Don't Look Up

Professional comedians always tell you to throw away the first idea that comes into your head. Keep digging, that's when you get to the really funny stuff.

Don't Look Up is a movie composed almost entirely of first ideas.

It is a collection of the easiest, most obvious, laziest takes on all the targets of its satire: politicians are corrupt, TV is shallow entertainment, boomers are racist, tech bro superheroes never benefit anyone but themselves, science deniers are dummies. It's satire written by the top comments on Reddit. A collection of viral Tweets. 

The premise is that astronomers Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio discover a massive comet on a collision course with the Earth and try to warn people so we can do something about it. The Trumpish president (Meryl Streep) and her Don-Junior frat-boy son (Jonah Hill) find science boring and care more about the midterms, and blow them off. The two astronomers go on TV, where they get second billing to a pop star's (Ariana Grande) break-up, finally galvanize the nation into launching an attempt to knock the comet off-course, only to have it aborted by a weirdo Gates-Jobs-Musk tech giant (Mark Rylance) who wants to mine it for minerals needed to build smartphones. Their grassroots campaign to get people to look at the visibly approaching comet is met by a campaign with the rallying cry "Don't Look Up!" The tech giant's plan goes horribly wrong, of course, but not before he escapes on a spaceship. Then everybody dies.

It's a heavy-handed metaphor for global warming, or the COVID-19 pandemic, or any major social issue really, the cynical take that our society is by nature incapable of fixing any of its mistakes, and we're all doomed.

There are flashes of biting satire here and there--such as Jennifer Lawrence being confronted by her parents, who demand that she not bring "politics" (i.e. the fact that there's a giant fucking meteor headed for the Earth) into their house.

Most of it doesn't bite, because it's just the most toothless and banal restatement of the most common complaints about modern society. It doesn't satirize its targets, it just repeats them, without adding anything new or original. 

The movie also doesn't have a good grip on its tone, I think; the satire sometimes inclines to dry, black comedy, but then veers to silly over-the-top farce, like Ron Perlman's foul-mouthed geriatric astronaut using his pre-mission announcement to thank "the gays".

There's also just a lot of junk, though. The movie is about 30-45 minutes longer than it has any right to be. Scenes that either have no purpose in the story, or go on and on and on, like Ariana Grande singing an impending meteor song for five minutes, or DiCaprio's blowup with his wife who proceeds to throw all his medication at him, one by one, after announcing what each one does. A lot of scenes feel ad-libbed, in that the actors are kind of just talking without aim or purpose, just kind of rambling in the hopes that the scene will turn out OK.

I bet the movie was an absolute blast to make. Looks like the actors were having just the best time ever. As a consequence though, it does feel like the director, writer and actors are laughing at the audience, slightly smug and condescending. There's a crack about politicians being too stupid to be as evil as we think they are--thus putting the writers above both politicians and the general audience. 

Are they right though, are we doomed? It modern society congenitally incapable of taking action on any major issues or threats it faces? This movie won't convince you either way, being far too safe in its criticisms and repeating hot takes that have been around on social media for the last decade. 

For what it's worth, all of the criticisms ring true, if not especially insightful. Is the world going to hell in a handbasket? Yeah, does look that way. Is it too late to do anything about it? Probably. 

This movie won't change that, just make certain people feel better for being right. 

The Witcher: Season 2

The Witcher: Season 2

I didn’t think it was a bad season, really, but then I also don’t think it was an especially good one. It seems to have tried to fix things that were never broken, while nursing along all the broken things from the first season.

Before I complain though, I’ll be nice. I thought Jaskier (Joey Batey) was miles better this season, maybe because the overall tone was a bit darker, so the comic relief was more of a relief, maybe because the writing was better, less dependent on one-liners and more character-based.

At one point he shares a look and a smile with a bearded dwarf lady, barely lasts an instant, but it’s screamingly funny precisely because they don’t beat you over the head with it, just trust you to know the character and know what the look means.

There’s another bit shortly after where he and Geralt (an obscenely muscular Henry Cavill) are doing a walk and talk and he does a pitch-perfect imitation of Geralt. Again, nice little moment, building off our familiarity with the characters.

Then there’s a big, long scene where a dock worker complains he didn’t realize one of Jaskier’s songs took place in two timelines, ha ha, meta joke about the first season. Well, we’ll fix that with a purely linear narrative in season 2, hurrah for making stories more generic and predictable.

Which leads me to the point about trying to fix things that were fine.

The narrative invention is gone, and instead the suspense and drama are interrupted every two minutes to check and see what’s happening in the five other story lines (spoiler: Not much).

It’s also far less monster-of-the-week, more tired old “chosen one who might save or destroy the world” and you’ll be forgiven for checking if you’re accidentally watching Wheel of Time or not. Instead of twisted fairy tales, we get people possessed by demons being told to “fight against it!” and other staples of the genre.

The first episode is probably the best, and lo and behold, that’s the only one this season that has a monster-of-the-week setup. It’s a twisted take on “Beauty and the Beast” that dares to wonder what kind of woman would be attracted to a lion-boar-man living in a haunted mansion, and if such a person might not be the scarier of the two.

The rest is a fairly muddled and muddy tale about “destiny” which—and this is the killer—absolutely refuses to tell you what the friggin’ destiny in question actually is in anything but the vaguest terms imaginable. Something about the end of the world and the “Wild Hunt” and the “Conjunction of the Spheres” and “Elder blood” – the last of which seems to mean being part elf, but since there are whole tribes of elves running around it’s not clear why being marginally related to them is relevant. There’s also something called “Ithlinne’s Prophecy” but don’t worry, the show never bothers to explain what that is.

The other main story arc is about some ancient demon thing which, death stroke number two, absolutely refuses to tell you what it is friggin’ attempting to do in anything but the vaguest terms imaginable. “It feeds on pain” or something to that effect, which is great, just kind of generically evil without any goals then. “It wants to do bad stuff.” Very exciting.

So, we have a demon thingy which wants to do something, not clear what, and this may or may not have something to do with someone’s destiny, not clear what that is either. It’s the writerly urge to obfuscate and misdirect striking again, and it’s death to any kind of dramatic clarity or tension.

The dialog is pretty ropey, filled with lots of ponderous pronouncements which I think are meant to sound deep and meaningful, but are almost invariably just straight up baffling nonsense, like bullshit buzzwords spouted by a Lexus car commercial. “Fear is an illness, if you leave it untreated it can consume you” … “It’s not a question of price; it’s a matter of cost” … “True luxury should be compassionate, engaging and deeply personal.”

People keep saying these things but there’s no weight to them, nothing in the story to actually back them up.

“She's tougher than she looks,” says Geralt of Ciri (Freya Allan), his adopted daughter who he has known for all of half an episode. How the fuck would you know, Gerry? She’s ridden around on your horse for a day or two. Not exactly an Olympian display of fortitude.

The production design, directing and cinematography of the show are all kind of off-kilter, really. To examine a dead tree-monster thing (kind of like an evil Ent), Geralt rips random bits out of it with his bare hands. He goes to meet a kind of high priestess person, who o-VER e-NUN-see-AY-tes eh-VERY sy-LA-ble. There’s a wizard whose beard looks like painted-on asphalt. Telekinetic spells that blow people backwards ALWAYS do it in slow motion. There’s a bit of a Marvel-style reveal at the end of the last episode of … some woman, idk, she’s kind of there but gets no introduction or explanation.

Just so many bizarre choices.

I’m not sure I’m adequately conveying the atmosphere here. The bottom line is these people do not talk or act like human beings. It’s all just slightly off.

The Power of the Dog

The Power of the Dog

This will be short as there isn’t much to criticize.

The Power of the Dog is probably Hollywood’s second-best advertisement for traveling to New Zealand, next to Lord of the Rings. Here, NZ is subbing for Montana, and the landscape is NatGeo gorgeous, absolutely stunning, and the cinematography is very Every Frame a Painting level delightful. Lots of artsy shots of people silhouetted and perfectly framed in windows and doorways, very symbolic “inside looking out"/"outside looking in” shots for a psychological drama all about feelings that have been repressed and buried inside.

It’s glacially paced though, and extremely small stakes, so I can see this won’t be for everyone. Climactic scenes involve someone asking his brother to wash up before dinner, a dude playing the banjo in his room, and someone braiding rawhide into a whip. There are no guns at all, only two deaths, neither shown on-screen, and only one body. It's a movie that will have you as physically far from the edge of your seat as possible, real middle of the cushion stuff. Still, it’s a brilliant script, particularly adept at Show Don’t Tell, managing to communicate immense depth and turmoil to these characters without saying a word.

This is horribly unfair of me, but I’m afraid all that subtlety also makes the rare head-thumpingly obvious scenes stand out all the more, such as finding a secret stash of illicit magazines that the owner has—in a fit of self-destructive madness perhaps—carefully and self-incriminatingly written their own name on, or alcoholism being communicated by the tired trope of finding a whiskey bottle in the bed.

I don’t quite buy Benedict Cumberbatch as a charismatic bully or tough-as-nails cowboy with psychological insecurities though. I’ve seen lots of praise for his performance, but I don’t think he really has the physical presence for it. Director Jane Campion said there were lots of actors who can do tough, but not many who can also do vulnerable, and while she is an award-winning director and I’m a dipshit rambling online, Imma disagree and say Benedict can do vulnerable, sure, but asking him to play an American cowpoke was a stretch too far.

Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons both slip right into their roles, but the one performance I was impressed with was Kodi Smit-McPhee as Dunst’s son. He’s very good at the gawky, painfully uncool kid who seems like an absolute wimp, then gives us a peek at his startling and alarming knack for violence.

All the obliqueness and opaqueness means it’s a movie that’s up to you to interpret in some ways, especially the relationship between Benedict’s guy’s guy cowboy and mama’s boy Kodi, and it’s nice that the movie never comes out for or against any of these characters.

It’s up to you to decide what you make of it, and I make it to be a damn fine advertisement for New Zealand.

The Last Duel

The Last Duel

Caught this on Disney+ after it had been unceremoniously dumped there, following a slightly less than stellar theatrical run which can’t have lasted more than a month or so. 

I can see why, too—up against the likes of Dune (Part One!), released while we’re still mid-pandemic and saddled with both a tricky subject matter (viz: rape) and a 2.5-hour run time, not to mention Matt Damon AND Ben Affleck with dodgy facial hair, it’s a wonder this got made at all. Director Sir Ridley Scott can blame millennials all he wants for this failure, but honestly it’s the kind of movie that probably belongs on streaming these days, not the theater.

The movie is based on historical events, and the first thing I did when I heard about this movie was look it up on Wikipedia and let me tell you, HOT DAMN JESUS WHOO CHRISTING SHIT the reality of said duel is incredible.

Which is a shame, because the movie isn’t.

It’s not a bad movie, though the casting choices (and beards) are a little odd and the insistence on realistic indoor lighting gave me eye strain. No, mostly it isn’t that great because it is just plain old too damn long.

The Last Duel does the Rashomon thing of retelling the same story three times from the perspectives of the three main characters: First, Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon), a prickly knight with easily wounded pride and a penchant for suing people; second, Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), a dashing, womanizing squire and favorite of the local Count (Ben Affleck), who is accused of raping Jean’s wife; and last, Jean’s wife herself, Marguerite de Carrouges (Nicole Holofcener).

It strikes me as an odd way to construct the story, because I thought the whole point of Rashomon was that none of the versions was trustworthy, and everyone distorts the story to fit their viewpoint. So you’re not sure who is telling the truth, or if an objective “truth” is even an achievable thing.

Whereas The Last Duel very definitely does NOT want you to have any doubt about what really happened. Each chapter begins with a title card saying “The Truth According to (Character Name)” then fades to black, except for Lady Marguerite’s version, where the words “The Truth” remain on the screen for a second or two. The movie wants to you accept that her version is fact, the others fiction.

But the structure of the movie actively works against that conclusion. Her version is presented after two very slanted alternatives, first Jean’s in which he is painted as a noble warrior done dirty by an unappreciative liege lord and his sly, cunning favorite Jacques, and then a second in which Jacques claims the encounter was consensual and no rape occurred. So when we are presented with Marguerite’s story of an aloof and uncaring husband and lecherous, libidinous squire, she comes across as too perfect; we are already primed to be suspicious of these stories.

But the movie can’t doubt Marguerite. 

You simply can't imply that she's lying about the whole thing. Not now, not in this day and age, not in this climate, not in this economy. She must be telling the truth.

This fact takes the wind out of the whole "conflicting stories" structure. What's worse, it's not even a movie about finding out the truth. The second half goes to great lengths to point out that the whole trial had absolutely nothing to do with the truth at all. So why, I cannot help but wonder, employ a technique designed for a movie about the murkiness of the truth when your whole movie is about how nobody is interested in the truth? Techniques should be used for a purpose. This one isn't.

The only thing the retellings achieve is shed a little light on the mentality of the characters, especially the two male protagonists, but that’s not really enough to justify going through the whole thing three times. Yes, we get that Jean is less worried about the harm to his wife than to his honor and reputation. Yes, we get that Jacques is so used to getting his way with women that he cannot even conceive his advances are unwelcome. He remains convinced no rape occurred because in his mind, none did. 

We could still get all of that with a straightforward chronological retelling, without the structural trickery.

The production design and performances don’t really do anything to elevate the material. As I said, the movie feels wonderfully authentic in all its dimness and Monty Python and the Holy Grail esque muck, but it can be a trifle hard to make out what is happening at times. It’s not quite desaturated, but does feel as if a blue filter has been applied to everything to make it all feel a bit cool and damp. 

Meanwhile Adam Driver is as watchable as always, and Holofcener is solid if unremarkable, but Damon is an odd choice for a blustering bully, and Affleck is positively bizarre as the buffoonish libertine Count Pierre d’Alencon, totally out of step with the tone of the rest of the movie.

The actual duel itself I thought got off to a good start, but became a bit too Hollywood fight scene for my taste. In the actual duel, Jean was clearly outmatched, just getting his arse constantly handed to him, but here they have to do all these little action moves and reversals and surprises and I actually found it LESS entertaining than just reading the boring old words on the boring old page.

Arcane

Arcane

Well I went into this the way the Internet intended and insists is the only true way to experience televisual entertainment: Absolutely clueless. Utterly unspoiled by even the tiniest, remotest hint of knowledge about premise, setting or plot. God’s very own fool experiencing the Platonic ideal of in-cave viewing experiences. The very tabulaest of rasas. Have never played or even seen gameplay of League of Legends, don’t even know what a MOBA is, just assume it’s either a kind of crypto or a type of NFT. In short: a complete idiot.

In this complete idiot’s opinion, it’s really rather good.

Let me get the bitching out of the way before I sing its praises though. The plot involves two magical substances neither of which is particularly well-defined: There’s “Shimmer”, a purply glowing liquid which seems to be vaguely narcotic and/or addictive but also turns you into a violent monster but also heals you from injury but also kind of does whatever the plot needs; Then there’s “Hextech” which is blue glowing stuff, which um, glows. And is blue. Also does whatever the story requires, really.

Arcane is set in a city divided between the “haves” in Piltover, who have a monopoly on clean, environmentally and sanity-friendly Hextech, and the “have-nots” in the squalid slums of Zaun across the river, where drug lords have flooded the streets with Shimmer. The conflict between the two halves of the city plays out through the relationship between two sisters, big sis Violet (“Vi”, voiced by Hailee Steinfeld) who’s solid if a little fond of punching things, and blue-haired little sis Powder (Ella Purnell) who is a few sprinkles short of a shaker in the sanity department.

That would be a very solid basis for a story, but the trouble is that to stretch it out to nine episodes, the show has key characters change their minds about Hextech, the Piltover-Zaun conflict and each other about three to four times per episode. One hero swears to destroy all Shimmer production in the city, then decides not to, then decides to stop anyone else from trying to destroy it, then decides not to do that either, all in the space of about 15 minutes.

Such vacillating works well with an unstable character like Powder, but when everybody’s core motivations is spinning 180 at regular intervals, it just gets hard to keep track of what each character is trying to do.

For all that tangle though, this is a genuinely well-made show. Don’t even need to qualify it with “for a show based on a video game whose fans are infamous for being a bunch of arseholes.” It’s just a very solid production.

The animation, by French animation studio Fortiche, is just delightful, a stylish and vividly colorful blend of CG and cell-drawn animation. It’s a clean, realistic yet not uncanny valley style. The characters’ eyes, in particular, are mesmerizing, expressive, almost glowing. Shot composition and transitions from scene to scene are fresh, imaginative and creative.

The voice acting is similarly excellent, even with a couple of stunt-cast Hollywood names in the major roles. Just excellent, top to bottom, conveying the weight and emotion of the words quite wonderfully.

The world these characters is a little narrow, to be sure, but I think it’s as broad as the story needs, leaving the rest of the world to be fleshed out in future. I think that’s a smart move, rather than trying to dump it all on the audience from the get-go, and definitely makes it easier for someone like me to get into the story. It’s a fun blend of steampunk and fantasy, “Dishonored” with a dash of “Brazil”, just dark enough to keep things interesting.

In short, it just ticks all the boxes all the way down.

The end result is a show that is kind of oddly addictive, which is a nice feeling really. It’s been so long since there was a show that I felt compelled to keep watching, just to find out what would happen next.