Buys
A decision to star playing Torg Eternity had me buying some of more products for it, in pdf format because 1) many of the hardcovers have been delisted over time, 2) they were pretty costly affairs, and 3) there's some fun open license content available that doesn't exist physically. Future purchases will be based on what Cosms my players are most interested in, since I could break the bank getting everything. Better to pace myself even if that goes against my collector mentality.
"Accomplishments"
In theaters: I don't know if and how Lightyear crapped on people's childhoods because I saw the Toy Stories rather late in life, but this is a perfectly fine SF action comedy starring the "real" Buzz Lightyear, and I don't get the exaggerated gripes. Like other Disney efforts, it hits the nail of its "lesson" with a wrecking ball, making Buzz himself obtuse and leading to repetitive story beats, but I reconcile it two ways. First, pig-headed people are more stubborn than shown in movieland. People don't have easy epiphanies and usually revert to their base behavior. Further, the lesson he fails to learn over and over is NOT the actual lesson he needs to learn; there's a larger lesson that involves every character that's the real theme. And second, it's very much a comedy FIRST and in comedies, characters very often lean into their flaws, episodes after episode, because that's the joke. Thankfully, Buzz's self-seriousness is not the only joke. There are many. Taika Waititi's character is, no surprise, a delight, but the robot cat Sox had me in stitches and truly steals the show. Without him, we're looking at a 3 out of 5, but he adds a full star to my rating. I also rate the production design that evokes all the space franchises of the past without ripping them off. For a science fiction nerd, there's a certain intellectual joy in recognizing visual references to Trek, Wars, Battlestar, Starship Troopers, Buck Rogers, Black Hole, lots of anime, etc. And it's damn toyetic so that, current-day attitudes aside, it COULD have spawned a line of toys back in 1995.
At home: A thing of parts, Obi-Wan Kenobi has a number of things going for it, including how well it withholds the lead's lightsaber and building to a climax we want to see (compare to Revenge of the Sith which is wall-to-wall lightsaber duels and therefore tiring and boring), but like Rogue One (except more so), its interstitial nature means there are a lot of foregone conclusions. We know what CAN'T happen, and that naturally undermines the tension, and being a sequel to the Prequels means I have to sit through Anakin flashbacks (I will never not have cognitive dissonance attacks thinking Anakin is under Vader's helmet). Since Luke is really off the board, it was a clever idea to match Ben with little Leia instead - they never meet in Episode IV - to show how feisty she already was at 10. It does give Obi-Wan: The Professional a certain feeling of déjà vu given that Mando also runs around with a minor. The best we could really get in terms of interest (in addition to the action) is an expansion of the Star Wars universe, which we get with a couple new planets, con men filling the vacuum left by the Jedi, and elite Jedi killers, including a villain who turns out to be more intriguing than she first appears. Watchable without being electrifying (Obi-Wan is too sad for that), it nevertheless gives you a cool final battle that gives closure to the Kenobi-Anakin relationship in preparation for what's to come.
Within the first 5 minutes, Of Dice and Men has a conversation about GURPS and trashes Wuthering Heights - it's like it was written for me! But seriously, I love it when a movie is set in a niche environment and really goes for it, unashamedly, neither over-explaining nor losing non-experts in their wake. Normally, I say this about topics I know nothing about, like submarines or stock trading, but in this case, I know it well, and recognize myself and people I know in this role-playing comedy. Everything orbits one particular night that shakes the gaming group to its core, introducing everyone in flashback, and showing the consequences, achieving a surprising poignancy despite all the jokes. Quality geek material like this is hard to come by, because so much of it is seems to say "look at the geeks, haha, they're ridiculous", or else their hobbies are incidental to the plot, passing references to give geeks recognition without making it about that. For comedy's sake, the characters can veer on caricature here, but there's too much variety around the table for that to stick as a complaint. And the plot and relationships are impossible without the gaming hobby. Quite, quite liked this. Back to GURPS: Steve Jackson Games must have been the only company to give the movie permission to show their books because that's all you see, even though the characters are obviously playing D&D. If you've ever role-played, or been interested in role-playing as a hobby, you have the check this one out (free to watch on Tubi).
Rather loose and plotless, Between the Lines is an ensemble drama/comedy about the struggling staff of a struggling independent newspaper in the late 70s, which is to say, it (and they) started as boisterous activism and is now headed to formulaic corporatization as the 80s come into view. Who will stay, who will leave, who will be forced out maybe? Multiple character studies that, to my tastes, could have focused a little more on the work entailed, but there's some of that too. What's perhaps most fascinating about this relatively obscure movie is that about 90% of its speaking parts are held by recognizable faces from (usually later) movies and TV, with first feature film roles for John Heard, Marily Henner, Joe Morton and L.A. Law's Jill Eikenberry especially. But Jeff Goldbloom, Lindsay Crouse, Bruno Kirby, and the cancelled Stephen Collins (heck, even Lane Smith) hadn't exactly been swimming in high-profile roles before. It's almost like this movie fell into the orbit of casting agents who then promoted most of the cast to some measure of stardom. So while the stories are perfectly engaging, if nothing else, it's worth watching to see a lot of these early performances.
Steve Buscemi is a wannabe indie film-maker with New Wave aspirations who gets into bed with the wrong producer in Alexandre Rockwell's In the Soup, itself a product of New York's indie scene in the 90s. And while Buscemi makes a good straight man, caught in a whirlwind, rendering some fine narration, the movie really belongs to his financial partner played by Seymour Cassel, an irrepressible free spirit and charming con man who gets the would-be director into a lot of trouble, but also a lot of fun. Cassel has so much joy and passion for life that he's quite off his nut. What a great performance. In the Soup doesn't exactly tell you much about the world of indie film-making; it's really more about the characters and the various zanies around Buscemi, and about an unlikely friendship that perhaps inspires a purer artistic intent for the protagonist than the derivative art house films that interest him initially. But he's not going to come to that realization easily. Bonus performances by Jim Jarmusch, Carol Kane, Sam Rockwell (no relation), Stanley Tucci and Jennifer Beals at her most muse-like. Will Patton as a hard hemophiliac made me laugh out loud.
While on the surface of it, Ms .45 could be called "female Deathwish", Abel Ferrara's effort is better on a number of levels. First, violence against women is more shocking and visceral than that any old mugging (Thana - Zoë Lund - is sexually assaulted several times - trigger warnings in full effect - before turning to vigilantism) and there's little of the savior complex that comes with the male version. What Thana does is because of trauma, and another strength of the film is that what happens to her initially, while lurid, doesn't exactly have an exploitation vibe (nudity and so on). And it respects its subject enough that we actually see her struggling with horrific PTSD. None of that turning into a badass overnight. And this is a mute character, given no voice in a world of macro and micro aggressions. It's a well-used metaphor, and makes the character rather iconic. Ferrara has always had a relentless quality to his films, and this one is no different, but I do find its look unusual and quite beautiful. Bathed in a kind of pastel light, it creates a number of stand-out violent vignettes quite unlike the gritty feeling of 70s and early 80s fare.
While the character of Shaft is iconic, the first movie was surprisingly generic in terms of story and action. Dozens if not hundreds of cop/P.I. flicks have done the same. It was really down to the performance and the music. And I don't think much more of Shaft's Big Score! (the music isn't as good), even if they upped the production value by throwing boats and helicopters and interesting locations into the mix. Director Gordon Parks has style and flair, which was also evident in the previous effort, which certainly makes these films rise above the level of competent. But the crime stories are the same kind of things we would expect from cop shows on TV in the coming 2+ decades. This time, a bookie is killed as rival mobsters try to move in on the action and steal his well-hidden stash, and Shaft's tangential connection to the man throws him into the mix. Roundtree is as slick and cool as usual, but more with the ladies than the baddies, who throw him around a lot. I also find fault with the third act's structure, as the main villain gets offed long before his henchmen who represent more sustained physical threats. There was no way to flip that around a bit to make it more satisfying?
Even Tiny Lister looks young in Ice Cube's Friday, a day in the life of a couple of slackers, playing through vignettes as various characters come to them, though building towards an action finale, more by negligence than plot momentum. Cube is a good boy faced with the pressures of the suburban 'hood. It's actually rather poignant how he must eventually make a choice to give in to those pressures when the comedy takes a dramatic turn. His best friend and main reason he gets into trouble is Chris Tucker who is somehow shot the way he is in The Fifth Element, all crazy close-ups and talking to camera, which is very weird (I can only imagine Besson cast him from this film). A lot of Ice Cube's regular collaborators also show up, though generally, their characters tend to be a little thin. It's like you're enjoying spending a lazy day with characters and maybe wish they had more to say. It mostly lives on the characters' funny reactions (just watching Cube find cereal in a cupboard turns to delight), and few comic moments feel dated.
Unrecognized talent Wendell B. Harris Jr.'s Chameleon Street tells an amazing story, made more amazing by being true, or as true as the man who lived it - master impostor William Douglas Street - could make it, seeing as he's a pathological liar. Harris spent three years interviewing the man and used ONLY his words to craft this off-beat biopic, the nature of which flips it into a braggart dark comedy. Street obviously had a way with words, and the narration comes off as beat poetry at times, matching Harris' lyrical editing. If the movie is rough around the edges in terms of production and acting (from the day players anyway), it is justified by the theme. It's a story told by an impostor, and so the film of his life may well look like it was made by a novice film maker stumbling into the work the same way the real Street apparently managed at least 36 successful surgical procedures when merely posing as a doctor. Yes, it's Harris' only directorial effort, but it's that of a maverick, breaking rules and giving a cool performance in the lead as well. I wish he hadn't felt let down by the Hollywood machine and made many more.
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