It puzzles and irritates me that Sin City wasn’t far more influential than it was. Admittedly, even ardent admirers admit that it doesn’t completely work – director Robert Rodriguez described it not as an adaptation of Frank Miller’s comic book series of the same name, but a translation, using the book itself as a storyboard for scenes and imitating it as directly as he could. Unlike Zack Snyder in the making of Watchmen, Rodriguez even had the cinematic sense to not frame a shot to include non-existent dialogue bubbles. Still, this frequently causes weird visible cuts and frames; actors holding themselves like statues in awkward positions and sequences edited together in a visibly staged way.
But I think this is the price of experimental filmmaking. Ideally, I prefer tightly structured works designed to entertain, but I also dearly love works intended to push an idea or a technique past the point of reason – past the point of entertainment, or meaning, or common sense. These are works designed for everyone to learn from, and then you take what does work and use it in those tightly structured works. You need a work that’s occasionally Too Much to prevent everything else from being Too Little.
So what does Sin City bring to the table? I believe its filmmaking process should be the model for low-to-zero budget action filmmaking. In some ways, Sin City is the antithesis of John McTiernan’s action movie philosophy – his aim was to make you believe this was really happening, that the hero was a real guy who was really in that situation. Sin City, on the other hand, presents characters who are gods, demons, and angels in human form. The downside of CG and green-screen-heavy filmmaking has been that verisimilitude has been ruined. None of this is real, none of this is plausible, nothing of this ever existed in reality. Sin City fixes that problem by diving right into it – the pleasure of this is that none of it is realistic.
Very little of the film actually consists of action scenes – rather, it’s mostly dialogue shot as if it were an action scene, and almost every beat is delivered with an operatic tone – the camera looking up or down, intense cuts to closeups, that sort of thing (I suspect this has the least handheld of any Robert Rodriguez flick). The green-screens don’t undermine this melodrama – they enhance it, pushing it all the way to some mystical higher plane of existence we can only access in the cinema.
(The film also ‘compensates’ for this by drawing attention to the humanity within it; both the fact that it’s filled with stories of people making decisions, and in that the film is overflowing with creative decisions; Benicio del Toro’s weirdass voice as the dead Jackie Boy haunting Dwight in the car, or the makeup that has Mickey Rourke looking even more beat up as Marv)
This is what I believe low budget cinema can easily replicate, especially because the technology has only become cheaper since Sin City was released. I’m not saying I want all indie films to be like this – I also want mumblecore and indie comedies and brutally realistic dramas and whatever – but if you’re looking to make an action film and have limited resources, this seems like a logical model to have. I’ve seen enough low-budget action films to recognise that trying to replicate Hollywood’s high-budget scope might not be the easiest task in the world.
So why wasn’t this more influential? Why was it kind of a cinematic dead-end? I think there are several reasons for that, starting with the fact that people tend to replicate action before they replicate principles. The film itself has an incredibly seedy, revulsion-inducing vibe to it; it’s about serial killers, rapists (including pedophiles), corrupt cops, sex workers, and other sordid bullshit; there’ll always be a market for that kind of thing, but it’s not generally a vibe mainstream audiences or mainstream creators embrace.
Most people, as well, aren’t really interested in how the sausage is made when it comes to art, even the majority of people who make it – the true virtues of Sin City are invisible and take work to express. Compare this to, say, the works of Rodriguez’s friend (and director of one scene in the film) Quentin Tarantino, whose filmmaking is very visible and caused a wave of influence – smash cuts and title cards and all that other extra bullshit. I love that shit as well and I think he’s a master filmmaker, but the fact that ‘Tarantinoesque’ is generally a flaw in a work speaks to its superficial and easy-to-recognise pleasures.
Secondly – and this is a crucial element – most audiences are looking for ‘realism’, or at least what they believe to be realism. Ayn Rand described her work with the phrase ‘romantic realism’; this is another layer of her being a fuckin’ moron, seeing as that’s a contradiction in terms, but it speaks to what I think mainstream audiences are looking for. They want a work that functions mechanically how they expect the world to work, and the morality to play out so that people get what they believe they should deserve.
(Useful example: Game of Thrones was frequently criticized for its use of rape of women as a plot device. Defenders of the show would cite this as a realistic representation of medieval times, apparently forgetting that Game of Thrones is set in an entirely fictional world, and that the rapists generally got punished in a significant way, deciding the presentation of rape was fine so long as the offender gets what’s coming to him.)
It’s a shame, because one could very easily keep the mechanical construction of Sin City and how it was made while swapping out the morality and aesthetic; the same campy larger-than-life magnificence, but with, ya know, colours and happy characters and a moral outlook one prefers. In fact, ironically, marginalized storytellers who are specifically interested in larger-than-life action struggling to find funding because their ideas don’t sell well to a mass audience would actually find more utility in the Sin City approach than anyone else. Such is the way of the arts industry.
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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This makes me wonder if one of the few off-kilter heirs to Sin City is actually Hundreds of Beavers: another low-budget film embracing deliberate, stylized unreality that’s aided by cheap, available tech and black-and-white cinematography, just using those principles for slapstick Looney Tunes live-action comedy instead of pulp noir.
Great essay from an unusual angle. (Edit: I feel like I’m going to keep thinking about the idea of whether or not a work’s sense of morality is consistent with its supposed realism or not, too.)
Hundreds of Beavers is a great comparison in terms of broader budget/style ideas being used in different modes. I am skeptical of this — “one could very easily keep the mechanical construction of Sin City and how it was made while swapping out the morality and aesthetic; the same campy larger-than-life magnificence, but with, ya know, colours and happy characters and a moral outlook one prefers” — because I think certain aspects of Sin City’s mechanical construction are tied to its aesthetic and moral outlook, just as they are in the comic. The palette but also the flatness and the bluntness. What came to my mind when thinking of “Sin City with colors and a different moral outlook” was a film that actually predates it, Waking Life — the rotoscoping technology there also helps determine its outlook, and Linklater has rung different changes on the unreality there (dream in Waking Life, nightmare in Scanner Darkly, memory in Apollo 10 1/2). Sin City’s aesthetic is inflexible for both good and ill, Hundreds of Beavers could definitely be seen as following in its lineage in some ways but the mix of effects also feels flexible in a way Sin City does not. The other movie that comes to mind, at least in concept because I haven’t actually seen it, is Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow, another low-budget fantasy that from what I understand has a similar flatness to its morality and tone as well as its images.
I was going to mention Sky Captain as well, which came out a year before Sin City. It’s not a good movie, but I think it is more of a key text for low-budget Hundreds of Beavers type movies. It also uses green screen and homemade digital effects to do otherwise impossible things, but it’s less inhibited by a predetermined style (it’s inhibited by its own dreary style!)
Oh man, that’s a great point – and it reminds me to check if Hundreds Of Beavers is watchable in my area, which it is – it’s free on SBS! So that’s what I’m watching this week.
Watch with many people as possible (or at least the boyfriend) great group movie!
I had the same thoughts concerning HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS while reading this.
As to the relation of morality to realism, I would argue that what people want from movies isn’t so much an ideological re-enforcement of a world view, but a style that sustains a real world sense of space and time through the illusion of spacial and temporal continuity. Moralism, and the concept that movies project certain consequences of socially positive or deliterious behavior results from the cultural melieu from which stories are created, but they have no real bearing on the norms by which cinematic storytelling elements operate.
BEAVERS, in my opinion, utilizes Tristan’s ideas successfully as it converges two different cinematic narrative styles (animation and live action) into a recognizable form of comedic animated fantasy. SIN CITY, on the other hand, tried to out-do Frank Miller’s attempt to weld the expressionist elements to film noir into a graphic novel stylization, translating it back to film through mimesis. It reminds me of Greenaway’s attempts at using cinema to recreate painterly works, but without the addition of symbolist or mannerist literary content that compliments the visual style.
What Did We Watch?
Morbius
Just the boring kind of bad. The climax is lousy, even by the standards of this kind of film. It suffers heavily from being a low-ambition film imitating the high ambition of the MCU – the references to two separate larger universes (both the Sonyverse in particular and the weak attempts to reach out to the MCU) in particular, with this trying to set up a longer story arc. It worked in Venom because that was a dumb movie with a reasonably funny hook and an actor talented enough to play around in the small sandbox. The only person having any fun in this is Matt Smith.
The X-Files, Season Eight
Lauren going through the early episodes is pushing me to get back to this, and I accidentally ended up pushing all the way to the end of the season. It blows for the most part, but it does have fascinating bad ideas – the show is clearly reeling through a loss of identity and grabbing onto anything it can to retain reason for existence outside of the MOTW episodes. It fails to commit to the whole ‘Mulder has left the show’ idea and keeps bringing in female FBI agents that are wide-eyed fans of Mulder and Scully, hinting at a version of the show with a wider ensemble cast (not unlike Law & Order).
Dogget improves enormously as a character with Mulder back – the two of them have a kind of masculine dick-swinging conflict that feels much more in Mulder’s character than him not caring about rape victims; you instantly see that Mulder has brushed up against men like this his entire life and is sensitive about the threat to his masculinity in a way that doesn’t come up with Scully.
Scully’s pregnancy plot mostly sucks. Just like Mulder, I feel it brings out a traditionally gendered aspect of the character in a way that still feels true to her (see especially her exasperation at people trying to tell her what to do with her own body). And I do like the idea of her baby being a superbaby, but the actual expression of the plato is not just boring but antithrilling. First of all, the whole plot absolutely does not fit into the conspiracy we’ve had so far – the conspiracy has been taken down at this point, and we should be dealing with the consequences of the failed invasion, but instead it feels like we’re still expanding backwards.
Chris Carter’s writing has always felt like wheel-spinning – of all the regular writers, he’s the one who feels like he couldn’t actually explain what’s happening in front of us, and he deliberately obscures motivation and explanation to an obnoxious level. This does not mesh well with his high ambition and willingness to let an idea run away with him. He really is just Mulder, and he really does need Scully to ground him.
Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone
This show is so consistently flawed. My favourite of these was “The Blue Scorpion” because it held together the best and had a haunting Chris O’Dowd performance. “Point Of Origin” was simultaneously terrible and so go-for-broke in its ideas that I couldn’t dislike it. “Not All Men” was pretty great right up to its shrug of an ending. That said, I do deeply appreciate – and this ties into my essay – how it doesn’t bother with the pretence of realism. While it is, again, inconsistent in delivery, it’s always shooting for a fairy tale tone that allows implausible behaviours and dialogue.
The show definitely takes a big step down when Mulder… steps down, but I was surprised how much I still enjoyed the Doggett seasons even if I found them a bit more “solidly decent” rather than genuinely thrilling. In my nerdy tracking spreadsheet I was giving a lot of faint-praise 6-7/10 ratings at this point.
It’s fascinating, because Robert Patrick definitely does no wrong, and the writing (at least in the MOTW episodes) generally functions, it’s just the magic is not there.
I’ve complained enough about my problems with Peele’s Twilight Zone, so I’ll just say that I appreciate its ambitions and it’s one of the best shows for stimulating my creativity in a how-would-I-handle-this way. In fact, when it dials back its ambitions in S2, it’s less interesting to me even as I’m (mostly) less aggravated with it.
That reminds me: what were your favourite episodes? You said last week but I forgot.
My favorite of the series is “Among the Untrodden,” which I will admit does not feel precisely Twilight Zone-y but which I found emotionally involving and clever, and I like the hothouse-of-emotions of the girls’ boarding school; it all feels a bit like a sci-fi-tinged Megan Abbott novel, which is a plus for me. The other S2 episode I’m fond of is “Downtime,” which is maybe a bit slight but has some trans subtext that I think works well; the human part of the story sticks with me.
S1-wise, my favorites are probably “The Comedian” (mostly for Nanjiani’s performance and the last set he performs, even though the execution of a lot of the episode is weak–I’ll forgive a lot for a good ending) and “Replay” (feels very classic, except for the very end of the ending); “A Traveler” and “Blue Scorpion” also feel interestingly rich. (I need to revisit “Six Degrees of Freedom” at some point, because for some reason I don’t remember it very well.)
Inside Llewyn Davis – it hasn’t been very long at all since I last rewatched this (I assumed this was the second time I’d seen it this year, but it turns out it was actually on New Year’s Eve!) but Blank Check has put the Coens back on my mind, and also this was a Coens blindspot for my girlfriend, who has been amusedly asking me about my favourite cat movies after I revealed it to be a particular interest, haha. It has slowly worked its way up my Coens rankings and I definitely think it’s a top-tier work even if it’s less welcoming than some of their warmer films – considering how much of Llewyn’s failure is fair / unfair / his own fault is consistently fascinating to me and I love all of the supporting performances. When he finally meets somebody who’s more of an asshole than he is (hello, John Goodman) it’s hilarious.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Triggers in Leash” – already falling behind on this due to my holiday but I should be able to catch up this week. This one was my favourite so far, I loved the tense Western vibes and the way the conflict played out, right up to the clever ending. I kinda thought Hitch’s mean-spirited joke at the end was pretty great too even if I concede that it does undermine the actual story quite a bit.
Euro 2025 (football (soccer (women’s edition))) – hey, “we” won again! Very tight matches in the semifinal and final, I feel like England were deserving winners in the semi and VERY lucky in the final but they’re a likeable bunch of players and I’m glad they keep doing well.
That jump run Chloe Kelly does every time she takes a penalty is a great, fun personal touch.
It’s funny, there are other players with similar quirks that I find infuriating but when she does it I think it’s great, haha.
“WHERE ARE HIS TESTICLES” is some gut-bustingly funny cat content, and it comes at one of the sadder points in an incredibly sad movie, the Coens are absolutely at the top of their game here. And this — “considering how much of Llewyn’s failure is fair / unfair / his own fault is consistently fascinating to me” — is a big part of that too.
Since I apparently now watch this movie every few months I feel the need to correct you on the line which is the sadder, funnier “WHERE’S ITS SCROTUM, LLEWYN?” – the anguished scream that Mrs. Gorfein emits before that line is also incredible.
I am duly and rightfully chastised. And in the area of ballsacks! Not one I expected to receive and deserve chastisement in.
One of your known areas of expertise!
I know, right?
Have you archived the piece you wrote on Llewyn Davis and The Minutemen doc? That might have been my favorite piece ever to appear on the Solute.
Thank you! And yes, I made sure to bring that one over:
https://www.mediamagpies.com/going-solo/
Inside Llewyn Davis definitely deserves to at least be in the conversation about all-time greatest cat movies, even if I could see it not quite making, say, the top ten. You really should do an all-time top five on this at some point.
And wooo, “Triggers in Leash”! I’d really love someone to make a stage-show version of that at some point, the way people have done with some one-setting Twilight Zone episodes like “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?”
I think it’s up there for sure! I always say that Alien is my #1 cat movie but the rest of the list is a little muddier, if it’s not restricted to fiction then Kedi is tough to beat for sheer feline representation, in terms of Cat Performance alone the Street Cat Named Bob films – in which Bob plays himself deserve special praise. Harry & Tonto would definitely be a contender (and would make a fun double-feature with Llewyn) and then there are various animated movies that feel like they need at least mentioning.
The worst cat movie is Cats.
There should also be a subcategory of best cats in non-cat movies, because A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night may not have enough cat screentime for the movie to rank overall, but that cat is amazing and should be appreciated.
Yeah it’s a rich and complex subject! Sometimes the movie revolves around a cat, other times the cat is part of the ensemble or steals a couple of scenes, and there are some movies where it just feels like the filmmaker wanted to include as many cats as possible, which should obviously be celebrated – see for example L’Atalante and many of Agnes Varda’s films.
Yes, I’m saying there are several different cat-egories.
Babylon 5 — one of the secret police stooges is harassing a shopkeeper for having a sign critical of the president in his store, the shopkeeper sneers that the stooge is “late for a Bund meeting” and also calls him a “momser,” it rules how blunt Straczynski is being here but it got me wondering how much this bluntness would’ve been recognized at the time versus now, there’s a basic familiarity with history and Yiddish required and I feel like the latter was more present on TV back in the day. Anyway, wasn’t expecting chemical warfare via LSD, and holy warfare is less of a surprise but gets put on the table in a pretty cool way. And Chekov is back! Man is Walter Koenig good at being a prick.
Malice — somehow I managed to go into this 1991 movie relatively cold, just knowing Baldwin has a big speech, and I will not rob anyone of the similar pleasure of experiencing the tonal wildness of this flick, I had a bit of a nostalgic moment on seeing the Castle Rock logo at the start of the film and this is Castle Rock’s version of a trashy thriller, scripted by Aaron Sorkin and Scott Frank no less! These materials collide in ways that do not make a lot of sense but because of the prestige feel weirder, this is not how these mainstream folks should be acting. Baldwin is the man, there are a ton of guys (including Josh Malina, of course!) and a frequently naked Nicole Kidman, and then there is Bill Pullman in beta cuck mode. He is quite convincing, and perhaps what gives this movie the weirdest charge is how it feels like a straightforward version of another movie with Pullman in this mode from later in the 90s, one that interrogates nothing and assumes a comfortable righteousness (see: scripted by Aaron Sorkin). The movie explicitly references the story of Job, and at one point God literally tells the Job character that bad things happen to good people so just deal with it; this is Sorkin’s pushback on that concept but in the pushing a parable becomes a fantasy. Anyway, of course this is on Tubi.
I know exactly one line from this movie because it was in all the trailers , which Baldwin referenced in my favorite scene from 30 Rock:
https://youtu.be/HyZp4eQSGMo?si=GVjqaGZeAFUn2PO4
This was my knowledge too and the movie definitely has a lot more going on, but as noted above it plays with the theological implications here as well.
This is such a bonkers movie, but I can never resist peak ego Alec Baldwin in a turtleneck. Was it Roger Ebert who commented on never before having seen a film that decided to throw in a serial killer subplot just for the atmosphere?
That shit is wild, it seems to be setting up an entirely different movie. Hilarious that it beats another 90s flick to the punch in serial killing a famous actress!
It’s got that specifically 90s movie flavour that just leaves you with a vaguely baffled feeling as the credits roll. Like, I enjoyed it? parts of it? But overall, …, why? (Not why did I enjoy, but more why and how does this exist)
The Beast Must Die – Rich businessman and game hunter Calvin Lockhart invites several people to his estate to determine which is a werewolf, who he intends to kill. If this mid-budget horror/suspense hybrid is remembered for anything it’s for the insistence of the producer to tell the audience it must guess who the werewolf is, with the movie pausing for a thirty second “werewolf break” to let everyone decide who it is. Even though there aren’t actually any clues! Lockhart’s performance as a man so obsessed he ruins his marriage and his life is good, as are some of the production values. But the lighting at night is poorly adjusted to deal with hiring Lockhart, a black actor given the role to tap into Blaxploitation, and the “werewolf” is a German shepherd. I saw this as a kid and kind of liked it, and was reminded of it by the garlic eating scene in Sinners, only here it’s passing around a silver candlestick and then licking silver bullets. I don’t think this inspired Coogler, but maybe it inspired the game Werewolf?
Sherlock and Daughter, “Golden Fleece” – Sherlock rescues Watson and Mrs. Hudson, and stops a huge theft at the Bank of England. Only to realize it’s all a set-up for the REAL crime. Which we but not our heroes know all about. Can Holmes and Amelia save the day? While what the bad guys are planning is pretty absurd, it’s an interesting counterpoint to Moriarity’s schemes in the RDJ movies. And the overall construction of the story is ever more successful. Plus someone did their history homework: Holmes conducts a wire-tap, and while I don’t know if the term actually existed in 1895, the technique was, as Holmes tells us, already being done in the US.
Frasier, “Good Grief”/”Frasier’s Curse” – The sixth season starts with a gag no one will get now: Frasier is talking to the camera and saying how honored he is to be talking over this slot, which is a nod to the show taking over the time from Seinfeld. But it’s really Frasier trying out for a new job, and the bulk of these two episodes address his unemployment rather poorly. The former has Fraiser going through the five stages of grief about losing his job, which seems clever but ignores, among other things, how easy it would be for him to return to private practice. And then we learn that the fan club for someone on the radio for five years is three people. And the way we see depression manifest is that Frasier gets fat, that’s so funny! But despite having landed at acceptance, the second episode has Frasier still struggling as his high school reunion nears and as he keeps botching his interviews. There are some funny bits here and there, but these two taken together are hard to watch. And ultimately a waste of time since Frasier and Roz soon enough are back at KACL.
MASH, “It Happened One Night” – A freezing cold night is punctuated by friendly artillery fire, freezing temps, difficult patients, and a new arrival who wings Klinger. Good bits but nothing really comes together, though we do see that Col Potter’s approach to getting things done is pulling rank on subordinates and taking advantage of his years as an Army doctor with superiors.
The Avengers, “The Joker” – Emma is invited to the country, seemingly by an elderly admirer of an article she wrote on bridge tactics, but actually by a recently escaped adversary she pretended to woo on a case. Can Steed, hobbled by a bad leg, get there in time? Apparently a remake of an Honor Blackman episode, but a very good vehicle for Diana Rigg to show her resolve in the face of ever increasing confusion and fear. Look for Ronald Lacey, everyone’s favorite Nazi with the melted hand and melting face in Raiders, as “the Strange Young Man.”
Ghost World
Everyone who thought I would love this, you were absolutely right. Love Enid’s contempt as a kind of brittle, self-protective shell that doesn’t actually protect much at all, but it’s the best she can do in a world where none of the options for her future feel right (it’s notable that her fantasies pivot from playing house with Rebecca to playing house with Seymour, but she doesn’t truly want either option). Steve Buscemi is incredible, making Seymour my favorite part of a movie where I dig everything. Small but great detail: a kind of deglamming in Enid and Rebecca’s posture, with the two of them feeling authentically slouchy and awkward, much more like real teens than movie teens.
Superman (2025)
I liked this. Had some quibbles, where there are bits that feel shallow or mean-spirited in a way that’s at odds with what the movie is ostensibly trying to do, and also got queasy during it because I was stuck in the front row with my neck bent back (NEVER AGAIN), but it’s well-cast and fun. Highlight for me was Mr. Terrific.
Oldboy
For movie club. Speaking of operatic! Transcendent delivery system of instantly iconic ownage. It’s remarkable how much power Park Chan-wook gets from choosing images that are weirder and more distinct than they need to be: a man spilling out of a trunk on a rooftop garden, folding chairs out in the snow, the essence of purple wrapping paper, a hammer rather than a gun or a knife or even pliers. (I don’t like having to watch a man eat a live octopus, but it’s an undeniable, all-too-memorable sequence, too.) Woo-jin steals the film for me, and the elevator scene where the editing leads us from his outstretched hand then to him holding on to his sister all those years ago is grade-A cinema.
The Castle
Casper and Tristan mentioned on Discord that this tale of a dad trying to protect his home from being compulsorily acquired for more runaway space is a representative Australian film, and–having chickened out from experiencing Wake in Fright–I thought I would try it. Phenomenal decision. Charming family film that’s loving, well-observed, quotable, and often hilarious. There’s a segment of middle-class experience that’s rarely portrayed with this level of affectionate verisimilitude, and I tend to appreciate it wherever I find it, but this is especially great.
The Suicide Squad
See, I liked Superman, but I loved this. I feel like Gunn’s heart isn’t with the avatars of goodness but with the colorful assholes who can occasionally pull it together to care about someone or something, and since that’s where my heart is too, this is more his speed and mine. Funny and weird, and the emotional beats tend to work.
Scrapper
Picked this up off vomas’s recommendation, and it was exactly what I was hoping it would be: a low-key, funny, prickly story of a previously deadbeat dad bonding with his daughter after her mother’s death (and after she’s spent some time stealthily living on her own, faking her “uncle’s” conversation with Social Services via voice memos from a friendly cashier). I always like stories about characters trying to figure out how to be a family, and Scrapper is good at coming up with the awkward, charming steps in that relationship development, like Jason trying to retrieve Georgie’s lost tooth from beneath her pillow when it turns out it’s not even there.
Taken, “Acid Tests” and “Maintenance”
Saving my thoughts for the weekly TV round-up. (I’ll probably have at least one more episode to talk about then, too.)
Huh I’m sure I replied to this already but apparently not! Glad you enjoyed Scrapper, I was expecting it to be very down-to-earth gritty realism so the stylistic quirks really charmed me. Very fun movie.
The Castle is also a very charming film!
Hell yeah Ghost World! That small scene toward the end with the damn ironing board is so brutal, because no matter how much of an Enid you think you are, you are almost certainly going to be Rebecca here at some point. And Buscemi is wonderful, but how about the look on his therapist’s face as he turns to go? No one gets off easy here and that is what makes it so good, sometimes losers just lose. This, uh, might be why I have issues with the second Gunn on your list, although it is making me a bit more interested in the first if he’s in pure mainstream mode.
Seeing Oldboy in theaters was such a treat, and aces on how good Woo-Jin is, embodying “That woman deserves her revenge” morality. I wonder if Chan-Wook was secretly influenced by Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, given that Oldboy also serves fifteen years and there’s a similar tragic twist.
If you like Suicide Squad for the vibe you describe, you should add Peacemaker to your ever-expanding ‘to watch’ list. Damaged arseholes pulling together against a backdrop of emotionally heightening hair metal music, frequently involving singalongs. Also the most despicable Robert Patrick character and he’s having a blast.
I actually saw Peacemaker first and loved it too! Very excited for season 2. (And I added multiple songs to my Spotify because of that show.)
Woohoo fellow Peacemaker fan! I’m so excited for the new season. There’s going to be a new dance and everything!
Also, re. The Castle, the visual gag of them walking home from Tullamarine Airport was HYSTERICAL. You have no idea what a logistical pain in the arse getting to and from that airport is. The parking lots are like you get at DisneyWorld, and politicians have been promising and doing nothing to deliver a railway (like Sydney has!!) for what feels like my entire life.
But anyway:
“That’s going straight to the pool room.”
“Tell ‘im he’s dreaming.”
“It’s the constitution, it’s Mabo, it’s the vibe.”
“Can I just say Mr Kerrigan how disillusioned I am in our judicial system.”
“Steve always had great ideas. That’s why dad called him an ideas man. [cut to dad looking at a broom-head with a hose pipe running through it]. ‘He’s an ideas man’.”
“How’s the serenity.”
That real life airport knowledge makes an already good joke even better. And the mental image of that parking lot is terrifying.
I’m going to be using all of those quotes on maybe a weekly basis for the rest of my life now.
It was a very clownish weekend. I went to a poetry reading in a clown-themed bar, cool venue but the poets weren’t that great imho, and then there was an actual clown show late Saturday night. The first half was better than the second but I also got to see a naked man with Will Forte-energy consider putting dried pickles and peppers back up his ass, so I’d consider that part a win. May have still reached the point in my thirties however where I don’t necessarily need to see as many shows and live events? What do they call this, a thirderlife crisis?
Now I’m sick so I only had the attention span on Sunday for some King of the Hill. It’s good that Khan is getting played by an Asian actor but it marks times changing that for the 90s/2000’s this show was pretty progressive simply by depicting Kahn and Minh as three-dimensional characters and successful, wannabe yuppies. Hank at the golf course: “Do you know what they’re saying?” Kahn: “How should I know, they’re speaking Chinese, do I look Chinese to you?”
I didn’t get around to including it in my post but there was a fringe festival on in the town where I was on holiday and while I missed most of the good stuff due to family commitments I did see a fairly terrible magician (very dated humour even though his show was mainly aimed at kids, update your act man!) and a pretty great juggler (juggling knives on a unicycle is pretty damn impressive). All very family friendly though, no ass content.
Hope you feel better soon!
Gorky Park — This isn’t great, but it’s pretty good. Russian police detective Arkady Renko (William Hurt) is called upon to solve three murders that he thinks might have a connection to KGB operations. It’s tough seeing Hurt as Russian, especially playing opposite the very obviously Slavic Joanna Pacula. But eventually you get over that. The most interesting part is the casual rebellion against the Soviet system — everyone is fairly open about how much they dislike being under Big Brother’s eye, but in small and quotidian ways. Renko gets help from people involved in the case on a couple occasions by couching it as a way to thumb their nose at the KGB. And the cast generally is all very good, especially Lee Marvin in the Lee Marvin role and Michael Elphik as Renko’s second, the jaunty Pasha Pavlovich. And then the climax plays out a little differently than you expect. The scheme that led to the three murders in the first place could use a little more exposition (and you know if I’m the one saying that it’s got to be true). But eventually you can put it together. A well-acted thriller, not bad for a lazy Sunday afternoon.
RIP Martin Cruz Smith
I had not heard. The Renko series has its up and downs, but the mirror Cruz Smith held to Russia before and after communism has a lot of really good moments. Not surprised there weren’t more adaptations, but who knows, maybe someone will do something on streaming someday.
‘Is there a point, lieutenant?’
‘A point? Oh, oh, no, I wasn’t making a point.’
Prescription: Murder and Ransom For A Deadman – The two “pilot” movies for Columbo evolve Peter Falk’s detective. Falk’s first stab at Columbo has most of the elements of the future TV series in place: the raincoat, the cigar, references to his wife, always searching for a pen and ‘just one other thing’. He’s not quite as disheveled. His hair is shorter and he plays it more aggressively at times. Gene Barry’s villain is the typically affluent and charming Columbo antagonist, establishing a tension based on class which is common in the future series. The first act is the murder and the elaborate cover up with Columbo not appearing until the second act, the basic structural template for a show which radically inverted the pattern of the whodunnit.
Three years later Ransom feels much more like a pilot for the show. The writing is tighter and it moves quicker than the previous movie with the formula setting in. Richard Irving who directed both movies does a great job in establishing the look of the series. The early episodes feel more cinematic and Irving employs some ambitious editing that would follow into those early episodes. Faulk is much more disheveled and without the nice haircut. The bedraggled look and befuddlement earns him little respect, he knows it and uses it to his advantage. With the killer, here a slaying and girlbossing Lee Grant, he’s a mote of annoyance than serious threat. Or so she thinks. But Columbo is observable, relentless and socially adept. He never uses violence or threats. He intimidates only when necessary. Flattery gets him everywhere with the wealthy, ego driven suspects, with Columbo commenting on their intelligence and affluence. The manipulation always gets the killer to slip with Columbo getting the advantage. He’s such a lovable and a skilled detective.
Fantastic Four. Mostly very good. I think it needed a little more space for the family to breathe and focus on being a family. Pedro was good, again, as a father trying to protect his child (this is such a narrow yet broad typecasting that it is very funny to me—it’s not like reed, joel, and mando have anything else in common other than paternality—after decades of women being typecast as moms it’s funny that it’s happened to a male movie star.) Vanessa Kirby is great. Ebon Moss-Bacharach is very good. Joseph Quinn is there.
This is the first mcu in ages where there was clearly some effort put into the production design and cgi. It’s an interesting world that they’ve built. There are clever touches with things like the impossible architecture of Galactus’ ship or how Galactus acts when he first lands. Or
.
There is a credits tease of Doctor Doom, and the idea for how they’re doing doom is so dumb that it was immediately deflating the good will of enjoying the movie. They should just make another FF movie and let characters have arcs instead of whatever dumb idea they’re doing for doomsday (which has been filming for months and does not have a completed script. This is going to cost $500M and will be complete dog shit).
The 6 year old also enjoyed the movie, but I think she liked superman more, except this one had a cute baby.
Mickey 17 I do sometimes watch movies made for adults. This was great. It’s in that fun place for satire where it’s not exactly 1:1 but is still bitterly
sharp, much like snowpiercer. Mark Ruffalo doing some sort of trump cadence as the evil politician / racist sex cultist was great. Much like in a time loop movie, there’s a lot of cinematic fun in just watching a series of exaggeratedly gruesome deaths of our main character. When we get to the point that there are two mickeys, it reminded me a bit of the two Xanders episode of buffy, where one is just a more confident mirror of the other.
Avenue 5 eps 1 and 2. Armando Iannucci series about a space cruise ship. It’s got that sweet acerbic iannucci tone. Hugh laurie is the captain. Gabe from the office consistently steals the show with insane one liners. Josh Gad is there and this time he’s insufferable on purpose.
Didn’t need to do much more of Avenue 5 after these episodes but as the resident Gad hater, I had to admit he’s doing his job here.
He’s a reverse poochie. Every time Josh Gad is not on screen everyone should be saying “oh thank goodness.”
In a normal setting I want to eject him out an airlock; here, this is his desired reaction.
Heartbreaking—worst actor you know finds a niche where he’s actually perfect for the role.
His guest spot on Party Down is pretty spot on, obnoxious little wiener college Republican striver.
I watched the first season of Avenue 5 but it largely left me cold and I didn’t bother with season 2.
More re Mickey 17:
– Pattinson is really great. He has to go both broad and deep in making Mickey a comedic wretch and then making 17 and 18 different.
– Mark Ruffalo, like in Poor Things, excels at being a mean-spirited vile soulless asshole.
What Did We Play?
Ticket to Ride (Europe edition) and Cluedo were the big games on family holiday, I enjoy the former more than the latter but it’s interesting how much more strategy / puzzling out there is to do in Cluedo as an adult compared to the way I played it as a kid. I was playing these games with one kid (my nephew, nine years old) and I only made him cry once. I probably should have aimed for zero times, whoops. He gets the basic mechanics of games but still struggles with knowing when it’s his turn (even though he occasionally reminds other players of their turn?), holding cards in his hand (an unsorted pile on the table is favoured) and keeping strategy to himself, all of which eventually got to me on a day when I was trying to play through some unpleasant indigestion. I am history’s greatest monster.
Hey, only once isn’t bad.
I’m very fond of Ticket to Ride. Is it all that sophisticated? No. Do I like laying down my little train cars and connecting them into routes? Yes.
In retrospect, it’s unsurprising that someone deduced that many board game people would also be train people, and that a train-centric board game would therefore sell like hotcakes until the end of time.
It feels very well balanced – the winner is so often decided by a few points, and getting the longest-overall-route bonus can be absolutely critical in the final scoring. I’m keen to try some of the other variants as I’ve only played Europe, it pleases me that there are multiple board-game sites out there that have done full rankings of the various boards!
Unless you’re very deep into board games you have *no idea* how many train board games there are. There is an entire sub genre of board games all about managing stock companies involved in railway expansion throughout the world during the 19th century. They are called 18xx games because they’re all about all have names like 1830, 1846, 1850, etc. Except there are more than a hundred of them, so some are called things like 18CZ.
Hollow Knight on Nintendo Switch
Man, these Mantises are no joke. One guy is telling me not to go against them until I talk to some other guy who can get me a better sword. As far as I can tell, I’m not forced to do that, but I think I’m better off doing what he says. What I really want though is the map to Fog Canyon.
Also, I got the wall jump and have been roaming around seeing where I can go next. I found there’s an entire map section right above the game’s starting point. Might poke around there next week.
Inspired by Guillermo’s play and the need to take some time to myself to chill out, I also started a new playthrough of Hollow Knight. I have played it many, many times and for many, many hours, so alas, I don’t quite get the sense of discovery as a new player, but it was refreshing to learn I still remembered how to do a lot of stuff. I have died three times which I find very annoying as a veteran.
Anyway, I’ll keep where I am now under wraps for the newcomers playing for the first time.
I think the reason its influence isn’t greater is that it’s just not that fun of a sandbox to play in. Otherwise we’d be awash in Lord of the Rings but like Sin City AI generations (or maybe we are and this is one of those things I get spared from by living away from the socials). I think it’s also (speaking of AI) just as tough to pull off at a high level unless you have years of your life to sink into ala Hundreds of Beavers. The money buys a lot of familiarity with the tools and manpower to spread out the work.