Dreaming "Robot Dreams"

Spanish director Pablo Berger has made his first animated film, and it's a wonderful thing to experience.  Based on a graphic novel by Sara Varon, "Robot Dreams" takes place in New York in the 1980s, except it's a New York populated by anthropomorphic animals.  Rabbits go boating.  Ducks fly kites.  Octopi play the drums, naturally.  Also, there are robots.  Also, there's no dialogue, but lots of sound effects and plenty of music.  

Our main characters are Dog and his friend Robot, who he orders and constructs in order to have a companion in the lonely city.  Dog has to help Robot get adjusted to life as a New Yorker, and takes care of him - teaching him skills, taking him on outings, and keeping him safe.  The two form a lovely friendship together.  Unfortunately, a trip to the beach goes terribly awry and the two are separated.  From there, the story becomes a series of misadventures, existential musings, and bittersweet transformations, as Dog and Robot try to find a way to reunite.

"Robot Dreams" is rendered in the kind of very simple, graphic style, with pleasantly rounded shapes and distinct linework that you usually see in cartoons for young children.  The whole vibe is similar to Richard Scarry's Busytown books, and the PBS "Arthur" cartoon.  However, the world of "Robot Dreams" is crueler and harsher than it seems at first.  The misfortunes that befall Dog and Robot are absolutely gutting to watch.  Robot in particular, is subjected to some truly awful treatment because most of the other characters in this universe don't seem to consider him a sentient being.  I have all kinds of questions about the status and personhood of robots in this society.  Is Dog simply imagining that Robot is alive?  Are there some metaphysical "Toy Story" rules in play? - Robot does bear a vague resemblance to the Brave Little Toaster -  but the film isn't interested in the larger questions.  It's about Dog and Robot.  And it's about friendship and loneliness and fleeting connections and heartbreak and letting go.    

 

The lack of dialogue makes the film much more absorbing than I expected.  The characters are very expressive, full of joy and worry and sadness.  When Dog is first separated from Robot, his panic is palpable through the screen.  Robot, the more innocent of the pair, never seems distressed until the situation is truly dire.  The animation - old fashioned, traditional 2D for the most part - is excellent.  The sound design and soundtrack do a lot of the heavy lifting, including the crucial use of Earth, Wind, and Fire's "September."  Pablo Berger has some experience with this kind of dialogue-free storytelling.  The last film of his I watched was his silent, black and white reworking of Snow White, "Blancanieves."  It's a similarly lovely film that I hope gets more attention because of "Robot Dreams."  

And I'm sure that "Robot Dreams" is going to get plenty of attention when it becomes more widely seen.  It's very close to a totally universal film, watchable by anyone but the very smallest children who might find parts of the story too upsetting.  Kids will be able to follow the storybook visual language without any trouble and enjoy the appealing characters.  There's a scene where a snowman takes Dog bowling.  There's a scene where Robot helps a baby bird learn to fly.  At the same time, "Robot Dreams" feels like a film about grown-ups, exploring some difficult emotional territory, and certain situations that could be allegories for more serious issues.  

I also appreciate "Robot Dreams" for reminding me to be a little more adventurous in my animation viewing choices.  We're getting so many good animated films now from all corners of the globe, I've stopped feeling like I have to keep championing them, and defending the art form.  "Robot Dreams" is a Spanish production, despite taking place in New York, and only had very limited distribution.  I admit I would have passed this movie by if it hadn't been nominated for an Oscar.  It's been an awfully long time since "Blancanieves," and I didn't recognize that Berger was the director at first.  

2023 really was a very good year for animation, and "Robot Dreams" was one of the highlights.

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My Favorite Terrence Malick Film

Well, here I go again, picking the film from a director's body of work that feels like their most commercial output, and the least representative of their style.  Then again, Terrence Malick isn't a director whose films I've particularly enjoyed over the years.  I respect his deeply spiritual writing and penchant for spectacular cinematography, but without strong characters or story, my attention tends to drift.  So is it any wonder that the Malick film I'm on the best terms with has his most straightforward storytelling?

There are many movies about couples on the run, but Holly and Kit are an unusually memorable pair.  Played by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek at the start of their careers, they're a young reprobate and a sheltered teenage girl, who fall in love and quickly decide that they'll do anything to be together, including kill people.  "Badlands" is loosely based on the crime spree of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, but it's better understood as one of the many similar crime films that was made after the runaway success of "Bonnie and Clyde."  Instead of the Depression Era, "Badlands" takes place in the 1950s, mostly in the upper midwestern states.  It's less interested in the crimes than in the rebellion, following the young miscreants into the South Dakota badlands, where they evade the law and play at living in a state of nature. 

"Badlands" was Malick's first film, an independent feature made with very little money.  The production was notoriously troubled, badly managed to the point where most of the crew quit before the film was completed.  Three different cinematographers ended up being credited.  However, "Badlands" was where Malick established several of the working relationships that would carry through his entire career.  And the end result shows that he already had a very clear and specific approach to filmmaking.  Told from Holly's perspective, "Badlands" has a dreamlike, poetic quality that would recur in Malick's films again and again.  However, "Badlands" is unique in the way that it captures Holly's very specific, immature voice and outlook.  She falls for Kit because she thinks he looks like James Dean, and he's happy to indulge her adolescent fantasy of escaping from her stifling small town existence.  Her narration is full of little mundanities and romantic aspirations.  And every time he kills someone, she makes excuses and looks the other way.    

   

Of course, Kit isn't James Dean but a troubled young man with a taste for thoughtless violence.  He's so detached when shooting people, it's as if he's playacting a part, and is slow to appreciate the consequences of his actions.  At times he seems younger than Holly, despite being ten years her senior. His initial scenes with her are genuinely charming, and we don't question for a second why she wants him.  He's also a creature of youthful fantasy, nonchalantly claiming that he always wanted to be a criminal, but displaying no understanding of what that means.  Kit truly believes that he can outrun and outgun anything that stands in his path, self-mythologizing every step of the way.  There's a terrible poignancy to his unwavering self-confidence.  

Terence Malick retreated from the limelight after the completion of his second film, "Days of Heaven," and became something of a cult figure after he reappeared twenty years later to direct "The Thin Red Line."  His filmmaking has become more and more experimental with time, delivering staggeringly beautiful images that I wish I enjoyed more.  I've dutifully watched every single film Malick has directed, and his work is exquisite, but I rarely find it moving.  "The Tree of Life," for instance, is an intimate, personal reverie on childhood that I was entranced with one moment, and completely out of sync with the next.

And I don't know how much I would have enjoyed "Badlands" if it weren't for the work of Sheen and especially Spacek, who is one of my favorite actresses.  The leads of Malick's other films often feel like they're all interiority, so ungrounded from reality that they barely feel like people.  Kit and Holly, however, are very much beholden to the real world, and that's their ultimate tragedy.    

What I've Seen - Terrence Malick

Badlands (1973)

Days of Heaven (1978)

The Thin Red Line (1998)

The New World (2005)

The Tree of Life (2011)

To the Wonder (2012)

Knight of Cups (2015)

Voyage of Time (2016)

Song to Song (2017)

A Hidden Life (2019)

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A Riveting "Ripley"

Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley is a fascinating criminal character, who has been portrayed by Alain Delon, Matt Damon, Dennis Hopper, and John Malkovitch over the years.   The latest Ripley, Andrew Scott, might be the best one yet, though Scott is not an obvious choice for the part.  Netflix's new "Ripley" miniseries adapts "The Talented Mr. Ripley," which is about the early days of Ripley when he was just starting out with minor scams and confidence games.  Scott, who is in his forties, initially seems much too old to be playing the young Ripley.  However, he's so mesmerizing to watch that I completely forgot about his age after two episodes.  

Scott's performance gets plenty of assistance.  Written and directed by Steven Zaillian, the miniseries is immaculately constructed so that every little detail is imbued with character, and every look and glance and pause by the actors is as important as the spoken dialogue.  A significant amount or "Ripley" is in Italian, and I found it very easy to follow what was going on, even when I neglected to turn on the subtitles.  The visual storytelling is so concise and so clear, in a way that is far too rare.  I can't say enough about the stunning black and white cinematography from Robert Elswit, creating dreamlike views of Italy and private film noir purgatories.  And of course, he knows just how to focus on the little details that ratchet up the tension to dizzying heights.    

I've seen other adaptations of "The Talented Mr. Ripley," but this production feels completely unique.  Maybe it's Zaillian's takes on the characters, such as a Richard Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) and a Marge Sherwood (Elle Fanning) who feel like more substantial people with their own problems.  Maybe it's the careful attention to fashion and decor choices that make the whole experience feel so immersive.  Maybe it's having a Freddie Miles played by a nonbinary actor, Eliot Sumner.  Maybe it's the slow burn pacing that doesn't really ramp up until the third episode, but drops all these little hints and insinuations at just the right times, so the lead-up never feels boring.

But the more I think about it, the more I'm sure that it's largely due to Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley.  He's the only person onscreen for much of the running time, so we're intimately acquainted with his behaviors, his preferences, and his patterns of thought by the time his plans really start being put in motion.  We watch him struggle with the Italian language, with the multiple guises and subterfuges he has in play, and finally with the unexpected challenges of more serious criminal activity.  All his insecurities about himself are on display, and his failings are all too obvious.  This Ripley is so inexperienced that he's frequently fumbling through nervewracking situations, which is sometimes funny and sometimes incredibly tense.  Sometimes it's both.  I love that Zaillian lets many of the long, long suspense sequences play out with no dialogue, because it's unnecessary.

 

I've been watching a lot of classic film noir lately, and this version of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" is taking its cues from the best.  There's such a patience and a thoroughness to the depiction of a man that is neither patient nor thorough - at least not yet - and at times it almost feels like a critique on the work of a criminal by a more accomplished criminal.  It's a little disturbing to realize how easy it is to root for someone who is utterly without scruples or remorse, and get invested in the success of their schemes.  Of course, it's also very, very enjoyable to watch.    

There are four other Tom Ripley novels, and I very much want to see them adapted by the "Ripley" team with Scott returning.  I want to see how his performance as Tom Ripley is going to evolve over time, and where else it could go.  This is the best thing that Netflix has made in a while, and it's frustrating that it hasn't gotten nearly as much attention as it should have.  

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A Flight With "The Boy and the Heron"

It's been a decade since Hayao Miyazaki's last film, "The Wind Rises," and fifteen years since his last fantasy film.  In that time, animated films have exploded in number, with studios around the globe tuning out exceptional work.  However, nobody makes an animated film like Miyazaki, and "The Boy and the Heron" is one of his best.  After having seen the film once, I didn't enjoy it as much as I was hoping to.  However, there are enough moments of sheer wonder and brilliance that I know this is one of those films I'll be revisiting over and over again, the way I have with "Spirited Away" and my other Studio Ghibli favorites.  

"The Boy and the Heron" is reportedly Miyazaki's most autobiographical project.  It follows a boy named Mahito (Soma Santoki) in wartime Japan.  A year after his mother dies in a fire, his father (Takuya Kimura) is going to marry Mahito's aunt Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura), who lives in the countryside.  Mahito is suddenly thrust into a new environment and forced to confront his unresolved spiritual and emotional turmoil.  The impetus for his journey into the unknown is a Grey Heron (Masaki Suda), who keeps appearing to Mahito and claims his mother is alive.  The first hour of the film is fairly slow and sedate, as Mahito explores his new home.  The second half, when he goes on an adventure, and we meet characters like Kiriko the fisherwoman (Ko Shibasaki), fire manipulator Lady Himi (Aimyon), and a Wizard (Shohei Hino), is an overwhelming bombardment of fantastical creatures, places, and concepts.  It's the second half I had some trouble with, and I think I'll need a few more viewings to really get my head around it.  

This film feels in many ways like a spiritual cousin to "Spirited Away", where the rules of the fantasy world are not explained, and dream logic prevails.  Mahito travels through several different worlds, and some have suggested that they represent Miyazaki's other films, with the Wizard standing in for Miyazaki himself, or his mentor Isao Takahata.  However, there have always been recurring elements in Miyazaki films, like the appearance of cute, benign spirits.  Here, we get the Warawara, who are revealed to be people who haven't been born yet.  Lady Himi is the intrepid girl heroine, the Grey Heron is revealed to be the childish scallywag in disguise, and there are ecological and war parables going on everywhere you look.  Oh, and there are the adorable elderly ladies, of course.  "The Boy and the Heron" has seven of them (and they're diminutive enough to be dwarfs), acting as Natsuko's loyal troupe of maids and housekeepers.  

I was more impressed by the quieter, more immersive moments in the first half that really got me into Mahito's headspace.  There are wonderful, simple shots of him staring at slippers on the floor, or crossing an empty courtyard, that are incredibly evocative.  I love seeing the slow, but deliberate way that simple tasks are carried out - cooking, getting dressed, and even carrying a suitcase.  The fantasy segments have some of this, particularly Kiriko sailing and fishing, but the pace of the story is so rushed in the final scenes that there's far less time to take in the artistry.  And I so wanted to slow the movie down as it approached its conclusion so I could take in every frame of animation and every note of the score.  Every detail feels imbued with meaning, from bird droppings to lost bandages.

"The Boy and the Heron'' is one of Miyazaki's most ambitious and difficult films.  It is likely the most expensive Japanese film ever made, and took seven years to complete.  And more than ever, this feels like Miyazaki bidding farewell to the medium that he helped to transform, by putting more of himself onscreen than he ever has before.  After multiple attempts, it's clear that he will have no successor, and Studio Ghibli will never be as it was without him and the dearly departed Isao Takahata.  I'm clearly biased, having adored Miyazaki's work for decades now, but the appearance of this movie after such a long absence feels miraculous, and I'm already looking forward to watching it again.  

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My Top Ten Episodes of "30 Rock"

I've watched all 139 episodes of "30 Rock" plus the pandemic special, and it's time to pick some favorites.  Narrowing this list down to ten entries was tough, so the honorable mentions list is pretty hefty.

Episodes are unranked and listed by airdate.  Spoilers ahead.

"Black Tie" - One of the first big format breaking episodes, and the first to feature some major guest stars: Paul Reubens and Isabella Rossellini.  The two of them are given so much fun material, it's no wonder that "30 Rock" was able to convince so many other big celebrities to drop by over the years.  This is also the closest that Jack and Liz ever got to a romance, subverted of course in the end, but it's nice to think about the possibilities.

"Rosemary's Baby" - Even if the rest of the episode doesn't match up to it, I can't in good conscience leave off the episode with Jack Donaghy's award-winning trip to the therapist to help Tracy with some of his unresolved parental issues.  Alec Baldwin channeling "Good Times," "To Kill a Mockingbird," and Mrs. Rodriguez is one of the comedy highlights of 21st century television, and even though I didn't watch "30 Rock" in 2007, I knew that clip.

"Reunion" - "30 Rock" was always very good about subverting typical sitcom plots, and Liz Lemon's high school reunion was a doozy.  The show has established that Liz is terrible, and now we find out that she was always terrible.  Even if she was the stereotypical nerd, she was also the mean girl, and is forced to confront her own villainy.  To cap it all off, we have a "Carrie" homage gone wrong and Jack getting in on the fun as Larry Braverman.

"Generalissimo" - If it wasn't obvious by now, Jack Donaghy is my favorite character.  "Generalissimo" gives us the first of his many doubles, in this case an actor on a Mexican telenovela who plays the evil Generalissimo, a character hated by his girlfriend's grandmother.  Cue Baldwin in a mustache.  This was also the first episode for Jon Hamm as Drew, who proceeded to get more and more dimwitted with every subsequent appearance.  

"Klaus and Greta" - The one with James Franco and a body pillow.  This is a strong ensemble episode, with Jack and Kenneth breaking into Nancy's house to erase a phone message, Jenna in a fake relationship with James Franco (playing himself), Liz trying to help her gay cousin, and Tracy overcorrecting his attitudes toward women to prepare for becoming a girl dad.  The show was on a hot streak in season four, and this was one of the highs.  

"Anna Howard Shaw Day" - "30 Rock" did Valentine's Day episodes better than most other sitcoms, because it understands that Valentine's Day is always awful.  This is where Jack first meets Avery, who is easily the best of his romantic interests, and Liz has to find a ride home after her root canal.  The way the two subplots converge is perfect, and I love that all of Liz's exes stick around for a final gag, playing her hallucinations of the Afro-Caribbean nurses.

"Double Edged Sword" - Jack and Avery are stuck in Canada while Liz and Carroll are stuck on the tarmac, forcing both couples to evaluate their relationships.  Jack and Avery are a fantastic comedic pair, and I always love them being elitist snobs together, especially in a crisis where John Cho has to sneak them over the border.  Meanwhile, the end of Carroll's arc was inevitable, but what a way to go out!  The absurd airplane standoff is one of the best moments in the show.    

"Live From Studio 6H" - Yes, the live show where Jon Hamm briefly shows up in blackface, which leads to some great commentary on how racist TV used to be (and still is), and enables some righteous and very funny rage from Tracy.  Kenneth presenting a history of live television means all kinds of costume changes and everybody playing multiple roles.  Amy Poehler and Donald Glover also shine in guest parts - plus a Beatle or a Kardashian depending on which version of the episode you're watching.   

"Mazel Tov, Dummies!" - Liz finally gets married, after spending most of the episode trying very hard not to make a big deal out of her wedding.    I've never felt closer to a fictional character as I have with Liz Lemon here, valiantly trying not to follow social expectations, and deciding in the end that it's okay to want something.  The wedding itself was exactly what it should have been, and I'm glad the writers resisted getting the whole "TGS" crew involved to complicate matters.    

"A Goon's Deed in a Weary World" - The more I think about it, the more I'm sure that this should have been the last episode of "30 Rock."  Liz is finally convinced to let the show go, with help from her whole writing staff.  And after an extended "Willy Wonka" spoof, Jack anoints his successor, and Kenneth finally gets a capper to his multi-season search for a better job.  I understand the actual finale has to subvert all the usual tropes of sitcom finales, but I'm a sucker for a happy ending.   

Honorable Mentions: "Tracy Does Conan," "Up All Night," "SeinfeldVision," "Subway Hero," "Sandwich Day," "Believe in the Stars," "Gavin Volure," "Floyd," "The Moms," "Emmanuelle Goes to Dinosaur Land," "Reaganing," "TGS Hates Women," "Queen of Jordan," "100," "Leap Day," and "My Whole Life is Thunder." 

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"Dune Part Two" Goes the Distance

Spoilers ahead.

I don't think I need to say much about the spectacle of "Dune Part Two."  If you've heard anything about this movie, you know that Denis Villeneuve has made one of the best looking space operas of all time.  All the elements introduced in the first "Dune" - the deserts, the sandworms, the brutal combatants, and their arsenals of impossible weaponry - are used to create some truly massive, awe-inspiring action and war sequences.  The sandworm riding scenes are especially immersive, making great use of the thunderous sound design.  If that's all you want out of the movie, go forth and enjoy.  You will not be disappointed, especially if you go for an IMAX or other large format screening option.  And stop reading now if you don't want spoilers.  I mean it.  

However, what completely caught me off guard about "Dune" is that it has made substantial improvements to the story in adapting Frank Herbert's novel to the screen.  I've read Herbert's first "Dune" novel more than once, and its "chosen one" narrative never resonated much with me.  Villeneuve apparently agrees, taking elements from the later books in the "Dune" series to portray the rise of Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) as far more morally troubling than the novel ever did.  Chani (Zendaya) has been radically changed, from an unquestioning follower to a lone voice of dissent.  Through her eyes, Paul's triumph is a disaster, and what was once the victorious ending of the original "Dune" novel is now the low point of Villeneuve's "Dune" trilogy.  I expected the first movie to feel unfinished, but I never expected "Part Two" to also feel like a cliffhanger.

Despite all of the fabulous action sequences, with a climactic duel deciding the fate of the universe, "Dune Part Two" leans far more into the character drama than I expected.  The first hour is almost entirely devoted to setting up Paul as a Fremen fighter, integrating into their society and winning over the incredulous.  This is vital, because it humanizes the Fremen and makes the stakes of his decisions more meaningful.  Paul's ability to become the Fremen Messiah - the Lisan al Gaib - is never really in question.  However, he resists this path because his visions show that his coming to power will result in the deaths of millions.  All the characters supporting Paul, aside from Chani, end up being fanatics in some way.  Stilgar (Javier Bardem) is almost funny at first in how single-minded he is in promoting Paul as the Messiah, but this eventually morphs into more unnerving devotion.  Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) is downright terrifying as she becomes a Reverend Mother, and continues the Bene Gesserit campaign of manipulating the Fremen through her religious authority.  

This is unusually heady material for an action film, but "Dune" is one of the most influential science-fiction series for a reason, and I'm thrilled that Denis Villeneuve decided to really engage with its themes and ideas so fully.  There's still plenty of time for clashes with more traditional villains, though, and "Dune Part Two" has a really fun one with Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (Austin Butler), the psychotic nephew and new favorite of Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgaard).  There's a really visually interesting black-and-white sequence that takes place on their creepy homeworld, involving a gladiatorial battle and a Bene Gesserit named Lady Margot (Lea Seydoux).  Also being introduced in this movie are the Emperor (Christopher Walken) and his daughter Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), who don't get enough to do.  Oh, and Paul's unborn sister Alia keeps having psychic conversations with various family members, and it's very weird in a good way.  Villenueve never gets anywhere near as weird as David Lynch, but it feels like he's trying, at least.          

After all the delays and all of the outsized expectations for the film, I'm a little stunned that "Dune Part Two" was exactly what it needs to be - bleak, cautionary science fiction for grown-ups that is absolutely entertaining as any blockbuster ever made.  It immediately made me want to see the film version of "Dune Messiah," which is probably not happening for a long, long time.  It's one of those rare movies that actually makes me like the first film more in hindsight.  Villeneuve left out a lot of material I'm sure the established "Dune" fans are wringing their hands over, but the end result is an adaptation that has plenty to say and conveys it in the most grandiose, cinematic way that a modern filmmaker could ever dream of.  

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"30 Rock" Years Six and Seven

Minor spoilers ahead. 

The last stretch of "30 Rock" went much slower than I expected, maybe because I was so cognizant of the ending approaching, and maybe because these episodes were not the show at its best.  The biggest changes were some new additions.  Liz Lemon finally got a steady boyfriend in the form of Criss (James Marsden), and a new page named Hazel (Kristen Schaal) joins the crew, eventually becoming Kenneth's girlfriend.  Criss is fine, if unreasonably good looking for a hot dog seller, but I'm not a fan of Hazel.  In fact, I'm glad that I was familiar with Schaal from other things like "The Daily Show" before I ever saw her in "30 Rock."

Season six was mostly on par with the previous ones.  I didn't mind the status quo of Jack waiting for Avery to come back from North Korea, while trying to ignore an attraction to her mother Diana, played by Mary Steenburgen.  Liz was generally happier and more mature, Kenneth continued to move through different jobs, and we got another excellent live show.  Yes, the one with Jon Hamm in blackface, which may have resulted in the funniest moment in the entire series.  It was the first half of season seven that really felt like it was coming apart at the seams.  There was a crummy two parter centering around the 2012 presidential election, Jack trying to tank NBC to get Kabletown to sell it, and the Hazel storyline really got out of hand.  The last couple of episodes were pretty strong, giving everybody their happy endings and saying all the big goodbyes, but by then I was ready for "30 Rock" to be over.

I don't want to be too harsh.  "30 Rock" maintained an impressive level of quality all the way through its seven season run.  The density of jokes really ramped up in the later years, to the point where I was constantly having to backtrack to listen to dialogue multiple times to catch all the wordplay.  The show finally let Liz Lemon grow up, even though she'll always be terrible.  I love that the writers let characters hit some major milestones, with weddings, funerals, promotions, and divorces.  Tracy ended up being the most stable character on the show.  However, despite "30 Rock" spending so much time winding up loose ends, the actual ending felt so rushed and frantic that I wasn't able to enjoy it.  The characters were never designed for anything too heartfelt, unlike say the "Parks and Rec" gang, but I was hoping for a little more sentiment over self-aware winking.  Every "happy ending" had to be subverted or thrown into doubt  - except for Kenneth's, which got a great punchline at least.  

  

The "one time" pandemic reunion special that was aired in 2020 as part of NBC's upfront presentation actually made me feel a little better, even though much of it was shameless self-promotion.  While checking in on the cast in pandemic times, more of the minor characters got definitive endings, like Pete, Lutz, Sue and Jonathan.  Also, Jack McBrayer in a dress is so weirdly convincing, I wonder if Hazel would have worked better if she'd been played by McBrayer.  

In any case, I'm glad "30 Rock" ended when it did, and that I finished the whole series.  When the show was great it was great, and worth powering through the tougher episodes to see.  There were some missteps here and there, but it's clear why network sitcoms were never quite the same after "30 Rock."  I recognize the dialogue rhythms and the joke construction of so many subsequent shows as having been influenced by Tina Fey and her collaborators.  And good grief, some of their lines about capitalism and Bill Cosby turned out to be prescient.          

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The New Media Press Tour

Celebrities promoting their latest movie, television shows, album, fashion line, book, or other product, have always generated more media in the form of interviews and appearances.  However, these days a celebrity doesn't just show up on a few talk shows and sit for radio and print interviews.  In the new media era, the press tour can get pretty intense, and we've seen a big shift toward videos and shorts that are targeting social media audiences.

Promotional stunts have been around for a long time,  so there's nothing new about most of the video skits and games and silly stunts that we see celebrities like Awkwafina or Jake Gyllenhaal taking part in when their new movie drops.  These are often video versions of old features that we used to see in print magazines and other publications.  If you've spent any time on Youtube in the celebrity sphere, you'll have seen the videos of celebrities answering the "most searched questions" about them online, or getting quizzed on past movie roles.  Many of these are from familiar lifestyle magazines turned content creators like GQ, ELLE, and Harper's Bazaar.  So naturally, their interviews will have the celebs walk us through their fashion, diet, makeup and skincare, and home decor choices.   

Other outlets have gotten more creative.  Esquire conducts interviews while asking you to mix a drink.  Buzzfeed will cover you in puppies or kittens if you're lucky, and make you read thirst tweets if you're not.  Vanity Fair will subject you to a lie detector test or make you rewatch your past work.  LadBible will make you sample British snacks and rate them.  Complex will take you shopping for sneakers.  Then there's the Vogue mukbang videos.  This post came about because I couldn't stop thinking about a video that the Youtube algorithm kept recommending to me, titled "Florence Pugh Eats 11 English Dishes."  At the time of writing, the video is four years old and has a whopping 22 million views.  I haven't looked too far into mukbang videos, which I guess are part of the ASMR subculture, but they give me an uneasy feeling.  Watching other people eat to excess strikes me as disturbing.  Of course Florence Pugh didn't actually eat full servings of all the food that we see in the video, but linking her to content that is known for causing eating disorders and massive waste can't be a good thing.

And that brings us, inevitably, to "Hot Ones."  Ten  years ago I never would have guessed that a regular stop on the American celebrity press tour would be an extreme eating challenge.  Since 2015, celebrity interviews have been conducted while consuming chicken wings with increasingly spicy sauces - all available for purchase of course - ensuring at least some kind of honest response from the interviewee.  Sweating profusely is a common reaction, and it only gets worse from there.  However, the format of "Hot Ones" absolutely works in attracting more attention.  Matt Damon's oft cited interview where he bemoans the loss of mid-budget films was a "Hot Ones" interview where steam was practically coming out of his ears.  This kind of stunt feels crass at first, but is this fundamentally any different than the racetrack challenge on "Top Gear," or taking part in "Celebrity Fear Factor," or agreeing to be on CBS's yearly "Circus of the Stars" specials, where celebrities literally performed circus tricks?  Actually, considering that Linda Evans was bitten by a 200 lb jaguar while training for "Circus of the Stars," the hot wings are probably safer. 

There are some trends that I've appreciated seeing in online content.  There's more emphasis on celebrities interacting with each other, minimizing the roles of interviewers.  Awards season means a new round of "Actors on Actors" interviews from Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter Roundtables, which are designed to foster face to face celebrity conversations.  Many interview videos have celebrities appear in pairs or groups  so they can quiz each other or be pitted against each other in friendly competitions.  Podcast appearances are becoming more common, which allow for less structured, more casual interviews.  The most popular ones tend to be hosted by other celebrities, like "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend" and "Smartless."

There are plenty of the old fashioned type of celebrity interview in circulation too, of course.  Not everyone is comfortable with new media stunts, and you're not going to see Dame Judi Dench making ASMR or shopping for sneakers.  The late night and morning chat shows upload their interviews on Youtube for extra views like everybody else, and red carpet coverage remains plentiful.  And it's been nice to discover that some of those lifestyle and fashion magazines are still hanging around in some form, still foisting puzzling photoshoots on us.  

And the more things change, the more they stay the same.

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The Times of "Molli and Max"

"Molli and Max in the Future" is a romantic comedy that takes place in a cartoonish universe where magic is real, giant mecha robot fighting is a popular sport, and people can travel between planets and dimensions regularly.  Demons, gods, and fish people are a part of everyday life, and there are all kinds of technologies that can do amazing things - like have doubles of yourself live out big choices for you in another dimension and accelerated timeline, and report back how things went before you make your own decision.  If you've been keeping up with pop culture for the last decade or so, you'll recognize many familiar tropes from genre media like "Rick and Morty."  However, the patterns of human interaction - specifically romance - are pretty much the same as they always were.  

So Molli (Zosia Mamet) is a space witch cruising around looking for magic crystals one day when she accidentally runs across Max (Aristotle Athari), an up-and-coming mecha creator and pilot.  The two hit it off, but their lives are headed in different directions, so they decide to part ways.  Molli ends up in a sex cult fighting an intergalactic war for a while.  Max gains fame and fortune as a giant robot brawler.  They meet again many years later, in very different circumstances, but still aren't sure about their feelings.  Their paths keep intersecting and their lives go through some major changes.  As the universe heads toward a major crisis, will Molli and Max finally figure out that they're perfect for each other? 

You might be wondering how a very low budget indie movie, directed and written by first timer Michael Lukk Litwak, would be able to realize all of these complicated concepts and ideas.  Well, the short answer is, that everything is green screened and kitschy as hell.  The whole production looks like it was put together by a group of enthusiastic amateurs with a limited wig budget and a lot of free effects programs.  However, everyone involved clearly put a lot of effort into the film, and the DIY aesthetic is deliberate and pretty charming.  This absolutely looks like a student project you might have stumbled across on Youtube at some point in the last decade.  Halfway through the movie, however, I was absorbed in the story to the point where I was able to take everything at face value, ludicrous as a lot of it was.  

Because despite all the sci-fi silliness, Molli and Max's romance works.  In interviews, Litwak has cited "When Harry Met Sally…" as a major inspiration, except he wanted to update the dynamics for 2024.  His hyper-verbose lovebirds are kept apart by the usual doubts about self-worth, compatibility, and life experience.  However, they also face a lot of more contemporary existential dread together.  There's a major subplot with a Trump stand-in, a trashy demon fella named Turboschmuk (Michael Chernus), who is probably going to destroy the universe and kill everyone in it.  The commentary on current events is the weakest part of the movie, but it does get a few good laughs, including a priceless pandemic joke.   

Mamet and Athari are a little awkward at times, but fun to watch.  They both pull off the trick of being able to talk completely sincerely about totally absurd subjects, and will have you believing that they've survived relationships with selfish half-demons and possessive AI.  The dialogue is smartly written, often parodying the melodramatic and stylistic excesses of recent genre media, but also coming across as emotionally genuine.  There are also a lot of clever little science-fiction concepts used to work around budget limitations and narrative dead space.  For instance, after a long separation, Molli and Max fill each other in on what they've been doing via a dining option that also lets them watch each other's flashbacks.   

It's always fascinating to watch the cinema of a new generation emerge, and "Molli and Max" feels very much like something steeped in the online culture of Millennials and Gen Z, with the breathless rhythms of Adult Swim cartoons and Tik Tok memes.  It's perfectly at home with concepts that the older generations would call geeky, but the search for love remains as difficult as ever.  And screen romances of any kind are so rare these days that it's very comforting to discover that the fundamentals still apply as time goes by.  "Molli and Max" isn't a great movie, but it's the right movie for a certain audience, and I'm glad that it exists.      

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"Boy Kills World," Gets Twisted

I've watched a lot of R-rated, ultra-violent, over-the-top action movies, and they rarely manage to get the combination of action and humor right.  Either they come across as too mean-spirited, too vulgar, or just too silly.  "Boy Kills World" is one of the better ones I've seen, largely because it understands that it is an adolescent fantasy, leans into the absurdity, and uses the common tropes of these stories to its advantage.

Our hero is a deaf-mute young man known only as Boy (Bill Sarsgaard), who has devoted most of his life to training for the day he'll take revenge against the people who killed his family.  Under the tutelage of the cruel Shaman (Yayan Ruhian), he matures into a formidable badass.  However, he's never really grown up.  His internal monologue, voiced by H. Jon Benjamin, reveals that Boy is still immature after years of isolation - doing his best to look cool while mentally operating on the level of a twelve year-old video game loving kid.  The only book he had access to was the dictionary, so he recites vocabulary and definitions to himself as part of his self-narration.  He also regularly hallucinates his younger sister Mina (Quinn Copeland), who gives him someone to talk to.  

And this is fine, because the dystopian world that Boy operates in works by a twelve year-old's logic.  Boy's chief target is a paranoid tyrant named Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen).  Her siblings Gideon (Brett Gelman) and Melanie (Michelle Dockery), and Melanie's husband Glen (Sharlto Copely) help her run an oppressive totalitarian regime that regularly guns people down with impunity.  An annual "Culling" of the Van Der Koys' enemies is treated as a media spectacle, creating an opportunity to stage a vicious fight against costumed corporate mascots.  "Boy Kills World" is the kind of movie where comic book and video game stylization is everywhere.  There are all sorts of fun absurdist touches like Boy using a cheese grater as a weapon, and a Van Der Koy enforcer named June 27 (Jessica Rothe) wearing a helmet that displays pixel art and messages.  My favorite running gag involves Boy teaming up with a couple of resistance fighters, Basho (Andrew Koji) and Benny (Isaiah Mustafa).  Boy can't read Benny's lips, and because we're seeing everything from Boy's POV, Benny only speaks in a stream of gibberish words.  

  

This sort of clever business could get tiresome in a hurry, but the movie wisely doesn't rely on its gimmicks too much.  Directed by Moritz Mohr and written by Tyler Burton Smith Arend Remmers, the first two acts of the movie are great.  It moves fast, the action is relentless, and Bill Skarsgaard (having a very busy year) has no trouble getting Boy's emotions across without a word.  The humor is absurdist and silly, relying on a lot of visual gags and cartoon violence.  I am not remotely surprised that spinoff video games and an animated tie-in series are supposedly in the works.  Unfortunately, this approach doesn't carry through the whole film.  The filmmakers can't seem to help themselves and get too serious in the third act.  If this were a different kind of movie, the actors are good enough that they might have been able to pull off the tonal shift, but there's just not enough substance under all the antics for "Boy Kills World" to suddenly try to make us care at the last minute.        

This is the first feature - or at least the first American feature - for a lot of the creatives involved, and I expect that they'll go on to bigger and better things.  With "Boy Kills World" they've demonstrated a proficiency with the kind of kinetic action and mayhem that appeals to the young and anarchic, and hopefully they'll get more chances to improve.  I definitely appreciate what they managed to accomplish here, even if I think the script could have used a few more passes, and given the supporting cast more to do.  I fully expect to see these filmmakers picking up a franchise assignment eventually, and hopefully they'll find a more receptive audience in time.       

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Let's Talk About Localizations

So, while reviewing the Netflix adaptation of Chinese science-fiction novel "The Three-Body Problem," I mentioned that the series changed the races of a good chunk of the major characters so that they could be played by a diverse cast.  I've railed against this sort of thing in the past, such as with the live action adaptations of "Ghost in the Shell" and M. Night Shyamalan's "The Last Airbender" movie.  Netflix's "3 Body Problem" doing this didn't bother me as much, and I want to dig into why.

To do that, however, I need to talk about localizations.  This is when a piece of media originally written for one audience is adapted for a different audience, usually into another language and culture.  This often involves changing places, names, and other cultural signifiers to make a piece of media more palatable for the new target market.  Localizations are fairly common.  "Three Men and a Baby," "True Lies," and "The Birdcage" were all American films based on French comedies.  "All in the Family" and "The Office" localized British sitcoms for American audiences.    Plenty of other countries localize American media, such as the Chinese version of "What Women Want" with Andy Lau and Gong Li, or the Japanese "Unforgiven" with Ken Watanabe as a samurai, or the Colombian telenovela version of "Breaking Bad."  Many localizations have been very good, interesting pieces of media, but for a long time they were never intended to be seen by the original audiences of their source material.

I don't have an issue with localizations in general, especially when you're talking about kids' cartoons or sitcoms that operate in a very narrow, specific cultural space.   However, some of the American ones have been used as an excuse to whitewash stories and contribute to representation issues in the past.  The "Ghost in the Shell" movie is a prime example of a piece of media that was trying to have it both ways, courting the fans of the original work and aiming for a new audience, ultimately appealing to neither.  The movie is a fairly direct adaptation of the Japanese "Ghost in the Shell" films and comics franchise, still taking place in an Asian country with most of the same character names.  There's really no attempt at properly localizing (globalizing?  Westernizing?) the story.  However, the Asian lead character was rewritten so she could be played by Scarlett Johanssen, and there's no good reason why she couldn't have been played by Jamie Chung or Maggie Q or someone new.  Asian-Americans being seriously underrepresented onscreen in American media only made matters worse.  The Japanese didn't understand why this was a problem because, of course, they don't have to deal with representation issues.       

Netflix's "3 Body Problem" is similarly problematic at first glance.  More than half of the characters have been changed from Chinese to Caucasian, Black, Latino, and South-Asian, with a few gender swaps for good measure.  Three major POV characters are still ethnically Chinese, and a good amount of the show is Chinese language, but the whole structure has been fundamentally changed.  I think it's fair to call "3 Body Problem" a localization, at least partially, because it moves most of the action to the UK and extensively rewrites the characters to fit a Western context.  The diverse cast comes across as a good faith attempt to represent the intended Western audience, and I like that the major Chinese characters are very active and have agency.  Some fans have complained about parts of the story being changed to reflect Western values, and that's in line with how localizations are supposed to work.  You appeal to a broader audience by reducing and replacing culturally specific elements like Chinese politics and history.  I'm not sure how much of the show was really meant to appeal to the fans of the book - there were clearly efforts made to portray the Chinese portions of the series accurately and sensitively - but the show is a very different animal from its source material.      

However, with media becoming more global, and Americans becoming more willing to watch foreign media with subtitles, how much do we still need localizations like this?  We've been seeing formerly separate audiences aggregate and merge for a while now thanks to greater awareness of each other's media.  The anime and gaming communities have fought for years against attempts to localize their favorite Japanese properties, preferring the original versions.  After the success of "Squid Game" and "Parasite," do we really need an adaptation of a Chinese novel  that panders to Western audiences?  I don't know the answer to that question, but "3 Body Problem" does offer an interesting test case.  The Netflix series is actually one of two television adaptations currently available.  There's also a Chinese language serial of "The Three Body Problem" that is much more faithful and was released last year.  This is the version that everyone in China is watching, and it's also been made available to much of the rest of the world through streamers like Youtube and Peacock.  

So, if you want to watch a more faithful version of "The Three Body Problem," one is available.  If you prefer the glossier, Westernized version, that's also available.  Either way, the author of the book is getting paid and a lot of Chinese actors are getting work.  So while the situation's not perfect, I'm not inclined to be too upset about this one.  

    

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A Swing at the "3 Body Problem"

"The Three-Body Problem" by Cixin Liu, the first book in a trilogy, is one of the most high profile pieces of science-fiction to have ever come out of China.  There have been multiple attempts to adapt it.  Tencent came out with a serialized, Chinese language television serial of the first book in 2023, and now Netflix has an English language adaptation created by David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo.  This is one of Netflix's most ambitious and expensive projects to date, following a group of scientists and their early encounters with an alien race.

The eight-episode "3 Body Problem" makes substantial changes to the source material, the biggest one being that it's changed the ethnicities of a good portion of the characters so they can be played by a diverse international cast.  Nearly everyone was Chinese in the original, and fortunately three of the main characters still are - UK based detective Da Shi (Benedict Wong), physicist Jin Cheng (Jess Hong), and astrophysicist Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng in the past, Rosalind Chao in the present).  Many of the characters - Jin, Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo), Auggie Salazar (Eiza Gonzalez), Jack Rooney (John Bradley), and Will Downing (Alex Sharp) are a group of friends who used to be the students and mentees of a scientist who has recently killed herself.  This is linked to a string of other suicides, which Da Shi is investigating on behalf of an intelligence agency, all possibly related to various scientific experiments going haywire across the globe.    

 

I haven't read "The Three Body Problem," because it's the type of science fiction that is far too dry and technical for me.  I had my doubts about a Netflix adaptation, not just because the material is so talky and theoretical, but also because the book is steeped in Chinese history and culture that nobody outside of China has much knowledge of.  The Cultural Revolution plays a big part in the story, and to the credit of the show's creators, the very first scene shows Ye Wenjie's professor father being beaten to death by Red Guards, which influences all her choices going forward.  However, inevitably, there is less emphasis on these parts of the story, and greater efforts made to humanize the major characters - there are added romances, everyone knows each other personally, and the aliens often communicate through a human avatar named Tatiana (Marlo Hass) 

Overall, I think this approach works.  There are some parts of the novel that simply don't translate well to screen, and some episodes that are much slower and duller than others.  However, I was impressed at how well the show's creators managed to introduce and explore several challenging concepts.  The flashbacks to Ye Wenjie in China condense a lot of information, but little impact is lost and the historical details are handled with care and tact.  There's a virtual reality game featured in a few episodes that is realized extremely well, featuring a lot of expensive looking fantasy imagery.  There's a subplot involving nanofiber research that pays off in a spectacular action scene in episode five.  I was a little puzzled by Jovan Adepo being first billed in the cast when his character barely does anything in the first half of the series, but then he becomes a major focal point in the last two episodes.  It's impossible to predict what will happen from one installment to the next, and I was never bored.     

"3 Body Problem" is atypical for a science fiction television series.  It reminds me of Apple's "Foundation," the way it's setting up future events that will pay off over hundreds and thousands of years, and manages to combine several different genres.  However, this show strikes me as much better executed because it's only eight episodes long, and avoids filler and drawn out melodrama.  I hope that we get the rest of the trilogy adapted sooner rather than later, and Netflix will be more willing to tackle similar projects in the future.  I wasn't expecting much from "3 Body Problem," and it turned out to be a very pleasant surprise.       

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These Undiscovered Gems Aren't Gems

I spent a good amount of last month watching a lot of movies that I had been putting off seeing until after I was done with other projects  - mostly cult classics and obscurities that had been recommended to me at some point.  I enjoyed some of these, like the thriller "Brimstone and Treacle," with a young Sting, and "Pump Up the Volume," a teen angst movie with what might by Christian Slater's best performance.  I'll write up notes on these separately.

However, a lot more of these turned out to be duds.  Well, I want to be careful here, because some of these movies clearly mean a lot to people.  I didn't find these movies enjoyable to watch, whether it was because of their quality not meeting my (probably inflated) expectations or because, in several cases, they didn't age well.  None of these are interesting enough to write about separately, but I thought they might be worth writing about together.    

Let's start with a fun one.  David Mamet's 1997 film "The Spanish Prisoner" has a reputation for being an excellent confidence game movie, where there are twists upon twists and the rug is pulled out from under the audience's feet multiple times.  The trouble is that the film is totally hampered by the Mamet dialogue.  If you aren't used to Mamet characters' mannered, ornate way of speaking, it's incredibly distracting.  This is one of his first scripts without a lot of swearing in it, so maybe that also played a part.  Campbell Scott is fine in the lead role, and it's nice to see Steve Martin in a dramatic part, but the way the cons are revealed, one by one, is pretty predictable and too over-the-top to take seriously.  Mamet's "House of Games," a similar con game movie made about ten years earlier, works much better because the stakes are kept smaller and more believable.  

I can understand why "The Spanish Prisoner" would be impressive if you hadn't seen too many twisty films like it.  And I guess you would be impressed by 1995 indie "The Last Supper" if you hadn't seen too many black comedies that talk frankly about politics.  There are a lot of familiar faces here, including Bill Paxton, Cameron Diaz, Courtney B. Vance, Ron Perlman, and Annabeth Gish.  Five liberal grad students unexpectedly have a conservative ne'er-do-well in their midst at a dinner party, inadvertently kill him, and ponder doing it again to make the world a better place.  Given the current state of the American political climate, "The Last Supper" is very, very relevant to the world today, and I was hoping it would dig deeper into the Right/Left divide.  Instead, all the characters are pretty shallow, with the rightwingers being a collection of easy caricatures.  There are some smart ideas here, and the finale with a Rush Limbaugh stand-in is pretty satisfying, but overall "The Last Supper" is not enough.  It's got admirable ambition and it's  tackling big ideas, but the story falls apart under the smallest amount of scrutiny and the messages are so muddled it doesn't seem to commit to any position at all, except a weak appeal for moderation.  It's a movie of its time, which is fine, but far less cutting or insightful than it looked to be at the outset.

Finally, let's talk about "Cats Don't Dance."  I had pretty high hopes for this one, which was directed by "The Emperor's New Groove" director Mark Dindal.  I remember the discussion around this from the time of its release in 1997, because it was Turner Animation's big shot at making something that could challenge Disney, and it felt like the whole animation community got behind it.  However, I'm sorry to say that it hasn't held up well at all.  The villain, an evil child star named Darla Dimple, is still pretty funny and nasty in a kid-friendly way.  The rest of the showbiz story, however, doesn't work.  The hero cat, Danny, isn't just a naïve rube but an annoying showboater who I never felt like rooting for.  The other characters are underdeveloped and very one-note.  

Throughout "Cats Don't Dance,"  I couldn't help comparing it to Illumination's "Sing," which is also about animal entertainers with showbiz dreams.  Now "Sing" was a movie I didn't like all that much, but it handled the basic story beats and characters so much better.  "Cats Don't Dance" is clearly a passion project, and very well intentioned, but you can tell the filmmakers simply didn't have many resources and were aiming at a very safe family audience.  Even mediocre animated films these days are far more sophisticated.  I appreciated some of the Hollywood insider jokes and gags - the movie within a movie seems to be based on the insane production of the 1928 "Noah's Ark" movie - but "Cats Don't Dance" is the product of a bygone age, and best left to the viewers who grew up with it.     

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Getting Posh With "The Gentlemen"

Guy Ritchie's new TV series "The Gentlemen" doesn't really have much to do with his 2020 film "The Gentlemen," except it reuses the same premise of a criminal enterprise based on growing marijuana on the estates of aristocrats who are short on funds.  None of the characters or actors cross over that I'm aware of, so this is really a reboot rather than a spinoff. 

Eddie Horniman (Theo James), is the younger son of the Duke of Halstead (Edward Fox), who dies suddenly and leaves everything to Eddie - the estate, the titles, and everything else of value - instead of his dissolute older brother Freddy (Daniel Ings).  Eddie soon discovers the marijuana operations on the estate, being run by Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario), the daughter of mobster Bobby Glass (Ray Winstone).  Eddie wants out of the marijuana business, but his brother has gambling debts that have come due, a shady American named Stanley Johnston (Giancarlo Esposito) is very eager to buy the estate, and plenty of other problems crop up.

Ritchie directed and co-wrote the first two episodes, and you could simply treat them as a stand-alone movie.  The other six episodes feel slightly disconnected from the initial installments and lose some momentum.  However, it's a pretty good watch the whole way through, as Eddie gets pulled further and further into criminal activity and discovers he has a knack for it.  The supporting cast includes Joely Richardson and Vinnie Jones, while several other familiar faces show up in guest roles.  Michael Vu as the genial Vietnamese weed grower Jimmy stole every scene he was in, but the main event here is Theo James and Kaya Scodelario.  I've been watching these two in so many mediocre genre films over the past decade that it was a great surprise to discover that both of them are actually quite good actors.  They have chemistry together, even.      

And this is important because "The Gentlemen" is not the action series that I was expecting it would be.  People are graphically killed onscreen, but it happens far less often than you'd think, considering all the guns being waved around.  Most of the time "The Gentlemen" is a flashy crime series with a comedic bent.  It's far more "Breaking Bad" than "Reacher," full of schemes and capers and threats of carnage without too much carnage actually happening.  And it's all executed with enough style and energy that I didn't mind much.  Ritchie has dependably been turning out entertaining films in this genre for decades now, and "The Gentlemen" is no exception.  It's not as dark or as gritty or as funny as the most famous titles, but there is an impressive amount of swearing and drug use and ridiculously verbose people threatening each other.  For a Netflix series, I'm very satisfied with the results.     

For those hoping for something a little more substantive, I'm afraid there's not much.  Any class commentary is pretty shallow, and mostly over and done with after the initial episodes.  Eddie learns how little money he's actually able to get his hands on in a hurry to help Freddy.  Meanwhile Freddy, predictably, goes off his rocker when his privilege is threatened and behaves exactly how you'd imagine a cocaine-fueled rich brat would behave.  Oddly, the brothers don't interact much as the series goes on, so we don't get much family drama either.  There's certainly the potential for future complications, but the Horniman family secrets stay on the sidelines.  Romance doesn't really come up between Eddie and Susie either, which I wouldn't have minded, but it's not that kind of show.      

Finally, I want to note that watching the series requires more attention than I'm used to.  Maybe it's the heavily accented dialogue and maybe it has something to do with the pacing or sound design, but I found myself missing the endings of episodes on more than one occasion.  Scenes would just end abruptly, and I'd find myself staring at the credits before I knew it.  This didn't have a big impact on my enjoyment of "The Gentlemen," but I figured it was worth mentioning.  

  

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Confronting "The Demon"

Yoshitaro Nomura's 1978 film, "The Demon," is one that I've wanted to see since 2014, when it was prominently reviewed in The Guardian.  It's also one of those films with very disturbing subject matter, which is why it took me the better part of a decade to actually work up the courage to watch it.  You always hear about the films that they could never make today, and "The Demon" is one of these, about three young, unwanted, illegitimate children, who are suddenly left in the care of their biological father.

There are films about child abuse that get made, many of them very dark and depressing, but I can't think of many where the abuse is so starkly portrayed that it seems impossible the young actors involved weren't traumatized in the process.  There are very few scenes in "The Demon" with physical violence, the most obvious one being a horrifying incident where the screaming stepmother force feeds a bawling toddler rice.  However, the verbal and emotional abuse is rampant, and even the milder scenes of the children being coldly ignored are gutting.  The oldest child, Riichi (Hiroki Iwase) is only five, his sister Yoshiko (Miyuki Yoshizawa) is three, and the youngest is still in diapers.  You have to wonder how well children that young can differentiate between what's going on in real life versus what the adults around them are only pretending is going on. 

And all the adults in "The Demon" movie are horrible.  Ken Ogata plays Takeshita, a printer with money problems who finds that he can no longer support his mistress, Kikuyo (Mayumi Ogawa).  Unable to take care of the children alone, Kikuyo unceremoniously dumps them on Takeshita before disappearing for good.  Takeshita's infertile wife Oume (Shima Iwashita) is furious, and refuses to do anything to take care of the children, only interacting with them to punish and berate them.  She complains constantly about their existence, and is soon plotting ways to get rid of them.  As for Takeshita, he tries to be a good father at first, but he's weak-willed and has few options.  His wife is able to wear him down, until he does the unthinkable.  The film depicts extreme acts, but at the heart of it is a very clear-eyed examination of why child abuse happens.  Takeshita has no resources and no support.  The younger children are at an age when they need constant care.  Takeshita, who we learn was also an unwanted child, desperately wants to do right by them, but ultimately gives in to his wife's demands.         

 

I'm going to spoil what happens in the rest of the film here, because I think it's better to warn curious viewers of exactly what they're in for.  The baby dies of illness brought on by malnutrition, despite Takeshita doing his best to save him.  Yoshiko is abandoned at a crowded observation platform in Tokyo Tower, being too young to know her address or her parents' names.  As for Riichi, Takeshita takes him on a outing, waits until he's asleep, and then drops him off of a cliff into the ocean.  However, the boy miraculously survives and the police apprehend Takeshita, who is overcome with remorse.  These sequences are very suspenseful and the direction is very good, especially the picturesque scenes at the seaside cliffs.  However, the most impactful parts of the movie are the earlier ones in Takeshita's household, because the abuse and the neglect we see depicted are so appallingly normalized.  We rarely see casual cruelty to small children onscreen in such a realistic fashion.    

I can find plenty of faults with "The Demon."  The big one is the depiction of the women in the story, who are very two dimensional.  Oume in particular is a shrieking harpy who is very easy to hate, while all our sympathies are directed to Takeshita.  The final bit of the story with the police coming to the rescue is contrived in the extreme, and wildly melodramatic.  The film would have been much more powerful without the tearful confessions or the sage police detectives shaking their heads about "young people these days."  I won't get into what I think of the filmmakers subjecting the child actors to some of the situations depicted in the film, but surely it wouldn't happen now without causing an uproar. 

But that said, this is a film that's going to haunt me.  It's a lot more honest about childhood horror and the dark side of parenthood than I was expecting, and I'm not going to be able to stop thinking about some of those images.  The most wrenching moment in the whole film is a poignant shot of Yoshiko, staring at her father through the crowd as he's abandoning her, the expression on her face totally unreadable.

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