Minor spoilers ahead.
I'm forty-odd episodes into "The West Wing," and it's time I took a pause to evaluate where the series is and my own reactions to it so far.
First things first. Oh good grief, I listed Mandy in my original "West Wing" post as one of the show's better female characters, didn't I? Well, I still think that she had the potential to be a much better character than she was, but Aaron Sorkin clearly didn't have any idea of what to do with her, Ditto lawyer Ainsley Hayes (Emily Procter), who was brought in during the second season to be a Republican counterpoint to the Democratic West Wing regulars, and serve as a way for Sorkin to address some criticisms of the show. I really liked her, and I thought her character was handled beautifully. Alas, Sorkin couldn't figure out how to keep her in the picture. I mean, strategist Joey Lucas (Marlee Matlin) is fine as Josh's love interest, but she's not remotely as interesting as Ainsley. First Lady Abbey Bartlett (Stockard Channing), at least, has gotten more screen time as the series has gone on.
CJ remains my favorite character in the show, and I love it every time the press room erupts with the reporters shouting her name. Donna Moss (Janel Maloney) is kind of growing on me, but she's such a nonentity - really just there to be a Girl Friday sparring partner for Josh. And let's not kid ourselves here. 90% of the time, the focus of "The West Wing" is on the men - on Josh, Toby, Leo, Sam, and more and more on President Bartlett. The entire back half of the second season is about Bartlett grappling with the legal, political, and moral implications of hiding his health problems. Sorkin is very good at showing how the situation keeps snowballing, week after week. One of the most famous episodes of "The West Wing" is the second season finale, "Two Cathedrals," which features a showstopper of a monologue for Martin Sheen.
My favorite installments, however, are the more lighthearted ones. "Celestial Navigation" is a standout for being one of the most purely comedic, with Sam and Toby getting lost in Connecticut, CJ's dental mishap, and Josh accidentally creating the President's secret plan to fight inflation. Or there are the Christmas episodes, where the White House decor gets all tinseled up, and the regulars get a little mushy. The big stunt ending of the first season was fun, but also a good reminder that "The West Wing" was a '90s network television series, and very beholden to all of the usual conventions and limitations that came with the territory. The seasons always had to end with some big, sensational cliffhanger, and what could be more sensational than an assassination attempt? And it was fun to see the show become a political thriller for two episodes, but I was very relieved when everyone quickly got back to business as usual.
And business as usual is one of the chief joys of "The West Wing." It's the banter and the sentimentality that the show falls back on again and again, and the willingness of the core cast of characters to fight for one another and be a little cheesy about it. The show may be glum and dispiriting at times, but it avoids being cynical about politics. Sure, the pendulum sometimes swings too far in the other direction, making our heroes seem naively optimistic, but that kind of optimism is nice to see again, post 2016. Even though the focus of the series has quietly shifted toward political fights as the show's re-election storyline has ramped up, everyone still behaves, and nobody is infallible.
Some of the show's charms still elude me. I have no idea why the curmudgeonly Toby is so beloved, or what's going on in the minds of the shippers who want to pair up Josh and Donna. Mrs. Landingham's departure was very traumatic for some fans, and is one of few plot points I recall from when the show was originally airing. The event left me unmoved. However, I think it's safe to call myself a fan at this point. "The West Wing" isn't a show that I'm going out of my way to watch, now that I've gotten through the most famous seasons, but I still find myself putting on an episode when I have a little time. It's proven consistently strong and dependably entertaining in a way that few shows of its kind are.
---
Monday, July 27, 2020
Saturday, July 25, 2020
"Westworld," Year Three
Minor spoilers ahead.
"Westworld" is one of the most frustrating series that is currently airing. Despite plenty of resources at their disposal - a great cast, spectacular production values, and talented writers and directors - they just can't quite seem to pull it together. The third season was their chance to revitalize the show, changing the setting from the Westworld amusement park to the outside world that we've only glimpsed so far. The show's creators do a great job of setting up the human world of the future, a sleekly gorgeous dystopia where individuals are guided by a supercomputer called Rehoboam, that preserves the social order and keeps larger dangers at bay.
We have a few new human characters, chief among them Caleb (Aaron Paul), an ex-soldier who gets caught up in Dolores's plans, and the mysterious Serac (Vincent Cassel), who controls Rehoboam, and by proxy the world. However, the major conflict is between the escaped hosts, namely Dolores and Maeve. Dolores and her allies - including Caleb and Hale - want to disrupt the human world and take down Rehoboam. Maeve is being incentivized to stop them. Bernard and another host, Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth), have teamed up to try and keep the situation from blowing up. Oh, and the Man in Black is still in play, and has his own ideas about how to go about saving the world.
The human world looks absolutely fantastic. The actors, especially Evan Rachel Woods as Dolores, do a great job of introducing all these new concepts and hyping up the impending clashes to come. However, "Westworld" runs into some of the same problems that it's had since the beginning. On the one hand, it tackles all these big, fascinating ideas, and does a good job of setting up a compelling set of problems. I love the human world having all these parallels to the Westworld park, including the way Serac has justified setting individual human beings on predetermined courses of action, with grave consequences if they deviate. On the other hand, "Westworld" is still obligated to be an action show first and foremost, and nearly every episode involves some kind of big fight or chase sequence. The series largely abandons the mystery format and never gets quite as cerebral or philosophical as it has in the past. The show dispensed with its "final five Cylons" cliffhanger mystery in one, tidy swoop.
This shift is not necessarily a bad thing. It's much easier to follow this year's streamlined narrative and to stay invested in the various characters. The twists tend to come off better, and there's not the sense that the show's creators are rewriting the rules every time they need an escape hatch. There's also less filler and vastly improved material for some of the characters. Tessa Thompson is finally getting meatier scenes as Charlotte Hale. Some of Ed Harris's best moments are in this season, including a therapy scene involving several different versions of his character. Vincent Cassel and Aaron Paul are excellent additions to the cast, and none of the returning regulars feel shortchanged or sidelined this year.
However, the show seems to have gotten a little too wrapped up in spectacle for its own sake. Some of the big action moments are great, but others are duds, including nearly all the physical fights between Dolores and Maeve. The story often moves too quickly with the reduced episode count, and there are still several instances where reversals and changes of heart seem to come at the drop of a hat. In trying to be more cinematic, weekly developments are often less impactful, and the storytelling less thoughtful. It's fine if "Westworld" wants to be more of an action thriller from this point on, but I feel like the creators haven't quite figured how to balance those elements with the more ambitious sci-fi ideas they're trying to explore.
I also can't help drawing comparisons to Jonathan Nolan's last series, "Person of Interest," which shares a lot of the same themes and concepts with this season of "Westworld." I think "Person of Interest" sidestepped a lot of the thornier story issues, because it had a much simpler, straightforward premise and characters. "Westworld," by comparison, is juggling at least four different characters with major identity crises, who have a terrible habit of switching bodies and allegiances whenever it suits them. And, of course, nobody ever stays dead.
Still, "Westworld" remains very watchable, and I'm keen to give this season a pass because it feels like it's going to end up serving as an important connector piece to whatever is coming next. And, unlike the previous seasons, this year's finale was actually very satisfying.
---
"Westworld" is one of the most frustrating series that is currently airing. Despite plenty of resources at their disposal - a great cast, spectacular production values, and talented writers and directors - they just can't quite seem to pull it together. The third season was their chance to revitalize the show, changing the setting from the Westworld amusement park to the outside world that we've only glimpsed so far. The show's creators do a great job of setting up the human world of the future, a sleekly gorgeous dystopia where individuals are guided by a supercomputer called Rehoboam, that preserves the social order and keeps larger dangers at bay.
We have a few new human characters, chief among them Caleb (Aaron Paul), an ex-soldier who gets caught up in Dolores's plans, and the mysterious Serac (Vincent Cassel), who controls Rehoboam, and by proxy the world. However, the major conflict is between the escaped hosts, namely Dolores and Maeve. Dolores and her allies - including Caleb and Hale - want to disrupt the human world and take down Rehoboam. Maeve is being incentivized to stop them. Bernard and another host, Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth), have teamed up to try and keep the situation from blowing up. Oh, and the Man in Black is still in play, and has his own ideas about how to go about saving the world.
The human world looks absolutely fantastic. The actors, especially Evan Rachel Woods as Dolores, do a great job of introducing all these new concepts and hyping up the impending clashes to come. However, "Westworld" runs into some of the same problems that it's had since the beginning. On the one hand, it tackles all these big, fascinating ideas, and does a good job of setting up a compelling set of problems. I love the human world having all these parallels to the Westworld park, including the way Serac has justified setting individual human beings on predetermined courses of action, with grave consequences if they deviate. On the other hand, "Westworld" is still obligated to be an action show first and foremost, and nearly every episode involves some kind of big fight or chase sequence. The series largely abandons the mystery format and never gets quite as cerebral or philosophical as it has in the past. The show dispensed with its "final five Cylons" cliffhanger mystery in one, tidy swoop.
This shift is not necessarily a bad thing. It's much easier to follow this year's streamlined narrative and to stay invested in the various characters. The twists tend to come off better, and there's not the sense that the show's creators are rewriting the rules every time they need an escape hatch. There's also less filler and vastly improved material for some of the characters. Tessa Thompson is finally getting meatier scenes as Charlotte Hale. Some of Ed Harris's best moments are in this season, including a therapy scene involving several different versions of his character. Vincent Cassel and Aaron Paul are excellent additions to the cast, and none of the returning regulars feel shortchanged or sidelined this year.
However, the show seems to have gotten a little too wrapped up in spectacle for its own sake. Some of the big action moments are great, but others are duds, including nearly all the physical fights between Dolores and Maeve. The story often moves too quickly with the reduced episode count, and there are still several instances where reversals and changes of heart seem to come at the drop of a hat. In trying to be more cinematic, weekly developments are often less impactful, and the storytelling less thoughtful. It's fine if "Westworld" wants to be more of an action thriller from this point on, but I feel like the creators haven't quite figured how to balance those elements with the more ambitious sci-fi ideas they're trying to explore.
I also can't help drawing comparisons to Jonathan Nolan's last series, "Person of Interest," which shares a lot of the same themes and concepts with this season of "Westworld." I think "Person of Interest" sidestepped a lot of the thornier story issues, because it had a much simpler, straightforward premise and characters. "Westworld," by comparison, is juggling at least four different characters with major identity crises, who have a terrible habit of switching bodies and allegiances whenever it suits them. And, of course, nobody ever stays dead.
Still, "Westworld" remains very watchable, and I'm keen to give this season a pass because it feels like it's going to end up serving as an important connector piece to whatever is coming next. And, unlike the previous seasons, this year's finale was actually very satisfying.
---
Thursday, July 23, 2020
A Day At Comic-Con 2020 Online
I had some free time today, so I thought I'd take advantage of San Diego Comic-Con holding all their panels online this year. I watched five panels, all pre-recorded, roughly following the posted schedule but not exactly. These were the panels for "Star Trek," Amazon's remake of "Utopia," the "Marvel's 616" documentary series, "The New Mutants," and the 80th anniversary of Bugs Bunny. I wanted to put down a few thoughts on the experience.
First, there's no way that an online panel conducted via conferencing software is going to be able to match up to the live experience of Comic-Con. I've been watching recordings of past Comic-con panels that have ended up online for ages, and the crowd reactions have always been an integral part of the fun. Here, nobody makes any attempt to replicate them. Instead, you get a collection of celebs talking up their latest projects, usually with a couple of promo clips. A few trailers premiered, and a few exclusive clips were trotted out, but noticeably fewer than in recent years. There weren't any huge announcements that I could see, aside from the "Star Trek" panel confirming the new "Star Trek: Prodigy" Nickelodeon show.
There are clear benefits to having the panels online. I could attend multiple panels taking place at the same time. There were no lines, no space issues, and no getting your view blocked by other attendees. Because all the appearances were filmed in advance, there were no technical glitches to deal with and less time wasted on drawn-out introductions. However, this also meant no spontaneity whatsoever. There was never the possibility of people crashing each other's panels, no live Q&A mishaps, no unexpected fan interactions, and frankly far less energy and verve. Everyone's gotten used to the online panel format enough that there's no novelty there anymore. Some of the panels did try to incorporate some fan involvement, taking pre-submitted questions, and encouraging social media use. I thought it was very sweet that "New Mutants" spent a few minutes showing off some fanart.
All the panels were scheduled for an hour, but they varied wildly in actual length. The "Star Trek" panel, which actually covered presentations for three different shows, ran nearly 90 minutes and included a partial table read of the "Star Trek: Discovery" season finale. The "New Mutants" panel was just shy of 30 minutes, about the right length. The panel for Amazon's "Utopia" tried to fill a full 60 minutes, which was a bad idea because they ran very short of material. Based on the British "Utopia" mystery show, the cast had to keep answers evasive to avoid spoilers, which meant there wasn't really a lot for them to talk about. A couple of the participants were also relative newbies who clearly weren't used to doing press. The "Star Trek: Lower Decks" folks, by contrast, just let everybody loose and bleeped all the spoilers out for comic effect.
I did have something like the experience of wandering into random panels without really understanding what I was getting into. I got "Marvel's 616" mixed up with the "What If…" series, but the guests included Gillian Jacobs and Paul Scheer, who were super entertaining, and they totally sold me on the potential fun of an anthology series about the history of Marvel comics. I'm not really a Bugs Bunny fan, but I do enjoy Billy West, Leonard Maltin, and Jerry Beck. Their panel turned out to be a thinly veiled promotion of Warners putting out a new Bugs Bunny shorts collection, but it was still great to listen to a bunch of actors and animation geeks sharing their love of Bugs for an hour.
Since I'm not planning to attend another Comic-Con any time soon, I'd appreciate something like this being available in the future. It's not remotely close to anything like being there, but most of the panels were pretty fun to leave on all day, and I'm looking forward to a few other things on the lineup.
The best thing I saw today was definitely Marina Sirtis roasting Patrick Stewart during the "Star Trek: Picard" panel. I think she may be turning into our new Carrie Fisher.
---
First, there's no way that an online panel conducted via conferencing software is going to be able to match up to the live experience of Comic-Con. I've been watching recordings of past Comic-con panels that have ended up online for ages, and the crowd reactions have always been an integral part of the fun. Here, nobody makes any attempt to replicate them. Instead, you get a collection of celebs talking up their latest projects, usually with a couple of promo clips. A few trailers premiered, and a few exclusive clips were trotted out, but noticeably fewer than in recent years. There weren't any huge announcements that I could see, aside from the "Star Trek" panel confirming the new "Star Trek: Prodigy" Nickelodeon show.
There are clear benefits to having the panels online. I could attend multiple panels taking place at the same time. There were no lines, no space issues, and no getting your view blocked by other attendees. Because all the appearances were filmed in advance, there were no technical glitches to deal with and less time wasted on drawn-out introductions. However, this also meant no spontaneity whatsoever. There was never the possibility of people crashing each other's panels, no live Q&A mishaps, no unexpected fan interactions, and frankly far less energy and verve. Everyone's gotten used to the online panel format enough that there's no novelty there anymore. Some of the panels did try to incorporate some fan involvement, taking pre-submitted questions, and encouraging social media use. I thought it was very sweet that "New Mutants" spent a few minutes showing off some fanart.
All the panels were scheduled for an hour, but they varied wildly in actual length. The "Star Trek" panel, which actually covered presentations for three different shows, ran nearly 90 minutes and included a partial table read of the "Star Trek: Discovery" season finale. The "New Mutants" panel was just shy of 30 minutes, about the right length. The panel for Amazon's "Utopia" tried to fill a full 60 minutes, which was a bad idea because they ran very short of material. Based on the British "Utopia" mystery show, the cast had to keep answers evasive to avoid spoilers, which meant there wasn't really a lot for them to talk about. A couple of the participants were also relative newbies who clearly weren't used to doing press. The "Star Trek: Lower Decks" folks, by contrast, just let everybody loose and bleeped all the spoilers out for comic effect.
I did have something like the experience of wandering into random panels without really understanding what I was getting into. I got "Marvel's 616" mixed up with the "What If…" series, but the guests included Gillian Jacobs and Paul Scheer, who were super entertaining, and they totally sold me on the potential fun of an anthology series about the history of Marvel comics. I'm not really a Bugs Bunny fan, but I do enjoy Billy West, Leonard Maltin, and Jerry Beck. Their panel turned out to be a thinly veiled promotion of Warners putting out a new Bugs Bunny shorts collection, but it was still great to listen to a bunch of actors and animation geeks sharing their love of Bugs for an hour.
Since I'm not planning to attend another Comic-Con any time soon, I'd appreciate something like this being available in the future. It's not remotely close to anything like being there, but most of the panels were pretty fun to leave on all day, and I'm looking forward to a few other things on the lineup.
The best thing I saw today was definitely Marina Sirtis roasting Patrick Stewart during the "Star Trek: Picard" panel. I think she may be turning into our new Carrie Fisher.
---
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
"Wendy" Soars
I had a rough time getting myself situated into the world of Benh Zeitlin's debut feature, "Beasts of the Southern Wild," but once I finally did, I found the film a richly rewarding experience. Now, seven long years later, Zeitlin has finally made his follow-up film, "Wendy," an adaptation of J. M. Barrie's "Peter Pan." It's not nearly as strong as "Beasts," but I had no trouble connecting to this one.
Wendy (Devin France) and her brothers James (Gavin Naquin) and Douglas (Gage Naquin) are the children of a poor diner waitress, Angela Darling (Shay Walker). Growing up only seems to promise poverty and toil, so Wendy is easily convinced to jump aboard a mysterious passing train one night and run away from home, at the urging of a wild little boy named Peter (Yashua Mack). He brings Wendy and her brothers to a fantastic island where children stay young forever, unless they lose faith and begin to doubt. It's a paradise until, of course, it isn't.
The same earthy, chaotic, magical realist style Zeitlin used in "Beasts" has now been applied to "Wendy," along with the cultural context of the impoverished American South. So, instead of polite British children dressed in proper sleepwear, here the Darlings are a passel of scruffy rural Southern brats who make do with what little they have. The Lost Boys are no longer all boys, and feature a mix of races, with a dreadlocked African-American Peter in the lead. The more fundamental Peter Pan mythos has also been reworked heavily by Zeitlin and his sister Eliza. Neverland is now watched over by a supernatural creature called "The Mother," who manifests as a glowing sea creature, and is the source of the children's eternal youth. The adults on the island are all revealed to be former foundlings brought there by Peter, who fell from grace and grew old.
It's the style of the production that really sets it apart. Everything's been stripped down to bare essentials, and often props, costumes, and sets look like they've been repurposed from whatever the filmmakers had available. Neverland is full of wonders, including spouting geysers, underwater caves, and inviting wilderness, but it's a more grounded, natural place that has little in common with the CGI-heavy fantasy landscapes of studio-produced children's fare. The child actors, mostly nonprofessionals, are raw and energetic. Their acting is totally unpolished, but their genuine emotion and vividness are striking. The children's wild revels are all lovingly filmed by cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, in a way that highlights all the tactile rough edges, but also leaves room for giddy moments of impossible cinema magic, like the kids playing with the geysers, or jumping to and from the moving trains.
The result is a grand piece of poetic cinema, with sweeping, dreamlike passages of lyrical childhood wonder, that do a fine job of selling us on this version of Peter Pan and Neverland. When the film tries to get into more typical narrative conflicts, however, it runs into some trouble. Everything is relayed in very grand, very earnest terms, and either you buy into the make-believe wholeheartedly, or you don't. And you either find the Terrence Malick style narration and stream-of-consciousness editing effective or you don't. "Wendy" should be lauded for tackling all the darker, pricklier parts of the Peter Pan story in a way that never feels compromised or reductive, but occasionally the film gets too bogged down by its ambitions, and too beholden to its source material. The ending in particular comes off as a little tone-deaf in its aggressive positivity.
And yet, I couldn't help falling a little in love with "Wendy," with it's overwhelming immature emotions, it's child-eye view of the great big world, and its sheer untamed vision. We've seen the Peter Pan story told so many times onscreen over the years, often through these elaborate productions that end up being counterproductive. And we've seen very talented artists update and explore the story in various ways, trying to expand on its fascinating themes and ideas to varying levels of success. "Wendy" is the first in a long time that really feels like something different. It doesn't achieve everything that it wants to, but it gets pretty close to being something great.
---
Wendy (Devin France) and her brothers James (Gavin Naquin) and Douglas (Gage Naquin) are the children of a poor diner waitress, Angela Darling (Shay Walker). Growing up only seems to promise poverty and toil, so Wendy is easily convinced to jump aboard a mysterious passing train one night and run away from home, at the urging of a wild little boy named Peter (Yashua Mack). He brings Wendy and her brothers to a fantastic island where children stay young forever, unless they lose faith and begin to doubt. It's a paradise until, of course, it isn't.
The same earthy, chaotic, magical realist style Zeitlin used in "Beasts" has now been applied to "Wendy," along with the cultural context of the impoverished American South. So, instead of polite British children dressed in proper sleepwear, here the Darlings are a passel of scruffy rural Southern brats who make do with what little they have. The Lost Boys are no longer all boys, and feature a mix of races, with a dreadlocked African-American Peter in the lead. The more fundamental Peter Pan mythos has also been reworked heavily by Zeitlin and his sister Eliza. Neverland is now watched over by a supernatural creature called "The Mother," who manifests as a glowing sea creature, and is the source of the children's eternal youth. The adults on the island are all revealed to be former foundlings brought there by Peter, who fell from grace and grew old.
It's the style of the production that really sets it apart. Everything's been stripped down to bare essentials, and often props, costumes, and sets look like they've been repurposed from whatever the filmmakers had available. Neverland is full of wonders, including spouting geysers, underwater caves, and inviting wilderness, but it's a more grounded, natural place that has little in common with the CGI-heavy fantasy landscapes of studio-produced children's fare. The child actors, mostly nonprofessionals, are raw and energetic. Their acting is totally unpolished, but their genuine emotion and vividness are striking. The children's wild revels are all lovingly filmed by cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, in a way that highlights all the tactile rough edges, but also leaves room for giddy moments of impossible cinema magic, like the kids playing with the geysers, or jumping to and from the moving trains.
The result is a grand piece of poetic cinema, with sweeping, dreamlike passages of lyrical childhood wonder, that do a fine job of selling us on this version of Peter Pan and Neverland. When the film tries to get into more typical narrative conflicts, however, it runs into some trouble. Everything is relayed in very grand, very earnest terms, and either you buy into the make-believe wholeheartedly, or you don't. And you either find the Terrence Malick style narration and stream-of-consciousness editing effective or you don't. "Wendy" should be lauded for tackling all the darker, pricklier parts of the Peter Pan story in a way that never feels compromised or reductive, but occasionally the film gets too bogged down by its ambitions, and too beholden to its source material. The ending in particular comes off as a little tone-deaf in its aggressive positivity.
And yet, I couldn't help falling a little in love with "Wendy," with it's overwhelming immature emotions, it's child-eye view of the great big world, and its sheer untamed vision. We've seen the Peter Pan story told so many times onscreen over the years, often through these elaborate productions that end up being counterproductive. And we've seen very talented artists update and explore the story in various ways, trying to expand on its fascinating themes and ideas to varying levels of success. "Wendy" is the first in a long time that really feels like something different. It doesn't achieve everything that it wants to, but it gets pretty close to being something great.
---
Sunday, July 19, 2020
I Don't Understand "Devs"
I was looking forward to this miniseries, Alex Garland's first foray into television for FX and Hulu. I liked his two recent features, "Ex Machina" and "Annihilation," for their unusually heady takes on science-fiction horror stories. "Devs" initially fits right in line with those films. It stars Sonoya Mizuno as Lily Chan, an employee of the Googlesque tech giant Amaya. Her co-worker and boyfriend Sergei (Karl Glusman) is one day recruited for the company's secret "Devs" division by company founder Forest (Nick Offerman) and Devs chief Katie (Alison Pill). Sergei soon ends up dead, leaving Lily with a mystery to unravel. Other characters include Amaya's head of security Kenton (Zach Grenier), Lily's ex-boyfriend Jamie (Jin Ha), and Devs employees Lyndon (Cailee Spaemy) and Stewart (Stephen McKinley Henderson).
However, "Devs" turned out to be much less straightforward and more cerebral than anything I've seen from Garland. The story is slow paced and works best as a moody techno-thriller, but only up to a point. There are some fascinating characters, and some sequences of great suspense and horror, but at the same time it's difficult to follow what the characters' motivations and desires are. I'm not smart enough to understand what's going on in "Devs" all the time, because the story relies heavily on concepts taken from theoretical and experimental physics that I can't always follow. A major theme is the idea of determinism - that all our actions conform to a predetermined script - and how certain characters seek to undermine, enforce, or work around it. However, the corresponding human drama is too often similarly impenetrable - I'm still not entirely sure what was driving the show's major villain.
"Devs" is a better show to enjoy for its aesthetics and particular brooding mood. There are so many strange and interesting things to look at, from the giant statue of a toddler in the woods, to the pulsing golden interiors of the Devs building, to the episode where we see multiple versions of characters in various scenes, representing how various timelines could have played out. The soundtrack is mesmeric and intriguing. The show takes the common elements we associate with Silicon Valley tech companies like Facebook and Google, and gives them a sinister twist - the guru-like CEO with a cult of personality, the Bay Area environs, the security paranoia, and the unsettling corporate culture. Even television static can be made to be fascinating and difficult to look away from. Unfortunately, the atmospherics are often obtuse to the point of absurdity. Everyone talks slowly and deliberately, often saying sinister things without much substance - or too much substance. We eventually find out exactly what Devs is doing, but the implications often feel weirdly unconnected to the actual mystery that's driving Lily.
And speaking of Lily, she's a hard character to root for. It's strange, because Sonoya Mizuno gave some perfectly fine performances in other genre media recently, but gets nowhere with trying to make Lily sympathetic and heroic. There's something very introverted and interior about Lily that makes her difficult to connect with. She reminds me a lot of Rami Malek's Elliot Alderson from "Mr. Robot," except without the narration that really grounded that character and made him so relatable. Lily, stuck with a lot of long silences and seemingly impetuous choices, is often more of a mystery than the tangle of corporate espionage that she's trying to penetrate. What's more, other characters are constantly telling her she's special, but Lily never manages to demonstrate why to my satisfaction.
So, "Devs" looks spectacular and has sky high ambitions in delivering hard science-fiction. For the first few episodes, a strong supporting cast and the excellent production values manage to keep it humming along. However, it doesn't keep the momentum up in the second half, as the series gets deeper and deeper into mind games, and the characters reveal themselves to be much flimsier than they originally appeared. Allison Pill and Nick Offerman really deserve some kind of award for exuding so much calm creepiness that, sadly, doesn't amount to very much. I feel the ending of "Devs" was properly botched, not because it was difficult to understand (which it was), but because it was so keen to answer questions that the series did a terrible job of getting us invested in to begin with.
I'm all for Alex Garland getting more opportunities to blow our minds, but this was a project that should have stayed on the drawing board.
---
However, "Devs" turned out to be much less straightforward and more cerebral than anything I've seen from Garland. The story is slow paced and works best as a moody techno-thriller, but only up to a point. There are some fascinating characters, and some sequences of great suspense and horror, but at the same time it's difficult to follow what the characters' motivations and desires are. I'm not smart enough to understand what's going on in "Devs" all the time, because the story relies heavily on concepts taken from theoretical and experimental physics that I can't always follow. A major theme is the idea of determinism - that all our actions conform to a predetermined script - and how certain characters seek to undermine, enforce, or work around it. However, the corresponding human drama is too often similarly impenetrable - I'm still not entirely sure what was driving the show's major villain.
"Devs" is a better show to enjoy for its aesthetics and particular brooding mood. There are so many strange and interesting things to look at, from the giant statue of a toddler in the woods, to the pulsing golden interiors of the Devs building, to the episode where we see multiple versions of characters in various scenes, representing how various timelines could have played out. The soundtrack is mesmeric and intriguing. The show takes the common elements we associate with Silicon Valley tech companies like Facebook and Google, and gives them a sinister twist - the guru-like CEO with a cult of personality, the Bay Area environs, the security paranoia, and the unsettling corporate culture. Even television static can be made to be fascinating and difficult to look away from. Unfortunately, the atmospherics are often obtuse to the point of absurdity. Everyone talks slowly and deliberately, often saying sinister things without much substance - or too much substance. We eventually find out exactly what Devs is doing, but the implications often feel weirdly unconnected to the actual mystery that's driving Lily.
And speaking of Lily, she's a hard character to root for. It's strange, because Sonoya Mizuno gave some perfectly fine performances in other genre media recently, but gets nowhere with trying to make Lily sympathetic and heroic. There's something very introverted and interior about Lily that makes her difficult to connect with. She reminds me a lot of Rami Malek's Elliot Alderson from "Mr. Robot," except without the narration that really grounded that character and made him so relatable. Lily, stuck with a lot of long silences and seemingly impetuous choices, is often more of a mystery than the tangle of corporate espionage that she's trying to penetrate. What's more, other characters are constantly telling her she's special, but Lily never manages to demonstrate why to my satisfaction.
So, "Devs" looks spectacular and has sky high ambitions in delivering hard science-fiction. For the first few episodes, a strong supporting cast and the excellent production values manage to keep it humming along. However, it doesn't keep the momentum up in the second half, as the series gets deeper and deeper into mind games, and the characters reveal themselves to be much flimsier than they originally appeared. Allison Pill and Nick Offerman really deserve some kind of award for exuding so much calm creepiness that, sadly, doesn't amount to very much. I feel the ending of "Devs" was properly botched, not because it was difficult to understand (which it was), but because it was so keen to answer questions that the series did a terrible job of getting us invested in to begin with.
I'm all for Alex Garland getting more opportunities to blow our minds, but this was a project that should have stayed on the drawing board.
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Friday, July 17, 2020
The 2019 Movies I Didn't See
I write these posts every year to sort out my feelings toward some of the more prominent movies I've made a conscious decision to skip watching. I'm working through the last handful of 2019 films on my "To Watch" list, mostly foreign films with later domestic release dates. However, as my Top Ten list has been set for a while, and the queue of 2020 films is only getting longer, it's time to make some hard decisions.
Below are seven movies that didn't make the cut this year. I reserve the right to revisit and reverse my viewing choices in the future. However, I still haven't watched anything from last year's list.
"Gloria Bell" and "The Upside" - Both of these films are remakes of foreign films that I've already seen, the original Brazilian "Gloria Bell" from 2013 and the French "Intouchables" from 2011. I'm more interested in "Gloria Bell," because it kept the same director, Sebastián Lelio, got much better critical notices, and stars Julianne Moore. However, neither of the original films impressed me in the first place, and I have no interest in seeing American takes. "Intouchables" in particular strikes me as the kind of sappy, tropey racial harmony parable that I've had more than enough of.
"Tolkien" - I think the marketing campaign borrowing so much from Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" films is what really turned me off from this. It's another literary biopic that draws parallels between the life of the profiled author and the books they would go on to write. There was an earlier project announced a few years ago that would have dramatized the friendship between Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, but that one didn't go forward, to my disappointment. This one reportedly sticks to Tolkien's early years, and seems to have been roundly ignored by everyone as a bore.
"Dragged Across Concrete" - I've watched only one of S. Craig Zahler's previous films, "Brawl in Cell Block 99," and I'm not ready for another one. Zahler makes very violent, very gory films that push boundaries and delight in making viewers uncomfortable. "Dragged Across Concrete" has gotten decent reviews, and I'm usually a fan of crime and heist films, but I am extremely wary of this one. The content is way out of my comfort zone, the pace is reportedly slow, and the running time is over two and a half hours. Good luck to Mel with the comeback, but I'm not subjecting myself to this.
"Good Boys" - I'm sure this is a good film, however, it's one of those coming-of age comedies full of R-rated content that I just find tedious. Writer/Directors Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky's credits include "The Office" and "Hello, Ladies," and I've liked lead actor Jacob Tremblay in everything I've seen him in. However, the prospect of watching a trio of profane sixth grade boys getting into escapades just fills me with utter disinterest. I'm happy that it made a lot of money and made a case for more original comedies, but I am not the audience for this film and I'm perfectly okay with that.
"Midway" - I do like a good Roland Emmerich disaster film, and this one didn't get horrible reviews. They were bad, but not horrible. The movie was a crowd pleaser and did well. However, I've watched an awful lot of epic war films from the '60s and '70s recently, and I can't muster up any enthusiasm for this one. I haven't seen the original "Midway" from 1976, which wasn't a particularly well received film to begin with, and notoriously reused footage from other films. The big draw of that film was an all-star cast, and the best "Midway" can come up with is Patrick Wilson and a Jonas brother.
"The Aeronauts" - Director Tom Harper made another film last year that I really enjoyed, "Wild Rose." However, "The Aeronauts" stars Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, two actors I haven't had the best luck with in recent years. A movie with the two of them alone in a balloon for ninety minutes, even if it was an action adventure flick, sounded rough. A major red flag is that the film was designed for IMAX and positioned as a prestige film, but critical interest has been absolutely nil. This sounds an awful lot like a repeat of "The Walk," the underwhelming Philippe Petit film.
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Below are seven movies that didn't make the cut this year. I reserve the right to revisit and reverse my viewing choices in the future. However, I still haven't watched anything from last year's list.
"Gloria Bell" and "The Upside" - Both of these films are remakes of foreign films that I've already seen, the original Brazilian "Gloria Bell" from 2013 and the French "Intouchables" from 2011. I'm more interested in "Gloria Bell," because it kept the same director, Sebastián Lelio, got much better critical notices, and stars Julianne Moore. However, neither of the original films impressed me in the first place, and I have no interest in seeing American takes. "Intouchables" in particular strikes me as the kind of sappy, tropey racial harmony parable that I've had more than enough of.
"Tolkien" - I think the marketing campaign borrowing so much from Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" films is what really turned me off from this. It's another literary biopic that draws parallels between the life of the profiled author and the books they would go on to write. There was an earlier project announced a few years ago that would have dramatized the friendship between Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, but that one didn't go forward, to my disappointment. This one reportedly sticks to Tolkien's early years, and seems to have been roundly ignored by everyone as a bore.
"Dragged Across Concrete" - I've watched only one of S. Craig Zahler's previous films, "Brawl in Cell Block 99," and I'm not ready for another one. Zahler makes very violent, very gory films that push boundaries and delight in making viewers uncomfortable. "Dragged Across Concrete" has gotten decent reviews, and I'm usually a fan of crime and heist films, but I am extremely wary of this one. The content is way out of my comfort zone, the pace is reportedly slow, and the running time is over two and a half hours. Good luck to Mel with the comeback, but I'm not subjecting myself to this.
"Good Boys" - I'm sure this is a good film, however, it's one of those coming-of age comedies full of R-rated content that I just find tedious. Writer/Directors Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky's credits include "The Office" and "Hello, Ladies," and I've liked lead actor Jacob Tremblay in everything I've seen him in. However, the prospect of watching a trio of profane sixth grade boys getting into escapades just fills me with utter disinterest. I'm happy that it made a lot of money and made a case for more original comedies, but I am not the audience for this film and I'm perfectly okay with that.
"Midway" - I do like a good Roland Emmerich disaster film, and this one didn't get horrible reviews. They were bad, but not horrible. The movie was a crowd pleaser and did well. However, I've watched an awful lot of epic war films from the '60s and '70s recently, and I can't muster up any enthusiasm for this one. I haven't seen the original "Midway" from 1976, which wasn't a particularly well received film to begin with, and notoriously reused footage from other films. The big draw of that film was an all-star cast, and the best "Midway" can come up with is Patrick Wilson and a Jonas brother.
"The Aeronauts" - Director Tom Harper made another film last year that I really enjoyed, "Wild Rose." However, "The Aeronauts" stars Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, two actors I haven't had the best luck with in recent years. A movie with the two of them alone in a balloon for ninety minutes, even if it was an action adventure flick, sounded rough. A major red flag is that the film was designed for IMAX and positioned as a prestige film, but critical interest has been absolutely nil. This sounds an awful lot like a repeat of "The Walk," the underwhelming Philippe Petit film.
---
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
My Top Ten Films of 1965
This is part of my continuing series looking back on films from the years before I began this blog. The ten films below are unranked and listed in no particular order. Enjoy.
The Agony and the Ecstasy - Like most costume dramas of the era, "The Agony and the Ecstasy" was designed to be a spectacle. However, this one had more high-minded ambitions with its documentary elements and art history framing device. It also, unexpectedly, featured an unlikely comic duo in the form of Charlton Heston's Michelangelo and Rex Harrison's impatient Pope Julius II. Critics of the time complained about its relatively slow pace, but the film certainly got across the grand scope of Michelangelo's passionate ambitions and the enduring beauty of his creative accomplishments.
Bunny Lake Is Missing - Otto Preminger was an eclectic director, but his real forte was a good psychological thriller. "Bunny Lake" is one of his best in this vein, hiding the psychopath in plain sight and wringing chills out of very simple situations and environments. Preminger's London, shot in black and white, is a cold and alienating place. He's able to make familiar playground equipment look sinister, and children's rhymes sound absolutely monstrous. And even so many decades later, his cat-and-mouse games are perfectly played, and still able to generate plenty of visceral tension and terror.
The Collector - An absorbing thriller that achieves maximum emotional effectiveness by letting its horror premise play out very slowly. A madman kidnapping a girl and holding her in captivity is a familiar plot, but seeing how the characters' relationship develops over days and weeks proves absolutely enthralling. It's impossible not to pity Terrence Stamp's deeply disturbed criminal, even as we're also rooting for Susan Eggar to escape from his clutches. I especially admire the film's restraint in using fairly limited violence and treating the subject matter seriously. The tragedy hits so much harder as a result.
For a Few Dollars More - The second film of Sergio Leone's influential "Dollars" trilogy is my favorite for its simmering revenge story and particular mix of performances. I like Lee Van Cleef better as a shady good guy, and partnered up with Clint Eastwood's nameless bounty hunter. Klaus Kinski has a memorable supporting turn as the hunchback, and Gian Maria Volonte is a perfectly despicable villain. I confess that spaghetti westerns aren't generally to my taste, but this one has strong characters, and a satisfying story with a good emotional throughline. Also, I love the Ennio Morricone score.
Le Bonheur - Agnes Varda presents a portrait of lovely domestic bliss, full of warmth and color and brightness. Then she digs into the relationship of the main protagonists, showing how the couple's happiness is predicated on totally different assumptions - and a completely unequal power dynamic that renders one of them easily expendable. The verdant aesthetic choicess paired up with a troubling narrative generate some stirring proto-feminist vibes. Of all of Varda's films, this is easily her most effective example of style conveying message, and most cinematically exuberant and beautiful.
The Knack ...and How to Get It - A Richard Lester romp that functions as an experimental film, a sex comedy, a satire on gender relations, and a snapshot of the British sexual revolution. Coming on the heels of "A Hard Day's Night," "The Knack" makes use of sketch humor, absurdity, farce, and a good amount of camera trickery. Following the exploits of two would-be lotharios, the film is still remarkably relevant for its biting depiction of the male id and the eternal search for easy gratification. Full of energy and youthful verve, it always moves quickly and never seems to run short on ideas or irreverence.
Red Beard - Akira Kurosawa made a medical drama starring Toshiro Mifune, their last great collaboration before they famously fell out. It's humanist drama of the highest order, instilling lessons about medical ethics and social responsibility to our protagonist, an arrogant younger doctor with lofty ambitions. Episodic in structure, and sprawling in construction, the film unfolds like a great novel, telling smaller human stories that all illustrate a common theme. And Mifune's Akahige is one of cinema's great medical curmudgeons. He's as effective here as he is in any of his samurai and warrior roles.
Repulsion - My favorite Roman Polanski film is an unusually intense psychological thriller about a girl in isolation who becomes mentally unhinged. Catherine Deneuve delivers a great performance that turned her into an international star, but the real fireworks came from Polanski's depiction of her character's deteriorating psyche through physical manifestations - the corridor of hands, the cracks in the walls, and of course the sinister strangers at the door. The mixture of horror and fantasy imagery, the art direction, and the soundscapes were groundbreaking at the time of release, and still raise chills today.
The Saragossa Manuscript - This Polish fantasy film has a gimmick that has almost never been repeated - nesting multiple stories within one another in a Russian doll structure. The stories themselves are simple and unspectacular - mostly based on medieval folk tales - but there's something uniquely gratifying about seeing them told in this manner. The finale where we reach a long string of payoffs, one after another, delivers its own special kind of thrill. Director Wojciech Has was known for his Surrealist ideas and use of dream logic, which is reflected by this beautifully executed experiment in cinema.
The Sound of Music - Finally, one of the great movie musicals ever made is "Sound of Music," with Julie Andrews at the height of her musical powers, and a Rodgers and Hammerstein soundtrack that remains iconic. It's the prime example of a stage musical that was vastly improved by its adaptation to the big screen. Shooting much of the film in Salzburg and the Alps breathed so much life into the production. The beautifully staged musical numbers, the greatly expanded score, and several darker interludes all serve to make "Sound of Music" a far more resonant and joyously vital film experience.
---
The Agony and the Ecstasy - Like most costume dramas of the era, "The Agony and the Ecstasy" was designed to be a spectacle. However, this one had more high-minded ambitions with its documentary elements and art history framing device. It also, unexpectedly, featured an unlikely comic duo in the form of Charlton Heston's Michelangelo and Rex Harrison's impatient Pope Julius II. Critics of the time complained about its relatively slow pace, but the film certainly got across the grand scope of Michelangelo's passionate ambitions and the enduring beauty of his creative accomplishments.
Bunny Lake Is Missing - Otto Preminger was an eclectic director, but his real forte was a good psychological thriller. "Bunny Lake" is one of his best in this vein, hiding the psychopath in plain sight and wringing chills out of very simple situations and environments. Preminger's London, shot in black and white, is a cold and alienating place. He's able to make familiar playground equipment look sinister, and children's rhymes sound absolutely monstrous. And even so many decades later, his cat-and-mouse games are perfectly played, and still able to generate plenty of visceral tension and terror.
The Collector - An absorbing thriller that achieves maximum emotional effectiveness by letting its horror premise play out very slowly. A madman kidnapping a girl and holding her in captivity is a familiar plot, but seeing how the characters' relationship develops over days and weeks proves absolutely enthralling. It's impossible not to pity Terrence Stamp's deeply disturbed criminal, even as we're also rooting for Susan Eggar to escape from his clutches. I especially admire the film's restraint in using fairly limited violence and treating the subject matter seriously. The tragedy hits so much harder as a result.
For a Few Dollars More - The second film of Sergio Leone's influential "Dollars" trilogy is my favorite for its simmering revenge story and particular mix of performances. I like Lee Van Cleef better as a shady good guy, and partnered up with Clint Eastwood's nameless bounty hunter. Klaus Kinski has a memorable supporting turn as the hunchback, and Gian Maria Volonte is a perfectly despicable villain. I confess that spaghetti westerns aren't generally to my taste, but this one has strong characters, and a satisfying story with a good emotional throughline. Also, I love the Ennio Morricone score.
Le Bonheur - Agnes Varda presents a portrait of lovely domestic bliss, full of warmth and color and brightness. Then she digs into the relationship of the main protagonists, showing how the couple's happiness is predicated on totally different assumptions - and a completely unequal power dynamic that renders one of them easily expendable. The verdant aesthetic choicess paired up with a troubling narrative generate some stirring proto-feminist vibes. Of all of Varda's films, this is easily her most effective example of style conveying message, and most cinematically exuberant and beautiful.
The Knack ...and How to Get It - A Richard Lester romp that functions as an experimental film, a sex comedy, a satire on gender relations, and a snapshot of the British sexual revolution. Coming on the heels of "A Hard Day's Night," "The Knack" makes use of sketch humor, absurdity, farce, and a good amount of camera trickery. Following the exploits of two would-be lotharios, the film is still remarkably relevant for its biting depiction of the male id and the eternal search for easy gratification. Full of energy and youthful verve, it always moves quickly and never seems to run short on ideas or irreverence.
Red Beard - Akira Kurosawa made a medical drama starring Toshiro Mifune, their last great collaboration before they famously fell out. It's humanist drama of the highest order, instilling lessons about medical ethics and social responsibility to our protagonist, an arrogant younger doctor with lofty ambitions. Episodic in structure, and sprawling in construction, the film unfolds like a great novel, telling smaller human stories that all illustrate a common theme. And Mifune's Akahige is one of cinema's great medical curmudgeons. He's as effective here as he is in any of his samurai and warrior roles.
Repulsion - My favorite Roman Polanski film is an unusually intense psychological thriller about a girl in isolation who becomes mentally unhinged. Catherine Deneuve delivers a great performance that turned her into an international star, but the real fireworks came from Polanski's depiction of her character's deteriorating psyche through physical manifestations - the corridor of hands, the cracks in the walls, and of course the sinister strangers at the door. The mixture of horror and fantasy imagery, the art direction, and the soundscapes were groundbreaking at the time of release, and still raise chills today.
The Saragossa Manuscript - This Polish fantasy film has a gimmick that has almost never been repeated - nesting multiple stories within one another in a Russian doll structure. The stories themselves are simple and unspectacular - mostly based on medieval folk tales - but there's something uniquely gratifying about seeing them told in this manner. The finale where we reach a long string of payoffs, one after another, delivers its own special kind of thrill. Director Wojciech Has was known for his Surrealist ideas and use of dream logic, which is reflected by this beautifully executed experiment in cinema.
The Sound of Music - Finally, one of the great movie musicals ever made is "Sound of Music," with Julie Andrews at the height of her musical powers, and a Rodgers and Hammerstein soundtrack that remains iconic. It's the prime example of a stage musical that was vastly improved by its adaptation to the big screen. Shooting much of the film in Salzburg and the Alps breathed so much life into the production. The beautifully staged musical numbers, the greatly expanded score, and several darker interludes all serve to make "Sound of Music" a far more resonant and joyously vital film experience.
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