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.        

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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.    

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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)

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"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. 

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"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.

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"Space Cowboys" and "Analyze This"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.        

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"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.     

   

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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.    

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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.     

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"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.      

 

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In a "Landscape With Invisible Hand"

I feel like I've seen every variation of alien invasion movie, but "Landscape With Invisible Hand" finds some new wrinkles to explore.  Like the best science-fiction, its aliens are really a thinly disguised allegorical lens through which to examine current social problems.  The allegory is not subtle, and the execution is awkward at times, but I found myself fascinated with the film's scenarios the whole way through.  

So, welcome to Earth in 2036, where the alien Vuuv have conquered the world.  The Vuuv, who resemble pink rectangles of flesh with some skinny, brush-like appendages and eyestalks, managed to do this peacefully and efficiently.  They simply brought some new technology to Earth, replaced the top tier of capitalism, and massively widened the gap between the haves and the have-nots.  The Vuuv live with a few select humans in fabulous wealth on their floating islands, while the rest of humanity is stuck in a rapidly disintegrating society, literally below them.  Jobs are few, everyone is scraping by, and the Vuuv are gradually replacing things like schools and governments with systems designed to benefit themselves.   

The film focuses on the Campbell family, who try to deal with the realities of the occupation as best they can.  Mother Beth (Tiffany Haddish) is out of work, despite being highly educated.  Her teenage son Adam (Asante Blackk), is a promising artist, but feels directionless.  He connects with a classmate, Chloe (Kylie Rogers), and eventually arranges for her displaced family to live in the Campbells' basement.  This leads to friction almost immediately, but Adam and Chloe fall in love.  Their attempts to earn money and keep their families happy, however, keep backfiring.  First, Adam and Chloe try to livecast their relationship to a Vuuv audience.  Then, the Campbells allow a Vuuv to roleplay as their father figure.  Finally,  Adam's artistic talents are noticed by the Vuuv.

Written and directed by Cory Finley, and based on the novel by M. T. Anderson, "Landscape with an Invisible Hand" takes aim at social media figures, tech conglomerates, rich elites, and clueless capitalists by mirroring their behavior in the Vuuv invaders and colonizers.  The worldbuilding here is fascinating, showing how the Vuuv have wormed their way into every part of human life, and how so much of their power comes from human complacency.  We don't see much of the original meeting between Vuuvs and humans, but their day to day interactions speak volumes.  The average Vuuv is not stronger or smarter than the average human - they just have more power and money, so they feel entitled to behave like the superior species.   Conversely, you have Chloe's family - her traumatized father (Josh Hamilton) and contemptuous brother (Michael Gandolfini) - who are jealous and  hostile in spite of the Campbells' generosity, and desperate to curry favor with the Vuuv to put themselves higher up on the social ladder.  Their behavior contrasts with the Campbells, who are more willing to question the Vuuv and resist the measures designed to make humans subservient.  

"Landscape" sometimes feels like it's hopping between too many different targets and topics, at the expense of the characters.  The whole film could have been about the livecasting, and the way that the performative aspect of Adam and Chloe's relationship affects their behavior.  However, I like that the film aims for bigger targets and wants to explore more of this disturbing utopia.  The Vuuv are both repellant and fascinating, and extremely memorable.  They're so non-threatening in person, and yet so immediately off-putting, I couldn't stop staring at them whenever one appeared onscreen.  The Vuuv's tactics are both sinister and yet at the same time extremely familiar.  I think the movie works so well because the Vuuv dystopia is a barely exaggerated version of our own world, and the Vuuv are horrible in very human ways.  I love that the most ruinous thing they do to Adam is to threaten a lawsuit. 

Trying to compare this to other alien invasion movies is a challenge.  "They Live" is similar, but the subterfuge is totally unnecessary, of course.  The same goes for "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."  Why waste so much time coming up with these fiendish plots, when the mechanism for conquering humanity is right here, having been developed and put in practice by humans themselves?

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"Schmigadoon!" Year One

I binged the first two seasons of Apple's "Schmigadoon!" over two days.  Each season is only six episodes, and the episodes are only around thirty minutes apiece, so this wasn't difficult.  "Schmigadoon!" is a series I kept putting off, being wary of the first season's aggressively wholesome vibes.  However, when the second season started airing, and I finally got it into my head that this wasn't just a musical parody show, but a show that was a [i]parody of musicals[/i], I was onboard.

Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) and Melissa (Cecily Strong) are two New York doctors in love, who go on a backpacking retreat together to work out some relationship tensions.  They wind up in the strange little town of Schmigadoon, where everyone behaves as if they're in a Golden Age 1950s musical, breaking out into song and dance numbers at every opportunity.  When Josh and Melissa discover they're stuck there, and can only leave when they find true love, their relationship is further jeopardized.  

Created by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio, with every episode in the first season directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, and with a ton of Broadway vets in the cast, "Schmigadoon!" takes the assignment of being a musical pastiche very seriously.  The songs are catchy, the performances are keen, and the production design has a wonderful look of unreality about it, aping the look of the old MGM spectaculars.  I've seen a good amount of musicals from this era, enough to pick out some of the references to specific shows, songs, and characters.  The title comes from "Brigadoon," and the various townsfolk share a lot in common with the ones found in  "The Music Man," "Oklahoma," "Carousel," and "The Sound of Music."  You have the insightful schoolmarm Emma (Ariana DeBose), stern Doc Lopez (Jaime Camil), the gregarious Mayor Menlove (Alan Cumming), the meek Reverend Layton (Fred Armisen), his uptight wife Mildred (Kristen Chenoweth), the rapscallion carnie Danny (Aaron Tveit), and the teenage temptress Betsy (Dove Cameron).  Martin Short also shows up for a cameo as the leprechaun from "Finian's Rainbow."     

Josh, who doesn't like musicals, and Melissa, who does, find themselves inhabiting new roles and getting caught up in some familiar plots as they search for love.  A lot of the show's humor comes from the two of them pointing out and commenting on the absurdity of the tropes they see, and occasionally warping them to their own ends.  Melissa, for instance, delivers a cheerful sex-ed lesson to two expectant parents with a tune very reminiscent of "Do-Re-Mi" from "The Sound of Music."  She later shuts down a dream sequence ballet before it can get underway, grumbling that nobody likes them.  However, "Schmigadoon!" also plays the love story of Josh and Melissa straight.  Most episodes begin with a flashback to important moments in their relationship, and we're definitely supposed to root for them to end up together.

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who isn't a fan of musicals, because there are a lot of musical numbers in the show, put together by people who clearly love all the over-the-top theatricality that they're making fun of.  My biggest complaint with the first season is that they don't go big enough, or give enough of the individual performers the chance to shine the way they do in the second.  There are plenty of big set pieces and solos, like Kristin Chenoweth singing "Tribulation," the "Schmigadoon!" version of "Trouble" from "The Music Man," but her villain character is so dour, it takes a lot of the fun out of it.  Jane Krakowski shows up for two episodes to play a romantic rival for Melissa, and disappears just as she's starting to get interesting.

I like the first season of "Schmigadoon!" fine as sweet, feel-good entertainment, just the way I like the musicals that it's lampooning.  However, the second season is such an improvement, I can't help but think of these initial episodes as necessary setup for far better to come.  But more on that next time.       

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No Beef With "Beef"

It took me several episodes to get into the new Netflix series "Beef," starring Steven Yeun and Ali Wong as two Southern California residents, who get into an escalating feud after a road rage incident.  The show is very good - well acted, well written, great production, very entertaining, and plenty of substance - but it has the kind of anxiety-inducing story that I have trouble with.  I can sit through a movie like "Uncut Gems" for two hours without much trouble.  "Beef, " however, is ten hours of watching these two people teetering on the brink of self-destruction, and that's not my idea of a good time.  Because of Wong's involvement, I assumed this would be more of a comedy than it turned out to be.  There are some laughs, but mostly of the cringe and groan variety.   

Part of the issue is that Danny (Cho) and Amy (Ali Wong) are pretty awful people from the outset, before we learn how terrible they actually are.  Danny is a down-on-his-luck contractor, who owes too much money to a grifter cousin named Isaac (David Choe), and supports a shiftless younger brother named Paul (Young Mazino).  Amy is a businesswoman with a young daughter, June (Remy Holt), and a stay-at-home artist husband, George (Joseph Lee).  She's hoping to sell her business to the uber-rich Jordan (Maria Bello), so she can finally work less and spend more time at home.  Despite being on opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, Danny and Amy are both unhappy and full of rage.  The feud gives them an outlet for these feelings, but at a significant cost.       

The first three episodes of "Beef" nearly made me quit, because they were all about setting up why Danny and Amy were so angry, with only minimal time devoted to any actual feuding.  I'm an Asian-American who grew up in So-Cal, and recognized a little too much of my own upbringing here.  Amy sucking up to the suffocatingly crunchy art crowd and Danny's endless hustle for menial jobs immediately brought up uncomfortable memories that I wasn't keen on revisiting.  "Beef," created by Lee Sung Jin, clearly contains biographical elements from his own experiences as an Asian-American immigrant, and I noticed a few details from Steven Yeun and Ali Wong's actual lives too.  So, "Beef" feels like a very personal project for everyone involved.  I'm glad I stuck with the show, because all the setup does pay off, the pace does pick up, and there are some good twists and turns to keep things interesting.  

I wound up appreciating "Beef" more as a character study of two very troubled people than as a feud story.  This is the first mostly dramatic role I've seen Ali Wong play, and she's excellent.  We've seen plenty of stories about dissatisfied women blowing up their seemingly perfect lives, but the specificity here really won me over.  Likewise, Steven Yeun has a lot of experience playing scumbags, but Danny is sympathetic in spite of his many faults.  The quality of the performances goes a long way in helping to keep the story palatable as tensions escalate and the two leads take turns reaching new lows.  "Beef" goes exactly where you think it will, with a crazy finale full of violence and mayhem, but all the buildup makes it feel earned.  And I suspect the best episode is actually the one that takes place in the middle of the season, where everything is going fine for Amy and Danny.  And it drives them both crazy.  

I also want to spread some kudos to the supporting cast, many of them playing characters who aren't quite what they seem to be at first glance - Paul, George, George's mother Fumi (Patti Yasutake), and the nosy neighbor Naomi (Ashley Park).  "Beef" does a good job of efficiently subverting expectations and peeling back everyone's layers to show us different sides of people we think we know.  This is also true of Amy and Danny, who are innately more alike than they are different.  One of the best messages in "Beef" is that Asian-Americans from different backgrounds share more common culture than they think.  Amy is Chinese, Danny and Paul are Korean, and George and Fumi are Japanese, but in the end I doubt any viewer could distinguish which was which.     

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I Get a Kick Out of "Renfield"

"Renfield" is a comedy about Dracula's famous minion, Renfield (Nicholas Hoult), who has survived along with his famous master to the present day, where he's joined a support group for codependents trying to get out from under the thumb of the narcissistic people in their lives.  After a century of doing the bidding of Dracula (Nicolas Cage) - including finding victims for him while he recuperates from his last skirmish with holy men - Renfield wants out.  In the process, he's also going to make friends with Rebecca (Awkwafina), a local cop, who is trying to bring down the Lobo criminal organization, headed by the unscrupulous Bellafrancesca (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and her slimy son Teddy (Ben Schwartz).  

There are a lot of good ideas in "Renfield."  Nicolas Cage getting his ham on as the Prince of Darkness is a very good idea, and practically worth the cost of the ticket alone.  Nicholas Hoult is also a good choice for Renfield, managing a good mix of pathetic reprobate, wounded puppy, and cheerfully violent maniac.  I even like Awkwafina in the role of the cop love interest, whose aggressive comic sensibility actually works to her advantage in the part.  If you know your vampire lore, "Renfield" brings back all the old hits, from Dracula having mesmerism and transformation powers, to the rules about vampires having to be invited in, to Renfield's powers being activated only when he consumes live insects.  

As a film nerd, I love that this movie is set up as a direct sequel to the 1931 "Dracula" starring Bela Lugosi.  We even get a few famous scenes from "Dracula" replayed, but with Cage and Hoult digitally inserted.  And as an action nerd, I appreciate the sheer absurdity of the fight sequences.  This is the kind of movie where Dracula and Renfield are so overpowered, they can literally rip limbs off their opponents, and turn them into an explosion of gore with a punch.  This is the bloodiest studio film I've seen in a long while, but the violence isn't  really horrific because it's so cartoonishly over-the-top.  Combined with the gross-out factor of the bug-eating, and Dracula looking particularly nasty during the early parts of the film while he's in recovery, "Renfield" has a good chance of making you wince and squirm.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of time taken up by the tepid subplot with the police and the Lobo organization.  This is clearly just a way to generate cannon fodder for the vampiric shenanigans, but it's handled pretty poorly, and a lot of scenes fall flat.  Frankly, any scene without Hoult or Cage just couldn't hold my interest.  And Hoult and Cage work so well together onscreen, it's a shame that most of the film is about Renfield avoiding Dracula.  The interesting parts of the movie are the character interactions, and as fun as the fights are, you could have taken a lot of them out.  There are indications that the film originally looked very different, with major scenes ending up on the cutting room floor, including some kind of musical number with dancing bugs.  

"Renfield" is a lot of fun, but not as fun as it could have been.  It feels like there were a lot of compromises made behind the scenes, and this is the version that everybody could agree on, but wasn't quite what anybody wanted.  A lot of this material is already very familiar thanks to "What We Do in the Shadows," and while Nicolas Cage goes full Nicolas Cage, it's not for nearly long enough.  A couple more drafts, a few tweaks here and there, and this would have been a much better movie.  It's fine for what it is right now, but I'll be fast forwarding through at least half of the running time on any rewatches.  

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"The Great," Year Three

Mild spoilers for the first two seasons ahead.

I'll be disappointed if there's a fourth season of "The Great," because the third wraps up the series so nicely.  I'm sure the show could have gone on for a few more years, but Tony McNamara and the other creatives wisely decided to steer their "occasionally true" story of Catherine the Great back toward actual history.  This is the season where consequences finally catch up to many of the characters, and Catherine sheds some of her naiveté to truly become a formidable empress.    

The first part of the season finds Catherine and Peter in an uneasy truce after their latest clash, with everyone else at court still nervously sorting out their allegiances.  Catherine elevates Elizabeth and Archie into the position of her primary advisors, and is on the outs with Marial.  Grigor finds himself being supplanted as Peter's best friend by King Hugo (Freddie Fox), who is still at the Russian court with Queen Agnes (Grace Molony), trying to find support for retaking Sweden.  George enthusiastically joins Catherine's side, though no one can tell if she means it.  Velementov becomes ill and Peter's double Pugachev takes on a new role.  And the body count increases significantly.

After two seasons of chaos and silliness, it's nice to discover that "The Great" can take itself seriously when it wants to.  While there's still regular bawdiness and comic violence this year, the show plays Catherine and Peter's relationship troubles and existential crises straight.  The grieving process, in particular, is treated with admirable care and consideration.  The major dilemma this season is dealing with a peasant uprising that threatens Catherine's reign, and challenges some of her deepest assumptions about herself and her right to rule.  I like that Catherine herself is positioned as an antagonist as she goes through periods of instability.  As she grows more comfortable with power, she acts more like Peter - making decisions at a whim, terrifying her court, and habitually flinging glassware.  Her assaults on Russian tradition grow more and more contentious, until the backlash is so extreme she can no longer ignore it.  She's exasperating, unreasonable, and hypocritical this year, and finally has to become self-aware.   

The last few episodes where Catherine finally grows into her power are pretty thrilling to see, but I'm still primarily here for the comedy, and the ensemble does not let me down.  Freddie Fox and Grace Molony are fantastic as the scheming Swedes, who decide seduction is the best path to gaining allies.  A big highlight is Marial's prepubescent husband Maxim (Henry Meredith), who becomes an active participant in all the court intrigue this year.  He reveals a love of fancy shoes and bloodshed, challenging Grigor to a duel in the second episode, and plotting assassinations by the end of the season.  George's devious maid Petra (Emily Coates) also gets an upgrade to spy, blackmailer, and co-conspirator.  However, Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult continue to wipe the floor with everyone, and Hoult is pulling double duty this year as both Peter and his grimy double Pugachev.  

    

The writing remains very good.  I'm impressed that McNamara and his fellow writers managed to come to satisfying conclusions for just about everyone in the sprawling cast - well, except Orlo, who's primarily a punchline this year.  If you've had enough of the royals, Elizabeth, Marial, and Grigor are all great to follow through this season, finally working out what they really want and who they really want.  "The Great" also continues to be the most sex-positive show on any network or service, with people constantly shown having and enjoying sex.  That's still far more of a rarity than it should be.  

I'm going to miss "The Great," but this is a clear endpoint for the series, and we're lucky to have had it go on for as long as it did.  I'll probably put together a Top Ten list for individual episodes where I'll go into some spoilers and discuss the events of this season in more detail.  So stay tuned.    

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