The First Five of "Stuart Fails to Save the Universe"

I was a casual viewer of "The Big Bang Theory" for years, but never got invested enough to catch up on any of the episodes I missed or check out any of the earlier spinoff shows.  However, "Stuart Fails to Save the Universe" was such a weird prospect that I had to give this thing a look.  After all, I was paying for the HBO Max subscription anyway.

So, the guy who owned the comic book store in "The Big Bang Theory," Stuart (Kevin Sussman), is positioned as the star, joined by his assistant manager and ex-girlfriend Denise (Lauren Lapkus), and two CalTech academics, Bert Kibbler (Brian Posehn) and Barry Kripke (John Ross Bowie).  All four end up on a universe-hopping adventure together, thanks to a device that Sheldon and Leonard from "The Big Bang Theory" purportedly created.  A push of a button allows them to bounce from universe to universe, which is very handy in the first episode, since our heroes start out in an apocalyptic version of Pasadena and need a way out.

I've watched five episodes so far, and the show is not very good.  Creator Chuck Lorre and his longtime collaborator Bill Prady are joined by Zak Penn, who has written an awful lot of superhero movies.  They've taken a collection of minor characters from "The Big Bang Theory" - who I barely remember and haven't seen onscreen since 2019 - and promoted them to series leads.  Meanwhile, the main cast of "The Big Bang Theory" occasionally drop in for cameos.  And this doesn't really work.  Kevin Sussman is a character actor in his fifties, playing an unremarkable schlub who isn't very amusing or sympathetic.  Brian Posehn is born to play sidekicks, so he and a cartoonishly evil, lisping John Ross Bowie muddle through okay.  I don't feel I've seen enough of Lauren Lapkus yet to say much, though I've liked her previously on "Comedy Bang! Bang!" and other shows.

The big selling point of "Stuart Fails to Save the Universe" is that Chuck Lorre decided to give genre-bending storytelling and meta-humor a try, abandoning his usual realm of sitcom couches for a show that features an entirely new universe with totally different rules each week.  We jump from the apocalypse, to a world run by robots, to a world where magic is real, to a world where Stuart is in a mental hospital, to a world inhabited by pre-civilization collectivist tribes.  Also, being on HBO Max means fewer content restrictions and a bigger budget for all the CGI in the show.  The result is similar to watching a live action "Rick and Morty."  Alas, it soon becomes apparent that  Chuck Lorre is no Dan Harmon.  

The pacing is frantic and the dangers are grandiose, but the humor in "Stuart Fails" amounts to the same old Chuck-Lorre-sitcom one-liners, middlebrow manchild shtick, and caricature based humor.  Stuart isn't really friends with the other two guys, so there are no existing group or family dynamics to play off of the way that "Rick and Morty" does.  Stuart still holding a torch for Diane is the only sign of any sort of real emotional connection anywhere.  So far, there are also no compelling stakes to the story aside from finding a "normal" universe somewhere that the group can call home.  Though, as the title indicates, Stuart and his travelling companions usually leave each universe worse off than they found it, the show never really gets very dark or satirical.  Frankly, the characters are too simple-minded for that.

So far the most clever bits are usually in the opening sequence, which prominently features snarky signs and messages that change in every episode.  All the episodes also have spoiler titles, such as the pilot being called "Spoiler: Gary Dies."  And a character named Gary does in fact die.  There's not much cleverness that makes it into the actual episodes, which are keen on using all the tropes and tactics of smarter, geekier shows, but don't put them to particularly good use.  Since Lorre and his collaborators are new to this kind of material, I expect that they'll improve over time.  The show has already been renewed for at least another season.

I, however, don't think I'll be sticking around much longer for "Stuart Fails."  "President Curtis" is a similar show that premiered around the same time, and is already much more promising - but that's another post.

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The New Devices of "Toy Story 5"

It's been thirty years since the original "Toy Story," and it's interesting to see how the franchise has evolved over time.  It's become more and more clear that the toys, especially our most prominent major characters like Woody, Buzz, and Jessie, are really stand-ins for parents.  Their relationships with the children that they safeguard have become more and more explicitly parental over the last few movies.  And what are parents worried about these days?  Electronic devices.  It was one of the neatest tricks of advertising that I saw this year, putting the new tablet character Lilypad (Greta Lee) right in the middle of the poster, representing a massive existential threat to the "Toy Story" gang, and instantly grabbing the attention of every concerned parent who has had to wrestle with the screentime question.

Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) is now eight years old, as imaginative as ever, but having trouble making friends because it seems like every other kid is spending so much time online.  Her well-meaning parents buy her a kids' tablet, Lilypad, to the consternation of her toys.  Jessie in particular is worried that the "devices" make kids grow up too fast.  Initial encounters with Lilypad do not go well, and Jessie and Bullseye mistakenly end up far from home, in the custody of another girl, Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris).  Meanwhile, Sheriff Woody and Bo are called in as reinforcements, and there's a whole subplot involving a lost army of the newest generation of Buzz Lightyear toys, which come with some interesting new hi-tech features.  Conan O'Brien, Shelby Rabara, and Craig Robinson voice new characters, and nearly everyone from the older "Toy Story" films reprises their roles in some capacity.

The franchise is definitely feeling its age.  "Toy Story 5," directed by Andrew Stanton, has a lot of jokes about Woody being old and out of shape, a lot of freak-outs about technology, and a lot of nostalgic callbacks to earlier films, especially "Toy Story 2."  The voices of several of the actors, like Tom Hanks and Joan Cusack, have noticeably changed, and the performances have changed with them.  Moreover, it feels like the movie was marketed more towards adults than children, though there are plenty of elements in the film that kids will enjoy watching.  PIXAR finally gives into toilet humor in the best way, introducing a toilet training toy named Smarty Pants (O'Brien) to deliver several very silly and mild scatological jokes.  While the animation is as eye-catching and detailed as ever, and all the actors and artists clearly remain very committed to delivering quality entertainment, there's a safeness and overly familiar quality to the film that left me comforted, but largely unmoved.  There are no big set pieces, no feats of animation spectacle, or any innovations in animation or storytelling that we haven't seen before.  They also feel a little slower, a little gentler, and more tentative.

The treatment of the devices, for instance, turns out to be very even-handed.  Maybe a little too even-handed.  Though initially viewed as threats, Lilypad and a few other tech-enabled toys are eventually revealed to be just as concerned about the well-being of their owners as the toys are.  The negative aspects of too much screentime, and the dangers of online interactions are highlighted, but it's the human beings who are at fault, not the technology.  With an eight year-old at the center of all this, the examples of online bullying and irresponsible behavior are understandably very mild.  However, I still raised eyebrows at the amount of bad screen habits we see in the movie that escaped comment.  It feels like a missed opportunity for PIXAR to more definitely take a stand for toys and offline play over screens.

It's been seven years since "Toy Story 4," so I'm not as worried about the franchise being overexposed as I once was.  This is one of the rare cases where I believe that new installments don't get made unless someone has a really good idea for one.  However, "Toy Story 5" feels so remote from those first three films now, and the filmmakers seem reluctant to handle the characters too roughly anymore.  Maybe this is just a rare misstep that will be righted eventually, but I think it's more likely that "Toy Story" has inevitably plateaued, and may be on the decline. 

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"House of the Dragon," Year Three

Spoilers for seasons one and two, and the first two episodes of season three ahead.

So, this is the season where "House of the Dragon" made some fundamental mistakes.  The most obvious one is not its fault.  HBO has cut down on episode orders, so the second season that premiered in 2024 had to end before its planned finale, the Battle of the Gullet.  This exciting naval battle ends up opening the third season instead, delivering lots of action and thrills that nothing else in the season matches up to.  An eight episode season would seem to be a perfectly fine length for "House of the Dragon," but there are a lot of characters who still don't have much to do between the violent clashes, and the showrunners seem determined to drag out the series for as long as its source material will allow, so the pace has slowed to a crawl.    

Most of the season is spent exploring the new status quo, with Rhaenyra having finally ascended the throne at King's Landing, but finding governance extremely difficult in the unsteady circumstances.  Up until now, Rhaenyra has been the most sympathetic of the main protagonists.  However, as the show moves into its later seasons, she's clearly not supposed to remain so.  The audience really should also be rooting for some of the other characters left on the board too, like Aegon II and Aemond, who are still on the run, or the scheming Ormund Hightower (James Norton), who has custody of Viserys's youngest son Daeron Targaryen (Benjamin Ainsworth), and is set up as a major foe of Rhaenyra's this season.  Though attempts are made to get us more invested in all of them, it doesn't work.  A few cool moments doesn't make up for Aegon being a brat for most of the year, and Aemond has gone from fun psycho to angst-ridden brooder.  Ormund is entertaining while he lasts, but reeks of cannon fodder and desperation.  Alicent and Helaena, put under house arrest, are still around, but too passive and ineffectual to really be players this season.  

I was still invested in Rhaenyra's reign and her relationship with Daemon, but watching her flounder as a monarch really tested my patience.  Rhaenyra's been interesting so far because she's a strong character blinded by tragic flaws, far too self-obsessed and conceited to believe she could be in the wrong.  Once she's installed in King's Landing, all these new anxieties and self-doubts kick in, rendering her weaker and more unlikeable with each episode.  And it's absolutely maddening to watch this play out.  I don't like that the show seems to so often be making Rhaenyra a victim of bad circumstances instead of letting her decisively make the mistakes that will lead to her ultimate fate.  It might be an issue with Emma D'Arcy's performance, but the writing is not doing her any favors.

This leaves me without many sympathetic characters left to follow through the story.  There are several secondary characters who still have my attention, though.  Baela had a great tragic turn this year, and was at the center of a major action set piece. Gwayne Hightower has weirdly emerged as one of the more heroic characters.   Ulf and Hugh are decent enough wild cards.  Alyn, Addam, and Rhaena feel like they're stuck on standby after the premiere, unfortunately, along with Lord Corlys.  I think the less said about Mysaria - a problematic figure from the start - the better.  

There is plenty of potential in this show going forward, but "House of the Dragon" has already fallen back on some of the worst habits of "Game of Thrones."  The third season was better than the second because it was more eventful, but it's still moving too slowly and getting repetitive.  Nowhere is this more apparent than with the Harrenhal subplots.  Daemon was stuck there for most of the second season, with Alys as his enabler, and once he left, Aemond showed up and went through almost the exact same experience.  

Maybe HBO could have gotten away with this if "House of the Dragon" was being released yearly, but my interest is already on the wane, and I don't see any end in sight.  As someone who wasn't too impressed with "Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," it might be time for me to take a break from this franchise for a while.

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My Favorite Andrzej Wajda Film

I don't think there's been a Polish filmmaker who has been as focused on Polish culture, politics, history, and national identity throughout his long career as Andrzej Wajda.  So though I was initially going to write this entry about "Danton," one of the great movies about the Reign of Terror, I feel it's far more appropriate to write about a Wajda film examining a period of Polish history through the lens of an investigation into the life of a fictional Polish hero.

"Man of Marble," like many other Wajda films, is about disillusionment and living in a corrupt system.  It follows a filmmaker named Agnieszka in the present day and her subject Mateusz Birkut in the past simultaneously, intercutting between their stories.  It emerges that Birkut was built up as a hero for propaganda purposes during Poland's Communist era, but once he actually undertook a heroic action in defense of a friend, he was brought to ruin by those in power.  "Man of Marble," made in the 1970s, was particularly notable for reflecting the social discontent of the Polish populace at the time of release, alluding to events that would be central to Poland's workers' movement of the 1980s.  "Man of Marble" would be followed by a sequel further exploring these themes, "Man of Iron."  Set five years later, it reveals the fates of several characters in "Man of Marble."  The political climate by that point was in such tumult that Wajda had to work outside of Poland for the next few years.

These two films are often discussed as a pair, but "Man of Marble" is more interesting for me for the way it engages with and is critical of Polish media.  The format of the film is similar to "Citizen Kane," with our heroine conducting interviews with people from Birkut's life, uncovering a little more about him with each encounter.  However, she is also working with researchers who unearth old films and newsreels about Birkut, many of them suppressed, censored, or never released at all.  The accounts of Birkut's life that they offer are usually deeply misleading.  Agnieszka even finds the director of the propaganda film that helped to lionize Birkut's image, who offers a more nuanced version of events.  However, there are also rare segments that contain fascinating glimpses of the truth.  Wajda created all of these archival materials himself in the style of the Communist  propaganda of the 1950s, highlighting their manipulative nature, and allowing him to contrast their narrative style with his own.

Wajda's frustrations as a filmmaker were also evident in the way he portrayed Agnieszka's struggles to make her film.  She has to fight for everything - funds, equipment, access to materials, approval of subject matter, and control of the project.  Agnieszka is played by Krystyna Janda in her debut role, this wonderfully modern, confident woman who struts through the opening sequence with determination and purpose.  I immediately sat up and took notice.  I appreciate that as much as the film is about Birkut, this forgotten hero figure who represents all the noble values of the Polish workers of his generation, it's also about Agnieszka, who resists the coverup and seems to embody all of Wajda's hopes for his country's future.  And it's her decision to keep going with her work, despite apparent defeat, that allows Wajda to end "Man of Marble" on a hopeful note.            

Andrzej Wajda isn't well known outside of his native Poland, despite being very highly regarded.  His work was a regular presence at the major European film festivals for decades, and four of his features nabbed Oscar nominations, most recently in 2007.  Many of his contemporaries like Roman Polanski and Krzysztof Kieslowski, however, are far more popular.  I suspect that this is because the degree of difficulty that comes with watching Wajda's films is higher - they are more culturally specific, more political, more ideological, and often very lengthy.  I confess that I watched "Ashes and Diamonds" and "Kanal" a few decades ago and didn't finish the trilogy until this year.

Finally, I should acknowledge that 35mm.online featured Wajda in 2026 for his centennial, and put several of his films online for free over the summer.  Without them, this entry would not be possible.   

What I've Seen - Andrzej Wajda

A Generation (1955)

Kanał (1957)

Ashes and Diamonds (1958)

Innocent Sorcerers (1960)

Everything For Sale (1969)

The Wedding (1972)

The Promised Land (1975)

Man of Marble (1977)

The Maids of Wilko (1979)

Man of Iron (1981)

Danton (1983)

Katyn (2007)

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"Frieren" and Friends

A common anime trope is the cute, girlish character who is actually decades or centuries older than she appears.  These are often pretty flat characters built for easy laughs or guilt-free titillation, and rarely examined in much depth.  So imagine my surprise when I came across "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End."  The title character, Frieren (Atsumi Tanezaki), is a long-lived elven mage who inhabits a swords-and-sorcery universe.  The series begins where most fantasy stories end, in the aftermath of Frieren and her adventuring party having defeated a mighty Demon King, beginning a new era of peace.  They all go their separate ways, but Frieren comes back to visit a few decades later, and is shocked to find her companions at or near the end of their lives, while time has barely passed for her.  Contemplating her relationships to humankind and the passage of time, Frieren sets out on a new journey with an apprentice mage Fern (Kana Ichinose), and a young warrior, Stark (Chiaki Kobayashi).

From what I'd heard about the series, I'd assumed that "Frieren" was a slower-paced slice of life show, where the adventures are fairly low stakes and the tone is kept very light.  This is sometimes true, as Frieren and her friends spend the introductory episodes slowly retracing the steps of the original adventuring party, doing small missions for local villagers, bonding over shared experiences, and collecting bits of new magic as they go.  And its all very pleasant and charming.  However, "Frieren" also fits the mold of a more traditional fantasy adventure series, having Frieren fight surviving allies of the Demon King for a string of episodes, or putting them in other dire situations that tend to end in spectacular fight scenes and the use of showy magic spells.  To allow them to travel through a more dangerous region, Frieren and Fern decide to take a mage certification exam that pits them against a slew of other powerful magic users, which takes up about a third of the show's first season.  However, there are still slower episodes between these arcs.  "Frieren" is able to take its time building up its characters and its lovely fantasy world, explaining the different types of magic and gradually digging into past events.

And the chief reason to watch the show is the character of Frieren, this detached, aloof being of immense power who has come to realize that she does value her connections to others, and wants to find ways to deepen them.  Though largely unspoken, her chief reason for going on this journey is to learn how to be more present for the people she values, and trying to reckon with her past and her regrets.  Himmel the Hero (Nobuhiko Okamoto), her warrior friend from the original party, dies in the first episode but his memory is a constant presence, and flashbacks to Frieren's time with him are common.  I like that the series will show Frieren struggling over small, day-to-day concerns, like choosing a birthday present, or spend a whole episode on a minor spat between Fern and Stark, because these dilemmas can be as confounding for the group as trying to slay the monster of the week.  The characters are pretty typical animal creations - Frieren is a lazy slob in private, of course, and Fern is the fussy rule-enforcer type - but they really grow on you.

The production values of the anime are very high, with animation by Madhouse Inc.  The appealing character designs work in both comedic and melodramatic contexts, and look great in motion.  I especially like their habit of using wordless montages to skip ahead in time, which will often use more character animation than all the scenes around them.  The limited animation of the anime style is utilized very well, with good editing and shot design making the stillness look more natural.  And the scenes that do feature lots of action look spectacular.  

"Frieren" is based on an ongoing manga, and a third season is in production for release sometime next year.  I'm a little wary of getting attached to another long series with no end in sight, but "Frieren" is good enough that I'll be happy to catch up with her again in the future.  

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My Top Ten Episodes of 2003-2004

Below, find my top ten episodes for the 2003-2004 television season below, in no particular order.  A few spoilers lie ahead, including for one of the more upsetting episodes of "The Sopranos."

Wonderfalls, "Wax Lion" - Let's start with the premiere episode of "Wonderfalls," the short-lived fantasy series from Bryan Fuller and Todd Holland, starring a wonderfully deadpan Caroline Dhavernas as a twenty-something in post-grad purgatory who starts hearing voices.  Only four episodes ever aired in the US - the back nine were Canadian exclusives - but I never forgot about this collection of characters and the weird, fanciful little universe that they inhabited.  

"Battlestar Galactica" - The miniseries that kicked off the reboot aired in 2003, and remains my favorite part of the whole saga.  The destruction of Caprica and the hurried escape mean plenty of action and incident, quickly setting expectations and showing us how this version of "Galactica" is different from the original.  The Cylons are more human, more intelligent, and more dangerous, while the depictions of space travel and warfare are far bleaker and more harrowing.   

Paranoia Agent, "Happy Family Planning" - Satoshi Kon's anthology series about a group of troubled people who end up participating in a mass delusion is one of the best things to have ever come out of anime.  The "Happy Family Planning" episode is one of the least connected to the main plot, following the adventures of three strangers, who have formed a suicide pact, as they seek to kill themselves together.  It is dark, surprising, and in the end strangely touching.  

Mythbusters, "Stinky Car" - The early episodes of "Mythbusters" were so much fun.  The show hadn't really settled on any particular formula yet, and the experiments could get really gnarly.  I don't know why anyone thought testing a myth about cleaning a car after bodies decomposed in it would be a good idea, but it made for some incredible - and disgusting television.  Seeing the aftermath of two pig carcasses on a Corvette was fascinating and really, really gross.

The Sopranos, "Long Term Parking" - Final spoiler warnings here.  We have to talk about Adriana.  I knew that her exit was coming long in advance, and Christopher was obviously going to betray her, but so much of the effectiveness of her death comes from the hit still feeling like it comes out of nowhere.  The sequence of events from Christopher losing his nerve at the gas station, to the call from Tony, to Adriana in the car with Silvio is so fast that you don't really have time to react.

The Wire, "All Prologue" - This is the one where they put Omar on the stand as a witness for the DA.  He proceeds to take over the court room, clap back against attempts to cross-examine him, and deliver a fantastic monologue about how he views the American legal system.  I still have no idea whether he lied on the stand or not.  However, the episode ends on a dark note with the death of D'Angelo, ending his tragic arc and our time with one of the show's best characters.  

Carnivale, "Babylon" - This is my favorite episode of the series, one that has little to do with the larger storylines, but profoundly impacts several characters.  It's simply a brief stopover at a creepy, seemingly abandoned town, where a tragedy occurs and the troupe ends up leaving something behind.  Like the best ghost stories, it's more melancholy and unnerving than actually frightening.  The funeral sequence and the chilling final scene have stayed with me ever since.  

Arrested Development, "Top Banana" - This was only the second episode of the show, but it was already firing on all cylinders.  The amount of quotable lines is nuts.  "There's always money in the banana stand."  "No touching."  Tobias trying to do Steve Martin.  GOB trying to mail a letter.  Patrice O'Neal as T-Bone.  Also, I have to give a shoutout to one of the best visual gags I've ever seen, the "DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT" bag.  Really, Michael.  What did you expect?

Futurama, "Farnsworth Parabox" - I am such a nerd, and this episode is for the nerds.  The story involves parallel universe theory, which means everyone rapidly encountering all these different versions of themselves from gold Bender to hippie Professor Farnsworth to that one universe where everyone has giant bobble heads.  The interactions are priceless stuff - sometimes you can only truly know yourself when you actually have to spend time with yourself.  

Angel, "Not Fade Away" - The end of the Buffyverse is a mixed bag, but I do love that it goes out with all the surviving good guys about to go into battle against the monsters, intent on fighting their good fight all the way to the end.  It's an hour full of exits, big and small, leaving the door open for a sixth season that never came.  I'm glad in a way, because some of these goodbyes were too good not to stick.  That last scene with Wesley seeing Fred again in particular.  

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Aang and Grogu Get New Movies

The more I think about it, the more sense it makes to pair these two features together.  "Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender" and "The Mandalorian and Grogu" are both movies that are spinoffs from popular and beloved series designed for younger viewers.  They are both intended to be watchable for people who haven't seen their respective shows, so they both feel a little detached from anything else in their franchises.  However, getting the feature treatment means that the creators get to do things that they never could in a television or web series format.

Let's start with "Aang," which follows up the three-season "Avatar: the Last Airbender" Nickelodeon series.  A now adult Aang (Eric Nam) unexpectedly comes across another member of his nearly extinct clan named Tagah (Dave Bautista), who sends him on a quest to retrieve a magical relic.  This means reuniting with his friends Katara (Jessica Matten), Sokka (Roman Zaragoza), Toph (Dionne Quan), and Zuko (Steven Yuen) for the adventure.  The voice cast is entirely new, and so is most of the crew, though one of the animation outfits involved, Studio Mir, previously worked on "Avatar" sequel series, "The Legend of Korra."  The series creators have story credits, but otherwise "Aang" feels a lot like the baton has been passed to an entirely different creative team.  The movie they've made looks absolutely fantastic, especially the epic scale action sequences with much more fluid and impressive animation.

However, as someone who has seen a lot of this series, because I have multiple younger relatives currently obsessed with it, "Aang" comes off as a little bland.  There are a couple of good character moments, and I have no complaints about any of the voice cast, but it's difficult to connect these versions of the characters with the ones from the show.  By making this a stand-alone adventure, the movie takes place well outside of the original narrative and sidesteps any potentially difficult questions about dangling plot threads and what's happened since the series finale.  Everyone is feeling a little adrift.  If this is the first time they've been together in a while, shouldn't they all be catching up?  Maybe resolving a few cliffhangers? And where is the rest of Aang's friend group?  Notably, all the secondary characters, including love interests, evil sisters, and beloved uncles are completely missing and never remarked on.  

The new Tagah storyline is also exactly the kind of throwaway, one-off plot that makes for a lot of great spectacle, but offers little in the way of expanding the "Avatar" universe, or offering any compelling stakes.  Aang learns an important lesson, but it's a lesson that we've seen him learn before, and there's none of the character growth and interesting worldbuilding that the franchise is known for.  Adult Aang seems nice, but he doesn't get much of a chance to display much personality.  Neither do any of the other heroes, except in the broadest terms - Sokka's still dropping one-liners, of course.  The "Aang" movie is lovely, and might be a good starting point for another series, but I didn't get much out of it.

 On to "The Mandalorian and Grogu," which I was happy to discover is firmly a "Star Wars" children's film.  Well, it's for children who are okay watching the hero constantly fighting sci-fi monsters and shooting enemies for over two hours, but still.  This is a creature feature full of aliens and robots and travelling around in cool spaceships to a bunch of different planets.  It's also got an incredibly simple plot.  The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal, with doubles Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder) and his adopted son, the green toddler Grogu, hunt down baddies for the New Republic, represented by a nice administrator played by Sigourney Weaver.  There are some complications involving hidden villains, double crosses, and Jabba the Hutt's angsty son Rotta (Jeremy Allen White), but for the most part we're just watching this duo travel the galaxy, getting into and out of trouble wherever they go.

This could be a short arc from the "Mandalorian " television show, since there is absolutely no change to the status quo or any character progression, except for Grogu being slightly better at controlling the Force.  Like "Aang," you could absolutely watch this without having seen the series at all.  However, amusingly, the movie does assume you've watched "Return of the Jedi" and know who Jabba the Hutt is.  Classic movie fans will also notice the influence of the "Lone Wolf and Cub" samurai adventure series is more pronounced than ever.  Director Jon Favreau and his collaborators seem to have decided to use this as an opportunity to do some of the more expensive characters that they couldn't justify appearing previously, like the Hutts, and experiment with the format a little.  Ludwig Gorransson's soundtrack gets the space to expand a bit, with the theme music getting a new electronica remix.  There are also noticeably a lot of puppets and practical effects being used here, especially little Grogu getting the spotlight for some major sequences.

And it's all very charming and very much in the vein of the "Star Wars" that I grew up with, but the film has been ignored by most audiences because it's definitely not the kind of "Star Wars" movie people have come to expect.  Between the lackluster marketing and the reluctance to deviate from the existing formula of the show at all, "The Mandalorian and Grogu" feels too much like an extension of the series that everyone can watch at home.  There are no ties to the rest of the "Star Wars" universe, but also no attempt to deepen the characters, or give them any new challenges. And aside from Sigourney Weaver and Martin Scorsese lending his voice to a new minor alien character, there aren't even any big names dropping in for cameos.  "Aang" has a more star-studded cast list than this!

I'm not worried about the state of the franchise, because the budget here was fairly modest and "Stafighter" is coming next year, but I still feel compelled to defend "The Mandalorian and Grogu." It's very slight, but perfectly fine for what it is, and I enjoyed it.  I expect that it'll work especially well for younger viewers looking for an entry point for "Star Wars." The youngest kids, who might be scared by little Grogu being menaced by scary aliens, and loud blaster fire, however, should stay home.

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American Anime in 2026

I read through some of the older parts of this blog recently, and I realized that I'd spent quite a few entries talking about the bumpy attempts of Hollywood to reckon with the popularity of anime, which are not unlike their bumpy attempts to reckon with the popularity of gaming.  There were so many plans for adaptations of titles like "Akira" and "Neon Genesis Evangelion" that all fell through, but there were a few successes too, like the recent "One Piece" live action series.  It's been a few years, so I thought these posts deserved an update.  Also, "Naruto" is next in line for an attempt, with a live action film adaptation directed by Daniel Destin Cretton currently undergoing a casting search.  So, this topic is back in the popular consciousness again.

The influence of anime on the American youth shows no sign of slowing down, though all the popular titles are different since I was an otaku twenty years ago.  The new "Demon Slayer" movie crossed $100 million at the North American box office last year, the latest in a steady string of animated hits from overseas.  Former anime pirate site Crunchyroll is in the top ten US streaming sites by subscriber count, with over 20 million subscribers.  Netflix, the home of the "Castlevania" franchise, has become a major driver of anime production, with 50% of their viewers reported to be watching anime on the platform.  They recently announced a partnership with MAPPA, the studio behind "Chainsaw Man" and "Jujutsu Kaisen," which has sparked a lively debate about the potential threat of the streamers to the Japanese production committee system that produces most anime, as well as physical media and appointment viewing - a bigger deal in the anime world than in other parts of the media landscape.

American creators have been trying to capitalize on the popularity of anime through co-productions with anime studios for a long time, but the results were often very hit-or-miss.  Early attempts like "Afro Samurai" and "IGPX" didn't quite work, probably because of mismatched expectations and the unfamiliarity with the different production cultures.  After a few decades of experimenting, it's gotten better.  This summer the third season of the "My Adventures With Superman" cartoon and the new "Avatar: the Last Airbender" movie, both heavily anime influenced, hit the streamers.  One was animated in Korea and the other largely in Australia, but they both clearly had roots in shonen anime.  It's not just the designs or the animation style that made these projects work, but the use of anime visual language, character tropes (genki girl Lois Lane), and storytelling choices that have become familiar to global audiences.  "Star Wars" and "Scooby Doo" are also on the list of franchises getting the anime treatment.  "The Ninth Jedi" will probably be out by the time this is published.  There are still regular stumbles, however.  "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim" feature film was a bad match of IP and anime aesthetic that didn't manage to appeal to anybody.

A culture shift has definitely happened.  Most of the people working in animation now grew up on anime, or are at least much more familiar with anime than they were in the '90s.  You don't see many conspiracy theories about Western shows stealing from anime these days - the homages are everywhere and they're proudly highlighted by their creators.  I'm of two minds about this.  On the one hand, I'm absolutely convinced that the boom in Western animated shows being made for YA and adult audiences owes a lot to the influence of anime.  "Arcane," "Blue Eye Samurai," and so many more great series wouldn't exist otherwise.  However, I've also seen some of anime's bad habits migrate to Western animation too, particularly in the projects that are really trying to go after the anime audience.

Personally, I'm taking it slow with anime.  I watch a series or two a year, and even if I enjoy them, I don't feel the way I used to when I was watching anime in my twenties.  I'm out of the target audience for the popular stuff, and a lot of the old tropes don't work for me anymore.  And, boy are the old tropes still in circulation.  The "Demon Slayer" and "Chainsaw Man" movies did not make me want to track down more.  Still, nostalgia and old habits compel me to keep a friendly eye on the anime world.  And every once in a while you can still find a "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End."  But more on that another time.

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Getting Through "Disclosure Day"

Spoilers ahead, but the big ones will be clearly marked.

"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" is my favorite Steven Spielberg movie, and one of my favorite movies period.  When I learned that Spielberg was making a new movie about aliens and conspiracies, I was excited but also full of trepidation.  I haven't connected to many of Spielberg's most recent films in the last few years, especially the genre efforts like "Ready Player One" and "The BFG."  Was "Disclosure Day" going to have any of the old Spielberg cinematic magic from his older classics?  Was I simply too old and jaded?  Were his filmmaking sensibilities now too nostalgia-driven and schmaltzy for me?

I'm sorry to report that "Disclosure Day" is a deeply mediocre effort for a Spielberg film, one where every issue I've ever had with Spielberg's work feels magnified.  As advertised, "Disclosure Day" is about a group of people trying to reveal the truth about alien activity on earth.  It turns out that all significant evidence and information about aliens is being suppressed by a government contractor, Wardex, led by the ruthless Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), that has grown into a malignant, unchecked entity with too much power.  One of the employees, a cybersecurity expert named Daniel Kellner (Josh O'Connor), steals information with the intent to release it to the public.  He and his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) go on the run, with help from another Wardex defector, Hugo (Colman Domingo).  Meanwhile, a Kansas City weather lady, Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), mysteriously starts speaking in different languages and displaying strange powers.  She and her skeptical boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell) also start being chased by Wardex operatives.

Written by David Koepp, who has often collaborated with Steven Soderberg in recent years, "Disclosure Day" feels like a film of a much older, less cynical era.  There are earnest declarations of wild concepts ("sometimes they take the forms of animals"), plot holes everywhere you look, and big, important questions raised without much expectation of trying to answer them.  Most of the plot boils down to getting characters from point A to point B, juggling Macguffins, and getting into improbable action set pieces.  And some of those action set pieces are very good, like one involving a car getting dragged alongside a train.  An extremely effective suspense sequence in the first act involves Scanlon using a mysterious device to eerily interrogate and control Jane from a distance.  Spielberg has always been good about creating images we haven't seen before and I loved some of the individual shots here - soldiers crashing through an invisible window, or a throng of camera lights through a windowpane looking like a starfield.

However, the storytelling is often very heavy-handed, with every emotional beat underlined by a far too noticeable John Williams score that is not doing the movie any favors.  The main characters were so credulous in such a mannered way that it kept taking me out of the picture.  Every time Emily Blunt did a Jedi mind trick, I wanted to roll my eyes - not at her, but at the overly reverent presentation of it.  I sat through two hours of "Disclosure Day" knowing how every single scene would play out, admiring the committed work of all the actors and crew involved, but being completely emotionally unengaged with anything onscreen.  I was ready to throw in the towel and write this off as a handsome, well-intentioned disappointment.

And then the last fifteen minutes of the movie happened, and suddenly everything worked.  Here I will spoil the ending, because I can't talk about it unless I do.  The news broadcast production control room sequence, where we watch the footage being sent nationwide, is absolutely extraordinary.  Suddenly we're in a room full of strangers, reacting to this stream of images that everyone is seeing for the first time together.  The mood shifts.  An NBC news presenter played by Courtney Grace offers live commentary, her stunned and emotional reactions accompanying the montage of audience reactions we watch unfold.  And I realized Spielberg had orchestrated a beautiful moment of shared global viewership and unity that I hadn't felt in decades.  I knew it was fictional, but it hit me so hard.

Yes, there's a lot about the movie that doesn't make logical sense.  And it's unapologetically hokey and bright-eyed, and don't think that I didn't notice the cutesy "Snow White" references paralleling the "Pinocchio" ones from "Close Encounters."  But I had a Spielberg moment with this film, a real taste of cinematic wonder for the first time in I don't know how long.  And my head says the movie fundamentally doesn't work and is a terrible slog, and my heart says that the last fifteen minutes was still worth it.

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"Rick and Morty" Mellowed

It's been five years since I last posted an entry about "Rick and Morty," which was shortly after the fifth season wrapped up.  A lot has happened.  In fact, so much has happened that I keep forgetting that I haven't addressed any of it.  First, we should talk about the production changes.  Justin Roiland was fired from the show in 2023 after some legal troubles and a long history of misconduct.  Rick has been voiced by Ian Cardoni, and Morty by Harry Belden since the seventh season, and I honestly can't tell the difference.  The show's other creator, Dan Harmon, is still around, but has definitely taken a backseat.  Scott Marder has been the only credited showrunner for a while and Harmon hasn't had a writing credit on any episodes since the third season.  Keith David's President Curtis also got a spinoff series, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

However, "Rick and Morty" hasn't lost a step.  Arguably, it's improved since I last wrote about it in 2021.   If you haven't seen "Rick and Morty" in a while, the changes in the most recent episodes might take some time to notice, but they're there.  Rick is still an asshole, but he's more responsive to his family and genuinely seems to care about them now.  Morty has become a more assertive teenager who will not only stand up to Rick, but regularly has to be the responsible one to get them out of scrapes.  There's still plenty of guts and gruesomeness, but the nihilistic bleakness of the early seasons has been turned way, way down.  Happy endings are still rare, but there's no longer the feeling that the creators are being mean to the characters just to be mean to them.  Back in the fifth season, I remarked that it felt like the show was growing stale and running out of ways to shock us.  In the ninth season, it's clear that they're no longer trying.  

Despite the show's initial reluctance, we've now seen pretty much all of Rick's past and complicated relationships with his wife and daughter.  And Rick, often in the most complicated and weird ways possible, has been slowly but surely processing some of his unresolved issues and improving his mental health.  A major recurring storyline involving an Evil Rick was resolved in season seven, forcing him to self-reflect and move on.  He's gotten to the point where he recognizes that many of his evil scientist coping mechanisms are self-destructive and will sometimes take measures to limit them.  He's also managed to maintain a much healthier relationship with Beth (and Space Beth).  This might initialllook like a situation where a once badass character has been defanged and Flanderized, but this has actually been a very well-considered character arc for Rick Sanchez, and I'd argue that it's paying off some valuable dividends.  

"Rick and Morty," for all its science-fiction chaos, is a family sitcom.  Many of the episodes regularly have A and B plots with different members of the family, and the humor is very character based.  Frankly, Rick works better as a sitcom character when  he's on a more even playing field with Morty and the rest of the Smiths.  Sitcoms also generally work better when everyone can return to something resembling a neutral status quo at the end instead of the kind of feel-bad, downer resolutions that stopped feeling innovative and daring by season three.  This means that a lot of the later episodes are silly and absurd and amount to the characters getting into a bunch of sci-fi enabled hijinks with no deeper meaning behind them.  And that works for "Rick and Morty" better than you'd think.  There's a recent kung-fu parody episode involving the Hawaiian Punch mascot, Punchy, that's just sublimely ridiculous. 

I also appreciate that the show has also moved on from some of its other early schtick.  I haven't seen Morty's crush Jessica (Kari Wahlgren) in a significant appearance in a couple of seasons.  Since Morty is now a hyper-competent, and much more self-assured character, who finally did go on a real date with her in the fifth season, Jessica doesn't serve much of a purpose anymore.  Kari Wahlgren went on to voice Rick's new love interest BugAnne instead.  He's clearly not ready for another relationship, but even a  friends-with-benefits sitch is a good sign.    

Frankly, the great thing about sitcoms was always that you got to know and care about  a group of characters over time.  And as that inevitably happened with "Rick and Morty," the show had to change.  I'm sure that many of the fans prefer the angrier, more subversive earlier seasons, but it wasn't something that was sustainable over a hundred episodes - and we're getting very close to that mark.  And "Rick and Morty" is doing just fine.    

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"Minions & Monsters" and "Backrooms"

I guess we're grouping the movies by color today.

I've had a contentious relationship with Illumination Studios' "Despicable Me" series.  Being frequently in the orbit of young children, I've watched nearly all of them over the years.  My tolerance of Gru has waned with time, but I always had a soft spot for the wacky little yellow minion guys, all voiced by Pierre Coffin speaking their own peculiar dialect made up of about 20% Spanish, 10% English, 10% Japanese, and 60% drunken karaoke vocalizations when you can't remember the words.  They're proper cartoon characters, who do all the physical gags and wild takes that are too often missing in the modern cartoon milieu.  And it kinda makes sense to let them pay homage to the origins of screen comedy.

In "Minions & Monsters," which has received the franchise's highest critical scores in a long time, they've spun off a group of new minions for a totally separate adventure set in the 1920s.  Among them are an artsy little storyteller who doesn't quite fit in named James, his best pal Henry, and their ASL-using friend Ed.  After multiple failed attempts to find a "big boss" who they can serve, this bunch lands in Hollywood during the silent film era.  After a few brushes with fame and fortune, James comes up with the idea to make his own monster movie, and to summon up some real monsters to star in it.  Hijinks with an all-star cast including Trey Parker, Christoph Waltz, Jesse Eisenberg, Zoey Deutch, and Jeff Bridges ensue.

Much has been made of all the classic film references that have been included in the "Minions & Monsters," from an opening sequence that sticks the Minions into early Edison and Muybridge film images, to a rollicking chase scene that manages to involve Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harry Lloyd, to Gort the alien robot from "The Day the Earth Stood Still" playing a major part in the third act.  As a film, however, it doesn't cohere together all that well.  The story is constantly switching gears from one thing to the next, and we're forever getting bogged down with digressions.  It takes too long for the actual story to kick into gear, and while the minions are great for individual gag and action sequences, the movie suffers for not having stronger protagonists.  "Minions & Monsters" is very watchable, but it's still very much a glossy entertainment aimed at small children, and it's best to go in with modest expectations.

On to "Backrooms," based on the web series of the same name created by Kane Parsons, and the famous internet creepypasta images that inspired a shared universe of dingy yellow liminal horror.  So, one day in the 1990s, a troubled furniture store owner named Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) discovers we can walk through a wall in the basement and enter a seemingly never-ending series of interconnected rooms where the rules of reality seem to have gone haywire.   For me, the appeal of "Backrooms" is all about the unsettling vibe of wrongness that comes about when spotting an imperfect copy or a missed glitch.   The best part of the film is the early scenes of exploration, where Clark makes his way through rooms with increasingly deranged architecture, containing collections of disturbing objects.  There are a lot of jump scares as some of the rooms' secrets are revealed, and the movie reportedly plays much better with an audience.

"Backrooms" reminds me of "Annihilation," despite bearing absolutely no resemblance to that film stylistically.  It's another one of these stories about exploring a strange forbidden zone, where some unknown force is making copies of places, objects, and eventually living things without really understanding anything about their function or purpose.  It would be a nice metaphor for anti-AI anxiety if "The Backrooms" were more ambitious.  However, director Kane Parsons is content to just unleash some scary monsters and have a few characters go insane.  The plot is secondary to the vibes, which works, but it's disappointing that actors like Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, who plays therapist Dr. Kline, aren't given much to do beyond the usual funhouse scare sequences and a few bits of shallow psychoanalysis.  The imagery is memorable, though, and there are plenty of nightmarish concepts that might keep you up at night.

The moody vibe of "Backrooms" is enough to sustain this film, but if we travel back to this universe again in the inevitable sequels, Parsons is going to need more help to keep his audience's attention.

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Aging Into "DTF St. Louis"

It's hard to know where to start with "DTF St. Louis," the latest limited series from Steven Conrad.  The hook is that it appears to be a typical crime series at first, starting with an investigation into an unexplained death, spearheaded by Detective Homer (Richard Jenkins) and Officer Plumb (Joy Sunday).  Flashbacks take us into the lives of the three people at the center of the case: St. Louis weatherman Clark Forrest (Jason Bateman), his co-worker Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour), and Floyd's wife Carol (Linda Cardellini).  Clark and Floyd become friends, and then Clark meets Carol at a party, and they connect.  However, the situation is more complicated than it appears.  And the more Homer and Plumb dig into the lives and relationships of the trio, the less clear things become.

"DTF St. Louis" is named after the hookup app that Clark introduces Floyd to, reflecting the show's interest in what's going on with average people behind closed doors.  There's a lot of time spent exploring everyone's sexual needs and dysfunctions.  Floyd and Carol's marriage is on the rocks for various reasons, and Clark's interest in both of them takes the entire series to fully unpack.  It  feels wrong to put an explicit label on what  these relationships really are, but the most important one is definitely between Clark and Floyd.  Both of these men are middle-aged, lonely, and find themselves connecting with each other in a way that they haven't been able to with anyone else in a long time.  But though that connection is valuable to them, they don't understand what to do with it, and their attempts to use it to improve other parts of their lives, or to address other deficiencies, leads nowhere good.

I think it's reasonable to call "DTF St. Louis" a mystery show, since there is a mystery to unravel, and we do get an answer ultimately, but it's the kind that completely subverts its premise, and maybe the whole conceit of mystery shows in the process.  You could call this an erotic thriller - there's certainly enough sexually explicit material to justify this being on HBO, but it's rarely very sexy.  Impotence, embarrassing kinks, aging bodies, and bad encounters with potential hookups are major topics.  There's a whole episode where the detectives dig into the origins of a kitschy pornographic photo spread found at the crime scene, and what it might mean.  I've seen the show classified as a black comedy, but that doesn't feel right either.  There are some very funny moments and plenty of cringey material, but I found the treatment of the characters extremely empathetic and even heartwarming at times.  The tone of the show is very specific, intimate, and refreshingly nonjudgemental.  I like that it acknowledges that everyone involved here crosses the line in some way.  At the same time, it refuses to show them anything but sympathy, because their impulses are ultimately all very human and very familiar.     

So, I guess I'd call "DTF St. Louis" an offbeat sort of melodrama, occasionally straying into half a dozen other genres, about three middle-aged people trying to find love, and doing a terrible job of it.  The performances are all very, very good.  Bateman finds a nice balance between charming and being clearly guilty of something.  Linda Cardellini is wonderfully opaque, and learning more about her character's motivations never gives away her intentions.  However, I think it's David Harbour who comes off the best here.  Floyd Smernitch is such a loveable human being.  He's a positive, sweet man who only wants the best for everyone, but no matter how hard he tries he seems incapable of truly connecting with anyone romantically or sexually.  

And it's also a show about people of a certain age, dealing with all the little tragedies and changed expectations of being past your prime.  These stories come along more often now than they used to, which I'm grateful for, but it's still rare to see one this good, with this level of talent.  At seven episodes, "DTF St. Louis" struck me as just the right length, but I still found myself sad when it was over.  

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My Top 25 of the Last 25: Sitcoms

So, this one is the list I feel the least qualified about writing because I've largely stopped watching sitcoms over the years since I abandoned linear network television.  However, I've dutifully gone back and sought out several of the series below recently, and I want to talk about them.  Sitcoms have diminished with the rise of the streamers, but by every metric they still make up a huge amount of the media we regularly consume.  I feel I'm writing this list in part to also spur myself to give more of these shows a chance in the future.

As with all the lists in this series, there are twenty five entries, but only the top ten get writeups.  I caution that there's a thin line between sitcoms and comedy series with an ensemble cast, and I'm probably going to make some categorization errors.  No "Extras," but I'm totally counting "Rick and Morty."

30 Rock (2006) - I have a strong bias towards NBC's "Must See TV" lineup and I always have.  "30 Rock," however, was one that I really had to warm up to over time.  I didn't become a fan until years after the show had stopped airing, and I made a conscious decision to binge large amounts of it at once.  And it was worth it.  "30 Rock," more than any other sitcom, has influenced the patter and pacing of modern TV comedies.  And I'm glad that Tina Fey is still making them to this day.

Arrested Development (2003) - The first three seasons, created by Mitch Hurwitz, comprise one of the best run of television episodes that has ever been made.  It's so specific in its idiosyncratic humor and wonderfully intricate web of escalating wordplay, running gags, odd characters and references that there's absolutely nothing else like it.  And this is also the show that supercharged the careers of Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Alia Shawkat, Tony Hale, and several other favorites.  

The Good Place (2016) - A high concept comedy about the afterlife from Michael Schur that gradually morphs into something much more existential and interesting over the course of its four seasons.  As Kristen Bell's Eleanor Shellstrop struggles to become a good person, the show earnestly explores philosophical concepts and systems of belief, culminating in one of the best series finales of all time.  Manny Jacinto as Jason is also my favorite sitcom dumbbell in ages.  

Futurama (1999) - Okay, this series started before my cutoff date and probably shouldn't count, but it was such a major part of the 2000s popular culture, the Matt Groening show that everyone moved on to after "The Simpsons" started going downhill.  References and memes abounded for years.  Also, "Futurama" was cancelled and revived so many times, in so many variations, I'm sure it set a trend.  At the time of writing, it's also the only show of the top ten that is still airing.

Parks and Recreation (2009) - I was late to this series too, which I dearly love for the cast rather than any specific jokes or clever bits.  It was so much fun to watch the ensemble gel and the writers to find their footing over time.  "Parks and Recreation" isn't really the optimistic, feel-good workplace show that we know and adore until the third season, an evolution that would be unlikely to happen today.  Leslie Knope and Ron Swanson remain two of my absolute favorite sitcom characters.

Malcolm in the Middle (2000) - This is the only semi-traditional family sitcom in the top ten, because it remains the only family sitcom that really felt like it did things differently.  Most of the other contenders are about different kinds of families while "Malcolm" is really distinguished by its irreverent tone, chaotic visual style, and narrative subversions.  If lessons are learned in the end, they're often inadvertent, and the victories are short-lived.  As the theme song warns, "Life is unfair."

Community (2009) - I've sung the praises of "Community" many times, for being one of the most ambitious sitcoms ever made.  The parody episodes, the meta episodes, and the drama going on behind the scenes, all helped this to achieve the kind of consistent quality and boundary-breaking innovation that few sitcoms could.  Honestly, the antics of the fanbase and creator Dan Harmon were often as entertaining as the show itself.  And I'm still holding out hope for the movie.

Fleabag (2016) - The Guardian calls this a sitcom, so I'm calling it a sitcom.  Phoebe Waller-Bridge's fantastic fourth-wall-breaking confessional where she plays a terrible, shameful woman, is still easily one of the best comedies of the millennium.  It's so brutally mean and honest, while acknowledging the cost of being mean and honest.  The second season with the Hot Priest might be seen as the show losing some of its verve, if it weren't simultaneously so utterly devastating.   

Veep (2012) - I had to have an Armando Iannucci show on this list, and "Veep" should count as a sitcom.  It's the most foul-mouthed, blisteringly sardonic piece of television that could only air on premium cable, but in the end it's a workplace comedy with a central cast of White House staffers who get into nutty situations in every episode.  And the satire was immaculate.  There are a couple of other cringe humor shows on this list, but "Veep" is the only one that got downright dark at times.

The Office (US) (2005) - This one was close, but how could I leave it off?  The documentary style, the uncomfortable humor, that cast - "The Office" slowly but surely became one of the cornerstones of the television landscape for a big part of the 2000s, and its influence is still felt to this day.  The original UK "Office" was revolutionary in its own right, of course, but it didn't have the bigger episode counts or the environment to grow into what the American version became.

The Next Fifteen 

Modern Family 

My Name is Earl

Rick and Morty

Superstore

Abbott Elementary

Brooklyn 99

The Thick of It

Vicious

Scrubs

Curb Your Enthusiasm

The Big Bang Theory

How I Met Your Mother

Schitt's Creek

The Office (UK)

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

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On "Obsession"

Half an hour into "Obsession," I was not impressed.  I'd spent what felt like an interminable amount of time watching the lead, a mopey twenty-something named Bear (Michael Johsnton) pine after his co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarette).  The two of them work retail jobs at a music store with their friends, including the boorish Ian (Cooper Tomlinson), and artsy Sarah (Megan Lawless).  Bear has been in love with Nikki for years, but can't bring himself to actually tell her he has feelings for her, even when she asks him outright if he's interested.  I didn't find Bear sympathetic or interesting.  Fortunately, "Obsession" is a horror movie and not a romantic comedy or coming-of-age story, so this was not a problem.

How "Obsession" became a word-of-mouth driven box-office breakout has been the subject of much interest.  Writer and director Curry Barker is having a real Cinderella moment, having made a horror film for less than a million dollars that went on to outgross major studio summer tentpoles.  And after seeing the film, I understand why.  "Obsession" offers a very good time.  It's a horror film that has genuinely surprising shocks, a good amount of nervy suspense, and some deadpan comedy too.  It's similar to last year's "Weapons" in that some of its most horrific moments are also wonderfully funny and absurd.  It uses a simple fantasy premise - Bear makes a wish on a novelty item called a "One Wish Willow" to have Nikki love him "more than anyone else in the world" - and takes it to twisted extremes.  

The movie really kicks into gear when Nikki becomes the post-wish "Freaky Nikki," the utterly obsessed and increasingly deranged version of Nikki who will do anything to be Bear's perfect girlfriend, but maybe doesn't have a good grasp on being a functional human being any longer.  Inde Navarette's performance is absolutely bugnuts insane in the best way possible.  She's a nice, normal girl one minute, then a creepily fixated freak trying to pretend that she's normal.  Whenever the mask slips, it's always a surprise as to how she's going to lash out next.  Will she start screaming in the middle of a restaurant?  Will she start telling you about her disturbing Hansel and Gretel incest fanfiction?  Will she just pull a comedic frown-y face at Bear in a way that defies description?  Freaky Nikki is a fabulous addition to the modern female monster pantheon, right up there with Monstro Elisasue and Aunt Gladys.

The unappealing intro is actually doing a lot to set the audience up to expect a certain kind of story with certain types of characters that are all going to be subverted.  We all know how this unrequited romance plot with the dorky guy and the hot girl is supposed to go, right?  "Obsession" feels very Gen Z in a good way.  There's casual drug use, mumbled line delivery, and Bear is a version of the increasingly common trope of the toxic "nice guy."  Thematically, the story touches on a range of relationship and mental health issues, and has sparked some interesting discussions online about Bear's degree of culpability for what happens.  Aside from Navarette, the performances aren't great, which actually adds to the verisimilitude of this film.  It's easier to accept that this insanity is happening to a regular group of people, all flawed and familiar in believable ways.        

Barker also does a great job stretching a limited budget, orchestrating some excellent creepy shots of Nikki with a few basic lighting tricks.  His editing choices and the sound design play a big role in the effectiveness of some of the reveals.  There are relatively few traditional jumpscares, but several shots that are more disturbing and uncomfortable the longer you look at them.  I don't know why the image of Nikki holding a bouquet of flowers over her face like a Matisse painting is so striking, but I couldn't look away from the screen.  And this is before anything really violent happens - a lot of very violent things do happen, by the way.  I worry that I've made this film sound lighter and more frivolous than it is, because the horror is absolutely dark, nightmare-inducing horror, and sensitive souls should approach with care.

For those of you who regularly enjoy such depravities, do seek this one out.  It's a keeper.

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