Getting "Laid"

I'm a little stumped at how to categorize the Peacock show "Laid," because of its unusual premise.  Stephanie Hsu stars as Ruby, a professional party planner who learns that all of her sexual partners are dying at an alarming rate.  The show is definitely a comedy, with characters that only work in the confines of a modern American half-hour sitcom - talking a mile a minute, dropping pop culture references left and right, and behaving like narcissistic monsters while still somehow coming off as relatable goofs.  It's also sort of an existential mystery show, with deaths to investigate, theories to test, and occasional check-ins with law enforcement.

I'm not sure if "Laid" is a romantic comedy, however.  There's a lot of discussion of sex and relationships, and Ruby spends a good amount of time flirting with one of her clients, a nice guy named Isaac (Tommy Martinez) who has hired her to plan his parents' anniversary party.  However, the pursuit of love is secondary to dealing with the aftermath of love.  Ruby is in her thirties and has a long history of casual sex, bad relationships, and self-sabotage.  Perhaps the most unrealistic thing about the show is that she has a comprehensive recall of everyone she's ever slept with.  However, despite setting up a lot of interesting emotional territory to explore, "Laid" never really gets into the roots of what's going on with Ruby at a more fundamental level.  There are a few unsteady steps taken toward healthier behavior and emotional closure, but not with much success.  This is one of those seasons of television that does a fantastic job of kicking everything down the road, to be explored more in-depth if we ever get a second season. 

Still, I found "Laid" a fun watch.  At eight episodes, it moves quickly and doesn't outstay its welcome.  This is based on an Australian series of the same name, with Nahnatchka Khan showrunning.  I like several of the other actors in the cast, including Zosia Mamet as Ruby's best friend and roommate AJ, and Michael Angarano as Richie, one of Ruby's former partners.  A parade of interesting guest stars show up as other exes, including Mamoudou Athie, Alexandra Shipp, and Simu Liu.  As for Stephanie Hsu, I'm not entirely sold on her as a lead actress, but I'm glad that she's getting her shot.  She's refreshingly messy, a little weird, and still completely convincing as someone that all of these different people would sleep with.  It's nice to have another higher profile Asian actress around who looks like a normal person.    

I suspect that "Laid" actually works best as a hangout show.  The material that plays the best is the little observational conversations and awkward situations that come up, like Ruby and AJ attending a weekday wedding that takes place in the middle of nowhere, and doesn't serve alcohol to boot.  Or there's the running gag with the bird wrangler hired for the anniversary party, and an argument over which band's T-shirt Richie always wore.  AJ is a true crime fan, and puts together a "murder" board that's a source of endless amusement.  No comment on the Amanda Knox cameo.  The deaths in the show are treated the way they are in murder mysteries - nobody's laughing, but the absurdity of the situation keeps the proceedings light.         

I cheated a bit and read up on the Australian version of "Laid" to get a sense of what was changed for the American one.  There's actually quite a bit of plot that the American "Laid" hasn't even touched on yet, despite the entire Australian "Laid" only being twelve episodes.  I suspect the show's creators are trying to stretch out the material, but also the American "Laid" is less dark and macabre than the Australian "Laid."  There's much more typical American sitcom scaffolding in place, and the show takes time to emphasize that the most important relationship Ruby has is actually with AJ.  If you're watching the show hoping to see the mystery resolved, you may come away unsatisfied.  However, if all you want is a pleasant, low stakes comedy with some cheerful rambling dialogue, and decently amusing characters, you could do a lot worse than the American "Laid."

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"Nightbitch" and "A Real Pain"

Marielle Heller's "Nightbitch" is a well-intentioned film about the frustrations of early motherhood that doesn't really work.  Amy Adams plays the unnamed, exhausted mother of a cute little two year-old son.  Scoot McNairy plays her oblivious, uninvolved husband.  Both of them are bad parents in different ways.  Mom has given up her career as an artist to look after her kid, and has become a shell of her former self due to the mundanity and isolation of single parenting.  Her son isn't especially difficult, never displaying behavior out of character for your average two year-old - the one exception being that he co-sleeps with his mother, so she hasn't had a decent night's rest in years.  However, Mom is at the end of her rope.  Mom needs to get out of her rut.  Mom needs a wakeup call.  Mom needs to embrace her inner wild animal and start acting like a dog.

Yes, you read that right.  The idea of a woman embracing motherhood by getting in touch with her animal instincts is a promising one, but "Nightbitch" doesn't explore that metaphor nearly as much as I hoped it would.  There are a few half-hearted scenes of new hair growth and weird pustules that parallel the unwanted bodily changes that happen postpartum, but nothing that could be called body horror.  Instead, the Nightbitch is primarily conjured from Amy Adams' wild-eyed performance.  She growls.  She barks.  She bites and devours.  She's very committed, and I was never once tempted to laugh at her, but at the same time I wonder if it might have been better if I had.  The movie is described in a few places as a black comedy.  I expected "Nightbitch" to really lean into its protagonist's bad behavior, maybe get weird and unhinged.  Instead, Mom's journey never struck me as unnerving, just odd.  And it does that exasperating thing where it tells you what kind of movie it wants to be, and what messages it wants to get across instead of letting that all happen organically.  

There are some things that it gets right, and Heller clearly made this film for the right reasons, but it never gels.  It reminds me an awful lot of "Tully," a similar film about a struggling mother, but adding all the genre bits and flirting with Manimal-ism simultaneously felt like too much and not enough.  I think "Nightbitch" makes for a nice conversation starter, especially for those struggling through the toddler years or contemplating parenthood, but there's not much here that worked for me.      

 

"A Real Pain" is a stronger piece of work.  Jesse Eisenberg wrote and directed the film, and also stars as David Kaplan, an American Jewish man who goes on a Holocaust tour in Poland with his cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin).  It's a small film about a very specific experience and relationship, with some fascinating facets.  The central character is really Benji, who is simultaneously incredibly gifted and a walking disaster, who David both admires but often finds tough to tolerate.  Benji is outspoken and insightful and can be incredibly charming.  However, he's also not great with personal boundaries and prone to emotional outbursts and inappropriate behavior.  The tour seems to bring out Benji's worst impulses. David does his best to cope while juggling his own complicated feelings about Benji, who he used to be close with when they were younger. 

Kieran Culkin is the reason the movie works, and he deserves every ounce of praise that he's been getting.  You can easily see this guy getting away with everything Benji does because he's just that charismatic.  His criticisms of people are blunt and cutting, but don't come off as rude because he's so sincere in his convictions, and seems so genuinely hurt by what he sees as wrong.  Jesse Eisenberg often takes a back seat here, but he also does a great job of playing the straight man, and helping put Benji into context.  I like that both characters learn no great lessons or come to any epiphanies.  However, they're both earnestly trying to get along and the potential for stronger reconnection is always a possibility.   

It's nice seeing a movie where you can be reasonably sure that every character was based on someone the filmmakers knew in real life.  There's the considerate British tour guide James (Will Sharpe), the soft-spoken African man who converted to Judaism, Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan),  and the other assorted tour participants trying to be polite as the incidents and disruptions compound.  It's always fun to completely fail to recognize Jennifer Grey again.  I noticed at the beginning of the film that "A Real Pain" is a Polish co-production, having been shot largely in Poland, and does a very good job of showing off the picturesque parts of the country.  The Holocaust tour feels very incidental to the film, and those looking for something more substantive on the subject  should probably try the recent "Treasure" instead.  However, "A Real Pain" feels like exactly the movie it set out to be - a small, personal, affecting story about the enduring importance and irritations of family.     

 

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"The Day of the Jackal" and "The Agency"

Have you been missing James Bond lately?  Well, never fear.  Two recent series about spies and assassins should help tide you over until Amazon gets the next Bond installment rolling.  Both of them feature leading men who might have been good candidates to play Bond at one point or another, and their casts even feature a few actors who have appeared in the Bond franchise.  

First up, "The Day of the Jackal," adapting the Frederick Forsyth novel.  It follows a skilled assassin called "The Jackal" (Eddie Redmayne) in the aftermath of his successful hit on a German politician.  We get to watch his carefully orchestrated escape, his dealings with his clients, and the double life he leads up close and personal.  His wife Nuria (Ursula Corbero) is kept in the dark about his work, though she has suspicions.  At the same time, MI6 agent Bianca Pullman (Lashana Lynch) and her boss Halcrow (Chukwudi Iwuji) are leading the manhunt, hoping to catch The Jackal before he can completed his next job.

The Day of the Jackal" is a gorgeous looking show, full of lovely European locales, well-staged action sequences, fancy weaponry, and attractive people.  There's a very Bond-esque opening theme, crooned by Celeste, that signals to the audience that we're about to enter a universe where espionage is exciting and romantic.  The Jackal is a sniper who is so skilled that he can make impossible shots with the right weaponry.  The parts of the show that follow him through his precisely planned jobs are thrilling stuff - most of it totally absurd, but in the most entertaining way possible. Eddie Redmayne makes a great baddie protagonist, always slippery, always springing new surprises on the audience, and somehow still completely sympathetic.

When we're not with Redmayne, however, the show is much less appealing.  I generally enjoy Lashana Lynch, but she's not given much of a character here to work with.  Bianca is very much the driven, obsessed detective type who is neglecting her family, and no fun at all to root for.  Also, the segments following Nuria and her terrible brother Alvaro (Jon Arias) as they dig into The Jackal's secrets are regrettable.  However, the lion's share of the screen time goes to the Jackal, and we get enough of him that the show is a thoroughly good time.  I'm glad this is getting a second season, and hopefully the series will be able to fix some of the issues that I had with it going forward.  

"The Agency" is a very different beast, the English language remake of the French spy series, "The Bureau."  It stars Michael Fassbender as a CIA operative, codenamed "The Martian," who has returned home to London after a long assignment undercover in Africa.  Unfortunately, he's not able to shed his false identity completely, having fallen in love with a Sudanese woman named Samia (Jodie Turner-Smith), who mysteriously turns up in London shortly after he does.  Other characters include The Martian's superiors Ogletree (Jeffrey Wright) and Naomi (Katherine Waterston), psychiatrist Dr. Blake (Harriet Sansom Harris), a new operative in training, Danny Morata (Saura Lightfoot Leon), Sudanese operative Osman (Kurt Egyiawan), and The Martian's bratty daughter Poppy (India Fowler).  Several familiar faces drop in for cameos that I will not spoil.

"The Agency" is following the John LeCarre style of espionage thriller - much more grounded and slower paced, with a focus on relationships and political maneuvering.  Following all the twists and turns and geopolitical interests requires far more attention than "The Day of the Jackal."  The big operation this season is trying to get an important intelligence asset, codenamed "Coyote," out of the clutches of the Russian mercenaries who abducted him.  Several other storylines are also explored - Danny being trained to go undercover in Iran, and Martian making increasingly poor decisions to stay in Samia's life - these are clearly only getting started by the time we come to the last episode of the season.  There are the occasional chase scenes and gun battles, but this series doesn't have much interest in spectacle. 

Instead, it's the performances that are the main event, and the cast is stacked with good actors.  Michael Fassbender and Jodie Turner-Smith make a lovely couple in crisis, and I'm happy to keep watching the show for them.  However, "The Agency" is such a slow burn that most of the rest of the cast felt underserved, and I wonder if the audience will have the patience to stick with the show long enough for that to change.  "The Bureau" has had five seasons so far, so "The Agency" doesn't lack material to adapt, but after the first ten-episode season of "The Agency," it feels like they've barely gotten anywhere.  I'll keep an eye out for the second season, but "The Agency" needs to pick up the pace.  

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Time to Get "Wicked"

I've read the Gregory Maguire novel "Wicked" and I saw the stage adaptation about a decade ago.  I liked them both fine, but I wouldn't consider myself a "Wicked" fan.  This version of Oz never held as much appeal to me as the one in L. Frank Baum books.  However, I've always appreciated "Wicked" as the piece of media that arguably kicked off the trend of retelling familiar childhood stories from the misunderstood villain's point of view.  A film version of the very popular musical was inevitable, and was wisely left in the hands of creators with an affinity for musicals - director Jon M. Chu, producers Marc Platt and David Stone, and co-writer Winnie Holzman, who adapted the book to the stage version.  

After many years, the long-awaited screen version of "Wicked" has been split into two parts.  Because the musical had very little breathing room between the song numbers, the story has been expanded to allow for more interesting interactions among the major characters.  We have the outcast Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo as an adult, Karis Musongole as a child), who was born with green skin and uncontrollable magic powers, who meets the entitled queen bee Galinda (Ariana Grande-Butera) at Oz's Shiz University, and they become unlikely friends.  This relationship is the crux of the stage musical, and whatever you want to say about the rest of the movie, they got this part right.  Erivo and Grande-Butera deliver very strong performances and have real chemistry together, so it's very easy to sympathize with them and get caught up in their lives

The casting does a lot of the work here.  Elphaba being played by Cynthia Erivo, an African-American actress, and being styled to emphasize this, immediately connects her to racial minority narratives and adds extra dimensions to her outsider status and her hero worship of the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum).  Then you have Ariana Grande-Butera, former Nickelodeon child star turned pop idol, playing the worst kind of pampered, privileged elitist.  She's simultaneously extremely hateable, but so funny and so stubborn about asserting her own warped worldview that it's hard to resist her charms.  Putting Erivo and Grande-Butera together in the same frames, and letting them clash and connect and find common ground is wonderfully satisfying to watch.

Where I feel that "Wicked" falls a bit short is with being a musical spectacular.  The sets and costuming are gorgeous, of course, and I have no complaints about the singing or the musical arrangements - often the Achilles heel with similar stage adaptations.  However, there's such a heavy-handedness with the familiar "Wizard of Oz" imagery and far too much time is spent setting up all the side characters and subplots that won't pay off until the next movie.  Galinda and Elphaba have a shared love interest, Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), and eventually Elphaba's younger sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) and the object of her affections, Boq (Ethan Slater) are all going to get swept up in the drama, but for this film these characters are just getting introduced and hanging around in a holding pattern.  Part One of "Wicked" ends with the famous showstopper "Gravity," and sends the audience home on a triumphant high, but it does not work as a standalone film.  

Jon M. Chu clearly put in a lot of effort here, but I have trouble with some of his cinematography and editing choices.  Several of the musical numbers are far too busy, and there's a sequence involving an effigy burning that's just awkward to look at from every angle - the actors all seem to have been haphazardly composited together in the frame.  Fortunately there's actually not as much reliance on CGI as I was expecting, with most of the dance and crowd scenes filled out nicely with real performers.  The effects-heavy characters like goat professor Dr. Dillamond (Peter Dinklage) come off very well, and you can tell that a good deal of the singing was done live.     

It's hard to evaluate "Wicked" when it's only a Part I, but it's better than I expected while still having a considerable amount of room for improvement.  It gets the fundamental parts right, creating screen versions of Elphaba and Galinda who build on the versions from the musical.  Some of the problems I had with the musical and novel versions have been replicated here - mashing a beloved children's movie and an edgy Fascist parable together means inevitable tonal clashes - but "Wicked" onscreen is very much its own beast.  I don't know if I'll revisit it any time soon, but I will definitely show up for the second half in a few months.

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My Second Favorite Robert Zemeckis Movie

I wrote about my favorite Robert Zemeckis film, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" for this series a few years ago, but not as a piece for Robert Zemeckis.  I gave the credit for that movie to its unsung animation director, Richard Williams.  This puts me in a weird spot now that I actually want to write about Zemeckis.  It took me a while to come around on Robert Zemeckis as a great director, because for so many years he'd gone so far off the rails - making films that pushed the boundaries of special effects technology, but that didn't function very well as films that anybody would want to watch.  However, there's been a lot of reevaluation going on with the recent release of "Here," and I've come around on his importance.  So, as not to repeat myself, today I'm writing about my second favorite Zemeckis film.

When you're talking about Robert Zemeckis, you inevitably have to talk about his use of special effects.  Zemeckis's career didn't really get going until he started making his effects-heavy spectacles, like the "Back to the Future" films, which his sensibilities are incredibly well suited for because he is such a detail-oriented, tech-savvy director.  The effects work in his older movies still holds up beautifully today, because Zemeckis is such a perfectionist.  His approach could be hard on his actors, but allowed him to make cartoons believably interact with a live-action world, have multiple Michael J. Foxes exist in the same frame, and stick Forrest Gump into historical footage, back when all of those things were impossible.  He's always had a fascination with animation, and spent a significant chunk of his career trying to use motion capture performances to make cartoon features.  However, I think his most successful attempt at turning human beings into cartoons was in "Death Becomes Her," one of his weirdest, darkest, and nastiest films.

For those who don't understand what camp is, "Death Becomes Her" is a great example.  Two awful, jealous, Beverly Hills frenemies, played by Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn, are pitted against each other over the affections of a hapless man, played by Bruce Willis.  Their feud eventually involves magic potions, zombies, and lots of over-the-top violence.  It also provides plenty of opportunities to turn the female form into a canvas for grotesqueries.  We watch Meryl and Goldie get old, get fat, get unalived, get their bodies warped into many different impossible forms, and become horror movie monsters - with fabulous hair and clothes.  I admit I've always had a special fascination with female screen monsters, and the ways in which femininity can become monstrous.   "Death Becomes Her" offers a smorgasbord of morbid delights in this vein, with the shiny new CGI effects allowing for some really impressive physical transformations.  Here's Meryl with a broken neck and her head on backwards.  Here's Goldie with a gaping hole in her torso that's not slowing her down at all.

Critics at the time of release called the film shallow and mean spirited, but I related very much to both of the main characters.  I didn't find them shallow, but rather childish and stubborn and full of elemental rage. They're caricatures of women, but caricatures that still ring true emotionally.  You can trace the roots of the story back to the old hagsploitation flicks like "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" but "Death Becomes Her" is much more ambitious.  I love that the movie mercilessly skewers Hollywood diva behavior, snipes at the beauty industry, and pushes the heightened women's melodrama tropes into the realm of pure absurdity.  Meryl and Goldie really get to let loose and go big, escalating from catty insults and other traditional forms of bitchery to going at each other with shotguns and shovels.  It's as indulgent as anything, and so entertaining to watch.    

I have to mention that "Death Becomes Her" is now a Broadway musical, which I have not seen but which I hear good things about.  I'm honestly surprised that it took this long, given the film's history as a cult classic and camp touchstone.  Unlike its heroines, "Death Becomes Her" has aged remarkably well as a movie, and all things it was sending up - impossible beauty standards, ageism, and the price of looking beautiful - are all as bad in the social media age as they ever were.  And when was the last time you saw any blockbuster starring two women in their forties?  

What I've Seen - Robert Zemeckis

Used Cars (1980)

Romancing the Stone (1984)

Back to the Future (1985)

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

Back to the Future Part II (1989)

Back to the Future Part III (1990)

Death Becomes Her (1992)

Forrest Gump (1994)

Contact (1997)

What Lies Beneath (2000)

Cast Away (2000)

The Polar Express (2004)

Beowulf (2007)

A Christmas Carol (2009)

Flight (2012)

The Walk (2015)

Allied (2016)

The Witches (2020)

Pinocchio (2022)

Here (2024)

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"Space Cowboys" and "Analyze This"

Writing about movies starring old white guys that I watched on airplanes might become a regular thing.  Here are some thoughts on two pretty good older films that I only watched last week because I was on a long flight and my options were limited.

"Space Cowboys" is the Clint Eastwood astronaut movie, which he directed and also starred in, alongside Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and James Garner.  He was just turning seventy at the time of its release in the year 2000, and was still every inch the movie star that he'd been for the three preceding decades.  You'll recognize the "getting the band back together" plot immediately, this time giving a team of elderly air force pilots who trained to be astronauts in the '50s a chance to finally make it into space in the present day when an old Soviet satellite needs repairs.  Eastwood's character, Frank, is the only one with the knowhow to fix it, so he uses that as leverage to get his whole team on the mission.

NASA enthusiasts will enjoy the chance to see the Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers as they existed twenty-five years ago, along with all the usual training hijinks and spiffy launch sequences.  However, the film's pleasures are really the performances - watching Tommy Lee Jones and Clint Eastwood spar, and James Garner and Donald Sutherland providing some welcome comic relief.  Jones even gets a decent romance with the team's mission director, played by Marcia Gay Holland.  The plot is very predictable - there are clashes with other astronaut hopefuls, tense negotiations with the top brass at NASA, and of course the Russians aren't telling them everything, but the execution is solid the whole way through.  Well, the decision to have the younger versions of the leads dubbed by the older actors is a little wacky, but otherwise I thought Eastwood did a fine job.  I appreciated seeing a movie about a space mission where nearly all the effects are practical, and it really is a treat to see these actors still in their prime.       

Onwards to "Analyze This," which is one of those movies that I thought I'd watched at some point, but really only remember from the endless clips and promos that I saw for it.  Released a few weeks into the first season of "The Sopranos," "Analyze This" starts with the same premise of a mob boss, Paul Vitti (Robert DeNiro), who finds himself in need of psychiatric help.  One thing leads to another, and he finds Dr. Ben Sobel (Billy Crystal), a bored psychiatrist who is about to get married to a nice woman named Laura (Lisa Kudrow).  After some very aggressive persuasion, Vitti becomes Dr. Sobel's patient, and Sobel finds his private life getting more and more mixed up with the mob.  

I think it's fair to call "Analyze This" the last really successful film that Harold Ramis directed, and the last big hit that Billy Crystal had as a leading man.  It feels like a film from a totally different time now, a big studio comedy with the resources to pull off some pretty decent set pieces, like the opening raid on a mob meetup that makes good use of farm equipment and lots of extras.  Robert DeNiro and Billy Crystal pair very well, and I was surprised that Paul Vitti has such an air of menace around him.  He's funny and endearing, but also absolutely convincing as a dangerous murderer who immediately introduces tension into every scene he invades.  So much of the laughter here is of the nervous kind, as it's impossible to tell how a scene is going to play out with Vitti involved.  DeNiro's performance is also terribly sweet, however, foreshadowing "Meet the Parents" and many more comedic roles to come.  

And yet, my favorite performance belongs to Joe Viterelli, who plays Vitti's loyal henchman Jelly.  Viterelli was a character actor who pretty much only played mobsters - the old fashioned kind in suits and ties who disappeared from popular culture right around the time the "Sopranos" got really popular.  I regret that I haven't seen any other film where he's played a major role.  Viterelli is so loveable and so memorable, and Jelly is a character who could only exist in movies like this - the type they sadly don't make anymore.  

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"Lost" Year One

Once I committed to doing my Top Ten Episodes project, I knew there were a few major television shows that I had to catch up with.  "Lost" is one of them, the product of a bygone era when the most popular shows were still on network television.  That means the first season runs 25 episodes!  Even if you count the pilot and finale as supersized installments, having over twenty serialized episodes in a single season is something I just don't encounter much anymore.

"Lost" at one point boasted the most expensive television pilot ever made, showing the immediate aftermath of a passenger plane crashing on an uncharted island in the Pacific, and what happens to the survivors.  It is one of the shows that started off the trend of bigger, more spectacle-driven television.  I was aware of "Lost" in 2004 - everyone was - but I didn't have the time to watch much television when the first few seasons were broadcast.  I saw random episodes here and there, but nothing really caught my interest.  I remember that genre fans were excited because "Lost" was a genre show that was popular with the mainstream, but it didn't feel much like a genre show to me.  The characters seemed much more like the denizens of prime time soaps or procedurals, and the mysteries of the island were always rather amorphous and indefinite.  

And watching the first season this time around, it took a very long time for me to really get invested in the fates of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815.  The format of the show is brilliant - Each of the main characters in the first season are given individual flashback episodes throughout the year to fill in their personal histories, while they explore the island and learn to get along in the present.  This means that episodes can take place in Korea with Sun (Yunjin Kim) and Jin (Daniel Dae Kim), or Iraq with Sayid (Naveen Andrews), or in England with Charlie (Dominic Monaghan).  Cultural osmosis meant I already knew some of the characters like Hurley (Jorge Garcia) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway), but I wasn't aware at all of others like the pregnant Claire (Emilie de Ravin) or step-siblings Boone (Ian Somerhalder) and Shannon (Maggie Grace). 

However, after twenty years and a lot of cultural shifts, I don't find the "Lost" characters to be a very appealing bunch.  I understand that in 2004 having East Asian and Middle Eastern main characters was considered very progressive, but in 2025 the first thing I'm noticing is that the Iraqi guy is played by an Indian actor and only four of the fourteen main characters are women.  No, Rose (L. Scott Caldwell) and Rousseau (Mira Furlan) don't count.  The traditional hero types, Jack (Matthew Shepherd) the doctor and Sawyer the rogue, do a lot of the running and shouting whenever there's a crisis, but are not nearly as compelling as unlucky Hurley or Sun with her difficult marriage.  Still, kudos to "Lost" for committing to having non-English speakers as major characters, back when getting American viewers to read subtitles was still a dicey proposition.

Many of the storylines and relationships develop slowly, and the plot beats of many episodes get repetitive - I know this is due in part to the demands of network television, but it still feels like the show is wearing me down more often than it's winning me over.  I really wanted to be able to latch on to the more complicated personalities like John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) or Michael (Harold Perrineau), but so far they're just bundles of familiar tropes - a damaged man undergoing a spiritual rebirth, and an overprotective black father learning to cope.  I'm hopeful that they'll become more interesting the further we get into the show.  I don't have much patience for the weaker, one-note characters like Shannon and Claire, but this is still early days so I'm willing to give them time.

I hate to say it, but I wasn't too impressed by the performances of any of the actors, though a lot of them are very charismatic and fun to watch.  Only Evangeline Lilly really had much of a film career after "Lost," though everyone seems to be steadily working.  The breakout star is clearly Damon Lindelof, who was showrunner with Carlton Cuse, and has the most writing credits out of anyone on the first season.  And it was only toward the end, when all the plot threads started tying together, and the characters all finally started working together, that I had the urge to watch more than one episode in one sitting.  The cliffhanger ending was excellent, so I'm not going to wait long before starting season two.    

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"Snack Shack" and "Goodrich"

Heartwarming 2024 male self-discovery movies on tap today.

Let's start with "Snack Shack," which is about the adventures of two fourteen year-olds, AJ (Conor Sherry) and Moose (Gabriel LaBelle), finding ways to make cash in the summer of 1991.  Written and directed by Adam Carter Rehmeier, the movie is crude, sophomoric, and clearly based on actual events.  AJ and Moose are constantly running shady schemes and earning the disapproval of their parents.  Eventually, an older friend, Shane (Nick Robinson), who lifeguards at the local community pool, points them toward running the poolside Snack Shack.  Simultaneously, the appearance of a new girl in town, Brooke (Mika Abdalla), threatens to turn AJ and Moose against each other.

You'll notice immediately that Conor Sherry and Gabriel LaBelle are twenty-something actors who do not pass for fourteen year-olds.  However, "Snack Shack" would be a lot less funny and endearing if we were watching actual fourteen year-olds doing some of the things that AJ and Moose get up to onscreen.  Their ingenuity seems endless, from fermenting their own beer to writing vulgarities on the hot dogs and charging an extra 75 cents.  Also, Sherry and LaBelle are such winning actors, who so deftly replicate the relationship that fourteen year-old boys have with each other - constantly putting each other down, random wrestling bouts, and enabling each other's worst ideas - that I couldn't bring myself to care too much.   

The movie, set in Nebraska City, Nebraska, is sunny, shaggy, and full of kids doing dumb and/or outrageous things just because they can.  The rivalries and beefs and existential crises are easily played for laughs, and it's only in the rare moment that a little real life heartache finds its way into the boys' summer, reminding us that this part of their lives will be over too quickly.   The only thing that really struck me as odd is that "Snack Shack" doesn't have any of the cultural signifiers for a piece of media set in the early 90s, but this might be because I'm not from the Midwest.  However, that speaks well to the longevity of "Snack Shack," which is one of the better screen surprises from last year.

Now on to a protagonist at a very different point in life.  Workaholic Andy Goodrich (Michael Keaton) receives a call one night from his wife Naomi (Laura Benanti), informing him that she's checked into 90 day rehab for a pill addiction he didn't know about, and he'll have to take care of their nine year-old twins, Billie (Vivien Lyra Blair) and Mose (Jacob Kopera).  As Andy struggles with new parenting responsibilities and escalating crises at work, he also rekindles his relationship with his grown-up daughter Grace (Mila Kunis) from a previous marriage, who is about to have a baby.

They really don't make enough films like "Goodrich" these days, which is the kind of adult dramedy that is really invested in its characters as fallible, but also wonderfully sympathetic and changeable human beings.  From interviews with writer/director Hallie Meyers-Shyer, the movie was specifically written for Michael Keaton, playing a basically good guy who realizes that he's neglected his family, and tries to fix this.  The process is frustrating and Andy takes some wrong steps, but it's also a voyage of discovery.  He's able to make all kinds of new connections and explore different parts of himself through fatherhood.  And he actually gets to know some of those closest to him for the first time.

What I really appreciate about "Goodrich" is that it's heartwarming and life-affirming, but actually fairly low on schmaltz.  Keaton is warm, but not cuddly.  He's still very capable of being an ass, and it takes Grace spelling it out for him to realize that he needs to be there for all of his kids, not just the ones who can't drive yet.  I also like that the movie is allowed to be leisurely and incidental, so there's room for a subplot with a potential client played by Carmen Ejogo, and his career is given real weight and stakes, so it isn't something that can just be brushed aside lightly.  

In other words, Andy Goodrich feels like a real person, living in a recognizable, present-day Los Angeles, sorting out realistic, everyday priorities.  And these days, that's not an easy feat to achieve in any kind of film.  And I'm glad I got to see Keaton in it, being subtle and charming, and nailing a role that's perfect for him.

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"Flow" and "Memoir of a Snail"

I'm usually pretty supportive of foreign and indie animated features, but the two that have gotten the most attention this awards season are just not my thing at all.  I debated with myself if it was worth writing these reviews, since smaller films like this face such an uphill battle getting audience attention, and putting forth any negativity feels kinda mean spirited.  However, just because I didn't like them doesn't mean that I can't write about them in a way that would highlight why other viewers might like them and want to seek them out.  Plenty of viewers have clearly enjoyed "Flow" and "Memoir of a Snail."  Maybe you will too.

First, let's talk about "Flow," which is a Latvian CGI film from Gints Zilbalodis and Dream Well Studio.  It stars a collection of animals, has no spoken dialogue, and seems to take place in a fantastical world that human beings have abandoned.  Our main POV character is a black cat who is caught in an unexpected flood, and must join several other animals - a dog, a capybara, a secretary bird, a lemur, and a whale - making a journey to a mysterious city.  The visuals are the main event here, creating an extremely immersive experience as we watch the cat travel through different environments, get swept away by the flood, and struggle to cooperate with the other animals to survive.  The animals behave like real animals for the most part, and are only minimally anthropomorphized.    

The CGI animation of the natural environments is lovely, and the critters are pretty cute.  Our hero cat looks almost exactly like the ones that often pop up in Studio Ghibli pictures, like Jiji from "Kiki's Delivery Service." The animators do a great job of keeping us invested in their journey, watching them work through one problem and obstacle after another.  If "Flow" had been created as a twenty minute short, I would have thought much better of it.  However, it's an 85 minute movie, and the premise just can't sustain the runtime.  Despite some standout sequences, I couldn't stop thinking of "Flow" as awfully reminiscent of a tech demo for a video game, designed to show off the impact of the gaming experience, and how cool the effects animation is.  I can understand the choice to use a non-traditional narrative, but as a result a lot of the movie feels very disconnected and arbitrary.  The character animation isn't expressive enough to suggest much actual intention in the animals' behavior, much less any motives, leaving their actions a mystery.  You don't see many animated films committed to so much realism, which is commendable, but it also negatively impacts the storytelling.  "Flow" left me intrigued, but unmoved, looking for a story to go with the lovely images.  

Now, on to "Memoir of a Snail," which is the latest film from Australian animator Adam Elliot, who made "Harvey Krumpet" and "Mary and Max."  Like his previous work, "Memoir of a Snail" is a biography of an oddball.  Grace Pudel (Sarah Snook) is a snail enthusiast who endures a difficult childhood with her twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) under the care of their disabled drunkard father Percy (Dominique Pinon).  Things become worse when Percy dies, and Grace and Gilbert are split up.  Grace ends up with nice, but mostly absent foster parents, and finds a friend in an elderly woman named Pinky (Jacki Weaver).  Gilbert ends up with a family of terrible religious fundamentalists, and is only able to communicate with Grace through occasional letters. 

I've enjoyed all of Adam Elliot's films and shorts, but I've never really liked them much as animated media.  The stories are certainly compelling, full of miserable personal histories, dark humor, and the celebration of imperfection and eccentricity.  Grace survives so much tragedy, you have to root for her, though the soap opera twists get to be a bit much by the end.  However, my biggest problem is with the visuals.  Adam Elliot's style is instantly recognizable.  His stop-motion animation characters are all ugly-cute caricatures of average people, often with lumpy bodies and huge bug-eyes, and rendered in drab colors.  The production design is full of subversive little details and nostalgic kitsch.  The animation itself, however, is crude stuff - characters rely mostly on voiceover instead of talking, and have a tendency to sit around, staring blankly out at the audience.  

Other animators with minimalist styles like Don Hertzfeld find ways to use the limitations to their advantage, and still come up with creative, memorable imagery.  "Memoir of a Snail" does manage a few good visual gags, but only seems to be animated when it absolutely has to be, which is a mark against it. I enjoyed the film, and do recommend it to discerning grown ups, but there are so many good animated films from 2024 that this places pretty far down in the list.    

          

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My Top Ten Episodes of 2015-2016

Below, find my top ten episodes for the 2015-2016 television season, in no particular order.  And spoilers ahead. 

Documentary Now! "Sandy Passage" - The very first episode of "Documentary Now!" is an irresistible spoof of the beloved cult documentary "Grey Gardens," with Bill Hader and Fred Armisen in drag.  I was initially not a fan of the ending, which struck me as tasteless, but it grew on me over time.  The subjects of the real documentary were portrayed as pitiable grotesques, and it seems only right that the fictional versions should enact their spiritual revenge on the filmmakers.  

Mr. Robot, "eps1.0 hellofriend.mov" - The pilot of "Mr. Robot" had enough intriguing elements to get me through two very rough seasons before I had to take a break.  I think Elliot is still Rami Malek's best role, a disassociating, alienated, cyberpunk renegade with serious mental health issues.  His rambling internal monologues reveal his paranoia, but also hit upon some uncomfortable truths of the first online generation.  And they set the tone for a show that still feels very of the now.   

Fargo, "Loplop" - This is not my favorite season of "Fargo," but this is my favorite episode.  Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Zahn McCarnon, and Jeffrey Donovan are all at their best negotiating a tricky, absurd hostage situation where the villainous Dodd Gerhardt meets his match in an actualized Peggy Blumquist.  The episode is a totally unpredictable high-wire act of nervous tension, hilarious role-reversals, sudden violence, and well-earned comeuppance for all parties involved.    

The Americans, "The Magic of David Copperfield V: The Statue of Liberty Disappears" - Every plan and mission in this episode goes right, but at the same time everything is going wrong, with the Jennings family hitting their emotional limits and threatening to fall apart.  Juggling so many relationships and lies and obligations comes to a head at last, the tensions spill over into a full blown fight between Philp and Elizabeth that was a long time coming.  Goodbye Martha.  

The Leftovers, "International Assassin" - Dream episodes are tricky things, but "The Leftovers" has always been a show that deals in symbols and existential themes particularly well.  Justin Theroux's Kevin might be dead, but in this episode he's currently an assassin tasked with killing an old foe - except that foe in this world is a little girl.  Part vision quest, part "Dante's Inferno," part wrapping up unfinished business, and a whole lot of emotional catharsis, say goodbye to Patti for good this time.  

Better Call Saul, "Nailed" and "Klick" - I couldn't pick between them.  These two episodes from the show's second season should be watched together anyway, as Jimmy and Chuck's relationship hits a particularly bad patch when Jimmy sabotages Chuck's work.  And Chuck will not take the loss.  It's jawdropping to see how far Chuck is willing to go to prove he's right, and Michael McKean performance is a tour de force.  And the fact that Chuck actually is right makes it all the more painful.

Saturday Night Live, "Ryan Gosling/Leon Bridges" -  Ryan Gosling had never hosted SNL before, and of course not everything in the episode works, but two of the sketches turned out to be all-timers.  One is "Santa Baby," where Gosling and Vanessa Bayer believe in Santa way too hard.  The other is the very first "Close Encounter" sketch, where Kate McKinnon plays an abductee, makes everyone else in the room break, and cements herself as one of the SNL greats of this era.  

Game of Thrones, "Battle of the Bastards" - Arguably the best battle episode that "Game of Thrones" ever produced, both because of the excellent depiction of the warfare, and because of the immense satisfaction of finally seeing Ramsay Bolton go down.  The intensity of the hand-to-hand combat was unusual, setting the episode apart from the show's previous big action-heavy installments.  And I love that Sansa got to be the one to really stick it to Ramsay in the end. 

The Chris Gethard Show, "One Man's Trash" - Quite possibly the greatest unscripted episode of television of all time.  Chris Gethard and his crew simply want the audience to guess what's in a dumpster before the episode ends.  The twists and the turns and the switching of sides and the ratcheting tension make this very silly comedy show into a total nail-biter by the end.  Special kudos to the guest stars, Paul Scheer and Jason Mantzoukas, who help to spur on the madness.  

The X-Files, "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster" - Finally, the best part of "The X-files" revival was definitely Darin Morgan getting to write and direct two more episodes.  In this monster-of-the-week spoof, the monster is a were-creature who is cursed to turn into a human.  Played by Rhys Darby, this tragic figure is both poignant and hilarious.  As for the episode, it's chock full of Easter Eggs, superfan Kumail Nanjiani gets a role, and Mulder gets his mojo back.  

Honorable Mention: "The Jinx" - While I'm on the side of those who question the tactics of the people who put this documentary together, that final admission at the end of the very last episode was undeniably a bombshell - one of the greatest gets I've ever seen in this kind of investigative piece.  

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"The Seed of the Sacred Fig" Stands Witness

This is a hard movie to watch, and as a result, a hard movie to write about.  "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" is an Iranian film, written and directed by Mohammad Rasoulof, who has run afoul of Iran's censorship laws multiple times, and had to flee the country to escape a lengthy prison sentence when this film was chosen for the 2024 Cannes film festival.  It takes place roughly in 2022, during the demonstrations and protests that came in the wake of the murder of Mahsa Amini.

A devout, honest man named Iman (Missagh Zareh) is promoted to be a judge in Iran's Revolutionary Court, which oversees major crimes including threats to the power of the state.  This means Iman enjoys better living conditions, but also tighter restrictions on his family, and he is issued a gun for protection.  His wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) does her best to keep their daughters in line - Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) who is attending college, and teenage Sana (Setareh Maleki) who lives at home.  Despite their mother's efforts, the daughters both support the protests and are affected by the social unrest.  Iman, faced with going against his principles as the protests escalate, becomes stressed and unstable.  And then the gun goes missing.

The family becomes Iran in miniature - a paranoid authoritarian father, an oppressive mother trying to placate him, an older daughter who speaks out against the injustice she sees, and a younger daughter who is surrounded by too much violence not to be affected.  Before the gun disappears or the social unrest erupts in Tehran, the tensions in the household are already high due to Iman's promotion.  Najmeh seems to be endlessly criticizing her daughters, and pressures them to stop associating with a friend, Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi) from a more permissive family. It's Najmeh who is the crux of the film, who starts experiencing doubts when the situation worsens.  She has to face the fact that she can do everything right and still be in danger.     

Mohammad Rasoulof is not a director I'm familiar with, but he's taking his cues from fellow Iranian filmmakers like Jafar Panahi, who are fiercely critical of the current regime, and not afraid of tackling major social issues head-on.  The making of this film was reportedly an ordeal - Rasoulof filmed it in secret while under a filmmaking ban, and was convicted on propaganda charges during its production.  He uses actual footage from the protests interspersed throughout "The Seed of the Sacred Fig," the aspect ratio changing so it looks like we're watching events unfold on phones along with the girls.  These images are also banned in Iran, of course.  They give the film an incredible immediacy and heighten the sense of danger and disruption.  

The strongest parts of the film are the first two thirds, where we watch the family react to multiple crises and reach their breaking points.  Najmeh starts out doing her best to play peacemaker, finding justifications for everyone's behavior, and ignoring what she can't fix. I find it fascinating the way that Rasoulof gets to the heart of the conflict, which is not about religion or moral values, but about living in a society built on fear and absolute control.  There's a bleak sequence where Najmeh and her daughters are questioned by a family friend who is also a government interrogator.  From the fear tactics and doublespeak, it's clear that mindless obedience is more important than actually finding out the truth.  Iman soon becomes so warped by his work as part of the unjust legal system that he views all dissent as rebellion.    

What's so brilliant about the storytelling is that we're seeing all of this largely in the terms of a present-day domestic drama, contained within a single, instantly familiar family unit.  The gradual breakdown of trust between Iman and his wife and daughters over the film's long running time is intense and upsetting.  The last third of the film turns very melodramatic, and moves the action out of the city, which I thought was a misstep - we're suddenly in a different kind of story where the threats shift from psychological to physical.  However, I understand why it was necessary thematically, because the film's critiques go beyond the current government.  Putting the family's conflict against the backdrop of an abandoned village is a reminder that the current instability in Iran is part of a much longer and more complex history. 

I doubt "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" will find much of an audience beyond the usual arthouse crowd, which is a shame.  This is very watchable and accessible for an Iranian film, and very relevant to political unrest happening all over the globe right now.  We don't get a lot of cinema this vital and this urgent, and it's absolutely remarkable that it was made at all.    

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"Zero Day" and "The Residence"

Quick thoughts on two Netflix limited series today.  Minor spoilers ahead.

"Zero Day" is a show that I had been anticipating for a while.  It features an unusually high profile cast, including Robert DeNiro as ex-president George Mullen, Joan Allen as his wife, Lizzy Caplan as his estranged daughter, and Jesse Plemmons as his personal aide.  Angela Bassett plays the sitting president.  Every episode is directed by Leslie Linka Glatter.  The showrunner is Eric Newman, best known for "Narcos."  In short, "Zero Day" has a pedigree that few other series could match.  And somehow, it's borderline unwatchable.

What "Zero Day" wants to be is a political thriller about the aftermath of a fictional cyberattack on the United States, which destabilizes the country.  Mullen is appointed to be the chairman of a special commission to find the perpetrators, and resorts to some very questionable means to do this.  As you'd expect, there's a lot of sensationalism, a lot of improbable political developments, and a lot of chances for Robert DeNiro to give impassioned speeches.  The trouble is that "Zero Day" had the misfortune to have been delayed by the recent strikes, and was released in early 2025.  "Zero Day" is patterned more or less on the US response to 9/11.  Thus, it is operating in a political reality that bears absolutely no resemblance to the present day.  The secret conspiracies look absolutely ridiculous when the people currently in office are doing much worse out in the open without real consequences.  The cyberattack and resulting transportation and telecommunications failures aren't examined in any real depth, despite featuring so heavily in the marketing.  Instead, they're just the impetus for generic civil unrest that never seems as threatening as it's made out to be.    

I think what really sinks the show is that we see everything play out mostly from Mullen's very limited POV, and somehow everything important ties back to him personally.  It's his daughter who happens to be the Representative tasked with monitoring the special commission's activities.  He has personal relationships with nearly every important figure involved in the story.  It feels like the creators don't trust the audience to be engaged by the political drama without piling so much personal drama on top of it.  There are some attempts to reflect the current political landscape, such as including influential tech moguls and a loudmouth conspiracy theorist as thorns in Mullen's side, but it just makes it all the more obvious how tone-deaf and out of date "Zero Day" is.  The answers are too easy and the problems are too quickly resolved, the result of a small group of bad actors who can be handily dispatched after Mullen makes a few tough decisions.  I don't mind DeNiro getting to flex a bit, and I enjoyed seeing everybody from Dan Stevens to Connie Britton popping up in supporting roles, but too much of "Zero Day" is indulgent political fantasy with no depth to speak of.  

And now, on to something completely different.  Shondaland's latest project is "The Residence," an eight episode murder mystery comedy that takes place in the White House.  Created by Paul William Davies, "The Residence" follows the efforts of consulting detective Cordelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba) as she tries to solve the murder of the White House's Head Usher, A.B. Wynter (Giancalo Esposito), during a state dinner for the Prime Minister of Australia (Julian McMahon).  There is a very long list of suspects, including an executive pastry chef played by Bronson Pinchot, Ken Marino as a scummy presidential advisor, Jason Lee as the president's even scummier brother, and Kylie Minogue, appearing as herself.  However, Cordelia Cupp doesn't believe in suspects.  She believes in keen observation, scrupulous journaling, and birding.  And she does all of these things constantly as she tries to piece together what happened to A.B.

"The Residence" is the most flat-out fun I've had with a murder mystery series in some time.  It's extremely well written and well edited, juggling lots of different characters and incidents and clues.  Each episode introduces more suspects - the engineer (Mel Rodriguez), the social secretary (Molly Griggs), the party crasher (Timothy Hornor), the ambitious underling (Susan Kelechi Watson), and the president's mother-in-law (Jane Curtin), just to name a few -  and shows us events from many different POVs.  It's immensely satisfying when everything pieces together in the end.  The show is very self-aware, with Detective Cupp and her Watson figure, Agent Park (Randall Park), calling out tropes when they come across them, all the episodes named after other famous mysteries, and a framing device with Al Franken running a Congressional hearing into the murder for more meta commentary.  I really like the way some of the exposition is done, using montages of different interviews and conversations so that many disparate characters appear to be relaying bits of the same story, responding to each other, and adding to each other's testimonies.  Brief clips of particularly pivotal moments come back multiple times over the course of the show, building on each other, and helping the audience to keep track of different theories.  The Wes Anderson-ian humor is also great, with sight gags and silly callbacks galore.       

Despite taking place in the White House, "The Residence" is apolitical, and a nice break from reality.  Well, the President (Paul Fitzgerald) has a First Gentleman (Barrett Foa) instead of a First Lady, and Senator Bix (Eliza Coupe) bears a resemblance to a certain Republican Congresswoman, but the specifics never match up.  Instead, the show is very concerned with the inner workings of the White House as its own institution.  A nonfiction book, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House, by Kate Anderson Brower, is credited as the main inspiration for the show, and a significant amount of time is spent spotlighting all the different employees and departments that keep the place running, from the Head Usher to the butlers, gardeners, housekeepers, kitchen staff, and security personnel.  In the course of trying to figure out whodunnit, we learn all the ins and outs of the fictional household, and it's fascinating stuff.  One of the show's best visuals is when it shows us dollhouse-like views of the White House, to highlight the different rooms in relation to each other.    

I want to give special kudos to Uzo Aduba, who puts her own stamp on the eccentric detective figure.  Cordelia Cupp is odd, stubborn, and brilliant, as many fictional detectives are, but also wonderfully patient, accepting, and self-aware of her own flaws.  It's a lot of fun to watch her work, and I hope to see her again in another mystery someday.     

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The Worst 2024 Movies I Bothered to Watch

This was a lot of fun to write last year, so I think it's going to be a regular feature.  All the usual caveats apply.  I'm not a professional critic and do my best to avoid seeing the movies that usually end up on "Worst of" lists, so I have not seen the real bottom-of-the-barrel dreck.  The list is in no way comprehensive, and mainly just a way for me to let off some steam as I'm working through the last few titles from last year.  It's a few months until I can finalize my "Best of" list for movies, but I'm pretty much done seeing all the mainstream releases I care about.   Minor spoilers ahead. 

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim - This movie was doomed the second the trailer was released.  I don't think that a new animated "Lord of the Rings" movie is a bad idea - the Bakshi version is a cult classic - but the anime style was the wrong way to go here.  I've read up on what was going on with the production, and all the great talent and all the technical wizardry involved, but the end result just looks disappointingly bland and generic.  It may not have been a film that was created just to keep the rights to the franchise with New Line, but it sure feels like one.    

Mother, Couch - Sometimes you see a terrible film from a first time director, that somehow has an A-list cast and resources that other directors would kill for, and you have to applaud everybody for taking a big risk that in no way paid off.   "Mother, Couch," was directed by a Swedish guy named Niclas Larsson, who made some award-winning short films and commercials.  From interviews, he seems to think he's made a horror film.  I think he's actually aiming for an absurdist existential comedy, but wandered off course.  There are some signs of talent, but Larsson's not ready for long form yet.

The Crow - Easily my biggest disappointment of the year, because I really loved the original "Crow" movie starring Brandon Lee, and I often like Bill Sarsgaard as a leading man.  This remake, directed by Rupert Sanders, occasionally has some good-looking visuals, but it's clear that Sanders still doesn't know how to do action, the writer doesn't understand the material, and the performers are all left adrift.  After decades of different versions in development limbo with so many actors and directors attached at various points in time, I can't believe this is what actually got made.

Cold Copy - A thriller about a young journalist who uncovers her mentor's unethical tactics isn't a bad premise.  It's just that everything about the portrayal of journalism in this film is decades out of date, and the unethical tactics are tame compared to what we know actually goes on in the industry.   Bel Powley and Tracee Ellis Ross are doing the best that they can, but they don't have much to work with.  "Cold Copy" is the brainchild of another European first-time director, Roxine Helberg, who made a lot of commercials.  I think it's better than "Mother, Couch," but not by very much.    

Bagman - Colm McCarthy is a very solid British director, whose last horror film was the excellent "The Girl With All the Gifts."  So what happened here?  The script is nonsense.  There's no atmosphere to speak of.  The bagman monster is kind of interesting at first, until you realize that it isn't actually going to do anything scary. Like the recent "Wolf Man," the parental anxiety themes are laid out well enough, but all the subsequent chills and thrills fall totally flat.  Also, was there a coherent ending to this film that was left on the cutting room floor somewhere?   

Reunion - I suspect the plan was to stick a bunch of talented actors and comedians in a by-the-numbers murder mystery together, and hope something watchable would result.  Well, it didn't. Lil Rel Howery, Billy Magnussen, Jillian Bell, and Jamie Chung all spend 94 minutes bumming around somebody's house, going through the motions as the plot slowly works itself out around them with zero thrills, laughs, or surprises.  The writers are the guys behind the "Edge of Sleep" series with Markiplier, so you can draw your own conclusions.   

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My Favorite Charles Laughton Film

Beloved stage and screen actor Charles Laughton only directed a single film, which was received so badly upon its release that he never made another.  However, it enjoyed a great critical reappraisal over the years, and "The Night of the Hunter" is now widely considered one of the best American films ever made.  It's a Southern Gothic chiller brought to life through German Expressionism, featuring one of Robert Mitchum's most iconic performances.  Its distinctive visuals are an homage to silent films - but unfortunately "The Night of the Hunter" was made in the 1950s, an era where nobody wanted anything to do with silent films.  

The story unfolds like a fairy tale, told largely from the perspective of two children who hold a dangerous secret.  The setting is a small town in West Virginia during the Great Depression.  The wolf at their door is the evil, murderous preacher Harry Powell, best remembered for the tattoos of "Love" and "Hate" across his knuckles.  Mitchum makes Powell calculating and intimidating and very, very charismatic.  His seduction tactics are rough and unpolished, but the traumatized and deeply religious widow played by Shelly Winters doesn't stand a chance.  All too soon they're married, and the evil preacher is now the evil stepfather as well.  The townsfolk fall for his oratory, and soon the children have no one left to protect them.  There was a lot of concern around Powell being perceived as too much of an anti-Christian presence onscreen, and at least one other major star turned down the role for being too villainous.  Mitchum, however, needed no convincing, and Harry Powell may still be the character he's best remembered for.       

There's a starkness and a simplicity to the film that is absolutely riveting.  Many of the suspense sequences have little to no dialogue, or are driven by Walter Schumann's score.  The child's eye view of the world and heavy use of religious and natural symbolism set the scene for a battle between good and evil in the most elemental terms.  As Powell puts it, it's the little story of right-hand/left-hand.  Laughton uses multiple silent film techniques and fills the screen with older cinematic devices and macabre Expressionistic imagery that had largely gone out of style in the sound era.   The black and white cinematography relays the story in light and shadows, and in some key scenes the characters are only visible as silhouettes.   So much of the storytelling is done through the shot compositions and set design, particularly the night sequences that can make the most idyllic settings seem eerie and threatening.  Huge portions of the screen are allowed to be totally dark, creating the opportunity for images with these dramatic, gorgeous contrasts.

One of the most famous scenes involves the reveal of a corpse seated in a car at the bottom of a flowing river, a surreal underwater shot created entirely in a studio by Laughton and cinematographer Stanley Cortez.  Other shots feature exaggerated storybook images, achieved with experimental editing tricks and clever stagecraft.  At one point the silhouettes of a horse and rider arrive on an impossible horizon, clearly artificial and yet incredibly  unnerving.  Children's faces appear in the stars, animals watch over the escape on the river, and Harry Powell casts a looming shadow that dwarfs everything in its path.  Children's songs and games are a recurring motif, and a framing device shows an old woman telling a group of children a warning fable about the "wolf in sheep's clothing." 

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That old woman is Rachel, the only grown-up who sees Harry Powell for exactly what he does, and joins in the fight against him in the last act.  She's played by silent film veteran Lilian Gish, toting a rifle as she tells her foundlings Bible stories.  She's symbolic of a true Christian winning out over a vile pretender, of good triumphing over evil.  Faith is restored, the night ends, and everything is brought out into the daylight.  However, the legacy of Harry Powell has persisted through both horror and non-horror cinema, and Charles Laughton is now better known in some circles as a great director than a great actor.  

What I've Seen - Charles Laughton

Night of the Hunter (1955)

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