cherold Reviews

Rustin (2023)

The march and the man behind it

[8/10 · 17 April 2024]

Rustin is the story of activist Bayard Rustin's scramble to create one of the biggest events of the civil rights event, an event that for most people is considered something MLK did.

What Rustin is not is a "biopic," as some describe it. I don't like biopics, because I watch them and ask, would I care at all if this person weren't famous. Yes, there is some biographical info in here, but this is primarily a gripping movie about the building of a pivotal moment in an important movement.

So it drives me crazy when people say this is a "typical biopic." This is not, guy born, finds his calling, goes through travails, triumphs, fades. This is, here's a short electrifying period in the life of a really interesting guy.

The story is an interesting one full of grand ambitions, schemers, heroes, victims, compromises, and deals. It is a fascinating civil rights tale that doesn't get the attention it should.

The cast is solid. Colman Domingo is very good as the fiery, brilliant Rustin, although his performance pales a little in comparison with the absolutely stunning portrayal of Rustin by Griffin Matthews in the 4th season of Genius, and Aml Ameen, who I fondly remember from the first season of Sense8, makes a an excellent MLK.

Ignore any review that calls this a biopic. Recommended.

Peninsula (2020)

weakest entry to date in the Train to Busan series

[6/10 · 15 April 2024]

Yeon Sang-ho has made 3 zombie flicks so far - the incredible Train to Busan, the excellent animated prequel Seoul Station, and now the rather meh sequel Peninsula. Each takes place in the same world at different times, and each has its distinct approach, so you should go into this movie understanding that it isn't remotely like Busan except for having bunches of zombies.

This time around, the approach is action adventure built on a heist/suicide-mission scenario. 4 people go deep into zombie territory in search of treasure, and of course everything goes wrong.

The result is a mixed bag. Some of the action is fun, and the movie finds interesting ways of battling zombie hordes, who run pellmell, including into each other in big pile-ups. The CGI is weak - not only do the zombies look fake - the entire city is clearly built out of mediocre CGI. There are a couple of entertaining kids and an intense performance by Kim Min-jae as a canny psycho.

In parts, the movie is brutal and entertaining, but it's got some severe pacing issues. There's a chunk in the middle that tries and fails to do a little character development and just brings the whole movie to a standstill. Even worse is the final 15 minutes, which tries to milk a tremendous amount of pathos from the situation by making it go on way longer than it should - it's basically a 5 minute scene stretched out until it breaks, so the closest thing it creates to emotion is irritation.

I feel if you edited out about a half an hour of this movie it would be a snappy little zombie thriller that still wouldn't be as good as the two previous films but would be worth a watch. But as is, it's something you can easily skip.

Zero Effect (1998)

OMG how do people like this?

[4/10 · 14 April 2024]

Okay, I didn't know anything about this except from the description on my flight's entertainment system, but a detective comedy is very much something I'm prone to like and it had good stars so I took a look.

The movie begins with a huge chunk of exposition in which Ben Stiller simply relates stuff about his employer, both praising him to a potential client and lambasting him in a bar. This is very tedious and goes on quite a while.

Then we finally meet the genius detective, Pullman, and he is just the most annoying person in the world. Not funny annoying, just irksome and unpleasant.

It was so dumb and annoying that I had to stop. Does it get better? Do the positive reviews here represent that after a really dreadful, poorly constructed, badly written start the movie somehow becomes great? It's possible. But even trapped on an airplane I couldn't watch anymore.

Unpregnant (2020)

Hilarious road trip movie

[9/10 · 14 April 2024]

In Unpregnant, a teenager finds herself pregnant and unable to get an abortion in her state without telling her mom. So she presses an ex-friend with a car into a road trip. And crazy things happen.

There are a lot of good things in this movie, but the best is Barbie Ferreira's hilarious performance as the quirky ex-friend.

During the road trip the two women relive past times in bad and good ways, argue, act supportive, act unsupportive, and meet some real weirdos, including a couple that become involved in a wildly funny chase sequence.

This movie treats the third rail of abortion with a light but persistant touch. The movie is unapologetic - Haley Lu Richardson's pregnant girl isn't required to explain or agonize on her decision - she is a decisive girl who has made a decision and that's just what's happening. The movie's politics are really subtext most of the way through, with the hijinx in the foreground, but it does eventually have some sharp commentary on the insanity of what Richardson is forced to go through.

I imagine if you're pro-forced-birth you will find this film horrendous on many levels, but if you're not, this is just terrific fun that hits the road trip sweet spot of wacky adventures and touching realizations.

Highly recommended.

Suicide Squad (2016)

most notably for giving us Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn, but generally ok

[6/10 · 14 April 2024]

This movie has a terrible reputation, but after seeing Margot Robbie's amazing performance as Harley Quinn in two later films, I thought I'd check this out. And while it's not great, it proved to be a reasonably enjoyable movie to watch on an airplane.

The movie centers around anti-terrorist Amanda Waller's project of using psychotic super villains to fight terrorism. This idea proves to be just as terrible as you would expect, and most of the movie is Waller trying to clean up the mess she made.

While the movie has some good action sequences and excellent performances from Robbie, Will Smith, and Viola Davis, it is poorly constructed. The first part of the movie is a series of minisodes introducing the main super villains, which just means the actual movie doesn't get started until maybe a third of the way through. Lots of movies manage to integrate character introductions into the story itself, but this movie can't be bothered.

Throughout, characters make odd choices, action varies in quality, and everything is just kind of ... not quite satisfying.

Even Robbie's gleeful psycho feels a bit like a prototype that still needs some work - there are just moments that don't feel true to her character, although perhaps I'm influenced by her subsequent roles.

Anyway, there are parts of a good movie here, and even if those parts are greater than the whole, this movie can be genuinely entertaining in spurts and is worth watching if your options are limited because Norse Air doesn't offer very many movies.

Hellbound (2021– )

Trailer: thrilling horror - Series: Talk Talk Talk

[4/10 · 14 April 2024]

I think Netflix did a disservice to Hellbound by making it look exciting in the trailer. That was easy to do, since the opening is full of disturbing action, and while the CGI was only okay and it wasn't a tremendously compelling scene, it was decent.

But after that scene, the episode becomes people talking about morality. It's not particularly interesting dialogue but there sure is a lot of it, with everyone very serious and morose.

Every conversation goes on too long. Then there's the broadcast by some extremist which is super annoying and seems to go on forever. I don't know whether it does, in fact, go on forever, because after what felt about 10 minutes of nonsense ranting I had enough and stopped watching.

The thing is, Netflix should have made an honest trailer showing people talking about religion and morality and justice. And then the people who thought that was a great trailer would have been the people to watch this and it would have a higher IMDB rating.

If you want chat, this is the series for you. If you want something from the director of Train to Busan that in the same thrillride style as that movie, expect to be disappointed.

Full River Red (2023)

a perplexing movie that would probably make sense if you were Chinese

[6/10 · 14 April 2024]

This is a tough movie to get a hold of. The producers apparently described it as a suspense movie with comedic elements, but it is rarely either funny or suspenseful. I'd say it's in part a drama of intrigue, part a mystery, but mainly I'd call it a horror movie because it's got a brutal body count and many deaths are horrifically cruel.

In fact, for me what's most interesting about the movie is how well it portrays a world where the pecking order involves who can kill who, making life cheap as people use murder to impress or jockey for position. It's actually a good example of a systemic issue - it's a kill or be killed world and there's really no way out.

The story involves a murder investigation, at least at first, but there are all sorts of twists and turns along the way. It's convoluted and at times I got lost.

But finally at the end the central driving force of everything is revealed, and it made ZERO sense to me. I had to do a bunch of research to figure out the meaning. Full River Red is apparently a poem schoolchildren learn in China but if you don't know the poem or Chinese history then the denouement is incomprehensible.

I'm not saying this as a criticism - it's perfectly fine to make a movie that only makes sense to the people of the country it's made in. I'm just offering a warning that the ending may not resonate as well if you didn't grow up in China.

Overall, I liked Full River Red but didn't love it. It's genuinely engrossing. The cast is good, particularly Teng Shen and Wang Jiayi. The score by Hong Han is amazing, with all these crazy punk songs that I've read are rocked-out Chinese folk songs. But the weird genre stew, the unpleasant brutality, and the puzzling-until-you-research-it ending made it less enthralling than the best of director Yimou Zhang's films.

Wonka (2023)

instead of a sense of wonder, I just wonder ... WHY?

[6/10 · 11 April 2024]

My first response to the first song in Wonka was, wow, this is a really bad song. Was it the worst song in the movie? Not necessarily. But it was certainly not a song you should start a musical with.

The music is in service of the story of a young chocolate maker who comes to the big city and has various travails that he faces with equanimity and magic. He quickly acquires some powerful enemies and powerless friends and a bunch of not-especially interesting stuff happens.

While I single out the songs, the movie is also notable for the weakness of its world building. You have this town where everyone is paid in chocolate and there's much evilness but none of it holds together.

I always find Timothée Chalamet irritating, and here is no exception. The rest of the cast tries their best, and their best is pretty good, but the only genuinely fun performance is by Hugh Grant, who makes a terrific snarky Oompa Loompa.

Visually the movie is colorful and fun, and there are two good songs - both listed from the Gene Wilder Wonka - and one surprisingly decent number for Wonka's shop opening.

The story is full of holes and coincidences, but this is very much a kids movie and I guess if you're a kid you can overlook a lot. But if you're an adult I wouldn't recommend this.

The Portable Door (2023)

Harry Potter and the Entry Level Job

[7/10 · 11 April 2024]

In The Portable Door, a nebbish gets a job at a company where at first no one will explain what the company is or what he does at it. Turns out it's a sorcery shop and all the executives seem to be out to get each other.

It's all very light and amusing, with good performances. At the same time, it sometimes seems to be trying to hard to be quirky for the sake of being quirky, and in the second half things get a little jumbled and there were elements I couldn't follow and only figured out far past when they should have been clear.

I'd never heard of this movie when I found it listed on an airplane's entertainment system, and only watched it because I liked the title, but I did really enjoy it overall and would recommend it even if you're on solid ground.

Constellation (2024– )

story more intriguing than the people

[5/10 · 10 April 2024]

The first episode of this series about an astronaut caught up in a space mishap just barely got me to watch the second episode. It began slowly, as you watched uninteresting characters do and say uninteresting things.

But when the mishap came it brought just a little life into the procedings. And the weird end made me curious what would come next.

In the second episode there was a little more intriguing weirdness, a little more interesting mishap drama, and the same amount of draggy parts and bland characters.

If this were a movie, where the plot points came more quickly (from reading the wikipedia synopsis there are lots of plot points), then perhaps the bland characters wouldn't matter much. If I cared about the characters, they would help propel the story. For that matter, if the series didn't keep thinking I *should* care about their cardboard characters and just spent less time trying to generate feelings of caring, I might have given this another chance.

But ultimately the lack of any interesting people combined with the insufferable slowness is more than I could take.

Not recommended.

Don't Look Deeper (2020)

engaging sci-fi that deserved more attention than it got

[8/10 · 24 March 2024]

Don't Look Deeper is a solid entry in the people-who-discover-they're-actually-robots genre. The story is well told, as Aisha figures out what's going on and deals with friends and enemies. While I didn't realize it until after I watched it, the series was created by the guy who created the terrific teen angst sci-fi series Impulse, which is slightly similar to this.

Don't Look Deeper was one of the series on the short-lived streaming platform's Quibi. These series were all made up on 9-minute episodes, and watching this in 9 minute chunks isn't ideal. But the series was edited into a 2-hour movie and watched that way it moves very smoothly - I rarely thought, ah, there's the 9-minute transition.

The cast is very good, the story moves quickly and has some interesting twists and turns, and the ending is quite good for a TV series setting up its second season.

Unfortunately, Quibi folded so that second season never happened. But it's not terrible to end this way, since the outlines of the future are clear.

This is really enjoyable, and I feel like the low rating is probably mainly a function of people not liking the weird 9-minute format. But watch it as a movie or binge the entire season at once and it's a really excellent sci-fi drama.

Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946)

intriguing moments

[6/10 · 23 March 2024]

Maya Deren's films are generally either surrealist non-narratives or dance/motion films. This one is a bit of both.

The film starts with Deren in what is essentially a cameo as a lady with some yarn, but it mainly follows a young woman wondering through a puzzling world. The highlight of the film is an extended party scene. It's a dance based on the way people move when they're at a party, pushing through, greeting people, moving on. Perhaps it's wrong to say it's a dance - it's a study in movement, and it's not until you see that movements are repeating that it's really clear it's choreographed.

There's dancing that's closer to what we think of as dancing after that, but that was only mildly interesting.

Honestly this probably would have been a better film if it had been nothing but the party. But it's genuinely interesting.

At Land (1944)

Interesting

[7/10 · 23 March 2024]

Maya Deren's second film is closest in spirit to her first, the brilliant Meshes of the Afternoon, although it has a less ingenious structure and didn't strike me as deeply. Deren plays a woman washed to shore who goes on an Odyssey through space and time - I guess, it's hard to really know. It has some very striking and curious moments and is worth seeing.

I'll say two things about my reaction to the film. First, I came across a version on Youtube that had been rescored. That score is to me less evocative than the original, which I found later on the Internet Archive, where someone has uploaded all her works. Had my first experience been with this score it might have affected my overall impression.

Also, I saw Meshes when I was a twenty-something film student and I saw At Land as a sixty-something guy. I might have had a stronger reaction in film school, but this film just never crossed my path.

My point being that a younger me might have liked this better, but still not as well as Meshes.

Argylle (2024)

a bold, terrible vision

[4/10 · 18 March 2024]

Some movies are bad because they're made by bean counters, but Argylle is clearly the distinctive vision of director Matthew Vaughn. Unfortunately, it's a really annoying vision.

The movie starts off well enough - sure, the look is the lowest of low budget action but it moves pretty well. It's a prologue to the actual story about a spy novelist and her uncanny-valley cat.

If you watch the trailer, you can get a good idea of how this movie could have been done. There's an action scene on a train that looks entertaining, and would, in fact, have been entertaining if Vaughn didn't do this confused multiple-reality thing (that the trailer editor wisely left out). A little of that might have worked, but there's a LOT of it, and in the next action scene, there's a lot more.

The movie also almost immediately doesn't make sense. I don't just mean the central premise, which is actually appealingly kooky. I mean that the spy is really just horrendously bad at all aspects of the job except fighting, which is weird. And the way he connects with the writer is inexplicable. And the bad guys are - I don't know what was going on there.

Anyway, I gave up around the "why aren't you crushing skulls" part of the movie, but I looked up the plot in wikipedia and it seems that the nonsense I saw is the least nonsensical part of the movie.

The cast is pretty good. There is clearly enough material to get a good trailer out of this. But ultimately this is just a disaster.

Madame Web (2024)

the great mystery of this movie's existence

[3/10 · 18 March 2024]

There are movies that, even though they are critically and popularly condemned, are pretty enjoyable, like The Marvels.

This is not one of those movies.

It's really hard to think of this as being a "movie" at all. That implies a level of thought and effort that I don't see. It's not just that the scenes are lackluster and nothing much happens. It's not just that the action scenes are rare and unexciting. It's not even that once I decided to just keep skipping forward looking for action scenes (because everything was just so boring) I realized that like half this movie is a bunch of teen girls bonding or something, it's not that the movie doesn't seem to have an ending, just a setup for a sequel that will never take place.

I think mainly it's the sense that no one involved was interested in making a movie. No one was trying to come up with a story, or characters, or interesting events. The movie is the equivalent of a quarterly financial report written at the last minute by someone who just got fired and its their last day at work. It's just ... no one seems to have wanted to make this.

It's weird, because there are movies that get pulled by studios where the makers are really upset, but you can't imagine anyone complaining if this had been scrapped. Everyone would have been, oh good, one less terrible thing on my resume.

This movie isn't even fun bad. It's just the absence of a movie.

Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

A middling movie with a couple of really good performances

[7/10 · 16 March 2024]

Rebel Without a Cause is a classic movie, but it was never a really good movie. It's just a 50s teen panic movie with a little extra gloss.

The film begins in a police station where all the cops seem like helpful social workers. After a brief look at James Dean we get a tedious scene of Natalie Wood crying about her father that drags on forever, but when James Dean starts chewing the furniture it gets a little more interesting, and Sal Mineo keeps things going as a sad little psycho.

These three introduce the basic concept, which is teens are miserable and don't quite know why.

That's pretty much it for the internal lives of these characters - angst and anger - but it's more than the adults get. Their role is to simply be object for the teens to interact with, and they have no internal lives of their own. Sometimes you can guess what's going on - Natalie's father is clearly freaked out by her puberty, but you get that from the script, not from his performance.

Perhaps that makes sense - it's a teens-eye movie, so like the Charlie Brown cartoons adults are just things that go waa-waa-waa and have no purpose outside of childraising. But it's a clunky construct.

Anyway, James Dean can't make friends, Natalie is in a gang that picks on him for no good reason, and Sal seems to want Dean as his daddy, since the real one is gone. There's some fighting, a famous "chicken" race, Dean's dad in a frilly apron, and Dean's mother looking directly at the camera and saying "you never realize something like this could happen to your child" in a "THIS IS THE MESSAGE" kind of way.

The characters are poorly developed, and while Wood's animalistic pleasure in the violence is rather fascinating her character overall makes a series of absurd left turns that makes her almost as much of a prop as the parents.

But none of that takes away from Dean, who yes, can be a bit much, but who is a riveting presence who fully commits. Without Dean and Mineo this would be just another forgotten teen exploitation film, but with them it's worthwhile.

Sanditon (2019–2023)

badly written

[6/10 · 12 March 2024]

The English period piece Sanditon starts as the genial Charlotte, played charmingly by Rose Williams, helps someone and is inexplicably rewarded with a free trip to a resort. There she meets a few people, one of whom is an old rich lady who goes on a seemingly endless rant, and goes into the water.

Most of that first episode is devoid of dramatic tension and is pretty but dull, but right at the end a little tension clumsily bursts into view.

In the second episode, there's loads of dramatic tension and the old lady inexplicably insults an heiress she is eyeing for a relative. I don't mean an insult in passing, I mean she literally harangues the young woman at a table full of horrified guests.

While the blandness and the lack of interesting things is my main objection to Sanditon, I want to spend a little time discussing exactly how badly written the old lady is, because it's truly extraordinary.

That rant in the first episode was long and dull, exposition the audience neither needed nor wanted. The dinner part scene is utterly perplexing - it's not just mean spirited by tactically inept.

And yet, while it's hard to say for certain from only two episodes, I don't think the old lady is meant to be an idiot. I think she's meant to be one of those say-what-they-think old ladies like the one in Downton Abbey.

But not only is her dialogue tedious, but she fails in the area that makes mean old ladies appealing in English period pieces - all insults must be filtered through an English upperclass passive-aggressive sensibility. But Sanditon's old lady is just a dumb boor.

The cast is good, especially Williams, and really, I don't blame the actress playing the old lady, because I can't think of any sort of acting that could overcome such a badly written character.

The series has the lovely look of a proper period piece, but it veers from tedious to infuriating with nothing in between. It is not worthwhile.

Saltburn (2023)

sharp satire, good performances, bad plotting

[6/10 · 4 March 2024]

Saltburn tells the story of Oliver, an awkward young man who befriends a rich guy at Oxford and meets his odd, entitled family.

At first, the movie is quite good. Barry Keoghan is ecellent as the awkward working class protagonist struggling to keep up with the upper classes. Jacob Elordi is appropriately charming. The folks at Saltburn all do great playing different flavors of odd - I particularly like Alison Oliver as the sister.

The movie is perhaps at its most entertaining when it first gets to the rich guy's home, a crazy mansion at Saltburn filled with snotty, gossipy, and profoundly weird characters. At the same time, I think that's when things start to go off the rails, because up until then the people felt fairly real but the family is quite cartoonish. It's the time when I started wondering - what exactly *is* this movie?

The bigger problem turns out to be the character(s) of Oliver. It's not that he isn't who he seems to be - that's a perfectly acceptable and not especially shocking twist. The issue is that his character shifts in weird ways. He's awkward and shy. He's weirdly mesmerizing and powerful. He's nice and friendly. He's creepy. And he just switches from one to the next and back with no one seeming to think it's weird or wondering why he's a totally different person than he was five hours ago. They should all be saying, hey, do you think Oliver has multiple personalities? But they don't. (And he doesn't - he's just badly written.)

Then there's the actual story, which culminates with a lot of death that no one finds suspicious and that, judging by the "big reveal" sequence at the end, writer/director Emerald Fennel thought was a lot less obvious than it actually was.

There are several problems here. First, the whole crime part makes no sense - there is no way no one these weird consecutive deaths wouldn't raise suspicions, no way Farleigh or the weird butler wouldn't at some point lay the sequence of events out to the police. It's ludicrous.

The crime section of the movie also drags things out much too long. There is a creepy scene in a graveyard that feels like the emotional endpoint of the film, and while stopping there would have left a lot of questions unresolved, it still *felt* like an endpoint. So everything after that feels like a really, really long coda. And this coda seems to move in slow motion, as though the director really hated to let go of the movie.

If the graveyard scene had ended the film, people would have wonder what happened after that, but this would have been far better than seeing what happened after that and thinking - Jesus, that was stupid. If you wanted to fill out the end, you could have had a quick series of newspaper clippings showing more death and Oliver's inheritance, and while it would still seem unlikely, at least it would be so quick we could see it more as a toss-off joke.

Fennel did a really good job with Promising Young Woman, which was dark but was *coherently* dark and had some depth. Perhaps since the main character was misunderstood, she decided this time around she would explain *everything* in great *detail* at the end, telling you everything that happened and how everyone really felt about everyone else, so that this time there would be no false assumptions.

Hopefully she does not do that again.

This movie, in spite of being genuinely entertaining and engrossing in parts, stumbles so badly at the end that it takes the whole movie down with it. So I don't recommend it, although it really does have good stuff in it.

American Fiction (2023)

Brilliant, flawless satire, but so much more

[9/10 · 1 March 2024]

In American Fiction, a black professor struggles trying to get his latest, very literary book published. Annoyed after seeing an author have tremendous success with a book in the poor-suffering-black-folk genre, he writes as a joke a pulpy novel about black criminals that is quickly embraced by way too many people.

The movie is sharply, bitterly funny from the first scene, in which a white student lectures him on racism. But while this movie is often hilarious, it is not one of these satires that uses its characters as props to make a point. The author, wonderfully played by Jeffrey Wright, is a prickly character dealing with family trauma, and it manages to delve into his traumas and flaws while never losing the humor.

The story keeps moving and never falls into the obvious choices, which is what makes the ending(s) so utterly brilliant.

This movie is funny, it is caustic, but it is also genuinely touching and heartfelt. I've seen about two thirds of the 2024 best picture oscar nominees and for me it's obvious that this should win (and won't).

One aside. I was pleasantly surprised when I looked at the user reviews to discover that they weren't filled with complaints about the portrayal of white people. This movie genuinely portrays white people as, at best, clueless idiots, and I was certain reviewers would be whining about that the way they have whined about the much less caustic portrayal of white folks in other movies. Perhaps this movie simply portrays white people so convincingly that we all have to say, well, yeah, that's fair.

Anyway, watch this movie, it's amazing.

May December (2023)

fascinating and hard to get a handle on

[8/10 · 1 March 2024]

An actor following someone around learning their mannerisms for a part is a not uncommon Hollywood trope. The actor stares at the person, mimics their motions, repeats their words, and gets on their nerves.

This is generally played for laughs, so perhaps that is one some people are inexplicably describing this off-kilter drama as a comedy.

But it's far from the typical set up. First off, the actress is studying a woman who had an affair with a kid, went to jail, and later married him. And now they're still married and they have kids.

But also, there's a sincerity to the approach of the actress, played by Natalie Portman. She seems really intent on understanding the character and the dynamics. The movie reminded me a little Drive My Car in that beyond the drama, this film is deeply concerned with the artistic process.

Whether there is a deeper understanding to be had is unclear. Julianne Moore as the ex-con is hard to pin down, and the truth of her relationship with husband isn't simple to parse.

The movie really leans into the discomfort of the situation. Moore has a darkness, her husband (Charles Melton) is stolid, and Portman, who is brilliant, falls somewhere between a studious actress and an unethical journalist.

At the end of this movie, I didn't know what to think of any of it. But I appreciate the way it pokes at the soft spots of my brain. I recommend it.

Somebody Somewhere (2022– )

I don't get the appeal, but my girlfriend loves it

[5/10 · 29 February 2024]

I didn't have much interest in this from the trailer, but it got rave reviews and my girlfriend had friends recommend it, so we watched it. And she loved it. And I have no idea why.

I mean, it's heartfelt, the performers are good, but it's only mildly, occasionally funny and the drama is rather maudlin. Mainly it's just kind of dull.

Because my girlfriend loves this, and she only watches TV in the evenings with me, I have had to suffer through it for two seasons. And I just can't get into it. I can say that it's an interesting, inclusive view of smalltown life. I can say it bravely fills the screen with unattractive people and a main character who is only fitfully likable, but I don't need brave, I need entertaining.

Anyway, people love this, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone with my taste in TV.

Monsieur Spade (2024)

A good center damaged by clunky bookends

[7/10 · 22 February 2024]

Just before watching this miniseries about a middle-aged Sam Spade living in France, I read an article about it's co-writer/creator/director Scott Frank and his success as a script doctor who could find a script's weaknesses and set them write. Unfortunately, Monsieur Spade needed Scott Frank the script doctor rather than Scott Frank the writer.

In Monsieur Spade, a middle-aged Sam Spade lives in France and stuff happens. But very little of it happens in episode one, which could be described as a slow boil, but is probably more accurately a low simmer with the heat turned up in the last 5 minutes. It's really rather dull, and takes its time for no good reason.

But then things pick up. A lot starts happening, people die, people threaten, Spade investigates and wisecracks, and it's all pretty good. True, there are odd bits, like the character of Jean-Pierre, who ultimately serves no purpose in the plot and isn't interesting in his own right. But for the most part it's entertaining.

And then in the final episode it goes totally off the rails in double-crosses and murders and schemes that don't make much sense, and then there's this endless discussion that more-or-less explains what happened in the most awkward and tedious way possible, and none of it holds together or offers any narrative satisfaction, and there are so many loose ends.

Come on, Scott Frank, the New Yorker painted you as having unerring instincts. WHERE DID THOSE INSTINCTS GO?

Overall, I actually did enjoy this. I like Clive Owen's Spade, even if he's no Bogie, and I liked the repartee, even if there's nothing nearly as memorable as almost every line of Maltese Falcon. The acting of the supporting cast is excellent, and the story does keep you interested before it falls apart.

Is it worth watching? Maybe. Just be forewarned.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2024– )

Why?

[4/10 · 19 February 2024]

Sometimes a TV series raises philosophical issues. Like, "what does this exist?" "Who thought it was a good idea?" "Who is it for?

This is such a series.

The first episode begins with a shootout. Are the people we briefly meet bad guys? Good guys? It's not at all apparent, although apparently there's a theory they're the characters from the movie this is based on. Anyway, it's brutal yet boring.

Then there's a weird job interview, which is creepy yet boring.

Then the two principles meet and have these aimless, pointless conversations that are just plain boring. Since the movie was a comedy you might think the conversation would be funny or something, but it's really not. Just bland chit chat.

Not only are their initial interactions dull but they don't really make sense based on who these people are and what their jobs are.

I made it through a half hour of the first episode. It might get better, but life is short.

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

Like watching genocidal paint dry

[5/10 · 19 February 2024]

It's predictable that critics would fall all over themselves praising a Scorcese film telling an important story. But based on the first two hours, which is all of this I've been able to slog through, Scorcese is telling the story very badly.

What makes this especially aggravating is any decent editor could vastly improve this movie. Because there's a compelling story and some solid moments, like the courtship scenes. But every brief, effective moment in the movie is counterbalanced with long, static conversations.

This, seriously, is most of the movie. People sitting and talking. It feels like the actors were told the outlines of the discussion and then just did an improv chat, being cautioned to speak methodically. And then it wasn't edited. At all. So these dialogue sections are endless.

They're also very tedious. Part of the problem is they often talk around in circles. This may be an attempt to portray the gangster approach of not saying things directly, but I doubt racist conspiracists were that subtle. Even if they were, it doesn't change the way the movie drags to a halt.

This movie is 3 1/2 hours long for absolutely no good reason. It's just Scorsese indulging his worst directorial tendencies.

If Scorsese punched a film critic in the face for four hours they would declare that a work of genius. Don't be fooled. This is not a good movie.

Maestro (2023)

great performances undone by distanced direction and disjointed script

[7/10 · 15 February 2024]

Maestro focuses on the relationship between conductor Leonard Bernstein and his actress wife, Felicia. And in the roles, Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan are phenomenal. Unfortunately, Cooper's direction and script undercut their performances.

First off, I want to say how much I love Mulligan. I have seen a lot of actors playing actors, but I've never before said, "hey, she's just like actresses who I'm friends with!" With her intensity and her mid-Atlantic accent, Mulligan perfectly captures that internalized theatricality that makes actors seem like they're performing while simultaneously just being themselves.

One of the strengths of the movie is that Leonard and Felicia seem like a very well-suited couple, with an intensity and a theatricality that creates a deep understanding.

The well acted, interesting characters give the movie a strong start, but soon the film loses itself. Cooper the director seems intent on keeping us away from the emotional center of the relationship. He either keeps the camera distant, as though we're watching a play, or zoomed in, as though we're watching an audition video. And to add to this, its sometimes unclear what a conversation is about, as characters talk about things without much grounding.

The overall effect is as though you are watching snippets of these people's lives through a window, or binoculars. The only moment in the second half of the film with any intimacy is Cooper's sweaty, weepy, bravura recreation of Bernstein's conducting in a church.

Why did Cooper create all this distance? My best guess is he saw Bergman's film and thought he'd like to do something like that but didn't understand why Bergman used that approach. Bergman's austere approach portrayed austere, intellectual, distanced people, so it made sense. The Bernsteins, on the other hand, were theatrical and intense and overwrought, and it would have made more directorial sense to lean into the emotion instead of muting it.

My second-best guess is he saw Woody Allen's Manhattan, which also uses distance with little intent beyond aesthetic pretensions, and he simply doesn't understand sophisticated storytelling.

Either way, Cooper ultimately squanders two great performances - one of them his.