As a junior high shop teacher, Mr. Birchum’s classroom concerns are binary
in nature. His students are either wearing their safety glasses or they aren’t.
Their power tools are either on or off. His students’ “lived experiences” and “their
own truths” do no make any difference. Unfortunately, that is the kind of
thinking his school’s new J.E.D.I. (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion)
officer wants to stamp out. However, the cranky wood-worker will not be quietly
cancelled out of his job in the debut episode of Adam Carolla’s new animated
series, Mr. Birchum, which premieres tomorrow on Daily Wire+.
It
is the first day of school, but Birchum and his best buddy workmate, driver’s ed
teacher Mr. Gage, are already dreading the stupidity of their students and the
school’s bureaucracy—even before they meet Karponzi, the new J.E.D.I. officer. Since
Birchum’s unwoke rep proceeds him, Karponzi is already gunning for him and the
lazy, feather-nesting Principal Bortles is not about to object.
Mr.
Birchum is a character Carolla developed early in his radio career, whom he resurrected
to serve as a zeitgeisty critic of the decaying American educational system.
There is a little bit of Archie “Silent Majority” Bunker in him and even more of
Tim Allen’s Home Improvement persona. However, Mr. Birchum is more right
than wrong and he is smarter than 99% of the people around him.
He
is also really funny. Yes, this is a Daily Wire+ series executive produced by
Ben Shapiro, but it is important to remember Carolla paid his dues touring
comedy clubs for years, before he became a leading free speech advocate and critic
of “safe spaces.” Carolla and writers Mark Hoffmeier, Byron Kavanagh, and Mike
Lynch score plenty of points against Karponzi’s rigid extremism. However, some
of the funniest gags come from traditional workplace and family sitcom
situations.
The
show’s pointed perspective just gives them more bite, as when Birchum’s
sympatico, woodworking-crazy stepdaughter Jeanie stages a protest against her
realtor mother’s desecration of a mahogany fireplace. The writers even gently
mock Birchum’s rightwing persona, when he grudgingly admits the teachers’ union
he despises probably saves his bacon.
Nevertheless,
some of the series satire is worthy of South Park, which was obviously a
source of inspiration. Arguably, J.E.D.I. is the funniest, most ruthlessly
cutting acronym since Team America’s Film Actors Guild.
Everyone who saw the film The Dry (or read the novel) knows Aaron Falk’s
teen years were difficult, before he joined the Australian Federal Police. It
turns out, they were even worse. Falk has a new case, but it brings back even
more painful memories in Robert Connolly’s Force of Nature: The Dry 2,
also adapted from a Jane Harper novel, which opens today in New York.
For
Falk, when it rains, it pours. Right about now a little drought wouldn’t sound
so bad. Instead of the dry, dusty outback, Falk and his partner Carmen Cooper
rushed to a rainy, lushly wooded national park in Victoria, where there
whistleblowing informant disappeared during an annoying team-building retreat.
Calling Alice Russell a “whistle-blower” is a bit of an understatement. Falk uncovered
evidence she embezzled from her money-laundering conglomerate of shell
companies, so he pressured her to photocopy incriminating documents for his
investigation. He really put the screws to her before she left, so now he is
feeling guilty.
Through
a twist of fate, he understands the dangers of the fictional but highly
representative Giralang Ranges. Years ago, he and his father desperately searched
those woods for his mother, when she vanished during a family camping trip. Maybe
coincidentally, the Giralangs were also home to a notorious serial killer, who
might have still been active at the time of his mother’s disappearance.
Throughout
Force of Nature, Connolly juggles three timelines, with a good deal of
dexterity. There is grown Falk searching for Russell in the present day. Three
days earlier, Russell sets off into the woods with a group of women from her
office, awkwardly led by Jill Bailey, the wife of her corrupt corporate kingpin
boss, Daniel. Falk also constantly flashes back to some twenty or thirty years
ago, revisiting his desperate search for his mother.
Connolly’s
largely faithful Falk adaptations certainly follow a thriller-like template,
but they focus just as much, or even more on the difficult circumstances that
drove the characters to take such desperate, nefarious measures. Frankly, that
approach is more successful in Force of Nature than it was for the
somewhat overhyped The Dry.
Of
course, Eric Bana is just as moody and intense reprising the role of Falk. However,
he convincingly handles Falk’s more traditionally procedural duties this time
around. He definitely looks, acts, and sounds like a Fed with a chip on his
shoulder.
Thank goodness the collective Law & Order franchise has so many
episodes. Otherwise, the Sundance Channel and MyTV might have to start
producing their own programming. Of course, the franchise has far more than 500
altogether. This is just the mother ship’s half-millennial milestone. It also
happens to be its most realistic, ripped-from-the-headlines case in quite a
while. Only five days after his release from a paltry 5-year prison sentence, a
violent sex-offender stands accused of murder in “No Good Deed,” the 500th
episode of Law & Order, which premieres tonight on NBC.
Jack
McCoy is gone, but certainly not forgotten. Nicholas Baxter, the new District
Atorney, faces a hotly contested “re-election” campaign, so he is eager to
convict Shawn Payne for the brutal murder and desecration of his social worker,
Angela Hart. Although Dets. Riley and Shaw gave a look to her hot-tempered
boyfriend, they quickly zeroed-in on Payne.
Given
the brutality of the case and the intense media attention, Baxter wants a
decisive conviction. Frankly, he is a little baffled why his inherited passive
aggressive Executive ADA Nolan Price agreed to such a lenient plea-bargain. Of
course, as far as Price is concerned, it was a miracle they prosecuted him at
all (he must have served under Bragg too). He also claims he wanted to spare
his surviving victim the further trauma of a trial. Yet, there is no denying
the new murder victim.
Frankly,
#500 is exactly the kind of episode the mature franchise needs more of. Take it
from a New York city resident (for over two decades), “No Good Deed” definitely
reflects the current state of the City. It vividly illustrates the dangers of
plea-bargaining and early parole. Plus, Sam McMurray oozes sleaze as politically
ambitious, leftwing Judge Steve Nelson, while Michael Hyatt inspires contempt
as manipulative defense attorney Vanessa Carter. They will remind you why you
always hated lawyers and politicians.
WEAPONS OF MASS MIGRATION investifates illegal immigration on the ground in Panama's Darien Gap. It finds suspiicous activity on the part of cartels, the UN, and the CCP. The national security implications are serious. EPOCH TIMES exclusive review up here.
Somewhere in the multiverse, there must be an alternate Chicago that is a safe,
peaceful city, with high-performing schools and a thriving economy. Obviously,
that is not the Chicago of our universe. It is not Jason Dessen’s Chicago
either, but he is definitely trying to find it again, to reunite with his wife
and son—the ones he knows. Dessen’s unwilling odyssey through the multiverse unfolds
in creator Blake Crouch’s 9-episode Dark Matter, adapted from his original
novel, which premieres today on Apple TV+.
Instead
of becoming Richard Feynman, Dessen married Daniela Vargas and had his moody
teenaged son, Charlie. It was worth it, but sometimes he wonders what might
have been. The other Jason Dessen does not have to wonder. He became a hot shot
physicist who built the “box” that serves as a portal between parallel universes, but he envies our
Dessen’s happy family life. Consequently, he kidnaps the Dessen viewers
identify with, marooning him in his own universe, so he can replace “our” Dessen
with his family.
Despite
his new wealth, Dessen desperately wants to return to his family, once he
figures out why his life is suddenly so radically different. Amanda Lucas, the alternate
Dessen’s lover and co-worker agrees to help him escape their industrialist
boss, but navigating the box is a tricky endeavor. The first few doors they
open nearly lead to disastrous consequences.
The
box is a very cool riff on Schrodinger that sort of symbolically puts those who
enter into super-position, with the help of psychotropic drugs. It is
complicated to explain, but it represents some nifty speculative science
fiction. Unfortunately, the characters are not nearly as interesting. In fact,
they are mostly a rather annoying assembly of dull, joyless neurotics. That
definitely includes Dessen—all of them.
That
human factor definitely matters. It is ironic that we need to make that point
regarding Dark Matter, since that is ostensibly the whole point of the
series. The notable exception would be Jennifer Connelly’s various performances
as the multi-Vargas Dessens. She has the most opportunities to play variations
on her character, which she fully capitalizes on. Each multi-verse Daniela is
recognizably similar, yet distinctive in her own ways.
Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine bring a lot of charm ot THE IDEA OF YOU. They are terrific together, but theyhet zero support from anyone else. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.
The so-called “Agency” is a lot like a Southeast Asian version of the La
Femme Nikita covert organization. Each female assassin has a “guardian,”
who is only supposed to watch over them. In practice, the watchers code-named “Grey
Fox” will have to fight like heck. It sort of goes with the territory when you
work for an assassination agency. They will have to fight each other when a
power struggle splits the Agency. Again, this isn’t so surprising for a group
of killers-for-hire. Whether he likes it or not, the new Grey Fox must look after
his Kittys in Lee Thongkam’s Kitty the Killer, which releases today on
VOD.
It
is a bit of mess when Keng, the Grey Fox, sends Dina, his favorite Kitty, to
retrieve a box from sleazy Wong, before he can sell it to the Japanese wing of
the Agency. Whatever is in that box is a lot like the glowing briefcase in Pulp
Fiction. Keng has his reasons for wanting it, which puts him crosswise with
Ms. Violet, the Agency’s boardroom boss, who unleashes “Nina the Faceless” on
Keng.
The
Grey Fox handily fends off hordes of generic henchmen, but the Faceless Kitty
is too much for him. As he nurses his mortal wounds, Keng carjacks poor
Charlie, a nebbish office worker, forcing him to become the next Grey Fox.
Or
something like that. Honestly, it’s debatable how much of this weird story
really makes any kind of sense. However,
it is easy to get all the heads that get decapitated by katana swords. Charlie’s
shtickiness can be a bit much, but the martial arts beatdowns are brutally spectacular.
Sumret Mueangputt’s fight choreography is wildly cinematic, but also dirty and
gritty.
The original Mercury 7 astronauts were test pilots, because they were
expected to go up and come back down, while somehow holding their spacecrafts
together. In science fiction, crew and passengers often spends millennia in
suspended animation as they travel to distant galaxies. The three-year trip to
Mars and back will be something in between, without the means to communicate with family back on Earth. It is a peculiar challenge that the
psychologists and “human factors” specialists at NASA are trying to prepare for
in Ido Mizrahy’s documentary Space: The Longest Goodbye, which airs
tomorrow on PBS, as part of the current season of Independent Lens.
It
is sort of hard to believe, but they did not really have people doing what Dr.
Al Holland does at NASA, until he started his department in 1994. Of course,
the hard-partying “Right Stuff” generation had their own ways of dealing with
stress (read Tom Wolfe). There was also a deep institutional fear of confiding
personal information that could potentially get astronauts scrubbed from future
missions. However, Holland and his colleagues slowly gained their trust, after
showing a need for their feedback, to help prepare future astronauts for longer
and longer deployments on the International Space Station (ISS).
Mizrahy
and Holland certainly diagnose potential problems, using the experiences of
former astronaut Cady Coleman, her husband, and their son as a case-study.
Hopefully, current astronaut and potential Mars crewmember Kayla Barron can
benefit. The Naval Academy grad and her Army vet husband managed her 176 days
in space, but they realize it will get more complicated when they have
children.
Although
it is still considered the stuff of science fiction, some form of deep sleep is
duly considered as a method of combatting loneliness and isolation (along with virtual
reality). However, Dr. Holland worries about the shock of waking up to three
years of elapsed history. For instance, imagine how jarring it would be to
suddenly learn the Mets won the World Series?
Viewers
can learn a lot from Longest Goodbye. It certainly instills a greater
appreciation for the sacrifices astronauts make. However, the pacing feels a
bit languid. Frankly, Ramachandra Borcar’s politely ambient score arguably does
the film a disservice. It might feel like a good match to the celestial
visuals, but it has a lulling effect. Some stronger, more emotionally resonant melodies
would have better sharpened viewers’ focus.
New Agey influencers might see an old manuscript and think they found the next
Celestine Prophecy. Yet, those who are a little older will be leery of
opening their minds and spirits, for fear of what might enter. You can
disregard old folk all you want, but, by definition, they are survivors. In
contrast, Anya is clearly out of her depth and in great peril right from the
start of Alex Henes & Matthew Merenda’s Mind Body Spirit, which
releases this Tuesday on VOD.
Having
inherited a creepy old house from the grandmother she never met, Anya moved in,
hoping she will finally have the space to find herself, or whatever junky New
Age term she might prefer. Anya aspires to be mindfulness-yoga influencer, but
she lacks the confidence to post her videos. Fortunately, she keeps her camera
rolling when she discovers the secret stairway to her grandmother’s creepy
storeroom of what look like witchcraft supplies (otherwise, we wouldn’t have a
movie to watch).
Her
old Siberian babushka also left Anya a journal, which includes a ritual the would-be
yoga guru assumes will recenter the spirit in the body. Of course, any horror
fan immediately suspects [currently] what this ritual is actually intended for.
Anya presumes her mother severed all connections with her grandmother, because
of some prejudice against her supposedly heightened spirituality, but we know
better—especially since we can sometimes see the old spectral crone skulking in
the background, unnoticed by Anya.
Probably
the best way to watch Mind Body Spirit would be with a mindfulness lifestyle
follower, who has no idea what is coming. Henes and Merenda create a good deal
of tension and the details surrounding the Baba Yagi-like grandma are
definitely creepy. The Russian cultural context greatly distinguishes Mind
Body Spirit from other similarly occult films. However, Henes and Merenda often
break the rules of the found footage subgenre, frequently having the camera move
seemingly of its own accord, even into different rooms. It is not Grandma
moving the camera either. I don’t want to be the found footage cop, but if you
are going to do something, do it the right way.
Indeed,
it is clear Henes and Merenda are trying to replicate the online viewing experience,
because they periodically replicate the “buffering” effect and interrupt the
action with three satirical commercials—two of which featuring “Kenzi Fit,” Anya’s
vastly more successful frienemy influencer.
Frankly,
those phony commercials are so perfectly on-the-money believable, they will
probably anger a lot of turmeric-tea drinking New Age posers. There is a lot of
sly commentary shoehorned into an impressively staged horror movie. Despite
massively “cheating” in the execution of their found footage concept, the co-directors
cleverly stage-managed the claustrophobic location, adroitly ushering the
limited cast into and out of the camera’s field of vision, during several nifty
tracking shots.
Never refer to a bandoneon as an accordion. You’d be barred from entering
Argentina. The smaller bellows instrument makes every melody sound beautiful
and sad. Unfortunately, nothing is sadder than a depression, which had been the
reality of the Argentinean economy for three years and counting in late 2001. Julio
Farber has had enough, so he is immigrating to Germany with his mother and
daughter. However, he has yet to break the bad news to his tango band. Despite
the chaos of the Argentinazo riots, saying goodbye is hard to do in German Kral’s
Adios Buenos Aires, which is now playing in New York.
Farber
and his bandmates love the music, but they live off their day jobs. Their last
gig only earned them a dozen empanadas, but since this is Argentina, at least
they were probably delicious empanadas. After their latest vocalist quits, they
try to recruit the legendary but long-retired Ricardo Tortorella as his
replacement. He turns them down unequivocally when they visit his nursing home,
but then arrives right on time for their first rehearsal.
Farber
is hoping to liquid his assets quickly, including the car a rookie cab driver soon
runs off the road, into an embankment. Of course, when Farber tracks down
Mariela Martinez through her company, she admits she is uninsured. However, he
allows her to pay for the damages in installments, once he recognizes how hard
she works for her young deaf son. In the meantime, Martinez agrees to chauffeur
Farber and his bandmates to all their gigs, so she soon gets to know them all
quite well.
Indeed,
meeting the band’s prickly personalities is one of the film’s greatest
pleasures. The piano player, Carlos Acosta, is obsessed with numbers in a way
that often gives rise to compulsive gambling. Tito Godoy is the bass player and
neighborhood mechanic, who has cannibalized more parts from Farber’s wrecked
car than he has fixed. Atilio Fernandez is a retired history professor, whose
leftist sensibilities are inflamed by the economic crisis, even though it was
the Peronistas and their ilk that got the country in its current mess.
Kral
has a keen affinity for tango, having previously helmed the documentary, Our Last Tango. However, the film also vividly recreates the anarchy and
anxiety of the Argentinazo era. Savvy viewers will be expecting the government’s
notoriously draconian limits on bank withdrawals, so every time Farber deposits
the proceeds from the sale of his assets, the pit in their stomachs will
tighten. Watching the mayhem that plays out in the banks and on the streets
helps explain why Argentina just elected Javier Milei, arguably the most
libertarian head of state ever. Considering what the Peronistas and their
various splinter parties have wrought, who wouldn’t want to try something
completely different?
Yet,
Kral quite deftly balances the real-life political and economic disorder with
the music and the bittersweet romantic comedy. The mutual attraction that blossoms
between Martinez and Farber is never driven by cute contrivances. More than
anything, their shared experiences as single parents lead to sympathy and
understanding.
Every
significant role is perfectly cast, starting with the romantic leads, Diego
Cremonesi and Marina Bellati, who develop a sweetly shy and believably awkward
chemistry together. Mario Alarcon plays the great Tortorella with elegant
dignity and poignant sadness. Carlos Portaluppi, Rafael Spregelburd, and Manuel
Vicente are colorfully crusty as Farber’s bandmates. They get a lot of laughs
kvetching, but there is a good deal of wisdom in their banter. They also look
convincing holding their instruments. That is especially true for Cremonesi wiedling the bandoneon.
It is really just glorified solitaire, but we like to pretend it means
something. Evidently, tarot fortune telling is related to zodiac astrology—a fact
that should diminish rather bolster its credibility. When asked, my college
astronomy professor used to start his answers with: “if you know anything about
astrology, and I really hope you don’t…” Maybe he was more right than he
realized. Since this is a horror movie, there really is something to tarot,
something terribly sinister. As you might, a late-night session with the cards
has fatal consequences in co-director-screenwriters Spenser Cohen & Anna
Halberg’s Tarot, which opens today nationwide.
Like
most college students, Haley and her friends are drinking like fish during
their final Airbnb getaway before finals. It is a little awkward since she just
dumped Grant, whom everyone assumed she would marry. While hoping to find a
hidden liquor cabinet, they stumble across a cache of astrologic artefacts.
Seeing an ominous hand-painted deck of tarot cards, they push and prod Haley,
an amateur tarot reader, into telling their fortunes. She is reluctant, because
readers are only supposed to use their own deck, but hey, what could possibly go
wrong?
Obviously,
those ratty, macabre cards are very different. For one thing, they actually work,
predicting her friends’ futures in lethally ironic ways. At first, the deaths resemble
those in Final Destination, before we see it is really the demonic figures
from the tarot cards that are stalking them. The internet leads Haley to dodgy
astrologist Alma Astryn, who is indeed familiar with the nasty tarot deck. She
barely survived her first encounter with it, because she never read her own
fortune, unlike Haley. Astryn has been
chasing those cards ever since.
Tarot
is
not a classic horror movie by any stretch, but it is energetically executed. In
many ways, it feels like a throwback to the late 1990s-early 2000s post-Scream
era of films, very much in the tradition of Final Destination. Think
of all those movies with four hot teens and their goofball friend posing like
models on the poster. In this case, Jacob Batalon plays schlubby Paxton, who is
a lot like Reginald the Vampire.
Batalon
does his usual schtick, but Harriet Slater and Adain Bradley are surprisingly charismatic
elevating the under-written characters of Haley and Grant. Plus, Olwen Fouere,
who is quickly becoming the new Lin Shaye, brings reliable weirdness as Astryn.
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Many movies depict CIA officers as the bad guys, but in the real world,
several CIA station chiefs have been assassinated while serving their country.
Tragically, Farrah Malloy will be the next to die in the line of duty. However,
her widowed husband is also a CIA officer, with the know-how to find her killers and extract
retribution in Jesse V. Johnson’s Chief of Station, which releases
tomorrow in theaters and on-demand.
Ben
Malloy just ran circles around the FSB (the former KGB) intercepting a courier drop on the
streets of Budapest, where his wife is Chief of Station. Then he met her for
their anniversary, but it was interrupted by an explosion. Supposedly, it was a
gas leak, but Malloy soon suspects otherwise. Since the agency’s general
inspector clearly has it in for him, Malloy only trusts Dez, his wife’s former
colleague in the cyber division, with his findings.
Technically,
he also trusts Nick, who will also soon start working in agency IT, but Malloy
does not want him involved. Of course, the mysterious terrorists will
inevitably target the son to get to the father.
Much
like Aaron Eckhart’s last CIA movie, The Bricklayer, Chief of Station
starts with a promising premise, but quickly reverts to standard issue payback
VOD action. In this case, Chief is worse, because it chickens out quite
cowardly, by making the FSB “friendly” rivals rather than the true bad guys.
Just ask Ukraine how the FSB really conducts their business. This is not the
mid-1990s. Audiences are craving Russian and CCP Chinese villains, because they
want to finally see payback for their oppressive crimes. Instead, the producers
apparently cared more about sales in some of most despotic territories on
earth.
It
is a shame, because Eckhart has the perfect cerebral grittiness for a
vengeance-seeking CIA officer like Malloy. Olga Kurylenko has instant action
credibility Krystyna Kowerski, an agent Malloy’s wife used to handle. However,
screenwriter George Mahaffey literally drops her into the film from out of
nowhere, after a full hour of Malloy lone-wolfing, just in time to save his
butt.
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, was quite familiar with John Carradine’s work. She
featured several of his less prestigious “films” on Movie Macabre (to be
fair, The Monster Club isn’t so bad). Fortunately, he probably never
noticed or cared, whereas Elvira never embarrassed easily. Whether there was
tension or not, they both guest-starred on “October the 31st,” one
of two Halloween episodes of The Fall Guy, which mostly likely will not
be covered in the new movie reboot—but it screens through May 5th at the Paley Center.
In
the “31st,” Seavers and his proteges, Jody Banks and Howie Munson,
are working on a horror movie so schlocky, it even mortifies its star, Elvira. However,
she sees a silver lining in the manly slab of masculinity that is Colt Seavers.
Throughout the episode, she makes it clear she has one thing in mind, with
dialogue so suggestive, it is almost single entendre.
The
production contracted to shoot on-location in the spooky Deauville mansion,
because the old couple desperately needs the money. Nevertheless, grumpy old
Preston Deauville remains adamantly opposed to their presence, because he worries
someone might discover his secret. His opinion does not change, even after his
untimely death. In fact, Munson and Banks worry Deauville is haunting the production
from beyond the grave.
The
”31st” holds the distinction for featuring the only on-camera
appearance of the entire Carradine acting family together in one scene, when the
three Carradine brothers play servants old man Deauville reluctantly lays-off. The
senior Carradine is just as regally hammy as fans would hope playing Deauville.
However,
the Elvira and Colt show is what drives this episode. Frankly, it is surprisingly
they got away with all the wink-wink naughtiness in early 1980s primetime. Of
course, Cassandra Peterson was delighted. Reportedly, she was frustrated when producers
forced her to tone her Elvira persona when she previously guested on network
series. In contrast, creator Glen A. Larson and episode writer Samm Egan let
Elvira be Elvira. That led to Egan getting the gig writing Elvira: Mistress
of the Dark, the 1988 feature, and Elvira returning to The Fall Guy the
next year, in “October the 32nd.”
In Wolf Hall, Thomas Cromwell is the protagonist, but he is the bad guy in A
Man for All Seasons. Which is more accurate? Matthew Shardlake would admit
it is rather complicated, if you asked him privately. Of course, he would publicly
proclaim the righteousness of Henry VIII’s powerful strategist, since the
lawyer often serves as Cromwell’s unofficial investigator. Ostensibly, his
latest assignment is a murder investigation in a not so reformist monastery,
but his real job will be convincing the abbot to relinquish St. Donatus’s
property to the Crown. Yet, the lawyer’s stubborn desire for genuine justice
leads to danger in the four-part Shardlake, which premieres today on
Hulu.
Shardlake
is constantly underestimated, due to his spinal curvature, but Cromwell’s cocky
lieutenant, Jack Barak, slowly learns better while accompanying the lawyer to
St. Donatus. Somewhat awkwardly, Shardlake must sleuth out the killer of his
predecessor, who was auditing the monastery on Cromwell’s behalf. His head was
cleanly decapitated, but the murder weapon is missing.
Naturally,
Shardlake and Barak get a frosty reception from Abbot Fabian and his Brothers
because they fully understand their true purpose at the monastery. Relations
grow even more testy when Shardlake openly rebukes the monks for cruelly
bullying Simon Whelplay, a scrawny novice. Understandably, Shardlake identifies
with the malnourished monk in training, so the subsequent murder of Whelplay further
stokes his outrage.
Shardlake
is
not at the level of The Name of the Rose, even though it clearly aspires
to be. However, it is several cuts above the average episode of Cadfael.
Series director Justin Chadwick skillfully mines the gothic setting for
atmospheric chills. Stephen Butchard’s adaptation of C.J. Sansom’s novel retains
all juicy English Reformational politics, including the execution of Anne
Boleyn, which plays a pivotal role in the mystery.
To
the producers’ credit, they walked the walk, as well as talked the talk, by
casting Arthur Hughes (a thesp with radial dysplasia) as Shardlake. Beyond
issues of authenticity, Hughes eloquently expresses the lawyer’s passion for
justice and contempt for hypocrisy.
Frankly,
Anthony Boyle (in his third major series this quarter, following Manhunt and
Masters of the Air) looks and sounds rather miscast as the supposedly
swaggering Barak. However, Sean Bean is suitably gruff and imperious as Cromwell.
Yes, he lives past the first episode, but he disappears for most of series,
while the drama centers on St. Donatus.
Whenever you attend any of the major comic-cons, there is one complaint you hear
repeatedly: not enough graphic novels with extensive endnotes. At least, they
ought to be asking for that, because it would imply smarter graphic novels. In
this case, the “novel” part of graphic novel might be debatable, but the
intelligence is evident on every page. George Mason University economist Bryan
Caplan makes the happy-warrior case for housing deregulation in Build, Baby,
Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation, illustrated by Ady
Branzei and published by the Cato Institute, which goes on-sale today.
Caplan
patiently explains to readers why housing regulation, including rent control
and zoning laws make housing less affordable and harder to find for average
people. Of course, it is a simple matter of supply and demand, but do not take
his word for it. He quotes leftwing economist Paul Krugman at length dismissing
the folly of rent control. Perhaps Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck said it
best: “Next to bombing, rent control seems in many cases to be the most
efficient technique so far known for destroying cities.” Yet, rent control is
an article of faith amongst New York politicians.
Those
who have an open mind will learn a lot from Caplan. For instance, he makes a
convincing case for the environmental greenness of housing deregulation,
because new housing stock emits far less carbon than moldy older units. Likewise,
housing deregulation can narrow income inequality and promote social mobility. According
to studies Caplan cites, low-income workers are actually moving from states
where wages are high to states where they are low, because any advantages in
greater take-home pay would be more than offset by correspondingly higher
rents. That is a significant finding.
How
can you not love a graphic novel, or whatever, that features Frederic Bastiat
in a supporting role? Yet, Caplan makes compelling philosophical arguments for
housing deregulation from Utilitarian, Egalitarian, Libertarian, and managerial
cost-benefit perspectives. Caplan tries woo the left to his cause, which is
admirable, but probably futile in the polarized era of the “Squad.”
However,
if you really care about the housing issue, Caplan gives you a lot of substance
to engage with. A dozen or so economists, statisticians, and social science
researchers make guest appearances in BBB to “discuss” their work with
Caplan. Those who are still skeptical of their findings can consult the data in
the endnotes. Follow the science, right? That takes you straight to deregulation.
It
might sound dry, but BBB is a surprisingly snappy read. Caplan’s goofy
Dad-ish sense of humor helps makes the topic accessible. Yet, it is the
fascinating economic history and political philosophy that he incorporates that
really keeps the pages turning.
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Science fiction once reflected society’s concerns, but lately, it more often
tries to shape and alter society’s worries instead. Horror has become a better
barometer of our true collective anxieties. AI is a prime example. Horror depicts
the potential deadly menace of AI in movies like M3gan. In contrast, sf
tells us human beings are the bad guys, so AI constructs have more to fear from
us than we do from them, in films like The Creator, Automata, The Artifice Girl, Ex Machina, and Chappie, many of which bombed at the box
office. Can human and artificial consciousnesses just get along? The answer is
complicated, but it boils down to probably not in Jeremie Perin’s GKIDS-released
animated feature Mars Express, which opens this Friday in New York.
In
the future, anybody who is anyone lives on Mars rather than the crummy old
Earth. Artificial intelligence has achieved self-aware consciousness, but they
are still bound prime directive programming—unless a cybernetic hacker “jailbreaks”
them. Most of private investigator Aline Ruby’s work involves catching such
criminals, at the behest robotics tycoon Chris Royjacker, with the help her
partner, Carlos Rivera. Sadly, Rivera was killed several years ago, but they
still work together, because he had the foresight to back-up his consciousness.
Ruby fully accepts the back-up Rivera cyborg, but Rivera’s former family did
not.
Recently,
a rash of jailbreaks have led to violent robotic crime sprees. There seems to
be a systemic effort to corrupt artificial intelligences. Ruby and Rivera
quickly suspect it might be related to their latest case: the disappearance of
a cybernetic programming student.
Mars
Express is
a cool-looking attempt to create a Ghost in the Shell-style world, with
its own distinctive sociological take on human-AI interaction, inspired by
Asimov’s laws of robotics. Perin and co-screenwriter Laurant Sarfati also
shrewdly import elements of the noir detective genre. However, they inevitably return
to same anti-human themes, inviting viewers to literally root against their own
species.
Ironically,
Mars Express is an animated film with deeply human characters. Ruby is a
recovering alcoholic, who falters due to the stress of the case. Back-up Rivera
yearns to reconnect with Rivera-prime’s family, but he cannot undue his former
self’s mistakes or his ex-wife’s revulsion to his current physical form. (To be
fair, the way his head hovers above his should, sans neck, is a bit
disconcerting).
Sure, it was meant for kids, but Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark still
holds up when you rewatch it as an adult. Or does it? That is the question Owen
asks regarding the fictional teen horror series, The Pink Opaque. He has
reason to wonder whether it was truly fictional or maybe really real in
director-screenwriter Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow, which opens
this Friday in theaters.
Owen’s
teen years were already depressing, even before his mother’s early death. After
she succumbed to cancer, there was nobody left to intercede with his
controlling and over-protective stepfather. He was fascinated by the idea of The
Pink Opaque, but forbidden to watch it, because it aired after his bedtime.
Maddy,
a rebellious upperclassman, is a devoted fan, so she takes pity on Owen. After
one special night watching the show together on live TV, she leaves him VHS
recordings of the rest of the episodes as they air. Eventually, The Pink Opaque
is cancelled and Maddy runs away from home, leaving Owen to lead his lonely
life of quiet desperation. Then one day, adult Owen comes face-to-face with Maddy,
who will test his faith and his conception of reality.
By
far, the coolest sequences in I Saw the TV are those of the
show-within-the-show, The Pink Opaque. It tells the story of Isabel and
Tera, two friends who only met once at summer camp, but continue to fight the
series’ evil villain, Mr. Melancholy, through their shared psychic link. Weirdly,
the audience will start to care more about Tera and Isabel than Owen and Maddy.
Perhaps that was ironically intentional, but it creates an awkward dramatic
imbalance.
The
concept of The Pink Opaque and the potentially sinister role it might
play in Owen and Maddy’s lives is deliciously intriguing, especially for fans
of cult TV. Unfortunately, Schoenbrun is so determined not to make a
conventional horror movie, The Pink Opaque’s potential for mind-bending scares
is largely left to wither on the vine. Aesthetically and thematically, I Saw
the TV is too much like Schoenbrun’s previous feature, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. Essentially, both are hazy-looking meditations on
social alienation masquerading as horror films.
Many American serial killer movies predictably depict the serial killer as a
Jesus-freak. In this German thriller, the serial murderer was warped by Norse mythology.
It is a case that involves two seemingly contradictory yet intertwined toxic
belief systems: one is old and pagan, while the other is the recently
discredited Communism of the bad but not so old GDR. Two cops, one from the
East and one from the West, investigate the pre- and post-Unification killings
in the six-episode The Roots of Evil, directed by Stephan Rick, which
premieres Tuesday on MHz Choice.
The
Cold War was not kind to Ulrike Bandow, because of her mother’s unsuccessful escape
attempt to the West. She and her younger brother Marc largely survived thanks
to her father, an honest cop, who was killed under mysterious circumstances.
That left her to largely raise Marc on her own, when their mother’s second
attempt succeeded.
Not
surprisingly, she followed in her father’s footsteps, serving under his old
partner, Jurgen Dubbe. She prefers to do her own lone wolf thing, but she must
accept a new partner from Hamburg, Koray Larssen. Maybe she should be more
suspicious regarding his willingness to work in the provincial former GDR, but
she has issues distracting her. Marc has fallen in with band nativist thugs, to
ingratiate himself with the stepfather of his new girlfriend, Sabrina. To make
things even more awkward, Sabrina’s mother, Chista Schreiber, is Bandow’s
estranged childhood friend.
When
a ritualistic murder victim is discovered, Bandow is alarmed by the resemblance
of her wounds to some marks found on Schreiber decades earlier. At the time,
she claimed to be abused by a mysterious group of men somehow related to her
state orphanage. Bandow’s father and Dubbe discredited her story. Not surprisingly,
Bandow’s friendship was collateral damage. However, the disappearance of a
second girl quickly convinces Bandow and Larssen they have a serial killer on
their hands, one possibly related to Schreiber’s orphanage.
At
least Ingrid Heisler, the weird girl from the prologue, probably will not be
his next victim, even though she found the first victim. Her family’s rustic
lifestyle and her knowledge of runes and “the old way” apparently creates a
feeling of kinship for her heavy-breathing observer. Being weird probably does
not hurt either.
Many
of the themes and plot elements of Roots of Evil are very much like
those previously developed in Divided We Stand. Both series focus an odd
couple pair of cops from West and East Germany, investigating a crime that
dates back to the recently fallen Communist regime. However, Roots has a
darker tone that sometimes borders on serial killer horror. It is also less preoccupied
with the politics of post-Unification and culture clashes between East and West—it
is still there, but it is not as fully explored. The killer’s sinister paganism
is the series’ driving engine.
Regardless,
Henriette Confurius and Fahri Yardim are both quite good as Bandow and Larssen.
They are rock-solid handling the procedural business, but as Brother Marc,
Filip Schnack’s teen angst is abrasively annoying. Cloe Heinrich is excellent
as peculiar Ingrid, but Rick just cannot find the handle for her scene stalking
or being stalked by the killer. Instead of building terror, these sequences are
confusing and uncomfortable, in a “what am I watching?” kind of way. That is
somewhat surprising, because Rick rather deftly helmed the not-classic, but
still impressively overachieving Val Kilmer B-movie, The Super.
If the future brings global starvation, we can blame Greenpeace. They
successfully blocked the harvest of so-called “golden rice” in the Philippines.
Genetically developed to solve the Vitamin-A deficiency in rice-based diets, the
new strain could have saved millions of lives. All reputable scientific studies
have established the safety of genetically-modified foods, but Greenpeace
fear-mongered against it anyway. The world could use some golden rice in this
dystopian film. Food is in such short supply, every nation has agreed to a “voluntary”
euthanasia quota. Reportedly, America is lagging behind its death commitment, so
it gets awkward when a “volunteer” tries to back out. In fact, an incredibly
dysfunctional family finds they owe body to the government collection squad in
Caitlin Cronenberg’s Humane, which is now playing in theaters.
Food
is short and the ozone is shot, so the world government logically decides to kill
off a good chunk of their populations. At least they are providing incentives
for those who “enlist.” The media naturally bemoans the economic disparity in
enlistment rates. However, Jared York and his second wife Mia are the
exceptions. As a former war correspondent and a former celebrity chef, they are
an unusually prominent couple to enlist. He just wanted to have a final dinner
with his ingrate grown children before the Department of Citizen Strategy (D.O.C.S.)’s
lethal injection team arrives.
The
news comes as a shock to Rachel, the disgraced pharmaceutical exec, Ashley, the
struggling actress, Jared, the enlistment-encouraging media commentator, and Noah,
the adopted recovering addict. It turns out maybe their step-mother Mia wasn’t
quite so convinced, because she suddenly bolts right before DOCS arrive.
Unfortunately, the sociopathic Bob makes it clear his team must collect two
bodies, so it is up to the York children to decide who the second “enlistee”
will be.
Basically,
Humane turns into Ready or Not, when Noah finds himself hunted by
his siblings. The premise is questionable and the rapidity of their descent
into savagery is jarringly precipitous, but at least Cronenberg wastes little time
getting down to genre business. However, the most memorable characters are the
villains. Jay Baruchel is spectacularly sleazy as the opportunistically hypocritical
Jared and Enrico Colantoni is flamboyantly sinister as Bob.
Netflix's new live-action CITY HUNTER movie understands the kind of comedic figjht scenes franchise fans want and delivers accordingly. It always keeps the randy mayhem snappy. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.
Sourdough Creek is a town without slow music. By and large, it is also a town
without pity. Mayor Jeb Carver is mostly to blame on both scores. Much to his
consternation, a traveling slide guitarist challenges Carvey’s authority in
director-animator-producer Bill Plympton’s Slide, which screens today
during the 2024 Santa Fe Film Festival.
He
is only known as “Slide,” because that is what he plays. Slide is the sort of
journeyman guitar slinger who illustrates the Americana-roots music fraternity
between the blues and old school country. It is the 1940s, but the former
lumber town of Sourdough Creek still looks and feels like the old frontier. However,
the modern world comes calling, when a Hollywood producer decides to shoot his
next epic on-location in and around Sourdough Creek.
Slide’s
arrival is much less heralded. His visit nearly ends prematurely, when Mayor Carver
threatens to shoot him for playing slow tempos in his sin-soaked saloon.
Fortunately, Carver’s twin brother Zeke intercedes, because he notices Slide’s
sad songs sell more booze. They need the money for the ridiculously grandiose casino
they are building, to cater to the Hollywood jet-set.
They
still don’t like Slide—and he recognizes them for what they are. As a result,
he befriends their sworn enemy, the human-sized insectoid avenger known as “Hell
Bug,” and one of their victims, Deliliah, a sensitive vocal stylist, forced to
work as a bargirl and, you know, other stuff.
Essentially,
Slide is a Western, but in a gothic Americana kind of way. There are
also a lot of weird fantastical elements that are perfectly suited to Plympton’s
style of animation. Frankly, he is probably one of the few animators whose work
is instantly recognizable. Slide is him through and through, which is
cool.
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It is always super-awkward running into an ex, but especially so during a
hostage crisis. Mason Goddard could simply release Amelia Decker if she were
one of the hostages, but since she is the FBI negotiator, he is stuck with her.
She almost busted him once, but she is the least of his problems in [just
plain] Ives’s Cash Out, which releases tomorrow in theaters and
on-demand.
Goddard
really digs Decker until she foils his plan to steal a collection of rare
sports cars. He escapes justice, but lands in a deep depression. As a result,
he is not paying sufficient attention to the hair-brained caper his idiot
little brother Shawn cooks up for the gang until it is too late. He tries to
abort, but things just spin out of control too quickly.
Supposedly,
they are looking for a crypto-wallet in a certain safety-deposit box, but it
soon becomes clear they were set up. There is still a fateful box, but it is
very different from what they were led to believe. The owner also happens to be
the kind of shady billionaire smart crooks avoid crossing. However, the payoff
could be huge.
The
bank job-hostage crisis business in Cash Out is surprisingly well done.
This is definitely another VOD thriller for John Travolta, but it could have
been one of his better ones. Frustratingly, the film loses massive credibility
points when the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) take control of
the response away from Decker, at the billionaire’s behest. Repeat after me:
the CIA has no domestic operating authority, so if they took over an FBI
operation, the Attorney General would be in the Oval Office raising H-E-double
hockey sticks. This is what happens when public schools stop teaching civics.
Nevertheless,
Travolta looks like he is having a good deal of fun playing Goddard. He also
has decent chemistry with Kristin Davis, as the reasonably competent and intuitive
Special Agent Decker. Frankly, it is rather nice to see a mainstream commercial
film featuring a romantic couple who are both over fifty.
Arguing with Islamist Iranian bureacrats can be an uncomfortably Kafkaesque experience, but the drama is profoundly compelling in TERRESTRIAL VERSES. EPOCH TIMES exclusive review up here.
No matter how powerful they might be, your political connections cannot
protect you from an enraged Mamma bear. An ambitious politician’s money-man
learns that the hard after killing Eun Soo-hyun’s son. He beat the wrap, but he
was no match for her car. However, there will be further consequences for
everyone in Wonderful World, which premieres today on Hulu.
Congressman
Kim Joon’s fundraiser hit Kang Gun-woo with his car, drove around with him
hidden in the backseat, and then tried to secretly dump his body while he was
still living. It was too late by the time Eun found him, but if he had been
taken directly to the hospital, he probably could have been saved. Kim puts in
the fix during the trial, but when he still refuses to apologize afterwards,
Eun dispenses some poetic justice.
Apparently,
Alvin Bragg is also the DA in Seoul, because a murderer like Kwon gets
released, whereas the victims are prosecuted to the fullest extent. Of course, the
bereft Eun hardly cares, at least initially. However, Jang Hyung-ja, an older
inmate, takes Eun under her wing and revives her spirit. She too is a
murderess, but her circumstances were much less extenuating. While committing a
crime of passion, Jang also accidentally killed Kwon Seon-yool’s parents, for
which she has always been deeply sorry. Knowing she will soon die from cancer,
the older inmate convinces the soon-to-be released Eun to find Kwon and convey
her contrition.
It
turns out Kwon is a rather shadowy figure in his own right. In addition to his black
bag jobs, Kwon has some game-changing secrets of his own. Yet, Eun starts to
develop a strange rapport with him, based on their shared experiences as the
victims of violent crime—unless someone is getting played.
Wonderful
World has
some of the elements of Gillian Flynn/Liane Moriarty thrillers, but they are often
subservient to the angst and melodrama that are stereotypically associated with
K-drama. Perhaps, it is worth noting the series’ enormous domestic popularity.
However, straight thriller fans will find each episode is conspicuously
padded-out with overwrought dramatic moments for Eun to shine. Each installment
could easily lose fifteen minutes, oftentimes more.
This
is indeed a showcase for Kim Nam-ju, who makes the most of Eun’s agony and
outrage. Given the circumstances, it is impossible to not sympathize with her,
even when she is dealing with her somewhat hypocritical jealousy over Kang
Su-ho, her husband, who refused to move on from her, even though she refused to
see him throughout her imprisonment. More to the point, Kim taps into some deep
and dark emotions, while still staying relatively grounded.
They hold a dancing contest in this small Java village that is a lot like the
1930’s dance-offs seen in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They. However, in this
case, the sooner dancers collapse, the safer they will be. The lucky “winner”
will be damned to dance with demons forever. Mila will be lured back to her mother’s
ancestral home, just in time to see the sinister ritual revived in Kimo
Stamboel’s Dancing Village: The Curse Begins, which opens this Friday in
theaters.
Rather
suddenly, Mila’s mother was stricken with a mysterious, debilitating illness. According
to a shaman, the affliction will lift if Mila returns the ancient bangle her
mother took from the so-called “Dancing Village.” This would be the same
village seen in the KKN films, the top-grossing Indonesian horror
franchise based on SimpleMan’s novel. Since this is a prequel, you don’t need
to worry about those earlier later films.
With
her cousin Yuda, his friend Arya, and their reluctant guide, they find the
village, but they do not receive much of a welcome. The village headman has inconveniently
passed away and their spiritual leader, Mbah Buyut is out of town. Almost
immediately, Mila starts having visions of Badarawuli, the demonic femme fatale.
Rather ominously. The mother of her host, Ratih, also exhibits similarly severe
mystery symptoms.
There
is some blood and guts, but Dancing Village depends more on mood and
atmosphere for its scares. This is folk horror and its folkiest. It is chillingly
effective in a slow-burn kind of way. In fact, Dancing Village is
probably Stamboel’s most suggestive and quietly eerie film to date, either as a
solo director or working with Timo Tjahjanto as the Mo Brothers. Admittedly, some
of the dancing damnation scenes are almost campy, but in a way that is still
deeply creepy.
Once again, everything that is about to go wrong is the fault of Gen Z’ers,
but readers are supposed to identify with them anyway. They are the ones who
get lost in an in-between dimension and they are the ones that lure a cosmic
kaiju back to our world in Kelly Thompson’s graphic novel, The Cull, vol.,
which releases today.
Cleo
still blames herself for her little brother Jake’s disappearance and presumed
death, so her four best friends humor her, agreeing to meet at Black Water
Beach, supposedly to film one of her final “short films” before they graduate. As
they follow her into a cave in one of the massive geologic formations, they
discover a portal into what they deduce is a kind of “liminal” space between
dimensions.
Of
course, Cleo insists on venturing inside, hoping to find Jake there. Instead,
they encounter a hive mind ecosystem that welcomes Cleo’s friends and rewards
them with super-powers reflective of their personalities. However, the hive
mind recognizes Cleo’s emotional damage and thereby deems her a danger to the
ecosystem that it must eradicate.
Her
friends take exception, protecting Cleo from the collective environment.
Unfortunately, when they flee back through the portal they find a kaiju-like
monster terrorizing their world. They also discover time passed much slower in
the liminal dimension, so they fear their families probably assume they are long
dead.
Although
the cosmic portal travel is somewhat different, The Cull feels very much
like Paper Girls, but with less distinctive characters. Aside from Cleo,
everyone in the first five collected issues sound and act like cardboard
cutouts from any generic YA novel. Yet, it is the dialogue, riddled with
recovery and empowerment cliches, that really grows annoying.