The Possibilities of "Pachinko"

Minor spoilers ahead.

Based on the novel by Min Jin Lee, "Pachinko" traces the lives of a Korean family, beginning with their matriarch, Sunja (Kim Min-ha), who spends her girlhood in Japanese occupied Busan in the 1920s, and eventually emigrates to Japan, where she meets with discrimination and hardship.  We also spend time in 1989, where Sunja's grandson Solomon Baek (Jin Ha) works in America as a banking executive, and travels back to Japan to help close a business deal and further his career.  Jimmi Simpson is the only white actor in the cast, playing Solomon's boss in the Tokyo office.

In 1989 we also meet Solomon's father Mozasu (Soji Arai), who runs a successful pachinko parlor, and his girlfriend Etsuko (Kaho Minami).  Sunja is played by You Yuh-jung as an elderly woman.  We only learn about the family's history gradually, often watching it unfold through Sunja's experiences in the 1930s.  For instance, Sunja has a complicated past involving relationships with both the rich merchant Hansu (Lee Min-ho) and Isak (Steve Sanghyun Noh), a sickly Christian minister, and it's not clear how things played out with the three of them until late in the season.  Even then, many lingering questions suggest that the family carries many more secrets that we're just beginning to explore.   

Created by Soo Hugh, and directed by Kogonada and Justin Chon, "Pachinko" is one of the most unlikely things  to have come out of the American media ecosystem in a while.  This is a show with an almost fully Asian cast, where almost all the dialogue is in Korean and Japanese.  It's also a period piece, primarily concerned with the depiction of the Korean immigrant experience as it relates to the Zainichi Korean community in Japan.  That is a lot of hurdles for a western audience to clear, and I'm thrilled that Apple+ not only got this made, but made with such high production values and a real commitment to its quality.  The show has done well enough that a second season has already been greenlit.   

There's a complexity to "Pachinko" that I appreciate very much.  A major theme of the show is dealing with the struggles of past generations impacting the present.  While "Pachinko" honors Sunja and her struggle to persevere through decades of upheaval, it also spends a roughly equal amount of time with Solomon, trying to grapple with his cultural displacement and how to do right by his family while securing his own idea of success.  The older immigrant characters marvel over changing times and standards, recognizing that they now have more power, but also understanding that the old biases and prejudices will never really go away.  I like the series' sympathetic treatment of the female characters in particular, who come from an era where they were often overlooked and undervalued, but became the cornerstones of their families.  

I couldn't help comparing "Pachinko" to "Tokyo Vice," the crime series on HBO Max about an American expat exploring the Japanese underworld.  I enjoyed it, but was plagued with lingering worries about the show's authenticity because it was coming from a very western POV, despite featuring Japanese characters and the Japanese language so prominently.  I didn't have any of these qualms about "Pachinko" whatsoever.  Sunja is the main character without question, and the show's creators - many of them members of the Korean diaspora - are clearly very invested in doing her story justice.  One of the little details I love about the series is the way it plays with language, going so far as to subtitle Korean and Japanese dialogue in different colors so that Western viewers can appreciate how characters are blending and switching between the two.

I feel that I should caution that "Pachinko" is a very Eastern story, full of family melodrama, specific cultural expectations, and different frames of reference.  Sunja lives through a lot of social upheaval, and tragedy dogs her throughout her life.  Readers of the book should also be cautioned that "Pachinko" has been planned to run for four seasons, and there have been some significant narrative changes.  While the first, eight-episode season ends at a satisfying place, there's clearly much more of the story that's been saved for future installments.  And it thrills me that there will be future installments.  

If a once difficult show  like "Pachinko" can get made, and made this well, the sky really might be the limit.  

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And What Didn't Make my 2021 List

As a companion piece to my Top Ten list, every year I write a post to discuss some of the other major films that got a lot of attention, in order to give some context to my own choices. I find that writing this type of analysis is helpful when working out how I feel about my list and the year in film as a whole. It's also a lot of fun. Please note that I will not be writing about films listed among my honorable mentions, including "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar," "Red Rocket," and "The Green Knight," which I've already written individual posts about anyway.

Let's start with the foreign films, which had a very good year.  "Drive My Car" is probably the biggest title that didn't really work for me.  Ryusuke Hamaguchi's filmmaking style is very sedate, approaching delicate personal introspection with a self seriousness that I don't care for.  "Drive My Car" is very well made, but so humorless and self-obsessed that I found it difficult to sympathize with the main character.  I much prefer "The Worst Person in the World" from Joachim Trier, who freaked me out so badly with "Thelma" a few years ago.  I loved the messiness of the heroine's life and the inventive, playful nature of the filmmaking.  Unfortunately the ending fell short, so it didn't end up among my favorites.  Celine Sciamma's "Petite Maman" was similarly a beautifully shot and conceived film that felt too slight in the end to put on the same level with some of the others.  

I've already written about how I don't think that "CODA" deserves Best Picture.  I still like the film, and I hope that more people get a chance to see it, but its appeal is not because it does anything particularly new or particularly well.  Other award season favorites include "Belfast," and "Nightmare Alley," both passion projects for Kenneth Branagh and Guillermo Del Toro respectively that I found very watchable, but also very indulgent.  I'm glad that they got to make these films, but at the same time I hope that they got whatever they needed to get out of their systems so that they can move on to better projects.  "Being the Ricardos" and "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" are pretty average biopics from the usual suspects, and I didn't think either deserved the amount of praise that they got. 

Among the critical favorites, "Spencer" is a more interesting Pablo Larrain film than "Ema" or "Jackie," with a different take on the Princess Diana narrative, but I didn't like Kristen Stewart's performance.  "Annette" and "In the Heights" are both fun, and clearly involved a lot of effort, but musically and stylistically we aren't on the same page at all.   Among the smaller titles, "Passing" and "Zola" are wholly original features from talented newcomers.  They offered some great performances and personal touches, but I wanted more than what either of them were offering.

Animated films had a good year.  While I liked "Encanto" and "The Mitchells vs. the Machines," both films are too rushed and busy for me.  My favorite cartoon feature of the year is "Luca" because it's a film that lets me actually take in all of its beautiful little details and lush atmosphere, without putting me in the middle of an action scene or motormouth song number every five minutes.  "Flee" is great, and the use of animation is a wonderful way to get around the privacy concerns, but I just wish the execution could have been a little better.

The blockbusters aside from "Dune" have been only so-so.  And "Dune," as I've explained before, is only half a movie and it doesn't feel right giving it too much praise until I see the whole story. "No Way Home" gets points for the boggling logistics involved, but the animated "Spiderverse" really did this plot better ages ago.    I will give "Free Guy" a shout out for committing to being a video game movie on a level that nobody else has yet. 

Films that just missed out on my honorable mentions include "The Lost Daughter," "Shiva Baby," "The Card Counter," "I'm Your Man," and "Pig."

And that's my 2021 in film.

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My Top Ten Films of 2021

My criteria for eligibility require that a film must have been released in its own home country during 2021.  Film festivals and other special screenings generally don't count, but there's some wiggle room for COVID restrictions. Picks are unranked and listed in no particular order, previously posted reviews are linked where available, and the "Plus One" spot is reserved for the best film of the previous year that I didn't manage to see in time for the last list. And here we go.

The Power of the Dog - I can't get over how well cast this film is, how the film takes advantage of the particular strengths of actors like Benedict Cumberbatch, Kodi Smit McPhee, and Kirsten Dunst to construct the dynamics of its psychodrama.  It's also a film that demands a good amount of investment and perceptiveness from its audience, with some subtleties that require more than one viewing to really appreciate.  It's really been far too long since Jane Campion's last feature.  

tick, tick... BOOM! - I confess that I'm not as big of a fan of Lin Manuel Miranda's music as much as I am a respectful admirer.  His directorial efforts, however, interest me more.  "Tick, Tick… BOOM!" is a beautiful homage to Jonathan Larsen, using his early work as a jumping off point for a peek back into the New York of the 1980s.  I appreciate that Miranda trusts the performers and the material, never letting them be overwhelmed by the spectacle that other musical adaptations often rely on.

West Side Story - "West Side Story" is never going to be one of my favorite musicals, but I like to think it might have been if this was the version of it that I'd seen first.  Spielberg's filmmaking is so suited for musicals, it genuinely pains me that this is the first time he's made one.  "West Side Story" feels more like a proper Spielberg film, full of heightened emotion and youthful wonder, than anything he's made in ages.  I don't even mind Anself Elgort, though of course Ariana Debose blows him off the screen.    

The French Dispatch - Just when I think that Wes Anderson can't possibly get more whimsical or esoteric, he goes and structures a film after the format of an obscure arts magazine.  Three stories and other pieces of writing are dramatized and visualized with all the comic energy that Anderson can conjure, paying homage to the journalists and writers that he clearly loves dearly.  His production design has never been more sumptuous, his characters more joyously outre, or his sentiments more apparent.       

The White Tiger - Rahmin Bahrani's most ambitious film, due to its size and scope.  I worry a little about a film so critical of the Indian social order coming from someone who isn't actually Indian, but then Bahrani has been documenting the plight of the poor and disadvantaged in his films for years.  And this greatly informs the familiar crime story of "The White Tiger," which nicely delivers on the thrills and suspense, but also offers cutting commentary on the brutality of the social and economic divides.        

Luca - What I love about this PIXAR film is that it doesn't feel like a PIXAR film.  Instead, it has the more incidental, mellow vibe of a Ghibli or Aardman adventure, and some of the lovely visuals to match.  Some claim that this is aimed at a younger crowd, due to its lack of villains and world-ending stakes, but I think it's just content to be a humbler, cozier kind of summer vacation picture.  It's about three kids becoming friends, getting into trouble, and growing up a little - and that's all it needs to be.   

Titane - I don't quite grasp how all the pieces fit yet, or what all the metaphors mean, but "Titane" is such a stunning film regardless.  I admire its unpredictability, its total lack of inhibition, its knockout performances from stars Agathe Rousselle and Vincent Lindon, and its oddly tender ending.  Julia Ducourneau depicts body horror, and specifically female body horror in a way I've never seen onscreen before, and manages to touch on so many other themes of identity, sexuality, and trauma.

Licorice Pizza - A loving ode to the '70s, the San Fernando Valley, and bildungsromans of filmmakers past.  Paul Thomas Anderson helped me get over my preconceived notions about the material, mostly by giving Alana Haim a helluva debut.  This feels like the cinema of another time because it's so unconcerned with most of modern Hollywood's preoccupations.  And thanks to its appealing characters, easygoing tone, and wry sense of humor, I finally understand the appeal of a hangout movie.

Inside - Bo Burnham hijacked my attention in a way that few others ever have.  Though marketed as a comedy special, it's not a stretch to classify this as a movie.  Forget that Burnham is a stand-up comedian by trade, and you'd just see a beautifully made, minimalist apocalypse musical. And it's performed and presented with so much care and skill that you wouldn't guess that it was almost entirely the work of a single anxiety-riddled Millennial - who has spent way too much time on the internet.    

Stillwater - I went back and forth on this film more than any other, worried about the controversies around the film and the uncomfortable relationship it has with real world events.  However, something about Tom McCarthy's films have always resonated with me, and I admire him so much for making something so bleak and guilt-ridden and unforgiving.  It's so much more complex than it appears on the surface, directly challenging the movie myth of the righteous American action hero.  

Honorable Mentions

C'mon C'mon 

A Hero

Mass

Nitram

The Paper Tigers

Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar  

Red Rocket

In the Same Breath

The Green Knight

Little Fish

Plus One

Identifying Features

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"Severance" Year One

I love science-fiction, and while I enjoy the spaceship and superhero shows, I always prefer the more cerebral, "Twilight Zone" concepts.  "Severance," created by Dan Erickson, has a lot in common with the recent "Counterpart," as it involves multiple versions of its characters, and centers around a mysterious bureaucratic organization.  Unlike "Counterpart," which was patterned after an espionage thriller, "Severance" is more of a black comedy and satire of corporate culture.  It also has a much stronger set of characters.

Severance is a procedure that allows a person's conscious existence to be split into parts.  After being hired by the sinister Lumon corporation, and going through a surgical procedure, an employee's consciousness at work and their consciousness outside of work are separated.  "Innies" have no idea what their lives are like outside of the office, and from their perspective they never get to leave.  "Outies" have no idea what goes on in Lumon, only experiencing the parts of the day outside the office.  Our main characters are the four employees of the Macrodata Refinement department, newly promoted Mark (Adam Scott), new hire Helly (Britt Lower), the most senior employee Irv (John Turturro), and talkative, laid-back Dylan (Zach Cherry).  They're closely monitored by their supervisor, Milchick (Tramell Tillman), and non-severed boss, Cobel (Patricia Arquette).

The Lumon offices are a Kafkaesque nightmare world of maze-like hallways, outdated office equipment, and windowless, overbright rooms.  The work is all done on computer terminals, heavily coded, so that it's impossible to understand what is actually being "refined."  Employees are encouraged to work for inane incentives like finger traps and dance parties, with disturbing disciplinary options if they cause trouble.  Lumon's work culture is revealed to be more and more cult-like as the season progresses, under the control of the mysterious Eagan family.  The Innies are all curious as to what the outside world is like, but have a warped sense of reality due to their circumstances.  Each episode reveals a little more about their weird little bubble, including encounters with other departments (who they are distrustful of), a museum-like Perpetuity Wing dedicated to the Eagans, and visits to Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman), the wellness counselor who recites comforting facts about their Outie lives.

We also follow Mark outside of the office.  He's a recent widower, trying to move on with the help of his sister Devon (Jen Tulloch) and her husband Ricken (Michael Chernus), a wannabe self-help guru.  Scenes outside of Lumon are far more grounded in the real world, gloomy and gray because most of them take place in a wintry suburb, usually at night.  They're not as fun as the Lumon offices, where the main action is, but this is where some of the show's most important puzzle pieces are revealed, and a complementary slow-burn suspense story is quietly set up over the course of the season.  Outie Mark grows increasingly uncomfortable with his involvement with Lumon, especially when a man named Petey (Yul Vasquez) shows up, claiming to be a former Lumon co-worker.  

  

You could have played everything in "Severance" totally straight, as many of these mystery box shows do, but I think it's so compelling because of that streak of absurdity and dark humor.  Many of the cast members, including Adam Scott and Zach Cherry, have been primarily comedic actors, and their ability to exist in that space between funny and horrific is key to the show's best moments.  The mood can change on a dime, making the show wonderfully unpredictable.  Another major contributor here is Ben Stiller, who directed six of the nine episodes, and knows how to build tension beautifully.  There's a very "Twin Peaks" vibe to Lumon, where so many of the little workday rituals and processes are subtly off.  You can tell the thin veneer of corporate niceness is hiding something very wrong with this picture.

More importantly, I think it's the show's ability to build up characters we care about, giving the mystery some effective stakes.  The actors are terrific, with special kudos to Tramell Tillman, who I've never seen in anything before this, and makes Milchick instantly iconic with very little screen time.  The Macrodata Refinement team starts out as a typical set of office sitcom types, and by the end of the season, the suspense has been ramped up to dizzying heights, and it's impossible not to root for them to overthrow their oppressors.  The last episode in particular is one of the tensest episodes of television I've ever seen, and I would have been beside myself if we hadn't already been promised a second season.   

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"The Afterparty," Year One

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller creating another television show isn't something that happens every day, so I figured I'd take a look at this one.  It's a comedic murder mystery that runs eight episodes, stars a nice collection of funny actors - including Tiffany Haddish, Dave Franco, and Ben Schwarz - and has one of the more ambitious gimmicks I've seen in a while.  Every episode, except the final one, is produced like it's from a different genre, to reflect the different POVs of the different suspects as they're being interviewed.  One remembers everything as a rom-com, another as a thriller, another as a musical, and so on.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.   

The murder takes place at the afterparty of the characters' high school reunion.  A pop star named Xavier (Dave Franco) is the victim, and possible suspects include the lovelorn Aniq (Sam Richardson), his unrequited crush Zoe (Zoe Chao), her touchy ex-husband Brett (Barinholtz), Xavier's old bandmate Yasper (Schwartz), the attention-seeking Walt (Jamie Demetriou), and Chelsea (Ilana Glazer), whose reputation was ruined by Xavier in high school.  Detective Danner (Haddish) puzzles through a mansion full of clues and everyone's different recollections of what went on that fateful night, and invites the audience to figure out the mystery too.  The show's creators designed "The Afterparty" to be a solvable mystery, with secret puzzles and coded messages everywhere.  Poke around one of the show's Reddit groups if you want all the answers.  I figured out who the murderer was about halfway through on my own, based on the screenwriting tropes involved, which honestly feels like cheating.

Because, "The Afterparty" is a show that wants you to notice that two characters swap drink glasses, and wonder who's locked in the bathroom during a crucial moment, not to think about which character has enough actual connections to Xavier to be a satisfying answer to the mystery.  It wants you to pay attention to the little side puzzles and red herrings that pop up over the course of the investigation, and maybe get invested in the cutesy romance that is set up between Aniq and Zoe, not to wonder exactly how much alcohol everyone has been downing all night.  I think it's important to keep in mind that "The Afterparty" remains a light comedy throughout, even when it's modeling itself after a scary thriller in one episode, or an action adventure in another.  There's a heightened, sitcom quality to all the characters' behaviors that emphasizes that the show is a stylized whodunnit exercise, not meant to resemble reality at all.  The suspects are all super broad and eccentric, easily categorized as types.  The nerd, the jock, and the weirdo from high school grew up to be… the nerd, the jock, and the weirdo.    

  

Most of my complaints are really with the execution.  The series is around two episodes too long (did we really need more than one flashback episode?) and the genre switching gimmick quickly runs out of steam.  The first three installments are pretty good at sticking to their assigned tropes, while the subsequent ones are more half-hearted.  Zoe's isn't even really a genre, but a style - she gets an animated story where different aspects of her personality battle for dominance during the reunion.  This is one of the episodes that doesn't really work, because the tone of it is so out of sync with all of the others.  All the stories are very cartoonish, but are generally better about keeping one foot in a shared reality.

At least the performances are fun.  I like Tiffany Haddish as the no-nonsense detective in this, along with Sam Richardson and Jamie Demetriou.  There's really not enough time, and this isn't the kind of show where anybody gets to do anything too interesting, but I appreciate that everyone is clearly trying.  However, it's not a coincidence that one of the characters designs escape rooms, because that's exactly how the creators want you to think of this show.  You're not here for a story.  You're here for a puzzle, and specifically the type of puzzle that requires watching the show in a certain way to collect clues and follow a carefully laid out path.

I had trouble doing that, so ultimately I don't think this is a show for me.  However, I'm sure it's a great watch for somebody else.

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"Roar" Goes For It

I was originally going to do a "Rank 'Em" post for "Roar," the Apple TV+ anthology, as I have with other recent anthologies like "Black Mirror" and "Love Death and Robots."  This is an eight episode series based on Cecelia Ahern's short story collection of the same name, with showrunners Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, who created "GLOW."  Some of the episodes are  based directly on Ahern's stories, and others just follow the same format of magical realist fables about women's experiences.  However, this is one of those cases where I think the show as a whole is more interesting than its individual episodes.  

"Roar" has its ups and downs, as all anthologies do, but I stuck with this one because it was very easy viewing.  Each episode is roughly thirty minutes long, and features a little genre gimmick - sometimes a very literal depiction of a common metaphor.  "The Woman Who Found Bite Marks on Her Skin" is being visibly eaten alive by her guilt.  "The Woman Who Was Kept on a Shelf" follows the career of a trophy wife who is obliged to spend her whole marriage on an actual shelf.  Some are more fanciful, and some are more grounded.  Two stories break from form entirely - a murder mystery where a ghostly Allison Brie plays "The Woman Who Solved Her Own Murder," and a girl power western with Fivel Stewart, "The Girl Who Loved Horses."  The show often feels like a female-centric "Twilight Zone," with a lighter mood and more absurdist bent.  

What sets the better episodes apart is the execution.  The talent involved here is top tier, featuring all women creatives.  Episodes feature Nicole Kidman, Judy Davis, Issa Rae, Merritt Weaver, Meera Syal, and Betty Gilpin.  Rahida Jones and Channing Godfrey Peoples are among the directors.  However, it feels like a crapshoot as to which combination of talent yields good results.  The Issa Rae episode is about trying to navigate a creative career as a black woman, which results in our heroine literally becoming invisible - a thuddingly obvious analogy that isn't handled well.  The Nicole Kidman episode has the promising idea of her character eating photographs to relive her memories, but this stays disconnected from the actual story, which is about her changing relationship with her ailing mother.  Both episodes look great, but are oddly written with weak endings, little humor, and don't seem quite committed to being genre stories.     

The best episode is probably "The Woman Who Was Fed By a Duck," which stars Merritt Weaver as a woman who gets romantically involved with a talking duck, voiced by Justin Kirk.  I also liked "The Woman Who Found Bite Marks on Her Skin" with Cynthia Erivo, and "The Woman Who Returned Her Husband," where Meera Syal's character decides to split from her husband after decades of marriage.  Fortunately, she still has her receipt for him.  These episodes all stand out because they got me to empathize with the main characters and their underlying struggles.  They're also successful at telling satisfying genre stories and connecting them to the characters' ongoing dilemmas.  Erivo dealing with mysterious bite marks might be a very simple and predictable idea, but as part of a depiction of post-partum depression and the usual body horror of motherhood, it works.       

While I love the recent embrace of fantasy and science fiction shows over the past few years, it has not escaped my notice that it's still fairly rare to find programs that explicitly explore women's stories through these lenses.  "Roar" delivers the kind of genre programming that I want to see more of in the current media landscape - more diverse, more thoughtful, and more human scale.  The social commentary is obvious, but rarely feels the need to draw attention to itself.  The target audience is clearly a little older than we normally see, but the level of talent that this project attracted makes it clear that the creative impulse to make this kind of content is alive and well.

Cecilia Ahern's "Roar" collection has plenty of other stories to adapt, and I hope we'll get a chance to see more of them somewhere down the line.

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Rank 'Em - The Roman Numeral "Star Trek" Movies

I finally watched all the "Star Trek" movies over the last few months, and I'd like to share some thoughts.  I figured the best way to do that was with a "Rank 'Em" list.  Since there are  currently thirteen "Star Trek" films, split up into very distinct eras, this post will only cover the early ones featuring the cast of the original "Star Trek" television series.  Keep in mind that I've never actually watched the original "Star Trek" television series.

Spoilers ahead!

"The Wrath of Khan" - Ricardo Montalban is having a ball playing the evil Khan Noonien Singh, and he is so much fun to watch here.  I grew up with the more cerebral "Next Generation," so it took me a while to appreciate that the original series was a much more action-adventure affair.  I think it really clicked with "Wrath of Khan," which is really a naval thriller set in space.  Sure, the Genesis terraforming technology is cool, and allows for some early CGI effects, but the real fun is in the Kirk v. Khan theatrics, and of course the legendary goodbye for Mr. Spock traumatized an entire generation of sci-fi fans.  

"The Motion Picture" - To call the movie indulgent is being nice, but I honestly love the amount of sci-fi spectacle that this movie commits to.  The "2001: A Space Odyssey" style space imagery is trippy and unique.  Everyone's made fun of the beauty shots of the Enterprise, including "Lower Decks," but the ship never looked so good.  And of course, there's the iconic Jerry Goldsmith score.  This "Star Trek" voyage was before so many of the franchise's familiar rules were cemented, so scenes like the transporter accident are legitimately shocking.  However, I also enjoy that the first "Star Trek" movie manages to evoke a legitimate sense of wonder in a way that none of the others have.    

"The Voyage Home" - The one with the time travel trip to modern day San Francisco.  This is the "Star Trek" movie best remembered for making a killing at the box office, because it's the most lighthearted and fun.  You've got the crew on a wonderfully weird fetch quest to bring humpback whales to the future, doing comedy bits about twentieth century life, and generally getting themselves into amusing hijinks.  I'll also admit that a lot of my fondness for the film is due to the nostalgia of seeing locations like the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Golden Gate Park the way they were in the '80s.  While I enjoy the more serious "Star Trek" outings, its nice to have the more casual, funny ones too.    

"The Final Frontier" - The one William Shatner directed.  While I totally understand why this movie has its detractors, as the last act is a lot of inscrutable nonsense, I honestly enjoyed watching this one all the way through.  A big part of it has to do with the fact that it's so firmly fixed on the male bonding going on with Captain Kirk, Doctor McCoy, and Mr. Spock.  The three of them get to banter, gripe at each other, and behave like dear friends in a way that's terribly endearing.  I also like Laurence Luckinbill very much as Sarek, and the story up to the silly climax is very good.  However, this is also the "Star Trek" installment with Uhura's, uh, diversion - one of the oddest moments of the franchise.

"The Undiscovered Country" - Director Nicholas Meyer from "The Wrath of Khan" returns, and the results are honestly a little lackluster.  This is the most recent of these films that I've seen, and I was really looking forward to it, but nothing really impressed or stuck with me.  I love the whole setup of the Federation and the Klingon empire finally burying the hatchet, but the whole business with Kirk and McCoy being framed for an assassination and having to escape a mining colony took forever, and the big finale really was too reminiscent of far too many other "Star Trek" outings.  Still, I appreciated that we got a chance to have a proper goodbye to the original crew. 

"The Search for Spock" - It's not a badly made film, and it's got some nice moments, but at the same time it fundamentally takes away from "Wrath of Khan" by walking back Spock's death.  The decision was so controversial, the studio let Leonard Nimoy direct the film - and the subsequent one - just to get him onboard.  Ultimately I think it was worth it to get Spock back, but I still don't like the way the franchise went about it.  And all the hostilities culminating with a William Shatner and Christopher Lloyd fistfight is just hilarious.

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My Favorite Dorothy Arzner Film

I was delighted when I finally found another female director that fit my ridiculous, self-imposed criteria for "Great Directors" entries.  Dorothy Arzner has directed more than ten films, those films aren't impossible to find, and she is definitely a major figure in the film landscape - along with being the first female member of the DGA, she's credited with helping along the careers of some major stars, and apparently invented the boom mike.  Unfortunately, I didn't respond well to her most famous film, the Maureen O'Hara and Lucille Ball showbiz comedy, "Dance, Girl, Dance."  Fortunately, there were plenty of other candidates worth writing about.

I settled on the melodrama "Craig's Wife," which is fairly atypical for an Arzner film.  Most of her pictures feature female leads, and portray them as admirable and sympathetic.  Harriet Craig, played by Rosalind Russell, is a cold, controlling perfectionist who secretly hates men.  The film watches her drive away everyone in her life through her selfishness - her servants, her niece, and finally her husband.  The original play that the film was based on is more satirical, and has been criticized for treating Harriet Craig as a one-dimensional tyrant.  The film adaptation, however, offers a more interesting, psychologically complex portrait of Harriet Craig's neuroses.   

It's clear that Harriet is a monster, bullying her employees, trying to sabotage her niece's romance, and avoiding a dying sister.  However, she's a product of her environment and upbringing.  Her callousness and obsessions with social status, financial security, and control comes from a traumatic childhood and bad experiences with men.  She considers romantic love a liability because all emotional attachment is weakness that she can't tolerate.  Her marriage - which she views as a business transaction - is based on maintaining the facade of a perfect, charming housewife, and her downfall comes when this facade is threatened by those closest to her.   She's fine with acquaintances and neighbors admiring her life, but she has no interest in actually interacting with them.  Her loving husband, once he becomes a source of potential scandal, is a liability.  The only thing she truly values is her house and its furnishings, which she insists on keeping spotlessly clean.

"Craig's Wife," was the first film where Rosalind Russell got top billing.  She's fantastic at making Harriet sympathetic, in spite of her impossible expectations and  ice queen demeanor.  She's so intelligent and poised, with a clear capacity for improvement, that I was rooting for her to learn the error of her ways and be redeemed in the end.  The other adaptations of the play are less kind to Harriet, but here Arzner treats her as a tragic figure.  She only learns to appreciate human company after she's ruined her relationships with every other character, leaving her alone with her empty, pristine house.  Even then, Arzner suggests that Harriet still has a chance at happiness, setting up an encounter with a neighbor that could lead to something that's been completely missing in the film - the presence of female companionship.  

The one complaint I have about the film, and why I was originally hesitant to write about it, is that it is so short - only 75 minutes in total.  When "Craig's Wife" was remade with Joan Crawford in 1950, it was given an extra twenty minutes and Harriet's background was fleshed out considerably.  Arzner's version is faithful to the  stage play, though with a few additional scenes and locations to help fill out Harriet's world.  In addition, there are bits and pieces of subplots involving the supporting characters that I'd love to see expanded.  The murder mystery elements, for example, never really land well, and were eliminated from the later adaptation entirely.    
 

As for Dorothy Arzner, she's one of those forgotten film pioneers who led a uniquely fascinating life.  She worked with many other famous leading ladies early in their careers, including Kathrine Hepburn and Joan Crawford,  uniquely positioned as the only female studio director during the Pre-Code era when silent films transitioned to sound.  She's known for portraying women in more unconventional relationships, and particularly with foregrounding female friendships.  It's rumored that she retired in the 1940s after the Hays Code came in, and Arzner's penchant for challenging the moral strictures of the day fell out of favor - cutting short a remarkable career.      

What I've Seen - Dorothy Arzner

Get Your Man (1927)

The Wild Party (1929)

Sarah and Son (1930)

Anybody's Woman (1930)

Honor Among Lovers (1931)

Merrily We Go to Hell (1932)

Christopher Strong (1933)

Craig's Wife (1936)

The Bride Wore Red (1937)

Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)

First Comes Courage (1943)

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"Ennio," For My Mother

Hi, Mom. How are you?

I saw a movie this week that I thought you'd like.  I know you enjoy films about classical composers, and they just released a documentary on the work of Ennio Morricone, "Ennio: The Maestro," also called "The Glance of Music" in some places.  I know you're not much of a fan of modern composers - you've made your thoughts on Igor Stravinsky very clear - but I know that you've liked some of Morricone's music in the past.  More importantly, I think you'll appreciate that this documentary actually talks about the music and not just about the man.  It contains extensive interviews with Morricone himself, where he talks about his work, his influences, and his experiences composing.

I should warn you that "Ennio" is about two and a half hours long.  It's super comprehensive about Morricone's life and career, starting with his time as a child trumpet player, his musical education, and his earliest commercial work as an arranger.  The bulk of the attention is kept on Morricone's film music, and only briefly touches on his other work.  And that makes sense, since the film was put together by Giuseppi Tornatore, the director of "Cinema Paradiso" and "The Legend of 1900."  It doesn't individually discuss all of his film scores - which would be impossible since he's done hundreds - but it covers all the ones you probably know - "The Dollars Trilogy," "The Mission," "Cinema Paradiso," and "The Untouchables."  It's probably too long to watch in one sitting, but you can break it up into parts pretty easily.  Also, most of it is in Italian with subtitles.  That might make some of the more technical discussions harder to follow, but I thought Morricone was pretty good at getting his points across, even though I barely remember anything from music theory classes.

You know I'm a film nut, so I got a lot out of revisiting Italian cinema from Morricone's point of view.  He worked with everybody, including Gillo Pontecorvo, Bernardo Bertolucci, Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Liliana Cavani, Sergio Leone, and Pier Paolo Pasolini before Hollywood came calling.  So many films have Morricone scores that I didn't realize were Morricone.  The funniest realization was that he'd scored a Pasolini comedy, "Hawks and Sparrows," where the credits are set to music and sung by Domenico Modugno.  As always, I now have more movies I want to track down, including Cavani's "I Canibali," and "Sacco & Vanzetti."

You can tell how beloved Morricone is from the people who agreed to be interviewed for the film.  Clint Eastwood is here, of course.  Fellow composers like Hans Zimmer, Quincy Jones, and John Williams are here.  Bruce Springsteen shows up to gush about "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly."  Then there's Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, Barry Levinson, and more directors than I can list.  The film also has some of the last interviews with departed filmmakers like Bernardo Bertolucci, Vittorio Taviani, and Lina Wermuller.  Bertolucci directed "The Last Emperor," which you told me you liked, though Morricone didn't do the music for that one.    

I think the best part of the film is the early stuff with Morricone as a struggling musician.  I'm surprised that there wasn't more attention on Morricone's personal life.  There's some material on his parents, but after he gets married, we don't get anything else about his family or relationships.  His wife and four children didn't participate in the film.  Most of his friends and contemporaries are gone.  Morricone himself, however, contributes plenty.  It's fascinating to hear him talk about his work and his collaborators, and the particular pieces that he remembers creating.  I'm sure that you're not going to like all of the music featured in the film, especially the more experimental work.    

However, I'm curious to know what you think about the more traditional scores.  I'll send you a link to where I got the film.  Let me know if you run into any technical issues.  Would Dad like this?  Well, they spend a lot of time on the "Dollars" movies individually, so Dad might like some of the earlier parts, but he'll probably get bored after that.  

I'll talk to you on Sunday.  Take care of yourself.  Okay.  Love you.  Byeeee.

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About That "The Batman" Movie

Minor spoilers ahead.

"The Batman," directed by Matt Reeves, is a lot.  It's three hours long, introduces a new version of Batman (Robert Pattinson) and Gotham City, and juggles a lot of secondary characters and villains.  I like that it treads some similar ground to "Batman Beyond," with an inexperienced Batman still in the early days of his career, but also has very specific ideas about the character that undermine parts of the superhero's familiar mythology.  Its influences are clear - David Fincher films like "Se7en" and "Zodiac," "The Long Halloween" Batman series, and '90s grunge music.  Pattinson's Batman feels more like The Crow at first, a tortured soul who spends a lot of time brooding over his personal traumas.  However, this is also a Batman who is still in flux, still building his persona and making a lot of youthful mistakes.

Gotham City is the most impressive part of "The Batman."  It looks absolutely terrible, a grim, decaying, urban nightmare, where crime has steadily been on the rise for years.  Reeves manages to make it feel both grounded in reality, using the imagery of serial killer media, and also very stylized.  Bruce Wayne lives in an ornate Gothic mansion.  Criminals in elaborate makeup run rampant.  The Riddler (Paul Dano), is a serial killer who appears in a bulky military cold weather mask, and uses some killing contraptions that wouldn't be out of place in the "Saw" franchise.  The whole aesthetic leans toward horror and psychological thriller territory, with very rough-hewn imagery.  There's a bat signal, but the image hardly looks anything like the Batman symbol.  At the same time, this is a film where Batman's reputation is so potent that criminals are spooked by shadows and the mere possibility of his appearance.

Viewer reactions will certainly vary, but I liked having such a long "Batman" movie because it gives Reeves the opportunity to tell a sprawling, complicated detective story from beginning to end, and give his Batman a full and satisfying character arc where he gets to change as a person and as a superhero.  I think this is a very good sign for any future sequels, because Reeves can tell a wide variety of Batman stories depending on how the Pattinson Batman develops along the way.  In this film, I think Pattinson is a decent Batman, but his Bruce Wayne is an almost comically angst-ridden shut-in.  It works for the purposes of "The Batman," but only just barely.  The characters around him are more successful - I really like Jeffrey Wright as Jim Gordon, the only cop in a corrupt department who Batman trusts.  They partner up to solve the Riddler case, with Gordon getting him access to crime scenes.  Zoe Kravitz plays a version of Catwoman who is mostly on the side of angels, waging a personal war against mobster Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) and his cronies, including the up-and-coming Penguin (Colin Farrell).  Wayne family caretaker Alfred (Andy Serkis) makes a few appearances, but they're pretty much limited to passing along information about Bruce's parents. 

All the familiar elements of a Batman story are here.  Action fans should be reassured that there are cool fight scenes, motorcycle chases and car chases with a new Batmobile, plenty of gadgets, and a big disaster sequence for the finale.  However, they take place in a Gotham where it's frequently raining, the cinematography is chronically dark and murky, and horrible, disturbing murders seem to happen every ten minutes.  There are plenty of one-liners, but the delivery is bone dry.  This is one of the least child-friendly pieces of "Batman" media that's been made yet, and I suspect that's a major reason why the movie hasn't done as well at the box office as some of the others.  Adult Batman fans are going to love this, but it's going to be challenging for more casual viewers and newcomers.  Then again, "Joker" made a billion dollars, so I understand why Warners was willing to take a chance with this approach.

Part of me is curious as to what the Ben Affleck version of this movie would have looked like, but I'm very happy with "The Batman."  There are things that didn't work, and aspects of this version of the character I wish had been explored more, but overall this is a very mature, very thorough and intelligent reworking of Batman that is perfectly suited for 2022.     

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Hollywoodle.ml, Framed.wtf, and Boxofficega.me

With the rise of Wordle, there has been a whole spate of new daily puzzle apps.  I've started casually playing a couple of the ones related to movies, and figured I'd pass along my recommendations. 

Hollywoodle.ml is for lovers of the old Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game.  Every new game asks you to connect a pair of actors, like Alec Baldwin and Andy Samberg, based on the movies they appeared in.  So, Alec Baldwin was in "Boss Baby" with Steve Buscemi," who was in "Hotel Transylvania" with Andy Samberg.  Or, Alec Baldwin was in "Men in Black 3" with Will Arnett, who was in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping" with Andy Samberg.  Being someone who watches too many movies, I can easily spend hours working out the connecting paths.  A recent development has been a new feature that shows the connecting paths with the fewest moves, and the most popular ones that people have played. The design is a little clunky, and it still feels like a beta version, but the idea is sound. I think there's plenty of opportunity for improvement.   

Now, Framed.wtf is even more minimalist, but it's already probably the best version of itself that it could be.  The gimmick is simple - you guess what a movie is based on a series of screenshots, starting with the most obscure.  So, for "Blade Runner 2049" the first screenshot is a character's shadow, the second is of an empty set, and the sixth is one of the more recognizable shots of Ana de Armas as the hologram Joi.  So far, the movies have all been very popular ones, and there hasn't been one yet where I haven't been able to figure out the answer within the first three screenshots.  However, it's much more approachable for the casual movie viewer whose only exposure to some of these films might be through advertisements or other cultural osmosis.  I've seen similar screenshot guessing games on many movie forums over the years, and I'm not surprised to finally see it in app form.    

Boxofficega.me needs the most explanation out of all of these games, and is probably the most niche.  The concept comes from the "Blank Check" movie podcast, where every episode ends with one of the hosts, Griffin Newman, guessing the five highest grossing films at the U.S. box office for the weekend when a featured movie premiered.  Thanksgiving weekend of 2008, for instance, saw "Four Christmases," "Bolt," "Twilight," "Quantum of Solace," and "Australia" top the box office, in that order.  Whenever Newman's impressive recall of box office statistics falters, a series of hints are deployed to steer him to the right answer, such as what genre the movie was, who starred in it, or who directed it.  The app version invites the player to do the same, starting with a list of financial stats, and distributors for the five movies you need to guess.  You start out with 1200 points, which are deducted when you make wrong guesses or have to use hints.  Most of my games end up with scores in the 600-800 range.    

  

Clearly, this game is aimed at the narrow group of movie nerds who keep up with the business side of the industry, and look at the weekend box office results every Monday morning.  This happens to include yours truly.  I'm nowhere near an expert, but I can usually figure out at least one movie without using any of the hints.  That said, the hint system is great.  You can pick and choose how much information you want to reveal.  I can usually figure out the answers based on some combination of tagline and first billed actor, but there are a lot of other stats to fall back on, including second and third billed actors, director, budget, and final gross.     

 

As with Wordle, a lot of the appeal of these games is being able to generate winning streaks, to look at your playing stats, and mark improvements.  Boxofficega.me is the only one with a paid version so far, asking for donations of any amount to access an archive of past games.

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Miss Media Junkie vs. Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Probably the most significant disappointment I've had with any film this year has been with "Drive My Car," the highly lauded Japanese film from director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, who had two films released in 2021.  The other is his anthology, "The Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy," which I also watched.  I've read multiple reviews and articles by Hamaguchi's admirers, detailing why they've connected to his work, but I remain unconvinced.  And I figured it was time to write about my stubborn resistance to this newly beloved auteur.

I did like one of the three stories in "The Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy," the finale segment titled "Once Again," where a case of mistaken identity causes two women to spend a pleasant afternoon together and form an unexpected connection.  It's intimate and touching, and nicely exemplifies the central theme of chance being a major force in life.  The other two stories also center around women.  In "Magic (Or Something Less Assuring)," a woman realizes that her best friend has fallen in love with her ex by chance, and wrestles with the possibility of ruining the new relationship out of jealousy and doubt.  In "Door Wide Open," a woman tries to seduce a professor as part of a revenge scheme that goes amusingly sideways.  In "Magic," the protagonist is frankly rather off-putting.  Her interactions with her ex suggest they had a troubled relationship - troubled due to her own manipulative behavior - which she's ultimately able to curb.  In "Door Wide Open," the pivotal scene involves the protagonist discussing an erotic passage of the professor's new book with him.  In both stories, it's suggested that the central male character is deeply repressed, and both come across as infuriatingly passive compared to the more sexually aggressive women.  Both of these stories contain extended scenes of awkward encounters that completely left me cold.  

"Drive My Car" was much less aggravating, but it features a similar dynamic.  The main character is Yusuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima), an actor and theater director, married to Oto (Reika Kirishima), a television writer.  Revelations about Oto send Yusuke on a voyage of discovery, trying to reconcile his image of his wife with the side of herself that she never shared with him.  Through interactions with her ex-lover Koshi (Masaki Okada), and his own driver, Misaki (Toko Miura), Yusuke is able to process his feelings in a positive way.  During the course of the film, he's also mounting a new multi-language production of Anton Chekov's "Uncle Vanya," and we spend a lot of time with Yusuke in casting and rehearsals.  "Drive My Car" is very deliberately paced and its three hour length never feels too slow.  But good grief, is it tedious.  From the behavior of his female characters, I can't help thinking that the director has major hang-ups about women and sex that he's been trying to address through his filmmaking.  All the major relationships in his films are pretty awful and suffocating and rub me the wrong way.      

It doesn't help that Yusuke is a pretentious theater director doing Chekhov.  I usually love watching artists at work in films, and their process of creating art, but Yusuke's efforts are so stultifying and unengaging.  Similar to the professor in "Door Wide Open," who remains stone faced while listening to his own salacious writing being read to him, Yusuke's distance from the material he's trying to engage with is used to show his own disordered mental state.  I get the point being made, but it just kills me that Hamaguchi has the audience marinate in that discomfort for such a prolonged amount of time.  It certainly didn't do anything for my appreciation of "Uncle Vanya."  The narrative does pay off eventually in "Drive My Car," but the process of getting to the resolution didn't endear me to Yusuke at all.  And this is  a film that clearly wanted me to sympathize and root for Yusuke.    

Now, I understand why "Drive My Car" worked for many critics.  It's unhurried and thoughtful.  John Cassavetes is cited as a major influence on Hamaguchi.  Claude Chabrol and Wong Kar-wai are brought up quite a bit too.  These are all directors that I admire and appreciate, but I don't love them.  The domestic subject matter and the challenging characters that they gravitate towards just don't interest me or work for me a lot of the time.  This year in particular has been difficult, with COVID restrictions limiting many filmmakers, and pushing everyone away from certain subjects.  I honestly wonder if I would have been more receptive to Hamaguchi's work in a different year, or if I was at a different place in my life.  For now, however, his movies just aren't for me.      

   

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The Movie List Nobody Watches

My recent focus on watching films from the 30s and 40s has helped me finish up various "best of lists."  I've noticed, however, that I've inadvertently also been making a lot of headway finishing a movie list that really nobody watches, because it's full of not-very-good films: the list of top grossing films by year.  You can use the worldwide or the domestic list, but they're largely the same and both are pretty awful.  Up until the end of the '90s I guess you could make an argument that they at least represented some of the best filmmaking talents of each era, but starting in 1999 it's just been an endless stream of gigantic franchise films.  Some of the recent box office winners are downright embarrassing in retrospect.  "Shrek 2" was the highest grossing film of 2004?  The live action "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" was the highest grossing film of 2000?  What were we thinking?

Sure, there are some very good films that became the highest box office performers of various years.  Nobody can challenge the bona fides of "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "The Sound of Music," or "Rocky."  However, the highest grossing film of any particular year was often the result of forces that went beyond whether or not a film was any good.  Hype was almost always a big factor.  Consider "Cleopatra," the box office winner of 1963, which was the most expensive film ever made up until that time.  It is a gargantuan, four hour spectacle that got mixed reviews at the time of release, and has not aged well.  That era also gave us 1966's highest grosser, "Hawaii," about a pair of humorless missionaries bringing Christianity to the islands, and 1958's "South Pacific," the garish adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about forbidden love in the tropics.  

Then there are some downright weird outliers.  The highest grossing film of 1952 was "This is Cinerama," and the highest grossing film of 1955 was its sequel, "Cinerama Holiday."  Both were roadshow presentations designed to show off the widescreen Cinerama format, and consisted of first person POV shots of roller coasters and trips through foreign lands and natural scenery.  They were technical demonstrations more than narrative films, and are almost impossible to view today in their original intended format.  And I'll admit that this post was inspired in large part by my recent viewing of "Jolson Sings Again," the highest domestic grosser of 1949.  It is a sequel to the 1946 Al Jolson biopic "The Jolson Story."  It details Jolson's later years and comeback, stopping about every ten minutes for a pleasant song number.  It ends with the main characters attending a screening of "The Jolson Story," and a medley of songs reprised from that movie.  "Jolson Sings Again" often feels more like an Al Jolson tribute concert than a film proper, and offers nothing cinematically interesting whatsoever.          

  

One interesting recent development in the list of worldwide top grossers is that we're seeing a shift to non-American films thanks to the pandemic.  2020's highest worldwide grosser was the "Demon Hunter" anime movie, and it looks like 2021's winner will be China's "The Battle of Lake Changjin," the most expensive Chinese film ever made.  It's not clear if this trend will continue, as China continues to be jerks about keeping western films out of the lucrative Chinese market, but it's just another reason why nobody treats box office dominance as any measure of quality.  Some of these movies have become so obscure that I've had to go out of my way to track them down, and they haven't had the amount of cultural impact that you'd expect.  In 1951, the biblical epic "Quo Vadis" made more than twice as much as any other film, but isn't nearly as well remembered as other films from the same year, like "A Streetcar Named Desire," "An American in Paris," or Disney's "Alice in Wonderland."  And though "Quo Vadis" is not a bad movie, it's pretty clear why.     

  

As I continue on my merry way through the '30s and '40s, I'm watching the box office winners when I have the chance - a big part of this exercise is trying to get more historical context for the classics I've already seen, after all.  However, too often I've found that historical context is pretty much all that these films offer.  

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