Okonh0wp Reviews

Ragtime (1981)

An ensemble masterpiece that should have been more famous

[10/10 · 13 April 2024]

Between his two Oscar wins for One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest and Amadeus, Milos Forman created this gem that has been criminally underlooked among period pieces of the 1980s.

The source novel intertwined icons of the era like Harry Houdini, Jacob Riis, Booker T Washington, and Sigmund Freud; lesser-known figures like Evelyn Keys and Stanford White who were intertwined in a scandal that captured national attention; and fictitious characters.

In the film, the focus shifts from Evelyn Keys (Elizabeth McGovern) to a radical brother of an upper-class family (Brad Dourif), to ragtime piano player Coleman Walker Jr. (Henry Rollins Jr.) whose encounter with a racist fire chief (Kenneth McMillan) pushes him over the edge to commit a terrorist attack. It's a great ensemble piece that pulls into and out of focus, with a number of interesting characters that meander into and out of the main story, and often create their own interesting tangents.

In particular, a character solely named Father (James Olson) is an interesting litmus test for our modern-day views on allyship. He disapproves of adopting Coleman's daughter (from their domestic help played by a then-unknown Debbie Allen) when he first discovers her, and he's clearly established as the yin to his enthusiastically revolutionary brother-in-law's yang, or his more compassionate wife. At the same time, he's never anything less than respectful to his black colleagues, and makes a leap of faith when it matters. Similar depth is given to a lot of the characters here, and that's what makes this film such a thought-provoking one.

Like Amadeus, the film is one of the most visually ornate films I've seen.

Double Indemnity (1944)

A near perfect film

[10/10 · 12 April 2024]

I first saw this film when I was discovering classic film as a teenager. Black-and-white films were a new language for me. The second time I saw it as a college student watching the film for a film course, I had a greater appreciation for Barbara Stanwyck's gift with delivering sharp dialogue and Billy Wilder's ability to write it.

In my most recent viewing over 15 years later, I have come to realize that this is a perfect film. The story is a classic morality tale of a man (Fred MacMurray) driven to commit the perfect murder by vanity (thinking that as an insurance insider he could fool the system), love, wealth, and who knows what else is going on through his head. Likewise, his lover (Barbara Stanwyck) Phyllis is such an enigma that she enters unreliable narrator territory and viewers can debate how truthful she was about her feelings until the end of time.

The third element of this relationship triangle (although, it's platonic) is the brilliant Edward G Robinson as the insurance investigator who acts as Neff's moral center and close friend. It's the kind of meaningful platonic relation between two men that one rarely sees in movies as the two act as doppelgangers to one another.

Although Maltese Falcon came first, this might be called the first true noir film. With Billy Wilder's visual mastery and knack for witty dialogue, the film incorporates a lot of trademarks like scenes lit for night, hard-drinking anti-heroes, and stories told in flashback narration.

More than that it's an economically told and fun movie with a tremendous number of choice lines.

Harley Quinn (2019– )

Better than the comic book version, I suppose

[6/10 · 7 April 2024]

Even if my superhero fatigue is not as much of a problem in the less supernatural DC universe, I'm likely not the target audience for most comic book adaptations. I've almost never read a comic and if I ever went to Comic Con, I would act like an anthropologist who was treating the setting like a field mission.

Still, the rogue's gallery of Batman has always been delightfully campy and fun, and it has been interesting to see a variety of film makers provide their own take on this material.

Since Suicide Squad (a horrible movie for every element outside of her), it's been a pretty open secret that the most fun character in Batman lore is Harley Quinn, and the potential has always been there for a buddy comedy between her and Poison Ivy. I even remember watching the animated series of the 90s and having a particular fondness for that episode as a kid.

The show takes place in Harley Quinn's post-Joker break-up, with many of the rogues like Penguin, Bane, and Two-Face taking the clown prince's side. As a result, Quinn forms her own band of fighters (I'm hesitant to call them villains, because the good/evil, chaotic/neutral paradigm in this universe seems very odd).

They're strangely voiced by Tony Hale and Jason Alexander, so it takes one out of it to hear George Costanza and Buster Bluth as menacing thugs. They're more like the 90s X-Men who revel in cutesy puns and squabbling as they fight.

Poor Things (2023)

An allegory for the ages

[10/10 · 3 March 2024]

Poor Things is a very gross film on a few levels. These are not the kind of sex scenes or nudity that most people would find titillating; there are live shots of brain surgery; Willem DaFoe is a grotesque-looking man who burps metal.

It's also a beautiful film. It's probably intentionally both as it comes from the mind of visionary Yorgos Lanthimos who can never be blamed for an unoriginality. His previous works have included The Lobster, The Killings of a Sacred Deer, and The Favourite.

In this film, he tells the story of a miserable pregnant woman (Emma Watson) who commits suicide. A mad scientist (Dafoe) discovers her and takes the fetus's brain and inserts it into the dead mother to reawaken her. It's a female spin on the Frankenstein story with a lot more sex and moral ramifications. See, because the newly revived patient is a grown woman with full sexual capacities. As someone who starts out as the ultimate in naivete, she also wins the attention of two men. One is a debonair socialite (Mark Ruffalo) who simply wants to deflower her, while the other is a more gentlemanly admirer (Ramy Yousef) who's strangely entranced by her.

The end result is a journey of self-discovery, whose uniqueness allows the film to explore romantic tropes in the same way that a science fiction film has a looking-glass way of dealing with societal issues.

The film's art direction is a little overly CGI, but most of its vague steam punk aesthetic seems to work in placing it in some timeless chapter of the past. It's also a film that marks Emma Stone's best performance by miles. She's simply transcendent.

Tetris (2023)

Absolutely wonderful film

[10/10 · 3 March 2024]

It's hard to understate how impressive it is to take a subject that bores me to tears and make it a gripping thriller. Of course, it helps that the real-life story is equally mind-boggling: In order to acquire the rights for the video game Tetris, Dutch businessman Henk Williams mortgaged his house, risked trouble with the KGB, and was initially dependent on a company that was actively trying to screw him. When he finally broke free and secured the rights with the Nintendo company, he realized he didn't have the rights because he was lied to.

Although it's easy to root for him in retrospect, movies like these often overlook that these bold risk takers simply can't be classified as responsible adults. I'd love to see a deleted scene between Henk and his financial advisor, where he tells him how this is the opposite of the kind of investments he should be making.

The film comes with ready-made villains in a rich heir to a rival company (seems kind of spoiled with privilege) and the KGB. It also doesn't require much suspension of disbelief that this was the strict reality of the KGB at the time. Sofya Lebedeva plays a honey pot of sorts who sneaks up on the protagonist (and the audience) with her allure.

Tetris is the kind of film you never knew could exist based on what's on paper. Who knew that a film about intellectual property rights could be so sexy and fast-paced?

Da 5 Bloods (2020)

Affecting film that feels universal

[8/10 · 3 March 2024]

Da 5 Bloods has a film with a lot to say about the Black experience in war, and even then it's not a film that feels exclusively for a Black audience.

It's a war film about four Vietnam veterans (played by character actors Norm Lewis, Delroy Lindo, Clark Peters, and Isiah Whitlock Jr.) who return to the war zone years later to recover some lost goal. Joining them is one of the soldiers' sons (Jonothan Majors) who acts as an audience surrogate. There's an aura of celebration like friends at a reunion, but come on, this is a war movie: The façade is quickly broken by revelations of post-war economic hardship and PTSD.

Like Platoon, Bridge on the River Kwai, or Apocalypse Now, this film turns tragic as the crew is immersed into psychologically and physically hellish situations. The main actor, Paul (Delroy Lindo in what might be an Oscar-bait part), loses his mind, and survival is far from guaranteed for any of them.

Perhaps, this is even more tragic than those other films in that these veterans have been through this before; it was clearly a difficult experience (as evidenced by the haunting of the 5th blood); and they decided to undergo a mission through the Vietnamese jungle again. Were they misinformed about how much those jungles would be guarded by Vietnamese and mercenaries? Were they deluding themselves into thinking this would be easy? Maybe the tragic reality (and subtle economic commentary) is that they needed the gold that badly.

Either way, getting invested in these people's lives means you will be hit by the senseless of how it ends, but that's par for the course of a war movie. In other words, it's an affecting film and a rich one.

Contagion (2011)

A surreal experience watching this post-pandemic

[9/10 · 13 February 2024]

Although one listicle I consulted lists 50 films that Hollywood has produced about biological warfare (including The Rock, Eleventh Hour, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Code Red), it feels this is one of the very few to zero in on what would be known as COVID a decade later. From one perspective, it's pretty eerie watching this after the world was forever changed by COVID. Another way to look at it is that it's simply a film that highlights human folly. Think about it: Nine years before it happened, this film exposes the very realistic possibility that a bat in Eastern Asia could create a mutated virus which could throw humanity in chaos and kill millions of people. And yet, we didn't adequately prepare for the possibility or stop the spread of it across oceans. Either way, it's an eerily prescient film and a fascinating artifact from a pre-Covid era.

This is a thriller and an ensemble film juggling storylines including a widowed dad (Matt Damon) whose wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) was Patient Zero, a muckraking reporter (Jude Law), various scientists on the ground (Kate Winslet and Marion Cotillard), and political middlemen who manage them (Enrico Colantoni). It's a true ensemble film with some heavy-hitting actors taking small roles just to fit in the whole.

It's also a thought-provoking film, and while it's a grim one, it's also littered with shades of hope .

Lessons in Chemistry (2023)

On the surface it seems like preachy feminism, but it's really a gem

[10/10 · 3 February 2024]

I'm normally weary of shows that are overly preachy, and this show is very overtly about feminism.

She's a chemist in a version of the 1950s so extremely misogynistic, that it comes across as extreme. In fact, her male chemists are so extreme in their outdated proclamations that she MUST be brainless because she's female, that they almost come off as strawmen.

For her part, Brie's character of Elizabeth Zott enters the series as a standoffish character who seems a little calculated. As time goes on, the layers unpeel to show a woman who's the product of trauma and stunted ambition.

Her heart gradually opens up to a quirky colleague who's a bit of an outcast himself (Lewis Pullman). The two fall in love in a very organic and satisfying relationship.

There are definitely a lot of swerving plot points in this 8-episode run, including the aforementioned fate of the relationship, and she transitions from chemistry to hosting a TV show about cooking (a development that is revealed midway through the series, but it is a big part of the show's advertising).

Like many TV shows on TV, this is about watching a genius tick. Zott is possibly neurodivergent and suffers from trauma. Her skills aren't dealing with people, but her mind ticks in a certain way that's at the heart of the show.

Elizabeth Zott is a character worth rooting for.

Shrinking (2023– )

A really strong sense of togetherness

[8/10 · 29 December 2023]

Joining the already-excellent slate of TV shows on Apple Plus is this look at a therapist (Jimmy, Jason Segel) whose life takes a hard turn upon the death of his wife and the rebellion of his teenage daughter.

The stated gimmick of the show is that Jimmy's depression forces him to become brutally honest with his patients, but that's not entirely true (minus a pollyannish woman in a bad marriage played by Heidi Gardner). It's more that Jimmy starts putting more of himself into his work and his friend circle as he gradually recovers from his wife's loss.

In particular, he allows a patient with PTSD (Sean, Luke Tennile to stay at his home. He also opens up to his neighbor (Liz, played by Bill Lawrence mainstay Christa Miller); reconnects with his former best friend who faded out of his life (Brian, Michael Urie); and relies more on his work colleagues (Gaby, Jessica Williams; and Paul, Harrison Ford) for emotional support. In short, it's about a man gradually recovering from a massive hole in his life by creating a newfound family.

Whereas other dramedies like Kidding or Louie might cross over to dreariness, Shrinking maintains a steady upbeat tone. Part of the appeal, in my opinion, is the sense of togetherness among the characters. It's not a sad co-dependence either. Rather, it's an emphatic plea among these characters to trust, to open up, and to be there for each other.

In the opening episode, Jimmy's former friend Brian bursts through the door during a therapy session, and asks him why he isn't there for him. While Brian offers to pay for the startled patient's therapy session, it's clearly inappropriate. Very few of the interactions between Jimmy's fellow therapists and Sean or Jimmy's daughter feel entirely appropriate either. But it's all endearing anyway. In fact, it's refreshing when viewed from America's largely individualistic suburban society where people prefer to stay out of their neighbors' business.

Migration (I) (2023)

Simply delightful

[8/10 · 28 December 2023]

In this animated comedy, Kumail Nanjiani stars as a play-it-safe duck who is urged by his more adventurous kids and wife (Elizabeth Banks) to migrate from New England to Jamaica. With an eccentric uncle (Danny Devito) in tow and a few friends they pick up along the way (a Jamaican parrot played by Keegan Michael Key with a thick patois, among them), the family faces death at every turn.

The film is in the mold of a classic animated film based around a simple Aesop (stepping out of your shell = good), but it thrives with a high laughs-per-minute ratio, solid animation, and strong comic personalities

One of the things this movie does best is to bend around the talents of its voice actors. Kumail Nanjiani often excels as a straight man on crack, so he's good as a worrywart parent who rightfully points out that life can be pretty dangerous from the bottom of the food chain. Danny DeVito is a bit of a wildcard, and has plays various degrees of curmudgeon, so as a cranky uncle, he works well. He also has a strong character arc. Carol Kane steals a couple scenes as an mercurial heron who might want to alternatively eat or nurture them during a storm.

Quiz Lady (2023)

Low stakes against-type fun

[8/10 · 3 December 2023]

A relatively low-stakes comedy that's sure to please Jeopardy fans and Awkwafina fans alike. Although, Awkwafina plays the responsible sister to Sandra Oh (doing her best Awkwafina impression) and a rare against-type switcheroo in this buddy comedy. Will Ferrell plays ersatz Alex Trebek and Jason Schwartzman plays ersatz Ken Jennings (who's secretly evil) on an ersatz version of Jeopardy that we see and hear about before.

Awkwafina's character, Anne, is some ambiguous form of neurodivergent (she's a shut-in, riddled with anxiety, Asperger's-like memorization skills, etc.) and could make for a great Jeopardy contestant. But she doesn't have the confidence to actually follow through with it.

Problem: Meet impetus -- the sisters amass an enormous debt with the mob when their mother flees the country with gambling bills -- and solution: Oh's character, Jenny, makes it her mission to push her sister out of her shell so they can win their money back. Their journey takes them to a historically accurate inn in Philadelphia (with Tony Hale delightfully cosplaying as Ben Franklin), an acid trip, and a brief alliance between Anne and her casually nihilistic next-door neighbor (Holland Taylor) who has a weird crush on Paul Reubens. What other way is there to crush on Paul Reubens?

The film has enough comic twists to keep things interesting and Awkwafina is hard to resist.

Empire of Light (2022)

A clever film in a number of ways

[8/10 · 15 March 2023]

It might be a bit overkill for the Academy to have awarded Olivia Colman three Oscar nominations in four years, but the multi-layered ball of repressed pride and externalized self-doubt that Colman plays here is the performance of the year in my book.

The film is set in a theater in a small English town in 1981 and though it focuses on Olivia Colman's character of Hilary, there's a rich slice-of-life quality to it.

Sam Mendes has long had a knack of capturing the atmospheres of time and place: The suburban purgatory of American Beauty, the sepia-toned Depression-era Midwest of Road to Perdition, the hellish warscapes of Iraq in Jarhead and World War I in 1917.

At the same time, Mendes tries to equate a cinema in 1981 as the height of theatergoing, when he's at least 40 years removed from the era of movie palaces and grand showings. There's a curious vagueness here from a director who's generally so exacting with his showings. It's also hard to get a grip on exactly what kind of an English town this is: Vaguely somewhere that's not London is as much as I can gather.

The crust of Hilary's arc is that it throws her into two relationships: A numbing dalliance with her cheating boss (Colin Firth) and a May-December romance (Michael Ward as Stephen) that's as dreamy as the movies that Hilary and her crew never actually get around to watching (irony alert!). Colman plays the self-loathing with the former and the genuine affection with the latter beautifully.

There's also the obligatory referencing of the times (the Thatcher era) and the racism involved in Ward's character. It's a sure bet that any film that attempts to discuss race (particularly by a White director) will have loud critics whatever you do, so it's best to just ignore that: This isn't a film with any profound proscribed solutions to race, but the existence of a Black character in a more racist era than the present is dealt realistically and in a way that serves the story.

The film picks up significantly in the second act with two or three strong twists that are cleverly deployed. Even when it's dragging, the mood works.

Despite the film fee.

Hello Tomorrow! (2023)

Certainly worthy of your attention if nothing else

[8/10 · 15 March 2023]

Mad Men meets 50s era sci-fi. I'm unclear exactly what year the show takes place, but it hardly matters as the show is decidedly ahistoric. This is a parallel version of the 50s where we didn't just land on the moon but were able to quickly subdue it for human colonization to the point that we were selling real estate on it.

This show reflects a 1950s era sensibility in which men are bread winners, and there's no better way to win that bread than don a suit and sell something.

But wait! Were real estate prices as suffocating in big cities in that era as they are today? Didn't we not go to the moon until 1970 when society was more populated with hippies with long-hair? Again, best not to think too much about historic details.

The series anachronisms' are tied together quite well anyway under the umbrella of 50s-era sci-fi where writers were coming from uncertainty about what the space age would bring.

It's not until the show's 5th episode that anything crucial really happens to the plot but what drives the series is that it has a strong sense of place and time and the heavy hitters--Billy Crudup, Alison Pill, Hank Azaria, and Susan Heyward (not the Oscar-winning actress from the 40s and 50s)-infuse the drama so well.

Not Dead Yet (2023– )

It's ok

[6/10 · 15 March 2023]

Capitalizing on Ghosts, Gina Rodriguez plays, Nell, an obituary writer who can see dead people.

It's one of many female-centered shows about a woman who doesn't have her life together in the vein of Dollface, Maggie, Girls, Single Drunk Female, and can trace its lineage to Mary Tyler Moore.

However, Mary Tyler Moore never looked that far down on its protagonist. One problem of this subgenre is that it casts broad labels over women based on whether they're in a relationship or have achieved a certain career goal.

A lot of these female-driven shows have no idea how to draw a straight male. Admittedly, plenty of male-centered shows have the exact problem with women and my heart goes out to so many of my favorite actresses who get stuck in those thankless characters. Still, does anyone really enjoy watching manic pixie dream guys?

There's also one of the autistic leads from As We See It here as the autistic apartment owner and roommate for Nell, which is an interesting wrench to throw in the works of typical sitcom character conflict.

The show is watchable but hasn't really hit its stride yet. No relationship is really the stuff that would make lists of TV's "Most ruthless boss" or "Most heart-warming besties" and I get the feeling the show is going for those kinds of archetypes.

Reboot (2022)

Beautiful

[10/10 · 15 March 2023]

Shows about show business are a tired trope from unimaginative writers, but occasionally something pops through that's worth fighting against that bias. Created by Steve Levitan (Just Shoot Me, and more recently Modern Family), this show contains some of the more wholesome relics of old-school sitcoms while still maintaining a sharp subversiveness.

Three has-been actors (Johnny Knoxville, Judy Greer, and Callum Worthy) and one classically-trained has-been in denial (Keegan Michael-Key) are recruited to revive a multi-camera (AKA old-school, laugh-track) sitcom in a comedic landscape of more advanced comedy. To make matters more complicated, the new executive producer is an avant-garde (Rachel Bloom) who's only doing the show to get back at her father (Paul Riser) who sorta kinda abandoned her as a child and he refuses to relinquish the rights without getting involved in the day-to-day trappings. Like Levitan's previous hit, Just Shoot Me, this is a sharp comedy centered around a (forgive me for using such a gooey word) beautiful father-daughter relation.

The V.I.P.s (1963)

A great ensemble film

[9/10 · 4 March 2023]

Similar to Airport, the film opens with a credits sequence that looks like a TGIF opening except the characters are bathed in luxurious back drops. And the presence of Orson Welles, Louis Jordan (the ethnically ambiguous Bond villain who utters the delicious line "Mr. Bond, you have a nasty habit of surviving"), Elizabeth Taylor, a not-yet-famous Maggie Smith, and Elizabeth Taylor was enough to keep me going.

I went into this for a project I was doing on best supporting actress winners (Margaret Rutherford), but I stayed because I love a good ensemble film.

The film follows four storylines: A dramatic love triangle involving a woman (Elizabeth Taylor) who is planning on leaving her husband (Richard Burton) for an idle playboy (Louis Jordan) but wants to dodge confrontation through a Dear John note; a Yugoslavian director (Orson Welles) needing to leave England to dodge tax laws; an Australian magnate (Rod Taylor) with assistant (a not-yet-famous Maggie Smith) who needs to head to the board of directors before his company is bought out; and a loopy Duchess (Margaret Rutherford) who is trying to raise money to save her castle.

Unlike most ensemble dramas where there are a lot of intersecting characters, there's an urgent need for everyone to go in the same direction which is out of London's Heathrow airport which means the tension gets ratcheted up to 11 in one foul sweep, when a case of fog (this is a thing?!) delays all flights.

The film is at its most compelling when focusing on the Burton/Taylor/Jordan plot which has enough heft to support its own dramatic mid-century melodrama like the Douglas Sirk or Elia Kazan film.

Burton and Taylor were a tabloid phenomenon on screen and the pair had just come out of a film shoot where they just discovered each other's bodies (TCM reported that this film was rushed into production to capitalize on the tabloid). It was over the shoot of this film that an internally tortured Burton decided to leave his wife and marry Taylor: An idealized glamour that six other men had fallen under the spell of over the course of Taylor's life. It's not hard to imagine how viewers in 1963 felt watching the two act out a heated marriage spat felt like a glimpse of the tumultuous affair between two of the most beautiful and idolized people on the planet.

But the scene-stealer here is Louis Jordan. Referred to as a "gigolo" by a jealous Richard Burton, he's the kind of idle gentleman who casually walks through life bedding women and never thinking about his next meal. He's a gambler as if there's any profession cooler than that. He's properly vulnerable with Liz Taylor and he shows an intriguing splitting of the difference between empathy and verbal one-upmanship to the man whose wife he's stealing.

The Australian magnate plot is a solid B-story with the contrasting sense of gravity by Maggie Smith (another scene stealer) and the "Oh well, my life's over, might as well have champagne" attitude of Rod Taylor. There are a couple sweet twists and the story feels emotionally robust.

The Orson Welles and Margaret Rutherford plots are mostly filler. Welles dons an Eastern European accent and some fine character affectations and Rutherford shows a penchant for physical comedy as she constantly looks lost and fiddles with her hat a lot.

The upsetting thing is with the richness of the performances of Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Louis Jordan, and Maggie Smith, Rutherford walked away with the 1963 Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Still, I'm glad this film won an Oscar of some sort so I had the chance to discover it.

The characters are all rich

The star cast.

1600 Penn (2012–2013)

From a different era

[8/10 · 16 July 2022]

This show was released in a a quaint era when our political landscape (at least here in the US) wasn't so trauma-inducing that we can enjoy something politics adjacent as lightweight sitcom fare.

This was also a coming out vehicle of sorts for Josh Gad who wrote the show and fashioned himself as a Chris Farleyesque figure (they're both plus sized and Gad was probably aware of this) who's a lovable oaf.

Gad's character, Skip Gilchrest, the first son to President Dale Gilchrest (Bill Pullman looking as presidential as ever) has zero malicious bones in his body but exists in a social climate that's politicized to a microscopic degree, so he's a ticking time bomb for social disaster which is a great recipe for comedy.

Rounding out the ensemble are a couple precocious kids, a goody-two-shoes daughter (Martha MacIsaac) whose clean-cut image is derailed by an unplanned pregnancy, and a beautiful step-wife (Jenna Elfman) who spends many of the episodes overcompensating for the "trophy wife" image. The pregnant first daughter and the step-mother readjusting to expectations are a couple fine wrenches to throw into the machinery, and things get particularly juicy when the baby daddy shows up (Robbie Amell) in the fourth episode. A great comedy of errors ensues in which Rebecca discovers that her one night stand wasn't a navy man but an dim-witted Old Navy employee who has no idea why he's being called to the Oval Office as the president berates him. This is the series at its high point and why this wasn't the pilot is part of why this show didn't get renewed, I suspect.

The writing was pretty decent the first time around but when I watched the show a lot more recently, I found myself appreciating it more. Perhaps the show is so digestible nowadays is because it's fairly removed from politics. At the same time, it's a little soft, but it's good comfort food in a Nick-at-Nite kind of way.

Because it was so digestible.

Adventure Beast (2021)

Nature + Gore = Fun

[8/10 · 9 June 2022]

Bradley Trevor Greive (AKA BTG) is a field zoologist who's so enthusiastic about animals, that he regularly gets mauled and nearly eaten by them on an episodic basis and does so with effective zeal. In other words, he's a pretty zany character and the actor has an easy time selling the part. After all, the character is heavily based on the actor who is an ex-Australian military paratrooper and naturalist who has appeared on Animal Planet series such as Fear Island: Fortress of the Bears and Nature's Strangest Mysteries: Solved.

BTG is joined by two extremes as his side kicks: Overly timid field assistant Dietrich and exuberant niece Bonnie. Both push the extremes of their characters for great comedic effect.

Each episode is set in a different ecosystem with solid plotting and has a semi-educational nature, as BTG spews animal trivia like he has tourette's syndrome. On the whole, it's mostly a lot of fun.

Licorice Pizza (2021)

Unique and infectiously fun while always teetering on the brink of ickyness

[9/10 · 9 January 2022]

This film is icky, bizarre, and unfocused but that's all negated by sheer infectiousness. It's more about capturing the fun of prolonged adolescence in a certain place and time, than it is focused on a series of linear events. The film oozes nostalgia in the same way that most of us can relate to: How a song from that summer we came of age resonates with us a thousand times more than the latest top 40 single or how a certain food might remind us of our late grandmother's cooking.

The film rides the coattails of two larger-than-life personalities in Gary and Alana. Gary is a former child actor that his C- looks don't prevent him from hitting on women ten years his senior or opening businesses. The object of his affection is an aimless Jewish woman who has a part-time job is photographing student IDs at his school. She's well-aware that she lives in a society where a 25-year-old can't date a 15-year-old but they form a make shift friendship that eventually turns into something pseudo-romantic and definitely codependent.

While Gary is clearly a doer, Alana is a counterpart in that she reacts to him with a filter for his BS. There are also a number of other colorful figures though they're mostly just passing flickers to the two main characters. Those who think Sean Penn and Brad Cooper might be big presences in the film based on the posters should note that they're more like cameos.

Don't Look Up (2021)

Completely effective political satire though depressing for this viewer

[6/10 · 26 December 2021]

"Don't Look Up" marks the encouraging evolution of a former comic film maker branching out into satire.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence stars as a meek scientist and his doctoral candidate who discover that a comet is hurdling towards the Earth. Unfortunately, they are confronted with a tone-deaf media (portrayed by morning hosts Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry) and an even more incompetent president (Meryl Streep).

It's meant to be an allegory for global warming, but it touches on the anti-science views of Trumpism (and now the current Republican party), the unholy marriage between politics and industrial interests, and the short-term view of American politics. In terms of ambition, few films have even aimed this high ("Dr. Strangelove" and "Network" are the best examples) and it's hard to deny that this is really effective.

Considering Adam McKay is a former head writer of SNL who's made some very funny films, it's a little disappointing that the film wasn't packed with just a few more comic jabs.

Most people will enjoy this.

In terms of my personal experience, I found it depressing only because I'm not the kind of person who enjoys exposing myself to a lot of news when there are a lot of negative things happening to the US right now including people who ignore science. In this case, this film hit too close to home.

Being the Ricardos (2021)

Aaron Sorkin sinks back into obnoxiousness

[3/10 · 25 December 2021]

Watching this makes me desperately wish there was a more vocal movie-watching bloc who would be willing to denounce Aaron Sorkin as insufferable.

The typical Aaron Sorkin project features characters who all have IQs of 150, and possess the exact same degree of interest in holding extremely inefficient conversations that are always branching off into a minimum of three tangents per interaction. It seems like Sorkin's characters possess the listening skills of autistic Onion News reporter Michael Falk.

I assumed that with his run of "Moneyball", "Molly's Game" and "Trial of the Chicago 7" that Sorkin found a way to temper his most irritating elements.

But "Being the Ricardos", while an exciting story, is simply Sorkin writing Sorkinesque caricatures which is a pretty bad fit when the story is about show business and Sorkin attempts to give camera blocking the same gravity as a federal trial.

It's also a problem because this story should be about the Ricardos and it's hard to believe that the Ricardos sounded like Aaron Sorkin. This has led to noticeable anachronistic language (the word gaslighting didn't exist in 1953) and charges of inaccuracy on the part of Lucy and Desi's daughter.

On top of that, the dialogue is just plain annoying. In an early scene, Vivian Vance almost forces a conversation onto Bill Vance without his consent three times about a 7-year-old communist that he's clearly not interested in having. In the same scene, Lucy starts innocently hazing a director but it's not funny and it mostly sounds like Aaron Sorkin's typical justification of the creative ego over anyone who gets in the way of the creative process (similar battle lines were drawn out in past Sorkin projects like the train wreck "Studio 60" and "The Newsroom")

The subject matter is exciting as is the story but Aaron Sorkin needs to get out of his own way.

MacGruber (2021)

Unfortunately, what made for a good film doesn't hold up over 8 episodes

[6/10 · 20 December 2021]

The Saturday Night Live sketch was inexplicably turned into a hilarious movie with near cult culture status in 2010. The film approached gratuitous nudity and violence with such an over-the-topness that it reminds one of the hard-drinking college friend with no sense of shame.

Considering that the series has no boundaries over how low brow is the limit, there's no reason to worry about tarnishing the legacy of such a spectacularly stupid film. If you can mine any laughs at all out of it, I say go for it.

Still, I have to note: The series never reaches the comic plateau of the film. The comic energy works best when Will Forte's lunacy is juxtaposed alongside Ryan Phillipe's sensible soldier and love interest Kristen Wiig (the film starts out with her married to a general played by Lawrence Fishburne which is quite the obstacle). One problem is it takes at least three episodes to get the tree of them together and by then there's a significant loss in momentum. Will Forte's MacGruber is notably nastier here (I'm guessing it's a way to deepen the character and give him edge) and it's a lot less fun.

Even when operating on full cylinders, it still feels like the jokes per minute count is a little lower than the film. Perhaps, it's because of the way the plot is serialized and stretched out but not in a way that adds to the humor.

Last year, Erinn Hayes and Rob Huebel starred alongside Fred Melamed, Ken Marino, Jason Matzoukas and others in the Children's Hospital spin-off "Medical Police" that combined humor and action in a serialized manner in a much superior way.

Breaking News in Yuba County (2021)

Not a particularly special black comedy

[3/10 · 19 December 2021]

Black comedies involving ordinary people who get mixed up with hitmen are pretty much a dime a dozen and this doesn't stand out one bit. It doesn't help that the plot contrivance for how the subject gets caught up in the mob -- she portrays her husband's death as a disappearance to get attention-- is flimsy, boring, and makes her look unsympathetic.

There's also not much of a thematic thrust for the film to attach itself to. Is it about two sisters bonding? Is it about hitmen being hitmen? Is it a tragedy?

The best I could say is that it has a solid cast but they're not giving much to do.

The Courier (2020)

A great true spy-thriller

[8/10 · 12 December 2021]

Having been inundated with James Bond and Jason Bourne, it's easy to forget that much of the spy genre doesn't accurately depict the actual lives of spies. Not even in the same ball park.

Spies aren't one-man armies or charismatic seducers. They're people in the shadows like Greville Wynne who go about the same routine over and over in hopes of gleaming a trace of information that could make a difference in history.

The story is told at what I like to call the speed of history. While that's a different type of film than a spy thriller, the stakes are no less enormous and the intellectual and enormous weight of the costs are no less effectively portrayed.

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021)

Overly typical British period melodrama with wrong notes

[5/10 · 12 December 2021]

Maybe I'm burned out of British period pieces but this film is unremarkable in its premise, and, at times, laughably off in that execution.

The film is told with the whimsy of a Tim Burton film (Olivia Colman does narrative duties) reminiscent of Edward Scissorhands or Miss Pettigrew but the protagonist isn't really that much of an oddity. Played by Benedict Cumberbatch, Louis Wain (whom I presume became famous on account of they based a movie on him) possesses a few of the aesperger-like traits of Cumberbatch's "The Imitation Game" character (Alan Turing) and is romantically inexperienced, but that's about it. When he's told by his employer (Tobey Jones) very often that he's eccentric, it's just plain bizarre.

There's a nice love story with Claire Foy and an occasional look into the economic reality of a man who has to support five sisters but the movie only touches on those things rather than makes either of them the focus of the story.

There are pleasant mood elements, but the movie is so forgettable I barely remembered anything about why the guy was famous two hours after watching the film. Something with cats?