"Sugar" is On the Case

Initially I wasn't going to watch "Sugar," because I had a pretty significant chunk of the show spoiled for me, and I wasn't too keen on watching a moody detective noir starring Colin Farrell.  Farrell used to be one of the actors I had an irrational aversion to, which has slowly gone away over the years, but I didn't want to press my luck.  However, I learned that the main character, a private eye named John Sugar, was a film buff.  And the modern day Los Angeles detective noir he was inhabiting, created by Mark Protosevich, had a habit of splicing in clips from old films like "Sunset Boulevard," "The Night of the Hunter," and "The Thing."  As a cinephile, I decided that I had to see this.

John Sugar is a mystery man who speaks multiple languages, is indestructible in a fight, and leads a pretty lonely existence.  He gets his cases from a woman named Ruby (Kirby) and seems to have a lot of friends who are worried about him.  His latest assignment is to find the missing granddaughter of a film mogul, Jonathan Siegel (James Crowmwell), which means digging into the lives of the troubled Siegel family - father Bernie (Dennis Boutsikaris), his ex-wife Melanie (Amy Ryan), current wife Margit (Anna Gunn), and unstable son David (Nate Corddry).  There's also a local gangster in the equation, Stallings (Eric Lange), who is involved with the drug trade and human trafficking.

Farrell makes a great film noir protagonist, and I'm glad that I watched "Sugar" for his performance at least.  I've seen a lot of older film noir in the past year for other projects, and John Sugar is a nice mix of classic brooding hero and eager fanboy in love with the persona, and still a mystery man underneath it all.  The show is told from his highly subjective POV, with narration of course, which is why the film clips keep showing up.  As Sugar works on the case, we see stream-of-consciousness flashes of whatever he's thinking about - memories and related associations mostly.  The implication is that Sugar is as preoccupied with the unreal as he is with the real.  Five of the episodes, including the pilot, were directed by Fernando Meirelles, whose style is a great fit.

As with all detective stories, the ensemble has a big impact and "Sugar" has a solid one.  The Siegels are an opportunity to paint a picture of the dark underbelly of Hollywood, and Protosevich and the other writers don't hold back.  The nasty arc of David Siegel in particular is very well done, with Corddry playing an immediately hateable twerp of a villain, and Lange a much more menacing one.  It's always nice to see Kirby and Amy Ryan in anything, and I was glad that Ryan snagged the love interest role.  Though the show takes place in the here and now, everyone in it feels like they're in a proper film noir, with all the old character types and tropes effortlessly.    

As I previously mentioned, I had one of the show's big reveals spoiled for me, which unfortunately did impact my watching experience.  I was able to appreciate how well the series was structured and all the little ambiguities and hints leading up to the reveal, but I felt I'd missed out on most of the fun.  If you're curious about "Sugar" and have gotten this far, I urge you to not read anything else about the show and go watch it.  As a film noir it's pretty good, but as a film noir wrapped in a more experimental kind of narrative, it's far more interesting.  And though I did enjoy "Sugar" as a character study, I know I would have liked it better as the genre mystery it was intended to be.    

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Name a Favorite Movie for Every Year Before You Were Born

Back in 2017, I filled out one of those lists where you pick a favorite movie for every year that you've been alive.  Now that I've finished off my Top Ten project goals and have watched a lot more older films, I'm ready to pick favorites for all those years, pre 1980, when I wasn't alive.  To keep the length reasonable, however, I'll be stopping at 1939, which gives me forty-one years of movies.  As with the last list, I stress that this is a list of favorite films.  Not top.  Not best.  Not most worthwhile.  Just favorite.  And I'm going to cheat.  So here we go.  

1979 - The Muppet Movie

1978 - Superman

1977 - Close Encounters of the Third Kind

1976 - Carrie

1975 - The Rocky Horror Picture Show

1974 - Young Frankenstein

1973 - Robin Hood

1972 - What's Up Doc?

1971 - Bedknobs and Broomsticks

1970 - Little Big Man

1969 - Last Summer

1968 - The Lion in Winter

1967 - Le Samourai

1966 - Daisies

1965 - The Sound of Music

1964 - Mary Poppins

1963 - The Big City

1962 - Lawrence of Arabia

1961 - One Hundred and One Dalmatians

1960 - Psycho

1959 - Some Like it Hot

1958 - Mon Oncle

1957 - Nights of Cabiria

1956 - The Mystery of Picasso

1955 - The Night of the Hunter

1954 - Hobson's Choice

1953 - Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

1952 - Ikiru

1951 - The African Queen

1950 - Born Yesterday

1949 - Adam's Rib

1948 - Bicycle Thieves

1947 - Record of a Tenement Gentleman

1946 - It's a Wonderful Life

1945 - Christmas in Connecticut

1944 - Arsenic and Old Lace

1943 - Jane Eyre

1942 - Bambi

1941 - Dumbo

1940 - Pinocchio

1939 - The Wizard of Oz

A few notes - I played fair and did this year by year, looking through my data on Letterboxd and Icheckmovies, and going with my gut instead of my pretentious film nerd head.  If I had to watch one of these films right now, what would I pick?  Most of the time it wasn't a masterpiece, but a piece of entertainment.  

As expected, the pickings were very slim in the earlier years, and I mostly stuck to nostalgic old favorites - lots of Disney animation, light comedies, and musicals.  I managed to get in a few foreign films and artsier titles in the 50s.  It wasn't really until 1967 that I had difficulty picking titles immediately, because suddenly the number of good films I'd seen exploded.  I think "Le Samourai" only won that year because we recently lost Alain Delon.  Ask me again next week, and it might be "The Graduate" or "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"  Some years were far more stacked than others - 1970 barely had any titles I was considering, while 1971 had at least ten, including "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," "A New Leaf," "The Boy Friend," "Harold and Maude," and "Fiddler on the Roof."

I thought I did pretty good job of keeping nostalgia at bay through most of the 50s and 60s - I mean, objectively "Mary Poppins" is the greatest film to have been made in 1964 by any measure, but it really caught up to me the closer and closer I got to the 80s, because these were all the films I grew up watching.  I literally watched the 1973 animated "Robin Hood" daily at one point, because it was one of the few movies I had on home video.  

I'm surprised that no Stanley Kubrick films made it, but in the end Robert Stevenson was more important to me as a kid.  And no matter how many movies I watch, I'm still a kid at heart.  

  

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"Presumed Innocent" (1990) and "Presumed Innocent" (2024)

I watched the Apple TV+ adaptation of Scott Turow's novel "Presumed Innocent," thinking that I'd already seen the 1990 feature film adaptation, starring Harrison Ford and directed by Alan J. Pakula.  The premise of the eight-episode miniseries seemed familiar - the chief prosecutor at a district attorney's office is put on trial for murdering a fellow attorney, who he was having an affair with.  There's a political subplot, a lot of fallout with the protagonist's wife, and a great deal of time spent in the courtroom.  We haven't had a really juicy courtroom drama in a while, and I was happy to find this one getting good reviews and a decent amount of buzz.  David E. Kelley is the showrunner, no surprise.

However, the twisty story felt very modern and immediate.  I figured that some parts of the story must have been updated and expanded for the miniseries version.  Our lead, Rusty Sabich (Jake Gyllenhaal), is married to Barbara (Ruth Negga), and has two teenage children, Kyle (Kingston Rumi Southwick) and Jaden (Chase Infiniti).  We gradually learn about Rusty's relationship with the victim, Carolyn Polhemus (Renate Reinsve), his boss and mentor Raymond Horgan (Bill Camp), friendly detective Alana Rodriguez (Nana Mensah), and his therapist Dr. Rush (Lily Rabe).  On the opposing side are Rusty and Raymond's rivals, Nico Della Guardia (O-T Fagbenle) and Tommy Molto (Peter Sarsgaard).  Molto in particular has a bone to pick with Rusty.   

The drama that unfolds is everything you want a legal thriller to be - emotionally charged, full of surprises, and only minimally concerned with legal plausibility.  Jake Gyllenhaal comes off as untrustworthy enough that there's real doubt about whether he's actually innocent.  There are some excellent red herrings deployed, and in the process we get some compelling character work from actors like Ruth Negga and Bill Camp.  I'd happily give Peter Sarsgaard the Emmy right now, for going toe to toe with Gyllenhaal in the courtroom, never letting us forget for a moment how badly Rusty has transgressed.  If you enjoy big monologues like I do, the series has some excellent ones.  My only real bone to pick is with the ending reveal, which feels like a bit of a misstep. 

After I finished the series I decided to rewatch the 1990 film version, only to discover that I'd gotten it confused with a different legal thriller.  This was a film I'd never seen before, starring Harrison Ford as Rusty, Brian Dennehy as Raymond, Bonnie Bedelia as Barbara, and Raul Julia as defense lawyer Sandy Stern, a character completely excised from the new miniseries.  Pakula's "Presumed Innocent" is a much more faithful adaptation of the novel from what Wikipedia tells me, where the victim is an ambitious femme fatale, and Rusty Sabich is a much less ambiguous good guy.  The mood is more sedate, though the story is  just as engrossing.  A lot of the plot has to do with the corruption of the legal and political systems, with Rusty uncovering multiple instances of bribery and malfeasance as he tries to prove his innocence.

The miniseries is more interested in examining Rusty's relationships with Barbara and Carolyn, and the psychology behind his actions.  The film is far less interior, focused on unraveling a more traditional kind of mystery through an investigative narrative.  The film has just as many good performances as the miniseries, even though the emphasis is very different.  Raul Julia gets the big moment in the courtroom, Bonnie Bedelia gets the chilling last word in the final monologue, and it's always very gratifying to stumble across another Brian Dennehy performance I didn't realize existed.  I obviously wasn't going to get as invested in the characters over a two hour movie as I was with the ones in an eight hour miniseries, but "Presumed Innocent" is a solid entry in the pantheon of '90s courtroom movies.  

The two versions of the story are so different, it's honestly difficult to rate them against each other.  And it's not often that I've been able to go in cold like this with multiple takes on the same piece of IP.  I really enjoyed this experience, and I can only hope more creative types will take similar chances with other adaptations in the future.            

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"Time Bandits," Year Whatever

Terry Gilliam's "Time Bandits" is an odd choice to turn into a television series.  It's a child's fantasy adventure story told with the humor and irreverence of the creators of "Monty Python," but with a darker subversive edge that you don't see in mainstream media much.   I guess if anybody was going to come close to capturing that same feeling, it would be Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, who created the "Time Bandits" series with Iain Morris.  

So, a nerdy kid named Kevin (Kal-El Tuck), who is obsessed with history, discovers that his bedroom is a portal to different time periods.  He meets the Time Bandits, including leader Penelope (Lisa Kudrow), Judy (Charlyne Yi), Bittelig (Rune Temte), Alto (Tadhg Murphy), and Widgit (Roger Jean Nsengiyumva), who are former employees of the Supreme Being (Waititi).  They've stolen a map to all the portals that allow travel through space and time, in order to get rich.  However, they're idiots, and Kevin ends up being more knowledgeable than all of them.  He's accidentally pulled into the band's schemes, and helps them through all kinds of trouble as they travel from the Mayan Empire to the sacking of Troy to Prohibition era Chicago.  The Supreme Being is chasing them, because he wants his map back, and so is Pure Evil (Clement) and his henchwoman Fianna (Rachel House), who get Kevin's parents (James Dryden, Felicity Ward), and younger sister Saffron (Kiera Thompson) into the adventure too.  

I've seen the movie a few times, and I'm honestly not much of a fan, so I feel I'm in a pretty good position to parse the series in nostalgia-free terms.  What the Waititi and company have elected to do is to retell the plot of the "Time Bandits" movie, with much more conventional plotting and character building over longer journeys to different parts of history, but still retain a lot of the original concepts and imagery.  The humor is still plenty eccentric, but has almost no edge.  For instance, the original band of time-traveling thieves was made up of dwarf actors.  These have been replaced with a group of oddball comedy actors of taller stature - the kind that show up in most Waititi projects these days.  There are still a couple of dwarf actors in the show, but they're very peripheral.  The various encounters with historical figures still lean into absurdity, but are generally much sillier and nobody ever seems to be in any danger that the bandits can't talk their way out of. 

It takes a couple of episodes for the humor to gel, and in the absence of a stronger lead like Rhys Ifans in the similar "Our Flag Means Death," the rest of the cast often feels adrift.  Lisa Kudrow is great, but has more supporting character energy than lead.  The kids are great, but don't quite have the necessary presence to keep the momentum going.  When the chemistry is just right, like when the bandits meet a pompous Earl of Sandwich played by Mark Gatiss, the show can be a lot of fun.  However, this doesn't happen as often as I was hoping.  Where I think the series has a leg up is that it's got a lot of heart to it, which the movie was totally lacking.  Over the course of the series, I got attached to Kevin and the Time Bandits.  His TV obsessed parents have no idea how to relate to him, but this doesn't mean they're irredeemable, or that Kevin doesn't love them.  

The scope of the production is impressive.  This was clearly a pretty big budget affair, with excellent effects work, a lot of it practical to match the feel of the movie.  I'm very fond of Mark Mothersbaugh's electronica theme music.  The time periods and historical figures visited by the bandits are much more diverse than what we got in the movie, and we get to spend more time in each new environment since there are ten episodes to fill.  Regretfully, the early installments are awfully repetitive, with everyone quickly falling into a formula of failed heists and Kevin incrementally becoming more confident.  It takes too long for the bigger stakes of the story to be established, resulting in the last few episodes feeling very rushed.  

And to top it all off, the ending of the season is a mess.  It's not just a cliffhanger, but leaves off at a point where I was pretty sure that an episode or two just got cut from the series order at the last moment.  A second season doesn't look likely at the moment, and I'd be far more willing to recommend the show if it were more self-contained.  On the other hand, an abrupt exit is in line with how the Gilliam movie ended, so I guess I can't really complain. 

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"The Instigators" and "Wolfs"

Apple is cutting back on theatrical releases after some big titles underperformed.  However, they recently premiered two films that feel very much like they should have been getting wide releases, as they star some pretty big names - well, names that were big fifteen years ago.  It's probably a coincidence, but all the main players are alumni of the "Oceans 11" movies - Matt Damon and Casey Affleck in "The Instigators" and George Clooney and Brad Pitt in "Wolfs."

"The Instigators" is a Doug Liman action film where Damon and Affleck carry out a heist in Boston.  There are a lot of familiar faces in the cast - Hong Chau as Damon's therapist, Ron Perlman as a corrupt mayor, Michael Stuhlbarg and Alfred Molina as mobsters, Paul Walter Hauser as a hit man, and even Toby Jones as a government flunky with a good bit in the last act.  It's light, it's funny, the action is good, and this absolutely would have made a good chunk of change twenty years ago at the box office.  There's not much new or innovative, but the one distinguishing element is the endless Bostonian patter between Damon and Affleck.  The're set up as a sort-of criminal odd couple, but not with much conviction.  "The Instigators" is not one of the better things that anyone involved has ever done, but it's perfectly serviceable as an action film.  Affleck wrote it, and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck produced, which goes a long way toward explaining how it got made.  

"Wolfs" was more enjoyable for me, a smaller scale but more stylish action comedy about two unnamed fixers who are called in to the same job.  Written and directed by Jon Watts, who I only know from the latest live-action "Spider-man" films, it feels like a tribute to the brief run of Elmore Leonard adaptations that we got in the late '90s.  Clooney and Pitt are great onscreen together, and it's such a pleasure to listen to them argue and grumble about being forced to work together, and separately bristle every time someone points out how similar they are.  The plot is mostly beside the point, and there's a chase scene that goes on for way too long, but "Wolfs" delivers on the charm and the deadpan comedy.  Despite all the puffing and posturing, neither of these hardened professionals prove to be willing to do anything too mean, and it's genuinely nice to see them warm up to each other and join forces over the course of one wild night.  

I think of Damon, Clooney, and Pitt as being part of the last generation that we could really call movie stars, though Clooney was always getting dinged for making movies that never made much money.  In 2024, movie stars are almost totally extinct, despite repeated efforts to push up-and-comers like Glen Powell and Jenna Ortega to A-lister status.  Likewise, the films that depended on the participation of movie stars have been pretty scarce.  "Wolfs" is an excellent reminder of what a star-driven vehicle looks like, and the kind of filmmaking that is possible when you have actors with real onscreen charisma go to work.  Jon Watts also puts in some effort with the visuals - lots of nocturnal haunts and holiday lighting give the "Wolfs" a certain midwinter coziness.  "The Instigators" is much less accomplished, but I can tell what Doug Liman was going for and I'm grateful for the attempt.  

I'm also very aware that none of the leading men are young anymore, and my reactions to these films are definitely colored by nostalgia.  Apple was probably right not to give these films wider releases, because films like this don't play well in theaters anymore.  None of these actors have headlined a real box office hit in a long while.  Matt Damon in "The Martian" was all the way back in 2015, and I keep forgetting that Brad Pitt was in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood."  I don't think any of them have lost a step when it comes to performances, but it's no longer their era.  And that's a little bittersweet.     

   

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"Dark Matter," Year One

Spoilers for the first two-ish episodes ahead.

Not more multiverse media, I hear you cry.  We've had enough!  How much more can we take?!  Well, maybe there's room for one more show.  

The Apple TV+ series "Dark Matter" (totally unrelated to the 2015 "Dark Matter") is one of the best pieces of science fiction I've seen this year.  Based on a novel by Blake Crouch, who also created the show and wrote most of the episodes, "Dark Matter" is about parallel universes.  A physics professor, Jason Dessen (Jason Edgerton) is a little bored and resentful of his mundane life with his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and teenage son Charlie (Oakes Fegley), especially after an old friend, Ryan (Jimmi Simpson), wins a prestigious and lucrative scientific prize.  Then Jason is assaulted by a mysterious assailant and wakes up in a different version of his life.  He has no family but is the wealthy CEO of a tech company.  He also has a girlfriend, Amanda (Alice Braga) and a partner, Leighton (Dayo Okeniyi), who both think he's just returned from a strange mission.

Apple continues to make a lot of great science-fiction shows that seem to come out of nowhere.  Going with the parallel universe theme, I imagine that "Dark Matter" could have been made into a film with the same cast, but it wouldn't have been as good.  Nine episodes is probably a few too many for this miniseries, because the pacing drags at times, but it's so worth it to get to the last third, where all the setup pays off in such a satisfying way.  I continue to be happily flabbergasted at the resources Apple puts into these projects.  "Dark Matter" is set in and around  present day Chicago, and it's clear that a significant amount of the series was actually shot there!  There's a big chase sequence right on the University of Chicago campus!  After watching so many genre shows stuck in the Volume over the last few years, it's almost miraculous to find something so geeky set somewhere so tactile and recognizable.    

Like many science-fiction "what-if" stories, the story takes scientific concepts, in this case superposition and parallel universes, and extrapolates them into a totally fantastical scenario, where you can travel to other versions of your own reality and interact with them.  The fun of "Dark Matter" is that it sets up this impossible mechanism - in this case a Schrodinger's box that acts as a portal to other worlds - but then has it follow rules that create weirder and wilder possibilities, revealed to the audience a little at a time.  The show also takes the trouble to create a set of compelling characters, played by very talented actors, who are given the time to really grow on you.  We've all seen enough media about parallel universes to be familiar with the basic tropes by now - they're rife with alternate versions of characters and darkest timeline nightmare scenarios.  However, we've rarely had something like "Dark Matter" that has the thoughtfulness to really examine the psychological underpinnings of this kind of idea, and extrapolate some of the really brain-breaking stuff that would happen if it were possible.

So while there's a lot of twisty, plotty business about juggling universes keeping track of which version of which character you're watching, there's also a lot of good, solid character drama here.  Significant time is just spent with Jason examining himself, either trying to fit himself into different realities, or considering the choices that led him to particular situations.  I can understand why Edgerton and the rest were willing to take on this role, because so much depends on the performances.  It helps that the show keeps changing, the stakes and goals constantly evolving as the situation spins out of everyone's control.  We do end up with a big action finale, but it feels earned by the time we get there.  

The production overall is excellent, but it did include a pet peeve of mine, which is that there are certain key scenes where I couldn't tell what was going on because everything was so dark.  I understand the reasoning behind it, but still -  "Dark Matter" doesn't have to be a literal description.       

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My Most Anticipated Series of 2025

"Anansi Boys" and "Zero Day" were on last year's list, and I expect some of the titles below will be delayed to 2026.  Still, the idea with these posts was always to start off the year looking forward, and getting myself more informed about upcoming projects.  Below, find a motley assortment of series that have a reasonable chance of being released in 2025.  Of course, this is early in the year, so there's plenty more coming our way that we don't know about yet.  These are just the most prominent shows that I'm looking forward to right now. 

Black Rabbit (Netflix) - Jason Bateman and Jude Law will play brothers in this crime series from Zach Baylin.  From the descriptions I've read, Law will be playing the stable one, and Bateman will be playing the "chaotic" one, which sounds fun.  Bateman is also directing a few episodes, and so is his "Ozark" co-star Laura Linney, so I'm hoping that "Black Rabbit" is something in the same vein.    

Daredevil Born Again (Disney+) - After all the starts and stops, how could I not be curious?  What really sold me, however, was seeing a leaked clip from filming, and realizing how much I was still emotionally invested in seeing Charlie Cox, Elden Henson, and Debra Ann Woll together onscreen again.  I couldn't care less about the plot of this thing - though having Benson and Moorehead onboard should help. 

Alien: Earth (FX/Hulu) - Will Noah Hawley finally give us the Xenomorph invasion of Earth that we've been waiting decades for?  Probably not, since this is supposed to be a prequel to the original "Alien" film.  We're definitely getting some anti-capitalist commentary with Weyland Yutani up to their old tricks.  Essie Davis, Adarsh Gourav, and Timothy Olyphant are in the cast, so I'm hoping for the best.    

Murderbot (Apple TV+) - Alexander Skarsgaard will play the title character, a security android who unexpectedly gains free will.  This is a science-fiction action series from the Weitz brothers, based on the Martha Wells novels, and it's probably going to require a lot of effects work.  So even though reports say that this started filming in the spring of '24, there's no guarantee that we're going to see it this year. 

Untitled Vince Gilligan Apple TV+ Show - What we know so far is that the show is science-fiction, stars Rhea Seehorn, and has something to do with Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Thanks to the SAG/WGA strikes there were significant delays, but Apple has ordered two seasons based on the strength of Gilligan's past work on "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul."  And I can't wait to see it.    

The Terror: Devil in Silver (AMC+) - The third installment of the historical horror series will be an adaptation of a Victor LaValle novel about a sane man wrongly committed to a psychiatric hospital in Queens.  Karyn Kusama is directing the first two episodes and Dan Stevens will play the lead.  And considering Dan Stevens' track record with horror projects lately, I expect good things.  

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (Paramount+) - After decades of speculation, I'm glad this premise is finally getting turned into a show, with Holly Hunter in the captain's chair no less.  With "Discovery" and "Lower Decks" wrapped up, and things not looking good for "Prodigy," Starfleet Academy"  and "Brave New Worlds" will be the two remaining "Star Trek" series carrying the torch for the long-running franchise 

The Night Manager (BBC/Amazon Prime) - It's coming back!  Tom Hiddleston is returning for two more seasons of the John le Carre spy series.  Olivia Colman and much of the original cast  will also be back, but otherwise the details have been pretty scarce.  In the US, the show is moving from AMC to Amazon Prime, and if you can't wait, I hear that the Hindi version that came out last year is pretty good. 

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (HBO) - "House of the Dragon" won't be back this year, but we'll be getting more Westeros regardless.  "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" will adapt George R.R. Martin's "Tales of Dunk and Egg" novellas.  This will be a much smaller scale project focusing on one knight and his squire, at least at first.  You never know with franchise media these days.  

 

Spider-Noir (MGM+/Amazon Prime) - Finally, Nicholas Cage will be playing Spider-Man Noir again, this time in a series following his adventures in a 1930s film noir version of New York.  For the longest time I thought that this was an animated show, but it's not.  I'm not sure how much of Cage we're actually going to see onscreen, but superhero film noir pastiche is right up my alley.  

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