Before I watched many more noir films, I considered Max Payne really cool and really important to me, but also not that deep or interesting a story. This, I think, is the common view of it; it uses all the cliches of the genre but as an empty exercise emboldened by the fact that it’s doing so in an entirely new medium – making you feel, through gameplay, that you are the noir hero, something even the empathy of films cannot do as well as video games. Max’s story is generic signifiers and purple prose carefully laid over solid gameplay.
After watching many more noir films, I’ve come to consider Max Payne an above-average example of the form. The noir writers of the Fifties would surely appreciate the solid conspiracy plot Max uncovers and the simple, direct characterisation of his villains. Most importantly, I imagine many of them would be impressed by the simple atmosphere created through mixing a snowstorm with Norse imagery to imply an oncoming apocalypse, and indeed wishing they’d thought of that themselves.
This essay is less about Max Payne and more about the way I (and therefore we) categorize and compare art. When I was a young adult, I suppose I was unconsciously comparing most shows to the ambition of The Simpsons. I’ve called this four-quadrant comedy, where it’s all at once a meaningful character drama, having something important to say, using the form to most detailed effect, and also being the funniest fucking thing ever made.
Most of my faves could be described as having that ambition; Metal Gear Solid is almost hysterical in its reaching for multiple seemingly contradictory goals, The Venture Bros comes closest to following The Simpsons in its ambitions – even exceeding it when it comes to laser focus on its philosophical points – and Community combined its sitcom goals with melodramatic therapy on the part of creator Dan Harmon.
Part of mellowing out as I’ve gotten older involved developing an appreciation for works with not only simpler goals, but singular goals – or, more accurately, admitting how much I liked them. I’ve definitely learned to appreciate comedies that only try to be comedies – in a way, The Venture Bros took the most complicated route to get to that one goal – particularly after seeing many works try and fail to imitate the complexity of my faves, doing shallow imitation of things I normally am into.
My mistake – understandable as it might be – was to hope that everything could have the scope of The Simpsons, which is obviously not possible, and perhaps not even desirable. I know there are great, emotionally resonant episodes of The Simpsons that I skip when I just want something dopamine-inducing in the background while I do chores I explicitly do not want to do. Part of my change in outlook, though, is that I have a better handle on creating the kinds of things I like. Ever since my father passed, I’ve been writing in real earnest; much of which will never see the light of day, but which brings me pleasure.
When you’re young and, uh, lacking in knowledge, you tend to be driven by what you can consume. I know I was frustrated that I couldn’t create these things I found so wonderful; part of my love was my awe that someone was capable of making these spectacular, ambitious things. My frustration with ‘lesser’ works was frustration that the creator apparently couldn’t see that this could be better – more interesting, more creative, more moving than it needed to be.
Now that I’m the guy making things, I can take flaws in stride, even be delighted by them – I can find the gaps between what other creators have made and spin something good out of it. A work no longer has to fully reflect me and my goals; they can be smaller parts of the human experience, that I can take and rework into parts into my own work, and I can enjoy individual works as one sliver of the human experience. I can say Max Payne is the best at being Max Payne.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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Conversation
What did we watch?
Babylon 5, Season Three, Episode Nine, “Point of No Return”
I keep finding this frustrating response to episodes of this show, where the middle third (and often the first third) feels like marking time til we get to the important bit – like eating our vegetables before we get to what we want. Compare to The Shield, which is aggressively watchable. I happen to know the big turn that will happen this season, and this feels like building up to that, where Sheridan recognises that he has a perfectly legal move that completely upends the authority of the people above him (shades of Sinclair in the first season using the Rush Act to give the striking workers exactly what they want).
I feel like the ‘time-marking’ effect is partially a result of the twenty-odd episode approach; this feels like a lot of stuff a thirteen-episode season would skip over. We’ve collectively began to romanticise these two-dozen episode seasons, but I feel they best work for sitcoms and other status-quo driven shows. On the other hand, the long season also gives room for something like G’Kar being imprisoned for a decent amount of time, enjoying it as a mini-status quo and feeling relief when he’s freed (and indeed, shock that a guy has been waiting for him the whole time). This leads to the Narn allying with Babylon 5, which is a cool-as-hell turn.
Londo and Vyr’s plot, on the other hand, is exactly the kind of great thing you’d get from these long old seasons; it doesn’t push the story forward, but it lays the groundwork for it later, and it’s genuinely just funny to have this specific reveal that both Londo and Vyr will be Emperor. I’m enjoying watching Londo try and worm his way out of the position he’s put himself in; this feels like a plot you wouldn’t really see anymore, with a slimy anti-hero trying to get away with everything. It sets up Gaius only eight years later in a similar position – though he’s more sociopathic than Londo – but otherwise it doesn’t feel like a plot people do anymore.
The time-marking is much more noticeable here, when there is a big threat, than in the first season when the overarching story is “here are a bunch of people bouncing off each other in space” — you could see a larger narrative there but there was less urgency to it. So yeah, it’s frustrating, but the bits like G’Kar in prison given a fair amount of time help make up for it. And the other thing that gets romanticized that remains completely solid here is the classic TV episode — if the time is marked it is actually marked by acts and resolution, rather than a bunch of scenes with no structure.
Rogue — Australian boat tour gets trapped by a giant crocodile and … not enough ensues. Writer/director Greg McLean had previously made Wolf Creek and while I haven’t seen that yet I know its grim vibe; Rogue is in a weird zone of being a more crowd-friendly monster movie while also killing (or not killing) people off the cliched beats. But those cliches are there for a reason! Not every movie can be Tremors but the similar isolated/hunted setup here really clarifies how well Tremors crafts its characters and how poorly Rogue does, with Michael Vartan as the lead giving the most TV-ass-guy-in-a-movie flick I’ve seen in a long time. The end does good work with a big croc in a small space, getting there is a lot of nonsense. Every Criterion curation has at least one bullshit entry, here’s the 00s horror one.
REC — this is also in that Criterion category but I watched it on Shudder because Shudder knows their shit. And this is very good! The found footage conceit is great, if the characters are thin who cares, the movie moves too quickly for that to be an issue. Nice gore, great panicky vibe, interesting ending, this is how it’s done.
Madman — this, on the third hand, is prime Tubi horror, a dumbass early 80s slasher where a bunch of camp counselors in their 20s get iced by see title. The madman’s story is told twice at the beginning, once in classic ghost story form and once via song by a counselor who looks like the Fonz’s kid brother prancing around like he’s in Cats, just bizarre shit. A highly, highly MST3K-able movie that still has some nice decapitations and an interesting autumnal vibe (it was filmed on location in November) and a decent synth soundtrack when it’s not doing We Have Sweeney Todd At Home, technically a worse movie in every way than Rogue but far more enjoyable.
Fright Night — back to Shudder! The first half of this is not very good at all and I was wondering why it’s considered a cult classic, the hero is a huge dumbass and is only saved from being the most annoying person in the movie by his asshole buddy, an unholy combination of Eddie Deezen and Sherman from American Pie, just abysmal. Fortunately Roddy McDowall and especially Chris Sarandon are also here, Sarandon is a hell of a vampire, and the monster effects kick ass, lots of great and gross practical stuff. And the nightclub scene, in particular the seduction dance, is outstanding, the kind of thing that might not justify but retroactively excuses the nonsense beforehand — I can see where the cult comes from.
Traffic — hey, this isn’t horror! But it is a damn good time, Luis Guzman runs away with the movie but Del Toro is obviously great too and the whole cast brings it, so many Guys (love D.W. Moffett, a slimy DC survivor) zipping things along. And in terms of zipping, Stephen Mirrione’s editing is a more crucial of this movie’s success than Soderbergh’s color grading — “Peter Andrews” does good work but with this and Sarah Flack’s work on The Limey maybe “Mary Ann Bernard” should take a powder more often. Had the flash of insight that Topher Grace is essentially a younger and skinnier Adam Scott in terms of smarmy douchery (complimentary), where is their sibling buddy comedy.
Where To Land — hey, this isn’t horror or watched on my TV! Caught Hal Hartley’s new movie at the theater, it is about a writer/director who is clearly a Hartley stand-in and how his estate planning leads to mild farce about people thinking he’s dying. A small movie with big thoughts about life and death and work, its rhythms take some getting used to but it builds to a very enjoyable second half of people hanging out and piling confusions on each other. Bill Sage as Legally Not Hartley is very good, he collects people over the course of the movie because he’s interested in them and what they have to say, and if there is no real conflict here the film is also interested in hearing people out over a few surprisingly not bad light beers, and recognizing this as time well spent is as profound as you want it to be.
Live music — The No Kings rally in Boston had a wannabe-Woody Guthrie with an accordion, he sucked ass and played “America The Beautiful,” a pleasant song that sucks ass as a rally song. But the bands were better, The Sheila Divine closed with urgent anthems, they are to my mind a solid B+ band who I’ve never really gotten into but enjoyed here, and local hero Abbie Barrett kicked ass in the middle slot, a song about the Jan. 6 riots that is actually really good (with a nice spiky riff) and a should’ve-been-huge rocker about perseverance that is always awesome and was mildly tweaked to be anti-Trump (not hard), this got a huge response from the crowd and well should it. Speakers were often disappointing, good music remains undefeated.
Why play anything but the complete “This Land Is Your Land” if you want to be Woody?
The remake of Fright Night is better made, better acted, and just not as much fun as the original. David Tennant, I love you, but Roddy McDowall is exactly what we need.
The cast of the remake looks great (Farrell in particular is inspired, at least if he’s allowed to use his normal accent) but yeah, it has a more-serious vibe in its images that is not what you want.
Farrell uses the American accent he tends to use in most of the things I’ve seen him in.
Wooooooo live antiregnal music!!
Benjamin Bratt has never been hotter than playing a cartel boss in Traffic.
Phffft – The title refers to the indicator of a failed society marriage used by Walter Winchell. The divorce at hand is that of lawyer Jack Lemmon and soap opera writer Judy Holliday, and of course the entire arc of the movie is how long it takes them to realize their mistake. (Really interesting to note just how many movies use a divorce as the driver of the screwball comedy or romcom in an era when divorce was not that common.) There’s little of surprise here, of course. All the pleasure comes from watching the stars separately and together, though every so often George Axelrod’s script shows signs of far more sexual acrobatics going on in the 50s than Hollywood wants to admit. (Axelrod claims he wrote a much racier screenplay that was defanged by director Mark Robson.) The high point is a rhumba by the ex-couple that combines dancing skill, comedic timing, and just a bit of raw chemistry. Look for Kim Novak in her second movie role as a bombshell who is maybe a bit too eager to turn back the clock to her cheerleading days. (I just watched her first film, Pushover. Is a trend emerging?)
The Practice, “Of Human Bondage” – In the main story, Bobby is asked at the last moment to help a friend defend a teen sex worker accused of murder. She has an alibi, the corporate bigwig who had hired her that night, but he refuses to step forward (and of course his name is protected by lawyer/client privilege). How can Bobby win? Well, maybe by getting to the truth of things. This seems to follow on the heels of “Bobby and the dead newborn” as attempts to force Bobby into new ethical dilemmas, and it works only until you think about how unlikely things are. Elsewhere, Jimmy and another lawyer connive to convince both halves in a bitter divorce that each side is winning, and Ellenor defends a druggie on the simple principle that if he didn’t do it, he should not be convicted. I think we are deep into “how to pad out 24 episodes” territory. Guests include Alan Oppenheimer, who’s done so much voice work that I usually ignore his face when he’s in front of a camera.
Frasier, “Whine Club”/”Hot Pursuit” – In the former, Mel convinces Niles that he and not Frasier should be “corkmaster” of their wine club, and then has brunch with the family and rubs everyone the wrong way. In the latter, Frasier and Roz go to a broadcasters convention known for its raunchy opening night cocktail party, but both strike out and for one moment are ready to throw caution to the wind; while at home Martin is on a stakeout as a favor to Donny, and a worried Niles comes along. Each of these has its moments, from the charming absurdity of the wine club to the realization that Mel is Maris 2.0, from Niles admitting that he worried about his dad coming home from being a cop since he was five to the bittersweet not-really-romance. Indeed, the possibility of Roz and Frasier goes with Mary and Lou’s one date and Alex and Elaine’s one night of passion on the list of “scenes were friends think about crossing the line.” BUT Niles stormed out at the end of the former and that is forgotten in the latter. Given that there is some degree of serialization now in the run to the end of the saga of Niles and Daphne, this is pretty sloppy.
“(Really interesting to note just how many movies use a divorce as the driver of the screwball comedy or romcom in an era when divorce was not that common.)” — I can’t believe this is only just occurring to me now, but this entire dynamic rests on the divorce not involving kids, right? So it’s basically a more permanent/potentially permanent break-up between adults, allowing for lots of comedy between people of equal agency if not power. The minute kids get involved that goes out the window, and post-60s divorce is full of kids being involved so the dynamic is largely lost.
The closest I can get to a kid in anything like a “broken marriage” movie is the Greek refugee Katherine Hepburn insists on adopting in Woman of the Year. and he’s basically a prop.
Didn’t do a full pass at my local horror / cult / genre film festival but stopped in for a couple on Friday evening and a couple more on Saturday afternoon:
The Arbiter – a low-budget British comedy-action film that is basically riffing on The Raid and The Warriors: a bunch of warring gangs attend a summit in a well-protected office building but it turns out to be a trap instigated by a new gang, leading them to fight their way out. I saw another film (Nightshooters) by this director at the same festival a couple of years ago and LOVED it, this one was good in most of the same ways but lacked the “wow” factor, possibly due to covering similar ground, possibly because the martial arts guy they lucked into hiring for Nightshooters was fucking brilliant. This was still very fun though and a good film to see with a big crowd.
Redux Redux – sci-fi revenge film about a woman jumping through parallel universes to get vengeance over the man who wronged her, over and over again. This was possibly my favourite of the four films I saw at the festival this year although it did have a few notable flaws that held it back from greatness – mostly just a feeling like they were sometimes going for the big blockbuster-y moment but in ways that felt a little generic. The film is much stronger when it leans into the characters and their relationships.
Mag Mag – Japanese horror at 12pm, why not. I struggled with this one a bit, it has some creepy scenes and some really crazy ones and many of them worked well individually but none of it really came together for me. I was struggling to stay awake though, which never helps.
Man Finds Tape – I nearly always like the mockumentary approach to horror, it feels like such a good way to get into creepy territory and also embrace grungy camerawork without getting into full-on found-footage territory. This one isn’t quite Lake Mungo but I enjoyed it quite a bit and definitely found it unsettling. It maybe goes a little overboard towards the end, the subtler stuff creeped me out more than the big reveal, but it’s a fun one.
Also:
Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers – mentioned before that my girlfriend likes food / cooking movies, she hadn’t seen any Les Blank so I dug out my box set and we watched this one that I’ve seen before. Such a fun doc, it’s mad seeing garlic treated as such an exotic thing when it’s so easy to take it for granted these days, but I love the eccentric people throwing festivals to celebrate it, and the cookery footage is all extremely appetising, even though I’m mostly vegetarian and they keep shoving tons of garlic into piglets and so on.
Live Music – the reason I didn’t do a full pass at the film festival, a local band that I absolutely loved 10+ years ago reunited for their first gig since 2014, and it was fucking great even if I wasn’t a huge fan of the venue. There was also a local festival on the Sunday with a ton of venues all hosting bands all day, I saw seven very good sets and made it home for 8pm, hell yeah.
Seinfeld “The Trip” – double-length episode to start season 4. Jerry takes George to LA to look for Kramer while appearing on the Tonight Show. Fun excuse for a couple of celebrity cameos, and Kramer getting mistaken for a serial killer is a good excuse for some hard-boile / ridiculous cop characters. Really fun, excellent use of Clint Howard.
How Are You? It’s Alan, episode 5 – I assumed this was building to a huge meltdown relating to Alan’s failing relationship but this was subtler than expected. Although there’s still another episode left for things to explode, I suppose! Anyway, this has been consistently very funny.
Woooooooooooo live local music! Fuck yeah reunitings, I’ve been to a few of them and when they hit they HIT. And lol on Garlic, I love it but I made the mistake of showing it to my vegetarian mom and yeah, you see how the sausage gets made.
The Arbiter is a terrible, terrible name for a movie of that nature.
The protagonist of The Arbiter is the guy employed (?) to be the middleman between the gangs and the police, it’s not a terrible setup but yeah it doesn’t really give you a good idea of the kind of movie you’re getting into. Apparently it was written for Scott Adkins but he turned it down, haha.
Woooooooooooooo live early music!!
The Birds – Wrote this for Letterboxd:
The Birds are Melanie’s wild nature turning against her. They’re thwarted desire – or are they Lydia’s specific Oedipal needs? They’re our own behavior coming back on us all via climate change and a natural world turned understandably hostile. They’re the New Hollywood invading the Old with ambient noise, sudden violence that the camera lingers on, and the sheer psychosexual longing of it’s director (horrifically revisited upon the actress).
The birds could be very silly, and have been silly (Birdemic!) in other movies. Here, they eat movie banter and combative romance for dust, speeding up the conflicts, forcing the granite-chinned, dress-shirted, Jon Hamm-looking late 20th century American protagonist to bow and skulk before them like the mere mortal prey that he is. The first disaster movie and still maybe the best because it’s the rare one where the stakes actually feel mortal, like the characters are in grave danger that goes unsolved. The first hour is akin to Tennessee Williams’ warping of a standard romance and the second is a blood pressure pump. It’s grip on the viewer becomes a hard vise.
There are no end credits. October started unseasonably warm. Tippi Hedren by the final scene, character and actress both unraveled by the machinations of the director and the story, her fine coat torn and stained with her own blood, looks like a corpse. There was a point in the last 30 minutes where Hitchcock had somehow taken the film to 2025, had delivered it’s characters and plot to our time. They get in their automobile, the gas spewing into the air. The ambient noise and the sound of the screeching birds reaches the future. The car disappears.
The psychosexual shit in The Birds is really something, there are a lot of there-if-you-want-it-to-be implications regarding Lurie and his “sister.” Really like this idea of New invading Old Hollywood, subliminated pervert shit that makes it through the Hays Code steamrolled by avant-garde animal destruction.
The ambient noise and the sudden violence of the last half made this really stick out, the film is a few years ahead of Bonnie and Clyde on the European influence front.
Naked Gun (2025). Very solid. Liam Neeson has the same deadpan comedic talent as Leslie Nielsen. He plays everything completely straight. Pamela Anderson was surprisingly very funny. The screenwriting matched the ZAZ tone perfectly and had the right ratatat cadence. I had to pause to catch my breath after the snowman montage. Neeson only making cultural references from 1997-2005 was a great running gag, though it does mean that millennials are old now.
Creature Commandos, eps 1-4. Oh, is James Gunn wringing real pathos out of a team of misbegotten misfits? Is he making me feel sympathy for a humanoid comic relief character? Is his brother involved for some reason?
Yes, he has beats and themes that he keeps hitting and it’s funny to me how much similarity there is without feeling like a retread. The trick is that each character feels unique, so while the themes repeat and there are superficial similarities between his teams of misfits, the characters themselves have their own interior lives.
Also GI Robot is great.
He better come back.
On the subject of repeating themes without being redundant, Gunn is a lot like Danny McBride, in that there are a lot of similarities but he takes the characters seriously so it doesn’t feel repetitive even if he’s staying in the same niche.
What did we play?
I showed Call Of Cthulhu to another friend, playing through the solo adventure, and what I’ve concluded based on this is that people tend to get frustrated and nervous playing a TTRPG alone, having nobody to bounce ideas off. Like, it’s still fun, but people find that difficult.
Hollow Knight: Silksong – trying to mop up the last few bosses that I CAN’T BLOODY KILL before I properly make an attempt to finish the second act. First Sinner and Raging Conchfly are the two driving me nuts at present. I saw somebody online make a comparison between Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom and Hollow Knight / Silksong and it resonated with me – four great games but in both cases I find myself slightly resenting the sequel for being so sprawling, much as I’m determined to get to the end of this one I hope I don’t end up resenting it as much as I did TotK by the end.
Arcade Archives GALAGA’88 on Nintendo Switch
Played a few rounds. Never noticed before that some enemies can fuse with each other to create a single, bigger enemy that moves in more dangerous sine wave patterns. Which makes sense, since the thing that makes Galaga Galaga is the ability to double your ship. Anyway, pretty brilliant.
DOOM on Nintendo Switch
Speaking of brilliant, beat a few of the Shores of Hell levels. The levels are getting larger but still not so much that they become unmanageable. Also, I got my first chainsaw and hahahahahaha this is awesome. Really shakes things up when dealing with the larger enemies, and does wonders for ammo conservation.
Super Mario Bros. – Nintendo Entertainment System – Nintendo Classics on Nintendo Switch
My wife was feeling a little sick yesterday and wanted to play some Mario, so we took turns passing the controller and finished the game from beginning to end. Made liberal use of rewind so we never lost Fire Mario, but it still led to some funny moments of slapstick. Beat it in a little over half an hour. Good times.
Super Mario Bros. 3 – Nintendo Entertainment System – Nintendo Classics on Nintendo Switch
Last year I started a full run of the game, because my wife had never seen the end of it, and made it to the start of the final world. I picked it up yesterday and showed her the final castle, boss and ending. She liked the castle and boss and was amused by the way the boss goes out (literally), not so much by Princess Toadstool’s attempt at humor.
Beautifully said. I think we’re all practical effect fans here, and sometimes a sincere but flawed work of art is like a model that’s still obviously a model, or a puppet that’s still obviously a puppet: it doesn’t transport me, but I find it engaging and endearing to see something so obviously human-made.