"Accomplishments"
In theaters: It takes a long time for Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning to get going because it doesn't trust its audience and feels the need to explain the plot several times, a problem it shares with the previous instalment. It's one that exacerbated here by an indulgent need to connect all the films in the franchise together with various flashbacks and cringy retcons (yet never explaining the link between the Reckoning villain and Ethan Hunt set up in Dead Reckoning). This thing is thus bloated with exposition, much of it redundant or unnecessary. Hunt is, at this point, a means to an end, and I'm always more interested in the other members of the team. Simon Pegg and Hayley Atwell turn in some fun performances, and I really like the surprise additions. Sadly, they break up the comedy double act Feds from the previous film, and neither of them leave much of an impression on their own. But perhaps most disappointing for me is that it doesn't really work as a Mission: Impossible story because it lacks the con job element and prefers to be a straight action film instead. Not to say there aren't beautiful locations, great stunts, cool fights, and good jokes, but the constant stream of explanation gets in the way. It's perhaps interesting that the two movies it desperately wants to link back to are also ones I feel are weaker for breaking a necessary part of the formula.
At home: If you were irritated by kids - your own, other people's, kids in movies - The Assessment is going to push some buttons (perhaps even Stop Playback). It proposes a postapocalyptic future where a select few couples live in comfort, but have to be severely assessed if they ever want to add to the human race, i.e. have a child. Elizabeth Olsen and Himesh Patel are one such couple, and Alicia Vikander their Assessor, doing her damnedest to either make them realize they don't want kids after all, or prove they wouldn't make good parents. Once you understand the principle, you might well be ready for the movie to end (and I figured out the twist well in advance, too), but I really like the epilogues, and in retrospect, the film has many good ideas and scenes, and is constantly asking of you just how you would fare in the assessment, which is to say, in parenting situations. There's no single focus, playing on a variety of parental anxieties, whether not being able to conceive or adopt, failing as a parent, having your life derailed, etc. I choose to see that broad umbrella as a strength rather than a weakness.
Caribbean animator Alain Bidard takes a similar "virtual reality" approach to his (superior) Battledream Chronicle in Opal, a fantasy built on mixing SF with fantasy, Island myths with virtual worlds (that hide his technical limitations). You could have convinced me this was happening in some far corner of Battledream, but it's clear early on that the overt Freudian references are of a different order. Basically, we're seeing child abuse play out in fairy tale terms and it's not hard to guess what's really happening. I think it works well (I'm not disturbed by how slowly Bidard's figures tend to walk or speak - it's just a different beat, one that asks you to reflect on what you're seeing), but the third act is laced with expository psychobabble and questionable in its messaging. Half of everyone will scream that it's sending the wrong message (maybe the world is divided into emoters and suppressors, I don't know), but that's only really because it needs a facile fantasy solution. The words themselves are, in reality, ambiguous, and could be understood differently. But it's regardless a rather poor way to end things, and takes away from the work.
Adam Brody is... The Kid Detective. Or was, once upon a time. This deadpan Noir comedy gives us a new twist on both kid detective fare (Hardy Boys, etc.) and Film Noir's hard-boiled private eyes, making old things new in a small-town world that seems on the precipice of many different eras. Brody's Abe Applebaum was a prodigy, solving small-time cases as a boy, until that one, big, serious case that went unsolved and destroyed his life. Now, he's a Noirish flawed hero, and a new, big, serious case has just fallen into his lap, a shot at redemption (or at least catharsis) tied into everything we know about the world of the film (so like all junior detectives, pay attention!). Sophie Nélisse plays the virginal girl who hires him and becomes a kind of Watson to his Sherlock (though I would put Abe more in the Father Brown category). A lot of laughs, but also moments that hit hard. Our idea of ourselves shifts through life like the tone of this film. Don't lose your footing.
[Pakistan] Joyland has of course been banned in Pakistan, so even making this sort of movie there is an exploit unto itself, but it transcends the simple "issue film" its context could have dictated. Haider is a househusband whose virility is questioned in every scene, so when he becomes fascinated with a trans dancer, it's not entirely a surprise. But is there an affair in his future, or something that goes to the core of his own identity? The film makes every feminine character (including Haider) interesting and sympathetic, I think especially Haider's wife, but also the neighbor who takes a shine to Haider's aging father. These subplots all expose the same truth: In a society that represses women's autonomy, who would choose to be a woman? Well, of course, it's NOT a choice, just a reality. Beautifully shot and acted, Joyland also has a depth that wasn't required, but is appreciated. For example, take particular notice of the games the kids play and you might be able to decode the adult characters' secrets, including one that is never revealed.
[Bahrain] If you look at descriptions of installation artist Waheeda Malullah's work, it all seems much more interesting than the very brief "film" Coloured Photograph. Like it's just a piece of a larger work, or a chronicle of performance art, not a compete work.
[Oman] The Falconer is the (true) story of a white teenager in Oman who steals an falcon from the zoo in the hopes of training it up so it can survive in the wild - a narrative shared with the melodrama to of his best friend's sister, a different kind of caged bird, needing to get away from an abusive husband. It's this thematic duplication that makes the film interesting beyond any kind of biographical concerns, but between the "true story" clichés (I abhor those end-of-film actor-to-real person comparisons) and the wooden acting (maybe falconry was prioritized over acting), The Falconer fails to fly very high. Well, the birds are quite good (the falcon and the girl), but our two leads are uneven at best. Ultimately, the film makers ask whether preventing human suffering is more important than preventing animal suffering, and how privilege directs your answer. I don't disagree with the film's conclusions, but I'm not terribly excited about the exploration.
[Yemen] Unrest in Yemen during the Arab Spring is captured in a personal way by a British documentarian in The Reluctant Revolutionary, as he starts to focus on Kais, a tour guide who initially has his head in the ground concerning a revolution he could do without, as it's hurting his business. But as we get closer to violence - and there are some harrowing moments near the end of this where film maker Sean McAllister should really have left the country for his own safety - Kais has an awakening, partly born of his interaction with the documentary. More than a decade later, Yemen is in the news again, recontextualizing the film's ending, but perhaps it remains useful as a psychological portrait of the common man under an oppressive regime, becoming gently radicalized by circumstance, and therefore could be any of us as fascism rises in the West. I feel like I recognized my own situational depression in Kais'.
Books: Who at Target Books thought Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters was more enticing than Doctor Who and the Silurians?! One of two flaws in what is otherwise a great reimagining of the Third Doctor's second serial. The other is Malcolm Hulke's declawed ending. But it's easy to see why "Cave-Monsters" is one of the best-regarded Target novelisations. Today, the serial already provides the frisson with its pandemic scenes, and Hulke's anti-war stance will never go out of date. In the book, by getting us into the heads of a number of cretins (sorry, Brigadier, you too), he also opposes the Silurians' genocidal species-ism with Britain's imperial/colonial history. The phrase "make Britain great again" is even used... brrr. (As is "homo reptilia", decades before if would be on the show.) Hulke gives us a lot more on Silurian culture - including a prologue set before they went to sleep - and isn't shy about changing events to create different moments. All in all, a much richer story (nice illustrations, too), which is perhaps why I resent the last page so much. It's the one place where TV did it better.
David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp delves into an artist's concerns, with a very formal architect at its center, and his relationship with a more intuitive visual artist, exploring point of view by using different art styles, having characters discuss artistic process, and ultimately, resolving Asterios' mid-life crisis by pairing things down the way he might approach his own designs. Narrated by his twin who died in the womb is part of the theme of duality, which is Us and the Other, but the graphic novel acknowledges this is, on some level, false. There are many more points of view represented, and duality is therefore a fallacy. Lather on some mythological allusions for a textured reading experience. In terms of art, Mazzucchelli, though known to most comics readers as the gritty Noir guy who drew Daredevil: Born Again and Batman: Year One, eschews that style in favor of a more European cartoonist feel, and you wouldn't necessarily recognize him from this, except how impeccably designed it all is.
RPGs: Our monthly Call of Cthulhu game ended in tragedy when an Egyptian tomb started crumbling around our ears and all the characters got out (well, not the Victorian racist archaeologist NPC, but we manifested that, probably) with major wounds. My character survived, as did our gravedigger, but the battle nun was killed. Or the weird, wormy doppelganger that replaced her many sessions ago did, I guess. It was strange and Sanity-sapping, but I feel bad either that the player lost another character, or that that weird secret storyline ended without becoming the main plot first. Stone slabs falling from the ceiling, amirite? But given she already had ideas for another character - some kind of cowboy - I think she may just like switching characters (I have a player like that in the Torg Eternity campaign). Now, the Egyptian story seems to be over - unless the trip back is somehow covered - but I hope we see the "Children of the Sphinx" who tried to kill us return. We demand justice! My skeptic of a character of course believes the undead mummy that came after us is just a big-boned member of the secret society defending the tomb, and it's entirely with that attitude that he tried to get rid of treasure stolen by the gravedigger - not because it's cursed, but because the society would come for it. Well, maybe it can act as a lure. We might meet a gunslinger who could react in an appropriate way here...
A slightly shorter sessions of Torg Eternity this week (on account of a late start), but not gonna lie, we've been straddling two acts for a while and I'm happy to finish right on the END of the Act this time, opening the way for sessions that tell a complete story once more (seeing as Acts 49 and 50 of the campaign are next and I want to do something special). So they completed Caldera (a fan-made adventure available on the Infiniverse, signed Jay Rutley), fighting a losing battle on the lip of a volcano for most of it. They mostly rolled badly, I mostly rolled well, but the full-frontal strategy against the evil wizard's Magma Elementals wasn't too productive, even with control over a B-team. Throw in the fact that a Melodrama card was forcing me to have one character's love interest betray the team, and "I don't think we're gonna make it, guys" was uttered. But a weird little side-opportunity was taken by our Freedom Magician and I indulged it (as you'll see under Best bits). It led to victory, though sacrifices were made: The love interest, the Monster Hunter's fresh new assistant (I just MADE him!), and indeed, the Monster Hunter whose reconnection mishap has led him to transform to Aysle (we still have to decide what that means, but it does NOT cure his were-bat curse).
Best bits: Let's talk about that crazy ending... So the villains draw a Setback, and I make the evil wizard "help" his secret mistress with a blast of wind meant to throw the Frankenstein over the edge of the volcano. As he falls, I give him a choice to resolve the Setback - either fall or grab onto his love interest, making her fall instead. Though the character is normally the most moral, he nevertheless chooses the latter option, and his heart starts pumping just long enough to break. But as the Realm Runner shouts out the false narrative that SHE saved Frank, it rattles the wizard and he loses concentration right at the end of a week-long ritual, losing control of the volcano. BUT, the Freedom Magician decides that, as another potential servant of the Ayslish Darkness Device (which had tried to entice him in the previous Act), he should usurp and finish the ritual and become Master of the Volcano. First he orders the Magma Elements to throw themselves at the wizard who spends all his possibilities soaking damage before running out and frying, diving head first into lava. The players all want the Magician to then pull his body out so they can loot it for magic items (which included an Eternity Shard, they'll only find out when they read this summary), but he instead "resurrects" the love interest, making her a Magma Elemental herself and restoring her to the Frankenstein. She pulls a Bride and jumps back into the lava, horrified that she has been turned into a monster. But by this point, the volcano has been awakened, and while it won't do the whole apocalyptic thing the ritual was designed to do, it's still grumpy and wants to erupt. After failing to convince it, the players decide that a proper, old-school sacrifice would do it. And though the Freedom Magician had a Martyr card in hand, and was played by someone who changes characters all the time, they still voted to chuck the Monster Hunter's assistant into the volcano, stating that he was the oldest, and over his panicked objections. They all passed their corruption tests. Oh, and the bit where Realm Runner drinks a health potion from the just-disconnected Monster Hunter's stash and goes "what is this piss?!" was hilarious.
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