"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Somehow, John Wick had time for a short side-adventure between Parts 3 and 4 so he could cross over into Ballerina, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. If the "World of John Wick" is to survive without him, the film makers can't throw up their hands and bow to the notion that their new star (Eve, played by Anna de Armas) can't, alone, draw in audiences. (My other bugbear is that they didn't have to resurrect Lance Riddick with stock footage - I assume - to use the New York Continental.) Now, where Wick is a weapon of precision, Eve is told early that she has to fight dirty to offset her small size, which makes this instalment a lot more brutal and improvisational. To keep her world relatively separate, she's up against a death cult that doesn't play with the same rules, literally tapping into our impression that everyone in the Wickverse is an assassin in a satisfying way. The look of the film, with its pinks and blues reminded me of that first female John Wick riff, Atomic Blonde, but it's leading us down a theme of fire and ice rather than cool neon. At its best when it's not doing Wickisms, honestly.
At home: An exploration of niche fandom, Brigsby Bear starts on an odd alternate reality where James (the film's co-writer Kyle Mooney) lives in a bunker with his parents, and obsesses over the title bear, a daily show that's been on all his life, discussing its deep lore with fellow fans on the internet. And then he finds out the truth and thrust into a new life, has trouble letting go of the show that essentially raised him. Fandom can make you feel alone and isolated. Fandom can make you feel connected, it brings people together. Fandom is a culture in and of itself, and a moral framework. Fandom can inspire you. Fandom makes you want to participate. Fandom makes you fall in love with fictional people. Fandom can be shared, it's contagious. Fandom keeps you young, sometimes too young. Fandom can go too far, too. Fandom makes you obsessive. Fandom makes you reckless. Brigsby Bear knows all this and decides that on the whole, fandom is a net positive. Well, I'd have to agree, wouldn't I?
Where Dogville was a fairly subtle allegory for slavery, von Trier's follow-up, Manderlay, is much more overtly about that topic. Grace, now played by Bryce Dallas Howard, comes upon a plantation that has carried on with the practice 70 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and resolves, motivated by white guilt and a certain "I know better" privilege, to free the slaves and teach them (and their former owners) to live together in free society. In the allegory, she effectively acts as the State, introducing policies to strengthen civil rights, and struggling with the legacy of slavery (namely the wages of poverty). There's a brutal examination of race relations, especially where liberal ideals might hit a wall, and ultimately, it bursts the idealistic bubble of those who think America has expiated its evil past and delivered equality. The ending makes a shocking statement that, I think, goes further than the African-American reality, and may be universal to us all. Would you embrace being a slave to the State, and have you already? Difficult material, but take me away, John Hurt's voice. I'll follow you anywhere.
When I accused (not derogatorily) Makoto Shinkai of aping Miyazaki in The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004), it felt like the director was toiling in the shadow of a great master. When I make the same claim about Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Below (2011), it feels more like a tribute. This is after 5 cm/s, after all. And aside from the blazingly gorgeous backgrounds Shinkai is known for, his particular quirks are absent. No still life insert shots, for example. And so it looks like a Miyazaki picture, with a child living in the country going into a fantasy world - here a riff on Orpheus' descent into hell - where vertiginous flying/falling is a leitmotif and goopy corrupted monsters roam, somewhere between Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. Its exploration of grief and the necessary permanence of death is achieved through characters who aren't always willing to explain themselves, leaving the audience to decode their motivations and reactions, which is where the Shinkai-isms lie and Miyazaki fans rage, both at the audacity of making a movie so much like his and the failure to make it resonate in the same way. I appreciate its lingering mysteries, myself.
Coming to The King of Comedy late, and having already seen a number of its rip-offs, the bloom may be off the rose, and if you want to explain away my ambivalence in the following review, feel free. As with Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro plays a deluded sociopath who, in this case, hounds Jerry Lewis' talk show host to get a spot doing stand-up, jumping all those pesky obstacles like actual experience performing for audiences. He's a cringy jerk, never funny in his real life, and ultimately more reckless than dangerous. If there ever was a movie character I wanted to punch, it's Rupert Pupkin. And honestly, it's a big let-down when his material and delivery turn out to be pretty good (if slightly dark). Nothing to make me smile or laugh, especially at that point, but it made me go "what's the problem?" and are we supposed to infer that it's showbiz (and it's a-hole avatar Jerry Lewis) that's the real villain/clique here? Somehow, I more readily go to "it's in his mind" at the end of Taxi Driver than I do here despite the many imaginary scenes, which just feels like a moral betrayal on the film's part. I was much more interested in Sandra Bernhard's wacky stalker and wish she'd gotten some kind of epilogue too. Obviously, this spawned a lot of lookalikes - usually raising the cringe factor to 11 - so I recognize its place in film history, but I found it a very annoying watch.
The trick behind fully enjoying Kiss of the Spider Woman is to match Molina (William Hurt)'s fantasies (part dream, part movies they've seen) with the actual circumstances between the two cellmates. The movies don't properly exist, do they? Molina, gay, but coded as trans (1985 just didn't know what to do with this, or perhaps the 1976 novel didn't), is at once informing on Raúl Juliá's political prisoner, Valentin, in love with him, and trying to get the most out of the warden, which all comes out in the fascist romance recounted, where trust is short on supply. Though Valentin's stance is initially mistrustful, he eventually falls for the act (which isn't entirely an act, unless it's not Molina we should be worried about) and fails to see the clues right there in the story told. Or maybe it's Molina who ironically fails to see the clues in their own story. This is an acting shocase, mostly. Hurt gives it his best as the flamboyant Molina, but Juliá's performance is the more subtle and intriguing.
I've seen several Korean crime pictures "based on" true serial killer stories that I'm starting to think the country has a bigger murder problem than it does. The police in The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil claim the opposite, at least. The twist in this case is that the serial killer - who kills people he meets in arranged fender-benders - randomly attacks a violent gangster (Don Lee, who was Gilgamesh in Marvel's Eternals) who can hold his own and survives. From then on, it's a race to see who will catch the killer - the crooks, or the cops, led my a maverick straight arrow who stands to lose his soul doing so. Exciting fights and car chases are thrown in for good measure, but the film doesn't really need them. The clash of personalities is enough to sustain the tension. Lee is simmeringly great, a kind of Korean Wilson Fisk, and Kim Moo-yul (Juvenile Justice) holds his own as the cop. I like how they both win, in their way. The killer, however, is largely an unknown quantity. Smart and creepy, sure, but we're used to serial killer films trying to decode their pathology. There's no real attempt at that here, to the narrative's detriment.
Based on the Polish turn-of-the-century science fiction novel known as the Lunar Cycle Trilogy (by Jerzy Żuławski), On the Silver Globe is a surreal repeat of human history set on an alien planet, with a pretty interesting production history. It was made in the mid-70s, but interrupted by the Film Ministry for cost overruns (and not subversive material, though one might easily think so), all materials ordered destroyed. Ten years later, Andrzej Żuławski (the author's grand-nephew) finished and released the film with voice-over recounting the missing shots, and it works as an odd conceit since most of the film is found footage from a trio of astronauts' camera. Basically, they decide to recreate the human race on a muddy new world, but time flows differently for their children and they've soon spawned a new animist culture that sees them as gods. When another astronaut lands decades later, they've evolved to a Medieval level and see him as the Messiah, with results conflating various aspects of Christianity. The third act is rather confusing, especially the stuff back on postapocalyptic Earth, and the metaphorical cues way too on the nose for me, betraying the original culture/mythos created for the books/film. I especially liked the inversion of having (Old) Earth stand in for Heaven, therefore making dirt and mud crucial to the New Humans' practises and beliefs. Of course, this isn't really a work of subtlety even if we're not fed answers - the astronauts all go mad and reflect philosophically in grand Shakespearean terms - but I still liked it better when it wasn't being so obvious about its themes as it is in the final minutes.
[Benin] I'll give Divine Carcasse points for having an intriguing premise. We follow a car delivered to its French owner in Bénin as it changes hands a few times, as a way of examining a cross-section of the country's population. I just wish something interesting HAPPENED to any of these owners. The French dude is needlessly creepy (a problem of performance). The taxi driver has a more interesting life and I like the cuts to his fares, but it's still pretty basic. And then weird things start to happen, in an animist, cargo cult kind of way which is VERY interesting... and still it feels like uncut documentary footage. And there is a strong documentary vibe here, as the various intersections are padded out with cultural material. Ultimately, I did enjoy the idea of a car being cursed in Africa - a luxury object that's just not worth having - and then being turned into an idol of worship, transformed by the land that cursed it. It's just the execution I found rather dull.
[Gabon] In L'ombre de Liberty (The Shadow of Liberty), the government has put a price on a the head of a subversive pirate radio announcer code-named "Liberty". We follow both the police captain who hopes to catch him so he can touch reward money to pay for his son's life-saving operation, and a disgraced journalist inspired by (and obsessed with) Liberty to start writing again. Honestly, it's the latter's prostitute girlfriend (Nadège Kyara Bongo) who steals the show (in several ways). At times taking its cues from American crime pictures, with the attendant tropes, the dialog is often rather poetic and therefore avoids the outright clichés. Ultimately, it's about systemic corruption - Liberty's coded messages aren't really meant to be understood by anyone; the State is only banning "liberty" as a concept - and the characters' fates lie in that direction. It's unfortunate that the epilogue-heavy conclusion feels like it's searching for a proper ending, but I do like some it decides to do.
Its owner loses points.
Books: Barry Letts expands Doctor Who and the Daemons to almost novel length, and there are a lot of nice details peppered throughout, from Yates and Benton watching the football, to Benton and Miss Hawthorne trying to use a pentagram against the demonic gargoyle, to a lot of little backstory or interior monologue for even the smallest of roles. But I think we get lost in the details at times and the books comes off as more baroque than rich. We're switching points of view, even time frames, backtracking at various points to include everyone, and the story can get lost in chaos (the sequences where Sgt. Osgood - yes, Osgood - is trying to make the Doctor's energy exchange machine work are just interminable). That said, The Daemons remains a great story. It's Doctor Who's first stab at folk horror, and a great showcase for the entire UNIT team. The technical weaknesses of the televised story aren't a problem in prose, and the monsters are shown more often and more quickly, with some good illustrations supporting the text. I just don't think the extra length did it any actual favors.
Stephanie Phillips, we learn in the introduction to Eight Limbs, practices Muay Thai herself, and in this graphic novel wanted to show why a woman would choose to practice a martial sport, a generally male arena. She grounds this in CHOICE. Choosing to fight is not the same as being IN a fight. What I assume is her stand-in, a Muay Thai teacher with a newborn, has her life turned upside down when a friend asks her and her husband to take in a troubled teenager while a new foster family is found for her. The directions this takes are fairly obvious, but there are a couple of surprises, too. And while didactic when it comes to showing the martial art in action - we're being taught, as well - I nevertheless found the whole thing poignant almost from page one. Giulia Lalli's expressive art no doubt has something to do with this, but I credit how personal the story is to Phillips coming through as clearly as it does.
Frank Cho's Fight Girls presents a fierce televised contest between ten women, winner gets to become Queen of an interstellar empire. But don't get too attached, because Cho is quick to kill them off just as you're deciding to root for them. Ultimately, the only one who seems safe is the eye-patch wearing cheat authorities are scrambling to discredit in the background. Is there a conspiracy at play? It's a fun and often nasty plot full of twists and turns, but the characters are paper-thin. Make no mistake, this is largely about the art, and Cho drawing athletic female bodies fighting dinosaurs and other, weirder monsters. The page design affects clear grids on bright white paper, with figures often popping against a lack of background (a feature, not a bug, in this case) and Sabine Rich's colors enhance the art greatly.
RPGs: An exciting Call of Cthulhu session this week, as the Children of the Sphinx storyline ramps up with the kidnapping of our surviving characters (and the introduction of a fast-shooting Oregon cowboy to our group), as well as my character's cousin who damn well near got sacrificed to some Great Old One. So we're not leaving Egypt quite yet, it seems. My colleagues are always going to try and fight the monsters, it seems, and got involved in a protracted fight with something something tentacles something, but not me. My impulse is always to run away. In this case, Phelps was entirely too motivated to save his cousin to do that, so he ran TOWARDS something. After doing pretty well on the escape from an oubliette, I might have been feeling cocky. Walking into the temple chamber and making smooth speeches to shake the confidence of the cultists who had been promised immortality, while simultaneously using sleight of hand to cut my cousin's bonds was a bold move. But I have the stats for it; it's what being the "Face" is all about. My stupid character nevertheless glanced up at the Eye of Horus (or whatever that was) at the end and got the biggest Sanity blast he's ever gotten, leading him to forget the entire session. WHICH IS TERRIBLE FOR HIM. At least there are witnesses that can fill him in, but the whole way through, he (I) was thinking the novel based on this adventure would be a bestseller. Arrgh!
Episode 50 of our Torg Eternity campaign, coinciding with Christmas on the world calendar no less, so I wanted to do some special things. 1) Just before the campaign began, we had played a Christmas-themed adventure, set on this date (in the PCs' future) where the players had Santa Claus and the elves do a bunch of cool stuff. One of the things they did was leave a gift for the Realm Runner in his locker at Area 51 where he had been a bunker baby. Well, 2) I wanted there to be a consequence for the Freedom Magician falling to corruption and killing a U.S. Senator (no matter how evil), so the U.S. government has asked S.H.I.F.T. to clean out Area 51 (which it owns) and leave. So the gift is found in the locker, and it's the Old West revolver of a character the player used in our GURPS Shiftworld game (the Realm Runner is a descendant of another of the characters from that campaign) - this isn't a retcon, it's what we did in that Xmas game. Well, the gun starts calling him back to Paradise, the Wyoming town from that earlier game, and to the secret multiversal lab thought destroyed at its end. Some shenanigans later, and the PCs walk out in the last chapter of Shiftworld's settings - Deadlands (the famous horror/western game). They've crossed over into a Cosm not involved in the Possibility Wars with no clear way to return. So I had to dissect Deadlands and turn it into a Torg Cosm:
Not only do the players who played the Spade brothers get to visit an old setting of theirs, but the current sheriff is still a Spade, two generations removed. There, they also have to meet, 4) the Freedom Magician player's new character - a former lawman who is now a haunted preacher. They help the town investigate the mists enclosing the area and the destruction of a pair of farms, discover and defeat the Si-Te-Cah (giant cannibal spirits from Native legend), and then things went weird. The tunnel from which the mists were created by Edeinos priests in an alley on... Eternity Street (think Danny the Street, Doom Patrol fans, but it's filled with - (5) - characters from various RPG campaigns I've run over the years! More on this in our next episode...
Best bits: A lot of nostalgia, especially for the two Shiftworld players. I played part of the Deadlands theme as they entered town, and by the end, everyone who'd played in earlier campaigns was happily pointing out characters they recognized or had played. The Monster Hunter seems to be a magnet for low rolls and Mishaps, and after his third of the night, he walked out and slammed the door to his room, dramatically. Known to commit to a bit, I thought the joky rage-quit would last longer. The fight against the giants was long and hard, but the players forced a number of Setbacks on them. At one point, one giant got distracted by his human cattle and ate half of one as a show of force. Then he slipped in the gore, fell into the makeshift enclosure, and all the captives jumped over the tumbled fence. The Realm Runner had fun with the Mastermind Perk, retconning the building of tomahawks reputed to work on the Si-Te-Cah - cue several mishaps where the shoddy weapons fell apart in their hands. The Monster Hunter prevented tragedy by getting rednecks drunk so they wouldn't carry off their plan to capture and torture a Native. His belief in Santa Clause was also hilarious. The new Preacher is really good at fanning his Colt and gunning down multiple foes, and the Frankenstein continues to have a high batting average. Writing this up made me realize only one of the PCs isn't currently cursed in some way.
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