Buys'n'GiftsWe had our annual gift exchange and if we stick to "geek stuff" and the kind of media we discuss in these articles, let's mention Probe, a collection of Julian Barnes short stories (thanks Uncle Clo!); a TOS-era communicator (thanks Nath and Marty!); a dollar-store dinosaur (thanks for the stocking stuffer, Shotgun!); Cobra Kai merch (thanks Berry!); and Life's special commemorative Godzilla issue (thanks Amelie!). Oh and the group replaced my dead gaming console/thing to watch Netflix and DVDs on, so thanks alllllll!.
"Accomplishments"
In theaters: When The Matrix came out in 1999, it was the essence of cool, combining a then-unfamiliar Hong Kong aesthetic with cutting edge special effects and heady themes. Visually, it was so revolutionary, the sequels could never recapture that impact. Reloaded had a the visuals down, but failed to deliver on story. Revolutions did deliver on story, but by then, the effects failed to impress. By NOW, we're so used to photo-real effects and superhero action, it would be impossible to achieve the same impact, so all I asked of The Matrix Resurrections was that it deliver on story. While there's a part of me who would have enjoyed it even more if they went FULL meta on it and have Keanu play Keanu, or for that matter a more 1970s-style ending, the meta stuff in which Neo has been inserted into another life (or has he?) is my favorite part of the movie. It's funny, clever, satirical, and as John Wick proved, everyone loves sad puppy Keanu. But it IS a Matrix movie, which means a story about destiny, love and freedom. Rising stars Jessica Henwick and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II are very watchable as the new Trinity and Morpheus (so to speak), and there's a bit of cognitive dissonance in putting Neil Patrick Harris and Hamilton's Jonathan Groff in Matrix action. On par with Revolutions (which I know will mean something different to different people), I felt it did deliver a next chapter.However, if you're looking for the ol' "essence of cool", you won't find it. Directorially, it might even be Wachowski's most timid film.
If there's a movie where Bradley Cooper is actively auditioning to be the next Indiana Jones, it's Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley. But seriously, folks... I couldn't help but compare del Toro's stylish star-studded Carnival Noir to the 1947 adaptation of the same book, and a few details aside, they are very close - to the point where I could choose to watch either one on any given Sunday. Del Toro DOES fix my one beef with the Tyrone Power version though, and that's doing away with the then-studio-imposed happy (or happier, at least) ending. Also, the tarot readings are finally on point. And of course, given the director's predilections, it's going to have gorgeous production design and cinematography. For people who haven't seen any other version, it's going to be an entertaining retro-Noir that give or take strong language and brutal violence, could have fit an earlier era of Hollywood. For those who love the original, it's a good-looking take, but isn't different enough to make a big dent.
At home: In spite of not being a particular Lucille Ball fan (have I ever seen an episode of I Love Lucy? I don't think so), I did enjoy Being the Ricardos, while at the same time acknowledging it's nowhere near Aaron Sorkin's best work. Maybe there are too many narrative devices - a fake talking heads documentary, flashbacks within the flashback, Lucy's imagination staging the sketches in black and white - or perhaps the likeness make-up is distracting (on Nicole Kidman especially), I'm not sure, but it doesn't quite gel. And yet, there are a lot of great moments in the nitty-gritty of comedy writing and working out the slapstick, J.K. Simmons can do no wrong, and you can always count on Sorkin to deliver some cracking dialog. And to bring it back to a single theme, in this case Lucy's deep need to find a home, illustrated in the type of show she built, and contrasted with the type of marriage she had. I like Sorkin's biopics for that kind of distillation and insight, I just wish he'd cut out the layer too many.
I don't feel like Luke Cage is really the protagonist of his second season. I mean, yes, it does reposition him for what might have been a real gray zone of a third season, but he gets outshined by almost everyone else. Misty is always cool as hell and has her own journey. Mariah Stokes becomes as bad as they come and is well supported by Shades and her own daughter, while Bushmaster provides a second dose of villainy as a Jamaican gangster who has powers on par with Luke. And because there are so many threads to follow, Luke gets left in the dust, is all. Of course, this show continues to be the best-looking of the Marvel Netflix lot, not only because it dares play in the sunlight, but because its stars look so fabulous while everyone looks so haggard in Daredevil and Jessica Jones (if I don't mention Iron Fist it's to spite him for showing up and delivering the most boring episode of the season). It's also the show with all the great music. And all the violence - in line with its blaxploitation feel, it's much more violent than the other shows. Season 2 provides a good conclusion, but I fear the lead was never the main attraction.
/1993: Kurosawa's last film, Madadayo ("not yet"), is an extended goodbye for the director as well as the film's subject, writer Hyakken Uchida, whose pupils remained devoted to after his retirement from teaching, organizing an annual "Not Yet Festival" to celebrate his continued life. How this connects to Kurosawa's own end-of-career feelings, I can't specifically know, but if I were to force people to watch a movie at my funeral, it would be this one, at the risk of self-aggrandizing, I relate very strongly with many elements of Uchida's life, and it's with some delight that I realized midway through that I'd read some of his work (I Am a Cat). In the film, Uchida (Tatsuo Matsumura) is an endearing wit, and the character-driven comedy flows quite freely even as we head towards more tragic material. But even then, the film has such charm and grace, and ends on such a poignant image, that though I got emotional, Madadayo's celebration of life never loses its potency. What a beautiful film to go out on (though Kurosawa would have said "not yet!" - a bad fall confined him to a wheelchair and robbed him of any chance to direct more films, his health deteriorating until his death 5 years after Madadayo, age 88).
Paired Short: I enjoy Odds and Ends' feminist afrofuturism, but its terribly cheap production values tend to overwhelm my enthusiasm.
1994: Even as 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance unfolds, each fragment a scene violent cut off by going to black for too long a split second, you know Michael Haneke will not be giving you the closure that comes with knowing WHY something happened. This is far from his only exploration of unfathomable actions treated as such. So we watch a number of people in Vienna in the months leading to a mass shooting in a bank on Christmas Eve, and we know from the off they will be involved somehow. Did Haneke fictionalize them or did he try to reconstruct their lives from what people remembered of those months? I don't know, but it's the kind of slice of life that baldly says, "this could have been you". Even the role of the killer? Hopefully not, but what would it take to make YOU snap? The film often seems to try to the audience's patience to provoke similar frustration. While some scenes are abortive, others go on too long (the ping pong sequence is going to stay with me), and if you snapped and committed terrible acts, would we trace your motivation to having seen this film? Now look at other inexplicable murders and suicides through the last 40 years, does it make any more sense to blame Catcher in the Rye or Natural Born Killers, or the violence on a global scale as per the news footage used to frame the story? As usual Haneke asks, but does not answer. Because there is no reasonable answer.
Paired Short: Bong Joon-ho's student film Incoherence is comprised of three fun vignettes in which ostensibly proper men act improperly, and an epilogue that goes on way too long past the punchline. So the lack of subtlety was always part of his voice.
1995: Living in Oblivion is a really fun time! A low-budget indie about making a low-budget indie, starring Steve Buscemi as its anxious director, Catherine Keener as its anxious star, and on a historical note, Peter Dinklage in his film debut (whose character makes a great point). It's true to life (even if Murphy's Law is acting up), and has a recursive quality that essentially gives us several dream sequences that aren't entirely dreams nor reality, with clever use of black and white and color. Lest that description make it sound like it's pretentious and heavy, it still comes out feeling like a neurotic comedy. I thought it quite funny. And guys, as a now veteran podcaster, let me tell you there's nothing like a great room tone moment, and I don't know of very many in the history of cinema.
Paired Short: Despite the switches in tone and animation style, Joy Street is more like Despair Boulevard. But we all have a bad night, now and then, don't we?
Comics: The first volume of The Matrix Comics (originally published online, because of course), doesn't start on the right foot for me. Though there are some big name artists doing the early stories, they are too short and/or retread material we've seen too many time already across the whole of the franchise. From Neil Gaiman's prose story on, however, things get a lot better, more varied and more creative. Gaiman colors way outside the box, which is what I would have liked to see more of. In fact, whenever it's hackers fighting agents, it's a little dull. But given the talent (surprisingly) involved, there's more on offer, like Peter Bagge doing a metatextual comedy skit, Paul Chadwick riffing on Chaucer and producing one of the best stories in the collection as a result, and David Lapham essentially giving us a Matrix-inspired Stray Bullets story. Overall, more good stories than boring ones, even if it takes 50 pages before the quality rises.
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