"Accomplishments"
At home: By the second season of The Mandalorian, we're well on board - is Baby Yoda CUTER somehow? - and it's a good thing too, because in a number of places, it's definitely forcing episodes to act as back-door pilots for the the host of Star Wars shows to come. Could have been problematic in lesser hands, but if you're going to do turn one of the animated Jedi into a live action character for eventual series, you could do worse than make that episode riff on Lady Snowblood. Beautiful aesthetic. Star Wars fans also get characters from the films thrown in, which made the show a must-watch ON THE DAY lest surprises be spoiled. Especially true of the finale which not only made me catch my breath, but kind of made me teary-eyed too. Along the way, plenty of nice gasps. I'd say the one thing that didn't work for me was the Katee Sackhoff subplot which looks like it will bloom in Season 3. Though I loved her in Battlestar Galactica (and the links back and forth between SW and BSG are notable), in this franchise, I find her stiff and boring, which isn't all her fault when she has to spout a lot of Star-Warsy names in the same sentence, only highlighting how silly this universe actually is on that score. Personally, I could have done with more of the frog lady instead.
You can't have Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke and Chris O'Dowd in a movie and not have it come off as watchably charming. Juliet, Naked throws in the cute kid from Marriage Story for good measure, so yeah. But watchable as it is, the story feels unfinished and unsatisfying. One the one hand, the fact that we're denied closure on many of its threads could work as slice of life - life is messy, and so is these characters' lives, so don't try to force them into shape - but at the same time, it is very clearly a romcom, and its plot conveniences means that yes, plot is a thing that must be dealt with. Tapping into tropes, then not following up (which isn't the same as turning them on their heads) doesn't quite work. Similarly, I wish Juliet, Naked had more control over its themes. Byrne has been kept back by her daughterly duties and a boyfriend (O'Dowd) obsessed with a has-been rock star, and neglectful of her needs. She quite accidentally makes contact with said rock star (Hawke) who has abandoned music after screwing up the first half of his life, and so it goes. And I guess ultimately it's the loser fan who has the lesson to teach? (While clownishly learning none.) Or is it the random old woman captured in a photograph? Or are different characters learning different lessons? It can probably all fit under the umbrella them of following one's passions, but in that case, everything about Hawke's extended family becomes a distraction or complication and never really arrives at the same destination. Lovely to see these folks together in a movie, but the parts are stronger than their sum.
I love it when a movie uses its constraints to its advantage. Dave Made a Maze obviously has a small budget, but manages a unique fantasy/horror experience by making all its sets, monsters and effects out of cardboard and other arts n crafts supplies. Imbued with magical realism, the movie has Dave build a small-but-bigger-on-the-inside labyrinth out of cardboard boxes in his living room. His friends (and girlfriend played by the very watchable Meera Rohit Kumbhani) go in after him and discover it's a living, breathing organism filled with wonder, homemade beauty, strange transformations, and killer booby traps. The tone is definitely comedy, so the scares aren't very scary, and one of the friends is a very obnoxious documentary film maker who gives people cues as to what they should say. I find him a bit annoying, but he does support the theme of trying to force a creation into a certain shape and failing until you let go of your initial idea and let it dictate how it should be finished. Dave Made a Maze is as much about its own making as a film, ostensibly, as it is about the maze or the documentary about the maze. Written and directed by Bill Watterson, but not that Bill Watterson, though with its imagination come to life premise, I could have believed the creator of Calvin and Hobbes would have dreamed this up.
Post-Parasite, it's current and proper to check out the lesser-known films in Bong Joon-ho's filmography and 2009's Mother is totally worth the price of admission. Kim Hye-ja is impeccable as the eponymous, over-protective mother whose slow-witted son is charged with the murder of a school girl. There's only one thing to do and it's try to solve this murder mystery herself. But let's just say this is no Miss Marples. We're in the slums here, and desperation has been this woman's companion for a long time. What Bong Joon-ho is doing here is orchestrating a dance between cruel acts that are actually kindnesses, and kind acts that are actually cruelties, a most difficult balancing act that occasions some brutal twists of fate, well supported by his visuals. I especially like his close-ups, which are used for different effects, from the comic to the suspenseful, but always distinct and memorable. His interest in class struggle isn't as obvious in Mother, but people still prey on one another based on tiny increments of status. Mother is a more subtle work than much of what he's done since.
Ok, I'm not sure why the English title is Duckweed (the Chinese title translates as Ride the Winds, Break the Waves), but I let myself be completely charmed by this riff on Back to the Future. Director Han Han returns to a race car driver protagonist (after Pegasus), this one sent back in time after an accident to not so much change history as understand it and come to terms with it. Eddie Peng's character goes back to 1998 (there's some chuckles to be had with the retro here) and becomes friends with his estranged dad, gets to meet the mother he never knew, and get up to some amusing street gang action. Han knows how to have, not just with the car stuff, but with stylistic flourishes as well. Though it's played for laughs, the dad's inability to correctly predict the future fits perfectly with the older man he's become, and there's some poignancy to how Fate plays with all their lives. It gets a bit sentimental at the end - I would do away with the curtain call flashbacks - but not overly so given Peng's journey. I liked this a lot.
In the field of Die Hard rip-offs, Under Siege is a pretty good one. It uses the retiring USS Missouri as an interesting backdrop for the action, and a necessary one for the plot, and manages something most Die Hard rips forget - it individuates a large number of bad buys. They're memorable even if their demises aren't always, where they could easily have been washed away in the scenery-chewing tsunami that is Tommy Lee Jones. As a Steven Seagal flick, I don't think it gets any better than this. Though I'll never consider him among the top rank of action stars, he's a got a good character here. He's smart, funny, and really cares about food. Once the special forces training kicks in, being a cook remains part of his identity, and that's fun. Under Siege's biggest flaw is Miss July (Erika Eleniak), who is initially there to flash her chest and argue with the hero, but suddenly turns into a trained rookie marine sidekick, to finally end up where she began, an object to be kissed in the resolution, lack of chemistry or set-up be damned. If at least she'd wanted revenge for Gary Busey impersonating her, but no, she doesn't even see that bit.
Seagal's black ops cook is back in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, in which very similar things happen to him once more (this is just as Die Hard as Die Hard). Homegrown terrorists attempt to steal weapons from the U.S. government from a claustrophobic vehicle (this time a train, who doesn't love a good train movie?). Goes a bit far by including the same CIA douche and friendly Admiral as the first movie, they seem shoehorned in. Instead of Miss July, 17-year-old Katherine Heigl is his niece, but though she's trained in martial arts, she soon becomes more of a damsel in distress (sadly), while a plucky porter plays the actual sidekick who, like Miss July, starts as a complete idiot, and through osmosis eventually acts like a trained SEAL. This one is much less grounded than the first one (space lasers and all) and its villains aren't as good (though Eric Bogosian is still a lot of fun), and purely as an action movie, it's as entertaining as the first one. If I'd give it a lower score, it's for a technical flaw: the editing. There's one scene in the first Under Siege that uses video slow-motion, which is horrid, and this one pulls that trick OFTEN, as if it thinks it's a legitimate part of the franchise's visual vocabulary. No, ugh, stop it. There are also several action moments where I was struggling to understand what was happening, while others needed to be cut more finely, but instead fall a little limp from split second padding. But as a brain-to-off action spectacular? Perfectly fine.
In terms of the beloved black comedy/horror/Christmas movie genre, Better Watch Out fails on two of those ingredients. It starts out well enough, preparing us for a home invasion thriller set during the holiday season, our protagonists a babysitter and a 12-year-old who crushes on her, basically the last time he'll need a babysitter so it's presented as a kind of coming of age movie as well. But once the mystery of who is attacking the house is solved, the coming of age becomes impossible and instead ugly male entitlement drives the story, and while I take my comedy black indeed, there's a torture porn mean-spiritedness that is off-putting. It's also not helpful that, even though the babysitter gets her licks in (bless Olivia DeJonge, she can't hide her Australian accent when she gets fired up), the movie seems very proud of its "clever" antagonist, and doesn't really give him his comeuppance. It's not quite like it's signing off on his misogyny, but not far off. At the very least, it's unsatisfying to the audience. And the story could have happened any time. They use Christmasy props, but the spirit of Christmas is completely absent from its themes, even ironically. Only the dad likes Christmas, and the kids watch horror movies and act like they just walked out of the Scream franchise. The babysitter is moving away like this was supposed to be set after graduation. I guess they just really really wanted to use that title, and stole it from a killer Santa Claus movie.
Fate cuts it close in Serendipity, and I do think Fate is the protagonist of this old-fashioned romcom (the premise could have come out the Golden Age of Hollywood, especially with the Christmas trappings) that has two watchable stars (John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale) have a fortuitous meet-cute while in other relationships, and leave it up to wild chance if they are ever to meet again. Wild chance and being obsessed with one another, I guess. But though they have agency, Fate is really the one to watch, throwing all sorts of crazy coincidences our way so that it's undeniable that this is fantasy. And it's Fate's movie so much, once it's done its job, we kind of cut to the end while I still had questions. Bit of a fumble at the whatever-yard line there. I do wish the movie had exclusively used those jazzy, bluesy pieces on its soundtrack because the cloying, forgettable pop ballads are just awful. And relentless. Too loud and on the nose. That collection of non-hits really sunk the picture for me.
Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey has a nice aesthetic, that of the village under your Christmas tree crossed with The Greatest Showman with some Hugo thrown in (the bits of the story where everyone is a toy are the most beautiful), but in terms of plot, it's a bit of a puff pastry. The all-ages musical is fairly predictable, with a toy-maker losing everything, and hopefully his granddaughter can walk him back into the light, their fates tied up in a very very very cute robot toy. Pleasant and a little silly, though nothing revolutionary. Some very cool dance choreography, essentially more memorable than the songs themselves, which I have almost all forgotten less than a half-hour later. The exception is "Make It Work" (which also coincidentally has the most memorable choreography), with its double meaning and textured singing. A fairy tale for the kids, with a good sense of wonder, but like many Netflix productions, a little generic, or at least derivative, for me.
Role-playing: The ask was to craft a Christmas episode for our Savage Worlds Rippers game. I called it "A Christmas Carol on the Orient Express" as the characters were supposed to be heading from London to Cairo for the next chapter of their main plot anyway. I have a player who loves trains, another who is into Agatha Christie, felt like a no-brainer. From there, I made Christmas night in the Carpathians the time for a poor abused ghost to strike (good thing I own my own clackity chains), putting almost everyone to sleep while he attempted to derail the train and free his bones from the undercarriage where his murderers had put him. MERRY CHRISTMAS! Anyway, I trapped two characters in Christmas Past, when one of them lost her family to a Japanese werewolf (her chance of symbolic revenge taken away by our bruiser who is less scared of the wolves than they are of her); two others in Christmas Future, fighting a Yule Cat in Iceland (the trick is giving one another a piece of clothing so the giant kitty isn't enraged); two more in Christmas Present where they could see ectoplasmic extrusions of the ghost feeding on everyone aboard; and finally the team's thief waking up in the middle of the night as part of her normal pickpocketing routine, the only one who, once the team's alienist pinched herself awake and told her what was going on, could climb under the train to get the poor ghost's remains. A bit of the personal, a bit of foreshadowing, a puzzle to be solved on several planes of existence, and Christmas cheer! Well, I don't know about the latter.
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