The story of this episode is fairly nondescript; I had to actually look it up to even remember it. Admiral Pressman, Riker’s former commander on the eponymous ship, comes to the Enterprise to retrieve the remains of the ship before the Romulans can find it. Pressman turns out to have an ulterior motive and a willingness to do anti-Federation things to retrieve it, he’s defeated and berated by Riker and Picard, things wrap up at the end of the episode; it’s weak aside from the amusing introduction of “Captain Picard Day”. What’s really interesting about it to me is that Terry O’Quinn plays Pressman.
Pressman is one of my least favourite kinds of characters, a one-off who mainly exists for the heroes to point their fingers at. It’s extraordinarily easy to make up a guy who is wrong and have another guy tell him he’s wrong; at its best, Star Trek uses these characters to get somewhere more interesting, and at its second-best, it has the wrong character go on a real journey. “The Pegasus” is neither of these things; not quite terrible, but not really going anywhere interesting.
But none of the blame for it not working can be laid at the feet of O’Quinn. He plays Pressman’s fall with total conviction and, more importantly to me, a complete comfort at being someone else’s supporting player. He feeds the main actors the material they need to boo and hiss at him. As someone with an inflated ego, I find supporting actors fascinating, particularly ones who are playing easy villain characters. Their job really is to make the main guy look better.
With O’Quinn, it’s particularly fascinating because the guy who made “The Pegasus” had no idea that ten years later, he’d be playing one of the greatest television characters of all time – John Locke of LOST. His career at this point was largely guest roles on television shows not much different from this; his biggest role had been playing the villain of The Stepfather, which appears to be a slasher with an incredible pedigree (written by Donald Westlake, of all people).
(O’Quinn wrote and directed a play called Orchestrina, and I wonder if this was a proud career moment that carries him through his life)
People often snarkily describe acting as a career for narcissists, but it appears to me to be quite a humbling career path; some people get really lucky really early, but most successful actors have careers like O’Quinn, humble and reliable and playing thankless but important structural parts. The hope seems to be that you get one really cool role in your life at some point where you tell one story that moves people, and you get to become the representation of the very concept of faith. You use everything you learned during all the stupid little parts of the daily grind to become part of something more grand and mythical.
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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Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Hacks
Over on the Sunday TV post.
Final Destination and Final Destination 2
A friend got me to watch these because she wants me to watch the newest one when it comes out in cinemas; we were gonna watch more but she got tired quickly. Surprisingly densely plotted considering they’re not just slasher films, but slasher films where the villain is effectively fate – characters who make decisions and have networks that bounce off each other as they try and work out how to free themselves from this situation. The first one has some cool filmmaking; the protagonist looks at the plane he’s supposed to die on and it appears to be staring at him ominously, and the actual dramatic explosion of it is effectively the background violently entering the foreground. The second one opens with a literally explosive setpiece that feels like it takes ten minutes of all the characters violently dying before it’s all taken back to set the stakes.
If these movies have a theme, it’s about following one’s intuition. It uses very simple filmmaking tricks that even a child could pick up on to nudge you into seeing what’s coming, and admittedly tricking you sometimes – the second one has a death where you think the guy is going to grind his hand up in a garbage disposal and then burn alive, but these turn out to be part of the Rube Goldberg machine of getting him to fall out the window and get his head crushed by a ladder. The characters are initially driven by very strong feelings that something is wrong; the first film has a male character in what feels like a very female archetype, especially as he effectively has an emotional breakdown over his impending brutal death.
That’s not to say these are especially deep movies; each movie has had a scene of Tony Todd being Tony Todd as he explains what little lore we get, just to explain the tone of these things. But they’re fun, and better made than they need to be.
One of the most consistently fun horror franchises, I reckon – wouldn’t call any of them great but they’re all thoroughly entertaining and inventive. Curious to see how the new one ties in to what’s already there, hopefully it keeps up the quality.
You can’t stop there because you have to find a DVD copy of the third one (or maybe it’s the fourth and 3-D was the gimmick of the third) because it has a choose-your-own adventure mode where you can actually make minor decisions for the characters that affect the trajectory of the movie and changes who lives or dies.
Julius Caesar (1953) – Probably the most famous movie version of the play. But both a middling play and a middling movie. Apparently the only way you can mount a production of Julius Caesar now is to tie it to contemporary politics (modern dress and on the nose metaphors of current tyrants). And while I don’t think that meshes with the actual script, I get why theater companies do that. The story is pretty rote (hewing to history very closely but without adding much besides “Brutus does not belong in Dante’s Inferno”) and Brutus and Cassius are really not dynamic characters. The movie then ends up offering overly mannered performances by usually great actors James Mason and John Gielgud, plus a style that feels alternately too stagey and too trapped on a soundstage. Only one thing works here: Brando. He might more over the top than some would prefer, but he brings massive energy to the big “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” scene which is more than the one famous soliloquy. You feel his anger, but also his sarcasm and his scheming. It’s not a deep performance but neither is it a deep part. Brando is remarkably well suited to it. And hey, there are a lot of famous Bard-isms here, and that is always fun.
Frasier, “Dad Loves Sherry, The Boys Just Whine” – Martin ends his mostly off-screen fling with Jane Kaczmarek and takes up with brassy bartender Marsha Mason (the titular Sherry). She of course rubs Frasier and Niles entirely the wrong way, and that leads the three men to realize that criticizing various romantic interests and wives is a family tendency. It’s a bit unsettling, but not very funny. Mason is a great actress and has fun in her first appearance here, but Sherry is a lot for fans of the show to take and is kind of one-note.
M*A*S*H, “House Arrest” – Hawkeye, slapped with a towel by Frank after Frank defends Margaret from Hawkeye’s tongue lashing, punches Frank. Frank demands a court martial. Hawkeye is then put under house arrest, which is like a vacation for him. And then a visiting senior nurse hits on Frank, is caught by Margaret, and accuses Frank of rape. So all the witnesses against Hawkeye deny anything happened, and Frank is….? This is a bad episode. The plot armor around Hawkeye allows him to get away with violation of the military code and an act of violence against Frank that felt unwarranted, even as Frank is accused of an incredibly serious crime (though I don’t know how seriously the army took rape accusations by nurses in Korea). The story goes that this episode started to make the cast feel like the show was bending too much towards Hawkeye (though this was NOT the reason Stevenson or Rogers would soon be leaving).
NBA playoffs – Parts of the whooping the Nuggets gave the Clippers, and Indy’s only mildly surprising win at Cleveland. It always perplexes me when people ignore what a team both did in the last month of the season and in the previous year’s playoffs and say “oh, wow, this team is much better than I thought.”
Most notably, The Righteous Gemstones finale, which I’ll have more to say about on Sunday (probably), as with everything else. But watch it I did, and while I’m not at the point yet of having a thesis or review of it – I really wanted to let it sink in – I will say that it is by and large what I expected from a finale for the show. As always, at heart this show is about grace, redemption, and forgiveness.
Dead Reckoning — Bogart noir, roadmap … apparently needed? Because this winds up feeling like a weird revision of The Maltese Falcon, Bogie investigating the disappearance and then death of his army buddy, who had a secret life and an old flame. Who is played by Lisbeth Scott, saddled with a real shitty seduction song that sets the tone for her character being a femme fatale without Lauren Bacall’s sultriness or Mary Astor’s desperation. There is a lot of plot here and it gets confusing, what makes it more confusing is how Bogart is fairly genial in expression for good chunks of the movie while also being hard-boiled, one scene in particular toward the end is his war hero Dirty Dozening the bad guys to get information out of them with a bunch of hand grenades. An odd movie that doesn’t realize it is odd, that could be interesting but mostly feels accidental.
Babylon 5 — onto season 2, and Mrs. Miller noted the new credits/narration is like the remixed Veronica Mars theme song, similar words and tune but changed enough to be vastly inferior. I was down on Michael O’Hare at the start of the show but grew to like him quite a bit, it seems like he had to leave because of very significant mental health problems and that is unfortunate, Boxleitner (perhaps intentionally) is more brittle and less authoritative. He eats with the crew! Sir, there are RULES here. And one of the people he is eating with is this new pilot jackass who is in the main credits and everyone is pretending he’s been here the whole time, it drives me nuts — is this how you people felt about Hiatt on The Shield? Other people are missing as well, the cool competent Russian lady who was running shit in the Observation dome is gone and replaced by goobers and apparently Caitlin Brown did not want to come back as Na’Toth and that sucks, she had this great no-nonsense approach that makes a perfect Number 2/henchman and the new actor is softer and has less of a presence. So there are a lot of different pieces here and they have yet to fully cohere the way the show had by the end of the season, on the other hand the most recent episode introduced a black guy pilot who is of course the only pilot to get killed off in the big dangerous setpiece later on so perhaps the show is rebranding as a self-aware comedy.
I loved Dead Reckoning so, so much but I seem to be (happily in this case) a bit off the consensus, not sure why I was so completely blind to its flaws but I’ll take it!
It’s definitely not bad and the sleazy town setting is cool, I think I’d be more into it if I didn’t have the Maltese Falcon at the back of my mind while watching. And that song sucks ass! Scott “performs” it terribly too, she got a lot of flack in general from reviewers that is a bit harsh but it’s warranted there.
I too really grew to like O’Hare by the end of the first season and I think the show continues to suffer from his loss (although I like Boxleitner just fine).
He was a little stiff at the start but grew into the role nicely. And his voice is so much better for the opening narration!
Oh, man, the season 3 remix of “We Used to Be Friends” is pretty dire… And the season itself is pretty rough compared to the first two as well.
Rapidly speeding through Hacks S1 to my own surprise. Up to S1E8 This is the female anti-hero show I really wanted after Damages felt so corny and of a specific cable TV era (not in a good way). Everyone has their reasons and their heroic moments – Marcus choosing not to leave his date in a commitment-phobe panic, Deborah learning from her past and owning Adam Ray’s sexist comedy bro on stage, Ava pushing Deborah to be honest on stage – but it doesn’t lose sight of their worst qualities either. Spoiler: (Deborah, uh, NEARLY RUNNING HER SISTER DOWN WITH A CAR.) As I said on Ruck’s Discord, there’s a Vic and Shane dynamic here with Deborah and Ava, making me think impulsiveness and shark-like ruthlessness/self righteous action paired together make for good drama. (Angel and Spike too.) Both characters are capable of behaving like the other and will not always admit it, and the moments when they’re aligned make their bond deeper and also spikier.
Notes: “Can I do a podcast?” in the tiniest possible voice was hilarious. This is making me think of other shows about female bonding and how Parks & Rec never figured out Ann enough to be any kind of dramatic counterpart to Leslie. (Also everyone gets to be a wife and mom on that show, even fucking April, who would be one of those people who logically just wouldn’t have children. Holy SHIT, that was hilariously regressive.) Marty being genuinely sorry to kick Deborah out of the casino shows is good – as he says, he has a board to answer to, and he didn’t even take the blackmail personally. As my friend pointed out, Kiki is one of the most well-adjusted characters on the show.
Kiki ends up a small but powerful beating moral heart to the show.
She’s a good friend! (Maybe the first Ava’s had?)
It is great how she ends up beating down Ava’s emotional walls right at a time when she’s ready for that. She bounces well off Ava’s highstrung ambition.
Man, literally everyone on P&R having kids did really get on my nerves.
Hacks making Marty into an actual (and sympathetic) character instead of a cardboard cutout is one of the show’s touches I really appreciate; it would have been much easier to have him just be a snide obstacle to get knocked down, but instead, it’s obvious that he appreciates and respects Deborah, even when they’re at odds, and the show doesn’t judge him for making practical business decisions that Deb would also make in his shoes.
Ava and Deborah’s dynamic together is always fantastic, especially as they learn more from each other and take on each other’s traits and priorities, at least intermittently. I also love how the age difference between them works not only to provide a generation gap (one the show can use for comedy or illumination in both directions) but also a distinction in how they see their stories, how the past humiliations and pains Deborah reveals are things Ava learns about now, and feels as fresh and still-relevant, as much as Deborah has tried to put them aside.
One thing this show is really obviously, immediately good at is characters being a little weirder and more specific than they strictly need to be for plot purposes; after a while, I was shocked and delighted by how it chewed through one-scene characters that were immediately memorable and then disappearing. One of my favourites is the guy Ava buys a phone off at one point, and for a more recent example, the guy who reads Ava and Deb the ratings info, and keeps giving them insights into demography that he doesn’t have to but clearly finds interesting. It all very much reminds me of Grant’s observation of Shield characters – 90% cliche, 10% weirdness, but on this show that 10% is right up on top.
Love in S1E2 the guy who’s maybe justifiably mad at Deborah over a whole antiquary incident that happened offscreen, he’s got his own life and story here.
And Chris McDonald can play that cardboard cutout in his sleep, hell it’s how he made his career, but the show sees everyone as human. (I could see him saying “I accept your blackmail” to Deborah ala Tom in Succession, a moment of genuine appreciation for her cunning.) And based on the montage of Deborah repeating the same jokes over and over, he and Marcus aren’t wrong to suggest she’s now on auto-pilot.
Deborah revealing she never started the fire but took the blame feels so crucial – it was wrong for the guy to do that, but the more you get to know her, you see how she COULD have started it.
Johnny Dangerously – good fun, doesn’t quite find the gag-packed rhythm of the best parodies but it’s pretty consistently amusing with some committed performances. The woman playing Johnny’s mother is great and Joe Piscopo gives an excellent scumbag performance – he got the biggest laugh from me with a line about how his gun is so powerful it can shoot “through a school”.
Doctor Who, “Lucky Day” – interesting one, the “Doctor-light” episode is a solid tradition that has resulted in some great episodes but usually they revolve around the current companion whereas this one bounces back to Ruby Sunday from the previous season. She’s very capable of carrying an episode but this one fell a little short for me.
Live Music – missed a couple of gigs last week with a weird, intense but short-lived virus but felt well enough yesterday to get back out there and see local-ish drone-pop weirdos Ye Woodbeast, who are hard to describe but very enjoyable and unusual. A LOT more live music coming up this week so glad I wasn’t out of commission for long.
Wooo live music! Wooooo MORE live music! And Johnny Dangerously is one of those movies that is enjoyable now but if I’d seen it as a kid I bet I would’ve loved it.
Yes! Very much so, I had the same feeling watching it.
Wooooo live music and no virus!!
The Conversation
Wow, David Shire has a strong case for a lawsuit: a ton of the score here feels like it was gently massaged into being the constantly recurring Severance theme.
Anyway, this is an all-timer, and it will never not be bitterly, painfully, poignantly funny how bad Harry Caul is at the essence of his job, even as he’s incredibly talented with the particulars of it: he can surveil anyone, but for all his paranoia, he can also be surveilled by anyone, including people with far less training and talent. Everyone here has his number, and he’s not protected at all; he doesn’t even have enough guile not to take a pen handed out by a fellow bugging expert or the practical knowledge that yeah, his landlady is going to have a key to his place. This is also has one of the greatest unheroic moments in cinema, when all of Harry’s guilt and good intentions bring him face-to-face with (a variation of) the violence he’s been dreading and preparing for, and he literally hides under the covers, overcome by trauma and terror. A fantastic and completely ego-free Hackman performance.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
For Movie Club. Another all-time great unheroic movie: one of the most painful, crushing details here is that Eddie doesn’t get either the tragic grandeur of going down for a betrayal he’s committed or the painful fate of going down for a betrayal he refused to commit. He works himself up to sell out his friend, but only–bad luck, Eddie–after someone else, unknown to him, has beaten him to it; he takes on moral weight and absolute futility at the same time, and he’s punished for what he technically tried to do, but not because he tried to do it, only because Dillon is sacrificing him for his own safety. He’s stranded in an existential no man’s land, neither guilty enough for catharsis nor innocent enough for a sweeter kind of heartbreak. Also, Robert Mitchum’s fundamental weariness here gives him one of cinema’s best faces.
The Cutting Edge
And now for something completely different! Watched this with a friend, and we both commented on how it absolutely belongs to that strange (and strangely well-populated) subset of romantic comedies where the protagonists are absolute dicks to everyone in their lives, including each other. But hey, Terry O’Quinn as a supporting character, providing an appropriate bridge to this article!
It’s actually kind of nice to have a 1992 film where a gay character appears and does not face narrative scorn for his existence: he’s a past skating partner of Kate’s, and despite everyone initially blaming him for the loss of her gold medal hopes, 1) there’s never any pointed “he wasn’t man enough to be your partner!” comments, and 2) he’s ultimately exonerated, with romantic lead and former hockey player Doug pointing out that the guy’s performance was completely solid. Director Paul Michael Glaser was famously cool with everyone thinking Starsky & Hutch were gay, so I think that worked in the movie’s favor on this front.
Killing Them Softly
At its best, this is excellent, and it makes a great companion piece of The Friends of Eddie Coyle, especially in its unromantic, fatalistic look at the criminal world. Great Pitt, great Scott McNairy, great Gandolfini, great dialogue. But a painful percentage of it is “C-SPAN: The Movie,” with lingering shots and audio clips related to the 2008 financial crisis and Obama’s campaign. It would be annoying enough to have pointed broadcasts about financial desperation and mistrust playing out over a Mob poker game getting knocked over; it’s even worse when I’m apparently supposed to believe these guys had that on that in the background the whole time. Everyone does, in this movie. No one is ever listening to music, or watching a football game, or anything. It’s all news, all the time, the better for Andrew Dominik to drive home the idea of the plot’s political significance.
Some of the music, while excellent, is also a little too on-the-nose: I love “When the Man Comes Around,” but I would strongly recommend not pairing it with the man literally coming around, for example. But that’s nothing compared to all the C-SPAN. But basically everything outside of those two flaws works incredibly well, so if you can grit your teeth through those bits, you have an amazing low-key crime thriller.
Friends Of Eddie Coyle is definitely a bleak King Lear riff, not in the plot but in the theme of an old man trying desperately – mainly through rambling – to prove that his life and the long years of suffering he had meant something. This movie looks and feels so miserably cold.
Oh, Lear is a great point of comparison, and now I want to specifically rewatch Eddie explaining his “extra knuckles” to a bored Jackie in this light.
There is a paternalism to Eddie that makes him initially sympathetic, but, compared to others in his melieu, Jackie is expendable, and all of his “telling it how it is to stand up to be a man”. particularly in the context of their second meeting, ispure B.S. He moves from being a moral heart of the story to being just another villain getting, through a blindness of misplaced loyalty, his just deserts.
You think it looks cold, you’ve clearly never been to Boston! It is fucking cold.
All of the CNN commentary affected KTS criticism of the film when it came out, but the core of the film is excellently executed. It deserves a rediscovery.
Stray thought on Higgins adaptations: Perhaps THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE’s most important legacy was in spotlighting the literary disntinctiveness of a writers voice in conjunction with staging necessary genre movie action elements. Screenwriters and directors can ground their narratives with a certain specificity without sacrificing a certain, to sound a bit Barton Finkish, poetry of the streets. Although the above mentioned THE MALTESE FALCON kicked off this trend, it wasn’t widely adhered to until the 1990s with the rise of Elmore Leonard adapations emphasized dialogue over violence. Ironically, Leonard based films made during the period of COYLE’s release took the opposite track, and they seem a bit more dated.
Interesting — my main knowledge of 70s Leonard adaptations is Mr. Majestyk and I think that is really well done, at least as a film. Bronson is actually conveying interiority and Lettieri was made to be a Leonard scumbag, but its stripped-down quality feels very much of that era of Leonard.
It works the best because Leonard had a hand in adapting it, and the interesting plot points remain. The pacing feels more like a conventional 70 thriller and the dialogue is pointed and more brusk than the book, which isn’t a bad thing for a film but it kind of neutralizes the writer’s trademark dialogue. It also helps that Richard Fleischer was one of the most reliable journeymen of his era.
For another hilariously on the nose use of “When the Man Comes Around,” see Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
I thought about that when I was watching this! It’s been so long that I didn’t trust my memory about it being used in the same way, so I’m deeply amused and gratified to find out that apparently I was right.
You can spot the flaw in Killing Them Softly from the title, Higgins’ book is called Cogan’s Trade and that is what it is, the story of a man doing a job (and I don’t know if the movie makes it clear, but: Cogan is the new Dillon! Dillon is sick/dead of cancer, which is why Cogan is new on the job and worried about that as well as doing the job itself) and Dominik has to fucking fancy it up with his bullshit, and even worse write in a god damn speech to that extent. To quote another master of dialogue: Who ever told you you can work with men? This is what fatally undermines the movie for me, for all of its excellent qualities — which you cover above and are really fantastic, I was not expecting Dominik to go as hard as the book on a certain guy getting got and he goes there without hesitation — Dominik cannot fucking leave well enough alone and makes it a story about *cues up Obama speech* AMERICA. This is where the idiotic CSPAN shit comes in and as bad as it is cinematically and logically it is even worse thematically. Scoot McNairy is not Lehman Brothers you dumb fuck! The economic catastrophes at play are not aligned in the slightest! But oh “gangsters are capitalists,” no one has made that fucking connection before. Gahhhh I’m choking on my own rage here. I should just make Star Wars Prequels edit so I don’t have to think about how dumb it is anymore and I can just watch Gandolfini in loser God Mode.
Rumble Fish – It’s sparse in its sets but the lighting, shadows and fog give it a highly stylized and expressionistic style that pops. The first fight in the railway yard looks amazing with the other gang walking in seemingly from out of nowhere. But the expressionism is never over done. Much of the time it feels like Hud or The Last Picture Show in its slice of life look at lower class life where it looks neo-realist in contrast to the expressionism. It’s an interesting visual blend. It almost looks like it could be set in the 50s or 60s if it wasn’t for the early 80s automobiles, Rourke’s motorcycle and other background 80s signposts. I used to think Matt Dillion was so cool in this when I was 13. But now he’s just a boisterous asshole, though he plays it very well. Contrast him with Mickey Rourke who is understated and brooding. Nobody makes smoking look so cool. Stewart Copeland’s soundtrack sizzles. Glad I reconnected with this after so many years. I think it’s grown to be one of Coppola’s better films and maybe Rourke’s best performance.
Rumble Fish looks absolutely astonishing. It might be a wisp of a story but damn, who needs story when Mickey Rourke is smoking in black and white.
Sinners. What a movie. This is pure hollywood magic baby.
Few director-actor pairs are as productive as Coogler-Jordan. We’re approaching Kurosawa-Shimura and maaaaaybe even Kurosawa-Mifune levels here (okay, too far? Too much recency bias?). Anyway, this sort of genre storytelling rarely gets the big honors but I think Jordan and Steinfeld should get some consideration (they won’t). Göranson’s score and sound track is incredible; it was all I could do not to turn into ryan gosling and lean over to my wife and give her his speech about jazz is a conversation about the dueling blues-irish folk performances. They should also get an honorary oscar for most mentions of cunnilingus in a film.
Like I said, great work by the cast. Delroy Lindo is great as the old blues man. Miles Caton, in his first role, is phenomenal. Steinfeld is great—we see a lot more acting from her here than in pitch perfect and hawkeye. Jordan plays twins, and he plays them as different people.
If I had to nitpick a little it’s that I think the movie was doing something more interesting with the supernatural before the genre elements fully explode near the end. The big dance scene while Sammy sings “I lied to you,” and the stuff Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) was doing and Remnick’s promise of fellowship and music I think had room for expansion. Remnick especially is interesting as a villain—Coogler mentioned in an interview that it’s important Remnick is not a white southern vampire. He’s older than that. Whiteness was invented after Remnick; he (pardon the cliche) does not see race, unlike, eg, the white liberal villains of Get Out, who see race but pretend not to.
doctor who, most recent. “I know writers who use subtext. They’re cowards.” So far this season has given us the planet of the incels, where the villain is an AI generator, the Jim Crow south, and this guy. After the mid-episode turn, this episode turns great.
Another thought on sinners: lots of great location filming here that captures the natural beauty of the south along with a sense of dread and the sheer geographical oppression and isolation imposed by the size of the farms. That dual valence of a place that’s both eden and hell is interesting and I hope Coogler does more southern gothic.
I vacationed in South Carolina growing up and that eerie quality is nailed – different from the strange, flat expanse of the Midwest, still endless.
Remnick’s comment on the prayer is also a perfect touch, he does get what it means to have something stolen from you, and to be repressed, even if he’s only Irish. But he also wants Sammie’s “soul”, something he shouldn’t just get to have. Seeing it again tomorrow with friends and gonna try not to stim too much to the music.
The prayer line was great (though Ireland was Catholic prior to the arrival of the English, but of course not anglophone, Remnick would have known it in latin, unless he’s truly ancient and remembers when Padraig started establishing monasteries.).
re stimming to the music: I had a chuckle at my own expense when I found myself nodding head and quietly tapping my foot to the music and recalled delroy lindo’s line earlier about performing blues for whites.
homer: “it’s true, we are so lame”
Hey, how did you make that spoiler box?
And I had the same reaction, the genre stuff is fine and good but everything before it is extraordinary, wouldn’t mind terribly if the movie had stayed magical realism instead of full-on horror.
[ spoiler ] Darth Vader is Luke’s uncle [ / spoiler] without the spaces.
It’s still good, but sometime between Mary talking to Remnick and Cornbread’s return it gets more conventional, and it stays that way for a bit. Don’t get me wrong—there’s nothing wrong with a little genre fiction bloodbath. But there’s a version of this that comes out in November instead of April and actually puts Steinfeld and Jordan in the running for oscars, but it probably doesn’t make as much money.
On the brighter side, this gives Coogler the cachet and the fuck you money* to make both Sinners 2 and an oscars movie where he and Jordan get to really elaborate on what he’s thinking about “the ancestors.”
*Shout out to both coogler and göranson for getting producer credits for their wives. Jordan, you gotta get married. Get in on that.
Yeah, I’m not going to ding Coogler too much for going populist when everything he has done other than his first film has been elevating late franchise entries. He’s not sell-out Scorsese, he’s best-case-scenario Snyder.
oh for sure. I’m just kinda in the amateur critic’s trap of it being easier to articulate a flaw or a missed opportunity than what makes something great. I can’t say much more about Jordan, Jordan, Caton, Lindo, and Steinfeld than “Woo! Fuck yeah! Acting!” But I can see where Coogler was doing one thing with the supernatural elements of the story and then did something slightly more conventional.
Side Effects
An excellent note for Soderbergh to go out on, hard to believe he hasn’t made a movie in 12 years*. Here he expertly sets up one kind of story, a psychological thriller where Rooney Mara loses her own mind and her loving relationship to her ex-convict husband played with charm by Channing Tatum to her crippling antidepresant addiction, dragging her doctor played by Jude Law down with her. All the pieces and Soderbergh’s precise and chilly staging are there for it, as well as a few pointed barbs against the pharmaceutical industry as another expression of the industrial capitalism that concerns so much of his career.
Slowly but surely though, and just through following Jude Law along while his career and family life unravel, Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns find their way to a slightly different sort of thriller, and without compromising on aesthetic precision or pulling the rug completely out of the story. Without spoiling things, it’s all very fun and sordid without going full-bore into luridness, and Law anchors it with maybe my favorite performance from him outside of The Talented Mr. Ripley (and mabye the deeply flawed Anna Karenina), one where he manages to remain sympathetic even as his character leans into very questionable ethics. Also glad to see Vinessa Shaw in this, a very good actor who doesn’t seem to get as much works as she could get but who’s always a welcome presence (see: Eyes Wide Shut, 3:10 to Yuma, Two Lovers). Definitely recommend this one.
*For the record, I never for a second actually believed his retirement bullshit.
Also, rewatched Get Out on the background while having lunch with the in-laws. Had fun figuring out the stuff in the first half of the movie that prefigures where the plot was going all along. Had fun watching this after watching Sinners, covering some of the same themes from different angles.
I see what you did there!
You mean the bit about his retirement?
Side Effects is a ton of fun, I clocked the possibility of Soderbergh (and Burns) pulling a Usual Suspects lie in the opening scene (the quasi-Kuleshov effect of depicting a thing with visual significance that nonetheless is still just implication that the viewer leaps to provide) and then dismissed it. Got my ass! And yes, Law is great here, I think this updates noir dynamics very well while retaining a mean (complimentary!) cynicism — basically, Law needs to realize he can act like a man.
What did we play?
I’ve had more time of late to play Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown – I’m over 60% by now, which honestly, considering the stuff I have, feels low and makes me wonder if this is going to have mrke to do and more places to go than I can predict. I guess there is still a lot of stuff I haven’t explored.
It’s been a great deal of fun, although some of the platforming sections are frustrating – not so much strictly because of the difficulty, but because the combination of powers you have to use are mapped onto a controller in a very awkward and cumbersome way to use in combination. (Also frustrating: How imprecise the chakra aiming is with a gamepad – I keep having to switch to thumbstick mode to get through these sections.)
Little Kitty, Big City – figured I should play the OTHER “you are a cat” game while it was still on Game Pass, I was a little disappointed with how linear Stray was so enjoyed this one being a bit more of a sandbox-y / open-world experience. It’s pretty short (I reached the end credits within a few hours) but made a charming diversion while I was feeling under the weather.
Blue Prince – kind of all the way back in on this, allowing myself a few hints at this point now I’m deep into the ridiculous post-game stuff but I figure I might as well see as much as I can. Still exciting when a whole new area opens up this many hours into the game, there are some exasperatingly obscure puzzles but it’s definitely a fascinating game.
Man, I can see I’m going to get into Blue Prince.
Taught a seven-year-old how to play Purple, the simplest card-based drinking game in the world, so I got that going for me. (Drinks were not actually used, at least.)
The number of games I learned from teenage counselors at summer camp that I later learned were modified drinking games was… helpful?
Slay the Spire
One of my favorite games, and I was suddenly in the mood to revisit it. (Possibly because I impulsively watched part of a YouTube breakdown of some strategy tips, which my non-Spire-Slaying wife confirmed sounded like, “Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense; nonsense, nonsense, math” to her.) A lot of people are extremely good at this game and play it on the harder Ascension levels, where the game begins metaphorically punching you in the face to see if you can win while trying to see through two black eyes, but I am a weakling, so I’m just happy to have slain the Heart again on a very low Ascension level, this time with the Watcher. Fantastic deckbuilding game with a good mix of strategy and luck, some striking artwork, entertaining math, great to play while listening to music or podcasts.
Ah, yes, see also my wife if she overhears me discussing poker strategy.
F-Zero 99 on Nintendo Switch
They added a few new tracks and unlockables to I jumped back in for a session. Haven’t come across all the new tracks but I will, and the ones I’ve found so far are fun. And the servers are a bit busier than of late, which is good, but no so much that they make getting consistent results impossible, which is better.
Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes – Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics on Nintendo Switch
Played Arcade Mode through the week and beat it on the weekend. This is the most I’ve played of this game and it’s a fascinating change of pace from most other fighting games. In most of them, I try and play more with spacing, timing, deliberate movement and planning rather than head-on combat and aggression but here, because of the emphasis on character swapping and the AI always bringing on assists, there’s hardly any breathing space and I can’t rely on my usual style. I style try though, and I did get some wins that way (as a result, the vast majority of matches ended as timeouts rather than KOs) but this is a much more action heavy fighting game and I had to adapt to it.
I started off with a trio of Strider Hiryu, Captain America and Ryu. I wasn’t sure about Ryu, not because I didn’t play well with him, but because part of me wanted to have a different, more daring pick in my rotation. Chun Li was the one I really wanted, but she seems extremely week in this game to me (yes, I main her in Street Fighter III: Third Strike, why do you ask?). I eventually swapped Ryu for Sakura and it did the trick for while.
I made it to the final boss, Abyss, an impressively animated boss but whose second and third phases have some pretty cheap moves, forcing me to take the playstyle I’d honed up to that point and throw it out the window. After a while I decided to just spam specials, but of course that’s a risk because I have to take some damage just to fill the meter. I settled on Resident Evil’s Jill Valentine for the first phase, War Machine (who I picked by mistake and it turns out his horizontal missiles are perfect) for the second phase, and Strider with the gadget special for the third. All in all, a great fighter with some slight jank, definitely can see why it deserves the hype.
Poker
Played some Texas Hold ‘Em with the in-laws before and during the Canelo fight on Saturday night. We were only half paying attention to the fight (which was bullshit anyway) and we weren’t fully engaged with the game but I had fun either. Our nephew and his dad still controlled the game as usual, I only got a pair of good wins and I was the only one to cash out before we called it a night, but it was still all worth it for me. And absolutely better than just watching the fight on its own.
And we’re back! I think.
Seeing O’Quinn in a movie or show is usually a sign that at least one thing will be good, and sometimes a sign the entire endeavor will be worth my time. Not that I plan to watch any of the Hawaii Five-O with him.
I remember The Pegasus because: a) it finally explained why Starfleet doesn’t have a cloaking device; and b) tried to give Riker a less than sterling career, though that always felt pasted on. But if you were to ask me why it took Riker so long to get a command, I would say “oh, the Pegagus plus his stubborn unwillingness to leave Picard added up,” (Trekkies overthing stuff.)
We’ve been having server issues that are, at least temporarily, taken care of.
It does amuse me how the cast ended up stuck in their various positions from about season two onward, in defiance of usual military protocol and indeed any traditional workplace, for the exact same reason the real cast stayed in place – they enjoyed working with each other and doing their jobs.
Oh buddy, get on The Stepfather immediately. It is a great suspense film with a lot of interesting things under the surface (Westlake’s script is excellent and critics jumped all over the psychotic patriarch’s family values in the Reagan years) but most importantly Quinn is incredible in it.
Really should see this having only watched a clip. Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments was formative (ie. made 10 year old Conor not sleep for a week) and featured Quinn going apeshit.
I knew as soon as I saw Westlake on the Stepfather Wikipedia that you’d have a strong opinion on it one way or the other.
He did this and the adaptation of The Grifters around the same time, dude was on a heater. His attempt at a Bond movie is interesting, he came up with the bones of Tomorrow Is Another Day and when that got reworked/rejected he turned it into the novel Forever And A Death and it’s a fascinating example of the DeSouza Action Protagonist principle at work because the hero is reactive and sort of a dud (he would need the charisma of Bond performance to really work) while the villain is the one actually doing shit and you can tell how much more interested Westlake is in this guy.
Wholeheartedly seconded, The Stepfather rules, and O’Quinn is especially excellent. One of the best moves the movie makes is to have him genuinely be a true believer in everything he’s espousing; he’s specifically a fanatical, obsessive idealist in a real world, and that makes him a ticking time bomb.
Yes, bingo — and he’s such a believer in what he is espousing that he changes everything around it in order to make it true. Which to a very major degree includes himself! That mirror scene is famous for a reason.
Mad now that I can’t find this on streaming, even extra-legally.
Year of the Month update!
May’s year will be 1962, so you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al!
May 9th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Bon Voyage!
May 15th: John Bruni: L’Eclisse/Il Sorpasso
May 16th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Big Red
May 23rd: Gillian Rose Nelson: Almost Angels
May 30th: Gillian Rose Nelson: In Search of the Castaways
And coming in June, we’ll be moving on to 1983, including all these movies, albums, books, et al!
Jun. 9th: Sam Scott: El Sur
Jun. 23rd: Sam Scott: Codex Seraphianus
Jun. 24th: John Bruni: Legendary Hearts