My Top Ten Episodes of "Star Trek: Lower Decks"

I decided not to write a season review for the final season of "Star Trek: Lower Decks," because despite a good amount of serialization, the show has always worked best as an episodic series for me.  Also, I lost track of the seasons at some point and binged the whole ending in one go.   So I'm just going to skip ahead to the Top Ten episode list, where I'll be discussing my favorites episode by episode, and the last season will definitely get some representation.

Episodes are unranked and listed by airdate.  Despite the overrepresentation of the first season, I really enjoyed the show consistently the whole way through.  Lots of "Trek" references ahead, and it gets pretty nerdy.  

"Moist Vessel" - You can see the influence of "Rick and Morty" the most clearly in the first season.  Mike McMahon is an alumnus, and definitely brought some of the sensibilities of that show with him to "Lower Decks."  Here, we get concepts that you could never do in a live action "Star Trek" show, like the terraforming agent wreaking havoc on the Cerritos and the ascension ("Space koala!").  And yet, the best gags are character based, with Mariner's priceless reactions to being promoted. 

"Terminal Provocations" - This is the first Badgey episode, and the one where he works the best.  Honestly, the joke wore pretty thin after they brought them back a few times, but Badgey's introduction is absolutely priceless.  Having a holographic assistant character based on Microsoft Office's Clippy is funny enough, but then they're also a talking Starfleet icon badge?  And they're evil?  And Rutherford has to resort to some pretty extreme violence to put him down?  It's perfect.  

"Crisis Point" - The entire episode is a spoof on the "Star Trek" movie franchise, complete with modified credits sequences, ridiculously drawn out beauty shots of the Cerritos, J.J. Abrams lens flares all over the bridge, and Mariner playing a campy Khan figure named Vindicta.  Of course, the meat of the story is Mariner confronting some of her own issues through the holodeck therapy, and Boimler finally learning the truth about Mariner being the Captain's kid - which predictably freaks him out.  

"No Small Parts" - The first season had some significant competition, but the appearance of a special guest star convinced me it had to be on this list.  I think the big sacrifice play would have had a lot more impact if it stuck, but this was still a chance to see the Cerritos handling a major crisis with some real stakes.  Bonus points for the introduction of exocomp Peanut Hamper and turning the dopey Pakleds from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" into some pretty formidable villains.  

"I, Excretus" - This is one of my favorite episodes of the entire series because Boimler demonstrates his ability to be a total badass for the first time.  He spends most of the episode grinding a holodeck training simulation of a Borg mission until he's turned himself into the coolest action hero ever.  Meanwhile, it's nice to see Freeman and Mariner getting along, and other familiar "Trek" plots and scenarios getting goosed in the other simulations - including a wild new take on "The Naked Time."

"Grounded" - I picked the premiere of season three instead of the finale of season two because I love the way that it shows how much Mariner has progressed as a character over the last two seasons.  The big cliffhanger isn't resolved because of her efforts, but boy does she put in the effort.  This involves hijacking a theme park ride, complete with a hologram of Zephram Cochrane, then hijacking the Cerritos, and finally being brought down a peg when she learns Starfleet did the right thing anyway.  

"Reflections" - This is easily the best Rutherford episode, where we finally learn what's going on with his sinister implant and discover what a different person he was in his past.  I haven't written enough about Tendi, but this is such a good Tendi episode too - giving her relationship with Rutherford some emphasis.  This is also the episode where Mariner and Boimler are essentially stuck manning a recruitment booth at a job fair the whole time, and Mariner gets the opportunity to process her life choices. 

"The Inner Fight" - Nerd that I am, I absolutely loved that the last two episodes of season four paid so much tribute to the original "Lower Decks" episode of "The Next Generation" that was a big inspiration for this show.  They brought Robert Duncan McNeill back again, this time to reprise his one-episode role as the bad influence Nick Locarno!  I also found it very sweet that Mariner had a significant connection to the departed Ensign Sito in her younger days - I always loved that character.

"Starbase 80?!" - At last, the crew of the Cerritos visits the notorious backwater Starbase 80, which offers some interesting surprises.   Most of the episode functions as a horror thriller, with a giant bat and something that's turning people into zombies.  However, the "don't judge a book by its cover" message is delivered just right, and the new characters are all delightful.  I was so glad that the "Lower Decks" series finale provided an extra coda to this episode that ties up a lot of loose ends.  

"Fissure Quest" - I suppose that it was inevitable that "Star Trek" would end up exploring the multiverse, and this is the best possible result.  The episode is spent with the crew of an entirely new ship, populated by alternate versions of familiar characters - Boimler's clone, a Garak and Bashir who got married, a T'Pol, a Curzon Dax, and many, many Harry Kims.  It's pure fanservice, and yet it works so well because nobody's playing the material for laughs.  I hope to see this group of characters again one day.

Honorable Mentions:  "Those Old Scientists" (Technically a "Brave New Worlds" episode, or it would totally be on the list), "First First Contact," "Hear All, Trust Nothing," "Parth Ferengi's Heart Place," "A Mathematically Perfect Redemption," "Caves," and "The New Next Generation."

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Oscar Aftermath 2025

The Oscar ceremony was a nice break from reality this year.  There were a few shots at activism related to ongoing conflicts overseas, but not much related to the current Trump administration.  Kamala Harris was rumored to be making an appearance, but those were only rumors.  I had a pretty good bead on all of the winners well in advance, with the exception of Mikey Madison surprising in Best Actress, so there wasn't much suspense.  That left the usual pageantry and production snafus to enjoy, which I did.

 

Conan O'Brien hosted this year, which was a great choice.  He's very much of the old school late night host mold, but still current enough and silly enough to put a giant sandworm playing the piano on stage, pull up old headshots of nominees, and devote a whole opening musical number to promising to not waste time.  His monologue was only so-so, but a real stroke of genius was inviting some of the local first responders onstage to be lauded for their efforts in the recent disaster efforts - and then having them deliver a few below-the-belt jokes to capitalize on the goodwill.  Conan's audience interactions were great, and I will be very disappointed if the disappointed John Lithgow bit doesn't become a widespread meme immediately. 

Format changes this year included not having any of the Best Song nominees actually performed.  It was a sorry crop of nominees anyway, thanks to the inexplicable support for "Emilia Perez."  Instead, we had the show open with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande doing an Oz medley, and later on there was a Quincy Jones tribute and a whole James Bond extravaganza that feels a few years too late. Did Amazon sponsor that one?  The presenters were decent - Ben Stiller got to do a great physical bit -  and I liked having actors pay tribute to the craftspeople, but I still missed having the clips.  There were good speeches (Zoe Saldana), weird speeches (Kieran Culkin), bad speeches (Camille), really bad speeches (Animated Short turning into a power struggle), and Adrien Brody beating the Greer Garson record for longest acceptance speech in Oscar history.  Of course the show ran over, but at least they didn't hit the four hour mark.  

It was a bad year for the Oscars' production design.  The virtual backdrops were often very busy looking, and showrunners were having trouble getting what was on the screens to look right on the broadcast.  The orchestra was elevated above the stage, and for some reason partially blocking the central screen at times.  This resulted in the worst In Memoriam segment I have seen in a long time, which not only had the musicians blocking the screen, but also headshots of the deceased superimposed over their tribute clips, resulting in visual chaos.  And they left out Tony Todd.   And whoever decided to have a choir up there singing Mozart's "Requiem" as the accompaniment needs to be held accountable.  At least Morgan Freeman  was recruited at the last minute to pay respects to Gene Hackman. 

I didn't watch the reportedly disastrous live broadcast on Hulu, which apparently didn't account for  the extended running time of the ceremony and kicked a lot of people off the feed right before the announcement of  Best Actress.  I was hoping that this would be a viable alternative to my having to wrangle the local ABC broadcast signal every year - always a dicey proposition when you live in an apartment.  Alas, no such luck.   As long as we're  saving movie theaters, maybe we should also look into maintaining the television broadcast networks for situations like this.    

In the end "Anora" won big, and Sean Baker especially (tying Walt Disney's trophy count), but nearly all the Best Picture contenders walked away with something.  There were more Bob Dylan jokes than Trump jokes, and it's always great to see Goldie Hawn, Mick Jagger, and Bowen Yang.  June Squibb did a solid comedic bit with ScarJo.  The Quincy Jones number was worth it to see Whoopi, Oprah, and Queen Latifah looking fabulous.  Not everyone who won should have, but there were no glaring misses either.  And I hope Conan considers coming back regularly in the future.    

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Rank 'Em: Your 2025 Best Picture Nominees

There's been a lot of Oscar drama this year.  I like this batch of nominees fine, and appreciate that the international influence seems to be here to stay, though there are a few choices that I'm not on board with at all.  Below, find this year's nominees ranked from best of the best, to least of the best.  I'll keep the spoilers to a minimum.  

1. Anora - At the time of writing, this is my favorite film of 2024, an unpredictable, genre-defying romantic-comedy from Sean Baker.  It tells a very old kind of story, but with modern characters and sensibilities that offer all kinds of interesting social nuances to consider.  There are many other films this year addressing current issues and social ills, but no other film feels as timely and immediate.  "Anora" is also a delightful watch, zig-zagging from class comedy to Cinderella-sendup to genuine heartbreaker.  I know who I'm rooting for on Oscar night.   

2. The Substance - I'm probably putting this too high up in the rankings, but I adore Coralie Fargeats's crazy showbiz gorefest.  "The Substance" is a grindhouse horror movie through and through, but somehow it's stormed into the awards race and refuses to get out of the spotlight.  Demi Moore is the frontrunner for Best Actress and deserves it, giving us a portrait of self-loathing that is at the root of the film's squelchy body horror nightmares.  And I take the nomination as further proof that Hollywood is still in love with stories about itself, no matter how monstrous and gruesome.

3. Nickel Boys - I've never seen filmmaking in first person singular achieved as well as it is here.  RaMell Ross beautifully executes what could easily have been a gimmick, and you can't imagine the film being any other way.  What the camera is doing doesn't seem to work for everyone, but I couldn't keep my eyes off the screen.  The experience is so immersive, so intimate, and so haunting, it's impossible to come away unmoved.  The moments that stayed with me were often the incidental ones, emphasizing precious human connections in the midst of misery and adversity.  

4. The Brutalist - The more I consider "The Brutalist," the more I appreciate it.  This is a film of soaring ambitions, astonishing scope, and unusually weighty, meaningful themes.  Not all of it works, especially the ending, but the parts that do work offer the kind of cinema that we really don't see enough of.  I've sat through a lot of mediocre passion projects from very big name directors over the last few years, and seeing Brady Corbet pull off something this massive on a tiny budget is inspiring.  I'm also rooting for Adrian Brody for Best Actor, who hasn't done work this good in ages. 

5. Dune 2 - Denis Villeneuve did everything right here, repositioning Paul Atreides as an anti-hero and laying out his rise to power in more sinister terms.  I continue to love the production design, the grand scale spectacle, and the sprawling cast.  The sandworm sequence is one of the high points of the year.  However, it was harder to engage with the story in this installment, and so much was condensed that it lost some of the human element.  The supporting actors are the MVPs here, especially Zendaya, Javier Bardem, and Austin Butler - who simply didn't get enough screen time.

6. I'm Still Here - Maybe it's because the nomination was so unexpected, but I wanted more from "I'm Still Here."  Anchored by a fine performance from Fernanda Torres, it's a solid memoir about a family living through a dictatorship and dealing with tyranny firsthand.  However, it's a much smaller story than I anticipated, very personal and limited in scope.  There are other international films I would have nominated for Best Picture instead, like "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" or "The Girl With the Needle."  "I'm Still Here" strikes me as very good at what it's doing, but not exceptional.

7. A Complete Unknown - I keep forgetting that this is a nominee, because the movie feels so slight.  I'm not a Dylan fan, or very familiar at all with this corner of American music, so the material didn't hold much appeal.  However, watching a collection of talented actors play '60s folk music legends for a few hours was charming.  I appreciate that Bob Dylan wasn't lionized all out of proportion, and Monica Barbaro was a great surprise.  I can't quite wrap my head around what Timothée Chalamet is doing, but I appreciate that he's not giving us a typical Bob Dylan impression.

8. Wicked - They got the casting right, which goes a long way toward balancing out some of the glaring production flaws here.  I'm with the detractors of the film's cinematography and the unforgivable kneecapping of the "Defying Gravity."  However, "Wicked" is undeniably a good time at the movies, and a fabulous showcase for Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande if nothing else.  As with the "Dune" movies, it's difficult to judge based on an incomplete narrative, but as incomplete narratives go, the first half of "Wicked" is pretty swell.  I don't expect "Wicked: For Good" will be better.   

9. Conclave - I do not get it.  I simply can't take the film seriously.  The sequence of events is too ludicrous, the politicking is too didactic, and the final twist at the end is several levels of ridiculous.  Despite some good performances and plenty of Vatican eye candy, "Conclave" is such a heavy-handed message movie that it feels more like a parody of Oscar bait than an earnestly made film.  It's certainly entertaining, and has priceless camp value - Tedesco vaping is iconic - but I can't rank it any higher than this.  The fact that it's a frontrunner in the race strikes me as understandable but unfortunate.

10. Emilia Perez - It's not a bad movie.  It's ambitious, vibrant, weird, and not afraid to go big and melodramatic.  However, it's also remarkably tone deaf.  I'm not surprised that the film got made in 2025, but I am surprised that it got so much support in festival circles before anybody realized that it is a terrible trans narrative, terrible representation for its Mexican characters, and totally useless as a musical.  Zoe Saldana's performance is fantastic, and really should be in a much better film than this one.  I hope this will be a springboard for her to better things.

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My Most Anticipated Films of 2025 Part II

Continuing from last time, this part of the list will be for smaller releases, indie, and foreign films.  Release dates are hard to pin down and many of the titles below may end up releasing in 2026 or later.  "Love Me," "Life of Chuck," and  "Death of a Unicorn," were on last year's list.

The Wedding Banquet - Ang Lee's cross-cultural 1993 film might seem like an odd choice for a remake, but the LGBT experience has changed a lot over the past three decades. One of the screenwriters on the original film, James Schamus, is returning to collaborate with Andrew Ahn on a new version of the story where both of the participants in the sham wedding are LGBT, with a partner they have to hide from the unwary relations.  The cast includes Kelly Marie Tran, Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, and Joan Chen.

Bugonia - Yorgos Lanthimos is also remaking a film this year, Jang Joon-Hwan's 2003 Korean science-fiction comedy "Save the Green Planet!"  Lanthimos's version will be English language, star Emma Stone and Jesse Plemmons, and is probably going to be a lot darker.  I'm currently debating whether to track down and watch "Save the Green Planet!" first, or wait to see "Bugonia" in order to preserve some of the surprises.  All I know is that it's about conspiracy theories about alien invaders.  

Marty Supreme - I'm not the biggest Safdie brothers fan, but they consistently get some fantastic performances out of the actors they collaborate with.  Josh and Benny are both making their own films this year.  Josh and Darius Khondji, who shot "Uncut Gems," are making "Marty Supreme," about a New York table tennis hustler, largely inspired by Martin Reisman.  Timothée Chalamet will play Marty, with Fran Drescher as his mother.  Good luck also to Benny's "The Smashing Machine" with Dwayne Johnson.     

After the Hunt - At this point any Luca Guadagnino movie is something to look forward to.  "After the Hunt" will star Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, and Michael Stuhlbarg, among others, with music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.  This is some kind of thriller, with Roberts playing a college professor with a secret past, but the cast and crew already have me sold.  Unfortunately distribution is being handled by Amazon/MGM, so I have no idea when we're actually going to see a release.     

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die - I had to double check this, but it's been a jaw-dropping nine years since we last had a new film from Gore Verbinkski.  He's easing back into things with a smaller science fiction indie, where a time traveller does battle against a rogue AI, with help from the patrons of a Los Angeles diner.  The cast includes Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, and Juno Temple.  Verbinski has been one of our most dependable genre directors and it's good to have him back.    

Highest 2 Lowest - Should this have been on the list of higher profile films?  Well, with Apple pulling back on theatrical releases, the audience for this is going to be limited, unfortunately.  Spike Lee's latest joint is an adaptation of Kurosawa's "High and Low" starring Denzel Washington and Jeffrey Wright.  "High and Low" isn't one of my favorite Kurosawa films, featuring an interesting moral quandary, but very straightforward execution.  Will Spike Lee do something new with it?  We'll see in a few weeks.  

Die, My Love - After a long delay due to the strikes, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson will star in a dark comedy horror film directed by Lynne Ramsay, about a rural woman with post-partum depression who starts lashing out.  Ramsay is another of those directors who has gone too long between projects, her last being "You Were Never Really Here" in 2017.  I'm glad to see her teaming up with Lawrence this time out.  LaKeith Stanfield, Sissy Spacek, and Nick Nolte are also in the cast.

No Other Choice - Park Chan-Wook's long in-the-works film based on "The Ax" by Donald Westlake is due to arrive in the near future.  It will follow a desperate man played by Lee Byung-hun, who decides to eliminate all of his potential replacements after being fired from his job.  There's sure to be a good amount of social commentary, and hopefully some fun action too.  Park has reportedly been getting some input from Costa Gravas, who adapted the same book as "Le Couperet" back in 2005.    

The Phoenician Scheme - I'm not going to bother listing out who's in the cast of the latest Wes Anderson film, except to point out that Benicio Del Toro has the starring role.  Really, at this point you're in for Anderson's tale of thrilling espionage and fraught family relationships in a fantastically stylized universe, or you're not.  He's back at Germany's Studio Baselberg for this production, where he shot "The Grand Budapest Hotel" ten years ago, and I expect the visuals for this film to be similarly spectacular.  

The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol - Animated films take so long to make, and traditionally animated independent films, like the ones made by Sylvain Chomet, tend to take even longer.  It's been fifteen years since Chomet's last feature film "The Illusionist," and while there's a decent chance that we'll see  his latest, a fantasy biopic of the French writer Marcel Pagnol, by the end of the year, it's just as likely that it'll be a long time yet before the project makes it to theaters.  

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My Most Anticipated Films of 2025 Part I

I thought I had more time to put this one together as I'm still playing catch-up on awards season.  Anyway, 2025's slate of new movies looks a lot more promising than last year's.  I'm feeling a little spoiled for choice.  

As usual, this feature is being split into two parts.  The first will focus on the bigger budget studio films and the second will focus on the indie, foreign, and arthouse films that may end up breaking into the mainstream, but right now are only anticipated by film nerds like yours truly.  Here we go:

Mickey 17 - I thought for sure that I had this on a previous list, but delays kept it in limbo for so long, Warner Bros. could never commit to a date.  So at last, here comes Bong Joon-ho's follow-up to "Parasite," a science fiction satire starring Robert Pattinson as the title character.  He's described as an "expendable" worker being employed in space exploration, and the trailers suggest we'll be seeing Mickeys 1-16, and potentially a whole bunch more.  There's a lot of potential for dark humor and absurdity here, and I can't wait. 

Sinners - This is the new Ryan Coogler period genre film starring Michael B. Jordan on the schedule for next month.  Jordan will play twins, vampires may be involved, and this isn't based on anything except what's inside Coogler's head.  It's hard to tell which genre this belongs to from the marketing so far.  It might be a western, it might be supernatural horror, and it might be some flavor of psychological thriller.  I'm glad it's not tipping its hand too soon, and I'm also glad that Jordan got the clout to shoot this thing in IMAX format, for extra kick.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey - Kogonada's most high profile film to date will be a romantic drama starring Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell as the leads.  The cast includes Phoebe-Waller Bridge, Jodie Turner-Smith, Brandon Perea, and many more.  The script by Seth Reiss  was on the 2020 Black List, and is about a couple that follows the directions of a magic GPS to some interesting places.  We can definitely classify this one as a fantasy movie in the Charlie Kaufman vein, and I'm very curious as to whether Kogonada and company can pull it off. 

One Battle After Another - New Paul Thomas Anderson movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn?  That's an automatic must-see.  I guess Warners thought so too, because they're giving Anderson a $100 million plus budget for this movie.  Plot details are scarce, but fans are speculating that this may be based on Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, a novel about the end of the American counterculture of the 1960s and Ronald Reagan's War on Drugs in the 1980s.  If that's the case, this will be the first Pynchon adaptation to be released in IMAX!

The Bride! - Maggie Gyllenhaal is making a monster movie!  This is going to be some take on "The Bride of Frankenstein, with Christian Bale as Frankenstein's monster and Jessie Buckley as the bride, and many interesting actors in the supporting cast.  Peter Sarsgaard, Penelope Cruz, and Jake Gylenhaal will all be in here somewhere.  John Mulaney, after recounting his failed audition at last year's Oscars, wil not.  This was originally a Netflix production that was delayed by the strikes, and ended up at Warner Bros.  I may still be mad at Zaslav, but Warners has more titles on this list than any other studio this year.     

Tron : Ares - I do not understand what Disney is doing with the "Tron" franchise, but I am glad that it's getting another shot.  Director Joachim Ronning did a great job with "The Young Woman and the Sea."  I'm not a fan of Jared Leto, but the idea of him playing a program that has crossed over to the tangible world is intriguing.  The supporting cast includes Evan Peters, Greta Lee, and of course Jeff Bridges.  With deep fake technology having improved since "Tron: Legacy," I hope the next round of inevitable digital resurrections come off better this time out.

The Long Walk - With the next "Hunger Games" movie a long ways off, Lionsgate has decided to let director Francis Lawrence make an adaptation of Stephen King's "The Long Walk."  This is one of those movies I didn't think was ever going to happen, due to the subject matter, but after five "Hunger Games" movies and two seasons of "Squid Games,"  I guess now is the time.  The cast will include Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, and Roman Griffin Davis playing contestants in a grim death march competition.

The Running Man - And if you like your death games based on Stephen King stories a little glitzier, Edgar Wright is remaking "The Running Man" for Paramount.  This is the biggest Wright movie, budget-wise, since the "Ant-man" debacle happened, so I expect he'll be making the most out of the opportunity.  Glen Powell will star instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger, with Katy O'Brien, Josh, Brolin, and Daniel Ezra supporting.  No news yet on whether this version will be closer to the book, which had a much darker ending.  We'll find out in November.  

Klara and the Sun  - I know, I know.  Taika Waititi's track record lately hasn't been good.  However, I can't help thinking that Waititi might be really good for this material.  "Klara and the Sun" is based on a Kazuo Ishiguro novel about a robot girl in a dystopian world, with Jenna Ortega playing the title character.  Waititi might seem like the last director you'd want adapting Ishiguro, but he managed to turn "Jojo Rabbit" into an affecting Oscar winner.  And if this is a failure, it's guaranteed to be an interesting failure at the very least.    

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery - Hey, Rian Johnson's making another Benoit Blanc movie.  This time, the ensemble includes Josh O'Connor, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Josh Brolin, Cailee Spaeny, Andrew Scott, Glenn Close, and Daryl McCormack.  And that's all I know.  We can expect this one on Netflix around Christmas.

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The End of "Arcane"

Moderate spoilers ahead.

The second season of "Arcane" is very good, but a clear step down from season one, which is one of the best seasons of any animated show that I've ever seen.  The production quality is as good as ever - a little heavy on the music video-style montages, but with plenty of stunning visuals.  It also keeps the same structure - nine episodes divided up into three arcs.  However, the story is much messier and way more rushed, probably because the creators decided that everything needed to be wrapped up by the end of this season.

What I found so distinctive about "Arcane" originally was that it operated like a Greek tragedy, with all these characters striving to do right, and often being stymied by luck, fate, and basic human nature.  Problems were huge and systemic, and most of the villains turned out to be anti-heroes.  These same forces are at play in this season, but with the opposite effect.  Suddenly the deck is reshuffled and major characters are handed new roles and new powers, some seemingly out of the blue.  Major themes and conflicts from the first season are dropped, or sometimes resolved so quickly that it's difficult to take the developments at face value.  Because everything builds to a final showdown, and we need most of the characters on the same side, a bigger enemy is introduced to help facilitate patching up some of the rifts between characters.  The "arcane" that powers Hex Tech shifts from being an energy source to an invasive entity, with Victor as its seemingly omniscient faith-healer/religious leader styled avatar.  

There are a few new characters, like Jinx's kid sidekick Isha (Lucy Lowe), and Caitlyn's love interest Maddie (Katy Townsend), but most of this season's major antagonists were introduced in the first season.  Mel's warmongering mother Ambessa (Ellen Thomas) quickly takes charge in Piltover, and ensures that Caitlyn is installed as the new head of the government.  We also see expanded roles for characters like Silco's old cohort Sevika (Amirah Vann) and the mad scientist Singed (Brett Tucker).  Ekko, who was being set up as a pivotal character last season, despite not much screen time, finally gets a big, consequential episode in the last arc, and an important role to play in the finale.  Conversely, major characters like Mel and Heimerdinger spend way too much time off the board.  And while the first season of "Arcane" was built around Vi and Jinx, they feel like a much less important part of the ensemble this time around, with their long standing relationship tensions solved fairly quickly.

Frankly, the second season of "Arcane" makes the stakes bigger but also far more conventional.  Fighting against a supernatural entity or a mysterious foreign threat offers far less opportunity for real character building and interesting relationship dynamics than everyone trying and failing to fix the intractable Zaun and Piltover divide in the first season.  The big finale follows the beats of so many anime series I've seen over the years, down to the last desperate attack that literally breaks the rules of time and space.  The most popular episode this season is the one featuring Ekko, because the action slows down enough to actually get some good character building done for Ekko and Jinx.  Meanwhile, I had a terrible time trying to keep track of what Jayce was doing trying to track down a "wild rune," why Ambessa was fending off a group of mages called the Black Rose, and how an unexpected heel-turn at the end of the second arc made any sense.  There was a lot of plot going on, but not much effective storytelling. 

This season of "Arcane" has far too much talent and ambition and willingness to go for broke to be considered a disappointment.  I love the opening sequence in particular, which shows off how strong the character animation is without the fancy extra flourishes of the effects work.  I did enjoy how some of the storylines wrapped up, and the endings that some of the characters reached.  However, this feels like a different show than the one I watched in 2021 - an unneeded sequel, maybe, trying to give us a happy ending that wasn't necessary.  "Arcane" is almost certainly going to be one of the touchstones of this era of animation, and I'm glad the fans got their closure, but I think the first half still works better on its own.      

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There Will Never Be Another "Megalopolis"

Minor spoilers ahead.

It's always a little bizarre when a long-gestating film project actually makes it to the big screen.  Francis Ford Coppola's "Megalopolis" has been in the works since the 1980s.  It was always characterized as one of those ambitious epics with few box office prospects, something that didn't seem like it was ever going to escape development hell.  However, Coppola self-financed "Megalopolis," his first film in over a decade, reportedly spending $120 million of his own money on the production.  He had complete artistic freedom, and as a result has produced a film that totally defies convention.  

I'm a little at a loss as to how to describe the plot.  "Megalopolis" takes place in an alternate reality where the U.S. seems to have merged with Roman antiquity.  The city of New Rome is controlled by several prominent families, notably those of Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) and the rich banker Crassus (Jon Voight).  Our protagonist is Crassus's brilliant architect nephew Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver), who dreams of building a Megalopolis to inspire the people and unlock the city's true potential.  However, he's a womanizer and alcoholic, who has never gotten over the death of his wife.  Antagonists include Crassus's other nephew, Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf), and Cesar's TV presenter mistress Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), both power-hungry and loathsome.  On Cesar's side are Cicero's daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), who goes against her father to help create Megalopolis, and loyal driver Fundi Romaine (Laurence Fisburne), who is also our narrator.

My first instinct is to talk about Ayn Rand and "The Fountainhead," because of all the talk of architecture and utopias.  Or we could talk about Robert Moses, the urban planner responsible for how New York City looks today.  However, what's more interesting is how "Megalopolis" draws from early cinema history to tell this story.  There's the use of lofty title cards with each new chapter, glitzy throwback fashions, and grandiose settings (mostly achieved with CGI), recalling the bygone epics of Cecil B. DeMille and Fritz Lang.  Suddenly there will be a kaleidoscopic effect or an optical illusion recalling Dziga Vertov.  Split-screen triptychs are a recurring visual, straight out of the finale of Abel Gance's "Napoleon."  One sequence was designed so a live actor would play an interviewer reciting lines to the screen, and Cesar Catalina would break the fourth wall and respond.  I strongly suspect that "Megalopolis" would be a more effective film if you took out all the dialogue, which is often a lot of mumbled aphorisms and references to Roman history that don't seem to add up to much of a coherent story.  

Most of "Megalopolis" was shot on green screens, placing the characters in these impossible fantasy cityscapes.  If I can recommend "Megalopolis" for anything it's the old school spectacle.  There are some really eye-catching visuals, mostly of New Rome and its inhabitants.  I don't know enough about VFX to say how good the work is on a technical level, but Coppola isn't doing anything too complicated here, mostly staying in conventional frames.  Some of the composition is so informed by Classical paintings and architecture, it felt like I was watching a Peter Greenaway film.  The Roman aesthetics are filtered through Old Hollywood glamor, emphasizing opulence and hedonism.  Shia LaBeouf's character is the most obvious example of this, who appears for a good chunk of the film in gilded period drag.  I can't help but draw comparisons to "Caligula," which recently had a new edit and restoration.  These are both gorgeous films that are overlong, wildly indulgent, and beat us over the head with their tales of powerful men trying to establish their legacies.  "Caligula" has the upper hand, however, because it has the better performances.

That brings us to Adam Driver, who has been in an awful lot of these auteur passion projects lately.  All of the characters are essentially ciphers in "Megalopolis," standing in for particular political or philosophical viewpoints.  Driver rants and raves and professes his guilt and love and agony, but there's no verve behind it.  That great physicality and urgency he had in his performances five years ago seems to have largely dissipated.  It could be the role - Cesar Catalina spends most of his time moping about nobody understanding his vision and letting other people save him from his enemies.  This is a character whose big move is making big speeches, and polished oratory isn't really Driver's strength.  The only actors who come out okay are Aubrey Plaza - born to play the femme fatale - and Shia LaBeouf just because he delivers so much camp value.  

In the end, it feels like Francis Ford Coppola made exactly the movie he meant to make - a big, shiny, personal statement about art and society and love that may not make sense to anyone except him.  I find this tremendously admirable, despite finding the film itself almost totally incomprehensible.  However you want to slice it, it's undeniably Francis Ford Coppola's "Megalopolis," and I'm glad he decided to share it with us.  

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