alexdmcintosh Reviews

Three-Body (2023– )

Superior to the book

[9/10 · 9 March 2024]

The first Three Body Problem book is...well, not great. It's clunky and poorly paced in spots, exposition heavy, characterless, and sets up people and mysteries it doesn't even bother to resolve. What makes it work, though, is it's abundance of ideas and a compelling mystery. In short, its a worthy story in need of someone to tell it better.

Well, this series gets it mostly right. The casting is fantastic (Da Shi is perfect, no wonder he is a fan favorite), main and peripheral characters are expanded and given depth & motivation, and giant world-changing moments are given time to sink in and feel weighty. You feel the oppressive atmosphere as the noose around the world tightens.

To that last point, it does drag in places and sometimes feels like it is using filler to pad episodes. It also re-tells the same information over and over again that an audience already knows. Watching the series as a whole on Amazon made this really stick out, but I soon realized it's because this series was made to be newbie-friendly and consumed at a slower, old-fashioned pace. It gently fills in anyone who stumbled into a random episode and tries to invite them to keep watching, even though this comes at the expense of the modern, binge-watching experience the masses expect. It's meant to feel episodic and not like a 25 hour movie cut up into 45 min segments. They may have done this on purpose, but it does make for a frustrating watch sometimes and cost it a star in my book.

Netflix has their work cut out for them if they think they can do this any better in just 8 episodes (this series does contain an intimidating 30) but it sucks you in, does the book justice and leaves you hungry for more. Despite my criticisms of the first book, I feel the complete opposite about the sequel The Dark Forest, and this sets it up perfectly and has me thrilled for what comes next.

Corner Office (2022)

Look, you're not wrong pointing out it's about autism and conformity. That's not the issue here.

[3/10 · 24 October 2023]

Robert McKee: "...and God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That's flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character".

• Adaptation. (2002)

A game I play sometimes when there is narration is to imagine if the scene I'm watching would still work without the voiceover. The same with music played over scary movies scenes. So much of Corner Office fails cinematically that it only works with the voiceover, becoming the very crutch that ruins it.

It is in the WHOLE film. It looks like they have an explanation when it comes to show he's recounting his experience to a counselor, but then it keeps happening to the very end. See quote above again.

Yes, it is about autism, creativity in captivity, and the pressure to conform even when a clear truth is being denied. The issue is that all those things in CO are laid out and super obvious in the first 30 minutes...and then the film keeps going for another hour and ten minutes without actually saying anything about them, only to arrive at an ending that concludes nothing and just kinda...stops.

The tone and production design are fine, if pretty flat and uninspired, sitting at some nexus between Brazil, Severance, and Office Space. It just has nothing to say beyond standard office issues and just presenting them.

Also, the title. The Room in question is, in fact, NOT a corner office. They even repeatedly call it just "the room" throughout. So while I'm sure they changed the title from the short story to avoid association with one of the most famous bad movies ever, it should be no surprise a film as devoid of creativity and a voice as this one couldn't even title itself better.

No One Will Save You (2023)

A fine demo reel for everyone involved, but too bad about that ending.

[6/10 · 23 September 2023]

Its very hard to do something new with the UFO/alien abduction template, and this film proves no different. It took twenty years to get from Signs to Nope - that's far too long to wait for innovation in a subgenre I personally really connect with. But I have a real soft spot for it, so this perfectly scratched that itch, even if as it went along I started to really miss the restraint of something like the outstanding Vast of Night, that did far more with far less.

Brian Duffield & Kaitlyn Dever deserve all the praise coming their way for their work here. A well-shot, snappily paced and edited display of a full understanding of the cinematic and acting languages. Dever is headed for great things, and its always a pleasure to see a young person really get a meaty role to dig into and show they have the nuances and instincts to deliver. Duffield shows his Spielberg/Shayamalan influences but makes them his own, with old school parallax zooms and Raimi-type camera whips. It puts you in Brynn's mindset and makes the hopeless and claustrophobia set in fast.

As many will point out, it stubbornly adheres to that rule of Show, Don't Tell, which it pulls off with aplomb once you realize its doing it deliberately. I was reminded on more than one occasion of the Twilight Zone episode "The Invaders", another totally dialogue-free ET home invasion thriller. Though it gets a little too on the nose in places, where Brynn will just hold up the Chekov's Gun to the camera so we know its there, and have it on her person later after a ton of scramble and chaos ensures. I appreciate the effort, it just doesn't pay off as organically to the story as the setups/payoffs did in something like, say, 10 Cloverfield Lane.

It plays its hand a liiiiittle too early for my taste, showing the aliens a bit too soon and too clearly with slick, weightless CGI, but this is the film Duffield wanted to make, and restraint would have only hindered that story here. But...sigh...that ending, yes, is a mess. The emotional payoff to Brynn's story is made to the audience, but I really didn't understand what Brynn got out the whole ordeal. We get that classic Serling twist ending, but things are somehow less clear than before - are the Gray's victims of the parasites just as the humans are? Is Brynn being left unassimilated a gift or a punishment? Was everyone puppet mastered or body snatched? Am I supposed to be left with these questions & ambiguity on purpose or did the storytelling just fall apart? Its just unfortunate that for a tight spooky season treat, it couldn't stick the landing and leave an impact like it clearly wanted to. A fine effort all around, though, and one everyone should be proud to have on theirs CVs.

User reviews are on the money - 6.5/10.

Asteroid City (2023)

Man, I miss Rushmore

[5/10 · 2 July 2023]

Three characters. Down to earth aesthetic. Character action and motivation dictating framing, blocking and direction, not the other way around. And the genuine feeling of human growth, that distance has been traversed and we are different from where we started.

In his own way, Wes has gone full Shyamalan up his own a__. I hope he finds his spark again. Maybe he burned too bright with the trio of Moonrise, Fox and Budapest. Production design has overtaken plot. Character has been replaced with caricature, actors are props to be moved around, whose "quirkiness" is just another way of saying "written to have no inner monologue".

"It doesn't have to make sense. Just keep telling the story." Gimme a break.

Hellraiser (2022)

How to expand a mythology the right way

[7/10 · 8 October 2022]

Hellraiser seems to be one of those forgotten sequel-mill franchises that just keeps going but no one knows why. In terms of Barker's work, this new one does get closer to the original than most of the sequels. I actually liked Hellbound as much as the first, so this keeping in conceptual continuity with those two was fun to see.

As we got another Barker re-quel last year with Candyman, I expected an exquisite misfire along those lines, but this one shows how to do it right where the other failed horrifyingly. The first hour was a bit of a slog as we follow more whiny cannon-fodder of early-twenty-somethings through their modern progressive lives, but I was very surprised once we got to the third act well how they took the main character's plight of addiction and actually thematically tied it into the Cenobite's offers. It didn't disregard or ret-con things about the original the way Candyman '21 did, instead showing more complexity in demons' dealings and, dare I say, playfulness. You can almost understand through their mannerisms alone why they've chosen this path of existence.

It has it's problems with the screenplay, dumb character actions and exposition dumps, sure, but Hellraiser '87 is no masterpiece by any measure either. While Candyman '21 was an awkward bit of meta-irony about enslavement that no one seemed to notice when they were making it, Hellraiser '22 actually builds on the original and shows they understood the twist that makes the first two work - the titular "hellraiser" is never the cenobites. Julia and Frank are the villains of the originals, not Pinhead & Co, a fundamental misunderstanding that shows why the sequels just kept failing.

While Doug Bradley will never be dethroned for his sheer presence and intensity, absolute props to Jamie Clayton for having her own presence. I sometimes think studios try to force a blurb or tweet from character actors to create a false goodwill, but his praise of her performance was not a faux accolade. A rare belated sequel that neither disrespects or replaces the original.

Blonde (2022)

The worst "biopic" since Gotti

[4/10 · 29 September 2022]

--and possibly edited by the same person too. Its structure jumps around so much that scenes just happen without connective tissue between them and characters just enter and leave (JFK, Arthur Miller) without any setup or closure.

It straight-up apes David Lynch's style, too, with constant pseudo-Badalamenti dreamy synth score, and themes of a tortured woman spiraling into madness ala Fire Walk with Me and Inland Empire, without an ounce of the empathy and uncanny humanity. The ending is also a complete one-to-one ripoff of the Elephant Man.

Ana de Armas is utterly unconvincing, always sounding like she's doing an impression Monroe's pouty, wispy demeanor with no depth. Of course she'll get an Oscar nom, whatever that means anymore. Play a famous figure, ugly-cry and scream a bunch, show some skin, voila, Academy time. The Hulu series Pam & Tommy actually covered these similar themes of losing yourself to a public image and what part of you is owned by unseen forces of the masses much better with a far more convincing, three dimensional performance from Lily James as Pam Anderson. At least that blonde finally has something to boast about that rose above Marilyn's shadow. Don't waste your time.

You0 DECO (2022– )

Like Butch Hartman doing Orwell, via McLuhan. Not worth it.

[3/10 · 19 September 2022]

I owe "Tokyo 24-kyu" an apology. With similar themes of technology affecting our relationship with reality, free will, and value on the ethereal, I had felt at the time it had many interesting ideas that it turned out to not be mature enough to really explore well. But after "Yu0 Deco", that show had depth reaching all the way down to Terminal Dogma.

I fought to temper my expectations, since science SARU produced one of my favorite shows ever, anime or otherwise, a few years ago with "Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!". But hoo-boy, they got the C-team working on this one. The story is super derivative from things we've all seen before - the Matrix, Black Mirror, even Ready Player One (itself a derivative mess, but it makes the point about Deco being a copy-of-a-copy), but that doesn't excuse the episodic, scattershot narrative that ends with a rushed episode bad enough to rival "Promised Neverland"s disgusting finale, and takes a so-so show with a cast of likeable but forgettable characters and makes it a complete waste of time.

The light-hearted, Danny Phantom-level take on such extreme themes as mass surveillance, shadow populations, state-controlled murder, baseless virtual economies, etc, are brushed aside for scooby-doo type mysteries and hints of an overarching threat that never materialize into real danger. To paraphrase a "Last Jedi" critique, its like a story written by a high schooler, but, like, a really SMART high schooler.

Men (2022)

This is why every writer needs beta readers

[3/10 · 8 August 2022]

I've actually never seen any of Garland's other work, so I have nothing to defend or promote of his here. I will say, having undertaken the arduous creative process of writing a novel once myself, this is why you need someone else to read your work before you start showing it to the world. Symbolism and metaphors that are obvious to you as you're creating them can be impenetrable and esoteric to everyone else.

I WISH the message of this film was "all men are bad", because that would at least be A meaning. Instead, the metaphors cross-pollinate each other, and it comes across as a first draft with underdeveloped characters, so lost up its own a** that it loses all meaning behind the grotesque images.

I wish I had more to say, but it ended right when it was getting interesting. A rare case of me feeling like I completely wasted my time watching something.

The Deer King (2021)

A mess

[4/10 · 14 July 2022]

One part Mononoke, one part Maquia, and a third part season 3 of Attack on Titan. This should have been a full season of a show instead of a film, which completely hobbles its coherency. I know nothing of the pedigree of the writers and filmmakers and I wanted to like it more, but its a complete mess.

The opening is lovely the way it tells its story totally visually and practically dialogue-free, but the pacing is horribly rushed from there, plot points and exposition are delivered multiple times, its unclear who is with/against who at any time - especially in the third act - and our main character is passive and hardly developed outside of what happens/happened TO him. It ends up feeling like three movies all competing to be the main story instead of a cohesive, satisfying whole.

Our showing began with a message from Ando, the director, who seems like a very sweet, introverted guy who just wanted to make the best film he could. He's a great visualist, so don't be too hard on him. After working with Miyazaki, Kon & Shinkai, he has impossibly big shoes to fill.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Not as original in plot and premise, but sheer creativity and ideas keep it engaging and entertaining

[8/10 · 1 April 2022]

Best described as Sam Raimi, Hideaki Anno & Satoshi Kon by way of the Shaw Bros, with bits of Inception, The Matrix, Slaughterhouse Five and the cult Don Coscarelli film John Dies at the End. That latter pic had similar style and ideas but a more original plot. If not for the standard "chosen one" premise that has long since been exploded by The Lego Movie a decade ago, EEAAO could have been a masterpiece.

And it does come close - VERY close. Seriously, never before have butt plugs been so crucial to saving the universe.

However my biggest gripe is that it reaches its climax at about the 1 hour 40 min mark - then just keeps going. I started zoning out and wanting the movie to just get to the point of it all. I'm all for creativity and invention, but the final act of this could have been tightened up way the hell more in editing.

Strongly recommended, though. Go have a blast!

Police in a Pod (2022)

Bechdel what?

[9/10 · 20 February 2022]

In a cour dominated by copy+paste isekai, pervy wish fulfillment (Dress-up Darling), and the closure of one of the most popular yet terrible pieces of long-form storytelling (Attack on Titan), along comes Hakozume to stand proudly against the grain.

Initially we were drawn into it by the thumbnail image of gorillas in wigs - which is not the weirdest thing anime has ever produced! - and started watching it as a lark. What we found is a character-driven slice of life that deals with real world problems of local law forces and hierarchies, while allowing both Kawai and Fuji to become fleshed-out people that begin to see each other as their own better halves - the titular 'police in a pod'.

It also stubbornly and refreshingly refuses to let any sexual tension exist between the male detectives and our heroines. In fact, one episode even deals with a detective undercover with Kawai as her boyfriend and having full-blown panic attacks over how he should be acting to fit the role while avoiding anything that could be labeled 'sexual harassment'. The gorillas in wigs image even pays off in a very appropriate and humorous moment!

A great show that has become the highlight of the week's new episodes, perfect for teenagers, especially girls. Its full of insights about self-image, motivation, insecurity and uncertainty about the future. But at a time when fantasy reigns, something that demolishes the Bechdel test this thoroughly and entertainingly is worthy of laudation.

Cosmic Dawn (2022)

Interesting, somewhat derivative, premise let down by conflicting visuals, spotty writing and unnecessarily jumbled presentation

[3/10 · 16 February 2022]

As with most ambitious things, I'm actually having trouble putting into words exactly why it didn't all work in the end.

While losing a mother to something inexplicable and traumatizing is rough on a person, the only thing we get to see of Aurora's life after her mother vanishes is her dancing in a club having fun with drugs. But we don't SEE her problems or how far she's fallen. There's no real indication of how lost she is before the plot proper kicks in and therefore what kind of hole the Cosmic Dawn is filling. I guess we're supposed to figure she's seeing Alyse as a surrogate mother-figure, but that's all shoved aside at the end with no payoff. We needed more moments like the breakfast singalong, which was the first time in the film that a visual callback worked, showing Aurora getting the same high from her life before. But when I don't know what void she's trying to fill, I wondered why she kept going along with it all.

The script is smart in spots. I'm glad they dropped the Four Years Later/Ago captions real quick, and cleverly use names and ideas dropped into conversations to introduce them, then immediately jump to the other time to illustrate their importance. That connective tissue kept me following the narrative when I wasn't sure from one scene to the next When we were. Maybe a varied visual style between the time periods would have worked better, because Moneo knows how to make interesting cosmic visuals, but I'm not convinced he knows how to shoot slower, character-driven scenes interestingly.

But then there's Tom the Walking Plot Hole. Taking into account the twist at the end that he is, in fact, a True Believer/Reptilicus in disguise/Whatever, it calls into question literally everything he does in the film. If he has always been a believer that Natalie was going to open the doorway, why hide the phone in the woods to call her father and argue with her? If he were a plant to weed out non-believers like Aurora, again, why show doubt away from her? How did Dieter know Aurora would go to see Tom after getting the blue envelope? If we're supposed to think he got converted in the intervening four years, why did Tom try to hide the blue envelope to stop her from going back? Did Tom think she was going to trust him after trying to get her to watch it when Tom wasn't suppose to let her know he knew about the envelope in the first place? Nothing he does makes sense once you get that ending.

Another issue is the lack of a center of gravity for the drama. No offense to Antonia Zegers, who is a fine actress and does great work here, but she is pretty miscast as Alyse. Feel free to disagree - she DOES have some captivating eyes - but she doesn't have the draw and charisma of a cult leader, coming across more like your cool, single Aunt instead (an Aunt Amy from Daria, if you will, but less sarcastic). Most cult leaders seem to have a pretty normal, accessible exterior that peels away once you're in their isolated world, but its just hard to buy into her soft-spoken, floaty performance that commands everyone's loyalty when she's like that from the very beginning. They just seem like a group of weirdos being weird, and no one is drawn to that.

And we need to talk about the "cheepnis" of it all. There are great visuals and better integrated greenscreens than other small budget films, but it was a mistake setting so much of the story in the "Mothership". I didn't buy from the first frame that these were "renovated tunnels", as it looked like a stage from a high school play or a Star Trek TOS set - all neon lights and painted Styrofoam. A real location would have been much more immersive, and maybe allowed for more interesting shots than trackings and shot/reverse shot. The longer we lingered there and had time to examine it all, the more flimsy it looked and the more I was taken out of it.

Maybe its the fact that it left no real room for wondering if it was real or not, maybe it's that the space gods were just reptilian humanoids, but it just didn't work. It doesn't feel like a payoff at the end because it turns out things ARE exactly how they seem, so it didn't feel like any journey of discovery had happened. Yes, her mother was abducted. Yes, the flowers did allow communication. Yes, the cult was telling the truth. If you'd left me on a shot of all the bodies of the cult at the bottom of the cliff where the doorway appeared, it would have recontextualized the whole story. But there was no ambiguity or subtext to the story. I don't know what this was trying to say, and after having just seen it, I can't even take a stab at a guess.

David Byrne's American Utopia (2020)

Hypocrisy from a notorious bridge-Byrner

[5/10 · 29 January 2022]

I had an uncle who decided one day to abandon his two young sons and wife, who was still pregnant with their third child. He now lives in a different province as an upstanding family man, businessman and church member. But he is a scumbag and complete fraud to anyone who really knows him.

I say this to explain the ickiness I got from Byrne's message in American Utopia and to compare it with who he really is. Anyone who knows the history of Talking Heads' breakup knows Byrne is egotistical and "incapable of returning friendship". I don't need platitudes about peace and love from a man who used, abandoned, actively tried to hinder and can't make peace with the band that made him who he is today. I'm sure Jerry, Tina and Chris would agree.

Byrne is an outstanding musician and artist, and I will always be a fan, but a message of understanding and tolerance from him and the hatemonger Lee using the music of his former family is ugly and in poor taste. Watch AU and enjoy, but don't ignore the truth about the feel-good, flower-power message. 5 stars only due to the timeless TH songs.

Toast of Tinseltown (2022– )

"Has a rather tragic ring to it."

[4/10 · 12 January 2022]

I, like so many, really love the original three seasons of ToL. They're consistently weird and creative, well-written, with great characters and memorable music, some tunes I still hum to myself today. However I think I laughed maybe once this entire series at something other than the main character, and that hurts. Here are some points to consider--

1. I think this show was made at the wrong time. Celebrity fans of the original are awkwardly skyped in on product-placed laptops and tablets, and it bears the dated stamp of something made during the pandemic. I know no one's getting any younger, but if faced with that choice, use some no-name American actors or just wait for this to pass. It's hard to feel like Toast is in Tinseltown when all of Tinseltown just seems to phone it in.

2. No songs. The songs in ToL were like beautiful little pathos bombs, giving humorous and truthful insights into Toast and others to show an understanding that he isn't just a clown, but an insecure, genuine human. None of that carries over to ToT and it is sorely missed.

3. Watching Fred Armisen is like listening to comedy on its death bed while he holds the pillow over its face. Why he was cast in a major supporting role I'll never understand.

4. The only American celebrity who didn't make me cringe when onscreen was Rashida Jones. She plays a real human being who acts as Toast's confidant. Ed, though a creepy old pervert, always lends an ear or has Toast's back (quite literally in the stage fright episode). A character like Steven needs that, and she provides the other leg for him to stand on.

5. The only reason I give it the score it has is because of Toast himself. Matt Berry is as effortlessly funny and appealing as ever, and a pitiful loser like him (Toast, not Berry) only gets funnier the older he gets. It was a pleasure to see him and his world again.

It is a very disappointing follow-up to a show I truly love. But, as the Man himself sings, "all men somehow pay for love".

Man Down (2013–2017)

Doesn't quite nail its tone

[5/10 · 26 November 2021]

I think what Greg was going for was a quirkier view of his pre-comedy life, and while Greg, Mike and Riosin are all great as their characters and the show gets better as it goes on, it never really sold me on the comedy of it all.

I'm not a gatekeeper on what "funny" is, but I find MD to be uncomfortably straddling the "in its own world" premises of IT Crowd & Toast of London, and the awkward realism of Alan Partridge & Peep Show. It wants the absurdist schtick but also the brutal pathos, and never really quite succeeds over its 4-season run. You can believe an idiot like Jo would exist in Toast's world, but in a show that decides to take an excruciatingly realistic long close-up take of Dan pulling a bloody pencil out of his cheek, and then say a mentally unfit and fiscally irresponsible adult like Jo could get approved for a small business loan, it confused me how seriously Greg & company Wanted me to take all these character's plights. I should be anticipating the comedy to ensue when Dan finally gets to have a day with his baby, but after three seasons, I only found myself agreeing with Emma and everyone else that he shouldn't be within 100 yards of either mother or child. I was actively rooting against the protagonist, likeable or not. If you're making Seinfeld, that works. But a series literally about a grownup trying to pull his life together, the eponymous 'man down', it leaves you asking "why bother"? Brian's plight with his divorce and kids was far more engaging and memorable, and its a shame I'll never see that resolved. He became, for me, my true 'man down'.

If this tickles you the right way, then that's great. For me, Greg et al have done much better (gonna go watch some Taskmaster now).

Malignant (I) (2021)

Copy of a copy

[5/10 · 15 September 2021]

One of the fun things about scrolling past the anime block on Netflix is seeing all the crazy names of the shows and movies. "I want to eat your pancreas", "Made in Abyss", "That time I got reincarnated as a slime", these are all phrases no native English speaker would ever hope to come up with. The same is true with a modern filmmaker trying to copy an 80s Italian slasher.

Intention and craft are there, but they're too much. Wan shoots and blocks too smoothly and exactly the same way he shoots action scenes like in Aquaman - digital gloss, wide angle lens, 360 omnipresent camera, low frame rate energy. The problem in a horror movie is its all too clean and dictated by the camera instead of the action unfolding. In the hands of someone with more energy and invention like Sam Raimi, these become unnerving, jerky and crude, the unrefined nature adding to the atmosphere that Wan is clearly trying to capture. Here it all just feels calculated and winking.

Defenders are calling it intentionally campy. This is all in their own reading of it. The problem is that 80s low budget slashers and giallos weren't trying to be campy. Those were trying to be copies of superior, more success and classier horror films from their unique cultural points of view, so Malignant ends up a facsimile of a facsimile, lost in its own irony and at odds with its tone. There are 'eyebrows' missing here that a non-native filmmaker could never hope to replicate. I appreciate the effort, because ambition and risk-taking are NOT one of this movie's problems, but Wan has made much better.

Chompy & the Girls (2021)

Nifty little low-budget mystery

[7/10 · 14 September 2021]

Like something lifted straight out of a nightmare and so surreal I won't be sure in the future if this movie exists or I just dreamed it.

The story kicks off within the first 15 mins with its intriguing inciting incident, which could have unfolded into a clone of something like 'It Follows' or any other generic slasher, but instead goes some place else entirely. The two leads are instantly likeable (one remains so for most of the film, and the other...) and I stayed invested as it twisted in directions I didn't expect, even at the end when the limits of the budget became distractingly apparent.

I appreciate that the director/writer clearly understands the premise alone couldn't sustain the albeit swift 90 min runtime and knows the characters have to be...well, characters. It does drag in spots as Jackson begins droning on in a schtick that wears thin, but it informs her character's place in life and Braband does a decent job establishing basic, understandable traits and desires with simple things like a noose and a pair of cowboy boots. As an avid viewer of low-budget trash, this was a welcome above-average effort for a film of this caliber, which earns it a 7 for me.

It never looks incompetent or cheap (except, again, until the last fifteen minutes), is well shot, edited and paced, and if Braband continues to hone this off-beat style, he has a bright future. I'm looking forward to his next film.

This Is Pop: Hail Britpop! (2021) Season 1, Episode 2

Sheesh, britpop was more than just Blur and Oasis, guys

[5/10 · 6 July 2021]

Spends way too much time on Blur vs Oasis. Sure, the battle of britpop was a major event for the country, but the episode ignores the movement's stylistic roots in XTC and Roxy Music, major players like Pulp and "Common People", the greatest britpop song ever, or the shameful blacklisting by the press of genius Tim Smith and the masterpiece 90's output of Cardiacs. A nice intro to the britpop era but only Netflix-style surface level.

Snuff Box (2006)

Hard to review as its own thing

[7/10 · 18 March 2021]

It works when you think of it more as a demo reel, a proof-of-concept of the style and humor Berry would end up perfecting in Toast of London six years later by adding premise, characters and pathos. After all, you'll notice music, character names and even actors from ToL appear here first. Its a fascinating exercise to watch.

Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)

Marginally better

[6/10 · 18 March 2021]

Only slightly better than the Whedon version in a way the suggests someone other than Snyder and Terrio read over the script before shooting began. That is to say, certain things get set up and paid off in the way a movie should act. Though Barry Allen is still insufferable and Gadot still can't act, the biggest improvements are Cyborg and Steppenwolf. They and other characters get backstories and motivations. That's good, but it's also the bare minimum any storyteller should be able to achieve. Snyder still can't control his own worst impulses. When he shows, he tells. When he tells, he tells again. When epic things happen, someone is there stating the obvious or a pointless narration accompanies it. As a result, it drags in many places and doesn't justify its runtime or its R-rating.

There is still no room for subtly, and certain scenes still feel in places like they could have been edited around in any order ala BvS. Steppenwolf is now joined by DeSaad and Darkseid, but even with three baddies, Snyder still can't make a compelling villain with a reason beyond 'kill and conquer'. Did they all just forget for thousands of years they left the mother boxes on Earth? Some half-arsed line in the flashback waves it away.

They also kept moving the finish line - for the first half of the movie, the mother boxes creating the Unity are the big ticking clock threat to be stopped. Then, just before the third box is found, this new threat of the 'anti-life equation' is introduced. Then the Unity is formed, but now we have time to stop them before they 'synchronize'. And the anti-life stuff is just kicked down the road. How do you feel the threat when the moment of absolute defeat keeps changing?

And that epilogue...grrrr that epilogue...everything about it. The pacing, the bait-and-switch promise of new characters, the desperate setups that will never pay off...I haven't seen a final act handled so poorly since The Last Jedi.

Thank goodness, though, Snyder kept some of my favorite schlocky moments, such as Diana's half-hearted "Kal-el, no!", and our heroes literally digging up Superman's grave and loading him into the back of a pedo van, so I got some entertainment. Well, bravo everyone. You willed a 4-hour mediocrity into bare-minimum existence. At least Snyder's vision is now done and we can move on.

Watchmen (2019)

Start poorly, tries to get better, end awfully.

[5/10 · 12 January 2021]

Alan Moore protested Watchmen ever being made into another medium because it addresses themes and ideas specific to the decades-old platform of superhero comic books. Its one of the reasons the Zack Snyder film, for all its flaws, actually made a smart choice in changing the ending so it fit the film medium better, and argue if you want, I found it worked. This 'remix' shows why those kinds of intelligent decisions weren't made this time around, and we're left with what amounts to a Watchmen fan fiction that simply didn't need to be told because it has nothing to say. It's a bait and switch. You're sold a story that will be about timely political and cultural themes in an alternate world but it just ends up being a Marvel movie with a moustache-twirling villain wanting more power.

The odd mix of blatant fan service with repurposed dialogue and images had me scratching my head about who this is for. It takes so much screen time trying to get the uninitiated up to speed by cryptically retelling the book (think the Watchmaker's Son scene, which makes no sense in context why it is needed for anyone other than the audience) that it either insults you if you've read the book or it confuses you if you're just paying attention to the storytelling.

The world-building is clunky as hell. In 2019, why do cars that sound electric still have exhaust pipes when combustion engines were dinosaurs back in the 80s? Because 20+ year old pickup trucks are easy visual shorthand for "racist redneck"?

Why do the Tulsa police have a Dreiberg-designed airship (that can barely keep up with a two-seater Cessna), but the FBI still travel by old jet airplane?

The original hooded justice is inspired by an anachronistic film about a black lawman that makes no sense for existing in the time that it does, but, hey, its a powerful emotional image, right? What kind of movie like Trust in the Law would get made in the 1920s? That's like the dumb scene of a young Clark Kent running around in a cape playing 'superman' in Man of Steel.

Why does Veidt still have Nite Owl's airship at Karnak? How else did Dan and Laurie leave Antarctica at the end of the book?

And then the storytelling...my god, Lindelof is a hack...why didn't Angela witness Will's meeting with DM a decade earlier when she was on her Nostalgia bender? Did Will and Trieu know she would take his pills so he left that one out? How did she even see the night Judd was killed in the memories? They were never made into pills. These are the kind of story-killing plot hole threads you need to tug on before even starting pre-production.

Why did DM teleport that attacker on White Night to Gila Flats? I'm not the foremost expert on DM's character, but he's never had any issue killing people before, especially when someone he "loves" is in danger, so why? Because we need the plot to happen?

Why the elephant? Who was lube man? Why is Doctor Manhattan in the show at all? Remember his line "I'm leaving this galaxy for one less complicated"? Did the writers even read the book, or just go with what general pop culture has made famous about the book?

But aside from the bad worldbuilding and plotting, Watchmen at the end of it all is about the clash of ideologies, and, to paraphrase a better HBO show, what the cost of lies is for a better future and who is willing to pay it. This wants to be about the clash of ideologies, but racism isn't about ideology. I think about that angel of a man Daryl Davis who cuts through the rioting & headlines and shows racism to be a matter of the head as well as the heart. The book dared to be morally gray, portraying monsters as human and heroes as broken, desperate people. This show does nothing daring like that, but instead portrays the white supremacists as straight-out villains instead of flawed humans just as much a part of the broken world that needs to be saved as the heroes are. They're plot points that can be identified, controlled and led by anyone in a robe who shows up and assumes power. Even the Rorschach masks turn them into faceless fodder to be slaughtered mercilessly in the name of 'racial justice'. In short, this show was written by the kinds of ideologues who think things like unconscious bias training actually works. It just didn't do it for me.

Paranoia Agent: Happy Family Planning (2004) Season 1, Episode 8

Plays you like a fiddle

[10/10 · 30 November 2020]

Outstanding episode, and certainly the one that stuck with me long after the end of the show.

You'd be fine for choosing Double Lips as the best of the series, but that one is just sort of a re-skinned Perfect Blue. Happy Family Planning plays on the viewers' biases to show how numb we are becoming to others that you don't notice the truth until it is abstractly revealed at the end. Even a horrifying moment early in the plot involving a train ends in a punchline you could see being a reality soon.

It tells an unconventional story that walks a tricky tonal tight-rope to show how even in the darkest places people find joy, redemption, and yes, even a family. It'll linger in your mind for a long while.

The Queen's Gambit (2020)

Dramatically obvious when not being inert

[5/10 · 11 November 2020]

Maybe the rave reviews set my expectations way too high or I've absorbed too many of my wife's sports anime in passing, but I found this series very underwhelming. It had an annoying tendency to introduce potentially dramatic material and then immediately deflate it or do nothing with it.

The show never manages to bring you into the world of the characters. Through all their jargon and esoterica about chess, it all falls meaningless on you because, I suppose, we're just suppose to marvel at how complicated it all is as a way to establish her genius at the game, because it's never explained in any substantial or understandable way how she plays the game so differently in her own mind. Conversely, look at how Moneyball uses two characters with different understandings of the game to create a way to bring the viewer into the world through their dialogue. I understood and appreciated more about a sport I didn't care about at the end of that 2 hour film than I did after 7+ of this series.

Because her awakening in chess occurs at the same time as her drugging, the series leaves you wondering how much of her ability is her and how much is the substance dependency. I'll assume this was on purpose, but it's all smoke and mirrors to create the illusion of a flawed character. She never struggles because of it, succeeds and is lauded & praised at every competition, and literally kicks her self-destructive habits, including an almost life-long dependency on the tranqs, in the FIRST act of the LAST episode. Does this impact her in any way? Not at all. She has a moment of hesitation in the last game but uses the Force, I guess, and discovers it was her all along like there was an understanding placed into the viewer that it might not be.

Subplots abound that go nowhere and cost Beth nothing. Her adoptive father returns to claim the house. Will she have to face homelessness? Depending on her friends in the chess world to survive? Will she have to grow at all? Nope, she just happens to have enough money to buy him off in the same scene. Instantly, the tension evaporates. She's blown her money and can't go to Russia for her match. Jolene just lends her money with no string attached. Instantly, the tension evaporates. Borgov is being accompanied in America, they say, by KGB in case he 'tries to escape'. The state department agent tells Beth to be aware if Borgov tries to pass any sign or message to her. Is Borgov trying to defect? Will he send a message to Beth in their game? Nope. It goes nowhere. Then why even bring it up, writers? You know things mean things in your story, right?

And for all the time the last two episodes waste, including a moment where Beth makes a phone call and the camera literally wanders away on a house tour for no reason, it ends the story at such a weird place that I started looking for meaning where there wasn't any. The old man she sits to play resembled Shaibel to the point that I said 'oh my god, it's the same actor and she's symbolically playing her mentor again as an equal!'. Wrong. Not the same actor. It just ended on some old man in a park in Russia. Nothing resolving her trauma over her real parents, her substance abuse, the men she's used and regained trust with for no reason. Nothing. Well, I guess Jolene's going to get her money back, so that's something.

The acting is top-notch and the production design is second to none (minus some awkward greenscreens in Russia), and for the layman, I'm sure this was dramatic and intense, but this is definitely not for people looking for a story and experience as engaging and complex as the game itself.