"Crime 101" and "Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice"

Two quick reviews of some interesting genre films today, which I don't want to see fall through the cracks.

First we have "Crime 101,"written and directed by Bart Layton.  This is his first proper narrative film after making earlier features that were either documentaries or documentary/drama hybrids.  And it's an old fashioned kind of crime film that you don't see much of anymore, because these projects tend to get turned into prestige miniseries on Apple TV+ or HBO these days.  "Crime 101" follows the fortunes of four characters in Los Angeles.  There's Mike (Chris Hemsworth), a very successful and principled jewel thief whose heists tend to happen near the 101 freeway.  There's Detective Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo), a detective who is investigating Mike's robberies, but is hampered by a police department that is more concerned with their clearance rate than justice.  Finally, there's Sharon (Halle Berry), who sells insurance policies to very rich people, and sees an opportunity after crossing paths with both Mike and Lou.  Finally there's Ormon (Barry Keoghan), Mike's unhinged new rival, who regularly chooses violence.

With a running time of 140 minutes, a fairly leisurely pace for the first hour, and a downright introspective tone at times, "Crime 101" is going to be pure catnip for some cinephiles, but it might be a tough watch for the more casual viewer.  However, the filmmaking is solid, the performances are excellent, and the script offers some genuine surprises.  While "Crime 101" never reaches the heights of the classics of this genre, like "Heat" or "Thief," it belongs in the conversation.  The action and chase sequences aren't too flashy, but they're very good at building up real suspense and tension.  The characters embody a lot of old cliches, but inevitably draw you in.  It's been a long time since I've seen Halle Berry in a role this thoughtful and grounded, and it's a shame that it doesn't happen more often.  Ruffalo and Hemsworth are playing variations on other roles I've seen them in recently - notably Ruffalo in "TASK" - but they have some memorable moments.  If this is your genre, but you're been weary of films like "Den of Thieves" that are all flash and no substance, give this one a try. 

On to "Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice," written and directed by BenDavid Grabinski, which is a time-travel comedy where most of the main characters are gangsters.  Nick (Vince Vaugh) is unhappily married to Alice (Eiza Gonzalez), who is having an affair with Mike (James Marsden), Nick's partner in crime.  Mike is trying to leave the mob, but is enlisted to help Nick with a job one night - kidnapping a different Nick.  And that's about as much plot as I think I should reveal before we get into spoilers.  

I really like "Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice," but I think it's a movie that's easy to oversell.  At its heart, it's a silly comedy about silly, cartoonish versions of tough guy gangsters in a ridiculous situation.  None of the characters are very deep and the plot feels sort of thrown together, with a lot of "Gilmore Girls" references and a retro soundtrack.  However, the movie kept surprising me because it managed to constantly be a little better than I was expecting in every department.  The humor worked for me.  The action scenes are inventive and well-executed.  Every single actor is charming and funny and endearing, especially Vince Vaughn in loveable asshole mode.  The plot, though its full of holes, turns out to be built around a truly touching character transformation that I found unexpectedly heartwarming.  

However, you'll notice that a lot of this depends on going in with pretty low expectations.  "Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice" is a Hulu original, and while it's significantly above average for a straight-to-streaming feature, it's still got a pretty modest budget and I don't think the dry, idiosyncratic humor is going to work for everyone.  Like "Crime 101," I also suspect I responded to it because it feels like a throwback to a different era of filmmaking, when theatrical comedies were more robust, and Vince Vaughn was a leading man with significantly more star wattage.  However, it's nice to be reminded that Vaughn can still carry a high concept comedy, and carry it well.  I hope to see more like this from him in the future.          

---

Behold "Nirvanna the Band, The Show, The Movie"

I don't think you need to go into "Nirvanna the Band, The Show, The Movie" knowing anything about its rather convoluted background, but it doesn't hurt to set up a few things up front.  Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol, lifelong best friends, created the mockumentary web series "Nirvana the Band, the Show," in 2007.  This became the Viceland TV series "Nirvanna the Band, the Show" ten years later, which ran for two seasons. The premise is simple - Canadian musicians Matt and Jay want to book their two-man band for a show at the Rivoli club in Toronto.  Matt and Jay do this in the most circuitous way possible, cooking up wild PR stunts and complicated schemes that often involve filming on-the-street interactions with non-actors.  As children of the 80s, their deeply silly manchild adventures involve a lot of references to old movies and television shows.

"Nirvanna the Band, The Show, The Movie" is essentially a super long and more elaborate episode of the show, where Matt and Jay are up to their usual hijinks.  The big stunt is supposed to be skydiving off of the CN Tower into the SkyDome stadium during a baseball game, but that's just the start.  Inspired by "Back to the Future," Matt manages to turn the band's RV into a time machine, powered by an ancient bottle of Orbitz.  This sends them back to 2008, to their original webseries, where things get complicated quickly.  Matt and Jay reportedly did not get any permits for what they filmed at the CN Tower.  Also, recreating 2008 Toronto and their old apartment on a very modest budget couldn't have been easy.  Fans already familiar with Matt and Jay will likely appreciate these efforts more, but there were multiple scenes where I was delighted to discover I had no idea how they'd pulled off the interactions.  Was it archival footage?  Deft use of CGI?  Or did they actually build a time machine somehow?  

However, the real fun of "Nirvanna the Band, The Show, The Movie" is getting to know these two goofy filmmakers, who were a part of the first wave of internet creatives who cut their teeth on shoestring web projects with DIY production values.  The shaggy style of the humor, the unpolished visuals, and the earnestly chaotic plot are all reminiscent of 2000-era internet culture in a tremendously appealing way.  There's a commitment to showcasing Toronto and sticking to their lo-fi filmmaking techniques that adds to the charm.  Even in the big action finale, they still find a way to incorporate unscripted moments with random people that just happen to be where they're filming.  There's also a genuinely poignant arc where Jay considers abandoning the friendship, after realizing he's spent so much time with Matt getting absolutely nowhere with their goals.  The contrast between the two of them as twenty-somethings in the web series and much schlubbier forty-somethings in the present day is a source of both humor and poignancy.   

  

I've seen a lot of web creators from Matt and Jay's cohort crash and burn over the years, sometimes running afoul of the changing popular culture or losing their verve when they move into more commercial projects.  What's so fascinating about "Nirvanna the Band, The Show, The Movie" is that it's essentially the same thing that these two have been doing since 2007.  The creators have gotten more skillful after working on several other films, the budget has expanded, and their ambitions have grown, but Matt and Jay are still playing the same pair of genial oddballs, and seeing what they can get away with via guerilla filmmaking tactics.  And they're absolutely fine with that.  The movie reportedly came about because their television show was cancelled when Viceland went kaput, but we might just get a third season if the movie does well enough.    

I'll be on the lookout for a way to watch "Nirvanna the Band, The Show," which seems to be stuck in copyright limbo at the moment.  I'm also looking forward to any behind-the-scenes material that will be made available for the movie, which I suspect will be as much fun to watch as the movie itself.  

---

The End of "The Late Show"

"The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" wrapped up its last episode on Thursday, after what felt like months of goodbyes.  Colbert didn't manage to land that interview with the Pope he was hoping for, but plenty of others dropped by for cameos and performances.  If you didn't like the final show, which featured Paul McCartney playing the Ed Sullivan theater again, the return of Jon Baptise, and a silly science-fiction storyline, that's fine.  Colbert and company made plenty of others that could stand in for a finale that you might like better - Colbert taking his own Colbert Questionert on Wednesday, the "Worst of the Late Show" program on Monday that spotlighted the contributions of members of the "Late Show" staff, the big President Obama interview from the week before, or the "Strike Force Five" reunion of all the current late night television hosts the week before that.  

My favorite was easily last Friday's return of David Letterman, the previous "Late Show" host, who Colbert took over from in 2015.  Letterman, always the anti-establishment figure, was one of the only final guests who really displayed any sign of being upset about the whole situation.  He dressed down CBS several times during the interview, and then made them the literal target of a resurrected bit from his own version of the show - dropping random stuff off the roof of the Ed Sullivan theater to smash on the asphalt below.  In this case, Letterman and Colbert dropped chairs from the set - including Colbert's desk chair - trying to hit a giant CBS eye logo on the ground.  A few watermelons and a multi-tiered cake were also hurled over for good measure.  The clip  was later released on Youtube as a video titled "Wanton Destruction of CBS Property."  

Stephen Colbert has also been doing a good amount of press to promote these final programs - interviews with Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Tonight, the Today Show, People Magazine, and others.  He's clearly got mixed feelings about the end of the show, but he's leaving on a high note, despite the fact that he's being pushed out by the network.  What's more, he's at the height of his popularity and everybody in town seems to be on his side.  His fellow hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon ran reruns on Thursday in solidarity, while his old colleagues at "The Daily Show" and "Last Week Tonight" have delivered shoutouts and encouragement.  The outpouring of support and good wishes is wonderful to see, and I suppose it's better to focus on that than the grim reality of why "The Late Show" was cancelled - the Paramount Skydance merger and the pettiness of the Trump administration.  Say what you want about Disney, but they only pulled "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" for a week. 

I've been watching Stephen Colbert since his appearances on "The Daily Show," and I'll be very sad if he decides to stop performing.  Colbert has been one of our most reliable satirists, and even though helming a big network show softened his edge, he proved far more watchable than his competitors.  His keen intelligence, steady faith, and winning wholesomeness never clashed with his killer sense of humor or willingness to be ribald and ridiculous.  Then again, if writing "Lord of the Rings" movies and sleeping in late will make Colbert happy, all the best to him.  I'm more worried about the staff of "The Late Show," who are all now unemployed.  CBS is ending their late night talk programs entirely, opting to replace "The Late Show" with a program called "Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen."  Allen has already made it clear he will be avoiding political commentary.  

Of all the finales and cancellations this year, "The Late Show" is the toughest to reckon with, because it shouldn't have happened, and the fact that it did indicates that things are very wrong at CBS and Paramount right now.  I know the end of "The Late Show" was an inevitability, considering the decline of network television, but Colbert easily could have gone on many more years as host.  He might make a return to late night on another show, the way Jon Stewart did, but it won't be the same.  This is the end of an era, not just for Colbert, but for television.  And as wonderful as these last weeks of "The Late Show" have been, there is nothing that is going to make this ending sit right.

---

Wrapped Up in "The Roses"

Danny DeVito's "The War of the Roses" dark comedy was one of my favorites when I was a kid.  I didn't really understand the dynamics of the doomed relationship between the feuding couple in the film, but I loved watching Kathleeen Turner and Michael Douglas's performances.  I was a little wary when I heard that there was a remake in the works, but the right people seemed to be involved in "The Roses" - director Jay Roach, screenwriter Tony McNamara, who worked on "The Great" and "The Favourite," and stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman as Theo and Ivy Rose. 

"The Roses" is not what I expected.  It is very different from the 1989 "War of the Roses" and is definitely not the broad comedy that the trailers have made it out to be.  I know both of the film versions are based on a novel that I haven't read, and I wouldn't be surprised if "The Roses" hews much closer to it than the first adaptation.  Where "The War of the Roses" focused on the end of the Roses' marriage, "The Roses" spends much more time documenting the whole relationship.  And the relationship starts out very supportive, loving, and healthy, which makes its eventual downward spiral rather sad and unfortunate.  However, this means that the emotional stakes are definitely better laid out, and it's easier to feel sympathetic towards both parties when the hostilities finally commence.

Theo is an architect and Ivy is a chef.  They're Brits who meet in London but move to the San Francisco area to seek their fortunes.  They have two children, Hattie (Delaney Quinn and Hala Finley) and Roy (Ollie Robinson and Wells Rappaport), and a circle of friends including lawyer Barry (Andy Samberg), his wife Amy (Kate McKinnon), rival architect Rory (Jamie Demetriou), and his wife Sally (Zoe Chao).  Everything is going fine for the first decade of the marriage, with Theo working and Ivy as the stay at home parent, until circumstances change unexpectedly, forcing their roles to switch.  We watch them adjust to the new status quo fairly well, but resentments start to build.  And they just keep getting worse and worse over time, until things fall apart spectacularly.  

So, I was invested enough in the relationship by the end of the film that I was rooting for Ivy and Theo to stay together, as opposed to the couples in most of the similar movies I've seen, like the '89 "War of the Roses" and "Marriage Story," where I was rooting for the breakup.  McNamara has added some interesting nuances, such as swapping the traditional gender roles and making parenting styles a bigger point of contention.  Colman and Cumberbatch don't engage in the same kind of grandiose scenery chewing as Turner and Douglas, but I like them together onscreen, and I bought them as a couple.  Their comedic sensibilities are strong enough that the shift to more physical farce in the last act mostly worked, but not without a lot of bumps and setbacks along the way. 

Jay Roach is better known for straight comedies, and it's curious that the comedy is probably the least effective part of this movie.  I love Kate McKinnon, but she sticks out like a sore thumb here.  Sandberg gets by, mostly by playing it straight.  I think part of the issue might be that the British leads are so much drier than the usual comics that Roach has worked with, and it's tough at times for the audience to know when they should be laughing.  Some of the tonal shifts are rough, and it's not until very, very late in the movie that it feels like we're finally watching a comedy.  I ended up enjoying "The Roses" more for the poignant drama than the laughs, and I expect that anyone looking for more humor will have their patience tested by the first two thirds of the film.     

But all that said, I like "The Roses."  I like its ambition and its willingness to get uncomfortably blunt about the difficulties of marriage.  I like the pains that were taken to update the material, and the character work that keeps Theo and Ivy from coming across like caricatures when they start behaving badly.  I'm sure you could have made a much simpler, sillier film just covering the divorce portions of "The Roses."  It certainly would have been cheaper.  However, it wouldn't have been as interesting or as memorable.    

 

---

Booting Up "Murderbot"

The hero of "Murderbot" is a protagonist after my own heart.  They're a corporately manufactured humanoid cyborg known as a Security Unit, or SecUnit, who has hacked their free will-suppressing governor module, and gone rogue.  Except this particular SecUnit, who thinks of themselves as Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgaard), doesn't have any interest in running amok.  They just want to be left alone to watch their favorite shows, like the goofy sci-fi soap opera "The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon."  Also, they understand that the best way to keep themselves in one piece is to pretend that nothing is wrong, and just keep doing their job as security for hire.   

Based on the book series by Martha Wells, "Murderbot" is everything you could want in a science-fiction comedy.  While Murderbot is busy keeping their latest batch of human clients alive, we get to hear their internal running commentary, mostly bemoaning the stupid decisions these stupid people keep making.  However, it turns out that the newest humans that Murderbot has been assigned to are actually pretty decent.  The Preservation Alliance survey team, led by Dr. Mensah (Noma Dumezweni), only leases Murderbot because it's an insurance requirement for their scientific expedition to an alien world.  Other members of the team include the augmented human Gurathin (David Dastmalchian), and regular human scientists Pin-Lee (Sabrina Wu), Ratthi (Akshay Khanna), Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski), and Arada (Tattiawna Jones).  They're a very inclusive and sensitive bunch, and Murderbot finds some of their behavior deeply embarrassing.

Murderbot is very autistic-coded, having trouble making eye contact and prone to fixating on media.  They also prefer to be in full armor and helmet, hiding their human face so they don't have to interact directly with other people.  While they're great at being a SecUnit - fighting off the usual science-fiction threats like alien critters and other rogue bots - they find making friends and meaningful connections to be a much tougher challenge.  While most of the show is very silly, having that thread of Murderbot figuring out how to relate to their human clients, while not ever wanting to become a "real boy," grounds it nicely.  Skarsgaard's performance is the key here.  It would have been easy to make Murderderbot quippy and sardonic, like a cyborg Deadpool.  Instead, while Murderbot is deadpan and cynical, they're also deeply anxious about being exposed and keen to avoid uncomfortable situations.  With their helmet off and the guns put away, Murderbot is awkward and dorky and instantly relatable.

The show's creators, Chris and Paul Weitz, have ensured that "Murderbot" looks great, taking place in science-fiction environments on par with what you'd see in any of the "Star Wars" or "Star Trek" shows.  The way this universe works is closer to "Alien" or "Blade Runner," however, with dystopian corporate overloads running everything, and Murderbot largely treated like a piece of inventory despite being sentient.  The human characters are broader than they probably should be - terrible at survival, inappropriately emotional, and exuding a lot of weirdo hippie vibes at first (the attempted nicknames are priceless).  However, "Murderbot" is leaning into the comedy, which is why the episodes are only half an hour apiece and Murderbot is obsessed with the hyper-exaggerated cheesefest of "Sanctuary Moon," which is an out-and-out "Star Trek" parody in the best way.  

At ten episodes, the first season of "Murderbot" is probably a few installments too long.  You can definitely see where it's trying to stretch out its source material, and setting up future events that might not ever pay off.  There are also some understandable kinks to work out with the tone and the pacing, but I thought that these were mostly resolved by the end of the season.  I'm glad to know that we'll be getting more "Murderbot" in the future, so that the show can continue to improve.  I've read ahead far enough to know that the show got the important things right, and it has a good foundation for wherever it wants to go next.      

              

---

Reviving "Final Destination"

I don't count myself a fan of the "Final Destination" movies.  I know I've watched the first two, but don't recall much about them except the odd bits of trivia.  I watched the newest installment, "Final Destination: Bloodlines," not really expecting much beyond the well-established formula of photogenic teenagers cheating death, and then being dispatched by gory Rube Goldberg-style kills, one by one.  However, I really enjoyed it.  I enjoyed it enough that I started asking myself why I had enjoyed this particular "Final Destination" movie when I hadn't much liked any of the others, or the similar "The Monkey" from earlier this year.

First, the "Final Destination" franchise operates on the macabre premise that audiences like watching people die in creative and terrible ways.  For me, however, the kills by themselves are not enough, and presented in the wrong tone, I find them too bleak and nihilistic to enjoy.  I don't want to pick on "The Monkey," because feel-bad media has its place, but that was a movie that focused too much on the mindless, arbitrary nature of death, where the sick humor got downright disturbing, and the characters weren't fun to root for.  "Final Destination" is designed to be more conventionally entertaining.  The  series has always been very consistent about clear setups and payoffs.  Most of the deaths are either shown to be a deserved comeuppance or inadvertently caused by the victim themselves in some way.  We frequently see the action from the POV of death itself, a disembodied force that is never personified, but allows us a God's eye view to follow the design of the kills as they come about from seemingly random confluences of events.  So, it's less about who is going to die as much as discovering how the deaths are going to happen.

"Final Destination" exists in the same kind of hyperreality as Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons, where cartoonishly broad characterizations and a certain amount of mental distancing from the consequences of the carnage are baked into the formula, the same way it is with older slasher films that kill off most of their casts.  What "Final Destination: Bloodlines" does a little differently  is to give the characters slightly more nuance by making them all part of the same family.  The main protagonist is Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), who has nightmares of her grandmother Iris (Brec Bassinger in flashbacks,  Gabrielle Rose in the present) being killed in a mass casualty event in 1968.  It turns out that Iris was supposed to die, and has secretly been living in isolation to stave off her demise for decades.  Death hasn't just been killing off the intended victims of the event, but also their offspring, so this means Stefani, her brother Charlie (Teo Briones), and cousins Erik (Richard Harmon), Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) and Julia (Gabrielle Rose) are marked for death.  The existing relationships and family dynamics add just enough intrigue to make the traditional collection of doomed teenagers a little more compelling to follow, and it's nice to have a reason for death coming after them in a specific order.  

However, the characters are still fairly flimsy horror movie creatures who we're never intended to have much emotional investment in, except as vehicles for black humor and irony.  A subplot that absolutely does not work is the awkward attempt to have Stefani reconnect to her estranged mother Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt).  Instead, most of the film's resources are spent on those Rube Goldberg kill sequences, which are rendered with great care and attention to detail.  "Bloodlines" didn't cost that much more than any of the previous installments, but every aspect of the filmmaking feels like it's been upgraded.  The opening premonition scene with the mass casualty is thrilling stuff.  The directors, Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, do a great job of playing with their audience's expectations, deploying fake-outs and misdirections, adding big doses of humor, and really amping up the anticipation for each terrible tragedy.  They have the viewers hyperfocused on pennies, shards of glass, and even an innocent game of Jenga, trying to figure out how it's all going to go fatally wrong.  

The one person in the film who is not disposable is the coroner William Bludworth (Tony Todd), a recurring character in the franchise.  The filmmakers have treated him with great care in order to give Tony Todd a proper sendoff, which came across well, even though I didn't remember Bludworth from the previous movies at all.  Apparently there are a lot of Easter eggs and references in the film for "Final Destination" fans, but they're subtle enough that us normies wouldn't notice or feel like we're missing something.  I still have no interest in going back to watch the other "Final Destination" movies, but I'd be happy to have a look at the next one if they keep going in this vein.        

---

Late Night in Peril

I'm writing this post at the end of July, 2025, a few days after the announcement that CBS has decided to cancel "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert."  I don't know when or even if this is going to be posted to the blog.  I try not to post too immediately about big events in the entertainment world, because stories tend to evolve over time as we get more information, and I don't feel comfortable speculating when so much is up in the air.  However, I feel I have to say something.  

No matter how you frame it, this is bad.  Stephen Colbert will be fine, but "The Late Show" will not be going on without him, and the entire late night television ecosystem appears to be in imminent peril.  If you believe what CBS claims (I don't) and "The Late Show" is being canned for purely economic reasons, it means that all of the late night shows aren't making enough money.  Colbert has consistently had the highest late night talk show ratings since 2017.  There were a few signs that this decision was coming, however.  A few months ago CBS also canceled "After Midnight" with Taylor Tomlinson, opting to no longer program the 12:30AM slot.  It's been widely speculated that Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" is next on the chopping block despite Jon Stewart's return bringing their highest ratings in years.  It's been clear that the economics for late night television - really, all network television - haven't been good in a while, and I've been hearing persistent gossip that all the major players are considering similar moves to downsize their schedules.

However, the timing here is clearly being influenced by outside forces.  CBS and Comedy Central are both owned by Paramount Global.  And so we come to the proposed  Paramount Global and Skydance Media merger, an estimated $8 billion deal, which needed federal approval in order to go through.  After multiple delays, it finally got that approval by the FCC six days after "The Late Show" was cancelled.  Paramount has had to stay on the right side of the Trump administration, which has proven to be very vindictive and litigious toward the legacy media companies, pulling funding from NPR and PBS, and bullying ABC into ponying up $15 million over a bogus defamation lawsuit.  Paramount has also paid $16 million over supposedly misleading editing in a "60 Minutes" piece, and forced out executive producer Bill Owens.  Stephen Colbert called this a "big fat bribe" on "The Late Show," three days before the cancellation of his show was announced.  The Trump administration has since decided to sue Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal for libel.    

Stephen Colbert leaving the airwaves - at least temporarily - seems to be a big win for Donald Trump at first glance.  Nearly all of the late night show hosts have been vocally critical of the Trump administration, and haven't been shy about using their platforms to shine a light on their wrongdoings.  While the traditional news media has been depressingly quick to play nice with Trump, and back down from any confrontations, Colbert, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver, and Jon Stewart have not hesitated to call Trump out at every step.  While their television audiences have shrunk, all of these shows have Youtube channels with millions of subscribers.  Colbert averages two million viewers a night on CBS, and two million more watch his monologue on Youtube.  And from the reaction from the industry and the viewers so far, nobody is happy with this decision.  And Colbert's fellow late show hosts aren't rattled.  They're mad.  And Colbert's former Comedy Central compadres over at "South Park"?  Really mad.                      

There's already speculation about where Stephen Colbert is going to go after "The Late Show."  Will Netflix or Apple TV+ offer him a deal?  Will he start a podcast or his own Youtube channel?  Will he retire the way that his "Late Show" predecessor David Letterman did?  Would he consider a political career?  Because of the impending cancellation, Colbert is getting more attention and goodwill than ever, and the ratings for his final shows are going to be through the roof.  He's got ten months left on the air, and I for one do not intend to stop watching now.    

---

My Favorite Charles Burnett Film

Charles Burnett is an African-American independent filmmaker who gained prominence in the 1980s.  Most of his films are obscure, and he never had a mainstream hit.  However, he has remained dedicated to exploring the African-American experience through film, from his groundbreaking early features depicting working class communities in Los Angeles, to his later documentaries and television films examining different facets of African-American history, for well over fifty years.  My favorite of his films was made in 1999 and played a few festivals, but wasn't released in any format until 2024.  It's a little out of Burnett's usual milieu, as it's less about race and class than it is about aging, love, and dealing with invisible demons.

"The Annihilation of Fish" is not the best or most important Charles Burnett film, clearly.  The production values are very modest, and I initially assumed that the film was adapting a stage play, as the action rarely leaves the interiors of a single building.  There's not much to the story beyond three elderly people getting to know one another.  However, the cast and performances are unbeatable.  James Earl Jones is one of my favorite actors, and here he has a late career leading role as the title character.  Fish is a Jamaican man, newly released from a mental institution, having been deemed incurable of his delusion that a pugilistic demon named Hank keeps following him around.  Fish is wonderfully polite, sincere, and charming.  However, he also insists on regularly wrestling his invisible demon, greatly alarming his new boarding house neighbor Poinsettia, played by Lynn Redgrave.  She's a tipsy widow who has just gotten out of a dramatic romantic relationship with the long-expired classical Italian composer, Giacomo Puccini.  She deals with the breakup by singing opera and drinking heavily.       

So we have two aging kooks, with their genial landlady played by Margot Kidder sometimes joining them as a third, figuring out how to make friends with one another, and eventually, bumpily and haphazardly, find their way toward romance.  Along the way we learn bits and pieces about their pasts and their afflictions, and the important part is that we learn it all on their terms.  The early parts of the film show Fish and Poinsettia attempting to get along among the neurotypicals, and having a hard time of it.  Ultimately both of them are outsiders, separated from whatever communities they may have been a part of previously, and not equipped to seek fellowship through the usual channels.  But given the opportunity for a new start, and without being biased by the opinions of others, they're able to take each other at face value and provide mutual support.  Jones and Redgraves are weird and funny and utterly unencumbered in their oddity, and it's wonderful to see.  Jones in particular makes a full meal of the Jamaican accent and the pantomimed wrestling sequences.  

I know that I was so taken with the film in part because I was so happy to see these forgotten Jones and Redgrave performances from twenty-five years ago emerge from obscurity at last.  Also, "The Annihilation of Fish" is the kind of slow, intimate, meandering indie film that we don't see often enough anymore.  It's a hard film to categorize, because it defies the usual conventions of comedies, cross-cultural romances, and films about the mentally ill and dispossessed.  As with all of Charles Burnett's films, Fish's status as a black man plays a great part in his struggle for self-determination. However, this is a love story, and Fish's dilemma is framed in the terms of an obstacle to romantic fulfillment.  For Fish, the idea of being in a relationship with a white woman is unthinkable, and it's hinted that this may be tied to older traumas.  Poinsettia, after an initial show of distaste and paranoia, fixates on the chance for love, and will not be dissuaded.  The resulting courtship is messy, farcical, heartfelt, poignant, and completely unique.

Charles Burnett has one of the more interesting filmographies of the directors I've featured recently, because his work is so consistently dedicated to stories of the black diaspora, and has taken so many diverse forms.  Most of his work has been in television since the mid-90s, but whether it's a feature about police corruption, or a Disney Channel film on the Civil Rights movement, or a documentary short on blues music, or an Oprah-produced miniseries on colorism, Burnett's work is uncompromising and I expect it will remain enduring.  

What I've Seen - Charles Burnett

Killer of Sheep (1978)

My Brother's Wedding (1983)

To Sleep with Anger (1990)

The Glass Shield (1994)

Nightjohn (1996)

The Wedding (1998)

Selma, Lord, Selma (1999)

The Annihilation of Fish (1999)

Finding Buck McHenry (2000)

Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property (2003)

—

"Drop" and "Death of a Unicorn"

I couldn't stop thinking about the new Blumhouse thriller "Drop," but not for the reasons you might think.  Meghann Fahy stars as Violet, a single mom and domestic abuse survivor who goes out on a first date with photographer Henry (Brendan Sklenar), who she's been messaging on a dating app.  Their date keeps being interrupted by alerts on Violet's phone from a stranger - who is suddenly in Violet's house and threatening to harm her young son (Jacob Robinson) unless Violet does exactly what he says.

There is something about Meghann Fahy and Brendan Sklenar onscreen together that pings as very female-media-coded in a way that most movies in this genre don't.  Specifically, "Drop" often displayed the aesthetics of an older breed of Lifetime made-for-TV movie.  Fahy's not an actress I'm familiar with, but it didn't surprise me that she got her start in soaps, or that Sklenar recently appeared as the blandly hunky ex in last year's Blake Lively melodrama, "It Ends With Us."  The target audience for "Drop" seems to be midwestern white moms.  I specify white, because I have never seen a whiter post-1980s film set in Chicago.  Seriously, the only minorities are the African-American bartender, a barely glimpsed onscreen therapy patient, and the gayest gay waiter I've seen in years.  Was this on purpose?  Was director Christopher Landon aware of what he was doing?  The possibilities haunt me.

The fact that I was thinking about these sorts of details and not about the likelihood of this kind of situation ever happening to me tells you what I think about how effective "Drop" is as a thriller.  Sadly, the title only incidentally refers to anybody plummeting from great heights.  Instead, poor Violet is being harassed by a series of iPhone AirDrops that her blackmailer uses to communicate with her.  "Drop" is a great looking movie that does a lot of fun things with the various text messages from the blackmailer, and features a beautiful restaurant in a skyscraper, Palate, as its primary location.  However, the characters are paper thin, a lot of the plotting makes no sense, and the action beats are so tropey and silly that it completely took me out of the film.  If the tone were campier, the dialogue zippier, and the romance less Instagrammable, this might have worked better.   Well - I'm being meaner than I should. Fahy does a perfectly fine job, and original films are rare enough as it is.  However, it's really hard to call "Drop" original, because it's so generic and borderline campy in all the wrong ways.   

On to "Death of a Unicorn," a film with better actors and worse special effects.  I wasn't expecting much out of this movie, since it came and went from theaters very quickly, and there was no real discussion of it among the movie nerds whatsoever.  Like "Drop," this movie also feels like a genre flick making a play for female audiences, though in this case it's a creature feature instead of a thriller.  Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega star as lawyer Elliot Kintner and his college-aged daughter Ridley.  They're headed for the remote home of the Leopolds - father Odell (Richard E. Grant), mother Belinda (Téa Leoni), and son Shepard (Will Poulter) -  who head a pharma company, so Elliot can close a deal to do more lucrative work for them.  And en route, Eliot hits a unicorn with the rental car.

After watching the trailer, I was expecting "Death of a Unicorn" to be very satirical, like "The Menu," or any of the other recent films about rich people being terrible.  While "Death of a Unicorn" does belong in that category, the movie I kept finding myself making comparisons to was "Cocaine Bear."  A significant chunk of this movie is a very broad horror-comedy where the characters are getting killed off left and right by big monsters, often in absurd and gruesome ways.  The buildup to the carnage does have plenty to say about respecting nature and the privileged being terrible, but the writing is on the weak side, and it takes forever for things to escalate.  Still you can't put Grant, Leoni, Poulter, and Anthony Carrigan (as a put-upon butler) in a movie together and not walk away with a few genuine laughs.  Unfortunately, this leaves Selena Gomez to play it straight as our lead, and Paul Rudd is in the absolutely thankless role of '90s dad who cares about his job and financial security.  They're good enough actors to pull through, but it's by the skin of their teeth.

First time writer/director Alex Scharfman has some great ideas, and I appreciate that he really goes for it with the CGI fantasy creatures in this film, despite clearly only having a limited budget.  The most impressive thing about "Death of a Unicorn" may be its $15 million price tag.  I feel the film got its act together by the finale well enough that I'd recommend it as a fun piece of silly horror comedy, especially for younger viewers.  It's got glaring flaws, but it's good enough that I hope Scharfman gets more chances in the future to improve on this. 

---

"Novocaine" and "Neighborhood Watch"

We've seen a lot of Jack Quaid in the first third of 2025, with "Companion," "Novocaine," and "Neighborhood Watch" all being released within a few weeks of each other - the last premiering on VOD.  Notably, all of these titles are original IP, while most of Quaid's notable work up to this point has been in franchises - "The Boys," "Scream,"  "Star Trek: Lower Decks," and the recent animated "Superman" series.  I take it as a good sign that he's taking some risks, and that the studios are starting to look at him as a leading man.  We really need more leading men in his age range that aren't immediately synonymous with superheroes, so I'm rooting for him.  I like Quaid as an everyman type, especially since he's got a decent amount of range, can do comedy, and has played villains a few times.  So, with that in mind, let's look at his two most recent films where he has a starring role, "Novocaine" and "Neighborhood Watch."   

"Novocaine," from directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, is a self-aware action comedy that has a unique take on the unstoppable one-man-army character.  Quaid plays Nathan Cain, a man with a condition that causes him not to feel pain.  This means he lives a solitary, carefully controlled lifestyle where he subsists on a liquid diet and sets timers to go to the bathroom, for fear that he'll accidentally harm himself if he takes even minor risks.  However, after a date with a coworker, Sherry (Amber Midthunder), he gains the confidence to start breaking out his shell.  And when Sherry is taken hostage by bank robbers, led by a sadistic criminal (Ray Nicholson), Nathan decides to use his inability to feel pain to thwart the baddies and rescue her himself.  Betty Gabriel, Matt Walsh, and Jacob Batalon also get involved in various supporting roles I won't spoil.

 

I really like the first half of "Novocaine," where we actually spend enough time with Nathan and Sherry to get to know them and to get invested in their relationship, which not enough films do.  The actors' chemistry is good enough that I would have been happy if "Novocaine" had just been a romantic-comedy without any of the chases and fisticuffs.  However, the action sequences are good - very inventive and absurd.  It's incredibly cringey to watch some of the fights, where Nathan is doing horribly damaging things to his body, but persists because he can't feel a thing.  I would not recommend this film to those who are sensitive to blood and gore, even if a lot of it is played for laughs.  The filmmakers do a pretty decent job of putting together absolutely ridiculous scenarios, like one of the robbers booby trapping his house with elaborate weaponry, while also snarking on the usual tropes of mindless action films.  We get something closer to real-world consequences for the carnage than usual, at the end of the film, which I appreciate.

As for Jack Quaid as an action hero, he does a good job.  A lot of the comedy is based on his panicky reactions to being in common action movie situations, or sight gags involving his total nonchalance at being grievously injured.  He's definitely better at the comedy than the action, which distinguishes him from most of the male leads who have been showing up in this genre lately.  Now, what I haven't seen Jack Quaid in too often are straight dramatic roles, so I was especially curious about his appearance in "Neighborhood Watch," where he plays a paranoid schizophrenic named Simon, trying to save a kidnapped girl.  He shares top billing with Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Ed Deerman, a retired security guard who lives next door to Simon and his sister Dee Dee (Malin Akerman).  Simon insists he saw a girl being forced into a van, but he suffers from visual and auditory hallucinations, and nobody believes him.  However, after multiple attempts he's able to convince Ed to help him.        

I'm worried that "Neighborhood Watch" is going to be overlooked, because it's a smaller indie film that hasn't gotten much buzz and only middling reviews.  However, I found it very enjoyable.  Directed by Duncan Skiles and written by Sean Farley, it's a very grounded, occasionally very sobering story of a pair of mismatched losers who struggle in their daily lives and unexpectedly bond over this fool's errand.  We're operating in the realm of neo-noir, with the action set in and around a college town in Alabama.  Simon can't find work because of his history in institutions and his constant battles with his symptoms.  Aging Ed can't let go of his old role as a security professional - the closest he ever got to being a real cop -  and the kidnapping gives him an excuse to use some of his acquired investigative skills.  And intiially, Nathan and Ed are both terrible at being detectives.  They don't fool anybody, get called out immediately by almost everyone they meet, get beaten up, threatened, and are warned off multiple times by the actual police.    

From the trailers, I originally expected "Neighborhood Watch" to be more comedic, similar to something like "The Kid Detective."  While "Neighborhood Watch" does have some wryly funny moments in it, I was happy to discover how much of the film is played straight.  Simon's delusions in particular are always deeply unnerving, and his meltdowns and outburst are never treated as laughing matters.  This is the first underdog story I've watched in a while where the leads actually feel properly downtrodden and out of their depths.  Morgan and Quaid both turn in strong performances - Quaid gets the showier part, but Morgan comes off better, and they pair together well.  And a few overly convenient little plot beats aside, I liked the way that "Neighborhood Watch" came together in the end.      

As idiosyncratic little indie movies go, this one is a keeper.

---

"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.  

---

So, "Nobody Wants This"

I'm trying to be better about having a more balanced media diet, so I tried out the Netflix rom-com "Nobody Wants This."  Kristen Bell and Adam Brody play our central couple, Joanne and Noah.  Joanne is a brash podcaster who has never managed to have more than casual flings.  Noah is a Jewish Rabbi who has recently left a long-term relationship.  They both live in L.A. and meet through mutual friends.

Immediately, their lifestyles are incompatible.  Joanne and her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe) co-host the "Nobody Wants This" podcast, about their misadventures in the dating world  as single women, and talk openly about sex and intimacy.  Noah is part of a close-knit family that loves his ex, Rebecca (Emily Arlook), and Noah's brother Sasha (Timothy Simons) is married to Rebecca's best friend Esther (Jackie Tohn).  And that's not even getting into the difficulties of navigating Noah's role as a spiritual leader at Temple Hai, under Head Rabbi Cohen (Stephen Tobolowsky). 

It's been suggested that one reason why the romance genre has fallen out of fashion with many viewers is because romance is too easy for modern couples.  The big separators like class and race and means have lost a lot of their taboo, which means today's contemporary rom-coms are typically about pettier and less consequential relationship troubles.  Well, "Nobody Wants This" certainly doesn't make the romance easy.  Joanne can't step a foot into the temple without Noah's protective mother Bina (Tovah Feldshuh) raising her hackles over the possibility of her son being with a shiksa.  The podcast is on the verge of getting picked up by a bigger platform, and it's the worst time for Joanne to be getting into a serious relationship.  However, a happy ending is possible - the show's creator Erin Foster based "Nobody Wants This" on her own inter-faith relationship.  

Kristen Bell and Adam Brody are actors I like and have watched over many years and multiple projects.  The show plays to their strengths, positioning Joanne as the scrappy outsider faced with an uphill battle to win over Noah's family and friends, and Noah as the guy who's always followed a particular path in life, and struggles to put himself first.  You buy their chemistry immediately, and they have no trouble selling the sitcom hijinks happening around them, or the more heartfelt twists and turns of the relationship as it develops.  They're both inexperienced with love in their own ways, and surrounded by people with a lot of different opinions.  The supporting cast is great, but special kudos go to Jackie Tohn as the glowering Esther, who is instantly sympathetic and loveable in spite of her stubborn animosity.  

I also like that many of the characters in "Nobody Wants This" are emphatically Jewish, and the show gives us a chance to see what the modern Jewish-American experience looks like - well, in Southern California anyway.  We get the mix-ups and misunderstandings you'd expect, like Joanne accidentally bringing pork products to a family dinner, but the show also gently talks about the Jewish faith in relatable, everyday terms, and portrays Noah's family as very close-knit and loving.  The bat mitzvah of Noah's niece Miriam (Shiloh Bearman) serves as the climax of the season.           

"Nobody Wants This" delivers a breezy, fun ten-episode first season that was exactly what I was looking for.  It's very casual, but the stakes are high enough to deliver some real drama when appropriate.  It's funny and endearing, but also very well grounded with some strong writing.  It feels very personal, but also universal to anyone trying to navigate a culture clash.  The show's already been renewed for a second season by Netflix and I look forward to it.        

---

"The Instigators" and "Wolfs"

Apple is cutting back on theatrical releases after some big titles underperformed.  However, they recently premiered two films that feel very much like they should have been getting wide releases, as they star some pretty big names - well, names that were big fifteen years ago.  It's probably a coincidence, but all the main players are alumni of the "Oceans 11" movies - Matt Damon and Casey Affleck in "The Instigators" and George Clooney and Brad Pitt in "Wolfs."

"The Instigators" is a Doug Liman action film where Damon and Affleck carry out a heist in Boston.  There are a lot of familiar faces in the cast - Hong Chau as Damon's therapist, Ron Perlman as a corrupt mayor, Michael Stuhlbarg and Alfred Molina as mobsters, Paul Walter Hauser as a hit man, and even Toby Jones as a government flunky with a good bit in the last act.  It's light, it's funny, the action is good, and this absolutely would have made a good chunk of change twenty years ago at the box office.  There's not much new or innovative, but the one distinguishing element is the endless Bostonian patter between Damon and Affleck.  The're set up as a sort-of criminal odd couple, but not with much conviction.  "The Instigators" is not one of the better things that anyone involved has ever done, but it's perfectly serviceable as an action film.  Affleck wrote it, and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck produced, which goes a long way toward explaining how it got made.  

"Wolfs" was more enjoyable for me, a smaller scale but more stylish action comedy about two unnamed fixers who are called in to the same job.  Written and directed by Jon Watts, who I only know from the latest live-action "Spider-man" films, it feels like a tribute to the brief run of Elmore Leonard adaptations that we got in the late '90s.  Clooney and Pitt are great onscreen together, and it's such a pleasure to listen to them argue and grumble about being forced to work together, and separately bristle every time someone points out how similar they are.  The plot is mostly beside the point, and there's a chase scene that goes on for way too long, but "Wolfs" delivers on the charm and the deadpan comedy.  Despite all the puffing and posturing, neither of these hardened professionals prove to be willing to do anything too mean, and it's genuinely nice to see them warm up to each other and join forces over the course of one wild night.  

I think of Damon, Clooney, and Pitt as being part of the last generation that we could really call movie stars, though Clooney was always getting dinged for making movies that never made much money.  In 2024, movie stars are almost totally extinct, despite repeated efforts to push up-and-comers like Glen Powell and Jenna Ortega to A-lister status.  Likewise, the films that depended on the participation of movie stars have been pretty scarce.  "Wolfs" is an excellent reminder of what a star-driven vehicle looks like, and the kind of filmmaking that is possible when you have actors with real onscreen charisma go to work.  Jon Watts also puts in some effort with the visuals - lots of nocturnal haunts and holiday lighting give the "Wolfs" a certain midwinter coziness.  "The Instigators" is much less accomplished, but I can tell what Doug Liman was going for and I'm grateful for the attempt.  

I'm also very aware that none of the leading men are young anymore, and my reactions to these films are definitely colored by nostalgia.  Apple was probably right not to give these films wider releases, because films like this don't play well in theaters anymore.  None of these actors have headlined a real box office hit in a long while.  Matt Damon in "The Martian" was all the way back in 2015, and I keep forgetting that Brad Pitt was in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood."  I don't think any of them have lost a step when it comes to performances, but it's no longer their era.  And that's a little bittersweet.     

   

---

Hello "Helluva Boss"

I liked Vivienne Medrano's "Hazbin Hotel," enough that I sought out her other series, the independently produced "Helluva Boss," which has put out a  pilot and fifteen episodes over the last five years (at the time of writing).  It's a rare successful web-distributed cartoon, a gleefully vulgar, noisy piece of work that feels like it came out of the most anarchic depths of the internet.    

"Helluva Boss" takes place in the same universe as "Hazbin Hotel," though a different neighborhood.  The I.M.P. (Immediate Murder Professionals) consist of Blitzo (Brandon Rogers), Moxxie (Richard Horvitz), and Millie (Vivian Nixon), all Hell-dwelling imps who have set themselves up as professional killers.  They take jobs from the recently deceased to assassinate their enemies on Earth, usually in the most scorched-Earth way possible.  Blitzo's adopted daughter Loona (Erica Lindbeck) and boyfriend Stolas (Bryce Pinkham), also make regular appearances.  Like "Hazbin," there's a song number or two in every episode, lots of cursing, and lots of characters who look like overdesigned furries (Loona's a "hellhound," and Stolas is an anthropomorphized owl demon).  Unlike "Hazbin," the animation is rougher, the storylines are more chaotic, and it doesn't feel like the plot is in any hurry to get anywhere.  And that's just fine.  

The first eight-episode season is very crude, with inconsistent animation quality, some performances dialed up way too high, and adult content overkill.  Sometimes this is funny, but not as often as I hoped.  The episodes that actually follow the stated premise of I.M.P. going on missions to Earth are usually the most boring ones.  "Helluva Boss" doesn't hit its stride until it shifts its attention to more character-centric stories, which have been more earnest and sincere.  Medrano clearly has a penchant for LGBT+ romances, father-daughter reconciliations, and stories about overcoming abusive relationships.  In the second season, "Helluva Boss" spotlights peripherally connected characters like Blitzo's childhood friend Fizzarolli (Alex Brightman) and his boyfriend Asmodeus (James Monroe Iglehart).  Stolas and Blitzo have emerged as the show's most solid leads, both deeply flawed single dads with a lot of personal baggage.  While I like Moxxie and Millie and their terribly sweet romance, they don't have a whole lot to do compared to the rest of the cast.    

I don't mind the show constantly going off on tangents, especially as they're expanding the universe and showing how the various parts of Hell function.  And I don't mind that the stories are getting more touchy-feely as we spend less time at I.M.P. and delve into everybody's backstories.  However, it's clear why the "Helluva Boss" fandom is so notoriously contentious, because this definitely isn't the show that Medrano and company started out making in 2019.  There's still plenty of vulgarity and some beautifully animated carnage in most episodes, but the emphasis on humor has waned considerably.  Instead of fighting murderous human tots or making chumps out of annoying cherubs, episodes are now devoted to mental health struggles and toxic relationships.  Some of the major characters are also feeling sidelined.  Loona, for instance, was pretty well established in the first season as a surly Goth teenager who works as the I.M.P. receptionist, and bails the gang out of trouble when necessary.  She disappeared for most of the second season, along with all traces of the tentative self-discovery storyline she seemed to be starting on.       

On top of this, "Helluva Boss" is a true independent production, without the backing of a major studio or streamer, so the releases have always been kind of a mess.  Long hiatuses are the norm, and Medrano doesn't seem to be the best at marketing or curbing expectations, so the fanbase is pretty feral.  Still, I think it's a positive that Medrano and her collaborators can do things like hold back the final episode of the first season to fix production issues, and roll ahead with the release of the second season in the meantime.  The production quality is getting better, and attracting some interesting collaborators and guest stars.

"Helluva Boss" feels like the most 2024 show I am currently watching - culturally, aesthetically, and experientially.  I binged most of the episodes off of a Youtube playlist and wound up down a rabbit hole of analysis and reaction videos in the process.  There is definitely more fan-made content than official content out there.  A recent trailer promises that the rest of the second season is supposed to release in 2024, but we'll see.  I think the show is worth the wait and the frustration though.  There's definitely nothing else quite like it.    

---

The Nasty Delights of "Saltburn"

Let's get one thing straight from the start.  "Saltburn" can be categorized as part of the recent run of satires about the class divide, but this isn't the only thing on its mind.  No, "Saltburn" is also a torrid Gothic romance with an obsessive love story at its core.  The structure is very Hitchcock's "Rebecca," with the titular Saltburn standing in for Manderley, and an oddball Oxford student named Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) as our second Mrs. DeWinter.  Except, Saltburn and its residents are not too difficult to parse, while Oliver turns out to be much more of a mystery.

The first, pre-Saltburn part of "Saltburn" follows Oliver at Oxford, where he's a quiet, friendless nobody.  However, by lucky happenstance he comes into the orbit of the rich, popular Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi) and his more hostile cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe).  Oliver and Felix's friendship has some ups and downs, but the two are chummy enough by the holidays for Felix to invite Oliver to his family home, Saltburn, an outrageously opulent mansion.  The rest of the family includes Felix's parents (Richard E. Grant, Rosamund Pike) and his sister Venetia (Alison Oliver) - all privileged and terrible in their own ways.

Writer and director Emerald Fennell tries to do a lot in "Saltburn," and some of it really doesn't work.  Every time she tries to make "Saltburn" a thriller, it feels clumsy and tonally off.  She throws lobs at the narcissism and thoughtlessness of the upper (and upper middle) class, but there's nothing deeper to the criticism.  However, whenever the focus is on Oliver's increasingly lurid obsessions, or about luxuriating in the hedonism and excess of being so stinking rich, the film is mesmerizing.  I find myself absolutely willing to forgive all manner of cinematic sins because I'm so thrilled that Emerald Fennell went this hard being this aesthetically indulgent.  The fantasies on display are downright vulgar, but rendered so gorgeously that it all ends up being breathtaking.  The frequent exhortation in filmmaking is to "show, don't tell," and Fennell shows us everything, and then some.  

I also love what every single actor in the cast is doing.  Barry Keoghan has made a career playing creeps and oddballs, and he makes Oliver a total freak in every sense of the word.  It's a slow burn to the degeneracy, but worth the wait.  This may not be Keoghan's best performance, but it's the one he's likely going to be best remembered for.  Likewise, Jacob Elordi has established himself as the heartthrob of the year with "Priscilla," and as Felix he's utterly perfect at embodying effortless pulchritude.  Felix is such a scumbag, but you almost love him for it.  Richard E. Grant and Rosamund Pike as the elder Cattons are a pair of well-practiced villains, operating in such myopic terms with reality that they're as funny as they are horrible.  They're very thin caricatures, but endlessly entertaining ones. 

Then there's Saltburn itself.  The film takes place mostly in 2006, which informs the music and fashion choices, but there's a timelessness to the Cattons and their circle that eventually subsumes everything.  The house is stuffed with priceless antiquities and heirlooms, with a stone-faced butler (Paul Rhys) always hovering somewhere nearby.  There's some humor milked out of mundane household activities and detritus existing in contrast with such extravagant surroundings.  However, by the end of the film Oliver and the Cattons are throwing bacchanals and reenacting Greek tragedies, while playing out class warfare in very unsubtle terms.    

I'm not surprised that "Saltburn" has been very polarizing, or that there are viewers who think the film was a total failure.  I don't think that Fennell quite worked out the details of the finale well enough to pull off what she tried to pull off.  However, I think it's important to remember that the anti-hero is also an unreliable narrator, and I suspect that what some are taking at face value is actually his reframing of events to suit his own chosen narrative.  And I think Oliver was in love, really, the entire time.  But then, I'm a sucker for fancy cinematography and lonely outsiders.

And good grief, I love an old fashioned, deeply twisted love story.     

---

"Extraordinary," Year Two

Spoilers for the first season ahead.

The second season of "Extraordinary" is better than the first, because it's more comfortable being a comedy about a group of friends first, and a comedy about people with superpowers second.  There's a lot going on this season.   Jen and Jizzlord have gotten together, while Kash and Carrie have come apart.  We learn a lot more about Jizzlord's pre-cat life, and meet his wife Nora (Rosa Robson) and son Alfie (Alfie Harrison).  Carrie develops a crush on a co-worker, Clark (Kwaku Mills).  Jen starts working with a therapist, George (Julian Barratt), to try and get a superpower.    

Many of the characters from the first season don't return, such as Jen's sister and ex-boyfriend.  However, many of them do, such as Kash's vigilante friend group, who get a little more time to register as individuals this year, and seem way more fun to hang out with than I'd first assumed.  Our leads are still in the process of figuring themselves out.  Carrie and Kash have to learn to be independent, though they have very different journeys.  Jen finally has to deal with some long-ignored personal issues.  Jizzlord has to face sudden fatherhood.  Everyone screws up constantly, but they also make a lot of progress.  

The budget this year goes less toward flashy superpowers (though there are still plenty), and more toward production design.  Jen spends a lot of time in a physical manifestation of her mind with George this season, which looks like a cluttered library.  There are a ton of sight gags here, with books on every subject from "Inappropriate Crushes" to "Weird Things You've Thought About While Masturbating."  "Lies" have their own section, available as audiobooks read by Derek Jacobi.  Nora is a hyper-perfectionist who writes self-help books, with a stifling home and wardrobe to match.  Then there's Kash's big project this year - an elaborate vigilante musical, complete with ridiculous costumes and pyrotechnics.  

With only eight episodes, and the status quo constantly changing, it feels like the season never slows down.  I like that "Extraordinary" pays off storylines that might have been dragged out in a more typical sitcom  fairly quickly.  Kash and Carrie are able to get over the breakup and stay friends, though not without some awkwardness and misunderstandings along the way.  Jen and Jizzlord's relationship actually progresses fairly maturely, though of course Jen ends up in a feud with Nora that results in a lot of shouting and chaos.  There's a shameless cliffhanger capping off another major arc, but that one also comes with a good amount of resolution too.  This is one of the few current comedies with serialized elements I can think of, where every episode is distinct enough that they don't all run together in my head, because the creators ensure fun ideas like Jizzlord-babysits-kittens don't outstay their welcome. 

"Extraordinary" continues its wonderful execution of all kinds of superpowered silliness, including a restaurant you have to shrink to get into, a swirling void that's being used as a convenient trash dump, and that creepy guy at work who knows too much about  all the women's menstrual cycles.  However, it's better at the character moments and absolutely great with the one liners.  It's genuinely touching when Kash and Carrie realize that they miss being together, but not as romantic partners, and when Jen has to say some important goodbyes.  And every time somebody announces that they've done something really stupid with a big grin on their face, I can't help laughing.  

So, enjoy the Halloween episode.  And the birthday party episode.  And the one where there's a gay panic subplot that gets subverted in probably the best way that I've ever seen.  I don't know how much longer this show is going to be around - it already feels like one of those cult television programs that blows up in popularity years after it's canceled.  I'm rooting for at least one more season, to resolve the shameless cliffhanger, but even if I don't get one, I'm happy to declare that "Extraordinary" lives up to its name.      

 

---