What Happened to "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"?

So, "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning" is set up like a finale to the "Mission: Impossible" franchise, and is supposed to be paying off the storyline set up by "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One" from 2023.  I disliked "Dead Reckoning" whenever there wasn't an action scene going on, finding the AI-instigated doomsday scenario ridiculous, and the Esai Morales villain dull.  "The Final Reckoning" manages to be a significantly worse experience.  In fact, it's so much worse that I have to wonder how this movie made it to theaters in this sorry state.  It is easily the worst "Mission: Impossible" movie by a considerable amount, even worse than John Woo's "Mission: Impossible 2," which may have been silly, but at least it was still entertaining.

Let's start from the top.  "The Final Reckoning" does have two big, impressive action sequences.  In one, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) infiltrates a sunken submarine and has to escape it.  In the finale, he and the villain fight over the world-saving MacGuffin in biplanes, performing a variety of aerial stunts in the process.  These are everything you want "Mission: Impossible" to be, and I understand why viewers would watch the movie for them.  However, getting to the first major set piece requires sitting through almost a solid hour of incredibly tedious exposition and montages, setting up the plot and characters, reminding us of everything that happened in previous movies, and fawning over Ethan Hunt as the only one who can save the world from the evil AI, the Entity.  There are some brief fisticuffs here, and a quick sprint away from an explosion there to break things up, but nothing that lasts more than a minute or two.  This is a 170 minute movie, and you easily could have chopped the first forty.  

Trying to make a play for nostalgia, there are also a lot of callbacks to the first "Mission: Impossible" film from 1996, and more attempts are made to involve the rest of Hunt's team in the actual world-saving.  Old favorites Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), are joined by newbies Grace (Hayley Attwell), Paris (Pom Klementieff), and Theo (Greg Tarzan Davis).  We also get a cavalcade of celebrities in bit parts including Tramell Tillman, Hannah Waddingham, Katy O'Brien, and Angela Bassett as the US President.  These are diverting enough if you actually recognize the actors, or remember enough about the prior "Mission: Impossible" movies to catch the references (remember the Rabbit's Foot from Mission: Impossible III"?), but I found most of it pretty tedious.  The only callback I liked involves a minor character played by Rolf Saxon getting the spotlight for a bit, which was nice.

However, the whole tone of the film is eye-rollingly self-serious, the script is drowning in technobabble, and everyone is trying much too hard to get us to get emotionally invested in characters who have always been cardboard thin.  It was a relief when we finally got to the submarine infiltration, and the extended underwater sequence, because that happens mostly in silence and I didn't have to hear any more of the tin-ear dialogue for a while.  While the stunt sequences were a lot of fun, I actually much preferred the parts of the film that focused on the other characters, who got to banter and act like actual members of a team when Ethan Hunt wasn't around.  If Tom Cruise quits the series, can we just keep going with Simon Pegg?  Frankly, I haven't liked the "Mission: Impossible" movies very much for a long time now, and "Final Reckoning" just cements for me that it's about time for a change.          

However, I expect that this is going to be the end of the road for the franchise for a while, at least on the big screen.  The box office returns have been shaky, and Tom Cruise has been pushing his luck for a little too long.  You can expect my personal ranking of the "Mission: Impossible" films shortly.  Because if Charlie Cale has a ranking, I should too.    

 

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Was I Too Hard on "Happy Gilmore"?

I wrote up a post long ago about my feelings towards Adam Sandler, who made a lot of hit movies I didn't like and a lot of smaller, weirder films that I did.  I had long resolved to stop watching his mainstream comedies and just focus on his more critically acclaimed projects like "Uncut Gems" and the upcoming "Jay Kelly."  However, upon hearing that "Happy Gilmore 2" was getting pretty decent critical notices, I decided to revisit the original "Happy Gilmore," and to my surprise I liked what I saw.

I don't have a clear recollection of when or in what circumstances I first watched "Happy Gilmore" and "Billy Madison," Sandler's first two major films.  I just remember that Sandler's screen persona was a lot cruder and more physically aggressive than the leads of most comedies at the time.  He seemed to fly into destructive rages a lot, and Roger Ebert famously wrote that he didn't have a "pleasing personality" when remarking on Sandler's performance in "Happy Madison."  When I was a kid, onscreen aggression of any kind came across to me as threatening and sinister, so I'm not surprised that I didn't find him funny.     

I still don't like Happy Gilmore much as a character, but I understand more of his appeal.  Specifically, Gilmore represents a now instantly recognizable type of underachieving blue collar young male living with a lot of frustration and not many opportunities.  Unlike some of the other, later Sandler leads, he's not especially mean-spirited or crass.  He just has a lot of impulse control issues, which he's eventually able to improve.  He works great as the hero of "Happy Gilmore," where an unpolished wannabe hockey player shows up snooty golf pros and disrupts the golfing establishment. Sandler is pretty sympathetic and easy to root for here, instead of puerile and overbearing the way he comes across his less successful comedies.

What really struck me with this watch was that the supporting cast does a lot of the heavy lifting. Christopher McDonald as Gilmore's rival Shooter McGavin, and Carl Weathers as Gilmore's intensely committed coach, provide big personalities for Gilmore to play off of.  I loved seeing Richard Kiel get to menace people again, and appreciated the pure absurdity of the Bob Barker fistfight.  The cameos from Kevin Nealon and Ben Stiller are brief, but just enough to be memorable.  This is also easily the best movie I've seen from director Dennis Dugan.  The comedy always comes first, but the sports competition tropes are executed well, so the golfing is actually fun to watch.  

However, I don't like the attempts at romance at all.  The moments of Gilmore's jackassery I can't forgive are the ones aimed at Virginia, played by Julie Bowen.  Adam Sandler also co-wrote the movie with Tim Herlihy, and It was very disappointing to realize that their idea of the right girl for Happy Madison is a pretty, bland woman whose most prominent characteristic is not showing any sign of being upset when men are being abhorrent to her.  There are a few scenes where it's like she suddenly stops being able to understand English when Gilmore says something particularly crass.

This is acknowledged and corrected in "Happy Gilmore 2," which picks up twenty-five years later.  I found it mildly enjoyable, though Sandler's persona has totally changed from anarchic outsider to aging dad, and Happy Gilmore follows suit.  In a total reversal, he's now trying to save "traditional golf" from being destroyed by an obnoxious Xtreme sports style "Maxi Golf" league backed by an evil energy drink CEO (Benny Safdie).  Pretty much every surviving cast member from the original film returns, and a lot of time is taken up with tributes to the departed ones.        

But more than anything, "Happy Gilmore 2" emphasized that I did have some affection for the original movie, even if my feelings remain mixed on Adam Sandler's performance in it.  And my relationship with Sandler as a performer remains very complicated.  If we get any more late sequels to the likes of "Billy Madison" or "The Waterboy," however, I might be convinced to give those titles a rewatch too, for old times' sake.

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"Wednesday," Year Two

There's a lot going on in Wednesday's life this year.  Her brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) is joining her at Nevermore Academy, which means her parents are intent on sticking around in close proximity for most of the season.  There's a new Nevermore principal, a suspicious fellow named Barry Dort (Steve Buscemi).  There's a new music teacher, Isadora Capri (Billie Piper), also suspicious.  Wednesday attracts an obsessive fangirl, Agnes (Evie Templeton), with boundary issues.  Bodies start turning up, characters from last season are still lurking around (even the dead ones), and the only friend Pugsley is able to make is a zombie he accidentally creates and names Slurp (Owen Painter). Even worse, Wednesday has lost her psychic powers and Enid is under threat.

The first season of "Wednesday" was a smash hit for Netflix, and suddenly it feels like everyone wants to be on the show.  Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzman, who only appeared previously as recurring characters, are now series regulars.  There are big names playing all the guest stars, no matter how minor the part.  Hey, it's Thandiwe Newton running a mental asylum!  Hey, it's Christopher Lloyd as a disembodied head!  Characters from the first season who really have no reason to be in the second show up anyway.  Sometimes this is great, like Gwendolyn Christie popping up as Wednesday's exasperated new spirit guide, and sometimes this is just a distraction.  It feels like there's also an obligation to repeat all the hits - an Uncle Fester episode, a dance sequence, more cello playing and more fencing.  However, this season rarely gives Wednesday enough breathing room to attempt any character growth or to even check in on the friendships that were central to the show the last time we saw it.

It takes much longer than it should for "Wednesday's" second season to find its footing.  Frankly, the first half is an unappealing jumble of too many characters with too many problems all vying for our attention.  Wednesday herself comes off as unnecessarily mean and antagonistic instead of a classic outcast, since most of her schoolmates are cool with her now.  The family drama feels forced and there aren't any decent villains for far too long.  Eventually the show gets back on track, in part because the focus shifts from Wednesday obsessing over her own agendas to Wednesday helping her friends -  Enid, Agnes, Bianca, Tyler and even Thing -  who give us more sympathetic protagonists to root for.  Eventually all those disparate stories do come together, if you have the patience to make it to the end.  However, it relies on an awful lot of coincidences and messy reveals - and there are loose ends left everywhere. 

Tim Burton is back to direct half of the episodes and Netflix's pockets are deep when it comes to their hits, so we get a lot of fancy set pieces, CGI creature transformations, and even a brief stop-motion animation sequence in the premiere.  However, the most fun comes from relatively simple character business like a body-switch scenario and Joanna Lumley's snootier take on the Addams' Grandmama.  "Wednesday" features an Addams family with very different dynamics than the previous ones we've seen in other Addams media, and I'm all for it.  The show's larger worldbuilding, however, where anyone with powers is some kind of "misfit," subject to all manner of arbitrary rules, had me rolling my eyes.  We just have to call mad scientists "Da Vincis," and there happens to be a special subclass of werewolves called "Alphas" that are both super strong and super vulnerable. 

Then again, I'm older and far more cynical than the intended audience for this show.  This is, after all, a YA horror fantasy set at a magic boarding school.  I don't think that the younger fans of "Wednesday" will have any problems with the new season.  As for me, I liked enough of it that I'll keep watching, with the hope that Burton and company will cut the cast list down to size next time.        

   

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Ready or Not It's "28 Years Later"

I originally intended to pair this review together with another horror film, but once I started writing it, I kept finding more that I wanted to say, so here we are.  

I was never a fan of Danny Boyle's zombie film "28 Days Later," or really that whole wave of zombie media that started in the early 2000s and never really went away.  However, the reteaming of director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland for "28 Years Later" is an event worth paying attention to,  especially since this is their first collaboration since 2007's "Sunshine."  When "28 Days Later" came out, it was a departure from the zombie genre, with its fast-moving "Infected" and pointed political commentary.  It's only natural that "28 Years Later" should also be a departure, slowly introducing us to a vastly changed United Kingdom that is quarantined from the rest of the world. 

The tiny island community of Lindisfarne survives in isolation, because it is naturally protected from the English mainland by a causeway that is only accessible at low tide.  Twelve year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) makes his first trip over the causeway with his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) for a coming-of-age ceremony, where he learns to fight and kill the Infected.  Learning that there's a doctor who might be living in the area, Spike decides to get help for his mother Isla (Jodie Comer), who is afflicted by some unknown illness, and becoming more and more mentally unsound.  The story is told largely from Spike's POV as he learns more and more about the state of the overrun UK and the rest of the world, and becomes acclimated to living with the reality of death so close at hand.  

All the expected elements of a zombie film are present here, including several chase and kill sequences.  There are some particularly gnarly ones in "28 Years Later" involving splattery dismemberments and close quarters violence.  However, what Boyle and Garland are really after is depicting Spike's loss of innocence and subsequent spiritual awakening within this environment.  The depiction of the violence is often heightened, with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle using a lot of handheld camera, jump cuts, freeze-frames, and jarring editing.  Quieter sequences will incorporate fragmentary clips of unrelated prior Infected attacks and other existing media, showing where the characters' thoughts are, and invoking spectres of the Infected and the pre-Infected world long before Spike actually encounters them.  There's an especially chilling montage set to a recitation of Rudyard Kipling's "Boots" featuring clips of men at war, accompanying father and son as they set out into the unknown.  This makes for a zombie film that has one foot in arthouse and one foot in grindhouse, and it mostly works.  

What's especially interesting is the introduction of a strong spiritual element in this universe for the first time.  An allegory for the downfall of religion is presented in the opening sequence, a flashback to the original Infected attacks in 2002, where a young boy watches the invasion and destruction of a church.  Over the course of the film we see elements of its return, with a virgin birth analog, several potential Christ figures, and the invocation of memento mori as a central tenet.  There's also a very obvious Antichrist figure at the end of the film, setting up a forthcoming "28 Years Later" sequel. 

The worldbuilding is very good, with most of "28 Years Later" taking place in picturesque woodlands and largely deserted areas.  The Infected have changed along with their environment, and there are multiple encounters to show us their behavior and in different contexts.  Human beings, of course, have also changed, and one of the few humorous moments in the film involves Spike encountering a lost Swedish soldier (Edvin Ryding) who struggles to find common ground with someone who has never heard of the internet.  

Finally, I want to express my appreciation that Boyle and his collaborators have kept "28 Years Later" such a very UK film, drawing from a specific pool of influences and references from British history and pop culture.  There are nods to the Teletubbies, Jimmy Saville, and "Kes."  Sir Lawrence Olivier is now technically in a zombie movie, via one of the montages, and it feels oddly appropriate.  

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Checking in to "The Four Seasons"

Based on a 1981 Alan Alda comedy, "The Four Seasons" is about three married couples who make up a longstanding friend group.  They're all well-to-do Gen Xers who take turns planning trips together.  We see the four times that they all meet up during one eventful year, when one of the couples hits the skids.  Spoilers for the first two episodes ahead, as It's hard to talk about some of the best parts of the show without getting into how some of the relationships progress.

The main couples are Jack (Will Forte) and Kate (Tina Fey), Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver) and Nick (Steve Carrell), and Danny (Colman Domingo) and Claude (Marco Calvani).  We find out that Anne and Nick are the ones with the marriage in trouble during the spring trip to their lake house, which results in new partners and much awkwardness on subsequent trips as their friends try to navigate the new dynamics.  A key player is Ginny (Erika Henningsen), who becomes a regular in the group when she starts dating Nick.  The series is eight episodes long, with two episodes spent on each trip.  Each episode runs roughly 30 minutes, so it's a quick and easy watch.     

Co-created by Tina Fey, this is a very character and performance-driven show.  So, whether you like it or not will come down to how much you like hanging around a bunch of fifty-somethings and listening in on their middle-aged problems.  Nick and Anne aren't the only ones who find themselves at odds.  Danny is navigating a health scare, and doesn't appreciate Claude's smotherly level of concern.  Friction also develops between Jack and Kate as they try to be supportive of Nick and Anne, which makes them more aware of their own issues.  All of the characters, including Ginny, are pleasant, generous, and very open with each other.  And even when they're being terrible they're still entertaining.  This isn't a "White Lotus" style dissection of the rich and privileged, but there is acknowledgement of privilege, and it does color some of the interactions.  

I watched the original 1981 film for background, which stars Alda, Carol Burnett, Rita Moreno, and Len Cariou among others.  The new series features totally new characters, but the structure and the sequence of events is almost the same.  The biggest change, which I appreciate, is that we get to spend much more time with each of the characters and get to know them more intimately.  We learn that Danny and Claude have an open marriage, but their hangups have nothing to do with their sex lives.  Jack and Kate are the most boring and basic of their friends, but also seem the best equipped to weather their own ups and downs.  There are also a couple of changes to the character dynamics because this version of the story adds more characters than it subtracts.    

Domingo and Calvani have the showiest and most fun performances, and Fey and Forte are as solid as always, and I love them all dearly, but I think Steve Carrell is far and away the MVP this time.  Carrell is playing the guy who is the most often in the wrong, while still being sympathetic and worth rooting for.  Runner up would be Kerri Kenney-Silver, who plays a different kind of oddball here than she did on "Reno 911."  I also appreciate how Ginny is treated, coming in as the outsider but eventually the show flips the dynamic and shows us the situation from her POV.  The last few episodes involve some big emotions and Erika Henningsen is fantastic at getting us to care.   

"The Four Seasons" will be best enjoyed by people of a certain age, as as I'm getting older I'm not turning my nose up at any media aimed at this demographic.  This isn't great television,  but it earns its laughs and its poignant moments.  It gently addresses relationships, getting old, and how to handle what life throws at you.  I'm very curious what a second season would look like, as the ending of "The Four Seasons" definitely leaves open the possibility for one.  However, I also won't be too disappointed if this is where Fey and her collaborators decide to leave these characters.   

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The 2025 Video Essay Recs

These are all videos I watched for the first time within the last calendar year.  I'm fairly sure none are older than that, but there are a lot of entries on the list this time, so I apologize if I've lost track.  Here goes:

Every Frame a Painting: The Sustained Two Shot - They're back!  Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos returned to Youtube after eight years with a series of new film essays, as part of their promotion of their new short film, "The Second."  Each essay topic is framed by the duo working through filmmaking choices during the production.  So what is a two shot, what is it good for, why is it rarer than it used to be, and why choose it now for this particular circumstance?

Moviewise: I Dont' Care!  This is the Best Scene of the Century - While we're talking about filmmaking, I love comprehensive breakdowns and analyses of filmmaking, and especially appreciate when it's talking about fairly basic scenes that most viewers won't think twice about.  Here, Moviewise breaks down a two very simple shots depicting a man buying a car, revealing how much thought and care was put into a sequence that I scarcely registered while watching the film. 

Yhara Zayd: American Honey & The Detriment of Ambiguity - And speaking of things that completely went over my head the first time I saw them, here's Yhara Zayd examining the way race is used in Andrea Arnold's 2016 film "American Honey."  I clocked that Sasha Lane's character Star was practically the only non-Caucasian character in the film when I watched it, but missed so many of the little hints about her background, and how so many questions about her status and identity went unanswered. Zayd argues that the choice to keep things ambiguous may have been well intentioned, but fails to serve the main character of color because of the context in which she exists. 

F.D. Signifier: The Green Lantern Colorism Controversy - And for another discussion of race and media, I found F.D. Signifier's reaction to the casting of Justin Pierre as the newest superhero in James Gunn's DC universe to be a lot of fun.  After "Rebel Ridge," I don't think anyone was surprised that Pierre was tapped to play the John Stewart Green Lantern.  However, this video didn't go how I expected it to, because while there's plenty of acknowledgement that colorism is a problem, this particular colorism controversy has some interesting nuances related to gender and masculinity.

Pop Culture Detective: The Myth of the Alpha Male and Human Nature, Hope, and Ice Cream - Pop Culture Detective offers two nice, accessible refutations of some common fallacies that have been passed around in the popular culture lately, namely that the idea of the "Alpha male" somehow comes from observable science related to wolf pack dynamics, and that we should be cynical about human nature because people tend to do the selfish thing.  The media, of course, is not helping matters by perpetuating these ideas in movies and TV shows.  However, as PCD explains with the help of some nicely edited clips, there's no male hierarchy observable in wolves, and Noam Chomsky's "ice cream" thought experiment reveals that humans aren't really so bad.  

Mina Le: Why Does Hollywood Love an Age Gap Romance? - I've been watching Mina's essays for a while for her takes on fashion in media and various pop culture trends.  Here, she takes a look at age gaps in screen romances, particularly Gen Z's interesting resistance to them.  This includes a rundown of famous Hollywood age gap romances (Bogey and Bacall, Leo DiCaprio and nobody over age 25) and discussion of some recent films, including "The Idea of You," and "Call Me By Your Name." I appreciate that there's a significant amount of attention paid to the rise of the "MILF," and examining some of these issues from a female POV. 

Strange Aeons: A Famous Fanfiction With Some Weird Cult Ties - For a video that's just plain entertaining, here's a little slice of "Harry Potter" fandom history.  While I was never really in the fandom myself, I was active in fanfiction circles when "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" was at its most popular, and was definitely aware of it.  And of course the author turned out to be a "rationalist" weirdo trying to run his own cult.  Strange Aeons' channel is full of these strange tales of internet fandom, and I recommend checking out some of their other videos if you're in the mood to rubberneck more insanity. 

Thomas Flight: The Brilliance of Severance's Disturbing Precision - There have been several strong pieces about "Severance" this year after the release of the show's second season.  Thomas Flight offers a look into some of the influences behind the show's eye-catching cinematography and production design, especially the eerie liminality of the Lumen office environments.  For those of you who have not seen "Severance," this one has almost no spoilers to worry about.  

Patrick Willems: The Daniel Craig James Bond Era is the Weirdest Franchise Ever - Patrick Willems posits that the Daniel Craig starring James Bond movies reflect the evolution of modern blockbuster filmmaking trends better than any other franchise, and as a result are an incoherent mess in their totality.  I enjoyed several of the movies discussed, but I can't disagree with any of Willem's points here.    

Verilybitchie: The Fashion of Sci-Fi Futures - So, why are the decadent ruling class fashions of the future seen in so many science-fiction films usually feminine or gay coded?  Especially when we know that in real life, fascists usually show up in uniforms and suits?  To find the answer, consider a history lesson on the Great Masculine Renunciation - when fashion stopped reflecting class differences and started reflecting gender, a tour of common science fiction tropes that heavily espouse conservative gender ideology, and lots of clips of science fiction's most degenerate hunks looking absolutely fabulous.  

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"40 Acres" Hits Home

I know we're not supposed to use the term "elevated horror" anymore, and "40 Acres" isn't quite a horror movie, but the label fits here.  "40 Acres" is technically a dystopian survivalist story that seems to have a pretty flimsy premise at first glance.  It takes place a few decades in the future, when civilization and food production have collapsed, leading to widespread famine.  There's an eyebrow-raising sentence in the opening text that claims that farmland is now the most valuable resource on earth.  The Freeman family survives on their family homestead in Canada, trusting no outsiders and keeping to themselves.

Initially, I thought that there wasn't going to be much to the film's worldbuilding beyond providing an excuse for a siege scenario, similar to the "Purge" films.  The Freemans consist of mother Hailey (Danielle Deadwyler), her son Manny (Kataem O'Connor), father Galen (Michael Greyeyes), and daughters Danis (Jaeda LeBlanc), Cookie (Haile Amare), and Raine (Leenah Robinson).  The kids range in age from under ten to late teens.  The opening sequence reveals that all of them are combat trained to some degree, and are very comfortable with shooting intruders on sight, which is a common occurrence.  "40 Acres" features multiple sequences of bloody, prolonged action and fight sequences, including a nail-biting standoff involving the two youngest girls having to fend for themselves.

However, it's the scenes of the family trying to hold things together between the eruptions of carnage that are the most fascinating.  Hailey is black and Galen is indigenous, and both are from historically marginalized and persecuted peoples.  They have a blended family between them and are both very tough on their kids.  Hailey is especially strict with teenage Manny, her son from a previous relationship, who increasingly chafes under her restrictions.  A major point of contention is that the Freemans choose to self-isolate in order to protect themselves, having little to do with the network of farming families in the area, who communicate through CB radios.  Hailey's only regular outside contact is an old friend of hers from the armed forces named Augusta (Elizabeth Saunders), who has her own farm nearby.    

So when a new threat to the farm emerges, and the Freemans' bonds are tested, there are all these wonderful underlying tensions in place to up the stakes.  Parent-child relationships, community building, and historical context all come into play.  It's no accident that the invaders are mostly Caucasian and the Freemans are descendants of those who fled oppression, and are now put in the position of having to defend their legacies.  This is the feature debut of R.T. Thorne, a Canadian filmmaker, who pointedly includes the characters' pride in their cultures and identities in the film, but keeps the focus firmly on the stories of survival and bridging the generational divide.  The action is excellent, but the thematic content definitely helps deliver a more satisfying film than the usual post-Apocalyptic shoot-em-ups.  

Danielle Deadwyler is the standout of the cast, playing Hailey as this wonderfully tough, infuriating maternal figure who cares so much about protecting her family from all possible harm that she threatens to alienate them.  It's the type of role more commonly associated with male characters, and I enjoyed Deadwyler's performance immensely.  She's a fantastic actress all around, and here she proves her action prowess as well.  There is never a question that this is a lethal, capable woman who can get into scraps with multiple assailants twice her size and come out on top.  Michael Greyeyes and Kataem O'Connor are both also very strong onscreen, and I hope to see more of them in the future.    

I think it helps that I wasn't expecting much out of "40 Acres," but it does everything right, and delivers such an entertaining, crowdpleasing experience that I'm a little puzzled why it didn't get a bigger release.  Maybe the level of violence involving children meant certain limitations, but I doubt that couldn't be overcome.  I'd put this right up there with "A Quiet Place" and "The Last of Us" on the growing list of excellent dystopian family dramas.  And I guess that's a genre I need to keep an eye out for now.  

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My Favorite Quentin Tarantino Movie

I've been in something of a standoff with Quentin Tarantino for years now.  One of my rules for this director series is that you don't get written about  unless I've seen ten of your films, or half of your output if you're dead.  If you count "Kill Bill" as a single film, Tarantino has directed nine features.  Since he only intends to direct ten features in total, he's in no hurry to make that tenth film.  It's been six years since "Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood," and there is absolutely nothing new from him on the horizon.  Since I've been enjoying Tarantino's work less and less with each new movie, I think there's little chance of me taking much of a shine to that theoretical tenth film.  So, instead of waiting around, I'm counting "Kill Bill" as two films, and now I finally get to write about "Jackie Brown."

Tarantino has a reputation for reviving the careers of older actors who have hit a slump.  Pam Grier, a former '70s blaxploitation star, is one of the major examples.  "Jackie Brown," adapted from an Elmore Leonard novel, is clearly a star vehicle designed for her, and full of little tributes and references to Grier's past work and the era she came up in.  Tarantino changed the main character's name and ethnicity specifically so that Grier could play her.  And Grier does not hesitate to remind us that she is a movie star.  From the opening title sequence, which combines "The Graduate" with "Across 110th Street," she dominates the frame.  Yes, the lead of the movie is a black woman in her forties, and the movie isn't shy about that for a second.

Much has been made of Tarantino's more prurient obsessions, but I love how Jackie Brown is portrayed in this movie.  She's treated as an object of desire, but never fetishized or overtly sexualized.  Jackie is not the over-the-top action heroine of "Coffy" or "Foxy Brown," but an aging flight attendant caught in a bad situation, who faces either doing time or starting her life over again at 44.  A possible third option means taking a risk to get herself in the clear, and putting some long-dormant criminal talents to good use.  Pam Grier's onscreen presence is instantly commanding, yet vulnerable enough for us to believe that men like Max Cherry and Ray Nicolette would fall in love with her.  We see Jackie wielding a gun, briefly, but she's smart enough that she never has to use it.  And when she has her third act glow-up, her outfit is a badass black suit, the kind favored by Tarantino characters in "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction."  

"Jackie Brown" also boasts one of the greatest supporting casts ever assembled for a motion picture.  You've got Samuel L. Jackson in a "Superfly" wig being the most charming evil bastard you ever met.  You've got gum-chewing ATF agent Michael Keaton who sympathizes with Jackie in spite of himself.  You've got DeNiro and Bridget Fonda hanging out and watching "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry," before embarking on one of the worst criminal partnerships of all time.  And then you've got Robert Forster.  So much of "Jackie Brown" lives in his wistful reaction shots and long silences.  And I so appreciate that Tarantino lets his characters have long silences and private moments to themselves, where they're allowed to just exist with their thoughts.  

No discussion of "Jackie Brown" can be had without mentioning the soundtrack, built on favorites from Tarantino's record collection.  The meticulous curation, with many scenes written with specific songs in mind, lends so much to the way the film feels from moment to moment.  Jackie and Max's relationship sparking to The Delphonics records, the tracks playing in Ordell's car with the levels just the way he likes them, and Jackie finally singing along to Bobby Womack in the closing scene, all reflect a deep love and appreciation for the music that is part of the film's DNA.

While "Jackie Brown" didn't do well upon its initial release, being such a departure from Quentin Tarantino's earlier films, it's quietly grown in stature over the years to become widely recognized as his most mature and well-written feature.  It's definitely the one I've appreciated more with age, as I've come to relate more to Jackie and Max's view of the world.  And it's why I've been a little disappointed with every Tarantino film since.  His movies have gotten bigger and bigger, but at the same time they've also gotten further and further away from matters of the heart.

What I've Seen - Quentin Tarantino

Reservoir Dogs (1992) 

Pulp Fiction (1994) 

Jackie Brown (1997) 

Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) 

Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004) 

Death Proof (2007) 

Inglourious Basterds (2009) 

Django Unchained (2012) 

The Hateful Eight (2015) 

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019)

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Rank 'Em - The "Chucky" Movies

I filled in one of my horror blindspots this year, which was the long-running, genre-hopping "Child's Play"/"Chucky" franchise.  The quality of the individual movies was all over the place, but I enjoyed my weird, nasty journey with Chucky and friends.  Below, find my rankings of all eight films, from best to least.

Child's Play (1988) - The original "Child's Play" is still far and away the best film in the franchise, because there's nothing else that can match that great reveal where Chucky finally gets to let loose on Catherine Hicks.  It's a ridiculous premise, but the execution is fabulous.  Chucky is viscerally repulsive and scary in this movie, to a surprising degree.  Effects supervisor Kevin Yagher and his team deserve so much credit for their work bringing everyone's favorite Good Guy to life.

Child's Play 2 (1990) - Much less effective as a thriller since we know from the start what Chucky is up to.  However, the finale sequence in the toy factory is the high point of the franchise for me, with the best kill sequences and some potent nightmare fuel imagery.  I also have a soft spot for Alex Vincent as Andy, who I'm glad got to come back for another round.  The movie also sports a surprisingly deep bench of beloved character actors, including Jenny Agutter, Grace Zabriskie, and Beth Grant.

Child's Play (2019) - The recent remake is a lot higher on this list than I had originally intended to put it, but the film really is a pretty good watch on its own.  The actors are all solid, especially Audrey Plaza and Brian Tyree Henry.  Chucky being the result of misused smart technology works decently enough, plotwise.  The biggest problem is that the redesigned doll voiced by Mark Hamill doesn't hold a candle to the original Chucky.  The new guy just doesn't have as much personality or panache.  

Seed of Chucky (2004) - This one is a lot of fun as a Hollywood spoof, with Jennifer Tilly getting a chance to make fun of herself.  It's not great as a "Chucky" film, however, especially if you're here for the horror and gore.  Also, the new character of Glen/Glenda voiced by Billy Boyd didn't work for me at all.  What pushed this one over the top, however, was the participation of John Waters and the weird finale - which is the closest thing to a happy ending that I think the characters were ever going to get.  

Bride of Chucky (1998) - I applaud the creators for pushing the movies in a new direction by leaning into the comedy and the camp value of the Chucky character.  The addition of Jennifer Tilly as Chucky's longtime paramour, Tiffany Valentine, creates  a fun Bonnie-and-Clyde dynamic, and the opportunity for an epic glow-up sequence.  Unfortunately, I find Katherine Heigl and the other humans pretty forgettable, and Ronny Yu's direction and I have just never gotten along (See "Freddy vs Jason").

Child's Play 3 (1991) - I didn't find this nearly as bad as the reviews made it out to be, and it's definitely not the worst of the series.  If anything, the third "Child's Play" suffers from a lack of imagination, just sticking Chucky in a military academy as part of his latest attempt to steal Andy's body.  Andy now being a teenager played by Justin Whalin adds absolutely nothing.  However, there are still a few decent kills and Chucky still manages to come across as a real menace, which is more than I can say for… 

Curse of Chucky (2013) and Cult of Chucky (2017) - These are the two direct-to video features that are officially the last in the original continuity, not counting the 2021 "Chucky" television show.  And they're both fine.  I understand that some fans were happy to have Chucky back in fairly straight horror films again, but it was very noticeable that the budgets had shrunk and the effects work was much more limited.  Kudos to the heroic efforts of Don Mancini for keeping the franchise going for as long as he did, but by the end of "Cult of Chucky," it was clearly time for a break.  

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My Top Ten Episodes of 2013-2014

So, I went on a hiatus with this feature while I was figuring out what I wanted it to be.  Should I take the opportunity to go back and watch the highlights of these years that I hadn't seen?  Did I want to try to be comprehensive with these picks?

I quickly came to the conclusion that I didn't have the time or the resources for that.  It was better for me to take the more personal approach and make lists of favorites based on what I'd already seen, as if I'd made the lists at the end of the years they covered.  I'll continue to watch older shows, so you will see picks from programs like "Lost" pop up here and there, but I'm not going to seek out programs specifically for this list, or put off writing these lists until I've seen certain shows.

So, find my top ten episodes for the 2013-2014 television season below, in no particular order.  And a few spoilers ahead. "Breaking Bad" and "Hannibal" newbies, watch your step.

Review, "Pancakes, Divorce, Pancakes" - "Review" was a black comedy, but it wasn't clear how dark it was willing to go, or how much Forrest MacNeil was going to involve his personal life in his absurd reviews, until this episode rolled around.  Bookending the divorce segment with the two deranged pancake segments is perfect, emphasizing the cruelly arbitrary nature of the forces that Forrest has allowed to take over his life.  

Game of Thrones, "The Mountain and the Viper" - Pedro Pascal became a star thanks to his role as Oberyn Martell in the fourth season, and he got one of the show's most memorable fight sequences.  The buildup to the climactic clash was perfect, with the stakes slowly being raised until everyone was ready to see the Mountain go down.  Arguably, this was the high point of the entire show, and the last big surprise that the showrunners pulled off.  

Orange is the New Black, "The Chickening" - I didn't watch much of "Orange is the New Black," but this one always stuck with me for the way it deftly humanizes so many of the characters, like Kate Mulgrew's Red.  This can be treated as a transitional episode of sorts, where the narrative becomes less concerned with Piper, and spends more time on the diverse community around her,  The Diaz ladies get the spotlight and Pennsatucky makes her first appearance in this episode.  

Kitchen Nightmares, "Amy's Baking Company" - Reality programming doesn't make many appearances on these lists, but occasionally there is a cultural milestone so undeniable that to leave it off would be unthinkable.  So it is with this episode of "Kitchen Nightmares," a show I don't normally watch or enjoy.  However, there are some television trainwrecks that are so infamous that they are transcendent.  Behold, the folly of Gordon Ramsay and the madness of Amy and Samy Bouzaglo.

Person of Interest, "The Devil's Share" - The third season of "Person of Interest" had a run of fantastic episodes, including one of the best exits I've ever seen for a regular on a network show.  This episode is about the aftermath, where the good guys are embracing rage, retribution, and a lot of wrath as part of the grieving process.  However, what makes it an all timer is Enrico Colantoni's badass villain monologue at the end, when we find out who actually gets to see justice done.  

True Detective, "Who Goes There" - I'm making the obvious choice with "True Detective," the show that made the TV/movie star distinction obsolete, and choosing the most technically impressive episode.  This is the one with the famous six-minute long take action sequence, a hallmark of the work of director Cary Joji Fukunaga.  Within the narrative, it's something of a digression, but it's also indicative of the momentum ramping up and the past starting to catch up to the present.    

Community, "Cooperative Polygraphy" - I wasn't planning on picking anything from the rocky fifth season of "Community," but then I stumbled across the COVID table read of this no-frills bottle episode, with Pedro Pascal filling in for Walton Goggins, and I remembered how much fun it was.  The absence of Chevy Chase's Pierce is milked for all its worth, and I'm not smart enough to make the obvious sperm sample joke here.  Let's just say the best was made of a ridiculous situation.

Breaking Bad, "Ozymandias" -  Walter White has his day of reckoning, and it's spectacular.  His entire criminal enterprise has fallen apart, the police are closing in, and the fallout is affecting all of his remaining relationships.  Every single goodbye, from Hank and Jesse to Skyler, Walt Jr., and even baby Holly is absolutely gutting.  Directed by Rian Johnson, the episode is tense, full of little misdirections, and very good at ramping up the emotional intensity to dizzying heights.     

Mad Men, "Waterloo" - The moon landing episode, which features the farewell performance of Robert Morse as Bert Cooper, singing "The Best Things in Life Are Free" as he dances off into the unknown.  As the show prepared for its final stretch, Don found himself in another round of corporate politicking, escaping the executioner's axe again, and facing another divorce.  However, some changes are inevitable, and the season ends with Don facing both mortality and the 1970s.

 

Hannibal, "Mizumono" - Let's end with one of the most jawdropping season finales ever aired on network television.  The bloody culmination of the second season of "Hannibal" involves a showdown with all the remaining players at Lecter's house.  In hindsight, it would have had so much more impact if the show had ended right here, with four major characters on the brink of death, and a serial killer at large and seemingly invincible.   

Honorable Mention:

Doctor Who, "The Day of the Doctor"

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Going Into "Deep Cover"

Orlando Bloom, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Nick Mohammed are three actors that I've had some trouble with.  It's not that they're bad actors, but they're actors who haven't always had the best material, resulting in some less-than-stellar performances in sub-par roles.  The prospect of them starring in an action comedy together wasn't necessarily a deterrent, but it did give me pause.  So was the premise, where the three of them play aspiring improv comedians who are recruited to play buyers in a police sting operation.  I tend to find pretentious hammy actor characters in comedies grating.  This is why "Deep Cover" was pretty low on my "To Watch" list for a couple of months, but I'm glad that I finally caught up with it.    

"Deep Cover" is a British production, directed by Tom Kingsley, and written by two British and two American screenwriters.  Kat (Howard), Marlon (Bloom) and Hugh (Mohammed) are all participants in the same London improv class.  Once promising comedian Kat teaches the group, Marlon is a struggling actor whose biggest role has been in an embarrassing commercial, and Hugh is a lonely IT worker just trying to gain some social skills and confidence.  They're approached by DI Billings (Sean Bean) to work undercover on a small operation, but their decision to play badass criminal characters inadvertently puts them into contact with dealers and operators higher and higher up the chain, including middleman Fly (Paddy Considine), his boss Metcalfe (Ian McShane), and enforcer Shosh (Sonoya Mizuno).  Soon Kat, Marlon, and Hugh, are pretending to be Bonnie, Roach, and The Squire, while getting involved in criminal dealings with London mobsters, and being hunted down by another pair of cops, DI Dawes (Ben Ashenden) and DS Beverley (Alexander Owen).

The last thing I was expecting from "Deep Cover" was a well-written, well-plotted script, but that's exactly what I got.  After seeing so many lazily put-together action comedies over the past few years, it was such a nice change to have one where the story supported the farce.  There are lots of twists and curveballs thrown at the audience, and the story is genuinely unpredictable.  The pacing is also very well controlled, with none of the scenes going on too long or the jokes being overplayed.  You can tell that there probably was some improv with the dialogue, such as a scene where Kat lists all the drugs she's tried, or one where Hugh has to do cocaine, or the whole body disposal situation, but it never gets into unwieldy, Judd Apatow territory.  There's also minimal cringe or embarrassment humor, and no fixation on sophomoric content, unlike too many American comedies I could name.  

The leads are all great.  Bloom's Marlon is the only one who qualifies as a pretentious hammy actor character, but he's unsuccessful and insecure, and an awful lot of fun to watch.  The other two are normal human beings who just happen to enjoy improv.  It helps that all three turn out to be pretty winning underdogs, who are smart, good in a crisis, and play off of each other well.  The line delivery is great, the slapstick lands well, and I'm sure the film can sustain plenty of rewatches.  And it felt good to watch these actors show that they do have solid comedy chops, and can turn in great performances, given the chance.  Mohammed's found a good niche for himself over the past few years as a character actor, but Bloom and Howard have been floundering for a while with crummier projects like "Argylle" and "Gran Turismo."  If they want to stick around in comedy circles for a while, I'd be all for it.         

As for "Deep Cover," it's going on the short list of modern adult comedies that I really enjoy, along with "Game Night" and "Barb and Star."  I hope all the talent involved don't wait too long to make me laugh again.

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Rewatching "American Cinema"

I've always liked documentaries about movies and television, and I feel like being a nerd about media was part of my fandom DNA from early on.  One of the earliest ones that stuck with me was the 1995 "American Cinema" series, an ambitious ten-part PBS program that was designed to be part of an educational course.  

The main part of the series consists of ten hour-long episodes on topics like "The Studio System," and "Film in the Television Age," each with an introduction by John Lithgow and narration from an array of different actors.  There were also a few shorter supplementary episodes intended for classroom use.  My local PBS stations ran marathons of the series a few times, but the two episodes I kept stumbling across were "The Film School Generation" and "The Edge of Hollywood."  The first is about the rise of Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and their cohort in the 1960s and 1970s.  The second is about independent American cinema in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including films from Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, and the Coen brothers.  

I recently got a chance to finally watch the whole "American Cinema" series from start to finish, and I found it well worth my time.  It was impossible to cover all of the history of American moviemaking in the allotted time, but I found "American Cinema" a worthy attempt.  There's some variance in quality from episode to episode, but all feature good interviews from historians, working directors, and other Hollywood players.  There are also lots and lots of classic film clips that it must have been a monumental effort to licence.  Five of the episodes are focused on the history of American cinema, looking at the development of the studios, movie stars, and some of the major changes affecting the industry.  The other five are about the movies themselves, specifically a handful of genres that had their genesis in Hollywood - the western, the film noir, and the romantic comedy.  The opening episode is entirely devoted to the "Hollywood style," where Martin Scorsese and Sydney Pollack, among others, try to define what made Hollywood films stand out from the crowd.  

With the benefit of hindsight thirty years later, it's fascinating to see the choices and delineations made by "American Cinema" that don't match up with modern expectations.  There are episodes that spotlight directors who came out of the early television ecosystem, and the "movie brats" who came up from films schools, but the term "New Hollywood" hadn't been popularized yet, and Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls wouldn't be published for a few more years.  "Combat films" get a whole episode, but there's barely any mention of musicals or horror or animation.  African-American cinema, LGBT cinema, and outsider cinema are all lumped together in the one episode on independent cinema.  

Clearly a lot of thought and care went into the series, however, and despite some of the dodgy calls on what was included and what wasn't, I still found the presentations valuable.  Information in episodes like "The Star" may no longer be relevant to 2020s Hollywood, as it compares the careers of Golden Age stars like Joan Crawford and the more modern Julia Roberts.  However, I found the discussion made for a fantastic time capsule for the brief era where movie stars were real players in the movie business, and had a major say in what got made.  Many of the interviews are very prescient, such as Robert Altman predicting the death of physical film in favor of "electronic" media.  

Because I am easily swayed by nostalgia, I was frequently delighted with the chance to see directors like Scorsese and Spielberg as they were at the height of their powers thirty years ago, departed old masters like Joseph Mankiewicz and Billy Wilder, and even appearances by an appallingly young-looking Whit Stillman and Gregg Araki.  There are a couple of problematic figures in the mix - James Toback participates in one of the supplementary discussions - but the series manages to avoid tripping over most of the serious cultural landmines that I was expecting.  

Modern viewers might find the early installments too laudatory and inoffensive, but the romantic comedy episode has a great time letting Amy Heckerling and Kathryn Bigelow point out the conservative gender politics inherent in the genre and provide a more critical viewpoint.  Other directors air plenty of grievances about their time in Hollywood, and the examinations of the business side of the movies are all pretty even-handed.  I find the historical episodes much more interesting than the ones on genre and style, maybe because this is where I feel the series' age the most acutely.

There have been many other documentaries made about American cinema since "American Cinema," some much better and more insightful about their specific subjects.   However, I haven't found anything as ambitious or comprehensive on the subject yet.  And I do think it's important to acknowledge that this is one of my foundational media experiences, especially as a film fan, and something that I'll continue to judge every other entertainment documentary against.      

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"Materialists" Aims High

The chemistry of a screen love triangle is always a tricky affair.  And the more self-aware a romance is, the trickier it can be.  "Materialists" is a very self-conscious modern day love story that deals in a lot of very old romance tropes.  It depends entirely on buying that our heroine, Lucy (Dakota Johnson), has more chemistry with one man, John (Chris Evans), instead of another, Harry (Pedro Pascal).  Director Celine Song tries her hardest, but by the end of the movie I still wasn't convinced.  I enjoyed the movie for other reasons, but it's a shame that the central conceit never quite worked.

Lucy is a matchmaker based in New York City, who works for an upscale agency called Adore.  Her clients pay thousands for her to arrange dates with potential matches, and Lucy is very good at her job.  Easily the best parts of the movie are the scenes of her offering counseling and insights into modern relationships for her clients.  It's refreshing to hear her talk so bluntly about the transactional nature of many couplings, and all the traits people judge their worth by - age, wealth, height, weight, job, education, and attractiveness.  Lucy herself is happy to stay single, until she meets a "unicorn," a wealthy man named Harry who is exactly what she's always wanted.  However, a complicating factor is that she still has feelings for her ex, John, a struggling actor who she only parted ways with because he's perpetually broke.  

It's a given who Lucy is going to end up with, but getting there is the fun part.  I really enjoyed Dakota Johnson's performance, playing Lucy as this coolly self-assured, but incredibly jaded woman who peddles the notion that all good matches are just a matter of putting all the right variables together.   Johnson always had a slightly unapproachable screen persona, and that works for the character, who hides her insecurities under a facade of the all-knowing matchmaker who has all the answers and says all the quiet parts out loud.  "Materialists" is really a character study of Lucy, and what happens when her preconceptions are challenged.  Equally important as her relationships to John and Harry is Lucy's relationship with her client Sophie (Zoë Winters), an average woman with realistic expectations, who Lucy is having trouble finding matches for.  The matchmaking math isn't working as expected, and Lucy has to face that there are some serious flaws in the way she views love and romance. 

The filmmaking is wonderful, and "Materialists" is such a pleasure to watch.  Sure, there's plenty of lifestyle eye candy, but the visual storytelling all around is superb.  I love the way that Lucy looks subtly different in her scenes with her two love interests, the way that she's lit and the way that she's framed.  You immediately understand that Lucy belongs with John because she's more open and comfortable in his world than the more affluent one she's worked so hard to access.  I wasn't a big fan of "Past Lives" because I felt the story was awfully slight, but it's great to find that Celine Song's style translates to something more broad and commercial.

Alas, the only place where I think she went wrong was casting Chris Evans.  I like Chris Evans as an actor, but he and Dakota Johnson don't pair nearly as well as Pedro Pascal and Dakota Johnson.  Switching their roles might have been interesting, but what I think it comes down to is that Evans doesn't have the energy of a blue collar, average everyman.  There's too much Captain America in him for that, so the interactions with Johnson always ring a little false.  On the flip side, Pedro Pascal as a fantasy of the ideal husband, who turns out to be maintaining his own facade, is spot on.  I don't care that Pascal is in everything this year because he keeps nailing it.        

And despite the flaws, I happily recommend "Materialists."  It has been too long since we've had a high profile, unapologetically romantic film with ambitions this big and from talents this bright.  

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The End of "Squid Game"

Spoilers for the first and second seasons, and the first episode of the third season ahead.

What Netflix is calling the second and third seasons of "Squid Game" were clearly conceived of as a single thirteen-episode season, and probably should be treated as such.  However, I think that the final chunk of six episodes can be discussed on its own, specifically in the way that it reveals some of the problems with trying to continue this series past the first season.  I think the ending of "Squid Game" is perfectly watchable, but it's also undeniably a disappointment.

The second season was decent enough, and ended in a good place.  Most of the interesting characters were still alive and a big, formula-breaking event had just taken place.  The first major mistake that the creators make at the start of season three is prioritizing the status quo.  In a seemingly arbitrary move, Gi-hun is allowed to survive, and the games are forced to continue with only minor consequences for everyone still alive.  The pregnant girl, Jun-Hee (Jo Yu-ri) emerges as a major protagonist at this stage, along with the old woman, Geum-Ja (Kang Ae-Shim), and the crypto guy, Myung-gi (In Si-wan).  Of the three remaining games in this season, I found the first to be very good, but the other two are just variants of games from the first season, and easy to predict.  The creators try their best to throw in some new wrinkles and hint at different outcomes, but you can tell that they're wary of actually making major changes to what worked the first time.  

Another problem is that the show doubles down on the unsuccessful elements from the first season.  Those terrible VIPs in the metallic animal masks are back, are given more screen time, and are just as awful to watch as they were in the first season.  There's been a lot of discourse around this bunch, specifically who should share the blame for their hammy performances and the obviously dubbed dialogue.  However, I'd argue that the two subplots involving the cop, In-ho, and the guard, No-eul, are just as much of a problem.  So much time is taken up with following these characters, and they aren't nearly as compelling as anyone participating in the games.   And after so many episodes of teasing about their motivations and possible connections, very little new information is revealed for either of them.  I can sort of excuse having No-eul as someone to compare and contrast against Gi-hun, but In-ho's storyline is a total dud and absolutely infuriating.  

While I'm fine with how all the ultimate resolutions played out, I found the storytelling too drawn out and repetitive.   The second and third seasons together probably should have only run nine episodes all together, the same as the first season.  The last six episodes could have easily been cut down to four.  With so much extra padding, the pacing is sluggish and the weaknesses in the writing are more obvious.  All of the characters are necessarily heightened, but the participants in the last rounds are especially broad to the point of coming across as cartoonish.  All nuance goes out the window once the end is in sight. However, there are some excellent performances here, and I particularly enjoyed Kang Ae-Shim as the old lady who makes one of the hardest decisions in the game.  Lee Jung-jae has to contend with more convoluted character contrivances, but he still does a solid job as a more bitter Gi-hun.    

The second season was good enough that I don't think it was a bad idea to continue "Squid Game" in its current form.  However, the creators weren't able to make some of their new ideas work, and they clearly didn't know what to do with at least one of the major storylines.  I suspect that it was always their intention to leave the door open for a third season, but the way they went about it left too many questions unanswered and kicked too much down the road.  At this point I don't think another season is possible without overhauling "Squid Game" completely.  The creator has already expressed that he's not interested, so for all intents and purposes, I consider "Squid Game" finished.

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