Like It's 1999

There are a lot of retrospective pieces that have been written this year about 1999 movies, and it's not hard to see why. 1999 was a great year for film, full of unexpected hits like "The Matrix," "The Sixth Sense," "Fight Club," and "American Beauty." It was a milestone year for me at the movies too, the year I finally moved to a big city, got full control over my viewing choices, and had access to nearly any movie I could name. It was suddenly possible for me to go out and see things like "Eyes Wide Shut" in theaters. I got carded, even! My first trip to an art house theater was to see the US release of "Princess Mononoke," the first Miyazaki film to get a Stateside theatrical release

And so 1999 is the first year that I can really quantify as a moviegoing year for me. Before that point, I watched a lot of movies, but always at random, always having to negotiate viewing times and selections with the rest of my family. My parents were pretty open-minded and we watched plenty of independent and foreign movies, but they had their tastes and I had mine. And it was still mighty uncomfortable watching adult dramas like "The Ice Storm" and "Leaving Las Vegas," with their frank depictions of sexuality, in the same room as my parents. They still don't do so well with certain kinds of movies with a lot of adult content. (Mom hates all the cursing.)

I think that early excitement was a big reason why I still remember what I watched in 1999 so well. I still have very good recall of even the oddball pictures like and "Muppets in Space" and "Stigmata" - remember that trend where the new millennium was going to trigger the Apocalypse? The bigger titles like "American Beauty," which I saw in theaters multiple times, wound up having a major influence on my own developing tastes. I was lucky that 1999 was the height of the American indie boom, when the studios were giving chances to smaller filmmakers and weirder films that they would never get today. I watched "Being John Malkovitch," "Three Kings," and "Magnolia," from up-and-comers Michel Gondry, David O. Russell, and Paul Thomas Anderson, having no idea who these directors were.

The internet was still getting off the ground. There wasn't the hype cycle and the instantaneous judgement passed down on every new release, but it was a new source of information that made me aware of titles I wouldn't have known about otherwise. I was still relying mostly on television and print ads, however. Ain't it Cool News might have had early reviews of "Sleepy Hollow," but nobody had the bandwidth to download more than poster images and productions photos back in those days. Online marketing was just beginning to be a thing, with titles like "The Blair Witch Project." Heck, DVDs were only just getting off the ground. "The Matrix" was one of the first to do anything creative with the menus and easter eggs.

Speaking of "The Matrix," it's still one of my favorite films, but I'll never be able to think of it separate from the Columbine shooting, which happened a few weeks after "The Matrix" was released in theaters. The news media pointed fingers, and for weeks we saw clips of "The Matrix" and "Doom" used to illustrate the purported dangers of violent media. Similarly, the hype for "The Phantom Menace" was so massive, part of me still gets a little excited whenever I see any of the old promotional images. It took me a few years to realize how little I cared for that movie, though I still enjoy the soundtrack.

And it was the year I watched "The Iron Giant" stumble at the box office, to the dismay of my fellow animation fans. The year "The Cider House Rules," revived Michael Caine's career as a supporting actor. The year nobody liked "Wild, Wild West" or "Inspector Gadget." The year I got my very own Blockbuster card. And Hollywood Video card. And Reel Video card.

It was the year I truly started down the path toward becoming a media junkie, and sometimes I miss it. And then I remember 1999 was before I could drink legally, and I count my blessings.
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"Counterpart" Year Two

Spoilers for the first season ahead.

Well, it's definitely worth sitting through the first season of "Counterpart" to get to the second. The show gets better, though not in the way I expected. J.K. Simmons, whose excellent performances were the driving force behind the earlier episodes, gets less screen time and less to do for the first part of the season, allowing time to explore other characters. Olivia Williams and Nazanin Boniadi benefit the most from this, as Emily and Clare become major players in the hunt for the terrorist group Indigo, and its leader Mira (Christiane Paul). We also meet some new faces, notably a new investigator, Naya Temple (Betty Gabriel), and the head of a secret prison, Yanek (James Cromwell).

The show becomes more of an ensemble effort to its benefit. There are some weak spots - the assassin Baldwin is still problematic, though she's used in better ways this year, and Ian (Nicholas Pinnock) still remains dreadfully one dimensional. However, I found Emily and the Quayles equally as compelling as Howard this season, and sometimes moreso. Emily gets more agency and more personal flaws to combat, as both her Prime and Alpha versions, and bonus points for depicting what recovery from a coma is really like. Meanwhile, the twisted relationship of the Quayles is tested by new developments. The new MVP is definitely Betty Gabriel, who takes a thankless role as the IO's new mole hunter, and creates a memorable, moving character. Simmons is still fantastic, but both Howards are sidelined from the main plot for quite a while, with one stuck in IO custody and the other helping the formerly comatose Emily with her recovery.

And this year is very plot-driven. Previously, I mentioned that "Counterpart" was largely a spy thriller that didn't seem interested in its genre elements. This season proved me wrong, as the show's creators dig deeper into the history of the double worlds, and clarify some of the major themes. An entire episode, "Twin Cities" is devoted to the accident in 1987 that created the interchange, and the original group of scientists that studied it. It's the best installment of the series, and actually works decently as a standalone piece. We learn about the clashing ideologies and tragic mistakes that lead to the original rift, making for some wonderful Cold War allegory. And we watch our present day characters wrestle with the same issues, as they try to prevent Mira from carrying out her sinister terrorist acts against the Alpha world. The terrorist threat is a much stronger and more effective throughline this time, driving the whole season.

I complained about the murkiness of the visuals in my last review, but they've improved, and the show's style has grown on me. This year more happens in the daylight, and there's generally a cleaner, brighter look and better demarcation of potentially confusing elements. Nearly all those nameless minor characters I couldn't keep straight last year are gone. The visual storytelling also becomes much more important, as the two worlds are more directly compared and contrasted this season, even including split screens to follow simultaneous action in a few key sequences. We see a lot more doubles interacting onscreen, including a very disconcerting partnership between ambassador Claude Lambert (Guy Burnet) and himself. The action and spycraft get more outlandish as the season goes on, but they still offer some good thrills.

In the end, the "Counterpart" worlds feel a little smaller than they did last season. The grand conspiracies turn out to be limited to only a handful of people. The mysterious Management is all too human and fallible. However, it's a better defined, more fascinating world, shaped by personal vendettas and crippling paranoia. We get to see a few new places, like the prison, Echo, and there are several mysteries left unsolved. However, so many of the central ones have been wrapped up, and so many of the character arcs so nicely closed out, that the season finale feels like a series finale. I'm sure that "Counterpart" could have gone on for years, but I'm not disappointed that it ended the way it did.

There are a fair amount of shows running these days that should have wrapped up in similar fashion before wearing out their welcomes.

"Chernobyl" is a Triumph

The success of HBO's "Chernobyl" miniseries came as a surprise. However, it's definitely deserving of all its good press, and I'm thrilled that it seems to have had a real cultural impact. Much of the show's success comes from the approach that the creators decided to take with it. First, the series takes aim at the lies and the misinformation that contributed to the tragedy, rather than the stickier controversies about the use of atomic power, avoiding "China Syndrome" style fearmongering. Secondly, though the USSR government doesn't come off well, "Chernobyl" gives them credit where it's due, and takes pains to honor and spotlight the heroism of the individuals involved.

Created by Craig Mazin, the miniseries follows the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster from the moment that the initial explosion occurred, to the massive cleanup efforts, and later to the struggle to assign accountability and ensure reform. The series positions scientist Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) and bureaucrat Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgaard), who spearheaded the containment and cleanup efforts, as our leads. A third protagonist, nuclear physicist Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson), is wholly invented, and intended to represent all the scientists who helped during the disaster. All three are lionized considerably, mostly to help give the show a more dramatic narrative, but it never feels too egregious. We also see many smaller stories play out. One subplot follows Lyudmilla (Jessie Buckley), the wife of one of the firefighters, Vasily (Adam Nagaitis) who suffers from radiation poisoning. Another concerns the engineers present during the disaster, Akimov (Sam Troughton), Sitnikov (Jamie Sives), and Toptunov (Robert Emms), whose warnings were ignored by the reckless chief engineer Dyatlov (Paul Ritter). Other memorable figures include mining chief Glukhov (Alex Ferns), a young cleanup "liquidator," Pavel (Barry Keoghan), and a frustrated Mikhail Gorbachev (David Dencik).

There's been some debate as to why "Chernobyl" is so effective, and why it has elicited such a response. I think it comes down to the creators' success at humanizing all these characters facing the most horrific industrial disaster of all time. Sure, there's the uneasy thrill of watching the disaster unfold like a horror film in the early hours, but the drama is so much more moving when you see imperfect individuals struggling to process their existential despair, and summoning up the strength to try and fix things. Harris and Skarsgaard are absolutely stellar here as Legasov and Shcherbina, who are the ones who finally confirm the extent of the damage and its implications. They're perhaps portrayed as too heroic, but I think the audience needs such hopeful figures to help guide them through the utter hell of Chernobyl's aftermath. They embody all the sacrifice and bravery that the Soviets showed when it counted, counterbalancing the corruption and incompetence that lead to the tragedy.

And the depiction of the systemic corruption is very effective. The most sobering part of "Chernobyl" is how woeful the initial reaction and mitigation efforts were. The first two episodes that deal with the early response to the Chernobyl explosion and fire are immensely frightening. It's not because of the severity of the disaster or the impressive scale of the production, but because almost nobody we see in those initial hours understands or is prepared for the danger from the radiation, and in many cases seek to downplay or hide it. It's the dosimeters that are kept in the safe. It's the hospital that doesn't stock iodine pills. It's the bureaucrats whose first instinct is to find someone else to blame. The culture of secrecy and denial are shown to contribute heavily to dooming so many people to horrible deaths, attitudes that are sadly too familiar in the current political climate.

I found the second half of "Chernobyl" a step down from the first half, especially the way that the creators frame the conflict and invent a lot of courtroom theatrics to create a moral victory for the main characters. However, it's very impressive to see the scope and the ambition of the series as it tries to tackle many different aspects of the disaster and tell stories from many points of view. Also, clearly a lot of work went into getting the little details right, from home decor to protective gear and emergency vehicles. So on the macro and micro levels, the series is very strong, which makes it easier to forgive the dramatic liberties. In the end, "Chernobyl" does something that no other piece of media has managed - it's put a human face on the tragedy at last.
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"Hawaii" and "The Sand Pebbles"

My Top Ten project has brought me to the films of 1966. And I've had to face the uncomfortable truth that the further back in time I go, the more problematic portrayals of minorities in American films I find. In the films I've watched lately, these have ranged from the peculiar, like the curious use of blackface in "Finian's Rainbow," to the outright racist, like the Chinese kidnappers in "Thoroughly Modern Millie." However, there is a clear progressive sentiment running throughout many projects, and pains are often taken, however clumsily, to try and humanize the foreign Other.

That brings us to two epic historical films of 1966 that have been mostly forgotten, as neither are very good, but share one notable thing in common. Both received Academy Award nominations in the supporting actor categories, for performances by minority actors. Mako, as the boiler room worker Po Han, in "The Sand Pebbles," gave a rare positive portrayal of a Chinese character. Then there was Jocelyne LaGarde as Malama Kanakoa, the leader of the Hawaiian island where missionaries arrive to convert the population in "Hawaii." She was the first actress of indigenous descent to be nominated for an acting Oscar.

Both "The Sand Pebbles" and "Hawaii" are films that would never be made today for a variety of reasons. "The Sand Pebbles" was Robert Wise's passion project, about the involvement of a gunboat, nicknamed "the Sand Pebble," and her crew, during the start of the Chinese Civil War in the 1920s. It initially strikes an almost apologetic tone, as it addresses the mess that Western colonialism has made of China, and includes a stridently anti-imperialist character, the missionary Jameson (Larry Gates). However, the action stays with our protagonist Holman (Steve McQueen), a machinist aboard the Sand Pebble, and his efforts to work in the curious system that has developed between the soldiers and the boat's Chinese laborers.

Subplots include Holman training and befriending Po Han after initial reluctance, another soldier falling in love with a Chinese woman, and rising tensions as the political situation heats up, turning popular sentiment against the Westerners. The first half of "The Sand Pebbles" is fairly entertaining as it examines the seedy ecosystem of the gunboats and port towns, where commerce caters to the sailors. The Chinese characters are largely stereotypes, but a few can be viewed as heroic figures. Mako gets a fantastic boxing sequence where he has to go up against an American bully to keep his job. However, once the larger hostilities develop, the story becomes far more muddled. Nobody ever bothers to explain the conflict in any detail, and despite some good action sequences, the movie drags terribly through the second half of its interminable three plus hour running time.

"Hawaii" is similarly a film with good intentions, but considerably worse execution. Christian missionary Reverend Abner Hale (Max von Sydow) and his new wife Jerusha (Julie Andrews) come to Hawaii in the early 1800s to convert and civilize the native Hawaiians. Reverend Hale is a joyless, inflexible, zealot who sees sin everywhere, and the film is largely concerned with showing how Hale's marriage and his time with the Hawiians, lead by Malama and her son Keoki (Manu Tupou), eventually soften his outlook. For the vast majority of the running time, however, Reverend Hale is an insufferable ass of a man, and my favorite part of the movie was when Malama responds to his early attempt to shame her by simply slapping him upside the head and then ignoring him. An incredibly charismatic presence, Jocelyne LaGarde steals the movie and is almost worth sitting through the film to see her.

I say almost, because aside from Legarde's performance, "Hawaii" is remarkably off-putting. I've generally enjoyed Max von Sydow and especially Julie Andrews in their other film roles. However, their characters here are so glum and miserable, it's difficult to stay engaged. Reverend Hale's spiritual journey is a bore. Andrews' big moment is a harrowing childbirth scene. Individual Hawaiian characters are treated sympathetically, and there's some lip service paid to their disastrous exploitation by Westerners, but they remain firmly supporting roles with little real agency. It's a given that the Hawaiians will all be saved by becoming good Christians in the end. The movie also suffers from an overlong running time - again, over three hours.

Both of these productions were expensive prestige pictures with big stars and notable directors. Audiences were receptive, and both films were among the top five grossers of 1966. That's the reason I sought them out. It's fascinating to see how far Hollywood has come in portraying characters from other cultures, and the kind of patronizing nonsense that they used to get away with. And yet, while I might complain about the subservience of Po Han or Malama being used for some easy laughs, these were rare chances for minority actors to shine, and the parts were created by filmmakers who were earnestly trying to do right by them. It's no accident that they are far and away the most impressive and memorable parts of their respective films.

Mako never got a comparable role, even though he was active in film and television for the next forty years. Jocelyne LaGarde, however, never appeared in another film. "Hawaii" is her lone acting credit.

"Killing Eve," Year Two

Moderate spoilers ahead.

I've heard "Killing Eve" described as the sapphic "Hannibal," and that's a fair comparison. You have a cop and a serial killer playing cat and mouse games with each other as their mutual obsession grows. "Killing Eve" doesn't have quite the nightmarish visual sense or flair for the horrific, but it makes up for it with a much stronger supporting cast and a good sense of humor. Also, the plotting is a lot more coherent, which is a big plus.

Picking up pretty much right where the first series left off, Eve and Villanelle continue their careers as British intelligence agent and contract killer respectively. Eve gets a new case involving a new female assassin and several new co-workers, notably Hugo (Edward Bluemel) and Jess (Nina Sosanya). Villanelle, having displeased her employers, has to deal with an annoying new handler, Raymond (Adrian Scarborough). We also get a lot more of Fiona Shaw as Carolyn Martens, Eve's supervisor, and Owen McDonnell as Niko, Eve's increasingly frustrated husband.

The departure of creator and showrunner Phoebe Waller-Bridge definitely has an impact here. The second series of "Killing Eve" loses a lot of its unpredictability and edge. There are still plenty of twists and turns, but the show largely falls into the pattern of similar serial killer stories, though I won't spoil which ones. I like the new villains who crop up, particularly the creepy tech mogul Aaron Peel (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), but I miss the sense of chaos and anarchy. Villanelle is still mercurial and selfish, but a lot more vulnerable to meet the demands of the plotting. She rarely feels as dangerous as she ought to.

Still, the performances of Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer, and Fiona Shaw are all great stuff. Oh and Comer spend much more time interacting, and a real relationship develops between the two. It becomes a tug of war, with Villanelle trying to provoke Eve's dark side and Eve trying to find ways to use Villanelle's lethality for good. Sexual attraction is definitely part of the equation, though nobody ever quite confronts it directly. Of course, this doesn't resolve to anyone's satisfaction except the audience's. And perhaps Carolyn Marten's, who is quickly becoming my favorite character in the show. Her epic unflappability is simultaneously unnerving and terribly funny. I'll keep watching if only for the chance to see Carolyn and Villanelle interact more.

The show's production values feel like they've taken a step up. The action sequences are a little more elaborate, and the settings a little more varied. There's still a good deal of globetrotting and lifestyle porn, with the finale taking place in Rome. There are also some fun instances of the heroines playing with disguises and accents, doing their own spins on the usual spycraft tropes. There are other moments that play on typical crime drama and action thriller scenarios. My favorite is a reveal that takes place halfway through the season and uses Sandra Oh's ethnicity - still refreshingly a total non-issue - to take advantage of the the audiences assumptions and pull the rug out from under them.

However, there are a few iffy structural choices that I felt impacted the show negatively. Though there is an overarching mystery to follow from week to week, and compelling characters to follow, it has a troubling habit of leaving dead ends everywhere. The first half of the season spends a lot of time building up and having Eve chase the new killer, the Ghost, and then it seems to completely forget about her halfway through the season. Maybe this character will become important again next year, but the storyline is dropped so abruptly, without a satisfying conclusion, that I was left reeling. Other minor characters have a habit of disappearing without explanation. I know the actress left the show, but what happened to Kirby Howell-Baptiste's Elena Felton from last season?

Also, as much as I love the actor, there's a major resurrection that I wish wouldn't have happened. That was my biggest beef with the second season of "Hannibal" too. They killed so many characters, but never let the dead stay dead for very long. It's a little disappointing to learn that "Killing Eve" really is a standard crime drama at its core - but it's a very good one.
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My Top Ten Films of 1976

This is part of my continuing series looking back on films from the years before I began this blog.

The ten films below are unranked and listed in no particular order. Enjoy.


Network - It's scary how prescient the film was, to the point where Howard Beale's mad media prophet actually seems a little passe in the era of FOX News and Breitbart. Combining the artistic forces of Sidney Lumet, Paddy Chayefsky, and a superb cast, the film is a fantastic exploration of unchecked ambition, madness, and exploitation. It makes the case that the media may be monstrous, but only because it is a reflection of our worst impulses.

Marathon Man - Who could forget one of the least graphic, most effective torture scenes ever filmed? I count this as a career high for director John Schlesinger and writer William Goldman. And while everyone talks about Laurence Olivier as the chilling Nazi dentist, I don't think that Dustin Hoffman gets enough credit. He does the lion's share of selling the escalating thrills and paranoia, famously pushing method acting techniques to worrying extremes.

1900 - This ambitious Bernardo Bertolucci epic is difficult to approach due to the language issues and the considerable length. However, it's worth it to see the rare intersection fo so many acting greats, including Robert DeNiro, Gerard Depardieu, and Donald Sutherland playing a criminally underappreciated psychopath. As historical drama, it's unusually earnest in its political stances, offering a candid look at Italian history from multiple perspectives.

The Bad News Bears - Walter Matthau plays a grouchy, drunken reprobate who is roped into coaching a dysfunctional little league team. Together they proceed to skewer and subvert every trope of sports movies, and especially kids' sports movies, that they can get their grubby mitts on. It's such a joy to watch these little stinkers embrace their status as oddballs and outcasts. It's also a rare movie that really commits to the moral that winning isn't worth selling out.

All the President's Men - Still the prime example of the modern journalism movie, a clear-eyed procedural that systematically shows the investigation and reporting behind the Watergate scandal. Rarely sensational, but utterly absorbing, the film offers a sinister, murky vision of Washington D.C. and the workings of the federal government. It's a view that serves as a vital counterpoint to the usual, jingoistic cinematic images of American politics.

Carrie - Has two of my favorite female monsters in all of cinema, Carrie White and her mother. It's still a gutting portrait of female growing pains, religious mania, and toxic parental relationships, as well as a real scream of a horror picture. This was the first major adaptation of a Stephen King novel, and made a star of Sissy Spacek, one of my favorite actresses. It also helped to cement the reputation of foremost schlockmeister Brian DePalma, possibly the only director who could have done the material justice.

Face to Face - A female psychiatrist has a breakdown and slowly loses her grip on reality, to thrilling effect. This is one of the inimitable Liv Ullman's greatest performances, and I've always been disappointed that the longer miniseries version of this Bergman classic is nearly impossible to find, because I'd love to see more of it. As is, "Face to Face" makes a good pairing with other Bergman/Ullman classics like "Persona" and "Cries and Whispers."

Rocky - It's hard to remember when "Rocky" wasn't really about the boxing, but about a young man looking for his place in the world and someone to share it with. I appreciate the movie so much for the way it follows Rocky's courtship of Adrian. The training sequences with Mickey and the final showdown are wonderful, of course, but it makes such a difference that Rocky Balboa's life is portrayed as a many-sided, emotionally interesting one on the way to his triumph.

Taxi Driver - A snapshot of New York on the brink of economic disaster, mirroring Travis Bickle as a man teetering on the edge of rage and violence. Robert DeNiro's performance remains deeply moving, frightening, and sympathetic, and Bickle is as starkly relevant now as he was in the '70s. This is one of several collaborations between Martin Scorsese and DeNiro, but it was also the first of four films Scorsese made with Paul Schrader, a cinema great in his own right.

Martin - Of all the different takes on vampires I've seen, George Romero's tale of a young man who may or may not actually be a real creature of the night stands out. Martin's struggles against his darker impulses and emergence as a minor radio celebrity make good metaphors for the difficulties of certain populations to adjust to modern life and society. Even if Martin isn't supernatural, he's clearly a monster of a sort, and just familiar enough to be fascinating.

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About "Us"

Minor spoilers ahead.

"Us" is one of those horror movies that made it difficult to sleep much afterwards. Part of it was because the adrenaline from the thrills and shocks kept me up. The film is not especially scary, but has some of the most unnerving cinema monsters I've seen onscreen in a long while. And part of it was that "Us" is one of those movies where the ending forces you to reexamine the entire story in a different context, and I spent half the night piecing things together and having little "a-ha!" moments. And once I finished doing that, there was a mountain of subtext to dig through.

Like "Get Out," Jordan Peele's latest film has a lot of coded social commentary. On the surface level, "Us" is a doppelganger story, one with a few novel conceits. The Wilson family, mother Addy (Lupita Nyong'o), father Gabe (Winston Duke), and children Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex), go on vacation near the Santa Monica beach where Addy had a traumatic experience as a child. When their shadowy doubles, the "Tethered," arrive in the middle of the night, intent on killing them, Addy has to confront her old ghosts to dispatch and escape them. As a pure horror film, "Us" is executed beautifully. The doppelgangers are monstrous and frightful. The scares are visceral. The suspense is even better.

However, "Us" gets a lot of its power from suggesting connections and presenting ideas that go quite a bit deeper - or at least appear to. No definitive answers are ever given about the origin of the Tethered, but we get just enough details about how they live and operate that it's irresistible to want to pick them apart. They're essentially fairy-tale monsters, and thus obviously symbolic of other evils. Some have suggested that the Tethered are stand-ins for an exploited underclass, like the Morlocks. However, unlike the Morlocks, their lives and actions are explicitly tied to their doubles.' Not only are the Tethered the dark mirrors of the main characters, but their relationships to each other are too. We hear speculation that they're connected to protestors or human lab rats. When asked point blank who they are, the response is, "We're Americans."

They also make for such memorable visuals, all dressed in red, with dead-eyed expressions, and frequently holding hands in human chains. We've seen similar elements in other movie monsters, but nothing quite like this. Lupita Nyong'o delivers a fantastic performance as both Addy and her double, who the credits identify as "Red." She is the most aggressive and fearsome of the Tethered, who slings accusations at Addy with a raspy voice and grimacing smile. Nyong'o's performance is mesmerizing stuff, and I'm already pretty sure that she'll be snubbed at awards time to the ire of genre fans.

The rest of the cast is great too. Winston Duke as the social-climbing Gabe has the lion's share the film's funnier moments. And yes, "Us" does have its share of laughs, including morbid family squabbles and some skewering of the obsessions of the suburban set. Some have taken issue with Jordan Peele's worldbuilding being a little shaky here, but nobody can criticize him for the pitch perfect family dynamics and the shaking up of common genre conventions. I also found the various homages to '80s culture a lot of fun, especially the reminder that Michael Jackson was once briefly a horror icon. The soundtrack, of course, is a delight.

Again, Peele has created a magnificent piece of horror with a trim budget and an inventive script. I doubt that this will be able to match the success of "Get Out," because the social commentary isn't nearly as specific, and the story is less clearly laid out. However, I like that "Us" is more amorphous and uneasy, because it makes the scares all the more potent, and allows for more interpretations. I like the theory that the Tethered are a manifestation of capitalist guilt, but I also like them as a racial dissociation metaphor, or an environmental apocalypse metaphor, or even a political metaphor. Is Addy Donald Trump?

I know it's still before Labor Day, but this hasn't been a great year for movies that aren't massive blockbuster tentpoles. Thank goodness for Jordan Peele and company.
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My Favorite Ken Russell Movie

There are "Great Directors" entries where I've felt it necessary to remind the reader that this series is all about my favorite movies made by certain directors, not the movies that I consider their greatest or most iconic works. And there's probably no case where there's a great gap between the two than with my pick for Ken Russell, the notorious British provocateur. His most celebrated film is without a doubt "Women in Love," his most daring "The Devils," and the movie most exemplary of his style probably the rock opera "Tommy." To a certain degree I admire all of these films. However, the one that I really adore is "The Boy Friend," his tribute to Busby Berkeley and the golden age of movie musicals.

Writing about "The Boy Friend" feels a little like taking the easy way out. Russell is famous for pushing content standards as far as they could possibly go, often pairing really dark and twisted subject matter with over-the-top, campy depictions of sex, violence, torture, and depravity. "The Boy Friend," which was released in the same year as his most controversial films, "The Devils" and "The Music Lovers," has almost no objectionable material whatsoever. Instead, it's a lighthearted spoof of musical theater, starring the winsome '60s it-girl Twiggy in her first big acting role. However, it does have many of Russell's visual hallmarks, including opulent art direction, grandiose fantasy sequences, and aggressive, intense editing.

Based on a '50s musical that was a comic pastiche of the musicals of the '20s, "The Boy Friend" is a show within a show that involves a struggling theater troupe powering through a kitschy musical in the hopes of impressing a Hollywood director in the audience. There's all kinds of madcap business going on behind the scenes, and our leading lady is an assistant stage manager who has to take over for the show's star after an unfortunate accident. Look a little closer, and you'll also notice the deconstructions and lampooning of various character types, and the moments of raunch and sexual subtext sprinkled generously throughout. The showgirls appear garish as they fight for the spotlight onstage, while the men are often ineffectual and weak. Most of this is played for laughs, where it might have been played for grotesquerie or shock in a different Russell picture, but the subversive mockery still carries some sting.

I admit that it's the pageantry that I really enjoy, though. Roger Ebert famously panned "The Boy Friend" for being too cold and sterile, calling attention to the stifling cinematography of the onstage antics, and the unflattering stage makeup caked on the actors. However, he didn't say much about the film's flights of unfettered fancy whenever a character starts daydreaming. This is when all the big, full scale set pieces come into play, when the cinematography opens up, the orchestral fills out, and all the tension evaporates. The dance sequences are whimsical, full of cartoonish visuals and bright colors, but executed beautifully. Several Busby Berkeley shots are recreated, as well as tributes to other musicals and iconography of that era. It often looks ridiculous, but there's such a joy and weird creative giddiness to it. Let's do a Grecian pastoral! Frolicking elves! Invalids and sexy nurses!

Like many other Russell films, it gets to be a bit much. Number after number piles on the glitz to an excessive degree. I understand why the American distributors trimmed multiple song numbers and over twenty minutes of the run time. However, excess is a hallmark of a Ken Russell film. Nearly all of them manage to work in some kind of madcap fantasy sequence, even when it's totally inappropriate or in bad taste. "The Boy Friend" feels like the one project where Russell was able to let loose and put in as many as he liked, as wild and fantastical as he could make them. At the same time, some of my favorite moments of are the quietest ones, where Twiggy sings her lovelorn backstage solos to herself, or where the showgirls are shown washing up after the show. They're lovely, in a way I feel moviegoers tend to forget that Russell's films can be.


I'll always love "Lisztomania" and "Tommy" for their chaos and outrageousness, but nothing can beat "The Boy Friend's" gorgeous Pierette sequence with the Erte-inspired silhouettes. And no matter how much subversion and cynicism Russell may add to the conversation, in the end his fondness for his subjects always comes through.


What I've Seen - Ken Russell

Billion Dollar Brain (1967)
Women in Love (1969)
The Music Lovers (1971)
The Devils (1971)
The Boy Friend (1971)
Tommy (1975)
Lisztomania (1975)
Altered States (1980)
Gothic (1986)
The Lair of the White Worm (1988)

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Entertainment Weekly, No More

When I was a kid in the '90s, who loved movies but didn't know anything about them, the publication that I would read cover to cover whenever I had the chance was "Entertainment Weekly." Issues were only available to me through the dentist's waiting room, mostly, and sometimes the hairdresser's. They weren't as informative as "Variety" or "Hollywood Reporter," obviously but I had to make do with what I could get. Unlike the other glossy pop culture magazines, it had bits of actual hard data that I couldn't get anywhere else, including weekly box office tallies and the ratings charts for prime time network television programs. There were home media, theater, and book sections. Until my parents started buying the Los Angeles Times regularly, "Entertainment Weekly" was often the only way I could stay remotely current on anything going on in the entertainment industry. The seasonal movie preview features were my favorites.

And now, a few decades later, "Entertainment Weekly" is becoming a monthly publication with a shift in focus towards its online content. The July 5th issue was the final issue of the weekly version. No, the name isn't changing. I can't help feeling a little sad, even though I haven't cracked open an issue in at least a year. It was always nice to see the magazine on the publication stands, even after their biggest selling point seemed to be endless variant covers for the "Twilight" movies. And it wasn't a good sign when their exclusive photos would be all over social media within hours of being published. With the way that the internet has decimated the print industry, I guess it's impressive that "Entertainment Weekly" held out against the inevitable for as long as it did. As of 2017, it still had a circulation of around 1.5 million.

Of course, "Entertainment Weekly" wasn't really a weekly magazine. Last year it cut its frequency from 38 issues a year to 34. Even at its height, the subscription was for 40 issues, advertised as 55 because of several "double length" special issues. Their behind-the-scenes troubles have been well documented, as the magazine bounced from publisher to publisher for years. It never really recovered from previous attempts at retooling that chipped away at its editorial distance and critical integrity. There was always an uneasy balance between catering to populist tastes and maintaining the quality of the entertainment journalism, and in recent years the magazine has gotten noticeably dumber and duller. I stopped collecting issues around the time when there was a drastic revamp in 2008, increasing font size and shortening articles noticeably.

Thirteen staff members were let go as part of the latest transition, including veteran critic Chris Nashawaty, who took over after the long-reigning Lisa Schwarzbaum and Owen Gleiberman were ousted in 2013 and 2014. I poked around on the "Entertainment Weekly" website to try and figure out which critics (if any) were still there, but the site is one of those dreadful things designed for mobile devices that has gigantic graphics plastered everywhere and navigation is a pain. Seriously, this recent trend of breaking up articles every paragraph with slow-loading ads and pictures is the worst. If online content is going be the main focus of the publication from here on out, you'd think that they'd spend a little time and effort to actually make it readable.

Oh well. Unlike other publications, I don't find I have much trouble saying goodbye to "Entertainment Weekly." It had its time and place, but the world has changed and there are so many, many sources of news and criticism available to me now. Occasionally they'll put out a really eye-catching cover, but otherwise it's off my radar completely these days. No doubt it'll stick around or a while yet in physical form, if only because the splashy cover stories and exclusives can be a good marketing platform. I haven't thought of it as real entertainment news for a long time, though. And I haven't read their reviews since Glieberman and Schwarzbaum left. I'll still page through "Entertainment Weekly" issues at the dentist's office - but maybe not if I have the option of reading TIME or Newsweek instead.
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"American Gods," Year Two

Minor spoilers ahead.

I had to check multiple times to make sure that this season of "American Gods" only had eight episodes, because I couldn't quite wrap my head around how it ended.  Quite a lot happened this season, but it feels like we barely made any progress from week to week, and the finale landed with a mighty thud. That's not to say that this season was all bad - there are at least two excellent episodes - but as a whole it stumbles pretty badly.

Much of the dive in quality is due to the show's behind-the-scenes chaos.  Creators Bryan Fuller and Michael Green departed, taking a few important members of the cast with them, and leaving everyone else with a mess.  Media has been replaced by a far more awkward New Media (Kahyun Kim). Easter and Jesus are nowhere in sight. Instead, we have more of Anansi and Bliquis hanging around, without actually doing much except sniping at each other.  Ditto the Jinn and Salim (Omid Abtahi), who are now traveling as a pair. Shadow and Wednesday spend much of the season trying to reforge Wednesday's spear, and Laura and Mad Sweeney are still trying to bring Laura back to life. There's constant talk of carnage, but little action.

The premiere episode with the meeting of the Old Gods at the House on the Rock is something that the first season had been building to, and it was great to finally see it.  However, the meeting and aftermath were some of the only parts of the season where it felt like anything consequential happened. The war between the gods remains an amorphous, mostly theoretical thing.  Characters die, but it's been made clear that nearly everyone can come back to life in one form or another. There's a lot of waiting around, and Shadow's battles are mostly internal. Of course, that isn't all that different from the first season, where the show was mostly just a road trip adventure punctuated by all these smaller stories about the various gods in the past and present.  

The trouble is that these smaller stories aren't executed with nearly the same deftness or boldness as we saw under Fuller's directions.  As Matt Zoller Seitz lamented in his review, the sexuality has been cut to practically nothing but insinuations. The hallucinatory dream sequences are fewer and briefer, and the violence just doesn't have the same oomph that it used to.  I thought that Fuller overdid the surrealism sometimes, but his excesses at least gave "American Gods" a certain verve and vibrancy that helped it to stand out from the crowd. Now, there are so many of the show's little conceits that feel underdeveloped.  The Indian goddess Mama-ji (Sakina Jaffrey) pops up a few times as a waitress. Argus (Christian Lloyd) appears as the god of surveillance. There's also new Native American character for about five minutes. Nobody really has anything to do except kvetch and deliver half-baked advice.  

However, there are some things that the show gets very right.  Ricky Whittle is getting a bit better as Shadow, and I liked the flashback episode that explores his early days as a new immigrant in America.  Ian McShane's Wednesday continues to impress, and we see some different sides of him. However, far and away the best hour of "American Gods" this year is all about Mad Sweeney, and his tangled history.  Pablo Schrieber gives the best performance of his career playing multiple versions of the character through the ages. I really hope he still has time for "American Gods" going forward, as he's set to play Master Chief for the upcoming "Halo" series.

I'm honestly a little stunned that "American Gods" has been renewed for another season at least, which will be a much more structured thing as it moves into a mystery storyline from the book that will require a bit of a format change.  However, I'll still be watching because this show's highs are still high enough that it's been worth waiting through the rougher stuff. However, I hope the production manages to pull itself together. Even if the plot isn't all that important, and we're meant to just be sightseeing in this universe, the attractions should at least be in good working order.  

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Missmediajunkie vs. "How it Should Have Ended" and "Honest Trailers"

This is a post I've been meaning to write for a while.  I've been watching the "How it Should Have Ended" shorts and ScreenJunkies' "Honest Trailers" for years now.  I've watched them morph from rudimentary viral videos into some of the most widely watched and referenced pieces of movie-related media on the internet.  I mean, it's gotten to the point where the United States Army is sponsoring "Honest Trailers." And like everything that becomes mainstream and popular, these series have been weathering a fair amount of criticism.  So I thought I'd dig into this a bit today.

First off, it's no mystery why these videos are popular.  There's something very satisfying about seeing recent blockbusters being called out for their sillier notions by small time, independent content creators.  "How it Should Have Ended" is largely still designed and animated by two people, Daniel Baxter and Tina Alexander, though Starz handles the distribution. The videos have gotten more polished over the years, but are still appealingly rough around the edges.  "Honest Trailers" only has a slightly larger crew, and leans heavily on recut clips and the efforts of a faux-serious deep-voiced narrator. The humor is broad and playfully cynical.

The primary complaint I've heard levied at both series is that the commentary offered by these videos is too nitpicky and shallow.  And of course it is, because the primary aim of these videos isn't to provide real criticism, but to get a laugh and entertain. "How it Should Have Ended" and "Honest Trailers" also tend to get lumped in with the "Everything Wrong With…" series created by CinemaSins, a similar comedy show which often does put itself out there as legitimate criticism, and is notoriously bad at it.  "How it Should Have Ended" and "Honest Trailers" rely more on parody elements, which involve a great deal more creativity and originality. Not all the jokes and observations work, but I like that they come off more as earnestly questioning the logic and choices of the filmmakers, rather than simply slamming dubious minutiae as "sins."

Another criticism is that both series are extremely formulaic.  "How it Should Have Ended" recreates a handful of scenes from each film with goofy animation and then has them play out differently.  Most installments also end with a quick sketch involving Batman and Superman to offer more meta commentary. "Honest Trailers" creates a fake trailer for each movie, where a narrator delivers a snarky rundown of the major characters and plot before reading out a pun-filled credits roll.  And yes, that is where the "Deadpool" credits gag came from. These formats are both flexible enough to accommodate pretty much any movie you could name. "Honest Trailers" has also taken aim at television and other specials - there's a yearly Oscar edition - while "How it Should Have Ended" regularly produces bonus material and spin-off shorts.

Frankly, at this point the formula is part of the charm.  Both series are designed for quick and easy consumption, and their repetitive nature helps the effectiveness of the jokes and humor.  One of the reasons I think that both series have survived for so long is that they're very short, simple, and to-the-point. They're also very accessible for newcomers.  Frequently, the only thing being referenced is the specific movie that is being made fun of, and the humor is fairly gentle and good-natured. As a counter-example, consider the "I'm a Marvel... and I'm a DC" parody shorts.  I used to love these when they first started out, but over time they became much more self-referential and sort of wandered off into complicated ongoing storylines. The series is still going, but I've completely lost track of it.     

Finally, I've heard the claim that the degree of success enjoyed by "How it Should Have Ended" and "Honest Trailers" is somehow undeserved because they're derivative of the media that they're lampooning.  There's nothing wrong with derivative media, though. You see plenty of bad examples, because it's notoriously hard to do well. And it really takes some effort to do it well with any consistency. Frankly, I also like having these series around to point to as examples of how to do parody/satire/commentary of existing media right.  You can't just have a good gimmick, but also need the knowhow to execute it properly over and over again.

"How it Should Have Ended" and "Honest Trailers" are far from great in any sense, but they fill a niche and they do it well.  I don't watch either of them with much regularity, but I've enjoyed many of their installments over the years and I root for their continued survival.  

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"Good Omens" is Apocalyptic Fun

Amazon has turned Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's comic fantasy novel, "Good Omens," into a six episode miniseries.  It has a fabulous cast, great production values, and an engaging story. It's also kind of a mess, but in a fun way. Neil Gaiman was made showrunner, and he keeps a lot of bits that probably should have been left out, uses way too much narration, and runs into some major pacing problems.  In other words, exactly what you'd expect when giving over creative control to a celebrated novelist who hasn't really done this sort of thing before. However, the material is good enough and the talent is strong enough that it doesn't much matter.

"Good Omens" is about the end of the world as foretold by the Bible, and the major players are a bunch of supernatural beings and assorted humans either trying to prepare for or thwart the Apocalypse.  Our chief protagonists are an angel, Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and a demon, Crowley (David Tennant) who have been on Earth in various forms since the Beginning. The two have secretly become friends over the eons, and when they learn that Doomsday is approaching, decide to save the world they've grown very attached to.  Mostly, this involves trying to wrangle the fate of the Antichrist, a boy named Adam (Sam Taylor Buck), who was accidentally placed in the care of very normal human parents.

  

Aziraphale and Crowley are easily the best things about "Good Omens," and their friendship is the backbone of the miniseries.  They're both cosmic beings of great power, and complete opposites, but they come to realize that they enjoy each other's company, even if they have to keep pretending to be mortal enemies.  Sheen is especially great as the fussy, tweedy Aziraphale, who runs an old bookshop and is a shameless foodie. Tennant, however, gets more of the fun lines as the snarky Crowley, gets to drive too fast, and gets to dress like a rock star - or Neil Gaiman in the '90s.  Just the visual of the two of them next to each other is delightful, and the show goes back to it as often as it can.      

Unfortunately, the show isn't all about Aziraphale and Crowley.  It's also about a witch named Anathema (Adria Arjona), who is using a book of prophecy to try and avert the Apocalypse.  And it's about the last remnants of the Witchfinder Army, Lieutenant Shadwell (Michael McKean) and the newly recruited Newton Pulsifer (Jack Whitehall).  And it's about the forces of Hell and Heaven making preparations for the end. A hellhound is loosed. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are summoned. Jon Hamm plays the Archangel Gabriel, Miranda Richardson plays a medium named Madame Tracy, and Frances McDormand narrates the whole shebang as God. 

It's not that these storylines are poor.  It's just that they're not nearly as interesting or well executed.  For instance, I like the idea of Adam with his gang of friends, being eleven-year-olds on bikes on an adventure.  However, Adam's not as fleshed out as he should be, and what he wants from one moment to the next feels completely arbitrary.  I think the actor is quite good, but not good enough that he can make up for the weaker bits of writing and directing the way some of the more experienced members of the cast can.  Frankly, there are some sequences that are just plain awkward. The baby swapping scene is a particularly bad one, where the show keeps cutting away to a game of Three-card Monte to emphasize a belabored metaphor.  

And yet, clearly "Good Omens" was a labor of love and no expense was spared.  They must have spent a good chunk of the budget just licensing all the Queen songs on the soundtrack.  The production is absolutely gorgeous, creating this goofy, heightened reality where supernatural forces are constantly messing around with the universe.  I love the outlandish costuming of the demons and the Four Horsemen. I love the cheerfully literal way that metaphysical concepts are realized, like auras and miracles.  CGI special effects are used heavily, but some of the best visuals are all practical. There are fun little details everywhere in the set design. Nutty concepts like Satanic nuns and a rediscovered Atlantis are delivered with aplomb.

And in the end, I like that the show is very imperfect, and shaggy, and weird, and takes its time to enjoy itself.  By the time the last episode rolled around, I'd had a so-so time following the story and seeing all the reveals play out, and a much better time just enjoying the worldbuilding and the performances.  

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"Stranger Things" Year Three

Minor spoilers ahead.

It's the summer of 1985 in Hawkins, Indiana, and everyone is back for a new adventure.  All the kids have grown up a little, but not too much. There are some new faces, who mesh with our regulars nicely.  There are more creepy monsters to fight and conspiracies to uncover, but with some novel twists. There are also more nostalgic '80s references than ever, with a story that takes its cues from "Dawn of the Dead," "The Terminator," "Red Dawn," and "The Blob."  It's all very pandering, but also so much fun. I binged the whole thing in two days.

As usual, the show is split into multiple POVs following different groups of characters. You have the kids mostly grouped together, with El and Mike going through teenage love spats, and Lucas and Max giving them terrible advice.  They spend most of the season trying to find a missing lifeguard, Heather (Francesca Reale), who they suspect was attacked by Max's brother Billy. Nancy and Jonathan are now interns at the local paper, investigating strange behavior in the rodent population.  Joyce and Hopper circle the possibility of dating while looking into a conspiracy involving the mayor, Larry Kline (Cary Elwes), and a suspicious Russian (Andrey Ivchenko). Finally, there's the Scoops Troop. Steve, who has gotten a job scooping ice cream, and his sarcastic co-worker Robin (Maya Hawke), are recruited by Dustin to help decode a secret message.  This eventually leads to bribing Lucas's sister Erica (Priah Ferguson) to help them foil a secret Russian plot.  

Season three of "Stranger Things" makes it clear that a lot of season two was best viewed as setting up this year's story, and there have been some significant course corrections.  Characters like Billy and Max are fleshed out and made much more sympathetic. Max works way better as El's gal-pal than her rival, and her relationship with Lucas is adorkable. Billy becomes a different kind of villain, and his background is explored in a novel way.  We also see the return of conspiracy nut Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman), though he's largely stuck with Hopper and Joyce. I also support the further nerfing of Steve Harrington, now fully in the role of reformed asshole who still has a lot to make up for. It's such a joy to watch him try to play badass while spending the entire season in the ridiculous Scoops Ahoy sailor suit uniform.   

Unfortunately, not all of the changes work.  The weakest storyline is Hopper and Joyce's. Both adults behave more immaturely than their children, and are frequently over the top and shouting their dialogue at each other.  For all that Winona Ryder has improved since the first season, she still strikes me as one of the weaker members of the cast, especially when she's playing it broad. I wonder if Hopper was tweaked to try and match the level of her melodramatics, because he's an awful lot more hotheaded and reckless this year.  Though David Harbor is clearly trying, this is not a good change for the character. Another sore spot I had was with Erica, who has simply aged too much to get away with the amount of sass she's slinging.    

The rest, however, are still going strong.  The boys and El are all realistically growing up and finding their dynamics changing.  Though some of the kids get more to do than others, nobody's forgotten or mysteriously sidelined like Mike was last time.  Nancy and Jonathan remain very solid and get the most complete, self-contained storyline this year. Steve and Dustin are perfect losers together, and Robin is a stellar addition.  The monsters are still terrifying and disgusting. When the show wants to do horror, it's properly horrifying. However, there's more action and humor this year, which it's also pretty good at.  "Stranger Things" really takes advantage of the old Cold War trope of nefarious Russian baddies, who replace the scary government goons.    

One big difference is a notable upgrade in the show's production values, much of it put toward resurrecting '80s culture.  A lot of the action takes place in a painstaking recreated '80s era mall, Starcourt, where Steve and Robin work. '80s fashions are on full display, with El finally adding some color into her wardrobe.  The soundtrack is full of period appropriate earworms, including the greatest use of "The Neverending Story" theme ever. There's even a sequence where characters are hiding out in a movie theater playing "Back to the Future."  The monster effects are especially impressive, and the action scenes are easily feature quality. I love the final showdown at the mall where all the kids get in on the action.  

I liked this season a little more than last year's, and about on par with the first season of "Stranger Things."  There are still some tonal problems to work out, and I'd be happier if the adults were sidelined, but the show has remained wonderfully entertaining and watchable.  They do so much right, and get away with so much that shouldn't work. Even the copious amounts of product placement felt oddly quaint. Here's to hoping next season arrives sooner rather than later.

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