My Top Ten Episodes of "Lost"

There are 121 hours of "Lost" that aired over six years, with a scale of production and a level of quality that network television has rarely been able to match.  I don't think I can count myself a fan of the series, as I've often been at odds with the show's storytelling methods and thematic preoccupations.  However, after experiencing all of its highs and lows, I can say I admire it greatly for its considerable achievements.  

As always, episodes are unranked, but listed below by airdate.  Very big spoilers below.

"Walkabout" - "Lost" sure loved its plot twists, and one of the earliest and most successful was revealing that John Locke was paralyzed before coming to the island.  More than that, the whole episode slowly reveals that the confident mystery man who seems to have a leg up on the other survivors was actually a miserable nobody before the island.  Locke had one of the wildest and most unlikely arcs out of anyone in the show, and this was a fantastic starting point.  

"Numbers" - Hurley, however, is my favorite character.  His first flashback episode introduces the magic numbers that seem to guide his fate and bring misfortune wherever they pop up.  His personal journey from directionless schlub to lottery winner to man-on-the-run-from-a-curse makes for one of the most entertaining hours of the early years of "Lost."  The island sequences with the search for Rousseau and the antics with the traps are also a great time.

"Exodus" - Most of the "Lost" season finales are multi-hour deals that feature a lot of big spectacle and action set pieces.  If I have to be specific here, I'm singling out the very last hour where the hatch is opened and the raft is blown up.  It's absolutely the best cliffhanger the show ever came up with, and I'm still upset that the Michael and Walt storyline went so sideways in future seasons after the setup we got here.  The flashbacks all coalescing together was also very satisfying.  

"One of Them" - Sayid was one of the show's most morally interesting characters in the beginning, as this episode reveals his past as an Iraqi soldier who picked up some scary enhanced interrogation skills over the years.  He uses them to get answers out of the slippery Henry Gale, whose allegiances weren't confirmed at this point in the show.  Naveen Andrews and Michael Emerson's performances are both fantastic, and I wish they'd gotten more episodes like this to show it. 

"Tricia Tanaka is Dead" - Another episode with Hurley flashbacks, centering on his difficult relationship with his deadbeat dad.  However, this episode is on the list for the island storyline this time.  It's a classic filler plot, but it's such an unexpected pleasure.  Hurley, Jin, Charlie, and Sawyer find an old VW camper van and beer, and just have a guys' hangout episode.  Nothing much actually happens, except watching these four bond and get into trouble together, and it's perfect.  

"D.O.C." - I had to have a Jin and Sun episode, because simply having these two on the show was a big risk for "Lost."  Also, I love that the creators stuck to their guns and presented their flashbacks in Korean with subtitles.  "D.O.C." is from Sun's POV, building on events previously seen from Jin's POV, revealing another layer of secrets between the two in their complicated relationship.  Yunjin Kim was quietly one of the show's best performers, and this was a great showcase for her.

"Through the Looking Glass" - The third season finale was the best of the show's big action spectaculars.  It pulled off multiple major twists, gave us a satisfying goodbye for Dominic Monaghan's Charlie, and "Not Penny's Boat" and "We have to go back!" instantly became catchphrases.  As the show went on, a lot of the conflicts between the various groups on the island became increasingly contrived, but here the storylines were still very well set up and easy to follow.

"The Constant" - I was conflicted as to whether to include this, because while it's widely considered one of the best episodes of the show, the character of Desmond Hume doesn't do much for me.  However, if I had to pick any episode to explain what "Lost" is all about, it would have to be this one - exactly the right mix of mystery, science-fiction, spirituality, and sentimental romance.  And kudos to Sonya Walger, who I haven't given enough props for playing the eternally patient Penny.

"Dr. Linus" - I enjoyed all of the "flash sideways"  stories, and particularly the one for Ben Linus.  It does such a great job of presenting him with a new moral test that echoes the previous one, in an entirely different context, and making it compelling.  I like that the conclusion is bittersweet, with the Linuses ironically unsatisfied for having made the right choices.  The way Arzt and Alex are used is perfect, and it's always a treat to have another William Atherton villain.  

"The End" - I understand why the finale was considered controversial when it originally aired.  The amount of sentiment and the vague spiritual business with the church reunions could have been pure hokum.  However, after all this time, it felt like the show had earned this kind of resolution, even if it was only a fantasy of one.  And it was very gratifying that the right guy was left in charge.

Honorable Mentions: "Pilot," "The Other 48 Days," "Live Together, Die Alone," "There's No Place Like Home," "The Incident," "Ab Aeterno."

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A Peek "Inside No. 9"

I watched the first two series of "Inside No. 9," the British anthology series written by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, members of "The League of Gentlemen" comedy troupe.  I haven't seen any of their prior work that I'm aware of.  I plan to keep watching, but wanted to take the time to put down some initial impressions while I'm still early in the show's run.  "Inside No. 9" is a rarity, a long-running anthology program of thirty minute episodes where none of the stories have anything to do with each other except taking place in a location marked as "No. 9" in some way.  Shearsmith and Pemberton, both comedians, usually have roles in every episode, which range from the dramatic to the farcical.  Most of the stories are some type of black comedy with a twist at the end.  

I was a little tripped up by the first episode, "Sardines," which involves a group of partygoers playing a game of Sardines and revealing all sorts of lurid secrets in the process.  The dialogue is dense, the plot unfolds very quickly, and I had to rewatch the ending twice to untangle one of the big reveals.  Then, in the next episode, "A Quiet Night In," there is no dialogue at all.  This installment is a slapstick comedy about two hapless burglars trying to steal a painting from the home of a feuding couple.  Other episodes take place in a train car, a theater dressing room, and a 17th century barn, but the action is always kept fairly small scale.  This is wonderful for the more intimate dramatic episodes, but neither of the two horror episodes worked for me at all.  It could be a cultural thing.

It took a few episodes for me to get used to the format and the style of the humor, but I like "Inside No. 9" for its sense of scrappiness and unpredictability.  Budgets are obviously low, but there's a lot of creative ingenuity on display, and a taste for experimentation with the format.  The episodes I've enjoyed the most so far are the ones that have managed to surprise me, like "Cold Comfort," which takes place in a crisis hotline call center and is primarily filmed with stationary security cameras, and "The Trial of Elizabeth Gadge," which is the funniest take on a witch trial I've ever seen.  It's often not clear which genre an episode belongs in until it plays out completely, so part of the fun is trying to guess what the turn is going to be.  Will the domestic dramedy end in an ironic murder, a poignant reveal that the main character has been dead the whole time, or a wry subversion after someone finally admits a lie or deceit?  

So far the casts have been very good.  Shearsmith and Pemberton have turned in some strong performances, and have been joined by familiar British talent like Gemma Arterton, Jessica Gunning, and Jack Whitehall.  These episodes are old enough that I was happy to find a few departed stars like Helen McCrory and David Warner gamely playing ridiculous characters.  However, "Inside No. 9" also makes room for unexpectedly touching episodes like "The 12 Days of Christine," featuring Sheridan Smith as a woman who seems to be unstuck in time.  By the time the final reveal rolled around, I'd completely forgotten I was watching an "Inside No. 9" episode.

So far the ratio of good and middling-to-bad episodes isn't great, but I'm heartened by the fact that "Inside No. 9" has improved over the two series I've seen, with the stories getting more complex and ambitious.  Or maybe I'm just getting used to Shearsmith and Pemberton's writing.  The highs have been very high, and I like that there seems to be a determination to parody or pay homage to so many different kinds of British media, from Shakespeare troupe hijinks to "Witchfinder General."

I'm glad to have seven more series to look forward to, and will do my best not to binge them too quickly.  However, I can already tell I'm going to have a heck of a time writing up the Top Ten episodes list when I'm done.  

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"The Bear," Year Four

Spoilers for the first two-ish seasons ahead.

Well, "The Bear" is back.  I binged it across two days, took copious notes, and sometimes paused to Google characters I'd forgotten or restaurant terms that nobody bothers to explain (and the word is "stages," not "stawges" or "stodges.")  I have no regrets, because the show is as good as it's ever been.

I'm not going to advocate skipping the third season of "The Bear," because there were some great episodes, especially "Napkins" and "Ice Chips."  However, everyone who was disappointed with the third season can be reassured that the fourth is back on track.  The momentum has returned in a big way, with Cicero and The Computer literally installing a countdown clock in the restaurant to show how long Carmy and his crew have to turn The Bear around before the money runs out.  Rest assured that the two big cliffhanger items from last season, the restaurant review and Sydney's partnership agreement, are both resolved this year.

However, what's most important is that it feels like everyone is moving forward, and Carmy in particular is finally confronting a lot of his emotional baggage.  Where the third season was very internal, with everyone often stuck inside their own heads, the fourth season is all about the characters finally talking to each other and trying to bridge the gaps.  This takes longer for some of them than others.  One pivotal episode is essentially a single long conversation between Carmy and Sydney that eventually involves Richie and Sugar.  Other episodes cover a Berzatto family wedding where we finally meet the Faks' notorious sister Francine, Sydney babysitting for a cousin while considering a new job offer, and Carmy having a visit with his mother that he's put off for too long.  This means a lot of big confrontations finally happen, many tears are shed, and emotional catharsis is abundant.  Occasionally, we also get a few laughs.

There are a few new faces in the cast, and some very big names dropping in for an episode or two, but most of these are returning ones.  The wedding features a lot of cameos, and is a great semi-sequel to the flashback Christmas episode from season two.  Meanwhile, Jessica (Sarah Ramos) and some of the crew from "Forks" are hired on at the Bear to help fix service bumps, while Sugar starts slashing the budget, and Ebraheim retains the services of a consultant, Albert Schnur (Rob Reiner), to help raise the profitability of the sandwich side of the business.  The world keeps expanding, this time focusing less on the restaurant world and more on the lives of the core cast.  We meet a few more members of everybody's families.  A lot of minor characters keep popping up with life updates, from Marcus's roommate Chester (Carmen Christopher) becoming a real estate agent, to Ted Fak (Ricky Staffieri) getting a girlfriend.

I like the way that the show is still experimenting, subverting expectations, and keeping it real.  I love how this season has so many scenes that are just people talking to each other.  There's a great interaction where Carmy is trying to visit Claire, but has to get through a few well-meaning gatekeepers first.  The finale is incredibly intense, but doesn't rely on any of the familiar tricks - no pulse-pounding guitar music on the soundtrack, and not a montage in sight.  It's clear why so many big guest stars say yes to the show, because the acting is phenomenal and the actors get to do so much of it.  They get to argue and make up and cry and demand and become elated or devastated or furious.  They get to drop one liners, miss connections, give meaningful looks, and be kind to each other when you don't expect it.

One thing that the fourth season doesn't give us is a clean and tidy endpoint, which some of the previous ones have.  Big decisions are made and there are clear indications that ongoing problems can be solved, but we don't see events play out.  I don't know if there will be a fifth season of "The Bear" at the time of writing.  There's certainly the material for one, but all the leads have gotten so much busier over the years with other projects that I don't know if the scheduling is feasible for the foreseeable future.  It would be a shame if this were the last we ever saw of Carmy and Sydney and Richie and all the rest, but I don't think it's a bad way to go out either.        

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My Favorite Victor Sjöström Film

Victor Sjöström  is one of the great silent film directors, who was successful both in his native Sweden, where he was one of the central figures of the early Swedish film industry, and in Hollywood, where he made several of his best films and was credited as Victor Seastrom.  In 1924, he directed the first film entirely produced by a newly formed studio called Metro Goldwyn Mayer, or MGM.  This was "He Who Gets Slapped," a psychological thriller starring Lon Chaney and Norma Shearer.      

 Victor Sjöström's films, particularly his American films, stand out from other silent films of the time for their rare emotional and psychological intensity.  He was very good at showcasing his actors' performances, possibly because he was an actor himself.  Here, he helps Lon Chaney to deliver one of his signature roles, the tragic clown who calls himself "He Who Gets Slapped," or simply "HE."  Based on a Russian stage play, with clear influences from the opera "Pagliacci," "He Who Gets Slapped" examines the history of a wronged man who has everything stolen from him, and decides to re-enact that humiliation every night in a circus act that largely consists of being slapped and abused by the other clowns to absurd extremes.  It's incredibly dark for a melodrama of this era, and I initially mistook it for a horror title, similar to Paul Leni's "The Man Who Laughs."  

The plotting is typical for melodrama, with our protagonist being swindled and persecuted by an evil Baron, and then falling in love with a fellow circus performer played by Shearer, before a heroic sacrifice leads to his last minute redemption.  However, the centerpiece of the film is the circus, with its white-painted clowns and ferocious animals.  There was never a more bleak and bitter depiction of a man's broken psyche, where the world has become an endless joke and his suffering is the punchline.  The clown act is mindlessly cruel, and all HE can do is smile and take it, as the crowds roar with laughter.  Sjostrom isn't shy about emphasizing the disturbing aspects of the farce, and Chaney ensures that the misery and despair of HE comes through in every frame.  Eventually HE is saved by the kindness of the female lead, and opportunity to overcome his oppressors, but the character is defined by his unrelenting sadness and grief.         

Lon Chaney, the "Man of a Thousand Faces," was famous for his ability to play sympathetic grotesques and other exaggerated characters through the skillful use of makeup.  "He Who Gets Slapped" came right between two of his most famous roles in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "The Phantom of the Opera."  Though nowhere near as iconic as those characters, HE is still a fantastic screen creation, a painted clown whose permagrin does nothing to hide his actual feelings and state of mind.  Trained in clowning by real circus clown George Davis, Chaney's performance is carefully layered so that it works in both the context of the circus act and the encompassing melodrama.   It's his ability to elicit so much pathos, despite the heavy makeup and clowning mannerisms, that makes the character work.  "He Who Gets Slapped" was an important role for Chaney, giving him some of the best reviews of his career, and greater visibility as a leading man.

A less well regarded director probably wouldn't have had the clout to make such a dark film, but Victor Sjöström had been well established in the Swedish film industry for over a decade at this point, known for his sterling dramas and character studies.  "He Who Gets Slapped" was the second of eight films he made in the Hollywood studio system, including "The Scarlet Letter" and "The Wind."  Though his Swedish films were more important for their innovations in editing, cinematography and special effects, I prefer his later ones which benefited from collaborations with Hollywood acting talent and larger studio budgets.  Alas, Sjöström was one of the directors who was not able to adapt when the talkies came in at the end of the 1920s, and he acted more than he directed for the rest of his career.  Memorably, his final screen appearance was in a film made by one of the many directors he inspired - Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries."         

What I've Seen - Victor Sjöström

Ingeborg Holm (1913)

A Man There Was (1917)

The Outlaw and His Wife (1918)

Karin Daughter of Ingmar (1920)

The Phantom Carriage (1921)

Love's Crucible (1922)

He Who Gets Slapped (1924)

The Scarlet Letter (1926)

The Wind (1928)

Under the Red Robe (1937)

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The "Eephus" Elegy

I'm the wrong person to be extolling the virtues of "Eephus," directed and co-written by Carson Lund, which I strongly suspect is one of the great baseball movies.  I don't just mean one of the great baseball movies of this decade or this era, but one of the great baseball movies, period.  The trouble is that I don't have much of an appreciation for the sport, and no nostalgia for it whatsoever, and "Eephus" is often about nostalgia.  

A ballfield in Massachusetts is about to be demolished to make way for the building of a new school.  Thus, the local recreational team, Adler's Paint, faces the end of the line.  The team spends one last day there, playing an eventful game against their rivals, the Riverdogs.  From the beginning, the game is a dodgy affair.  Adler's Paint almost has to forfeit because a player is late.  Balls are lost, players leave early, and everyone grumbles over aches and pains and all the compromises they need to make to keep the game going.  Nearly all the players are middle-aged men, some noticeably out of shape.  The spectators include politely disinterested family members, snide passersby, and one ancient recordkeeper.  As the game drags on, and the sun goes down, there seems to be no reason for any of them to be there, except their dogged determination to finish the game.

"Eephus" is very much a vibes movie.  There's not much of a plot, except for watching the game play out and listening in on people's conversations.  The characters all have names, but it's difficult to keep track of them, and I didn't recognize any of the actors.  Apparently the documentarian Frederick Wiseman contributed some voiceover work.  But no matter - the players are a ragtag collection of guys who are endlessly fascinating to observe.  No introductions are made, and we have to operate off of a lot of incidental information - this this one is married, that one is studying to be an engineer, and the pitcher specializes in the "eephus," a rare pitch that seems to slow down as it approaches the plate, causing the batter to misjudge its timing.  The film has chapter markers, each noting the time of day and offering a quote from one of the baseball greats, like Yogi Berra and Babe Ruth.  A radio in the dugout plays a recording of a far more exciting professional game from decades ago.       

I like the way that "Eephus" presents a picture of male camaraderie through a mosaic of small interactions - some ambivalent, some contentious, some with a fair amount of invective, but none of the disagreements leading anywhere serious.  There are complaints, encouragements, commiserations, invitations, and remembrances.  Their treatment of the game is unsentimental.  Throughout the day we hear repeated claims that one player or another shouldn't even be there that day, or should have left hours ago, or that the whole game is an exercise in futility.  However, without ever stating why or how, it's clear that the game does mean a great deal to many of the players.  They hunt down the lost balls, figure out substitutions as they lose players, and even engineer a nifty way to keep playing in the dark.  They perform the rituals of the game as best they can, from the national anthem, to the sharing of beers.

  

There's something instantly evocative about the way "Eephus" looks, its images of the schlubby players in their red or blue uniforms somehow a very  comfortable and familiar sight.  Everything about the cinematography runs contrary to the glorified images of baseball heroes, shots lingering on everyone looking tired, or bored, or exasperated.  However, there's also a wonderful patience to the film, letting us soak in the inviting New England small town atmosphere.  The passage of time is captured beautifully as daylight fades, and in the night sequences the lighting becomes more inventive and dramatic.  I love the way that fireworks are used in one of the final scenes.

 

In short, you don't have to like or know anything about baseball to enjoy "Eephus," though I'm sure it helps.  You do, however, have to be able to empathize and sympathize with the men who love baseball, beyond all hope of glory, to the bittersweet end.    

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"Black Bag" Snaps

I was a little worried about seeing Michael Fassbender playing another intelligence operative in "Black Bag" so soon after I'd seen him in "The Agency."  However, the two characters and the two projects are completely different.  Fassbender and Cate Blanchett play married MI6 agents George Woodhouse and Kathryn St. Jean.  We first meet them when they're throwing a dinner party for two other co-worker couples from British Intelligence.  There's Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela) and Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), whose tempestuous relationship is on the rocks.  There's psychologist Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naonie Harris) and Col. James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page) who are more recently linked.  Also, one of the people at this dinner party is a leak, who may be responsible for putting a cyberweapon in the wrong hands.

"Black Bag" is an espionage thriller, but one that is very small scale and very tightly focused on the interplay among a small number of characters, all of them connected to each other through various personal relationships.  As George hunts for the leak, he stress tests all his suspects, including his wife, who has always disagreed with him on the subject of their finances.  Their fascinating relationship is at the heart of the film.  How do they manage to maintain their marriage and their careers in a field where nobody can trust each other, and everyone around them has made a mess of their love lives?  We listen to the pair exchange pillow talk and promises, some that we're meant to take at face value, and some that we're not.  George says he'll never lie to Kathryn.  Kathryn says she'll never lie to Greorge - unless she has to.  

I expected "Black Bag" to be more of a standard spy thriller, with the chases, fight scenes, and other showy set pieces that I associate with the genre.  What director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp have put together is a lot sparser and more down-to-earth, built around conversations, interrogations, meetings, and some very tense dinner party games.  It's more stylized and definitely more sexy than the soberly paranoid spycraft of John LeCarre, whose work is alluded to in various ways, but it doesn't bother with the flashy business of going on missions or putting on false identities.  Wardrobes are aspirational, but reasonable.  There's a little bit of globetrotting, a few shots fired, and one satisfying instance of incendiary vehicular carnage, but otherwise the performances are the main event.  And of course the performances are great.  Fassbender and Blanchett have loads of chemistry, and we get to see it up close and personal.         

   

It's really extraordinary how Fassbender and Blanchett have both played similar characters before, but George and Kathryn feel entirely unique, and in conjunction with each other they're a different organism altogether.  I've seen a few reviews of "Black Bag" reference "The Thin Man" movies, which star another effortlessly suave crimebusting couple, but like everything else in "Black Bag," more is done with less.  George and Kathryn aren't showy or demonstrative, but their obsession with each other is plain.  Unlike the other couples in the story, their romance is very much alive, and their seduction of each other is ongoing.  I appreciate that it's an unfussy romance for adults as well.  There's a remarkable degree of self-control and letting the silences speak, which does so much to cultivate the air of mystery around our leads.  

What keeps me from wholeheartedly falling in love with "Black Bag," is that I saw Soderbergh's "Out of Sight" recently, which has a similarly low key, mesmerizing love story playing out.  And that highlights the one thing about "Black Bag" that I felt fell somewhat short - the score.  The irony is that the composer is David Holmes, who did the score for "Out of Sight," and many, many other Steven Soderbergh films over the years.  Much as I love the "Black Bag's" commitment to minimalism, there were some scenes where I just needed a bit more.  Then again, I've only seen "Black Bag" once, and I suspect this is the kind of movie that improves with repeat viewings.  In any case, it's not one to miss.

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"Lost," Year Three

Spoilers ahead for the first three seasons of "Lost."

The third season of "Lost" is a big improvement over the second.  It feels like the writers know where the story is going, even if that may not be the case.  The focus is narrowed to only a handful of characters, who finally get enough screen time to gain some more depth, and the story builds over the course of the whole season to a satisfying climax.  The season finale is the best episode of the show so far.

Having good, well-defined villains helps a lot.  We get a much better picture of Ben Linus and the DHARMA Initiative group, as Jack, Sawyer, and Kate spend the first several episodes imprisoned in their stronghold.   The one major new character this year, Dr. Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell), is introduced as a villain and becomes more complex as the season goes on.  While I'm still not as interested in the captured trio as I am with characters like Locke, Hurley, Sun, or Sayid, at least this run of episodes fleshes out Jack, Sawyer, and Kate to the point where they feel like more well-rounded characters.  Sawyer in particular emerges at the end of the season with a very good arc.  DHARMA could be more threatening though.  Ben and Juliet's mind games are awfully tame by 2025 standards, and the stakes always feel very arbitrary for everybody - all the attempts to recruit Jack and Locke into the cult feel silly.  Still, I'll take the crazy cult over the smoke monster and random polar bear sightings.  There's still too much about the island that's way too mystery-baity.  

The best storyline of this year definitely belongs to Charlie.  I haven't written much about Dominic Monaghan's work in the show, because there simply wasn't much to the character aside from being an addict and glomming onto Claire to worrying extremes.  Desmond's premonition gives him a chance to finally make some meaningful decisions and be a hero.  I'm heartened that the show managed to stick at least one good exit for a character.  The worst storyline is probably the little experiment with Nikki (Kiele Sanchez) and Paolo (Rodrigo Santoro), two background characters who have their own running narrative in the background of other episodes.  While I like the concept, and I'm glad the writers are experimenting like this, it's just not done well.  We barely learn anything about these two before their featured episode, where they're killed off with surprising cruelty.  

And speaking of being killed off, I was not pleased to lose Mr. Eko, whose actor quit the show.  Unfortunately that means the only surviving character from the tail section group is Bernard, and all the black regulars are gone aside from Rose and some random flashes of Walt in the finale.  The cast keeps getting whiter, and the issue is glaring.  On the one hand, I don't think the "Lost" writers should have felt obliged to tie themselves in knots trying to keep up the characters and storylines that weren't working.  On the other hand, this is clearly a systemic issue.  Lindelof and company getting called out for this kind of thing was instrumental to getting us the much improved "Watchmen" and "The Leftovers," later on down the line.  

I like that the flashback-heavy structure is still being used, and especially that this allows backstories for some of the characters to be gradually deepened and given more context.  Flashbacks build on flashbacks, setting up the next season when we'll see how the characters' absences will affect the direction of their stories.  I like Sun and Jin's episode this year in particular, because it shows how much the two of them have habitually been keeping secrets from each other.  Then there's Locke, whose terrible father (Kevin Tighe) keeps coming back in more surprising and entertaining ways.  The flashbacks are also handy for fun guest star appearances.  It was nice to see Nathan Fillion as Kate's ex, Zeljko Ivanek as Juliet's ex, Bai Ling as Jack's ex, Cheech Marin as Hurley's dad, Beth Broderick as Kate's mom, and Billy Dee Williams as himself.  The production values continue to improve.      

I've been warned that the show peaks with the fourth season and it's all downhill from there.  All of the subsequent seasons are also shorter than the first three, so I'm actually well past the halfway point for "Lost."  I'm enjoying "Lost" enough that I'm going to see it through to the end.  However, at this point I'm glad that I didn't watch this while it was airing.  The ability to work through the episodes at my own pace is very important to bolstering my goodwill toward the show.  Also, having some foreknowledge of where the story is going is helping to curb expectations.     

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"The White Lotus," Year Three

The response to the third season of "The White Lotus" has been much more negative than I expected, which puts me in the odd position of wanting to defend the show more than I might have otherwise.  If you've seen the first and second installments of "The White Lotus," you already know the gist here.  We follow various groups of rich, terrible guests of the White Lotus hotel, with someone guaranteed to be dead by the end of the last episode.  This time the setting is Thailand, in a White Lotus dedicated to health and wellness.  The themes of the season are spiritual rot, mortality, and some really screwed up family relationships.

There's a great set of characters this year.  Timothy and Victoria Ratliff (Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey) have built a family vacation around their daughter Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) wanting to visit and interview the leader (Suthichai Yoon) of a nearby meditation center.  Their sons Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and Lachlan (Sam Nivola) are also in tow.  Frenemy girlfriends Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Laurie (Carrie Coon), and Kate (Leslie Bibb) are on a reunion trip.  There's depressed Rick (Walton Goggins) and his much younger girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), who end up trying to track down the man who killed Rick's father.   Of course we have the White Lotus staff, led by manager Fabian (Christian Friedel), and hotel owner Sritala (Lek Patravadi), though more attention goes to aspiring security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) and his co-worker crush, Mook (Lalisa Manoban).  Finally, you may remember Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) from the Hawaii edition of "TheWhite Lotus," who is on a work exchange trip, and becomes close to her local host, Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul).  Scott Glenn and Sam Rockwell show up eventually in roles I will not spoil the specifics of, along with another familiar face from a previous season.

For the most part I really enjoyed this season of "The White Lotus," about on par with season two.   The show's creator, Mike White, reportedly patterned several of the stories on Greek tragedies, so the threat of bloodshed and highly inappropriate relationships are everywhere.  However, I like that there's a nice mix of more typical, down to earth situations, like the frenemy reunion with its fairly realistic exploration of female resentments and jealousies, and the more absurdist stories involving murder plots and blackmail.  Sometimes there are strange tonal inconsistencies - Belinda's storyline gets increasingly wild as the season goes on - but the various plots and characters balance against each other well.  I never felt, as I sometimes did with the second season, that certain characters or actors were being wasted.  Not all the stories played out the way I wanted them to - the Ratliffs' in particular - but I thought they worked on their own terms.  It's never been more obvious, however, that the foreshadowings of death are only there to keep the audience around for the character drama, and Mike White has no interest in actually constructing a whodunnit or howdunnit.     

I think this year suffered a little from not having a larger-than-life performance at its center on the level of Jennifer Coolidge's Tanya or Murray Bartlett's Armand, though Walton Goggins certainly put in some effort as a man embarking on the worst revenge plot ever hatched.  Jason Isaacs got me to sympathize with Timothy, as he stands on the precipice of financial ruin, and gradually realizes how hopelessly unprepared his family is for bad news.  Piper Perabo is the most delightfully awful rich lady caricature I've seen in some time, with Patrick Schwarzenegger also doing great things as a walking masculinity crisis.   Aimee Lou Wood might be the season's breakout star, as self-deluding but ever-hopeful Chelsea.  All the frenemies are great, but Carrie Coon with a monologue is always a force to be reckoned with.  However, the monologue of the season is definitely Sam Rockwell's - again, I refrain from spoilers.

  

I do feel that the picturesque Thailand setting wasn't used to its full potential.  Most of the appearances of Eastern spirituality are really just window dressing, and it feels like the bulk of the season could have taken place anywhere else.  Of the Asian performers, the only one I felt got much of a chance to do anything was Tayme Thapthimthong as Gaitok, and frankly he gets about the most perfunctory and least interesting narrative out of anyone in the cast.  I could have used more of  Sritala, who at least has hints of hidden depths.  

All in all, this season of "The White Lotus" was on par with the previous seasons, but there was room for improvement.  I'd urge Mike White to let things percolate a little longer before the inevitable fourth season.  

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"The Pitt," Year One

A prestige streaming series with a fifteen episode season?  How can this be?  The new Max medical drama looks like "ER" at first glance, and apparently was originally conceived of as a sequel series until rights issues quashed it.  Showrunner R. Scott Gemmill, executive producer John Wells, and star Noah Wyle are all "ER" alums.  However, "The Pitt" is a different beast.  For one thing, it takes place in real time, like "24," with each episode covering an hour of a marathon shift at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital ER, from 7:00 AM all the way until 10:00 PM.

Much has been said about how much more realistic "The Pitt" is than other medical shows.  We get to hear curse words!  Sensitive body parts and medical gore are uncensored!  I can't attest to the accuracy of the medical procedures being performed.  However, it is nice to see a much more realistically diverse group of doctors, nurses, and social workers, plus acknowledgement of long wait times, administrative pressures, and the still lingering trauma of the COVID pandemic.  "The Pitt" is not a documentary, and there's plenty of played-up drama. Nobody is wearing a surgical mask.  Morally and emotionally difficult situations seem to arise every few minutes.  The writers tackle every current hot-button issue affecting medical practice, from abortion to anti-vaxxers.  However, I appreciate that the focus stays on the medicine.  We stay in and around the hospital the whole way through, and whatever information we learn about the characters we learn in the course of their day at work.  No flashbacks or cutaways are deployed.

There are a lot of characters to keep track of - Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch (Wyle) is the senior attending physician, and the man in charge of the doctors.  Under him are the senior residents, Dr. Collins (Tracy Ifeachor) and Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball), and residents Dr. Mohan (Supriya Ganesh), and Dr. McKay (Fiona Dourif).  New to the hospital and working their first shift are a newly transferred resident, Dr. King (Taylor Dearden), an intern, Dr. Santos (Isa Briones), and a pair of medical students, Whitaker (Gerran Howell) and Javadi (Shabana Azeez).  Nurses are sparse in the cast, because of the focus on the doctors, but the most important are the ER's charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) and everyone's secret crush, Mateo (Jalen Thomas Brooks).  And just when you think you have everyone sorted out, the night shift starts showing up, led by Dr. Abbott (Shawn Hatosy).

The real-time storytelling format is a big plus, because it allows stories to unfold in a more realistic way from episode to episode.  We see the ER workers dealing with cases that are ongoing from previous shifts, and eventually have to hand off their work to others.  Some situations drag on over multiple hours, including a patient named Doug (Drew Powell) who is stuck in the waiting room.  You can spot him in episode after episode, his frustrations building as the hours pass.  There's also an emphasis on how so much of the doctors' work is complicated by other issues - language barriers, patient combativeness, cultural differences, and thorny domestic situations.  One patient may be a trafficking victim.  Another may be plotting something terrible.  Kiara (Krystel V. McNeil), the department social worker, frequently has to be called on.  

Watching The Pitt's newbies learning how to navigate this world is the main driver of the show's excellent character drama.  Noah Wyle's great as Dr. Robby, trying to stave off emotional and spiritual exhaustion as he struggles to lead during one of the worst shifts of his career.  However, I was far more invested in Drs. Javadi, Whitaker, Santos, and King.  Part of the fun of "The Pitt" is the competence porn, where we're watching smart, capable, dedicated people doing good work.  However, at the same time it's about watching people at major inflection points in their lives and careers - learning, maturing, and facing new challenges with every new patient.  Everyone loves Dr. King, who is hinted to be on the spectrum, and blossoms quickly as she gains more confidence under pressure.  However, it's also fascinating to chart the progress of overconfident, pain-in-the-ass Dr. Santos, who shows up with a slew of bad impulses and a troublemaking streak.

All the teaching and learning does mean that the writing sometimes gets awfully didactic.  All the characters are fallible, but they do get self-righteous at times without much pushback.  My biggest criticism of the show is that it allows the doctors to get away with some very risky behavior without enough consequences.  There's some self-awareness of this, especially with Santos's and Langdon's storylines, and all the really touchy subject matter is generally handled well, but I think the show could do better.  

Frankly, I like "The Pitt" so much that I'm really excited that it has the opportunity to do better.  For the few things that rub me the wrong way, there are so many more that delight me.  You don't see many shows this dense with new characters and new information, week after week.  The cinematography and editing do a great job of showing more than you'd expect without showing too much.  There's no backing score and all the music is diegetic.  And there are gossipping Filipino nurses!  

 

Fifteen hours were over too quick.  Pay off Crichton and get the next season into production ASAP.  

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"I'm Still Here" and "A Complete Unknown"

Let's finish up the Oscar movies today.

"I'm Still Here" was a big hit in Brazil, a film about the arrest and disappearance of retired politician Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) when a fascist regime was in control of the country in the 1970s.  We initially meet Rubens and his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) living with their five children near the seaside, enjoying a quiet life out of the spotlight together.  However, after increased activity by far-left radicals, Rubens is arrested.  Shortly afterwards Eunice and teenage daughter Eliana (Luiza Kosovski) are also taken into custody, and Eunice is interrogated.  

What makes "I'm Still Here" a particularly effective piece of drama is getting the audience situated with the Paiva family first.  We watch the kids play, oldest daughter Vera (Valentina Herszage) preparing to go overseas, and Rubens working as a civil engineer.  The violence of the regime is only present in the background, through news broadcasts on the radio or snatches of conversations with friends.  A good amount of time passes before the police appear in the Paiva home, insisting that Rubens come with them.  And suddenly everything about the Paivas' lives is upended, with Fernanda Torres emerging as the lead of the film as Eunice tries to get answers and survive the abusive treatment of her oppressors.  The interrogation sequences are harrowing, but where the film really shines is in the aftermath, as Eunice struggles to keep her family going and maintain her resolve in her hunt for answers.    

I probably built this film up too much in my mind, because this was the hardest Best Picture nominee to actually find and watch in the runup to the Oscars, but I expected more from "I'm Still Here."  We watch terrible things happen to some good people, for apparently no good reason.  An epilogue twenty-five years later provides some closure, but no real answers.  Not knowing much about Brazilian history, and nothing about Rubens Paiva, I had to go and look up a lot of the missing context for the disappearances   after finishing the movie.  Torres's performance is very good, lovely and subtle for the most part, but I wish I could have seen more of what Eunice was up to during those twenty-five years the movie skipped over.  It feels like there was much more to the story than what we saw onscreen.

On to "A Complete Unknown," which is an interesting take on the life and career of Bob Dylan, played by Timothée Chalamet.  We get plenty of context for Dylan and his music, as "A Complete Unknown" focuses on the period from 1961 to 1965, when he moved to New York and became a part of the folk music scene.  We see him  befriend other musicians like Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), with Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) and Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) making appearances.  And when Dylan's star begins to rise, we see it in relation to the careers of the other musicians in his orbit at the time.    

I don't know much about Bob Dylan aside from his most famous songs.  I like the way he's portrayed here, first as a bright young discovery that everyone wants to know, and then as an increasingly frustrated artist who can't stand being pigeonholed in the folk genre, and eventually burns several bridges to get himself out.  He's shown from the POVs of several people close to him, including his girlfriend Sylvie (Elle Fanning), often being a monumental ass.  At no point was I able to see Chalamet as Bob Dylan, but he's charming enough and does a decent enough job with the songs, so I didn't mind.  I'm grateful that Chalamet didn't attempt to sound or behave more like the actual Dylan, which would have probably been very distracting.

The ensemble cast is great, with a magnetic Monica Barbaro leaving the biggest impression as someone I need to pay more attention to.  If you're a fan of folk music, "A Complete Unknown" almost plays like an all-star concert, with plenty of rousing musical interludes and nostalgic recreations of '60s New York.  Director James Mangold, who gave us a much more traditional biopic with "Walk the Line" twenty years ago, is very surefooted here, both building up and undercutting Dylan's image as necessary.  Though this never gets much into the biographical details, "A Complete Unknown" does an excellent job of getting across why Bob Dylan is famous, and how he fits into musical history.  And it's a good time at the movies too.    

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"Hard Truths" Has the Performance of the Year

Everyone who has seen "Hard Truths" is not happy that Marianne Jean-Baptiste was not nominated for an Academy Award for her performance.  Personally, I am also pretty miffed that "Hard Truths" wasn't a contender for Best Picture either.  This is Mike Leigh's latest film, and if you're not familiar with Mike Leigh, he's a British director who has been making excellent domestic dramas about ordinary British people for decades.  One of his earlier films, "Secrets & Lies," is where I first saw Marianne Jean-Baptiste onscreen, incidentally.  That one was nominated for Best Picture, and Jean-Baptiste got a Supporting Actress nomination, way back in 1997.  

"Hard Truths" is about a woman named Pansy Deacon (Jean-Baptiste).  I think everyone has encountered a Pansy at some point in their lives - a bitter, angry, paranoid person who instinctively lashes out at everyone around them, and is altogether very unpleasant to be around.  "Hard Truths" follows Pansy through a brief period of her life leading up to Mother's Day.  We meet Pansy's husband Curtley (David Webber), and adult son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett).  We meet her younger sister Chantelle (Michele Austin), a hairdresser with a much nicer personality and two grown daughters (Ani Nelson, Sophia Brown) of her own.  We learn that Pansy and Chantelle's mother passed away a few years ago, and perhaps this has led to Pansy having to deal with some uncomfortable emotions.

It's difficult to say exactly what is wrong with Pansy.  She seems to be perpetually in a bad mood, and stuck in a cycle of being hostile to and critical of everyone she meets.  Her rude, demanding rants border on the comical at first, because they're so unfiltered and over-the-top.  However, Pansy also cleans compulsively, can't seem to stand being outside, and tends to wake up screaming from bad dreams.  She's anxious and scared and in pain from various ailments that haven't been properly treated, but refuses to ask for anyone's help.  Instead, she stubbornly pushes back against anything that resembles concern.  How much control she has over her own behavior is uncertain, but she cares very much about being in control.  Marianne Jean-Baptiste does an incredible job of keeping Pansy sympathetic while simultaneously being utterly detestable.  And the whole way through, she's very very watchable. 

"Hard Truths" also examines the people who have been the most impacted by Pansy's behavior, specifically her hardworking husband and directionless son.  Both seem numb to Pansy's constant verbal abuse, but eventually we do get a sense of what's going on with the two of them under the surface.  David Webber is wonderful at getting across how Curtley really feels about his wife and their toxic dynamic while hardly saying a word.  His silences say just as much as her deluge of dialogue.  Then there's Chantelle - the only person who Pansy seems willing to be civil with, and is able to talk to with something like honesty.  Reading between the lines, she provides the most likely answers as to why Pansy's family has been reluctant to abandon her to her own misery.  

Leigh also pointedly includes scenes of other characters biting their tongues in other daily interactions - Chantelle's daughters navigating microaggressions at work, and Moses being bullied - putting Pansy's behavior into context and suggesting that her hostility didn't come from nowhere.  The POV shifts to focus on different family members throughout the film, giving us glimpses of each of their private worlds, and their moments of isolation and loneliness between the bigger scenes where they come together.  Despite all the unhappiness on display, I found "Hard Truths" one of Mike Leigh's more uplifting films.  Nothing is anywhere close to fixed or resolved in the end, but we do close out on a hopeful note. 

And I hope Mike Leigh keeps making films for as long as he can, and I hope that Marianne Jean-Baptiste gets more chances in the future to deliver performances like this one.    

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Remember "September 5"

One of the more interesting Oscar also-rans this season is "September 5," directed and co-written by Tim Fehlbaum.  The chatter around the film suggests that it was the wrong movie at the wrong time, an account of the Munich Olympics hostage crisis of 1972, told from the POV of the ABC television broadcasting team that covered it.  "September 5" depicts the event as an act of terror perpetrated by the Black September organization, and says almost nothing about the underlying Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which some modern commentators have deemed unforgivable in the current political climate. 

However, "September 5" isn't really about the hostage crisis.  It's about the media's reaction to the crisis, and all the ways that the people in charge of the broadcast, led by Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) and Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), make bad calls and set terrible precedents, in the name of getting the story out.  Initially, they're set up as the underdogs.  The crew stationed in Munich is from ABC Sports, not ABC News, and covering events live as they're unfolding is a relatively new innovation.  Much of the film plays like a 70s thriller in the vein of "All the President's Men" or "The Parallax View," with as much focus placed on process as on sensationalism.  It's fascinating to watch the television crew at work behind the scenes, getting the cameramen in the right places, trying to ensure new information is confirmed, and juggling all the myriad technical necessities of putting a television broadcast together.  An added complication is that no one speaks German except for a single interpreter, Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch).    

"September 5" makes all the same points as movies like "Network" and "Nightcrawler" about the dangers of reckless journalism, but the difference here is that the wrongdoers are not raving madmen or lurid immoral sociopaths.  These are highly trained media professionals who are working under enormous pressure and time constraints.  When they realize they've made mistakes that potentially impact the hostage situation, no one is more horrified than they are.  It also makes a considerable difference that the events of September 5 are real historical events.  I wasn't alive in 1972, but a lot of the archive footage pings as awfully familiar, and I admit I sat up straighter when I realized that the barely glimpsed newscaster being given directions by the control room was Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker).  There are ABC logos everywhere, and as far as I can tell "September 5" has no ties whatsoever to ABC or Disney.  Paramount is the distributor in the US.   

Not being familiar with the actual events, I found the film's suspenseful ending very effective.  Even if you know how the crisis plays out, however, there's plenty of tension that comes  from watching how the main characters are making decisions in response.  Bader emerges as the film's lead, and John Magaro delivers a memorable performance, as a man doing his best to look like he knows what he's doing as the situation grows more and more dire.  Peter Sarsgaard is in imperturbable authority mode, and a solid presence as always.  Finally, most of the filmmakers are German, and through the Gebhardt character they find a way to include a thoughtful German POV on the tragedy.  As a non-American and as a bystander to many of the decisions being made, she becomes the closest thing we have to an audience surrogate. 

I understand why "September 5" is being largely ignored, because it's not telling the kind of story that viewers are interested in right now.  However, it is quietly one of the better criticisms of the news media that I've seen in a while, and a reminder that there are real, fallible people who decide what we see on our screens, and how we perceive the events of the day.  The louder, more pointed satires of the current news ecosystem don't get the point across nearly as well as "September 5," which presents the original sins of live television broadcasting in far more sympathetic, cautionary terms.    

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"Nickel Boys" and "The Girl with The Needle"

These two films were probably my toughest watches this season, and also two of the absolute best movies I saw from 2024.  

"Nickel Boys," based on the book by Colson Whitehead, takes a very specific adaptation approach that seems to be working for some viewers but not others.  The entire film is shot from a first person perspective, so we only see what the two main characters see.  Initially this feels like a gimmick, but it becomes an integral part of the experience of watching the film, and is central to some absolutely devastating emotional moments.   

Elwood (Ethan Herisse) is an African-American teenager with a promising future, growing up in Civil Rights era Tallahassee, Florida.  Because he unknowingly accepts a ride from a car thief, he's sent to Nickel Academy, a reform school based on the notoriously abusive Florida School for Boys.  At the Academy, Elwood becomes friends with Turner (Brandon Wilson), an African-American boy from Texas and together they try to survive years of terrible treatment, while making plans for escape and resistance.  The film occasionally also flashes forward to an adult Elwood (Daveed Diggs) living in New York City, who is considering whether to testify about his experiences at Nickel Academy.   Occasionally we're also shown montages of other images, reflecting Elwood's thoughts and state of mind.  

Written and co-directed by RaMell Ross, with cinematography by Jomo Fray, "Nickel Boys" is an incredibly immersive, beautifully realized examination of memory and perspective.  Even without the tragic subject matter, seeing the world from Elwood's perspective for two hours is such an enlightening thing to experience.  The scene that hit me hardest was one of the simplest, where Elwood's grandmother Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) comes to Nickel Academy for a visit.  It's not just the way that Elwood sees the world, but how everyone else sees Elwood, or doesn't see him - the way they speak to him, the shifts in body language, and whether there's eye contact.  The film feels incredibly intimate and personal, especially in the way that it transcends time and space and reality.  The brief inclusion of other POVs forces us to question if Elwood is a reliable narrator.  Is his subjective view of the world something we can trust?  I've seen a few other movies that have tried similar first person narratives, like "Hardcore Henry" and "Son of Saul," but "Nickel Boys" is really something unique, and I'm glad it's finding its audience.    

On to "The Girl With the Needle," a black and white film set in Copenhagen from Swedish-Polish director Magnus von Horn.  Initially the film's aesthetic struck me as so austere and miserable as to verge on parody.  That feeling didn't last.  Set in 1919, we follow an impoverished seamstress, Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) who takes up with her boss Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup) because she believes that her husband Peter (Besir Zeciri), a solider, has died in the Great War.  This leaves her in dire straits, but eventually she is able to find work as a wet nurse for a woman named Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), who takes unwanted babies and illegally places them with other families.  The story unfolds like a dark fairy tale, of the "Bluebeard" variety, as Karoline slowly unravels the truth about Dagmar and comes to terms with her own conflicted feelings about motherhood.   

"The Girl With the Needle" is not a film I had many expectations for, and I found myself being constantly surprised.  I kept thinking that the narrative was going to follow one familiar path or another - the relationships with Jørgen and Peter, the struggle to end an unwanted pregnancy (the film's title comes from Karoline's attempt to give herself an abortion), or simply surviving in a brutal, harsh world where we see violence constantly being used against the weak and displaced.  However, the film is really about Karoline's relationship with Dagmar, who is a loving mother, a shrewd businesswoman, and perhaps also a complete monster.  Trine Dyrholm's performance is bold and horrifying.  Here is this strong, unflinching woman who is willing to acknowledge uncomfortable truths, but exploits them for her own gain.  It's difficult to condemn her completely, because the cruelty of the time and place she inhabits enables her atrocities, and by a certain twisted logic she's not in the wrong.  

I've always had a great fondness for female villains and monsters, and Dagmar is one of the most memorable I've seen in a while.  Her effectiveness is in her complexity, which also helped assuage some of my initial worries about the film's potential political messaging.  The ugliness of her actions is dwarfed by the lies she uses to justify them.  Karoline is no fairy tale heroine either, willing to be vicious and unkind in order to ensure her own survival.  Her wanting an abortion is never framed as immoral, and her later maternal yearnings not hypocritical.  I want to add warnings here that anyone sensitive about violence against children or the depictions of birth and early motherhood difficulties should tread very carefully.  There are images in this film as potent as those found in any horror picture, and they won't be easy to forget.  

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Surviving With "The Brutalist"

It's been a long while since I saw a film with an intermission, and if any film needs one it's "The Brutalist."  This is Brady Corbet's epic immigrant chronicle of a  Hungarian-Jewish man named László Tóth (Adrien Brody), who arrives in the U.S. in 1947.   Initially, László stays with his Philadelphia cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) and Attila's wife Audrey (Emma Laird).  We learn about László  little by little as he struggles to make his way in America.  We know that his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) are still in Europe, and László  hopes to bring them over to the U.S. as soon as he can.  We know that he's been deeply affected by the war, and develops a heroin addiction to deal with the pain, but stubbornly holds on to his pride and identity.  Then László takes a job for a rich industrialist, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), and the truth about László is revealed.     

I don't want to say much more about the plot of "The Brutalist," because I think one of the chief pleasures of watching the film is learning all the information about László's past incrementally.  There's a very deliberate separation between the two halves of the movie, where we meet László as an individual trying to make his way in America, and then as part of a married couple trying to reconcile themselves with their histories and their traumas.  I will say that it's rare to see a film that is so dense with themes and ideas - the Jewish experience, the immigrant experience, the cost of art, and the predatory nature of the wealthy and privileged.  Mostly, however, it's a film about how America works - the folly of the American dream and how so much of its greatness is due to the efforts of exploited immigrant talent.  Corbet puts a lot of work into evoking a particular time and attitude in America's past - the postwar 1950s when Brutalist architecture and modernist music were signalling a break from old norms, and a desire to create something new and essential.  

"The Brutalist" is easily Corbet's most accessible film, because putting aside all the grand notions of art and industry, the story boils down to László's relationships with Van Buren and his wife.  Adrien Brody delivers the performance of his career as this terribly wounded, haunted man who comes to America to try and start over.  He says very little at first, but his physical state tells us everything.  Every scene of him waiting in bread lines and sleeping in storage rooms is engrossing.  Every introduction to a new person, and every conversation sheds new insights on how he perceives himself, and where he might fit into the social order.  The first half of "The Brutalist" is stronger because the narrative is simpler and less complicated, but also because it's so fascinating to watch László reclaim his humanity in the wake of tragedy, coming back to life again after coming too close to death.  

The second half of the film is more difficult, putting our characters in less certain territory.  Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones earn their Oscar nods - Jones in particular delivers a performance of far more substance and weight than I've ever seen from her.  Erzsébet has suffered more than László physically, but mentally and spiritually she's far stronger, and I love how forward she is.  Meanwhile, Guy Pearce has been dependably good in villain roles, and  Van Buren is certainly a memorable one.  However, he has a difficult character arc, with too much implied and a final fate that's proved controversial with viewers.  I don't mind Corbet's use of narrative ellipses, but it does feel like a well-meaning producer decided three and a half hours was enough, and cut the last hour of the film in favor of an abbreviated epilogue.      

There has been some controversy around the use of AI to make some of the Hungarian dialogue sound more Hungarian.  I highly doubt viewers will notice, and the pronunciation corrections have absolutely no effect on how moving the performances are from Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones.  Likewise, you can see where a lot of corners were cut with the production of "The Brutalist" if you start looking, but it doesn't take away from the larger picture, which is a very singular, personal artistic vision, executed with uncommon skill.  

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"Nightbitch" and "A Real Pain"

Marielle Heller's "Nightbitch" is a well-intentioned film about the frustrations of early motherhood that doesn't really work.  Amy Adams plays the unnamed, exhausted mother of a cute little two year-old son.  Scoot McNairy plays her oblivious, uninvolved husband.  Both of them are bad parents in different ways.  Mom has given up her career as an artist to look after her kid, and has become a shell of her former self due to the mundanity and isolation of single parenting.  Her son isn't especially difficult, never displaying behavior out of character for your average two year-old - the one exception being that he co-sleeps with his mother, so she hasn't had a decent night's rest in years.  However, Mom is at the end of her rope.  Mom needs to get out of her rut.  Mom needs a wakeup call.  Mom needs to embrace her inner wild animal and start acting like a dog.

Yes, you read that right.  The idea of a woman embracing motherhood by getting in touch with her animal instincts is a promising one, but "Nightbitch" doesn't explore that metaphor nearly as much as I hoped it would.  There are a few half-hearted scenes of new hair growth and weird pustules that parallel the unwanted bodily changes that happen postpartum, but nothing that could be called body horror.  Instead, the Nightbitch is primarily conjured from Amy Adams' wild-eyed performance.  She growls.  She barks.  She bites and devours.  She's very committed, and I was never once tempted to laugh at her, but at the same time I wonder if it might have been better if I had.  The movie is described in a few places as a black comedy.  I expected "Nightbitch" to really lean into its protagonist's bad behavior, maybe get weird and unhinged.  Instead, Mom's journey never struck me as unnerving, just odd.  And it does that exasperating thing where it tells you what kind of movie it wants to be, and what messages it wants to get across instead of letting that all happen organically.  

There are some things that it gets right, and Heller clearly made this film for the right reasons, but it never gels.  It reminds me an awful lot of "Tully," a similar film about a struggling mother, but adding all the genre bits and flirting with Manimal-ism simultaneously felt like too much and not enough.  I think "Nightbitch" makes for a nice conversation starter, especially for those struggling through the toddler years or contemplating parenthood, but there's not much here that worked for me.      

 

"A Real Pain" is a stronger piece of work.  Jesse Eisenberg wrote and directed the film, and also stars as David Kaplan, an American Jewish man who goes on a Holocaust tour in Poland with his cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin).  It's a small film about a very specific experience and relationship, with some fascinating facets.  The central character is really Benji, who is simultaneously incredibly gifted and a walking disaster, who David both admires but often finds tough to tolerate.  Benji is outspoken and insightful and can be incredibly charming.  However, he's also not great with personal boundaries and prone to emotional outbursts and inappropriate behavior.  The tour seems to bring out Benji's worst impulses. David does his best to cope while juggling his own complicated feelings about Benji, who he used to be close with when they were younger. 

Kieran Culkin is the reason the movie works, and he deserves every ounce of praise that he's been getting.  You can easily see this guy getting away with everything Benji does because he's just that charismatic.  His criticisms of people are blunt and cutting, but don't come off as rude because he's so sincere in his convictions, and seems so genuinely hurt by what he sees as wrong.  Jesse Eisenberg often takes a back seat here, but he also does a great job of playing the straight man, and helping put Benji into context.  I like that both characters learn no great lessons or come to any epiphanies.  However, they're both earnestly trying to get along and the potential for stronger reconnection is always a possibility.   

It's nice seeing a movie where you can be reasonably sure that every character was based on someone the filmmakers knew in real life.  There's the considerate British tour guide James (Will Sharpe), the soft-spoken African man who converted to Judaism, Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan),  and the other assorted tour participants trying to be polite as the incidents and disruptions compound.  It's always fun to completely fail to recognize Jennifer Grey again.  I noticed at the beginning of the film that "A Real Pain" is a Polish co-production, having been shot largely in Poland, and does a very good job of showing off the picturesque parts of the country.  The Holocaust tour feels very incidental to the film, and those looking for something more substantive on the subject  should probably try the recent "Treasure" instead.  However, "A Real Pain" feels like exactly the movie it set out to be - a small, personal, affecting story about the enduring importance and irritations of family.     

 

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