BuysChristmas sales being what they are, I snatched Watch Dogs: Legion for my Xbox. Guess I'll be living in Fear State--I mean future London for a while.
"Accomplishments"
At home: Benoit Blanc can be back as often as he wants, in my opinion, and it seems Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig are interested in doing as several more Knives Out Mysteries. The second, Glass Onion (a title that fits the movie, but I'm sad doesn't riff on the original's), assembles a cast of potential murderers on a private island so we can have a nice old go at the filthy rich and other influential jackasses - Kate Hudson is particularly funny, but Edward Norton likely to most relevant to today - during the height of the pandemic, no less. It's kind of a modern And Then There Were None situation. What works so well with Blanc is that he seems a character out of time, an Agatha Christie character somehow existing in our modern world, a little befuddled by it, or perhaps playing Columbo to the rich pricks he's constantly investigating. It's fun and charming. Lots of twists and turns, turning the closed room mystery on its head, often by having the camera/editing lie to the audience, or rather, cut around clues that would be too revealing too early. In a sense, we're characters in the room, overhearing this bit of business and not that one, but all will eventually be revealed and make absolute sense. Johnson pays off lots of little details, actually and thematically, and additional viewing will probably highlight more. And that absolutely cracking ending!
I can't claim to be a Hellraiser expert. I've seen the original film, of course, and read a few Barker stories in comics form. That's about it. So I come to 2022's Hellraiser as if it were fairly new. And... I quite liked it. Probably more than any other Hellraiser material I've consumed in the past. It's not as viscerally gory as the first film, but then I've always felt that Barker's concepts were too intellectual for that to work well anyway. Without over-explaining the lore, this one presents a cool puzzle box story about obsession and not heeding the old, all-purpose warning "be careful what you wish for". It starts off pretty slow, but once Riley (Odessa A'zion) and her friends get to the estate where the climax must happen, there's no looking back. It's slick and intriguing and contains some good moments of triumph, tragedy and irony. In the past, Hellraiser's world was more intriguing than the stories ended up being. Within the limits of my experience, HR22 is the one movie that rights this wrong.
I was ready to bail out of Jack Ryan Season 3 even in episode 4, at which point it picks up considerably, but... This far in, Krasinski's Jack Ryan still feels like cipher, and I'm less and less invested in the rest of the CIA personnel as well. It's just a lot of "Jack Ryan brings intel, no one believes him, he's proven right, rince-repeat", which you'd think would stop happening after a while. The season's arc this time takes us back to the Cold War, as a cabal of rogue Russian hardliners try to start a war between Russia and the United States - almost ripped from the headlines, except that we're in some kind of parallel reality where the Russian president is a reasonable dove, so there's a bit of cognitive dissonance there. As has been the case since the first season, it's the "guest" characters who are most interesting - the old Russian intelligence agent, the new Czech President and her father - which seems a formula to exploit. Episode 6 seems to have the big climax, but there are further complications so it goes to 8 for a further climax where Ryan, uhm, mostly stands around and waits for other people to make the calls. Well, he'll always have episode 6. One question lingers: Am I gonna do this to myself again?
How to make a Christmas classic: Above all, I think you need it to be charming. And Miracle on 34th Street (1947) fits the bill very nicely. Everyone knows the ending, but there's lots more to like even if it's the shenanigans during the trial that drew laughter out of me. Edmund Gwenn is perfect as the "real Santa Claus", or an old man who believes himself to be so, but nevertheless lives in a home in Long Island and accepts a job as Macy's Department Store Santa. Sometimes believing something makes it real enough, and his plan to bring the spirit of Christmas back into the already too commercial holiday seems to work. But the harder cases are the family he latches on to - his boss played by Maureen O'Hara whose heart has been broken and now no longer allows any frivolous imagination in her life, and her therefore too-logical daughter played by a tiny Natalie Wood. But there are a lot of fun supporting performances to, and pretty soon everyone must agree that there MUST be a Santa, and so why not this particular one? Adults may or may not enjoy Christmas and its trappings, but do it for the kids at least!
Christmas in Brazil appears to be a hot, colorful affair, but Jorje, the protagonist of Just Another Christmas, was born on Christmas and it gave him a life-long dislike for the holiday, even though his family is really into it. Then in 2010, he falls off the roof playing Santa and wakes up the next Christmas Eve, and the next, and the next, a kind of selective amnesia curse that plays like a Quantum Leap and Groundhog Day remix. His whole life passes him by, and of course he'll reconnect with the holiday and with his family. And when it gets to that heartwarming stage, it's at its best, to the point where I wish it kept its harder edge to the end (but no, formula must win over). Leandro Hassum is obviously a big comedy star in Brazil - you can see him doing shtick where something more contained would have worked just as well... or better, really. His fast rants are fun, but his facial expressions are way too broad. In fact, when he's pushed into dramatic moments, he's perfect. Tone down the wackiness and the cheese, and I'm way more onboard. (I feel like this is going to be remade for American audiences any time now.)
Though Val Lewton is better known for spooky horror stories, his last production, Apache Drums, shows how thoughtful he is with ANY genre. And maybe it's a little spooky itself. The Apache who beset the very small desert town of Spanish Boot are essentially treated as a force of nature, rarely shown up close and often not at all. But interestingly, the opening card reveals the Apache have very real grievances, so despite the subjective portrayal and the priest's characterization of them as devils, it's not as cut and dried as that. And this is the theme of the film. The "good guy" hero mayor starts the film by evicting the rascal gunslinger, but not only do his decisions lead to tragedy, but they are suspect too - motivated by jealousy and spitefulness. Meanwhile, Stephen McNally's rascal may just be the town's salvation. And the theme recurs in the way the Cavalry captain treats the Apache defector, etc. Like I said, thoughtful. And unexpected in a film that starts like many westerns, almost too efficiently setting up characters and conflicts. But by the end, not only does Apache Drums offer its own unique mood and resonant themes, but you've had a full meal. Thinking back on various set pieces or elements, they could each have been a movie's sole focus.
I feel like I'm always saying this, but I'm not a huge fan of modern biopics/true stories unless they also showcase great film making in some way. There's just such a formula to them that drains my interest. In the case of Call Northside 777, it's a slightly different formula, but so old-fashioned as to create the same effect. Based on the Chicago Times' fight to release a man languishing in prison for a crime he claims he didn't commit, it has a narrator that keeps intruding to give us facts (in ADDITION to an opening scroll), which pulls me right out of the mood established by Jimmy Stewart as the hard-to-convince, no-nonsense reporter assigned the story. I'm also not quite sure the "final proof" (despite my interest in the "cutting edge technology" shown) is that percussive. Ultimately, this docu-drama noir was already too long to really pay off some of its more intriguing elements, like why Stewart's editor (Lee J. Cobb) was so interested in the case. It seemed about more than just selling newspapers, or perhaps Cobb is just too interesting a presence for us not to wonder.
Already, in writer-director Larry Cohen's first film Bone, he shows incredible originality, elevating what should be exploitative schlock to a whole other level. The character of Bone is a presumptive thief/rapist/killer played by the always entertaining Yaphet Kotto, in a home invasion scenario that sends a rich git (Andrew Duggan) out to empty his bank account while his wife (Joyce Van Patten) stays behind and under threat. That works as a thriller no matter what. But Cohen is actually subverting expectations by making it a satire too. The rich couple are the real monsters, and Bone struggles with his role in the drama, playing off what's expected of a black man, in terms of both the racist culture and the civil rights movement. While it seems impossible to make a would-be rapist sympathetic, there's a very big question as to whether Bone is one, or just expected to be one. The theme is similarly addressed in Duggan's encounter with an anarchic chick on his trip, though the connections aren't immediately obvious. Cohen is inventive throughout, giving his scenes a lot of texture, editing in flashes of memory and imagination that deepen the characters (but not Bone, who remains unknowable except through Kotto's intriguing performance), and playing around with metaphors. Viciously funny and darkly thought-provoking.
Alex Winter dug up a lot of archive material I'd never seen before in his recent documentary on Zappa, so much that it wasn't ALL stuff I'd seen before (though as a fan since my university days, I'd seen a lot). Interestingly, he takes an approach similar to Frank's in his childhood home movies, splicing in all sorts of askew footage (though the style may be predicated on using those home movies as transitional elements). Otherwise, it's a fairly straightforward talking heads documentary, bolstered by the story often being told by Zappa himself, in his own voice. You'd think Winter had a camera crew following him since the late 60s - but that's Frank Zappa, a man who recorded an inordinate amount of his life. Because his life was his work, something that comes through in the doc. Truthfully, there's so much - and given that I've read Zappa's own book, read a lot of liner notes, etc. - that you could have done an hour about every album and still left stuff out. So as a summation of the work and the man, warts and all, it's a fine piece. If nothing else, you'll come out of it wanting to hear more, or dig into your record collection to appreciate the oeuvre all over again.
In Blue Period, Yatora is a high school student who suddenly decides he wants to go to art school and from there proceeds a journey of self-discovery that attacks head on what it means to be an artist, in particular, what thought goes into it. Having traveled in the world of fine arts myself, I found it relatable, but also often didactic. It works in that 1) dramatizing conversations with teachers of course invites it, and 2) Yatora is a very intellectual character, so it feels natural enough for him to analyze even his instincts. For audience members not in the arts, these 12 episodes might just be eye-opening, but it tends to explain itself a lot. And while the material could have allowed greater flights of visual fancy (in terms of spectacle, the few moments that dare break the mold are memorable), there's no question the show knows how to engineer cliffhangers. Not obvious in a relatively quiet show about finding your voice as a painter. Overall, I thought Blue Period was touching, especially (but not solely) the friendship between Yatora and the beautiful trans girl who first invited him to join the art club.
I like Bill Burr's comedy well enough. Shouts a lot, but the delivery is funny, and he excels at saying things you shouldn't say in polite company and still make them go down. I’m Sorry You Feel That Way does have a couple of jokes that have aged badly (but were probably already at the limit in 2014), otherwise it works. Burr has this way of sending up the bigots by mocking what they say, even if he's the character saying it. And when a comic goes for 80 minutes without stopping, and as energetically as he does, there's a lot of craft at work. One of the things this special makes me think about is the choice of city where you should shoot your special. By going to Atlanta, he gets a weird reaction to his gun control material, which he then weaponizes into "off-the-cuff" jokes at the audience's expense - something he was no doubt counting on. Craft again: Making you think something is spontaneous when it's probably written. Now if someone can just explain to me why the show is in black and white. There's one reference to B&W in the stand-up, but no directorial pay-off, so... Is that venue just garish?
Books: James Blish's Jack of Eagles presents an ordinary man who somehow taps into extraordinary psychic powers and gets pulled into a web of intrigue, discovering a whole world of "psi-men". Just don't ask me how the cover of my edition relates to any of it. Blish's particular specialty is exploring the social ramifications of whatever sci-fi trope he's developing, but there's still a hard edge to his SF. An edge that's almost at odds with his nicely-flowing prose. The book starts out as a small human story about a trade newspaper editor who explores his own knack for ESP-like "guessing" - an interesting mystery - but at some point, Blish is connecting the doubtful science of parapsychology to heady theoretical physics and you feel like you're reading a mathematics manual designed for PhD students. I do like the crazy climax - impossible without those heady physics - but the opening chapters didn't prepare me for them. Jack of Eagles is still a pretty fun read, but I can see why it's not considered one of Blish's stand-outs.
I come to Manga mostly through anime, but there was still something very familiar about Kaori Ozaki's The Gods Lie. Japanese stories about kids in school undeniably have their specific tropes. (Heck, some of the details coincidentally showed up in the Blue Period series I finished watching on the same day I read this book!) But the familiarity and simplicity are deceptive - there are a lot of subtle themes being addressed. The story: After finishing 6th grade, a boy befriends and ends up falling in love with a tragic girl from his class who has been abandoned by her parents to fend for herself. They are both on the cusp of "becoming", still children in some ways, adults in others, innocence being forced out of them through circumstance. Of those subtle themes, the title refers to that of the lies people tell to spare one another pain, something that puts a tragic ambiguity over the book's final moment (though you can hope). Another is how children adapt to the loss of a parent (the cat in this story provides a fertile metaphor) or any "incompleteness" to grow and evolve naturally. Once does not need to feel "broken" for a perceived lack, which is a nice take-away. A quick page-turner that left me a little weepy.
Jen Wang shows off a beautiful cartooning style in The Prince and the Dressmaker, the story of the very special relationship between a Parisian seamstress and a cross-dressing Belgian prince. It wouldn't work if Wang couldn't design some amazing frocks for the characters, of course, but I also like how she knows when to go without dialog and let environments and expressions tell the story. And we care about these characters. Frances and her aspirations to become a fashion designer, but trapped in the shadow of the prince's secret. Prince Sebastian caught between his parents' wish that he marry soon and what he sees as a shameful impulse to become "Lady Crystallia". And then the complex feelings that develop between the two, across their classes. The final grace note almost steps into the fantastical in trying to give these two a happy ending, but it's touching if not strictly realistic (sounds like a spoiler, but it's not necessarily what you think). A pretty almost-fairy tale about living your best life and being appreciated for it, not in spite of it.
Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët's Beautiful Darkness is an incredible graphic novel, filled with grotesque beauty, like something Baudelaire might have dreamed (by way of The Secret World of Arrietty). A little girl dies in the forest, and all the characters from her imagination come spilling out of her corpse and found a colony around it. Aurora, her namesake and nominal avatar, seems the only positive figure, but even she might be drawn into violence and evil as the girl decomposes. Kerascoët's art is cartoonish, bordering on the abstract when working on the toy-like characters, but then adopts a detailed, realistic style when he pulls out to show the macro-world, in all cases applying a gorgeous watercolor treatment on his pages. As to the story, it's more a portrait of a deteriorating society than any kind of straightforward plot, Vehlmann often crafting one-or-two-page "gag" strips (common in the Euro-comics tradition) that show where his tiny monsters are at in their development. Images both beautiful and horrific meant to stay with you forever.
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