My Favorite Mel Brooks Movie

It was tough picking a favorite Mel Brooks film.  It was so tough, I wound up rewatching most of his filmography, just to make sure I was giving every picture a fair shot.  "Blazing Saddles" is easily the most daring and subversive.  "Spaceballs" remains a beloved piece of my childhood.  "Life Stinks" is the secret masterpiece.  "Twelve Chairs" is the other secret masterpiece.  "History of the World, Part I" is not top tier, but definitely has the best musical number.  However, the Mel Brooks movie that the world would undeniably be worse without is "Young Frankenstein."  

My history with "Young Frankenstein" is odd, but not unusual.  This was the first version of "Frankenstein" I ever saw in any medium, and thus had no context for the parody of the decades of "Frankenstein" movies that had come before.  Along with Herman Munster, this version of the Monster established the character as a humorous figure in my young mind, and not at all scary.  When I was older, I was astonished to discover that the Universal monster movies were considered straight horror pictures, and the James Whale "Frankenstein" didn't even have some of the best characters.  Was that hunchback with the properly aligned eyes supposed to be Igor?  And was there no Inga?  And no Frau Blücher?! NEEEIIGGGGHHH!  

Despite not getting most of the jokes, I still found "Young Frankenstein" a great watch when I was a kid, because it features so many wonderful performances by some of my favorite comedy actors.  Gene Wilder's increasingly unhinged performance as Frederick Fronk-en-steen is one for the ages.  When he finally gives into the madness, lets loose, and starts raving, it's electrifying.   Cloris Leachman and Madeline Kahn don't get enough screen time, but they make every second count.  Nobody played the bimbo with a thick accent better than Terri Garr.  Marty Feldman's Igor may not have originated the twisted mad scientist's assistant character, but he definitely set the bar for all the screen Igors to follow.  And then there's Peter Boyle as the Monster.  To this day, his enthusiastic, incoherent rendition of "Puttin' on the Ritz" fills me with indescribable joy.

On this most recent rewatch, fifty years after the film's premiere, there are some elements of the film that have not aged well.  The sexual dynamics probably wouldn't fly with most viewers, and some of the wordplay no longer plays.  However,  I was finally able to appreciate "Young Frankenstein" as a spoof of the "Frankenstein" franchise, and it's fabulous.  Mel Brooks manages to capture some real tension and atmosphere in the early parts of the film.  It's arguably the best looking feature he ever made, in beautiful black and white, using a lot of the same visual language as the '30s "Frankenstein."  The pace is slower than most of his films, resulting in "Young Frankenstein" being Brooks' longest film.  The gag count is relatively low, but when those gags hit, they hit.  I also appreciate the commitment to old comedy bits and slapstick that you don't really see anymore, like the revolving bookcase gag.  The amount of wholehearted silliness that finds its way onscreen is something that modern comedy could use more of.     

I'd be lying if I said that the Gene recent Wilder documentary didn't influence my decision to write about "Young Frankenstein."  The movie was as much Wilder's baby as Mel Brooks.'  He came up with the initial idea and co-wrote the script.  His performance as Fronk-en-steen is one of his very best.  Wilder went on to write and direct more films, but I doubt that he'll be getting his own "Great Directors" post in the future, so this may be my only chance to express my admiration for one of the funniest comedians who ever made movies.  

As for Mel Brooks, in interviews he's claimed that this is his best movie, but not the funniest.  I disagree, preferring character-based laughs to the no-holds-barred free-for-all of the more celebrated "Blazing Saddles."  And you're not going to see many comedic characters better than the ones in "Young Frankenstein."  I still prefer these versions of the mad scientist, frustrated monster, and loyal assistant to the originals, and I suspect many other fans do too.  

What I've Seen

The Producers (1967)

The Twelve Chairs (1970)

Blazing Saddles (1974)

Young Frankenstein (1974)

Silent Movie (1976)

High Anxiety (1977)

History of the World, Part I (1981)

Spaceballs (1987)

Life Stinks (1991)

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

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Checking In to "Hazbin Hotel"

I've thought long and hard about how to describe the adult animated series, "Hazbin Hotel."  I'm going to go with a dark Disney musical that takes place in Hell, where most of the heroes are demonic furries, and everyone curses a lot.  The art style is very mid-2000s Cartoon Network, crossed with Tim Burton-y aesthetics.  The characters wear lots of suits with bowties.  Lots of stripes.  Lots of gigantic eyes.  

Finding the origins of the show led me down several intriguing internet rabbit holes, to "viral creator" Vivienne Medrano, aka Vivziepop.  She's a popular independent animator who built up a following through Youtube videos and webcomics, and managed to crowdfund the pilot for "Hazbin Hotel," which she posted to her Youtube Channel in 2019.  At the time of writing, it has 100 million views and a passel of rabid fans, so it's no wonder A24 took notice.  Five years later, the first season was released on Amazon Prime.  And it's fascinating stuff.

Charlie Morninstar (Erika Henningsen) is the bubbly, do-gooder princess of Hell.  As a naive nepo-baby, she wants to help the denizens of Hell with her latest project, the Hazbin Hotel - intended to redeem the damned and help them ascend to Heaven.  Charlie has the support of her girlfriend Vaggie (Stephanie Beatriz), a very untrustworthy Overlord of Hell named Alastor the Radio Demon (Amir Talai), and his minions Husk (Keith David) and Niffty (Kimiko Glenn), who work as hotel staff.  They start out with two guests - sex worker Angel Dust (Blake Roman) and slithery Sir Pentious (Alex Brightman).  Unfortunately, Heaven hasn't signed off on this idea.  They only seem interested in sending down stabby Exorcists every year to murder Hell's inhabitants (yes, you can die again in Hell) as population control.

"Hazbin" is initially a very tough watch.  There are a ton of characters to introduce, complicated worldbuilding to explain, and lots of different arcs and mysteries to set up.  And frankly, it does this pretty badly.  The pace moves way too fast and I frequently felt like I was missing information.  The chaotic first episode also does that thing that all adult animated series seem to feel obligated to do, which is to pile on the adult content in the first episode to make it very obvious that children should steer clear.  The overkill is not pleasant, and I nearly jumped ship after the premiere.  I think that it's helpful to watch the original "Hazbin Hotel" pilot on Youtube before the rest of the series, because it handles some of the introductions better.  There are also "Hazbin" comics and music videos, which provide a few more answers and bits of context.

I didn't give up after the first episode, however, because the show does a couple of things very well.  The first are the musical numbers.  We get two in each episode, infectious Broadway style songs written and composed by Andrew Underberg and Sam Haft, and sung by stage vets who know what they're doing.  I was not enjoying the exorcist leader Adam (Brightman) until one of his rants turned into a fantastic villain song, "Hell is Forever."  Or there's the villain song that gets taken over by a different villain, "Stayed Gone."  And when Charlie's dad Lucifer (Jeremy Jordan) shows up, of course he gets a number, "Hell's Greatest Dad."  I think Angel's traumatic "Poison" is probably my favorite though, along with the more cheerful "Loser, Baby" duet that gives Keith David a chance to shine.   

 

Also, once things settle down a little, the lead characters are an appealing bunch - Alastor's my favorite for his old-timey radio announcer voice and serial killer vibes.  They're very LGBT friendly, with a lesbian couple front and center, plus others who are genderfluid and/or queer-coded.  There are definitely a few cross-species romances going on.  When you get past all the vulgarities and debauchery, there's a lot of heartfelt talk of emotions and friendship and never giving up in the face of adversity.  A whole episode is devoted to Charlie reconnecting to her dad in a terribly wholesome way.  The darkest material - and the show does get dark - is handled with surprising sensitivity and care.  

So, there's a lot less parody of Disney musicals than I expected, and a lot more of, well, actually sticking to formula and being a Disney musical.  "Hazbin Hotel" talks dirty, but it's got so much earnest theater kid energy, it's no wonder that its audience skews young and obsessive.  However, there's plenty of room for improvement.  A few characters are so over-designed it hurts to look at them.  And the writer's room desperately needs reinforcements.  And it really should not have been so difficult to find the prequel comics that explain how Angel met Charlie.

It's going to be a long wait, but I look forward to season two.

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"The Taste of Things" and "Perfect Days"

I've been slacking when it comes to foreign films from last year.  Let's check two more off the list. 

Foodie film fans rejoice, for another great title in this genre has arrived.  "The Taste of Things" is a French language film set in the 1880s, about the gourmand Dodin Bouffant (Benoit Magimel), and his love for his cook and partner in fine dining, Eugenie (Juliette Binoche).  Directed by the great Tran Ahn Hung, the film features several long, decadent scenes of food being prepared to perfection, served, and consumed.  It's absolutely mesmerizing to watch so much care and dedication being put toward the art of cookery, and using preparation methods from a century ago, no less.  If the entire film had never left the kitchen, I would have been perfectly satisfied.

However, the film does leave the kitchen, and eventually reveals itself to be about a long simmering romance between Dodin and Eugenie, neither of them young anymore, and both getting wistful about what the future holds.  Dodin makes his feelings plain, but Eugenie refuses to marry him.  There are several subplots, including plans for a dinner for a visiting prince, Eugenie wishing to take on a girl named Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire) as an apprentice cook, and Eugenie suffering from an unknown illness.  However, I found myself impatient with anything that deviated too far away from the cooking, with all of its beautifully captured sensory pleasures.  The characters are at their best when they're at their most passionate, usually about food, but sometimes about each other.  

Unfortunately, the romance wasn't to my taste, being very French and very melodramatic.  Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel are very winning, however, playing relatively simple, appealing roles that make good use of their larger-than-life movie star charms.  The original French title of the film is "The Passion of Dodin Bouffant," which I feel is more appropriate than "The Taste of Things," because Dodin is who emerges as the main character after all is said and done.  I felt a little cheated that most of Juliette Binoche's screen time was in the first act, but it all works out in the end.  As with all films of this kind, it's best not to watch it on an empty stomach.  

On to "Perfect Days," which is a lovely, unhurried sort of slice-of-life film.  Directed by German director Wim Wenders, but taking place entirely in Tokyo, we follow the daily life of a middle-aged custodian named Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), who spends his days cleaning public toilets.  Hirayama is dedicated and happy in his work, despite how his position is perceived.  We meet several of the people in his life - a flighty co-worker, Takashi (Tokio Emoto), Hirayama's young niece, Niko (Arisa Nakano), and the owner (Sayuri Ishikawa) of a restaurant that Hirayama often frequents.  We also learn the pattern of Hirayama's life and all the little pleasures that he enjoys - listening to cassette tapes of American oldies, photographing and taking care of trees, and reading books every night.  The title comes from Lou Reed's "Perfect Day," which features prominently on the soundtrack.

According to interviews, Wenders was originally invited to Japan to make a documentary about Tokyo's public toilet initiatives.  He ended up making something like a modern day Ozu film, creating a leisurely portrait of an ordinary man who goes about his usual routine of work and hobbies, and not much really happens.  However, each new encounter and each new incident tells us so much about Hirayama.  What he pays attention to and what he cares about all help to create an irresistible private world of quiet, simple, beautiful moments.  His arc in the film is subtle, but it's there.  Koji Yakusho, who picked up a Best Actor award from Cannes for his performance, is gently heartbreaking as he's forced to confront specters of the past and future.  Without ever saying much, we come to learn exactly what kind of a person he is, and by the end of the film it's certain that whatever life throws at Hirayama , he'll be just fine.    

Wim Wenders is one of those filmmakers who hasn't made a masterpiece in a while, and it's so heartening to discover that he's still capable of knocking one out of the park.  

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My Top Ten Animated "X-men" Episodes

With the release of "X-men '97" I figured it was a good time to revisit the '90s X-men cartoons that I watched as a youngster.  It has been a very long time since I've seen any of the episodes, but I have watched the first four seasons (we don't talk about season five) multiple times, so I remember it better than the more recent series like "Wolverine and the X-men," which I only watched through once.

Here we go.  The episodes below are unranked and ordered by airdate:

"Night of the Sentinels" - The original two parter that kicked off "X-men: The Animated Series" sees Jubilee join the X-men and the first clashes between the X-men and the Sentinels.  It was the Sentinels that first caught my attention, these looming bad robots who were allowed to roam the streets, snatching up unsuspecting mutants like fairy tale giants.  "X-men" also made a show of killing off a good guy straight away, to set expectations that they were different from other kids' action cartoons.  Of course, nobody stays dead in the "X-men" universe.

"Slave Island" - The Genosha episode.  I'm kind of impressed that they set an entire episode of a kids' cartoon in a surprise forced labor camp.  Well, so did "Batman: The Animated Series" in the same year, come to think of it.  Anyway, I think this episode established Gambit as my favorite character, the guy who couldn't be trusted but always came through in the end.  For a little while, he was allowed to be much more morally gray than most characters we saw in similar cartoons, but more on that later.  

"The Cure" - Rogue was also one of my favorite characters in the show, because she got the short end of the stick when it came to mutant powers, and thus was the protagonist of several angsty stories about self-acceptance.  When a cure for being a mutant is announced, of course she's  the one that takes an interest, and of course it turns out to be a villainous scheme.  However, I like that she offers a different point of view.  This is also the episode that introduces Angel, soon to become the villain Archangel. 

"Days of Future Past" - The big two-parter where we learn about a post-apocalyptic future from a time traveler named Bishop.  This is "Terminator" lite, of course, but I'm still impressed that the show's creators managed to adapt something this dystopian for the Saturday morning crowd.    This is also where a lot of the season's unusual (for its time) degree of serialization pays off - we finally lay the concerns about Gambit to rest, and Mystique and Apocalypse's evil plot reaches its final stages.  

"Till Death Do Us Part" - Season two starts off with a bang, putting a resurrected, brainwashed Morph back into the mix to stir up trouble.  Also, Scott and Jean tie the knot (the first time), and we get the first showdowns with this season's big bads - Mister Sinister and the Friends of Humanity anti-mutant hate group.  Wolverine has to take the lead to save the day, but this is a great ensemble story that gives every major character some time in the spotlight.  It's really not a good idea to tick off Cyclops.      

"A Rogue's Tale" - I think this is my favorite episode of "X-men: The Animated Series."  Rogue's visions of a furious Ms. Marvel are an interesting mystery, and the answer, revealing that Rogue's got some seriously gnarly skeletons in her amnesia closet, is awesome.  In the end, the situation is completely screwed up and there's nothing that Rogue can really do to fix things.  Part of me is still a little nervous about the live action Ms. Marvel everytime I see her, because I know what's coming.  

"Mojovision" - One of the weirdest corners of the Marvel universe that ended up in the show was the Mojoverse, ruled over by a disgusting alien mastermind who is essentially a parody of a seedy television network executive and presenter.  The X-men are kidnapped, transported to another dimension, and forced to star in Mojo's programming slate.  There's also a subplot about Professor X's continuing adventures in the Savage lands, but it was nowhere near as much fun as the interdimensional TV. 

"The Phoenix Saga, Part V: Child Of Light" and "The Dark Phoenix, Part IV: The Fate of the Phoenix" - I never much liked the Phoenix stories, which took up the majority of the third season.  Frankly, there was too much emphasis on all of these weird off-planet characters, and Jean always felt like too much of a McGuffin without enough real agency.  However, each of these arcs at least ended in a suitably epic way, (though Jean's big sacrifice in "The Phoenix Saga, Part V" is negated pretty much immediately).  

"Nightcrawler" - Finally, the Nightcrawler character was the show's opportunity to talk about religion, very carefully and very gently.  His appearances were easily my favorite part of the fourth season, and I wish that we'd gotten to see more of him.  HIs debut episode, however, does feature one of the most shamelessly contrived cliffhangers I have ever seen in any medium.  The '90s "X-men" really was a soap opera for kids, and that's why we all loved it.

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"Mr. & Mrs. Smith" Are a Match

Donald Glover and Francesca Sloane are behind the new "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," which is loosely based on the 2005 action film about a pair of married spies.  Aside from the premise, they don't have much in common.  Glover and Maya Erskine play "John Smith" and "Jane Smith," who are recruited and paired up together by a mysterious "Company," given a gorgeous apartment in New York to cohabitate in, and sent on high risk missions that often involve killing people.  But because this is written by the people behind "Atlanta," the relationship between John and Jane is a much more nuanced and difficult thing than we usually see in these kinds of genre stories.  

Through eight episodes, we watch John and Jane meet, get comfortable with each other, fall in love, and then run into some typical relationship issues.    There's equal narrative weight placed on what's going on in their private and work lives, and the two definitely influence each other.  A big reason John and Jane's relationship is so intense is because they can't really get away from each other.  If you've seen the film "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," you'll know that the pair eventually see a couples therapist (Sarah Paulson), and end up at each other's throats.  Unlike the film, however, reconciliation is not guaranteed.  John and Jane's problems aren't something that has an easy fix, and the odds are stacked very high against them by the end of the series.  

I think it's fair to characterize the show as a dramedy, but not a comedy.  Like "Barry" and "Succession," the show is funny because the characters are funny and their lives are absurd, not because they're delivering jokes.  Donald Glover and Maya Erskine are well matched and have good chemistry with each other.  They convinced me that John and Jane were people who I could meet in real life, with a connection that felt genuine.   The series largely behaves like a big budget action franchise, and a lot of its effectiveness comes from putting the beautifully shot action sequences and exotic locales in stark contrast with these very grounded, sometimes humdrum personal interactions that our leads are carrying on with at the same time.  The pacing is slower than you might expect, and I was constantly caught off guard by how willing the show was to pause the action for little everyday annoyances like uncharged cell-phones, or just to let the conversations wander off into odd tangents.  

"Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is also a genre parody to a certain extent, with some self-aware skewering of common action tropes.  For instance, a thrilling foot chase through a European city - the kind we've seen so often in James Bond and Jason Bourne films - becomes a lot more difficult when the Smiths have to bring along an elderly man that they're trying to keep safe.  Or there's the difficulty of trying to seduce a target who clearly isn't in his right mind, leading to a situation that ought to feel sexy just getting more and more awkward.  The first episode is mostly the Smiths ambling around New York City, bored out of their minds, and waiting for something exciting to happen, which is what most of being a spy is actually about.  Some viewers will find the approach refreshing.  Some will not have the patience for it.

I like the show's worldbuilding, where we learn a little more about the Company and how they operate in each episode, slowly turning up the tension and the level of danger.  The guest cast is so good that I'm not willing to name most of the actors, since it's so fun to see each new face pop up as the target or victim of the week.  At the same time, the show goes where the romances in these kinds of shows never go, but where we know they realistically would.  John and Jane talk about the future, about their parents, and about having kids.  They find major incompatibilities in their outlooks on life that make a future together tough.  Soon competing goals and outside pressures push things to the brink.           

"Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is a project I've been hearing about for a while, as Donald Glover was originally supposed to be starring with Phoebe Waller-Bridge.  I suspect their sensibilities clashed, and Glover won out and stuck around, while Waller-Bridge exited.  I'm a little curious what that version of the show would have looked like, but I'm perfectly happy with the show we got.  

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"30 Rock" Years Four and Five

Spoilers ahead, folks.

I think my favorite season of "30 Rock" so far has been the fourth one, with year five pretty close behind.  The creators have let the status quo change, with Jack resolving a major love triangle with Julianne Moore and Elizabeth Banks, emerging a family man in the fifth season.  Meanwhile Liz escapes what seems like an inevitable future with Michael Sheen (playing Wesley Snipes?) and snags Matt Damon in a pilot uniform - at least for a while.  There's a new TGS cast member, Danny (Cheyenne Jackson), a lot of hints dropped that Kenneth is at least 200 years old, and NBC was bought by Comcast, I mean Kabletown.

However, the character I've warmed up to the most has been Tracy.  Dissatisfied with being the resident hedonist and producer of lowbrow comedy, he goes on a quest to become an EGOT winner and girl dad.  It's genuinely fun to see this play out, and Tracy's material is consistently among the funniest stuff that the writers come up with week to week.  Jordan is a fantastic performer, and is allowed to take some bigger swings.  And I like Sherri Shepherd as his wife Angie, who gets more screentime (and I confess I didn't know Sherri Shepherd was an actress before this).  Grizz and Dot Com also being secretly erudite never gets old.  Tracy Morgan missed a good chunk of the fifth season due to health issues, which the writers turned into a Dave Chapelle-esque sojourn to Africa.  

There were more format breaking episodes, like the live show, the episode of Angie's "Queen of Jordan" reality show, and a hundredth episode two-parter.  However, I've always been a sucker for serialization, and Jack tackling monogamy and fatherhood is what has gotten me the most engaged with "30 Rock" to date.  Avery (Banks) is such a great character, and I'm delighted that she's become a recurring player.  I can only hope that Liz's love life undergoes something similar in future episodes - Damon's appearances are fun, but we all knew it was never going to work out.  Speaking of Damon, the caliber of talent that shows up on "30 Rock" never fails to boggle me.  At NBC, they have Paul Giamatti working as an editor, Michael Keaton as a maintenance guy, and Tom Hanks even pops up to boot Tracy from the A-list.  The mother's day episode was awash in comedic greats, from Patti LuPone to Jan Hooks.  And it's increasingly obvious that Brian WIlliams is a giant ham.   

100 episodes into the show, I feel like I've been fully won over at last, and thoroughly enjoy the "30 Rock" universe and the deep bench of minor characters its built up.  It's gotten to the point where it's genuinely nice to see Dr. Leo Spaceman (Chris Parnell), Devon Banks (Will Arnett), and Dennis Duffy (Dean Winters) pop up every now and then, where I'd initially found each of these characters annoying.  Conversely, some of the running jokes are starting to wear on me.  A few characters like Jonathan (Maulik Pancholy) and Kenneth really feel like they're in a rut.  Kenneth in particular has been getting jokes that are more absurd and extreme, and I don't think it's helping.  He got an arc in seasons four and five, where he was briefly fired from the NBC page program and had to work his way back to the status quo, but it's just made him more cartoonish - and not in a good way.  Jonathan and most of the writers are good for one-note gags, but Jonathan specifically gets the same joke every single time he appears.  Jenna is holding steady, but I do hope she gets more to do than date Will Forte in drag.

As we move into the final seasons, I expect the remaining episodes will go faster than I think they will, and not just because the final season was truncated to thirteen episodes.  I've gotten exactly what I wanted out of the show, which is the feeling of watching a solid network sitcom again, and finally getting some very old references.  Don Cheadle on a bed of rice!

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Sensing a Pattern With "Argylle"

How does Matthew Vaughn keep getting away with this?  Sure, the first two "Kingsman" films made a lot of money, but the third one tanked.  Also, they got more and more indulgent with each subsequent film, until the best thing about the last one was the nutty Rasputin dance video.  "Argylle" feels like it's continuing on the same trajectory.  Vaughn's latest twisty spy comedy is overlong, badly paced, and wastes the talents of a lot of good actors.  There are a couple of Vaughn's usual absurd action sequences in the last act, but they were too little and too late for me.

"Argylle" is built around a series of twists, and in order to discuss some of the plotting, I'm going to spoil the first one.  We open on a spy named Argylle (Henry Cavill with an unfortunate haircut) and his trusty partner Wyatt (John Cena) carrying out a secret mission.  It's soon revealed that Argylle is a fictional character, the hero of a series of spy books written by Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard).  Plagued by several phobias, Elly lives a lonely life working on her books, with only a cat named Alfie and calls to her mother Ruth (Catherine O'Hara) for companionship.  Then one day, she meets a man named Aidan (Sam Rockwell) on a train, claiming to be a real spy.  Aidan reveals that Elly's books have somehow been predicting real acts of espionage, and she needs to help him stop the evil Division and its director, Ritter (Bryan Cranston).  

The script from Jason Fuchs isn't bad and the premise of this meta-parody of a spy actioner is promising.  However, it's absolutely smothered in aggressive style and comic book bombast.  The visuals are garish, the laugh lines are so telegraphed that they rarely land, and despite the best efforts of Rockwell and Howard, I didn't care about any of the characters.  I started out wanting to root for Elly and Aidan.  You don't often see a spy movie starring someone who looks like Bryce Dallas Howard - a perfectly normal woman in her forties who isn't stick-thin or hypersexual.  And Sam Rockwell seems to be having a lot of fun with the action scenes, and especially the dance sequences.  Alas, their characters are so paper thin - and this is by design because of the demands of the plot - it is impossible to get emotionally invested in anything they are doing.

Vaughn has already announced that this is the beginning of a planned "Argylle" trilogy and connected to the "Kingsman" universe.  I'm mentioning this to emphasize how Vaughn is treating "Argylle" like a blockbuster franchise from the get-go.  The movie is stuffed with big names, including veterans from the "Kingsman" trilogy like Samuel L. Jackson and Sofia Boutella.  Dua Lipa appears in the opening action sequence.  Matthew Vaughn's cat plays Alfie.  The budget put up by Apple was apparently in the $200 million range.  Frankly, the details of the production are far more interesting than the film itself, which is pretty much repeating all of Vaughn's best tricks and worst habits from "Kingsman."  I found the overuse of CGI especially grating this time out, because many of the action scenes are so weightless and unconvincing that they might as well be animated.

Parts of the film did work for me, and I don't want to write it off completely.  Once we get through the endless rigamarole with the twists, the climaxes in the third act pay off just fine.  The action might be terrible, but it is occasionally very funny, which I appreciate.  I'm curious about what "Argylle" might have looked like if you only gave Vaughn half the budget and lopped forty minutes off the running time.   

Henry Cavill fans beware - he's really not in this movie much.  He might have more of a role in the sequels if they get made.  And considering that "Argylle" somehow got made, I can't rule that possibility out entirely.

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What's Not Getting a Review, 2024

I've always watched more media than I review, but lately I've felt like I've been skipping over an awful lot of titles, some of them pretty high profile.  For instance, I decided to put off writing anything about "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" until I could pair it with one of the recent "Godzilla" theatrical films, because I didn't have much to say about the series.  Well, it turns out that I didn't have to say much about the latest "Godzilla x Kong" either, and had to disqualify myself from writing anything about "Godzilla Minus One" (more on that below), so I scrapped the whole thing.  And that got me thinking about what my criteria have been for what media I watch gets a review and what doesn't.  

Since I don't write this blog professionally, I've always had the luxury of choosing what media I want to consume, and what I want to write about.  If a highly buzzed about title or performance turns out to be a snore, like "Immaculate" with Sydney Sweeny, I don't have to waste time thinking about it.  Conversely, if a title turns out to be something I don't feel I have the necessary resources or capability to analyze the way that it deserves, like the Lincoln assassination miniseries "Manhunt" or the second season of "The Jinx," I'm not obligated to make an attempt.  "Manhunt" is one of those cases where the show's ambition exceeds its abilities, but getting into why would involve discussions of historical accuracy and other portrayals of Lincoln and the Civil War that would require a lot of effort to articulate.  And "Manhunt" just isn't consequential enough that I feel a need to make that kind of effort for it.

I don't talk about this aspect of my blogging very often, but curation is absolutely part of what I'm doing.  I want to point the readers toward the smaller, more easily overlooked titles like "Robot Dreams" and "Molli and Max" when I can, boosting their profiles, instead of providing the millionth take on why the "Road House" remake fell flat.  I also don't like trashing films and shows just for the sake of trashing them.  I want this blog to reflect my actual tastes, even if I'm trying to stay relevant to the wider cultural conversation.  If I'm obsessing over "Hazbin Hotel" as much as I'm obsessing over the far more popular "Shogun" series, the writing should reflect that.  Not every piece of media needs a review, but sometimes I'll write an entry just to highlight something I feel needs more attention or acknowledgement. I wrote a "Bluey" entry a while ago that was less of a review and more of an analysis piece, trying to explain what it was doing so much better than other children's media.      

Then again, sometimes I don't write a review for something because I have failed to live up to my own standards.  Hulu's "A Murder at the End of the World" is a miniseries I dutifully watched from start to finish, but I found it tremendously difficult to pay attention to.  In the end, I'd completely been unable to form any sort of reaction to it at all except for a mild dislike.  Any review I'd have tried to write would have been mostly a recap of events, with some discussion of Emma Corrin and Brit Marling's hairstyles, and kvetching about post-apocalyptic media trends.  And frankly, that's not uncommon with me. 

"Godzilla Minus One" isn't getting a review because I was completely overhyped for it, which threw my expectations totally out of whack.  And I realized about halfway through that the movie was hitting a major pet peeve of mine - Asian melodrama histrionics - that completely took me out of the story.  I was never going to be able to give the movie a fair shake, even though I ultimately ended up liking it.  I would have spent half of my word count on qualifiers and self-interrogations, which I prefer to keep contained in specific blog entries like this one. 

This doesn't just happen with films I dislike, but excellent ones like "20 Days in Mariupol."  With the good films, however, I'm usually able to find other avenues to talk about them eventually, like with top ten lists or other kinds of features.  On the other hand, because I often watch things so much later than everyone else, it's not wise to assume I dislike a title just because it's never come up on this blog.

And I guess that's the takeaway.  There's a lot of media out there.  I can't watch everything, and I can't review everything, but here are some takes on the bigger titles, and some recommendations for smaller ones.  And what's here is more important than what isn't.

Happy watching.     

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The 2024 Update Post

I haven't done an update post, where I write updates for a bunch of previous posts all at once, since 2021!  We're definitely due for one of these.  If you're unfamiliar with this feature, I address multiple posts  in the same entry because I don't have enough to say about each of them individually to warrant separate entries for each one.

Are the Midbudget Films Coming Back?  - A little over a year ago, before all the summer tentpoles started crashing, I wrote up a post on the modest success of films like "M3GAN," "Cocaine Bear," and "Knock at the Cabin," speculating that the studios might be turning their attention back toward the midbudget film.  And so far, so good.   There's been a lot of talk of "improving ROI" lately, with the studios getting more budget conscious.  The box office has been pretty quiet over the past few months, but there has been a steady stream of smaller films like "Anyone But You" and "Bob Marley: One Love" making money at the box office.  The streamers also noticed that titles that get theatrical releases first tend to do better on their services, so we're seeing more theatrical premieres for small films.   

A Short Ramble About Twitter  - Nothing has changed.  Elon Musk has essentially turned the platform into an alt-right coddling cesspool and hasn't suffered any real consequences for it.  I mean, it's now worth a lot less than Musk paid for it, advertisers fled, lawsuits are ongoing, and the user experience is awful, but Twitter is still chugging along with plenty of activity.  Alternatives like Mastodon and Threads never got off the ground.  Bluesky, which I've joined, would be a decent alternative if more people were using it.  However, there hasn't been enough momentum to get people to switch.  There are too many users whose livelihoods are still tied to Twitter.  The one positive development is Twitter's implementation of the "Community Notes" feature to combat misinformation.  This has led to some hilarious examples of Twitter users being called out for their nonsense, including Elon Musk himself.  No, I'm never going to call it "X."  That is a terrible name.

Regime Change at Warner Bros. - Well, everybody hates David Zaslav now.  Despite his cost-cutting making Max profitable, and a couple of wins at the box office, the WBD stock has been tanking and there is a ton of terrible press still floating around because of the decision to write "Coyote vs. Acme" and several other finished projects off for tax purposes.  Despite massive outcry and promises to consider selling "Coyote vs. Acme" to another distributor, it looks like we're never going to see Wile E. Coyote have his day in court.  The wildest part of this story is that James Gunn, currently running the new cinematic DC universe for WB, is a producer and writer on the film.  If WB can do this to him, they can do this to anybody.   

Investor Calls, Fandomes, and Tudums  - Thanks to the 2023 strikes, we haven't had a decent fan event in a while, and I've definitely been feeling it.  The level of hype for everything in the pipeline feels significantly reduced, especially the superhero media that was such a major driver of the box office for so long.  Part of the reason is that the studios don't have as much to promote, with so many projects delayed and left in limbo.  Another is that the superhero bubble burst, and everyone is trying to proceed more carefully.  However, it still strikes me as a little sad that everyone had to find out the new cast of the "Fantastic Four" from a tweet instead of a proper event.  I'm looking forward to the next batch of summer conventions.    

Collapsing the Window  - We're still seeing very short theatrical windows for films that don't perform well, such as "Lisa Frankenstein" and "The Book of Clarence," which both hit VOD less than a month after they were released in theaters.  Bigger titles like "The Marvels" show up after nine or ten weeks.  However, there are always exceptions.  I skipped seeing "The Boy and the Heron" and "Godzilla Minus One" in theaters over the holidays, and I regret it now. 

Finishing "The Nevers" - Finally, it's been over a year since the last six episodes of "The Nevers" dropped on Tubi, and they're still not available for purchase, can't be viewed on any other platform, and you still can't watch them on demand.  Tubi is still only airing them on a linear channel at seemingly random times.  Good grief.   

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Eyeing "The New Look"

I don't know anything about fashion.  When faced with the prospect of watching ten hours on the lives of Christian Dior and Coco Chanel reviving the French fashion industry in the aftermath of WWII, I was initially skeptical.  But how could I say no when Dior is played by Ben Mendelsohn, Chanel is played by Juliette Binoche, and the supporting cast includes John Malkovitch, Claes Bang, Emily Mortimer, Maisie Williams, and Glenn Close? 

"The New Look" is an oddly constructed show.  Created by Todd Kesslar, it covers about four years, from the ongoing Nazi occupation of France in 1943 to Dior's breakthrough in 1947.  Dior and Chanel have equal screen time, though their paths never intersect and their stories have no characters in common.  Dior initially works for the fashion house of Lucien DeLong (Malkovitch), designing dresses for the Nazis simply to survive, while his younger sister Catherine (Willaims) delivers messages for the Resistance.  Chanel, already a famous fashion designer and in her sixties, is much bolder in her collaboration with the Nazis, having fallen under the sway of the German intelligence agent, Spatz (Bang).  Faced with losing her business, she uses the Nazi connections to protect her financial interests.    

I'm a little curious how each half of "The New Look" would have played out if it were a totally independent project from the other, but pairing them worked for me.  Dior's narrative is fairly slow and sedate, especially in the early going, so it's nice to have Chanel's misadventures as a spy injecting some energy.  Conversely, in the later episodes Chanel's post-war miseries go well with Dior's struggles to start his own fashion house and finish a major collection.  Between the two of them, we have the difficult rise of one icon and the tragic fall of the other, and all the usual elements of traditional biopics - frustrating family relationships, bad romances, brief encounters with other famous faces, and some sketchy accent work.  With such a sprawling timeline, the focus shifts several times to different characters and situations, some more interesting than others.  The first half of "The New Look" actually works pretty well as a WWII narrative, sometimes better than Apple's other big spring offering, "Masters of the Air."

This is all due to the performances.  I'll happily watch Mendelsohn in anything, and he kept Dior watchable despite him not being a particularly interesting person.  The show does its homework and gives us plenty of opportunity to appreciate Dior's beautiful dresses, but "The New Look" never really feels like it's about the fashion.  It spends far more time on Dior's family, friendships, spirituality, and endless self-doubt.  This material is fine, but usually ends up being totally dwarfed by the Coco Chanel storylines.  Juliette Binoche is the main reason to watch the show.  Her version of Chanel - aging, embittered, narcissistic, and often doing terrible things - is absolutely fascinating.  She's totally in the wrong and unlikeable most of the time, and resorts to underhanded tactics frequently.  However, she is so dogged in her pursuit of what she feels that she's owed, you have to respect her.  If she's going down, she's going down fighting until the end.  I hope that "The New Look" gets a second season so we can watch her claw her way back to the top again in the 1950s.   

For the most part the series is well put together, but I'm not a fan of some of the little conceits, like ending each episode with modern covers of WWII era songs, and sometimes with confusing onscreen text.  There's also been criticism about the show being in English when the characters are almost all French, and the actors seem to feel obligated to speak with French accents.  However, when the series works, it works.  The narratives may sometimes feel scattershot, but this results in some fantastic scenes, like Chanel's stinginess catching up to her at a crucial moment, or a missed reunion at a train station.  There's room for an unexpectedly touching performance from Emily Mortimer, and for Malkovitch to Malkovitch as only he can.

"The New Look" will not be to everyone's taste, of course, but as far as prestige TV goes, this was a nice surprise that exceeded my expectations for it.

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Shelving the Top Ten Project

I started my Top Ten Project way back in 2016 with my top ten list for 2008.  And slowly, bit by bit, I've hit my goal of having seen at least fifty films for each calendar year I write a list for, and worked my way back to the early days of filmmaking, through over six decades of films.  My original goal was to reach 1939, considered the greatest year in cinema back when I was a kid in the '80s, and I've just about done it.  The next top ten post for 1939 will be my last for a while.  I have the resources to keep going, through the 1930s at least, but I want a break and I don't really feel a need to go too much further back than this.  Silent cinema has its charms, but is not something I enjoy in large doses.   

Frankly, watching films from the '40s became more and more of a chore as time went on, especially getting through the WWII years.  I found myself watching certain films at 2x speeds and keeping an eye on running times.  It's also gotten tougher to choose films I want to watch, because there are fewer resources and less interest overall in films from before the 1950s.  Pickings are also slimmer.  The film industries in many countries were practically nonexistent or deeply impacted by WWII.  Many obscurities just don't exist anymore.  I found myself choosing too many titles based on stars and directors instead of notability or awards attention.  The box office winners of the '40s feel especially disconnected from present day critical evaluations, with many well-regarded classics having not been popular at the time of release at all.  The films that did make money were often very bland crowd-pleasers.     

As I've expressed many times before, the whole point of the project was to get more context for the classics, and often the context has boiled down to Hollywood and the American public's tastes having changed drastically over the years, which is perfectly understandable.  As much as I've liked familiarizing myself with different actors and directors, and occasionally turning up some real gems among lesser known films, I've sat through far more that I've failed to connect with at all.  I'm mystified by what people saw in leading men like Van Johnson and Ronald Reagan.  The outsized nationalistic fervor of the post-war period is often uncomfortable, and a pervasive strain of Civil War apologia in films like "Santa Fe Trail" is even worse.  I've nurtured a special dislike for biopics of band leaders and sports heroes, often bearing no resemblance to real events.  It's clear what a lot of '50s films were reacting against.

I like the comedies, however, and I like having so many musicals with talented singers and dancers who really know what they're doing.  I finally understand the appeal of Jack Benny and Bob Hope and young Mickey Rooney.  Lucille Ball unexpectedly emerged as a new favorite for her appearances in some pretty serious films, along with Ida Lupino, who I was only familiar with as a director.  As long as you don't want too much psychological complexity or challenges to the prevailing worldview, there are plenty of very entertaining movies.  The '40s did wholesome entertainment like no other era, with the Hollywood studios at the height of their powers.  However, by the time I reached my fifty film goal for some of these years, I definitely felt like I was scraping the bottom of the barrel.       

For a while I was looking forward to getting to the pre-war Hollywood films of the '30s and especially to the pre-Code stuff, but I'm putting off continuing for a bit.  I need to get my head out of the past for a while.  Instead, I've amassed a pretty good list of more recent titles I want to spend some time exploring first.  So, for now, we've reached the end of regular "Top Ten" posts.  I don't really have a replacement series in mind at this point, so we'll just play it by ear.

Happy watching.       

 

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Memorializing the "Masters of the Air"

It's spring, which means it's time for prestige miniseries, and if there's anything that counts as a prestige miniseries, it's the WWII shows executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.  "Band of Brothers" has been required viewing if you have any kind of interest in WWII, and its spiritual successor "Masters of the Air" has been in the works for over a decade.  An extremely qualified cast and crew have been assembled to tell the story of the "Bloody Hundredth," a US Air Force Unit stationed in the UK that flew missions over Europe and Africa in WWII. 

I want to tell you that "Masters of the Air" is worth the wait, and that the series lives up to "Band of Brothers" and "The Pacific."  Clearly no expense was spared in putting together the production, and everyone involved delivers very professional, committed, and well-researched work.  However, the show doesn't strike me as anything special.  Some episodes are more exciting than others, such as the third installment that depicts the Schweinfurt-Regensburg bombing mission.  We follow the combatants through planning, missions, internments, escapes, and plenty more.  However, it's only the very, very end of the finale, where a montage of stills explain what happened to each of the major characters after the war, that actually hit me emotionally.  

This is not the fault of the cast.  The three major POV characters we follow through the series are Maj. "Buck" Clevan (Austin Butler), Maj. "Bucky" Egan (Callum Turner) and Lt. Harry Crosby (Anthony Boyle).  There are several notable guest stars, including Barry Keoghan, Bel Powley, and Ncuti Gatwa.  I don't think it's the fault of the writing.  Co-creator John Orloff wrote most of the episodes, and he worked on the original "Band of Brothers."  His instincts are old fashioned, including having several episodes begin with narration reminiscing about aspects of the war experience, but the storytelling is sound.  I appreciate the inclusion of the Tuskegee Airmen in the later episodes and the many nods to support staff, maintenance crews, and other participants in the war.  

There's been some grumbling about the effects work, which I agree isn't the best.  There's a ton of CGI in the flight scenes, and deployed in such a way that elements like the aircraft, flak, and smoke plumes look far too perfect and unreal.  However, the larger problem is really that the whole show has a certain attitude of uncomfortable hagiography to it.  There are too many rough edges that have been sanded off and too many compromises made with the facts in order to show us the kind of heroic narrative we're expecting.  "Masters of the Air" feels like the show that "Band of Brothers" managed to avoid being - too idealized, too self-mythologizing, and too beholden to notions about what WWII media is supposed to look like.  There's a two and a half minute opening credits sequence that is so self-important and so reverent, it borders on parody. 

Of course, this is the point.  There are plenty of similar WWII movies with played-up patriotic derring-do that are classics.  However, those movies functioned very differently from "Masters of the Air."  The big issue is that  we don't get to know any of the characters individually, well enough to care about them.  "Band of Brothers" got away with it, because Easy Company being on the ground in such terrible conditions made the group as a whole very sympathetic and compelling to follow.  With "Masters of the Air," the only character I really got attached to was our narrator, Harry Crosby, who goes from hapless navigator to stressed out strategist as the show rolls on, and he's rarely in the thick of the action.  Buck and Bucky just aren't very interesting, despite their bravery, and the others are difficult to keep track of or are gone too soon.  

I respect the amount of effort that went into this project, and I suspect that people who really love WWII media, especially the aircraft geeks, will have a great time with "Masters of the Air."  I, however, had a better time with the accompanying documentary about the real Bloody Hundredth, which I happily recommend to anyone curious about the series.         

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