Youtube Channels For Media Junkies

Loathe as I am to admit it, I'm spending a lot more of my time on Youtube these days.  There are several channels and creators who are reliably producing good work, and I wanted to share a couple of my favorites today.  These are specifically channels geared toward media fans, and I've purposefully left out reviewers and essayists in favor of information and interview-based programming.  Find my picks unranked below.  

Charts With Dan - I love a good box office analysis show, and since my last podcast alternative went kaput, I've started checking in with Dan Murrell whenever he pops up on my feed.  Monday mornings have always meant checking on box office numbers since I was a kid, and it's nice to have someone who just focuses on the numbers and the stats without too many digressions.  Murrell does his homework, offering historical comparison, overseas numbers, projections, and more.  He also does the typical review and ranking videos, but is good about keeping those separate, and not crossing the streams. 

Criterion Collection Closet Picks and Konbini Video Club - I love listening to people who make movies talk about other people's movies.  And the most reliable way to do that is to put them in front of a lot of DVDs and Blu-Rays that they can browse through.  The Criterion folks put some of our most beloved filmmakers in a closet with all the Criterions, and film them making picks to be shared with the rest of the world.  I've also recently stumbled upon the Konbini channel, which has a "Video Club" series showing filmmakers visiting JM Video, one of the last video stories operating in Paris.  It's a French channel, but many of the visitors like David Cronenberg and Christopher Nolan are English speakers.    

Corridor Crew - Corridor Digital is a VFX company that started out posting tutorials, breakdown, and "making of" videos of their projects.  And then around four years ago, they put out a reaction video to the original "Sonic the Hedgehog" movie trailer, and their popularity exploded.  What sets "Corridor Crew" apart from most reaction shows is that the three hosts are VFX professionals who break down and discuss the technology and techniques being used, helping to shine a light on the vast amount of work it took to achieve some of the end results.  It's fun to watch them talk through and figure out how certain effects were achieved, and lately they've been bringing on some pretty big name effects folks to show off their work.  I especially enjoy whenever they look at older movies and practical effects.

Tested - Adam Savage is still going strong post-"Mythbusters."  His channel features a lot of maker and hobbyist content, but it's always had a strong pop culture component.  Over the last year he's visited a bunch of famous effects houses, tracked down old props and costumes from popular movies, and reacted to a bunch of new products and technologies.   I've never been one for collectibles, but it's still fun to watch him goggle over the latest superhero figurines and prop replicas.  And then there was the video where he showed what had become of Tik-Tok from "Return to Oz," which gave me a nostalgia rush like nothing else in ages.  

Gold Derby - Finally, there are so many interviews out there that nobody seems to be aware exist, especially for below the line creative folks.  The Gold Derby channel is a goldmine for these, talking to writers, cinematographers, costumers, sound editors, composers, production designers, hair and makeup, and more.  Usually these are part of FYC campaigns, so the interviews are specifically about one project.  If you really want to deep dive on the production of a particular series or film, however, this is the perfect place to start.  The interviews themselves aren't very polished, and most of the recently posted ones were over Zoom, but everyone is clearly happy to be there.      

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"Ozark" Year Four

Minor spoilers ahead.

The last season of "Ozark" feels like two shorter seasons, especially since they were released in two batches and there are some significant cast changes between one and the other.  In any case, they're both a step down from the third season, going back to some of the same bad habits as the earlier parts of the show.  Marty and Wendy are back to being a united front, even as Wendy becomes more unhinged in the wake of Ben's departure.  The big fissure in the Byrde family this year is that it's Jonah's turn for rebellion, kicked off by the whole messy situation involving Ben.

The first half of the season is stronger because the villains are stronger.  Darlene is at the height of her powers, joining forces with several parties who the Byrdes have alienated or ticked off.  We're introduced to Navarro's nephew Javi (Alonso Herrera), a violent, ambitious, well-educated criminal who is the presumptive heir to the cartel.  He shows up at the Ozarks at around the same time as Mel Sattem (Adam Rothburg), a nosy private investigator who was hired to track down Helen.  The second half of the season introduces Wendy's father Nathan (Richard Thomas) and Javi's mother Camilla (Veronica Falcon), who are both not quite what they seem.

No matter what gets thrown at the Byrdes this year, however, they're like Teflon.  They always manage to make a deal at the last moment, figure out some string to pull, and maintain the status quo.  Again, the show is driven primarily by plot and not enough by character.  I appreciate that "Ozark" is built for melodrama, and the impossibly compressed timelines and people changing allegiances at the drop of a hat are par for the course, but the Byrdes being so untouchable robs the show of any tension.  The twists and turns get even more unbelievable this year, with the Byrdes brokering deals between the cartel and the FBI, Wendy getting into national politics, and lots of business involving a disgraced pharmaceutical company.  I confess I lost track of what was going on more than once.  Even worse, the season starts with a flash-forward of the whole family in a van together getting into a major accident, so we know they're going to survive and stay together until that point.  

This isn't to say that this run of episodes isn't still enjoyable.  Wendy becomes a power-hungry monster for a good stretch, and the biggest villain of the fourth season might be her.  Laura Linney is alternately terrifying and infuriating, and I'm glad I finished the series for her performance if nothing else.  Marty, by contrast, ends up fading into the background more often, mostly serving as the voice of reason.  Even when he does get the spotlight, his actions don't have nearly as much consequence.  Ruth is more compelling, striking out on her own and fighting to stay in the game, even as her personal misfortunes keep compounding.  "Ozark" from her POV turns out to be a tragedy, and often more rewarding than rooting for the Byrdes.

There's been some controversy about where "Ozark" chose to end.  I think the trouble comes from the finale not having a real sense of finality to it for some of the characters, and certain events being very rushed.  That car crash I mentioned earlier turns out to be a red herring that barely has any impact on any of the ongoing storylines.  I think the more pressing issue is that the Byrdes stopped feeling like real people for too much of the final season.  I loved season three because when Wendy and Marty were in crisis, we got to see them really grappling with their pasts and their personal issues.  There's a little of that this year, mostly involving Wendy and her father, but not nearly enough.     

And that lack of character work keeps this from being one of the television greats.  I thoroughly enjoyed "Ozark," and I love that it gave Linney and Garner the chance to tackle some magnificently complex characters, but the show is not all that it could have been.  I can't help hoping for more, though, and I'm glad that the door was left open in case the show's creators ever feel like taking another dip.  For now, I'll say my goodbyes to the show, and you can expect a Top Ten episodes list in the near future.

 

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"The Last Voyage of the Demeter" and "The Boogeyman"

Let's look at two summer horror movies that happen to both feature David Dastmalchian in a supporting role today.

"The Last Voyage of the Demeter" has a promising premise - it's based on the section of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" describing the vampire's sea voyage to London on a ship called the Demeter.  I wonder why no one has tried to make this film before - a ship is a great setting for a classic haunted house or monster scenario, because the characters are all trapped there with nowhere to go.  However, the long period this film spent in development hell points to a lot of complications behind the scenes.   

André Øvredal, best known for "Trollhunters" and "The Autopsy of Jane Doe" takes up the challenge with a mostly Scandinavian creative team and a very diverse cast.  The crew of the Demeter includes Captain Elliot (Liam Cunningham), his young grandson Toby (Woody Norman) as cabin boy, first mate Wojcheck (David Dastmalchian), and Joseph (Jon Jon Biones) the cook.  Our main protagonists are Clemens (Corey Hawkins), a black doctor who has signed on as a sailor, and Anna (Aisling Franciosi), a stowaway discovered a few days into the voyage.  The film's version of Dracula (Javier Botet) is barely humanoid, and very much in monster mode.

The result is a very predictable, but very watchable period monster movie.  The premise is played straight, to the point where the first act could have come from a completely non-supernatural maritime adventure movie.  I appreciate that the film lets the crew be memorable personalities, even if we don't have the time to get to know them all, upping the stakes and the tragedy of the situation.  The horror is also genuinely horrific, with scenes of immolation and gruesome kills that may be upsetting for sensitive viewers.  All the creature work with Botet as Dracula is a treat, and the atmosphere of dread is excellent.

Clemons as a POV character, unfortunately, is a major problem.  I think the character as written is pretty decent, but something about Corey Hawkins' performance kept taking me out of the movie.  I didn't believe for a second that he was in any danger, despite the movie repeatedly proving that no one was safe from Dracula, and his final confrontation with the fiend is positively dire.  He shouts that he's not afraid of Dracula, but displayed no sign of being afraid of Dracula at any previous point in the movie.  And it's a shame, because we get some strong performances from the rest of the cast, especially Cunningham, Franciosi, Dastmalchian, and Norman.  I think the film is still worth the watch, but this could have been significantly better.

I probably would have skipped "The Boogeyman," except it's based on a Stephen King short story that I read many years ago and have not been able to forget.   It was about a man named Lester Billings whose three children are systematically targeted and killed by a classic bedroom closet monster.  I thought it worked as a great allegory for child abuse and trauma, as Lester grappled with his guilt and cowardice with the help of a therapist.  It also worked great as just pulpy entertainment, with a nasty twist ending. 

So I'm sad to relay that the film version of "The Boogeyman" has the dullest possible take on this story.  The focus is not on Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian), but his therapist Will Harper (Chris Messina), who is struggling with the recent loss of his wife.  Harper's teen daughter Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and younger daughter Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair) are both grieving and vulnerable, which draws the attention of the supernatural boogeyman.  The film plays out like a standard monster movie, with the girls having various nocturnal encounters with a creature they keep glimpsing in the shadows.  Will Harper is very much a secondary character, and Lester is really only there for some exposition.  None of the thornier themes about parenthood and abuse are present at all.  Instead, it's just your average, basic monster schlock with jump scares and fake outs you'll see coming from a mile away.

This is a shame because the caliber of the cast is pretty good, the monster doesn't look too shabby, and the source material has a lot going for it.  Sophie Thatcher does a fine job of carrying the film, while Messina is stuck with the blandest role I've seen him in all year.  There's just nothing interesting here after the opening scene, where we watch the Boogeyman sneak up on a baby while using a deceptive human voice to distract it.  Does this unnerving ability come into play at all in the rest of the film?  It does not.  Would anyone have noticed if they replaced the boogeyman with a large dog in the last act of the film?  Yes, but only because it probably would have been scarier. 

 

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"One Piece," Year One (For Fans)

Mild spoilers ahead.

I got to know "One Piece" through the anime series.  I watched over 300 episodes, up to the end of "Thriller Bark," before I decided to take a break and never got back to the show.  When I heard that Netflix was going to make a live-action adaptation, I was expecting the worst.  If they couldn't adapt more accessible IP like "Death Note" and  "Cowboy Bebop" right, surely "One Piece" was going to be a mess.  I'd followed all the drama around the terrible localization of the "One Piece" anime that FOX Kids put out in 2004.  "One Piece" is a smash hit just about everywhere besides the U.S. because American studios kept fumbling the franchise.

Fortunately, this time they got it right.  Netflix put a significant budget behind the show, let a couple of die-hard fans and "One Piece" creator Eiichiro Oda have major input, and committed to giving the fans what they wanted.  The Netflix series loses some characters and condenses many events, but this is a far more faithful adaptation of "One Piece" than I thought we were ever going to see.  We don't just get a perfectly cast Luffy (Iñaki Godoy), Zoro (Mackenyu), Nami (Emily Rudd), Usopp (Jacob Romero Gibson), and Sanji (Taz Skyler), but a slew of familiar side characters and villains brought to screen with the same amount of care.  The highlights include a lovable Shanks (Peter Gadiot), a gruff Zeff (Craig Fairbass), a chaotic Buggy (Jeff Ward), and a very intimidating Garp (Vincent Regan).   

Even better is the look and the feel of the show, which leans into how wacky and exaggerated the "One Piece" universe is.  We get all the crazy costuming, fluorescent hair colors, animal-human hybrids, and walking sight gags you could ever hope for.  The Den Den Mushi not only show up, but the production designers came up with megaphone and earbud variations.  Nobody ever explains what they are, and nobody ever needs to.  I love that the show is so action-heavy, and all manner of crazy stunts and effects sequences are brought to life.  And a lot of it is done practically, which makes a big difference.  We get to watch Luffy do all the Gum Gum attacks.  We get to watch Mihawk (Steven Ward) literally cut a ship in half.  There are so many fun little nods for the fans, like the villains' character introductions being done with their wanted posters, and "We Are!" playing when the Going Merry sets sail at last.  

One thing I felt was a little rough was the cinematography, full of low-angle shots and close-ups, maybe intended to mimic the original manga panels.  However, I got used to it quickly.  The show's pacing was harder to deal with, since the writers stuffed everyone's backstories into the show and let some of them run longer than they should have.  The biggest departure from the manga is Garp showing up so early, and making appearances in most episodes with Koby (Morgan Davies) and Helmeppo (Aidan Scott).  The extra material works because the characters are genuinely fun to watch, and it helps to fill in narrative gaps in the Straw Hats' story.  It's nice to see Koby and Helmeppo becoming friends, and Garp reminiscing about the old days with Zeff, while laying the groundwork for some of the big clashes coming in future storylines.  However, I think some of that time would have been better spent fleshing out some of the antagonists.  Why not give Buggy a few flashbacks?  

In short, as much as I enjoy the show, there's plenty of room for improvement.  You can tell that they're still working some of the kinks out, and hopefully the success of this season will inspire some improvements in the second.  There are some characters and concepts that honestly work better in live action, like a surprisingly nuanced Helmeppo, while others just end up looking like the CGI nightmares from Disney's worst animation-turned-live-action dreck.  Hatchan, the octopus guy from Arlong's crew, is one of the characters who got cut, and I'm glad.  There's a good chance he would have come out badly, and I still have no idea how they're going to handle Chopper or Brooke down the line.  The cast, however, has turned out to be the show's biggest asset - the wonderfully diverse performers do a lot to flesh out their characters, and have helped distract from some of the weaker parts of the production.    

I think that fans should be satisfied with the live action adaptation overall, but its real value is in providing a gateway for newcomers to "One Piece" who might balk at the anime and manga versions.  It also proves that live action adaptations of manga and anime can be successful, no matter how wild or unlikely they are, provided they have the right creative talent involved.  I doubt we'll see too many more shows in this vein, however, because "One Piece" was an extremely risky venture, and so easily could have turned out badly.  But if this does turn out to be the exception that proves the rule, it couldn't have happened to a nicer franchise.

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"One Piece," Year One (For Newcomers)

Netflix's adaptation of the long-running "One Piece" manga is a goofy, melodramatic pirate action show that takes place in a cartoon universe, but might end up tugging your heartstrings.  It's got a big budget, a cast of fresh-faced newcomers, and an admirable willingness to embrace the bizarre.  The "One Piece" universe is not only filled with pirates, but lots of people have superpowers, there are animal-human hybrids, some of the regular animals are sentient, and everybody gets into beautifully choreographed fights at the drop of a hat.  Be warned there are some intense scenes and mild swearing, so this isn't for younger kids, but it's not such a big deal if they sneak a look anyway.

Our hero is Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy), an optimistic young man in a straw hat, who declares that he will become King of the Pirates.  He's one of the many hopefuls who is sailing to a treacherous stretch of ocean known as the Grand Line, to search for a legendary treasure, the One Piece.  Unfortunately, Luffy doesn't have a ship or a crew and can't even swim.  However, he does have the advantage of having consumed a Devil Fruit, which gives him a superpower - his body acts like it's made of rubber, and can stretch and distort in all kinds of fun ways.  He spends the first season befriending and gathering crewmates - a pirate hunter, Zoro (Mackenyu), who wields three swords at once, a clever thief, Nami (Emily Rudd), a sharpshooter braggart, Usopp (Jacob Romero Gibson), and a charming cook, Sanji (Taz Skyler).  

And it's a good thing he's making friends, because Luffy soon gets on the wrong side of all kinds of enemies, including Buggy the Clown (Jeff Ward), the fishman gangster Arlong (McKinley Belcher III), and the claw-handed Kuro (Alexander Maniatis) - yes, all of them are pirates.  The main policing force in this world is the Marines, and they're after Luffy too, after he steals a map to the Grand Line.  We spend a scene or two with Vice Admiral Garp (Vincent Regan), and his cadet mentees Koby (Morgan Davies) and Helmeppo (Aidan Scott) in most episodes as they chase Luffy and friends from island to island, often cleaning up the aftermath of their adventures.  

There have been a couple of attempts at adapting anime and manga stories to live action, and none of them have been very successful.  "One Piece" is not a franchise I thought would have any chance of turning out well in live action, because the original has such an exaggerated visual style, and the characters are so extreme.  However, you can tell that everyone involved with this adaptation was careful to stay as faithful as possible to the original, and were wholly committed to its outlandish concepts and design aesthetic.  Nobody bats an eye at Zoro having green hair or meeting a pirate captain who is also a circus clown.  Nobody questions why seagulls are delivering the mail, and why the telephones are funky looking giant snails.  The MVPs of the production were definitely the art direction team that was able to figure out how to get all of this to make sense onscreen.

I like the cast, who are pretty much all unknowns except Mackenyu.  What they lack in finesse they more than make up for in enthusiasm and commitment to their roles.  I suspect most of them were chosen based on martial arts or stunt backgrounds, because there's so much fighting in the show.  The stunt work is fabulous, and it's really satisfying to see some of the clashes play out.  However, there's also a sneakily effective found family story at the heart of "One Piece" - several of them, actually.  I was pleasantly surprised that the creators got the worldbuilding and the action sensibilities of the series right, but I was completely bowled over by how well they handled the characters and story.     

   

I don't expect that this will be a series for everyone - the level of unreality is bound to turn off less adventurous viewers.  However, for action-adventure fans, this should be an easy watch.  It's simple, uncomplicated action and hijinks for those of us who still sneak the occasional Saturday morning cartoon and feel like cheering on some likable heroes.          

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Baffling, Beautiful, "Barbie"

I admit that I let myself get overhyped for "Barbie."  By the time I actually sat down and watched the movie, I'd had most of the better gags and laugh lines spoiled for me.  And after wading through all the different takes and analysis on the movie's messaging, I was expecting something a lot more assertive about being a feminist, progressive, forward-thinking satire on consumer culture and gender dynamics.

What we got instead was a very silly, very weird piece of entertainment that is careful to ensure that the audience is having a good time.  Rest assured that "Barbie" is about breaking down the idealized image of the Barbie doll and pointing out the impossibility of living up to that standard.  However, it does so in very gentle terms, making room for plenty of nostalgia, musical numbers, and feel-good girl-power moments.  "Barbie" was  also made with the full cooperation of Mattel, using all of their branding and intellectual property, so don't expect anything too critical when it comes to their corporate practices.  "Barbie" keeps its focus almost solely on the gender divide, and all the messages are very familiar and very safe. 

Writer/director Greta Gerwig and her co-writer Noah Baumbach have constructed a life-sized universe for Barbie based on the toy lines and all of those commercials for Barbie dolls we saw as a kid.  The worldbuilding here is not very sturdy, because Barbie only had the sketchiest outlines of a backstory, based mostly around bright, girlish, aesthetics.  And wow, those aesthetics look great on the big screen.  Everything in Barbieland is bright and cheerful and surely there's never been so much pink in one movie before.  The laws of matter and physics conform to how children play with their Barbie dolls, so Barbie floats down from her Dreamhouse to her car instead of walking down the steps.  There's no real water anywhere, hair length can change from moment to moment, and Barbie herself is always permanently on tiptoe to accommodate high-heel shoes.  

Pointedly, the Barbies occupy all the important roles in their society, including presidents, doctors, scientists, and judges, while the Kens are essentially accessories.  In keeping with Mattel's own diversity efforts, there are Barbies and Kens of all colors and body types.  So we have Barbies played by Issa Rae, Alexandra Shipp, Hari Nef, Dua Lipa, Emma Mackey, and Sharon Rooney, while the Ken actors include Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, and Ncuti Gatwa.  Everything looks like plastic perfection in Barbieland, and if you've ever played with Barbies you'll probably be able to spot something familiar among the sets or wardrobe choices.  There's a ton of Barbie paraphernalia recreated for the film, and even obscure side characters like Pregnant Midge (Emerald Fennell) and Ken's Buddy Alan (Michael Cera) show up.

The story of "Barbie" is about one Barbie, a Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), who starts having very un-Barbielike thoughts of death one day, and starts losing her Barbieness.  Her feet go flat and she can't float anymore.  After consulting with the local guru, Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), our heroine learns she must go to the Real World to find out who's been playing with her, and try to resolve this existential crisis.  She's joined by the Ken (Ryan Gosling) who is infatuated with her, and they soon meet the mother/daughter pair of Gloria (America Ferrera) and Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), who help to clue the dolls in on how the Real World operates.         

If you haven't worked it out by now, the "Barbie" movie is aimed at adults, and contains some instances of adult humor - nothing explicit, but plenty that touches on mature subjects.  While you can definitely call the entire movie an extended commercial for the Barbie brand, I like that it's honestly less about the doll and more about the complicated relationships that multiple generations of women and girls have had with the doll.  Gerwig seems to be honestly trying to reconcile all the competing ideas and criticisms about Barbie that have been around since her inception, and acknowledging everyone's POV.  Gloria is nostalgic and positive about Barbie.  Sasha dismisses her outdated and lame.  The Mattel execs talk the talk, but are shown to be massive hypocrites.  Even the creator of Barbie, Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman) gets to put in her two cents.  

This doesn't result in a very cohesive narrative, however.  "Barbie" has a lot of great ideas and notions, but feels very piecemeal and underdeveloped, with everything sort of thrown together.  The one part of the movie that absolutely works is Ryan Gosling's Ken discovering the patriarchy, bringing it back to Barbieland, and turning the place on its head, revealing its systemic problems in the process.  Gosling's performance is already iconic.  His Ken is a himbo manchild who flirts with toxic masculinity, but really just needs to learn to love himself.  Margot Robbie is even more perfect as Barbie, the harder role to embody, and it's a shame that Barbie's existential crisis just doesn't pack as much of a punch as I wanted it to.  There are bits that don't go anywhere, like the Mattel executives, led by a blundering CEO (Will Ferrell), who really don't need to be in this movie, and way too many distracting little references and product spotlights.

The filmmaking itself is lovely.  Gerwig's work is very playful, zipping between a "2001: A Space Odyssey" homage for the opener, to explorations of Barbieland and the real world, beautifully choreographed musical numbers, chase sequences, travel montages, and spoofs on the familiar Barbie commercial format.  Some of the one liners and sly asides are all-timers, and I so appreciate that Gerwig isn't afraid to get sentimental and lean into the fuzzy feelings.  Despite all the emphasis on how impossible it is to be a woman in the real world, there's no question why Barbie would still choose to be one.  I'm also impressed that Mattel was willing to poke this much fun at itself, though "Barbie" still looks very tame next to projects like the recent "Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers" movie. 

However, it's hard to get away from how half-finished the movie feels.  The mother-daughter story and Barbie's progression into a real girl are both awfully thin, and so much of that fantastic cast ends up stuck in the background.  I'm happy that "Barbie" is doing so well financially, but as a movie it leaves a lot on the table, and the audience has to do way too much of the heavy lifting.  I'd still recommend seeing it, because "Barbie" is so uniquely a cinematic spectacle from a female POV that nobody else has ever attempted on this level.  And it could very well be that I set my own expectations too high.  If I'd have gone in pre-hype, without knowing anything except that the movie was about Barbie, I probably would have loved it.         

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"Disenchantment," Year Five

Minor spoilers ahead.

I lost track of most of the storylines and many of the characters in "Disenchantment" by the time the final season rolled around, even though I've watched every episode.  Compared to the other Matt Groening shows, I've found it difficult to connect to "Disenchantment" for many different reasons.  I don't think the writers ever figured out how to crack the serialized storytelling, and the binge model of release didn't help matters.  I've never rewatched "Disenchantment" the way I've rewatched "The Simpsons" and "Futurama," and I've never gotten remotely as attached to the characters.  Still, having stuck with the show through multiple seasons, I decided I still wanted to see how everything was going to play out. 

After all, multiple cancellations of "Futurama" have proven that Groening and crew know how to deliver a good ending.  I was perfectly satisfied with the "Disenchantment" finale, where every character reaches a happy ending.  There are loose ends everywhere you look, and all kinds of lore left unexplained and unexplored, but this feels like the right place to stop.  Most of this season is spent reuniting everybody and mopping up the fallout from past storylines.  A couple of minor characters become much more important, mostly because they get romantically entangled with our leads - Ursula (Jeny Batten) is Zog's true love, Mop Girl (Lauren Tom) gives Elfo a distraction from Bean, and the Devil (Rich Fulcher) almost immediately becomes a henpecked husband when he gets too close to Dagmar.  There are a couple of interesting reveals that happen, but don't have much impact because the show's storytelling has been so chaotic.  Sure, it's a fun idea that a minor background character ends up being so important to the endgame of the series, but it also ends up feeling a little hollow, because we don't have much time to get to know the Macguffin in question.

  

I don't think that all the storylines were planned out from the beginning, or at least there have been some serious changes along the way.  For one thing, our central trio of Bean, Elfo, and Luci barely interact in the end, despite their friendship being such a big part of the show.  Luci has to hang out in heaven with God (Phil LaMarr) for a good chunk of the season, while Bean is obsessed with taking down Dagmar, and Elfo spends most of his time with Mop Girl.  The old dynamic's just not there anymore, and if this is the point of the story, it's not made very clear.  Instead, love seems to conquer all, rendering every other concern moot, resulting in abrupt endings for several different characters.  The deep bench of minor players enjoyed by "The Simpsons" and "Futurama" feels like it's still a work in progress on "Disenchantment."  Bean and Zog have accumulated a lot of friends and enemies on their travels, but the majority are very one-note and get little development.  Background details for side characters like Vip and Vap are often dropped on the audience out of the blue, while characters  who I thought were pretty major, like Oona and Derek, have been relegated to bit parts since around year three.  

The storyline that wound up working best was Bean's grudge with Dagmar.  Oona is still my favorite "Disenchantment" character, but Dagmar is the year's MVP for being a villain worth rooting against.  She turned out to be an incredibly funny caricature of the oversexed evil sorceress trope, and I loved all her digs at Bean and the Devil.  Bean and Dagmar's troubled relationship has been a major throughline for the show since the first season, and it was very satisfying to see Dagmar finally get her comeuppance.  Zog and Elfo, by contrast, felt a little underserved.  Both of them have earned their happy endings, but at the same time their stories  felt manipulated to have the best outcomes possible.  Luci didn't get to do a lot, but at least his role didn't feel extraneous for once.  

In the end I didn't love "Disenchantment," but I respect it a ton for trying to do something different.  So much effort was put into pulling off ambitious ideas and concepts.  I was constantly hitting the pause button to read the punny signs, and marveling over the interesting bits of worldbuilding.  One example is Bean having to spend so much time carrying Mora the mermaid around on land.  There's no joke or plot reason involved - just a reality of this world that Bean has to deal with, and we have to tough it out with her.  This level of mundanity is odd to see included in an animated show, and I can't say it adds much entertainment value, but at the same time I truly admire the level of commitment.

 

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A Short History of Disney Remakes

I've been seeing this idea that Disney is running out of films to remake since it's remade pretty much all of its Renaissance era animated films.  I thought it would be fun to take a look at Disney's history of remaking their own IP, especially since the research involved digging through a lot of old, forgotten Disney obscurities.

Disney has been in the remake game for decades, and there are a lot more Disney remakes out there than you think there are.  Here are some of the highlights:

1982 - Disney attempted to turn some of their popular live action movies from the '60s and '70s into television series for CBS in the early '80s.  The only one that made it to air was "Herbie the Love Bug," a sequel series to "The Love Bug," (1968) which ran for five episodes in 1982.  Two other pilots aired as episodes of the "Walt Disney" anthology program that year - "Beyond Witch Mountain," which functioned as the third movie in the "Witch Mountain" franchise, and "The Adventures of Pollyanna," which has the dubious honor of being the first feature length Disney remake that I could identify, retelling the story of "Pollyanna" (1960) with a wholly new cast.   

1988-1989 - NBC took over airing the Disney anthology series, retitled "The Magical World of Disney" in 1988.  They commissioned a new set of "Davy Crockett" adventures, based on the popular miniseries that aired as part of "Disneyland" in the '50s.  They also remade "The Absent-Minded Professor" (1961) as a TV movie starring Harry Anderson from "Night Court," and Keisha-Knight Pulliam from "The Cosby Show" played the title role in "Polly," another remake of "Pollyanna" with an African-American cast.   This means that the first race-swapped Disney heroine wasn't Ariel, but Pollyanna.  Both TV movies did well enough that they got sequels the following year.

1993 - "Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey" is the first theatrically released Disney remake, based on "The Incredible Journey" (1963).  The vast majority of Disney's early remakes were of their live action films.  While Disney was known for their animated films, their catalog was also dominated by wholesome live-action adventure and fantasy films aimed at families.  Many featured animal leads, and it makes perfect sense that an update of "The Incredible Journey" was one of their first major remakes.  

1994 - The first Disney remake based on one of their animated films only technically qualifies.  "Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book" starring Jason Scott Lee was largely based on the Rudyard Kipling "Jungle Book" stories, and only counts as a remake of Disney's "Jungle Book" (1967) because it includes some Disney characters like King Louie.  In this version, Mowgi is an adult, the animals don't talk, there are a pack of British villains to contend with, and the story plays more like "Indiana Jones" than Kipling or Disney.  A direct-to-video prequel, "The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story" (1998) was actually closer to the original.

1994-1995 - Meanwhile, over in the television division, Disney struck a deal with ABC to remake a slew of their live action family films as "ABC Family Movies."  This resulted in TV movie remakes of "The Shaggy Dog" (1959), "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes" (1969), "Escape to Witch Mountain" (1975), and "Freaky Friday" (1976), which all aired in 1994 and 1995.  A remake/legasequel for "The Love Bug" came in 1997 starring Bruce Campbell, and introducing Herbie's mortal enemy, Horace the Hate Bug.  The Disney Channel also got a remake of "The Barefoot Executive" (1971) in 1995.

 

1996 - The remake of "101 Dalmatians" (1961) feels like the first real attempt to adapt an animated Disney film into a live action one.  And they picked the right one to start with, since all the characters are either human or animals, and Disney has a long history of animal movies.  This was the era where Disney was actually remaking a lot of cartoons into live action, though it was other studios' cartoons like "George of the Jungle," "Dudley Do-Right," and "Inspector Gadget."  And the whole trend was actually kicked off by Amblin's "The Flintstones," which made large amounts of money in 1994.

1997 - 2009 - The majority of the theatrical Disney remakes going into the 2000s were still of live action films.  1997 saw a new "The Absent-Minded Professor" remake starring Robin Williams titled "Flubber," and Christina Ricci in an updated "That Darn Cat!" (1965).  Then came Lindsay Lohan, who would star in "The Parent Trap" in 1998 , "Freaky Friday," in 2003, and "Herbie Fully Loaded" in 2005.  "The Shaggy Dog" became a Tim Allen vehicle in 2006, and "Race to Witch Mountain" rebooted the "Witch Mountain" franchise in 2009 with Dwayne Johnson.  And to date, that's the last of Disney's theatrical remakes of their live action catalog. Aside from a musical version of "Freaky Friday" in 2018 that premiered as a Disney Channel Original, all the Disney remakes going forward would be of their animated films, starting with…

2010 - Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" really doesn't have much connection with the 1951 animated  "Alice in Wonderland."  The new "Alice" functions more like a sequel, and it takes most of its visual cues from Burton and illustrator John Tenniel.  However, between the popularity of Johnny Depp  and the premium on newly repopularized 3D event films, "Alice" made a billion dollars at the box office in an era where that didn't often happen.  As a result, Disney would end up following the "Alice" template of CGI-heavy spectacle to some very bitter ends.  

2010 - I just want to acknowledge that "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," based on the Mickey Mouse segment of "Fantasia" (1940), somehow transmogrified into a YA adventure film starring Nicolas Cage and Jay Baruchel, exists.  I don't understand why, but it exists.  

2014 - "Maleficent" wasn't actually the first Disney film to do the whole, "let's retell this familiar fairy tale from a supporting character's point of view," thing.  That honor goes to the "Gepetto" TV movie starring Drew Carrey, created for the ABC version of "The Wonderful World of Disney" in 2000.  I'm not sure if these should be counted as remakes, but some of the other Disney remakes have about as much in common with their original films as "Maleficent" does with "Sleeping Beauty," so it doesn't feel right to leave them off.  "Maleficent" takes a few familiar images from the 1959 cartoon and recreates one pivotal scene, but mostly tells an original story, repositioning an iconic villain as a heroine.  The  2018 "Christopher Robin" movie and the 2021 "Cruella" movie mostly follow the same pattern.   

2015-2016 - The remakes of "Cinderella" (1950), "The Jungle Book" (1967), and "Pete's Dragon" (1977) seem to be the best regarded Disney remakes of their animated (and partially animated) films.  It's no secret why.  These are director-driven, thoughtfully made films that use the animated classics as a jumping off point, but don't resemble them much.  "The Jungle Book" is the closest, but has an entirely different ending, and largely cut the songs.  If the remakes had continued in this vein, we'd probably all have been much better off.  Unfortunately… 

2017-2019 - Here's where we went off the rails.  Once Disney started remaking its Renaissance era animated films, the remakes became almost carbon copies of the originals.  Any original material was shoehorned around recreations of existing set pieces and musical numbers.  And Disney was well rewarded for this approach.  Remakes of "Beauty and the Beast" (1991), "Aladdin" (1992), and "The Lion King" (1994) each made over a billion dollars at the box office, and "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" were released less than three months apart.  The success of "The Jungle Book" and improvements in CGI seem to have particularly emboldened filmmakers to start tackling more difficult fantasy concepts.

That brings us to now, where a pile of lackluster titles over the past few years remaking "Dumbo" (1941), "Lady and the Tramp" (1955), "Mulan" (1998), and "Pinocchio" (1940) have pretty well wrecked the public's appetite for more Disney remakes.  I honestly like both of this year's attempts - remakes of "The Little Mermaid" (1989) and "Peter Pan" (1953) - but I understand why many others don't.  There are a lot more of these films coming up, and frankly I've stopped being upset about them.  Disney has habitually gone back to its existing IP over and over again for decades, and they're not going to stop.

And they're not going to run out of titles to remake.  Yes, they've burned through the more popular titles, but there are a ton left.  There are vast sections of the Disney catalog that haven't been touched yet, like their dark '80s fantasy films and the early 2000s Disney Channel Originals.  And if Disney somehow manages to remake every single film of theirs that ever made any money, they'll just remake them again with a different twist or in a different style, the way they did with "Freaky Friday" and "Pollyanna."  I expect we'll see "Ursula" at some point.  "Straight to streaming" has replaced TV movies, but everyone is still as susceptible to nostalgia as they ever were.

So, buckle up for Questlove's "The Aristocats" and Sarah Polley's "Bambi."  We're going around again.

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The Twilight of "Indiana Jones"

Minor spoilers ahead.

There's something rather lovely about Harrison Ford being in eighties, and still being able to make an "Indiana Jones" movie.  Ford is still a charismatic performer, and it's wonderful to have him back on our screens as often as he wants to be there.  At the same time, there's something undeniably ghoulish about this too.  Ford is in great shape, but clearly not able to participate in the kind of action scenes we expect from an "Indiana Jones" movie.  Most of "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" takes place in 1969, where Indy is retiring from teaching, and very much the picture of a grumpy old man.   

To counter this, Indy is joined on the adventure by his adult goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller Bridge), an archaeologist herself who is following in the footsteps of her father Basil (Toby Jones), one of Indy's old friends.  She has her own kid sidekick, Teddy (Ethann Isidore), a Moroccan thief we meet in Tangiers.  John Rhys-Davies is also back as Sallah, who has immigrated to New York with his family in tow.  They're up against a Nazi scientist named Dr. Schmidt (Mads Mikkelson), who is searching for the Archimedes Dial - an ancient mechanical marvel rumored to actually be a time travel device.  

However, the film also tries to give us the Indiana Jones we remember from the '80s by using digital doubles and deepfakes to open the film with an extended flashback to 1944, where Indy and Basil fight Nazi treasure hunters to recover looted relics.  This isn't just a few shots, but a full twenty minute opening act where the digital Indy is our main character, with plenty of dialogue and closeups and interactions with other actors.  The end result looks very expensive - better than "The Irishman," but not quite as good as some of the best digital doubles that we've seen in other films.  There are still a few Uncanny Valley shots, and I was always very aware that I was watching a deepfake and not the real thing. Something about the voice is very off.   

Fortunately, the rest of the film doesn't feel like a soulless copy trying to imitate the genuine article.  James Mangold takes over directing duties from Steven Spielberg, and puts together a lot of very energetic, very Spielberg-esque chase and adventuring sequences.  The characters are solid, and well cast.  I love seeing Boyd Holbrook and Olivier Richters playing Dr. Schmidt's henchman as old school, slapstick villains.  Phoebe Waller-Bridge gets to be both the plucky heroine and the femme fatale rolled into one - which shouldn't work but mostly does.  Mads Mikkelson playing a proper Nazi baddie (at last!) is very satisfying on every level.

The scripting is messy and full of callbacks, but I honestly don't mind so much.  Between the ages of the actors and the sad state of the box office, this is very likely the last time we're going to be seeing these characters onscreen, and the only reason why I bothered to watch the film was for the nostalgia.  I like that "Dial of Destiny" acknowledges Indy's age and his regrets in a way that "Crystal Skull" didn't.  The whole film is built around a time travel device as the big MacGuffin, with some great thematic touches.  There's a third act sequence involving Indy making discoveries at the ancient city of Syracuse that is legitimately one of the highlights of the entire "Indiana Jones" franchise.  

Sadly, "Dial of Destiny" can't get away from feeling totally unnecessary.  I can't imagine anyone was all that excited about another "Indiana Jones" movie after the lukewarm reception to "Crystal Skull."  I'm glad that "Dial of Destiny" resisted the urge to be a legasequel, and there are apparently no plans at this time to recast Indy, but it's hard to ignore that the franchise has run its course.  Everything about "Dial of Destiny" feels like a comfortable throwback, and I can understand why its appeal turned out to be so limited.  Like "Terminator: Dark Fate" and "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," it's yet another film where the nostalgia comes with the sad truth that my childhood movie heroes have gotten old and creaky.

"Dial of Destiny" cost so much money and lost so much money, it'll inevitably be remembered as a giant misstep for Disney.  I prefer to look on the bright side and treat it as a last hurrah for a character I've always enjoyed.  It wasn't great, but if this was the last "Indiana Jones" movie, it was a perfectly fine way to go out.    

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"Elemental" Nails the Fundamentals

I found myself spending a good chunk of the new PIXAR film "Elemental" staring at Wade Ripple's hair.  Well, Wade (Mamoudou Athie) doesn't have hair because he's a guy made of water, so I was looking at the ever-undulating waves on the top of his watery head that had been shaped to look like hair.  It's a great reminder of why the PIXAR animation studio has had so many imitators over the years but few real rivals.  Even though their house style is starting to feel a little old fashioned since the "Spider-verse" movies popularized 2D/3D hybrid animation, nobody matches up to PIXAR when it comes to the resources spent on making their films real works of art.  They take time to get all the little details right - like the leading man's liquid locks.  

A lot of the chatter around "Elemental" over the summer had to do with its marketing, which was pretty terrible.  The ads and trailers made "Elemental" look formulaic and bland, another project where PIXAR anthropomorphized something inanimate and gave them feelings.  What it completely failed to show was how beautifully this  was all executed.  In "Elemental," the characters are earth, water, air, and fire "elements" who share the bustling Element City together, though not without some friction.  Our heroine, fire element Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis), is the daughter of Bernie (Ronnie del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi), an immigrant pair who run a small store in a fire element neighborhood on the edge of the city.  Element City isn't built for fire elements, since the other three groups got there first, and there are many prejudices and misconceptions for their community to overcome.  

"Elemental" reminds me of "Zootopia," in a very good way.  There is an absolutely stunning amount of creativity and ingenuity that went into all the worldbuilding.  I've seen several animated films lately that have maybe one or two clever ideas in each scene.  "Elemental," on the other hand, is absolutely jam packed with them, and some sequences are just one gag or pun or fun visual after another.  Ember and Wade, our star-crossed lovers, are constantly having to problem solve to simply exist in each other's worlds.  Ember always carries an umbrella to guard against accidental splashes that might put her out, and has to dim herself down in a movie theater.  When she goes to visit Wade's apartment, of course it's mostly submerged, so she spends the evening perched on an inflatable floatie chair.  As for Wade, he's forever trying to sneak around Ember's father, who has a hatred of all things watery.  There's a lot of hiding in crevices and vases.

The visuals are a treat, but more importantly director Peter Sohn and writers John Hoberg, Kat Likkel, and Brenda Hsueh figured out how to tell a very sweet, heartful story in this universe.  Yes, it's a romantic comedy about opposites who attract.  Tempestuous Ember and gushing Wade are a delightful pair to watch fall in love.  But beyond this, "Elemental" is a surprisingly nuanced second-generation immigrant experience allegory.  The biggest roadblock to Ember and Wade's relationship is actually Ember's sense of duty and guilt about her parents, especially her ailing father.  They sacrificed everything for her happiness, so Ember feels it's only right for her to sacrifice her happiness for them.  I also appreciate that this is a movie that points out racism (or elementism?)  as a problem, but doesn't devote the whole narrative to it, and doesn't have the heroes try to solve the whole situation in one swoop.  Instead, it's just something that they have to learn to patiently deal with, person by person, like the problem customers at the Lumens' shop.        

Sohn drew from his background as a Korean immigrant who grew up in New York, but the fire elements are a stand-in for just about any immigrant community.  There's a big influence from Studio Ghibli here on the character designs - the water elements are straight out of "Ponyo," and the fire elements all seem to be variations on Calcifer the fire demon from "Howl's Moving Castle." The challenge of using CGI to animate non-solid characters must have been considerable.  There's also something very Ghibli-esque about the storytelling, which is built on a lot of little incidental encounters and slice-of-life scenes.  Mysterious leaks and the store being in danger aren't because of any major villains or evil schemes, but because of larger systemic problems that can't be easily resolved.

Maybe I reacted so well to "Elemental" because I went in with low expectations.  There's evidence of a lot of frantic rewriting behind the scenes, and you could point to a dozen other recent films that have tackled parts of this story more elegantly.   The element allegory is just plain messy at certain points, and you really have to ignore some of the logic gaps.  Still, this feels like PIXAR returning to form in a way that I haven't seen since before the pandemic.  And it's definitely a step in the right direction.

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"Ozark" Year Three

Spoilers for the first two seasons ahead.

This is a lot sooner than when I expected to be posting about "Ozark" again, and I was originally expecting to write about the last two seasons together, but I've been binging this show like nothing else in ages, and I really want to get some thoughts down before I dive into the final stretch of episodes.  After enjoying the first season of "Ozark," and being unimpressed with the second, the third season mounted a comeback and turned out to be everything that I wanted from the show from the start.  

I thought that "Ozark" had a great beginning, setting up all these characters and relationships and opportunities for good melodrama.  However, the second season fell into a rut pretty quickly.  The stories got repetitive and the juicier character stuff  mostly went nowhere.  Two major villains pretty much followed the same path of going unhinged and being dispatched quickly - outmanipulated by the Byrdes, who were able to out-think everyone with what felt like little real effort.  The third season introduced some new villains - a new FBI investigator, Maya Miller (Jessica Frances Dukes), prying into the Byrdes' finances, the head of the cartel, Omar Navarro (Felix Solis), and Frank Cosgrove Jr. (Jospeh Sikora), the arrogant son of the the Kansas City mob boss.  However, the Byrdes' worst antagonists this season are each other.

Since the beginning, Marty and Wendy's marriage has been on the rocks, but they were able to put the hostilities on hold while they sorted out all the other chaos in their lives.  In season three, disagreements over their business dealings turn the two against each other.  They don't communicate of course, as demonstrated by a comedic subplot with a marriage counselor, Sue (Marylouise Burke), but instead end up undermining each other until they're fully at war.  And the show was never better.    The conflict finally feels personal for everyone involved.  The deep imperfections in the characters are finally being explored.  The Byrdes are definitely up there with the Sopranos and the Jennings as one of the best TV drama couples because they're so well matched, and their fights reveal how deeply screwed up they are.  Bateman and Linney have been at the top of their game.

The other major newcomer is Wendy's unstable brother Ben (Tom Pelphrey), who ends up taking over the second half of the season.  It's a long, slow build to his unraveling, and handled very well.  Pelphrey's a great addition to the cast, initially presenting a very solid, likable presence.  Ben slides so neatly into the family dynamic and is such a good match for Ruth, the audience is tricked into letting down their guard.  Helen's arc functions in a similar way, with her briefly partnering up with Wendy for deals, and being very helpful in a crisis, but then things go sideways and we realize that her similarity to the Byrdes also makes her one of their most formidable enemies.  

All the stories and characters feel more balanced this year, with more emphasis on Marty and Wendy, but everyone else is getting the right amount of attention.  Ruth was put on a similar slow burn as Ben, which paid off beautifully.  The Charlotte problem was essentially solved by giving her and Jonah their own Charlotte to keep out of trouble, Helen's daughter Erin (Madison Thompson), and letting the kids stay mostly in the background.  Darlene regrouping in the shadows with Wyatt delivered some of the wildest twists this year, but it weirdly seems to have been the healthiest thing for everyone involved.  After the finale, I'm honestly tempted to root for them.    

I haven't said anything yet about the show's production values, which are great.  The gloomy cinematography isn't showy, but it's effective.  This year features a riverboat casino as a major location, an REO Speedwagon concert, and a few field trips outside of the Ozarks, which all look great.  This is one of those projects where Netflix spared no expense, and got their money's worth.  

I cannot promise I won't binge the rest of "Ozark" by next week, but I'll try my very best not to post about the show again until then.  

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About That "Little Mermaid" Movie

The most annoying thing about the live action Disney remakes of their animated films is that while these movies are  mostly awful, they're rarely completely awful, and can't be written off completely.  Most are watchable and some of them, occasionally, are pretty good.  It turns out that if you put enough talented people together with a large enough budget, inevitably they're going to figure out a way to be a little bit entertaining.  The new "The Little Mermaid," based on the 1989 cartoon version, has no good reason to exist, and features some truly boneheaded adaptation decisions, but as a whole this Disney remake is one of the better ones.  

I think it helps that the 1989 cartoon hasn't aged as well as some of the other Disney Renaissance blockbusters.  The characters are very thin, and culture has shifted a bit when it comes to teenage love and romance.  Rob Marshall, who last directed "Mary Poppins Returns" for Disney, doesn't change the story much and keeps most of the songs.  However, he smartly fills in some plot holes, updates the boy-girl dynamics, and changes the setting to the Caribbean to better accommodate a multicultural cast.   The new Ariel is played by Halle Bailey, who is very good in the part, though she has more of a pop voice than a musical theater voice.  Her Ariel is also quite a bit smarter and more resourceful than her animated counterpart.  Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) is still Caucasian, but the adopted son of a dark complexioned Queen Selina (Noma Dumezweni), ruler of their island kingdom.  Meanwhile, King Triton (Javier Bardem), the human-hating monarch of the seas, has fathered mermaid daughters of many different colors and complexions.  

The live action "Little Mermaid" is nearly an hour longer than the animated "Little Mermaid," which may test the patience of younger viewers.  However, the extra time is well spent.  The major characters are more fleshed out, and I'm happy to report that the romance is vastly improved.  Bailey and Hauer-King have good chemistry, and enough time onscreen together to actually form a connection.  It's only a few additional scenes, like Eric talking to Ariel about his adventures as a sailor, and Ariel finding a way to tell Eric her name while mute, but they do make a difference.  More emphasis is also placed on Ariel's relationship with Triton and the ongoing human/merfolk hostilities.  

As usual, the worst part of the adaptation is trying to turn the cartoon sidekick characters from the original film into more realistic CGI creations.  Flounder (Jacob Tremblay), Sebastian (Daveed Diggs) and Scuttle (Awkwafina) now resemble a real fish, crab, and sea bird, and it looks dreadful.  Scuttle getting a rap number (written by Lin Manuel Miranda, naturally) is a real low point in the film.  I'm an Awkwafina supporter, but she and Disney really need to take a break for a while.  Melissa McCarthy as the sea witch, Ursula, fares much better.  "Poor Unfortunate Souls" is the musical number that translates best to live action.  She doesn't get as much screen time as I would have liked, but she makes the appearances count.      

The 1989 "Little Mermaid" was the beginning of the Disney Renaissance, and I'm a little surprised that this adaptation took so long to reach our screens.  I suspect it has a lot to do with the technical challenges involved with doing so many nautical and underwater elements.  The film is very CGI heavy, with some visuals that work well, and others that don't.  The designs of Ursula and the mermaid characters, for instance, are great, but most of the other sea creatures are stuck in uncanny valley.  The  film is far more picturesque when it's on dry land.  Once again, underwater societies really don't work in anything even remotely close to live action.  

  

There's no end in sight for future live action Disney adaptations, despite their spotty track record.  And because I'm a Disney nerd who just can't resist, I'll keep watching them.  We have a new "Snow White" with Rachel Zegler and a "Lion King" prequel directed by Barry Jenkins up next.  Fingers crossed.      

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My Top Ten Films of 1943

This post is part of my ongoing project to create Top Ten movie lists for the years before I began this blog, working my way as far back as I can.  Below, find my Top Ten films for 1943, unranked.

Carnival of Sinners - I can't resist a good genre picture, and "Carnival of Sinners" presents a great take on the Faust story.  It's a French horror film via a dark fairy tale, where the hero has to battle with the devil for his soul, with the assistance of ghosts, saints, and an angel.  The evocative visuals do most of the heavy lifting as this was one of the final films of Maurice Tourneau, one of the greats of the silent era.    

Casablanca - You must remember this.  "Casablanca" almost functions as a Rosetta stone these days, as it originated so many oft quoted lines and was the subject of so many parodies.  The film itself, however, is still as tender and heart-rending as it ever was, with Humphrey Bogart's best performance front and center.  And while I prefer Ingrid Bergman in other pictures, it was "Casablanca" that made her a star.

   

The Song of Bernadette - In the past, mainstream audiences could  take faith-based stories like this at face value, but it's hard to imagine anyone making a film so earnestly credulous today, or any actress playing the young heroine the way that Jennifer Jones does, like a platonic ideal of a Christian piety.  "Bernadette" is exceedingly well made, however, and still offers plenty of photogenic uplift.   

Day of Wrath - And while we're on the subject of religious films, nobody made them better than Carl Theodor Dreyer.  After taking nearly a decade break from filmmaking, Dreyer returned with a film about a 16th century witchcraft case, but is in essence a tense domestic drama.  Some have also interpreted it as an anti-Totalitarian work.  Slow, absorbing, and emotionally wrenching, it was worth the wait.    

Jane Eyre - Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles are perfectly cast as Jane and Rochester, not only because they have good chemistry together, but because there's such an ambiguity to their relationship throughout the film, and both actors are so adept at navigating this.  Welles' influence on the shape of the film is undeniable, but director Robert Stevenson deserves his share of the credit for its success.

Lassie Come Home - I didn't realize that there was a series of "Lassie" films that predated the television series until last year.  The first movie is the best by a wide margin, because it's such a simple, unselfconscious enterprise.  This is the perfect boy-and-his-dog story, or really a dog-and-her-boy story, because Lassie spends so much of the movie as a solo act - and her performance is excellent.  

 

The Living Magoroku - One of Keisuke Kinoshita's wartime efforts is technically a propaganda film, but is functionally just a charming, well-made rural drama about a family being prodded out of old, superstitious ways, toward a brighter future.  The cast is excellent, and the way that the different subplots and characters arcs all converge in the end is immensely satisfying to see play out.    

Munchhausen - A fabulous piece of fantasy media that I like much better than the Terry Gilliam "Munchausen" movie.  In spite of its unfortunate Nazi origins (yes, really) and some of the insensitive content, the film is a piece of pure escapism with gorgeously executed special effects.  I especially enjoy the performance of Hans Albers as the title character, by turns silly and poignant and easy to cheer for.        

Shadow of a Doubt - If Alfred Hitchcock made a Nancy Drew film, it would probably come out something like this.  Teresa Wright establishes herself as a leading lady, but it's Joseph Cotten as the sinister Uncle Charlie who is the most memorable thing about the picture.  Hitchcock claimed multiple times that this was his favorite film and I can see why - it's one of his simpler features, but every element is excellent.

Stormy Weather - One of two major African-American musicals released in this year, featuring so much talent that never got enough of the spotlight.  I prefer "Stormy Weather" to "Cabin in the Sky" because its individual sequences are more memorable, and I'm more familiar with its cast.  The Nicholas Brothers' "Jumpin' Jive" sequence is still one of the most impressive feats ever captured on film.  

This Land is Mine - Finally, this is one of Jean Renoir's handful of American films, an anti-Nazi melodrama starring Charles Laughton as a school teacher in a town suffering under occupation.  It's part morality play, part home front propaganda effort, and part character study of a weak man who finds his courage.  The whole cast, including Maureen O'Hara and George Saunders, is doing some of their best work. 

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