Trailers! Trailers! It's Streamer Time!

It's been difficult to figure out how to do a trailer post for upcoming series, because the marketing works so differently.  Trailers often appear only a few weeks before a series comes out, with only a few bigger titles like "Stranger Things" or "Moon Knight" getting more extended marketing campaigns that go on longer.  There are shows like "Essex Serpent" coming out next month that we haven't seen a frame of yet.  It's hard to even pin down release dates for some projects.

However, it's the end of April and there are a flurry of shows being released, either to qualify for the Emmys or to take advantage of a very sparse summer movie season.  With competition ramping up among the streaming services, there's definitely been an uptick in marketing pushes lately.  I'm definitely more interested in some of these shows than the movies coming in the same time frame.   

All links lead to Youtube. 

Ms. Marvel - The Disney+ Marvel shows have been pretty much all in the same vein, all very broad and aimed at the same audience of established fans.  "Ms. Marvel" looks like it'll be a nice break from form because it's the first that seems to be aimed at younger viewers, and it features a Muslim-American teenager as its title character.  This will be a tough sell to some because the cast is mostly unknowns, but I expect the MCU will have built up enough goodwill by now that it'll find its audience.   

The Offer - This ten-episode miniseries will chart the making of "The Godfather," and the trailer is pretty good about showing off the cast.  I didn't know Juno Temple was in this!  And Matthew Goode is playing Bob Evans!  And Dan Fogler looks perfect as Francis Ford Coppola!  I don't know how much this material is going to appeal to people who aren't fans of either "The Godfather" or Hollywood tell-alls, but as a film nerd I'll be happily binging this the next time I get to Paramount+ in my rotation.

The Staircase - One of the show's creators is Antonio Campos, whose last few films I've liked., but all you really needed to do to sell me on this was the involvement of Colin Firth and Toni Collette as the Petersons, a couple at the center of a well-known murder investigation.  I haven't seen the documentary series this was based on, or the parody version, "Trial & Error."  I don't know any of the details of the actual case.  This puts me in a good position to go into this series blind, without any preconceptions.  

The Kids in the Hall (Red Band) - They're coming back!  All of the guys are old and decrepit now, but it only took a glimpse of Francesca Fiore and Bruno Puntz Jones to get me onboard.  My only real worry here is that the show might be more like their feature film "Brain Candy" or miniseries "Death Come to Town," and less like their original sketch-based format, which I greatly prefer.  The old "Kids in the Hall" was pretty bare bones, and the new series looks much more expensive.  However, I'll be there regardless.   

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - This is the "Star Trek" prequel series that's a spinoff of "Discovery," and features the younger versions of Captain Christopher Pike, Number One, and Mr. Spock, who were introduced there.  Kirk is scheduled to show up in the second season.  I like the cast well enough that I'll be happy to give this a shot, but the trailer honestly isn't doing much for me.  It's very focused on spectacle and sex over the characters.  Is this supposed to be more of a throwback "Trek"?

Stranger Things 4 - Part of me isn't convinced that this show is ever going to be released.  Three years after the last season, I'm actually pretty happy just seeing the trailer, with all the kids older, new monsters, new powers, and somebody rocking a sweet guitar solo.  This looks like a summer blockbuster, and I'm convinced that in a decade or two "Stranger Things" has a good chance of being rebooted as a film franchise.  Netflix has been having a terrible year, but they're far from out of the game yet.   

The Boys Season 3 (Red Band) - First, great song choice.  However, this trailer isn't doing much to convince me to keep watching the show.  I'm not too excited about seeing Jensen Ackles play Soldier Boy.  There's no sign that the plot is going to progress anywhere interesting.  The trailer is just emphasizing that we'll be getting more of what they think we want from the show - violence, irreverent humor, and Homelander behaving like a psychopath.  And are we supposed to know who the bearded guy is?      

Obi-Wan Kenobi - From what we've seen from Disney+ so far, they're selling a darker show than what they're actually going to deliver.  Most of the trailer is showing Ewan McGregor in desert environments and Moses Ingram being a badass.  I am really tired of Tatooine after "Boba Fett," so I'm hoping Kenobi isn't sticking around for long.  I don't have too many thoughts yet, except that there have been a lot more cast members announced who haven't shown up yet.  Fingers crossed.    

---

"Nitram" and "Spencer"

Now, some controversial films about real people.

Let's start with "Nitram," the Justin Kurzel film based on the life of Martin Bryant, who perpetrated a mass shooting in Australia in 1996.  There are arguments to be made that it's in poor taste to be making a film about a notorious killer, especially one that humanizes him to the degree that this one does.  However, "Nitram" is a very well made film featuring some excellent actors.  Caleb Landry Jones as Martin is especially impressive here, delivering a performance characterized by poorly managed mental illness, loneliness, and self-loathing. 

The film charts the period of Martin's life before his rampage, starting from when he was still living with his parents (Anthony LaPaglia and Judy Davis) in suburban Tasmania.  They do their best to keep him out of trouble, but Martin is unable to restrain his impulses. His relationships with them, especially his icy mother, are increasingly strained.  Martin befriends and eventually moves in with a much older woman named Helen (Essie Davis), which gives him more independence.  However, a string of tragedies, the decreased supervision, and Martin's growing feelings of alienation put him on the path to the unthinkable.  From what I've read, the sequence of events is fairly accurate, and the film shows the lead-up to the massacre but not the actual event. 

"Nitram" is an excellent character study of a man of limited faculties who struggles earnestly to find a way to get along in the world, but just encounters one gutting disappointment after another.  He never has the tools or more importantly the support necessary for him to succeed.  His parents are clearly so destroyed by years of dealing with his behavior, it's hard to blame them.  The film suggests that it wasn't Martin's developmental disabilities or his fascination with guns that led to the tragedy, but his loneliness and isolation.  The film packs an emotional punch, not because of what Martin did, but because Martin snapped for reasons that are frighteningly relatable and familiar.  And Landry Jones' performance does all the heavy lifting of getting and keeping the audience on Martin's side, all the way to the end.      

And now, on to "Spencer," a Princess Diana movie like no other Princess Diana movie that has ever been made.  When I heard that Pablo Larrain was directing this, I was expecting something like "Jackie," his dreamy, lyrical Jackie Kennedy film.  This is not the case at all.  "Spencer" depicts the life of the Princess of Wales, played by Kristen Stewart, more like a psychological horror film.  The story is set at Sandringham House in 1991, where the royal family is gathered for Christmas.  Diana is expected to show up, dress and eat according to the carefully planned schedule, and play nice.  However, she's nervous wreck from her husband's infidelity, suffers from bulimia, and feels increasingly suffocated by the expectations and limitations of her position.  So, she starts lashing out.

I'm sure that nothing in this film is historically accurate, with many characters and events wholly invented.  However, it feels like an earnest attempt to dramatize Diana's  internal struggle at one of the low points of her life.  Watching her wage war against her wardrobe, her diet, and the household staff led by Equerry Major Gregory (Timothy Spall), is wild.  Stewart's performance initially put me off, because she looked so uncomfortable onscreen, holding herself rigidly, and radiating anxiety.  However, I soon realized that this was the point.  The film isn't about the graceful exterior that the public is familiar with, but getting us to see the deeply unhappy woman she was underneath.  I think some of the film's inventions, like Diana's fixation on her childhood home and visions of Anne Boleyn (Amy Manson) don't really work, but her fantasies of self-harm are wonderfully unnerving.      

       

I came out very mixed on "Spencer," appreciative of what it was trying to do, but unhappy about the execution.  The film is so tightly fixed on Diana's claustrophobic POV, and plays with so many different levels of subjective reality that most of its historical lapses don't bother me.  However, I still don't like Kristen Stewart's performance much, and I don't like the characterization of Diana as a little-girl-lost figure.  It's much too reductive for my tastes.  This is anything but another boring biopic about the royals, though, and I'm sure plenty of viewers will appreciate it.

---

Miss Media Junkie v. Standup Comedy

2022 feels like the year that I've been playing catch up with pop culture.  Arenas that I don't pay much attention to, like gaming and music, have changed completely while I wasn't looking, and I'm not just getting used to new faces, but realizing that a lot of these new faces aren't new at all, but have been around for ten years and have an entire body of work that I was totally unaware of until now.  

Anyway, one of my pop culture blind spots is stand-up comedy.  I have a lot of hang-ups when it comes to comedy in general, because I have a pretty low tolerance for vulgarity and scatological humor, and for years comedy films were dominated by frat house and man-child comedy.  For most of my teens and twenties, it was the Farrelly brothers, Adam Sandler, the frat pack, "Jackass," and "American Pie."  After a while, I admit that I largely gave up on the genre, only showing up for the occasional Judd Apatow movie, or broader action-comedy.  The stand-up world was even worse for me, full of aggressive bad boys and garrulous middle-aged men griping about everything, and frankly they all sounded the same after a while.  The few prominent female comics like Sarah Silverman and Amy Schumer were often uncomfortably sexual.  They made me laugh, but they also made me queasy. 

So, for the majority of my life, I limited my comedy intake to sitcoms and late night talk shows.  "SNL" was about the limit for my tolerance.  And so, it took me a very long time to notice that things had started to change a little in stand up.  After I got through the Bo Burnham hyperfixation a few months ago, I started watching other comedy specials.  At first it was a lot of Tig Notaro, while I had HBO Max.  I liked Notaro from her recent acting roles, but didn't know any of her work as a standup comic.  She has a super deadpan, super even-keel style that I find very appealing.  Her breakthrough came in 2012, with a set called "Live," where she shared her recent cancer diagnosis and a string of other terrible things that had happened to her with a rapt audience.  There's an excellent Netflix documentary, "Tig," that uses the set as a framing device and examines this period in her life.

And then I found Hannah Gadsby.  Pretty much any discussion of recent comedy specials will bring up "Nanette," the 2018 special where Gadsby discusses her painful experiences as someone LGBT in Australia.  It slowly morphs from traditional setups and jokes to fiery activist cri de coeur, deconstructing and critiquing the format of standup comedy in the process.  Ultimately, she concludes that being a comedian and being who she is are sometimes in fundamental conflict.  "Nanette" is moving and it's challenging, and it's not particularly funny, but the standup context is absolutely vital to how it plays.  For pure entertainment value, I like Gadsby's most recent special, "Douglas," even better, which shows that she is perfectly capable of putting together a hilarious show based on material totally unrelated to her activism.  Her background is as an art historian, and I love the lecture-style material in her set, where she takes pot-shots at the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Louis CK. 

I don't know why it is that I have been connecting to white LGBT comics lately, as opposed to comics who look more like me - Ali Wong and Margaret Cho, for instance.  I think it's because Notaro and Gadsby aren't trying so hard to be transgressive.  They talk about themselves, and how they perceive the world, and trying to get through tough times as best they can, with brutal honesty.  Somehow, because they're so good at expressing who they are onstage without fear, that's plenty transgressive in and of itself.  I love Ali Wong to bits, but her acts are so relentless and so aggressive that I can't take much of it at once.  And I've never been as emotionally invested in her acts as I have watching Tig Notaro just talk casually about having a bad day.  It's 2022, and we've all been having a bad day.

Let me be clear that the Bill Burrs and the Chris Rocks are all well and good, and I admire what they do,  but it's been nice to discover that there are more laid back, more empathetic comedians that are out there providing an alternative - comedians who are more my tempo, and more my speed.  I still tread very carefully in these spaces, but I'm also happy to be finally catching up on something I didn't even know I had missed.       

---

"Better Call Saul," Years Three and Four

Spoilers for both seasons ahead.

I remember the buzz around the early seasons of "Better Call Saul" that slowly died away as the show went on.  The series maintains its quality level just fine from what I've seen so far, but I can understand why some viewers started to drift away.  The third season is still fairly intense and fast-paced, focusing on the feud between Jimmy and Chuck that results in Jimmy having his law license suspended.  However, the fourth season, which takes place over a much longer stretch of time, is much slower.  There are two or three episodes that are all about how Jimmy is bored and frustrated, and they take more patience than the rest of the show has demanded up to that point.

We're steadily seeing more familiar faces.  Gus Fring, Lydia Rodarte Quayle, Huell Babineux, and Gale Boetticher have made appearances, with Gus becoming a regular foe for Nacho and Mike.  New characters include a heretofore unseen Salamanca, Lalo (Tony Dalton), who is sent up North to keep an eye on Hector and Nacho.  There's also Chuck's ex-wife Rebecca (Ann Cusack), and a group of Germans who are secretly brought to Albuquerque to work on constructing a lab for Gus, lead by the tragic Werner (Rainer Bock).  Both Jimmy and Mike have now passed the point of no return in their journeys to "Breaking Bad," Jimmy more gradually and Mike with more self-awareness.  It's also become clear that the defining relationship in Jimmy's life is the one with Chuck, even after Chuck dies.  Kim has emerged as the most sympathetic figure out of all of them, trying and failing to keep Jimmy on the straight and narrow, and letting herself become more and more compromised in the process.  I was really rooting for Kim and Jimmy to work out somehow, but Jimmy's inferiority complex and resentments have taken over by the end of season four.  His last really selfless act was torpedoing his career in elder law at the end of season three.

Mike and Nacho have the showier material in much of seasons three and four, getting wrapped up in Gus Fring's feud with Hector Salamanca, and later Lalo Salamanca.  Mike's ego is what gets him into trouble, his insistence on doing things his own way, and calling out the inadequacies of those around him.  (Hi, Marc Evan Jackson!)  This gets him more involved with Fring's operations until he takes on the construction project, and has to take responsibility for the fallout.  It's so much fun to watch Mike set up his little traps and schemes, it's easy to forget that he's taking a lot of stupid risks.  Nacho, on the other hand, knows he's in a bad situation from early on, and can't dig his way out from under the Salamancas.  Add Gus Fring on top of that, and I don't know how he could possibly survive until the end of the series.  So, like Kim, Nacho's one of the only really sympathetic characters left on the board.     

I like how the writers  handle the death of Chuck, the biggest event in the show so far.  More than that, I like that it's set up so far in advance, with Jimmy undermining Chuck at the trial, reporting the outburst to  the insurance agents to destroy Chuck's reputation, and putting Howard in the position to finish him off.  Similarly, the seeds are planted for Hector Salamanca's downfall throughout the third season before he has his stroke.  There aren't many television shows that really do long-form storytelling on the level that "Better Call Saul" does.  It's absolutely as good as "Breaking Bad," but is also confident enough to be more of a straight drama, keeping those big set pieces in few and far between.  Mike may have killed someone in the finale, but Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn deliver the most chilling scene in that episode with a two minute conversation.  

I'm giving myself a break before I get into the last two seasons.  I know what to expect at this point, and I'm confident that Vince Gilligan and company will be able to pull off a strong ending.  I admit that I'm glad that I decided to wait and binge the show so I don't have to deal with the long breaks between these final episodes.  Once I get started with these, I don't think I'll be able to stop until the end.

---

My Favorite Robert Wise Film

Robert Wise is a director with an impressive list of credits who came out of the studio system.  He started out at RKO as an editor, working on Orson Welles' early films, including "Citizen Kane" and "The Magnificent Ambersons" before becoming a director in the '40s.  After proving himself proficient in multiple genres, including horror, noir, and science-fiction, he started producing films in the '50s.  After the success of "West Side Story," which he won his first Best Director Oscar for, he was keen to work on his dream project, a war film called "The Sand Pebbles."  However, production delays prompted him to take on a "fill in" project in 1964, another musical adaptation.  This would be "The Sound of Music," which would become one of the most financially successful films ever made.

"The Sound of Music" is based on the Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical, which had to be significantly revised on its way to the screen.  Screenwriter Ernest Lehman and Wise spent significant efforts trying to cut down the sentimentality of the musical, and rework the lead roles to be more complex and interesting. Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer both had significant reservations about signing on to the film, because the original versions of the characters were so one-dimensional.  A common criticism of the musical was that it was too saccharine, a criticism that would also dog the film version.  Some existing songs were deleted, and new songs were written by Richard Rodgers specifically for the film, including "I Have Confidence" and "Something Good."  All the existing dance choreography was abandoned so that the filmmakers could take advantage of shooting on location in Salzburg, resulting in one of the least stagey musical adaptations of its era.    

In spite of all the concern about "The Sound of Music" being too simple and too sentimental, I suspect that this was also a major reason for its success.  As far as family entertainment goes, it's hard to beat.  This was one of the first live-action musicals I encountered as a child, through the easy-to-sing numbers like "Do-Re-Mi," "My Favorite Things," and "Edelweiss."  I didn't quite understandd what was going on with the Nazis when I watched the film when I was younger, but Fraulein Maria going out into the world and  endearing herself to the von Trapp children was easy to understand, as was the more difficult business of Maria falling in love with their father.  "The Sound of Music" remains so wonderfully accessible, its no wonder it was a worldwide hit - with the exception of Austria and Germany, where the rather inaccurate, Hollywoodized portrayal of the famous Trapp family  understandably rubbed the wrong way.

However, the film doesn't care remotely about resembling reality.  Wise and Lehman knew that they were in the business of constructing a fairy tale, a piece of heartwarming spectacle meant to fill three hours with music and dance and stunning cinematography.  From the first, sweeping shot of Maria singing to the green hills of Bavaria, the filmmakers built their film around the musical numbers, all carefully staged to show off picturesque views of Austria and the talents of their charming cast.  Between this and "Mary Poppins," Julie Andrews became everyone's favorite leading lady, and would rarely find a film role so suited to her particular talents again.  Her exuberance when performing songs as simple as "Do-Re-Mi" is infectious, and her comedic skills are impeccable.  Christopher Plummer vocally disliked the film, but he's so good as the stern Captain von Trapp that trying to escape its legacy proved impossible.  And frankly, I'm still a little stunned that this was Charmian Carr's only film role.       

I haven't seen "The Sound of Music" in years now, but it was a staple of my childhood, frequently aired on television around the holidays, and was the subject of countless retrospectives and specials over the years.  It didn't occur to me until I was an adult that the film was something of an outlier of its time - a lavish movie musical when musicals were on the wane in Hollywood.  Its success, along with a few others, was enough to keep the genre going for another decade.  And Robert Wise was eventually able to get "The Sand Pebbles" made, a very fine adventure film that is not remotely as memorable as "The Sound of Music."  

What I've Seen - Robert Wise 

The Body Snatcher (1945)

The Set-Up (1949)

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

I Want to Live! (1958)

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

West Side Story (1961)

The Haunting (1963)

The Sound of Music (1965)

The Sand Pebbles (1966)

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

---

"C'mon C'mon" and "The Lost Daughter"

A pair of movies about parenting today.  Minor spoilers ahead.

"C'mon C'mon" is the latest from Mike Mills, a gentle, warm-hearted film about the relationships between parents and kids.  Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) is a radio journalist who is traveling the country interviewing children and teenagers about their thoughts on the future.  His nephew, nine-year-old Jesse (Woody Norman), is a handful due to his oddball personality and difficult family situation.  Johnny is supposed to be looking after Jesse for a few days, but a few days turns into more than a few.  Then Johnny has to travel to New York, so he takes Jesse along with him.  

"C'mon C'mon" is a film of intimate conversations and poignant observations, shot in beautifully composed black and white.  So much of the film is just watching Jesse exist in the frame, his irrepressible energy constantly disrupting Johnny's life and the world around him.  Johnny doesn't handle the sudden responsibility of childcare well, though he tries the best he can.  We get to listen in on several of his phone conversations with his sister, Jesse's mother Viv (Gabby Hoffman), who is trying to help Jesse's troubled father Paul (Scoot McNairy) through a mental health crisis.  The two talk about Jesse, and eventually about the past events that lead to Johnny and Viv falling out for a year.  

It's wonderful and life-affirming to watch Johnny eventually learn all the little rituals of parenthood, to reconnect with Viv, and to watch his interviews with a variety of kids across the United States.  The kids are mostly worried, but ultimately hopeful about the state of the world, and Mills quietly makes the case that the rest of us can be too.  Joaquin Phoenix's performance is very natural and very open, letting him show his age and his softer side.  Woody Norman as Jesse is just about as aggravating as he should be, and comes across as a very genuine kid.  Their onscreen relationship is rewarding to watch, but I think what I appreciated the most about "C'mon C'mon" is the comforting mood it evokes.  Times are tough, but there's a lot of love to go around.  It's a pleasure to simply watch the characters care about each other, and try to help - even if they make some mistakes in the process.     

"The Lost Daughter" is a very different animal, a psychological drama about a woman on holiday in Greece, who finds herself contronting old questions about her life and choices.  It's largely a study of its central character, Leda, played by Olivia Colman in the present day and Jesse Buckley in flashbacks.  Directed by Maggie Gyllenhall, the narrative seems to be low stakes on the surface, but becomes utterly engrossing.  Like "C'mon C'mon," the film is about the difficulties of parenthood, but it's outlook is far less rosy.  Leda's quiet vacation is disrupted by the arrival of a boisterous, overbearing Italian-American family.  One young woman, Nina (Dakota Johnson), has a three-year-old daughter who briefly goes missing.  Nina seems overwhelmed by motherhood, which prompts Leda to look back on her own difficulties raising two young daughters while trying to advance her academic career. 

    

What I appreciate so much about "The Lost Daughter" is that it never tries to explain, or even really delineate its themes and issues.  A major source of tension is Leda's impulsive act of stealing a doll, and the audience is left in suspense as to what she's planning to do with it, what prompted her to do such a thing, and whether it might signal more troubling issues.  None of these questions are really answered directly, but Olivia Colman's performance does so much of the work of getting us into Leda's head, helping to show the emotional and psychological forces that drive her.  Through Leda, Gyllenhall looks at the darker side of motherhood that is rarely discussed - the exhaustion, the frustration, the impossible expectations, and the guilt that comes with trying to maintain any kind of independent life.  My read on Leda  - and it's very open to interpretation - is that she considers herself a bad mother, and she's fascinated by Nina because she exhibits the same kinds of feelings.  

"The Lost Daughter" is Maggie Gyllenhall's directorial debut, and she has absolutely no trouble with the tone or the material.  She's especially good at capturing tension - all those subtle little ways that seemingly casual situations can escalate or deescalate, and how certain innocuous behavior can come across as alarming or threatening.  It's a very small production, but it's nice to see Colman and Johnson really getting to sink their teeth into some challenging roles. 

---

"Being the Ricardos" and "Don't Look Up"

Let's take a look at Aaron Sorkin and Adam McKay's latest films.

"I Love Lucy" is undeniably one of the most influential television series in history, and its characters are iconic.  The show has faded from prominence considerably over the last twenty years, but I think most people still know Lucy and Ricky Ricardo on sight.  So the casting of Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz initially struck me as very peculiar.  In the odd frame, Kidman might be able to pass for Ball, but Bardem doesn't remotely resemble or sound like Arnaz.  

As the film went on, however, I appreciated the casting for helping to delineate between the onscreen Ricardos and the real people operating behind the scenes.  It's clear what drew Sorkin to the material - this is a showbiz story about the making of a classic series, and a profile of one of the most powerful couples in entertainment of their era.  Lucy and Desi are contentious and brilliant and very different from their onscreen personas.  Lucy is a demanding perfectionist, desperate to hold on to her hard-won success.  Desi is a shrewd businessman with some considerable vices.  The film focuses on one eventful week during the height of "I Love Lucy's" success, where Lucy and Desi's marriage is in trouble, the show is in trouble, and everyone is on edge - including co-stars Vivian Vance (Nina Arianda) and William Frawley (J.K. Simmons), producer Jess Oppenheimer (Tony Hale), and writers Madelyn Pugh (Alia Shawkat) and Bob Carroll (Jake Lacy).

The Hollywood tell-all structure and Sorkin's insistence on packing way too much of Lucy and Desi's relationship troubles into the film make "Being the Ricardos" difficult to enjoy.  While I appreciate Sorkin's recreations of the "I Love Lucy" production process, and his habitual fabrication of events doesn't ring too false this time around, the unrelenting cynicism of the piece and the downbeat, sober ending were hard to take.   The film is saved by its performances, and I'm ultimately happy that Sorkin went with more seasoned actors who could bring some real drama to the screen.  The MVP here is Nina Arianda as Vivian Vance, who is fed up with always being portrayed as a frump, and is easily the most human and sympathetic figure in the film.  And it takes a while to percolate, but I do think that this version of Lucille Ball is one of Sorkin's better female characters.  I appreciate how intelligent and uncompromising she's allowed to be, in stark contrast to the similar Tammy Faye Bakker from "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" earlier this year. 

Now on to "Don't Look Up," which is Adam McKay's earnest attempt to make something akin to a modern day "Dr. Strangelove" about the threat of climate change.  Initially I thought that the film was playing it too broad, following characters who were very larger-than-life, and events that were increasingly absurd, leading up to a doomsday scenario.  But then I thought about Peter Sellers hamming it up in "Dr. Strangelove," and "fighting in the war room," and I managed to get on the same wavelength with "Don't Look Up."  I don't think it's entirely successful in its satire, but I did enjoy it very much, if only for the opportunity to see actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, and Meryl Streep embrace their full comedic potential.

So, the world is in peril due to a comet heading toward Earth, identified by a PhD candidate, Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her professor Dr. Mindy (DiCaprio).  They alert everyone they can, including the President, Jean Orlean (Meryl Streep).  Alas, they're given the brushoff by her son and Chief of Staff, Jason (Jonah Hill), so they try the media next - namely talk show hosts Brie (Cate Blanchette) and Jack (Tyler Perry).  The public doesn't take it seriously, and the situation escalates.  The ensemble cast includes a Mark Rylance as an evil tech billionaire, Timothee Chalamet as a young miscreant with a heart of gold, Melanie Lynskey as Mindy's wife, Rob Morgan as the government's head of planetary defense, Ariana Grande as a pop star, and Ron Perlman as a designated hero.     

McKay manages to thread the needle, keeping the film from being neither too silly nor too angry.  The poignant moments are poignant, and the comedy is pretty funny.  I think the best decision was having Streep play the Trump analogue, with Jonah Hill stealing every scene as her annoying toady, and then to use them both pretty sparingly.  I deeply disliked McKay's last film "Veep," and I think that he avoided the worst of that film's snarky, self-satisfied, disdainfulness here by focusing more on the good, hopeful, decent people who are trying to do the responsible thing against all odds.  It's terribly sweet, somehow, to see DiCaprio and Lawrence playing a couple of ordinary dopes who nobody will listen to.  

"Don't Look Up" is very predictable and very on-the-nose in its allegory, to the point where it feels like its creators were holding back at certain points.  It's a good movie, and should be lauded for its ambition and its daring, but it's never in danger of being a great one.  I wasn't looking forward to its release because I thought the subject matter would be darker and more emotionally upsetting, but this is almost too gentle in its approach - and too easy to ignore.    

---