The Best Classic Films I Watched in 2024

In an effort to highlight older films, here are the best films I watched this year that were not released in 2024 or 2023.  I've also disqualified films from the 1930s, because those have been covered in my various Top Ten lists.  Entries are unranked and listed below by release date.

Small Time Crooks (2000) - I can't write off Woody Allen's films, because too much great work from his collaborators exists in them.  Take "Small Time Crooks," which has one of the best performances I've ever seen from Tracey Ullman.  I also really enjoy the way this goes from a heist comedy to a class comedy back to a heist comedy, with one of the best second act plot twists I didn't see coming.  

 

Pump Up the Volume (1990) - Captures a very specific time and place when radio was the medium of choice for the young and anarchic.  The teenage angst is all too familiar, but Christian Slater manages to express it in a way that resonates unusually well in the present day.  It's a nice reminder that angry young men don't have to be destructive or hateful in expressing their disconnection with the world.    

Matewan (1987) - A coal miners' strike in West Virginia brings a union organizer to a poor mining community that's about to turn into a powder keg.  John Sayles does a fantastic job of establishing the time and place, capturing the conflict from multiple POVs, and creating some really hateable villains to root against.  The inevitable shootout is impressive, but may be the least interesting part of the film.

Threads (1984) - Far darker and more nihilistic than I was expecting.  This made-for-television film about a fictional nuclear attack on the UK famously traumatized a generation of viewers during the Cold War.  However, it's not the attack that's so horrific, but the detailed documentation of the effects this has on the survivors and the environment, both in the immediate aftermath and far into the future.  

…And Justice For All - (1979) - A Norman Jewison directed dark comedy about the failings of the American legal system.  It's best known for the bit where Al Pacino gets to deliver one of his most famous, blistering monologues.  However, it's the image of Jeffrey Tambor as an attorney in the middle of a nervous breakdown that really stuck with me.  I miss this era of courtroom dramas.

Going in Style (1979) - We've seen so many sentimental "one last heist" movies, it's a shock to discover that this one, from the great Martin Brest, is so cynical as to border on bleak.  It's wish fulfillment, but at the same time a pointed critique on how society treats the elderly.  George Burns always seemed to be playing a caricature of himself in later years, but here he's dead serious, and a real heartbreaker. 

The Demon (1978) - This horrific Japanese melodrama about child abuse is one of the most upsetting things I've ever seen put on film, and it's no longer remotely socially acceptable to make anything like it.  The direct violence is fairly minimal, but the psychological oppressiveness is unyielding and deeply painful to witness.  This is on a short list of films I know I will never watch again.    

Spirits of the Dead (1968) - Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini made three of the sexiest, campiest adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe's work ever filmed for this anthology, with the most attractive cast you could have in the 60s.  There's Jane Fonda pining for her own brother, Alain Delon being very nasty to Brigitte Bardot, and Terence Stamp all tortured and disheveled.  How does this exist?     

Come Drink With Me (1966) - We lost the great Chang Pei-Pei this year, a female action star who rose to prominence along with director King Hu thanks to this film.  The fight sequences are highly stylized, but expertly staged, with Hu bringing his own influences from Chinese opera and dance to the filmmaking.  The inn sequence is still incredibly influential - quoted in the premiere of "The Acolyte," even.  

By the Law (1926) - I'm ashamed that I didn't know that film theorist Lev Kuleshov, who the Kuleshov effect was named after, was also a director!  "By the Law" is an absolutely fantastic piece of work, about gold miners in the frozen north who have to decide how to deal with a captured crazed murderer.  The storm sequences are incredible, and the performances genuinely still chilling to watch.  

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My Top Ten Episodes of 2017-2018

Since I've hit my goals for my Top Ten movie lists for the years before I began my blog, I thought I'd take a break and focus on television for a bit.  Specifically, I want to dig back in time a little ways and put together Top Ten episode lists for past seasons of TV.  I only started writing the TV lists for this blog for the 2018-2019 season.  Since I've watched runs of several older shows lately and filled in some gaps in my pop culture knowledge, I figured it was time to put everything in context.

Some caveats before we get started.  Television is a much more difficult medium than film.  There's so much of it that there's no way to be remotely comprehensive.  What shows up on these lists will reflect my own viewing preferences.  I tend to like prestige shows and genre shows, but I have some massive blind spots, especially with comedies.  I don't think I've watched any of the popular ones in ages.  My memory is also very fallible and I will leave things out.  The further back in time I go, the more the lists will reflect my access to various platforms, which wasn't always great.  

Entries below are limited to one episode per show, and are in no particular order.  And minor spoilers ahead.

The Good Place, "Dance Dance Resolution" - I really got onboard with "The Good Place" in its second season when they showed that they were willing to give us major twists and plot developments week after week that other sitcoms would have stretched out over years.  I was worried that the first season finale "reboot" meant we were going to be rehashing a lot of the story.  I didn't expect the show to use that as a jumping off point to blow up the entire "Good Place" premise three episodes later.  And Ted Danson losing his cool is so much fun to watch.  

Killing Eve,  "God I'm Tired" - Eve and Villanelle finally meet face to face after a season of playing cat and mouse, and it was worth the wait.  All the teasing and insinuations finally pay off with confirmation that these two are in a relationship that goes far beyond cops and robbers, and it's terribly bittersweet in retrospect, knowing what I know about how future seasons of the show play out.  However, the first season is "Killing Eve" at its peak, an irresistible spy fantasy that pushes every boundary that it can, and gives its leading ladies a chance to be fantastic.   

Mindhunter, "Episode 2" - There are several serial killers portrayed in "Mindhunter," but the standout performance is Cameron Britton as Ed Kemper, the Co-ed Killer.  The incredibly articulate, intelligent, and deeply troubled Kemper is the first major "sequence killer" that the protagonists interview, and he sets the tone for every subsequent encounter.  It's in this episode that "Mindhunter" fully establishes that it's going to be about the psychology of these criminals rather than their crimes.  And it's no wonder that Kemper became the show's most memorable character.

Westworld, "Kiksuya" - A standout episode of an up-and-down-season of "Westworld" gives the spotlight over to a background character, one Akechta of the Ghost Nation, played by guest star Zahn McClarnon.  We see the history of the park from his point of view as he grapples with emerging sentience from a completely different perspective than we've seen so far with the other hosts.  The dream-like tone and fantastic score help to distinguish Akecheta as existing in a completely separate, but parallel existence to everyone else we've seen in "Westworld" so far. 

 

The Crown, "Paterfamilias" - The very different experiences of a young Prince Philip and a young Prince Charles at Gordonstoun, intercut together and contrasted against one another, make for one of the most memorable early episodes of "The Crown."  Fatherhood, masculinity, and the horrors of UK boarding schools are all explored here through the Philip and Charles relationship.  It's an emotionally turbulent episode, to say the least, and not an easy watch, but endlessly compelling.  This may be the best performance I've ever seen from Matt Smith.  

Atlanta, "Teddy Perkins" - I haven't had the best luck with "Atlanta," but Teddy Perkins is undeniable.  There is so much commentary packed in about exploited child stars, the demands of the music industry, and screwed up fame-seeking families, with a title character who is a nightmarishly warped version of Michael Jackson crossed with Baby Jane.  Or you could just watch it as a mini-horror movie with Lakeith Stanfield's Darius stuck in a creepy house with a homicidal maniac.  And did we ever figure out who was playing Teddy Perkins at the Emmys?

Halt and Catch Fire, "Goodwill" - I knew ahead of time about how a certain storyline would end as the show wrapped up its last year, but I wasn't ready for this episode, where our main cast deals with the aftermath - packing things up and trying to move ahead while they grieve and bond.  All of these characters have behaved badly at some point or another over the course of four seasons, and it's so cathartic to watch them be there for each other, and reaffirm their connections in a healthy way.  Boz showing up at the end is just perfect.  

Black Mirror, "USS Callister" - As a long time "Star Trek" fan, I love the homages to multiple eras of the franchise, the villain being a tyrannical fanboy, and the subversion of the family-friendly space age idealism.  However, this is really a "Twilight Zone" style existential nightmare, as written by Charlie Brooker at his most sick and twisted, which I love.  You also have a fantastic cast, including Jesse Plemons, Cristin Milioti, and Michaela Coel.  A sequel is expected soon with the next batch of "Black Mirror" episodes, and I'm so ready for it.  

The Americans, "START" - We were all anticipating the confrontation with Stan, and were summarily sideswiped by the train scene and the best use of a U2 song in a piece of media ever.  The show had us rooting for the Russians, even as the bodies piled up, only to reveal at the end that the price of doing their job and getting out alive was everything they'd fought for.  The poignant ending questions if Philip and Elizabeth even still have each other after years of navigating their complicated marriage.  It hits so much harder than any violent death ever could.

Twin Peaks: The Return, "Part 8" - I'll be honest.  I don't really understand why everyone lost their minds over this particular episode of "The Return."  It certainly looks and sounds amazing, and the apocalyptic vibes are off the charts. However, it feels less like "Twin Peaks" than its own separate piece of David Lynch surrealism.  I prefer to think of it that way, as this fairy tale about the birth of evil, with the atomic bomb as America's original sin.  I don't know what it's all about, and the summaries read like gibberish, but I'm so very glad Lynch got to make this.     

Honorable Mention: The Terror

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"The Bear," Year Three

Spoilers ahead.

I managed to not binge "The Bear" this year.  I watched season three's ten episodes over four days, which is a perfectly sane, reasonable timeframe, managed to avoid spoilers, and  altogether couldn't have asked for a better viewing experience.  The short review is that "The Bear" is still excellent television, but the third season feels like it's treading water, setting up a lot of storylines that won't pay off until the fourth season, with some episodes feeling more like filler.

This is most noticeable with the first episode, a stream-of-consciousness look inside Carmy's head, which functions like a recap of his story up until this point, and also more plainly lays out all the connections between various figures from his life who we've met in previous episodes.  This also pointedly underlines Carmy's self-destructive perfectionism that comes to the fore this season, as he sets an excruciatingly high standard for the new restaurant that his employees struggle to meet.  The episode is beautifully done, with great editing, sound design, and use of music.  However, the season would have been perfectly fine without it.

There are some other excellent episodes in this year's batch.  "Napkins," directed by Ayo Edibiri, gives Tina (Liza Colon-Zayas) a long overdue spotlight episode that includes the beginning of her relationship with Richie.  "Ice Chips" sees Sugar finally give birth, but most of the running time is spent reconciling with her troubled mother Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis) while they're waiting in the hospital.  I don't mind the slow pace or the slice-of-life vibes of the other episodes.  It's nice to just spend time with these characters, checking up on Marcus after the death of his mother, or Richie fretting over his ex getting married again, or Sugar trying to keep ahead of the out-of-control bills.  Sydney and Carmy haven't made much progress - they're both still failing to communicate and the kitchen remains an intense pressure cooker.     

However, this doesn't excuse dragging out parts of the story to uncomfortable lengths.  Sydney spends most of the season debating whether to sign a partnership contract that would give her part ownership of the restaurant.  The fate of The Bear hinges on an important restaurant review, and at the end of the last episode, despite multiple fake-outs, we still don't know if it was positive or negative.  It doesn't help that the last episode mostly takes place at a party where a collection of real life chefs spend a lot of time waxing poetic about cooking and running restaurants.  Thomas Keller, a major inspiration for some of the characters, gets an extended cameo.  Carmy does have a big character moment here - he confronts the abusive chef, David Fields (Joe McHale), who seeded a lot of his neuroses, but if this was a turning point for him, we don't see the consequences yet.  And while Sydney seems to have made a decision about her future, it's anything but definite.

These frustrations aside, "The Bear" remains one of the most addictive  shows currently airing because it's so good about creating these nuanced, interesting characters who feel like real people.  I love the Faks trying to talk to Claire on Carmy's behalf.  I love Sydney rolling her eyes at her dad.  I love Cicero sticking his nose in the business, and bringing along a guy called the Computer (Brian Koppelman) to help.  I love all the guest stars who gamely show up to do a scene or two, including John Mulaney essentially just showing up to complain that Carmy smells and throw blankets over him in one of the flashbacks.  After ten episodes, I'm a little annoyed that not much was resolved and everyone is kicking their problems further down the road, but on the other hand it feels true to life.  Sometimes we're all just trying to see how long we can ignore something before the other shoe drops.

It helps that I know we're getting another season of "The Bear" soon.  The show has a very fast production, and as everyone's careers are taking off, season four is probably going to be the last one for a while.  Considering the long breaks that other prestige shows are working with these days, getting the resolution to the cliffhanger in twelve months feels positively reasonable.  And "The Bear" has been so consistently good, we all know it's worth waiting for.          

    

So Much Drama in "It Ends With Us"

Minor spoilers ahead.

I have not read the Colleen Hoover bestseller that this film is based on. All I know is that "It Ends With Us" is the big romantic drama that made its way onto the summer movie top ten chart.  I like Blake Lively well enough, but I confess this one was not on my radar at all.  I like a romantic comedy now and then, but I find straight romances more difficult, especially since so many of them lately turn out to be damp weepies. 

I'm going to spoil what kind of movie "It Ends With Us" is, because it's difficult to really talk about it otherwise.  Also, I think it's fair to give unsuspecting audiences some warning of what they're in for.  Despite starting with a meet cute and so many of the tropes that you'd find in romantic comedy, "It Ends With Us" gradually morphs into a story about a troubled, abusive relationship.  I think it's important to emphasize that at no point does this ever become an erotic thriller or neo noir.  We are always firmly in the bounds of an adult, contemporary drama aimed at women, using all the familiar character types and storytelling beats associated with them.  The emotional climaxes are heartfelt talks, and we're meant to feel a degree of sympathy for everyone, even the villains.  

The execution is decent.  Lively plays a woman named Lily Bloom, who is naturally opening her own flower shop, and falls for a handsome doctor, Ryle (Justin Baldoni, who also directed).  Jenny Slate is on hand as Ryle's sister and Lily's employee/bestie for some comic relief and emotional support, with Hasan Minhaj as her husband.  Lily's ex-boyfriend Atlas (Brandon Skenlar) also resurfaces in her life to add some complications.  While Blake Lively is dependably watchable, the filmmaking is pretty pedestrian.  The most interesting part of "It Ends With Us" is its shift from familiar romantic comedy fuzzies to more troubling emotional territory as the minor conflicts in the relationship escalate.  There are instances of domestic violence in the film, but they're framed in a way to minimize anything potentially traumatizing.      

We used to have more movies like this.  While trying to find points of comparison, I found myself digging way  back in my memory, to films like "What's Love Got to Do With it?" and "When a Man Loves a Woman."  I don't think "It Ends With Us" is a particularly good example of this kind of romantic drama, but I am heartened by the fact that it exists, and was fairly well received by audiences.  Lively's character has to blatantly spell out the film's messages at the end, and her problematic partner gets off easy, but I give it some credit for trying to grapple with difficult subjects with an unusual amount of nuance.  It feels like baby steps, but I wonder if certain audiences need that kind of hand-holding these days, after adult dramas have been scarce at the multiplexes for so long.  Then again, if you're going to have a bait-and-switch, why not really commit to the idea?

Apparently there was some animosity going on behind the scenes of "It Ends With Us" related to the film's final cut.  I'm a little curious as to what the differences were between Lively and Baldoni's warring versions of the film.  As it exists now, "It Ends With Us" strikes me as well-intentioned but pretty toothless.  It's a movie trying to address an important subject, but in a wishy-washy way that won't make anyone upset or uncomfortable.  Lively's performance is fine but nothing special, while Baldoni doesn't make much of a case for himself either as a director or a leading man.  I don't regret watching this, but it's easily skippable.   

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"Star Trek Prodigy, Year Two"

Minor spoilers ahead.

The second season of "Prodigy" might still be aimed at younger viewers, but is one that can be recommended to all "Star Trek" fans, especially if you are a fan of "Voyager."  The young recruits set out on a new adventure this year under the command of Admiral Janeway on the USS Voyager.  There are new characters, like the Vulcan cadet Maj'el (Michaela Dietz), and newly introduced old characters like the recruits' advisory hologram, the Doctor (Robert Picardo).  And there are new versions of old characters, like the very different version of Gwyn's father, Ilthuran (John Noble), that she finds when she arrives on their homeworld, Solum.  

Several characters are also keen to become new versions of themselves - Jankom Pog and Rok-Tahk are eager to throw themselves into Starfleet training, while Dal struggles, and is less sure about where he fits on the Voyager crew.  Zero goes through some of the biggest changes this year, as he explores the possibilities of corporeality.  I think I prefer the character dynamics of the first season, where the kids were figuring themselves out on their own, but it's good to see that they're still growing and developing in the second.  Gwyn ends up back with her friends pretty quickly, through circumstances that I will not spoil, and Maj'el makes a good addition to their group.  

However, this season is far more focused on the time-traveling mission to rescue Captain Chakotay (Robert Beltran), which almost immediately goes awry and puts the whole timeline in danger.  The season is still twenty episodes, but there's more serialization, with four separate two-parters.  "Prodigy" actually is canonical with the other "Star Trek" series, so we also get some more substantial references and tie-ins that establish where we are in the timeline.  There's less room for character-building and universe-building stories this year, which is a shame, but the writers still manage to introduce concepts like tribbles, the Mirror Universe, and the Travelers.  Cetacean Ops is something that can only really be done right in animation, and I was glad to see Rok find her way there this year.    

There are some great episodes in this season.  I love the Mirror Universe visit, which is kid-friendly but also genuinely nerve-wracking, and has one of the best laugh lines in the whole show.  "Prodigy" is also probably the best "Star Trek" series of the past few years in terms of how well it's structured as a season of television.  Not everyone gets the same amount of narrative emphasis or attention, but the storylines are well balanced and nothing feels neglected or shortchanged.  Additionally, none of the running subplots feels overly manufactured, such as Zero or Gwyn's ongoing storylines.  I appreciate that a good amount of the action actually centers around the "Voyager" alumni, and everyone has their opportunity to shine.

I do have one major criticism.  The show's production values are about on par with the previous season, which is actually a bit of a problem.  What's become more obvious with more characters from the older, live action "Star Trek" series participating, is that the CGI animation is not quite at the level to keep human faces out of Uncanny Valley.  With the hologram Janeway, the plasticine, slightly dead-eyed look actually felt appropriate.  However with Admiral Janeway, Chakotay, and more in the mix, the deficiencies are far more glaring.  I'm not watching "Prodigy" for the graphics, but it's definitely somewhere we could see improvement.  

At the time of writing, there is no indication that "Prodigy" will have a third season, but it's already made quite a mark on the "Star Trek" universe.  I'd love to see it continue, but the current adventure has been wrapped up well enough that these forty episodes stand quite well on their own.  

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Into "Wolf Hall"

I watched the 2015 "Wolf Hall" miniseries, produced by the BBC, which follows the career of Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance) as he becomes one of the chief advisors to King Henry VIII (Damian Lewis) during the Tudor period.  Six episodes condense two historical novels by Hilary Mantel, covering roughly seven eventful years.  "Wolf Hall" is known for an absolute murderer's row of fine British acting talent taking part in the dramatization of the court intrigue, including Jonathan Pryce as Cardinal Wolsey, Anton Lesser as Thomas More, and Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn.

"Wolf Hall" stands out from other historical dramas about Henry VIII's reign for being primarily concerned with the politics over the relationships.  This version of Thomas Cromwell is a fascinating character, a man of humble birth, but possessing incredible intelligence and strategic skill.  It's endlessly entertaining to watch his performance, which is always calm and calculated on the surface while he's quietly doing battle in every conversation and interaction.  It helps to have some foreknowledge of the historical events being portrayed, or at least all the major figures in play, but I was able to keep up pretty well.   The early episodes center around Cromwell's relationship with his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, whose downfall is presented as the primary reason for Cromwell's hasty climbing of the political ladder, trying to find as many allies as he can.  

However, the reason I'm writing this review at all is really to gush about Claire Foy.  Anne Boleyn is one of the antagonists of the piece, characterized as a shrewd, power-hungry manipulator with a very mean streak, and Foy makes her a treat to watch.  In every appearance she commands attention, and despite everything that historically happened to Boleyn, keeps her tremendously unsympathetic until almost the very end.  This may not be the most accurate take on Anne Boleyn, but it's easily one of the most memorable. High marks also go to Damian Lewis, whose Henry VIII seems nice enough until you realize the kind of unchecked power he's all too willing to use to get his way.  I had some trouble keeping the various power players at court straight, but an almost unrecognizable Bernard Hill as the unpleasant Duke of Norfolk stood out. 

The production strives for realism, with a good deal of the series having been shot in existing era-appropriate buildings and locations.  Night scenes are often darker than the norm, with some only lit by candles or firelight.  Interior scenes are generally pretty dim, which accounts for some of my trouble telling one courtier from the next.  However, this approach also results in a wonderful immersiveness to the show, where the characters feel like they actually inhabit the environments.  There are liberties taken for the sake of entertainment value, of course, but there was clearly a lot of care that went into everything we see onscreen.  I especially enjoy the costuming.  Cromwell's wardrobe improves with his station, so you can mark his rise just based on what he's wearing, and there are plenty of eye-catching looks for Anne Boleyn and her entourage.         

I haven't read Mantel's novels, but I appreciate how well written the series is, with scripts by Peter Straughan.  The dialogue is such a treat to listen to, modernizing the language to a degree, but never feeling too far out of its own time.  The way the show is structured also works very well, with Henry and Anne's famously rocky marriage often center stage, but since the show primarily follows Cromwell, some famous events are reframed in new contexts, and the early events play out in the background of his family's personal tragedies.  

The last four years of Thomas Cromwell's life are covered in a sequel miniseries, "Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light," which just came out a few weeks ago and will be hitting PBS sometime in 2025. I hope to see it as soon as possible.

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"Ghostlight" and "Sing Sing"

I had trouble figuring out how to write about "Ghostlight" and "Sing Sing," which are two of the clear standout films of the year so far.  They're both about how their main characters find redemption and meaning through their participation in amateur acting troupes.  In "Ghostlight," a construction worker named Dan Mueller (Keith Kupferer) stumbles across a tiny group of performers and joins them, which helps him to emotionally connect to his wife (Tara Mallen) and daughter (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) as they weather a family crisis.  In "Sing Sing," we watch a group of prisoners take part in a Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program, including long timer Divine G (Colman Domingo) and newcomer Divine Eye, who plays himself.  

What's difficult for me is that both of these films spend a lot of time examining the acting process, which has always been the aspect of movies and moviemaking that I know and care the least about.  I know good acting when I see it, and have always been - to my discredit - incurious about the actual mechanics of what goes into performances.  Media about the profession of acting hasn't been of much interest to me either - it's a big reason why I abandoned "Barry" pretty quickly.  "Ghostlight" and "Sing Sing," however, are much more accessible.  They're about amateurs who have few pretensions about what they're doing on the stage.  These are people who act because they enjoy it and get something positive out of the act of participating in the shows being staged.  

And the shows being staged are pretty chaotic affairs.  The "Ghostlight" players put on "Romeo and Juliet," with the leads being played by middle-aged adults, as a one-night-only performance.  The RTA group has more funding and experience, and decides to do an original time travel comedy that incorporates ancient Egypt, Freddy Krueger, and "Hamlet," complete with "to be or not to be" soliloquy, to appeal to their inmate audience.  However, both films take pains to demystify the process and capture the positive communal experience of putting on a show like this.  We see a few acting exercises and sit in on a few rehearsals, getting to know the actors as they struggle with their Shakespeare. 

"Ghostlight" strikes me as more successful at doing this.  I didn't recognize any of the actors, with the exception of Dolly de Leon, playing a former professional who is in the group because it's the only way she'll ever get to act in lead roles.  The Mueller family is played by a real couple and their daughter, who bring their existing family dynamic to the screen to good effect.  The conceit that "Romeo and Juliet" is mirroring the Muellers' real life tragedy feels a little too tidy, but the emotional journey that we watch them navigate as a result is handled beautifully.  In both films acting becomes a form of therapy for the actors.  It serves as a way for Dan to access and process emotions that he's been closed off from, helping him transform and heal from the past trauma.

"Sing Sing" is a very different kind of film, with documentary elements and more of a traditional character study with Colman Domingo's performance serving as the main event.  The play is a big part of his story, but the "therapy through acting" arc is given to a supporting character, Divine Eye, while Domingo's Divine G is struggling with a more existential crisis related to his incarceration.  This is a prison drama at the same time that it's a narrative about the creative process.  "Sing Sing" makes it clear that there are limits to what this kind of rehabilitation offers, and there's more emphasis put on the relationships formed between the prisoners in the program.  Nearly all the other actors are real RTA participants playing versions of themselves.  

It's curious, but the characters in "Sing Sing" feel more fictional than the ones in "Ghostlight," often coming across as very idealized versions of real people.  The ones in "Ghostlight" are more well-rounded, and often more relatable.  I'm not sure which take is the better one, and perhaps it's wrongheaded to be comparing these two films at all, but I suspect it's a matter of taste.  And in that spirit, I can happily recommend both.  

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Doubling Back on "Blink Twice"

Spoilers ahead.

I was not originally going to write a full post for  "Blink Twice," the directing debut of Zoe Kravitz.  I did a little capsule write-up as part of my post on 2024 summer thrillers and chillers.  This was one of the better ones, but not at the top of the rankings.  I found Kravitz's direction impressive, but you really don't want to scrutinize the mechanics of how any of the drugs or other mind-altering substances in "Blink Twice" work.  However, I couldn't stop thinking about the movie, so I feel compelled to write a little more.  Let's treat this as a post-viewing spoiler discussion.

I think the arrest of Sean Combs and the details coming out about his crimes had a lot of do with my continued interest.  I think watching a couple of interviews with Zoe Kravitz did too.  And seeing the film dismissed in some corners as "Get Out," but with #MeToo and anti-one percenter themes kinda riled me up to defend it.  Yes, all the themes in "Blink Twice" are familiar and topical, but Kravitz really tackles them in a way that not many other directors have.  There's a literal, prominent trigger warning at the beginning of the movie for a reason, but at the same time "Blink Twice" isn't difficult to watch.  There's a lot of humor, action, and smart framing of events to get the horror and depravity across while still being very entertaining.  The multiple jump scare sequence is one of my favorite parts, and I love the casual "what were we thinking?" banter when the women start putting the pieces together.  

I also keep noticing similar imagery in other media.  The private island vacation, the high end clothing, the beautifully plated food, and the luxury items in little gift bags are all things that you see again and again in modern media aimed at women, especially reality programs.  All the Cinderella narratives seem to involve shopping sprees and makeovers, and so many happy endings involve shots of lazing on a tropical shore.  Kravitz sets up these things as a trap, turning everything from the fancy drinks to the specifically designed clothing against our protagonists.  People have pointed out that Olivia Wilde did similar things with "Don't Worry Darling," where the perfect version of the '50s was supposed to be the draw to keep the victims complacent.  However, not very many people view the '50s as some kind of perfect ideal anymore - even the tradwife trend ditches the old aesthetics - and plenty of media from the last thirty years have happily subverted it.  "Blink Twice" hits so much harder because it's using current signifiers of wealth and privilege, all the things that people aspire to have right now.    

And let's not forget that Channing Tatum's Slater King is part of the package.  As we've seen over and over again in recent years, a man with too much money and too much privilege usually turns out to be a monster.  And yet, there's this terrible impulse to keep lionizing the people who win at capitalism, the Elon Musks and the Donald Trumps who have way too much control over our lives, even though they've demonstrated their total lack of decency and morality.  Tatum's over the top performance as this unbelievable narcissist would seem implausible if we hadn't seen this kind of behavior normalized by real people in the upper echelons.  And Haley Joel Osment and Simon Rex are there to remind you that even the harmless-looking funny guys can turn out to be predators.

I want to talk a little bit about the ending, which has attracted some controversy.  Frieda, played by Naomi Ackie, decides to turn the situation to her advantage rather than expose the truth.  She proves just as cutthroat as her subjugators, and just as willing to exploit her newfound power.  It's a dark turn, but a smart one.  I choose to interpret it as a reminder that women are just as susceptible to being monsters, and men can certainly be victimized.  And this kind of nuance is why I think "Blink Twice" comes across so much better than most of the socially conscious horror that I've seen recently.  If you want a happy ending for Frieda, it has to come with a price.  

    

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"KAOS," Year One

"KAOS" is a fantasy series with a fun premise.  What if the Greek gods existed in the modern day, and the world functioned the way that it did in Greek mythology?  Well, to start you'd have a much more abusive and contentious relationship between the gods and humanity, with the all-powerful Zeus (Jeff Goldblum) and Hera (Janet McTeer) as the heads of a dysfunctional family of deities that lives in immortal opulence.  The mortals on Earth spend much more of their lives devoting themselves to worship, knowing that at any moment they could be wiped out by a god-created disaster or turned into an insect.  Defiance of the gods is almost unheard of, and a desecrated monument means a national emergency.  

However, a reckoning is coming, as explained by our narrator Prometheus (Stephen Dillane), who is comically chained to the side of a mountain like in the myth, except for the times when Zeus snaps him over to Olympus to have someone to vent to.  A prophecy has been made that spells the end of Zeus's reign, and Zeus's paranoid, selfish efforts to safeguard his power make his already bad relationships with everyone around him worse.  Hera is constantly machinating behind his back.  His dealings with his brothers, Poseidon (Cliff Curtis) and Hades (David Thewlis) are fraught.  The only one of his kids who will talk to him is Dionysus (Nabhaan Rizwan), the underachiever who is still hanging around, trying to get some paternal approval.  These Olympus antics take up roughly half of the show's running time.

Meanwhile, the other half is about the humans - specifically three humans who will spell the end of Zeus.  These are Riddy (Aurora Perrineau), short for Eurydice, a woman who has fallen out of love with her husband Orpheus (Killian Scott), a man with a secret named Caeneus (Misia Butler), and Ari (Leila Farzad), short for Ariadne, the daughter of the President of Crete, Minos (Stanley Townsend).  If you know your Greek mythology, don't worry about spoilers.  Each classic story is given a few updates and subject to significant reinterpretation.  We see the whole Orpheus and Eurydice story from Eurydice's point of view, for instance, which means spending a lot more time in the underworld right as things are going metaphysically sideways.  However, despite the involvement of notables like Suzy Izzard and Billie Piper, the human storylines don't come off nearly as well as the ones about the gods, as they're often played straight.  All the fun, absurdist comedy, seems to be reserved for the immortal types.    

Created and written by Charlie Covell, "Kaos" delivers what it promises.  The production design is excellent, often incorporating clever little gags and motifs, like the underworld being entirely in black and white, and the Fates (Suzy Izzard, Ché, and Sam Buttery) all being played by trans or nonbinary actors.  The writing is pretty solid, with good pacing, and some resonant themes related to subverting systems of belief and authority.   Where the satire really hits is the material showing those in power to be totally undeserving of it, such as the narcissistic, contemptuous Zeus being thrown into turmoil because he thinks he's found a new wrinkle on his forehead, or the well-tanned Poseidon who of course swans around in a megayacht.  I wish the whole series had been about the gods' domestic squabbles - Hera being nasty to Persephone (Rakie Ayola), and any other woman she views as a threat, is a joy.  Goldblum and McTeer expertly camping it up is just the tip of the iceberg.

I should warn the prospective viewer that "KAOS" is only the first season of a planned three season show.  I'd initially thought this was a miniseries, and was disappointed to discover that the last episode didn't wrap up the way I was expecting.  There are resolutions to be found, but "KAOS" is also clearly just getting started.  I'm crossing my fingers that enough Netflix viewers feel the way I do about the show, and we get to that ultimate ending sooner rather than later.     

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"Int. Chinatown" Comes to the Screen

"Int. Chinatown" is a television show aimed at critiquing how television shows work, specifically cop dramas like "Law & Order," and more specifically how Asian-Americans are portrayed onscreen.  Based on the book by Charles Yu, which was written in screenplay format for extra meta fun, "Int. Chinatown" is about a generic Asian background character, Willis Wu (Jimmy O. Yang), who decides to be something more.  I never watched much of "Kevin Can F**k Himself," but this functions kinda similarly.  

Willis works as a waiter with his best friend Fatty Choi (Ronny Chieng) for his Uncle Wong (Archie Kao) at a restaurant in Chinatown.  He's close with his parents (Diana Lin, Tzi Ma), and has never gotten over the disappearance of his older brother Johnny (Chris Pang) twelve years ago.  One day a detective named Lana Lee (Chloe Bennet) comes into the restaurant and into his life, spurring Willis to get involved in her case.  However, neither of them can seem to get much attention from the lead detectives, Turner (Sullivan Jones) and Green (Lisa Gilroy), who always seem to be at the center of the action.  Even the lighting gets more interesting whenever they show up.  However, that won't stop Willis and Lana from digging into the mysteries of Chintatown, uncovering the conspiracy around Johnny's disappearance, and finding their way into the spotlight.  

"Int. Chinatown" is not remotely subtle about what it's doing, which is to show how limited the depictions of Asian American on TV have been through a genre that everybody is familiar with.  The episodes are even named after common roles for Asian actors like "Delivery Guy," and "Interpreter," as Willis figures out new ways to insert himself into the story, working his way toward leading man status.  It's also constantly taking apart common police procedural tropes in the process.   We get glimpses of the show that Willis is stuck in, called "Black & White: Impossible Crimes Unit," where the photogenic leads are constantly trading quips, the tech guy's job is to "enhance" everything, and of course there's a grumpy chief (Michael J. Harney) laying down the law.  There are a lot of fun gags with framing and blocking to denote the different levels of reality, and pointing out things that make no sense, like everyone insisting that Lana is a "Chinatown expert."  Eventually, the writers also take aim at old 70s and 80s action shows, and more modern prestige television too.   

There's a lot to like here, but the execution hits some bumps.  At ten episodes "Int. Chinatown" runs too long, and some of the concepts are messy.  There's a subplot with Willis's mom becoming a realtor that feels like part of a different show.   A whole episode is devoted to the super warped reality of advertisements, which never quite comes off right.  There have also been several very good recent movies and shows about the Asian-American immigrant experience, like "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once" and "The Brothers Sun" so a lot of the Chinatown tropes that are being taken to task in "Int. Chinatown" feel very out of date.  I'm also a little surprised that B.D. Wong's "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" psychiatrist character wasn't referenced at all, considering that he was one of the few Asian regulars in the genre.  The material that tends to work better revolves around broader, more general cop show nonsense, like a throwaway line about having to specify that the orchestra violinist murder and the string quartet murder are two different murders.    

However, Fatty inexplicably becoming a beloved celebrity because he's such a mean waiter is fantastic stuff.  Ronnie Chieng frequently steals every scene that he's in.  And I'm always glad to see Jimmy O. Yang in anything, because he's got such a terrific screen presence, and works well as a leading man in spite of his character actor looks.  I haven't seen Chloe Bennet in anything since "Agents of SHIELD" either, and she's great here, especially when Lana starts going off the rails. As someone who watched a lot of cop dramas, and recall a lot of terrible Chinatown episodes, I came for the meta, but I stayed for the ensemble.  It's always wonderful to find Asian actors like Diana Lim and Charles Pang who I wasn't familiar with before.  

  

I doubt we'll get a second season, but I'm still rooting for one.

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Growing Up with "Didi"

We don't learn the name of the title character of "Didi" (Izaac Wang) until pretty late in the film.  We know his friends, Fahad (Raul Dial) and Soup (Aaron Chang) call him Wang Wang.  He tells the older skater kids he's trying to impress that his name is Chris.  However at home, with his ever-nagging mother (Joan Chen) and paternal grandmother (Chung-Sing Wang), who speak very little English, he's Didi, which means younger brother in Mandarin.  Notably his older sister Vivian (Shirley Chen), who is about to go off to college, doesn't call him Didi.  Vivian and Chris Wang have grown up in the suburbs of Fremont, California, and don't speak Chinese to each other.  They only speak Chinese to their mother and grandmother.  Their father is absent, said to be working in Taiwan.

"Didi" captures a very specific time and place, but also a more universal experience.  Chris is thirteen years old, and it's the summer before he starts high school.  His sister, who he bickers and fights with constantly, is about to leave for university.  He hangs out with his friends, pulling pranks and posting stupid videos on Youtube, which is just starting to become popular.  The movie takes place in 2008, so Chris chats with his friends through AIM, and gathers information about his crush, Madi (Mahaela Park), through her Facebook page.  He works up the courage to talk to her, one thing leads to another, and then everything in his life starts to change much too fast.  And when Madi asks him what she should call him, at first he's not sure what to say.    

I was initially very apprehensive about watching "Didi," which was written and directed by Sean Wang.  As much as I am invested in Asian-American representation, Chris Wang is exactly the kind of teenage boy - constantly pulling pranks, talking like a wannabe rapper, and indulging every stupid notion that comes into his head - that I loathed being around when I was growing up in not-so-dissimilar circumstances.  To be blunt, I was always the Vivian in this story, though my relationship with my younger brother was never anywhere near as bad.  I wasn't keen on sitting through ninety minutes of teenage male nonsense, wrapped in skater-boy nostalgia, like Jonah Hill's "mid90s."  I'll admit here that I had a harder time trying to decipher some of the mid-2000s vernacular and acronym-heavy chatspeak used by Chris and his friends than I had with the Mandarin dialogue.    

However, it wasn't hard for me to find some empathy for the kids in "Didi."  Despite being about half a generation older, I recognized a lot from my teenage years in the film.  Sean Wang captures the look and feel of California suburbia better than most - the sunbaked sidewalks, the kids being a mix of ethnicities, and not being able to go anywhere without a car.  This version of the Chinese-American immigrant community also rings true - the achievement-oriented chatter among the adults, the test prep classes, and the endless unsolicited advice from family members forever highlighting your deepest inadequacies.  The most important character in the film after Chris is his mother, played with just the right amount of warmth and steeliness, by Joan Chen.  I don't know that I'd characterize "Didi" as a film about the mother-son relationship, but it's a big piece of the picture, and done beautifully.  

And by the end of the film, I found I liked Chris Wang very much.  I got invested in his search for identity, his missteps with his friends, his attempts to become a skateboarding "filmer," and finally finding some meaningful connection to his family.  I appreciate that a lot of his journey to maturation comes from  reacting to negative social pressures in a constructive way, and realizing that he doesn't have the luxury of staying an adolescent asshole forever.  Sometimes it's painful to watch, but it's also tremendously satisfying to see Chris figure things out.  Even though a lot of what came out of his protagonist's mouth got lost in translation, Sean Wang got all the important parts across just fine.    

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My Favorite Michael Haneke Film

This "Great Directors" entry was almost titled "The Michael Haneke Film I Dislike the Least."  Haneke makes films I don't enjoy - bleak, depressing, hopeless, anxiety-inducing, and psychologically grueling.  Of course, they're also brilliant.  Haneke films are absolutely thrilling in the way they control and manipulate the audience's perceptions.  What you don't see is as important as what you do see, and you can't trust what Haneke shows you.  He will use the language of cinema to trick you, to mislead you, to pull the rug out from under you, and leave you at the cliff's edge.  There will be mysteries with no solutions, buildups with no payoffs, and suffering without hope of salvation.

Haneke's first feature film, "The Seventh Continent," is one of his most conventional.  It's one of the most horrific, disturbing features I've ever seen, but it follows a fairly straightforward narrative.  Over three years, we watch a well-to-do family live out an ordinary life, but a terrible tension is building in each scene of mundane domestic activity.  We rarely see the characters speak to each other, but simply watch them carry out their repetitive daily chores.  There are many Bressonian shots of hands and objects.  Letters to relatives, read aloud, provide some bare bones exposition.  We are given clues to why the members of the family are so unhappy, but nothing concrete.  There is nothing to explain why they take such drastic action in the last act of the film.

Many of the usual elements of Michael Haneke films are already present in "The Seventh Continent." The married couple, like many Haneke leads, are named Georg and Anna.  Much of the action (or inaction) is relayed in long, unbroken shots.  The editing is very abrupt, cutting to black screens between certain scenes.  Sometimes those black screens linger, emphasizing that more is going on that we're not seeing.    The themes are familiar - existential malaise, nihilism, and the corrupting effect of modern society.  Haneke's filmmaking approach is extremely assured, honed by a long career in television.  "The Seventh Continent" is similar to Chantal Akerman's "Jeanne Dielman" in structure, very formalist and very simple, except that the ending has a more defined escalation, and drawn out climax.  

Even though we're never clued into the why, the family's acts of violence are made very explicit.  I don't think that Haneke would have chosen to show this later in his career.  He's never shied away from depictions of violence, but his later films don't focus on them the way he does here.  Frankly, this is the part of the movie that had me the most engrossed, especially the long, hypnotic scenes of deliberate property destruction.  The way the film is set up, they act as a release or punchline to the earlier, repetitive establishing shots of the family living in this stifling, airless life of alienation and mundanity.  These were the scenes that I found the most disturbing, because I felt a visceral thrill at watching this aspect of the family's self-annihilation.  The much-discussed shots of money being destroyed and flushed down a toilet are more jarring than the scenes of violence against human beings - almost surely because the former is almost never seen in media, while the latter is commonplace.      

I don't find any of Michael Haneke's films entertaining, and I'm not meant to.  Many Haneke films can be described as mysteries or thrillers, but they don't follow the rules for these genres.  In many cases, they actively subvert them, such as the two versions of "Funny Games," which actively seek to frustrate the audience over and over again.  "The Seventh Continent," at least, seems more interested in enlightening the audience than denying them.  Haneke claims that the film is loosely based on a real incident - I've never been able to find confirmation as to whether this is true or not - and if the mystery was taken from real life, I expect that limited how horrible Haneke was willing to be to the characters.  It's strange, but Haneke's films are usually so cold and so inhumane, I feel nothing for the people in them.  "The Seventh Continent" is a rare exception, where I had nothing but sympathy for everyone involved.         

What I've Seen - Michael Haneke

The Seventh Continent (1989)

Benny's Video (1992)

71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994)

Funny Games (1997)

The Castle (1997)

Code Unknown (2000)

The Piano Teacher (2001)

Caché (2005)

The White Ribbon (2009)

Amour (2012)

Happy End (2017)

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"Twisters" and "Rebel Ridge"

Catching up on summer action movies.

"Twisters" is the kind of simple, old fashioned disaster movie that is designed from the ground up to be a crowd-pleaser.  You've got Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell as the photogenic leads, Lee Isaac Chung directing - seemingly an odd choice until you remember "Minari" was about living in the American Midwest - and the best inclement weather that ILM can provide.  In addition to the disaster sequences and the obligatory romance, "Twisters" also features a plot that panders shamelessly to Middle America.  The well-funded scientists Edgar-Jones initially teams up with are positioned as the baddies, while the ragtag, thrill-seeking gang of storm chasers, who cultivate a social media following, are positioned as the heroes.  And to the credit of the filmmakers, it mostly works.        

There's been a lot of attention around Glen Powell's participation in "Twisters," since his star is on the rise and he has the showiest part, but the main character is Kate Carter, the meteorologist played by Daisy Edgar-Jones.  I'm more impressed with her than with Powell, as she has no trouble carrying the film and holding my attention, despite being saddled with a pretty dull trauma recovery arc.  I wish the film had made more use of its supporting cast, which includes Anthony Ramos, Sasha Lane, Brandon Perea, and Katy O'Brian - most of them in bit parts.  However, a big mark in the film's favor is that it has no overt connection to the 1996 "Twister" film, and I wouldn't even treat "Twisters" as a direct sequel.  There are a couple of common elements and homages, like the Dorothy doppler device, but otherwise "Twisters" wastes no time on nostalgia.  

And now for something completely different.  "Rebel Ridge" is possibly the most un-Jeremy Saulnier movie that Jeremy Saulnier has ever made.  The director is best known for slow-burn thrillers like "Blue Ruin," and "Green Room" - always very grounded narratives with realistic violence and consequences.  "Rebel Ridge" is designed to be a subversion of one-man-army films like the original "Rambo," or more recently the Amazon Prime "Reacher" series.  However, while it's shown that a single, righteous man on a mission can't defeat a corrupt police force on his own, "Rebel Ridge" makes one big concession to Hollywood-style fantasy.  Terry Richmond, played by Aaron Pierre, is a man of superhuman competence who makes for an incredibly appealing action hero.  I've liked Pierre in other roles, and it's great to see him in a fantastic part that makes him look like the coolest man alive.   

 

"Rebel Ridge" is slow paced, and more concerned with making its case against police abuses and civil forfeiture laws than delivering big action sequences.  The initial transgression against Terry involves two police officers running his bike off the road, and then seizing the cash that Terry intends to use to bail his young cousin out of lockup.  Still,  the action that we do get, and more importantly the long lead-up to that action, is very effective.  The confrontation scenes between Terry Richmond and the cops are tense and engrossing.  Fine one-liners abound.  Saulnier makes sure that both sides get their say, and we're made to understand the systemic incentivization for police misconduct before Terry makes the wrongdoers pay for it.  Those wrongdoers include the Chief of Police, played by Don Johnson, and officers played by David Denman and Emory Cohen.  Anna Sophia Robb shows up as one of Terry's few allies, Summer, a law student who helps him dig into the legal record.

Not everyone will have the patience for "Rebel Ridge" or appreciate its insistence on de-escalating most bad situations instead of going for the big payoff.  There are definitely politics and social commentary in play - economic, governmental, and of course racial.  Quite a lot of "Rebel Ridge" is actually an investigation story, and it zigs where you'd expect it would zag.  The ending will likely infuriate some as much as it satisfies others.  Frankly, I'm pleasantly surprised that the movie is as entertaining as it is while not being subtle at all about its messages.  I hope Saulnier has a few more movies like this in him.

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"Star Trek Prodigy," Year One

"Star Trek Prodigy" is a "Star Trek" series specifically aimed at children, and I had every intention of ignoring it, until the excellent reactions for the second season started coming in. I haven't watched many CGI animated series since the Mainframe shows from the '90s like "Reboot" and "War Planets," in part because the animation quality for television projects has always been pretty rough. "Prodigy" has the advantage that almost none of its major characters are human, so the character animation has more leeway to get creative, and counteract the stiff, plasticine look of most TV-grade CGI.


Initially produced for Nickelodeon, and then Netflix, "Prodigy" is about a group of ragtag youngsters who escape from forced servitude on a mining asteroid by stealing an abandoned Federation ship called the Protostar. How the ship got there and why it was abandoned are mysteries that the show takes its time answering. A twenty-episode season gives the writers plenty of time to properly acquaint us with all the characters, set up the stakes of the story, and spend some time introducing viewers to some of the big concepts of the "Star Trek" universe. The kids include Dal (Brett Gray), a cocky youngster from an unknown species who declares himself captain, Jankom Pog (Jason Mantzoukas), an earthy Tellarite who takes on engineering duties, Rok-Tahk (Rylee Alazraqui), who looks big and scary but is really a shy science girl, Zero (Angus Imrie) an intellectual energy-cloud being in a containment suit, and Gwyn (Ella Purnell), the complicated daughter of the Diviner (John Noble), the villain who runs the mining asteroid.


Shepherding them along is a hologram of Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), who initially mistakes the kids for a group of Starfleet cadets. Even after learning the truth she encourages them to follow their dreams of joining Starfleet, helping them through lessons on the Prime Directive, the Kobayashi Maru scenario, and other common "Star Trek" dilemmas - presented in a kid-friendly way, of course. There are other concessions to the young audience, such as the ship's pet Murf (Dee Bradley Baker), a big, friendly, rainbow slug who acts like a dog. However, there are also a surprising number of Easter eggs and "Star Trek" references for existing fans, including several cameos. More importantly, "Prodigy" feels like "Star Trek" through and through. Our young heroes run through plenty of common "Star Trek" scenarios, from exploring alien worlds, to the ship being sabotaged, to difficult moral dilemmas. There's a big, epic, season-long story involving the Diviner trying to gain control of the Protostar and using it against the Federation, but we also get plenty of smaller, episodic installments about facing the monster or crew disagreement of the week.


In short, I didn't realize how much I'd missed this kind of "Star Trek." Far too many streaming shows are giving us eight measly episodes every two years, and it's so nice to be able to watch the "Prodigy" kids learn and grow together over a longer, more relaxed season. All the characters are pretty tropey, but thanks to enthusiastic performances and committed writing, it's not hard to get attached. Even the hologram of Janeway feels like a well-rounded, very lovable character, entirely separate from the "Star Trek: Voyager" Janeway, by the end of the first season. I'm sure you could quibble over some of the mistakes in "Trek" lore, or the rather flimsy storytelling devices that the writers invent to keep the kids on the Protostar for so long without any real supervision, but that just feels stingy.


If "Prodigy" weren't a "Star Trek" series, I probably would not have watched it, and I'm glad I did. It's a fantastically well made adventure show for newcomers to the "Star Trek" franchise, and I intend to go on to the second season when I have a chance. I especially appreciate seeing how far television CGI animation has come over the last two decades, though I think I'll always prefer the traditional stuff.

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Five Years After "Endgame"

I planned to write a new installment of "State of the Superhero" for 2024, but I really only have anything to say about the MCU.  The rebooted DC films under James Gunn haven't really gotten off the ground yet, and their television offerings have been scarce under David Zaslav.  There aren't any more upcoming Sony Spider-Verse movies after "Kraven," aside from the far-off promise of "Beyond the Spider-Verse," and "Spider-Noir."

So, let's talk about what's going on with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  In short, the Multiverse Saga (Phases 4-6) is not going well.  Phase Four was massively impacted by the pandemic, and the quality of the television and film output was hit-or-miss, introducing a lot of new characters like Shang-Chi and the Eternals.  There was some grumbling about sub-par sequels, but the box office was still mostly okay.  Then came Phase Five, and the wheels really started coming off.  2023 was the worst year for Marvel Studios to date, with the awful "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," and "Secret Invasion."  "The Marvels" bombed spectacularly, though it didn't deserve it.  The allegations against Jonathan Majors came out around the time "Quantumania" did, prompting his removal from the franchise, despite playing the villain, Kang, who was set to be the big bad of the next "Avengers" film.  Then along came the SAG/WGA strikes, which meant more disruption and delay.  

I'm not going to get into all the turmoil going on at Disney and Marvel Studios behind the scenes that has contributed to the chaos, but everyone seems to agree that the increased amount of Marvel content due to the Disney+ streaming service has drastically affected its quality across the board.  Nearly every announced project has seen multi-year delays, and I've lost track of all the directors who have come and gone from the perpetually in-limbo "Blade" move with Mahershalla Ali, which was initially announced back in 2019 was recentlly taken off the schedule entirely.  The new "Daredevil" series had to be extensively retooled after several episodes had already been shot.  I'm not going to say much more about the upcoming Disney+series, because they'll be dealing with a backlog of already announced projects for at least the next year - none of them very interesting.  However, at least they're hiring more seasoned showrunners for future streaming projects.

What prompted this post was the 2024 Comic-Con announcements, which promised some big things going forward, and signaled that there have been a lot of frantic attempts to fix things out of the public eye.  The biggest news is that Jonathan Majors' Kang is being replaced by a new Big Bad - Doctor Doom, who will be played by Robert Downey Jr.  The fifth Avengers movie, formerly known as "Avengers: Kang Dynasty," has been renamed "Avengers: Doomsday."  The sixth Avengers film is still "Avengers: Secret Wars."  The Russo brothers, who have made some underwhelming films since "Endgame," are returning to helm both.  In other words, Marvel's getting the band responsible for their most lucrative movies back together.  I've seen some disappointment that Marvel is playing it safe and playing the hits, but I honestly think this is a pretty good outcome for everyone involved.  The Russos get a steady paycheck for a few years, and the next "Avengers" films are in the hands of directors with a lot of  experience.

We also got a much better look at the next few MCU films coming our way.  2025 will see the release of "Captain America: Brave New World," "Thunderbolts*," and "The Fantastic Four: First Steps."  I'm not too enthused about any of them.  "Brave New World,"  is going to be another espionage thriller in the same vein as "Winter Soldier," more grounded and realistic, despite Harrison Ford Hulking out in some of the leaked footage.  "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" series was such a mess, I'm glad that Anthony Mackie will have a chance to relaunch his version of Captain America, but the best case scenario that I can see is that this ends up being a homage to political thrillers of the 90s like Harrison Ford's Jack Ryan movies.  "Thunderbolts*" (I expect the asterisk is meant to represent the six main characters coming together) is a team-up movie for the MCU's antiheroes and reformed villains - mostly from "Black Widow" and " The Falcon and the Winter Soldier."  Frankly, it looks like a much less interesting version of "The Suicide Squad," and I'm not really a fan of any of the featured characters.  Florence Pugh's Yelena, the new Black Widow, is okay, I guess.  Bucky's charms continue to elude me.     

Finally, we have "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" which Marvel is pinning a lot of their hopes on.  It's kicking off Phase Six, and will likely lead straight into "Avengers: Doomsday."  However, this has been a difficult piece of material to adapt, and frankly I've never seen any adaptation of "The Fantastic Four" that I've liked.  Nothing about the new attempt is catching my interest so far.  The '60s setting isn't going to help bring in audiences, the "First Steps" title is meh, and the cast is not anybody's first choices for these characters.  The hovering car makes me think this movie is going to be aimed at an audience a lot younger than the ones for the three movies it's following - one of which is the R-rated "Deadpool & Wolverine" that made a billion dollars.

At the time of writing the next "Spider-man" movie was just announced for 2026. It seems awfully fast, but Marvel is going to need those reinforcements.    

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