Joan, on CW

The 1980s were an era of upward social mobility, flashy style, and conspicuous consumption. Joan Hannington wanted her piece of the pie, even if she had to steal it—especially if she could steal it. However, previous bad decisions, like her first marriage, keep blocking her attempts to get ahead in creator Anna Symon’s six-episode Joan, which premieres Wednesday on CW.

Joan is a loving mother, but little Kelly’s often-absent father is a lowlife, whose underworld debts endanger them both. Believing she needs money to create the safe, stable family environment her daughter deserves, Joan embarks on a series of desperate crimes. She has mixed success as a lone wolf, but she starts playing in more advanced leagues when she meets dodgy antiques dealer (apparently, that is the only kind you can find in London), Boisie Hannington. He has some big ideas, but they require patience and discipline, both of which Joan has in short supply.

Despite their bickering, Joan falls hard for Boisie and vice versa. She also enjoys the posh clothes and luxurious hotels that his schemes require. Of course, Boisie’s overseas accomplice Albie predicts Joan’s prima donna attitude will lead to trouble, but like everyone else in this series, he cannot walk away from a potentially lucrative score.

As you might be sensing, Joan has a real identity crisis. Symon cannot decide whether she is making a British version of Ocean’s 8 or an EastEnders spin-off. Just when it starts to get into a tantalizing larcenous endeavor, Hannington rushes off for another depressing meeting with social services or her grim family. To further complicate the audience’s response, we watch the future Mrs. Hannington break so many laws and make so many foolishly impulsive decisions, it is hard to root for her during the downbeat scenes of domestic drama.

Frankly, many questionable calls were made throughout the series, including the make-up for lead thesp Sophie Turner (the Dark Phoenix), which is so ghostly pale, you might half-expect the twist-ending from The Sixth Sense. It is a shame, because Turner is quite good expressing all of the title character’s emotional highs and lows. She makes Joan quite a roller coaster.

The Universal Theory

Thanks to Oppenheimer, viewers are getting used to the idea of physicists as movie heroes. Indeed, as the grandson of a Marine slated for the Japanese mainland amphibious landing, I’m probably alive today thanks to his Manhattan Project. Unfortunately, Johannes Leneirt probably lacks Oppenheimer’s brilliance and virtues. Yet, through dumb luck, he might stumble onto the secret of time-travel, the multiverse, and everything in Timm Kroger’s The Universal Theory, which is now playing in New York.

Leinert’s thesis advisor, Dr. Strathan, thinks little of him, but reluctantly drags him along to a post-war conference in the Swiss Alps. Frankly, for Strathan and his not-so-friendly rival, Prof. Blumberg, WWII maybe still lingers. Indeed, as proteges of Heisenberg, their activities under the National Socialists remain intentionally vague.

Evidently, immigration troubles delay the arrival of the keynote speaker from Iran, so Leinert has plenty of time to kill as they wait. He would like to spend it with Karin Honig, the hotel’s resident jazz vocalist-pianist. Weirdly, when he next approaches her after their memorable first meeting, she acts like a total stranger. Nevertheless, she eventually agrees to a series of assignations, until she suddenly disappears. As Leinert searches for Honig, he hears strange rumors regarding the effects of plutonium on the mountain overshadowing the resort.

Or something like that. Stylistically, Universal Theory is definitely Guy Maddinesque, but if anything, Kroger’s takes an even more abstract approach to narrative. Admittedly, Kroger and co-screenwriter Roderick Warich try to do something very cool and provocative, but it is not sufficiently grounded to connect beyond an intellectual level. The clever wrap-around segments (featuring an older, embittered Leinert appearing on a 1970s talk show, promoting his tell-all memoir, which his publisher insisted on selling as science fiction) offer some ironic humor, but the guts of it all are just too vague, too coyly open-ended, and too resistant to interpretation. Ultimately, the pieces do not quite fit together and the equation never balances.

Frankly, Olivier Asselin’s Le Cyclotron and Gyorgy Palfi’s His Master’s Voice share similar themes and aesthetics, but those under-appreciated films were much better executed. Universal Theory looks amazing, but there is less substance than Kroger’s portentous style suggests. As they might say in the Alps, it is all lederhosen and no Alpine ibex. In terms of storytelling, it is more closely akin to Tav Falco’s Urania Descending or F.J. Ossang’s 9 Fingers, which proudly proclaimed their avant-garde nature. If none of these films mean anything to you, you’re hardly alone, but take it as sign Universal Theory maybe won’t be your cup of tea.

Trueba’s Haunted Heart

Among reed players, clarinetists are considered somewhat nebbish, like Benny Goodman and Pee Wee Russell. Maybe that is why Max keeps his former musician identity a secret. However, his new hostess, Alex, develops an interest in him, which blossoms into a curiosity regarding his past. He obviously does not want to tell, so she probably should not ask, but she does anyway in Fernando Trueba’s Haunted Heart, which just released in theaters and on VOD.

When Alex shows up a week late for work at Max’s seasonal Greek isle destination restaurant, she must settle for a server position. Yet, despite her Millennial meltdown and his Gen X contempt, they still share a mutual attraction. She constantly milks his veteran wait-staff for intel, but all they know is that Max keeps himself to himself.

As the summer passes into the less busy fall, Alex moves into the hostess position she originally applied for, and into Max’s island home. However, as she pokes around, she finds strange clues to his murky history, including a 45 recorded by Paul Frye. Chico, her torch-carrying admirer, is happy track down the mysterious musician, who looks exactly like Max on his obscure LP.

Haunted Heart will deeply annoy jazz fans, in much the same way as Spielberg’s The Terminal, in that jazz plays a significant role in the film, but only holds a minor, almost incidental place in the soundtrack. We do hear “Christine Noir” & “Old Haunts,” two Frye recordings composed by Michael Philip Mossman, featuring Ken Peplowski on clarinet, with a rhythm section of David Berkman, David Wang, and Aaron Kimmel. Both tunes sound great from what we get to hear, which isn’t very much.

The rest of soundtrack consists of orchestral themes composed by Zbigniew Preisner (Kieslowski’s Thee Colors), which sound decidedly symphonic, but features brief saxophone solos (or obligatos) from Jerzy Glowczewski. Indeed, it is surprising (and disappointing), Trueba would allow the watering down of the jazz, considering he helmed the terrific jazz-focused films They Shot the Piano Player, Chico & Rita, and Calle 54.

Arguably, Trueba was consistently out of synch and off the beat throughout Haunted Heart. The slow build-up lasts about ninety non-thrillerish minutes. Only the last thirty minutes or so really give suspenseful vibes, but the mood is still undermined by forced contrivances. Frankly, it is hard to believe the way events nose-dive, when a little bit of communication might have avoided so much trouble.

Uzumaki, in Cinema Daily US

The artistry of Adult Swim's anime adaptation of Junji Ito's manga is hypnotic and the way it depicts the sinister force plaguing a Japanese village is deeply unsettling. Surpassing the previous film adaptation, UZUMAKI could leave viewers uneasy around spiral patterns for years to come. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

Sleep, Starring the Late Lee Sun-Kyun

Somnologists (sleep doctors) probably take issue with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but the silent German Expressionist classic launched a tradition of some pretty cool sleep-walking horror movies. With a baby on the way, Jung Soo-jin and her husband Hyun-soo could use all the rest they can get. Unfortunately, his sleepwalking grows so disruptive, he reluctantly agrees to consult a somnologist. Yet, she soon suspects something more supernatural in Jason Yu’s Sleep, which releases today in theaters and on VOD.

It starts with some cryptic words spoken in Hyun-soo’s sleep: “someone’s inside.” Then he wakes up bleeding from a bout of compulsive facial scratching. Before long, Soo-jin finds him sleepwalking through the apartment, often in ways that risk considerable harm to himself or others.

Suddenly, she realizes their annoying down-stairs neighbor’s noise complaints might be valid and relevant. She also stops dismissing her mother’s talk of sigils and shamans. In fact, Soo-jin starts researching supernatural causes in earnest. Not surprisingly, the combined pressure of recent motherhood and her deep dive into the occult takes its toll. Nevertheless, she remains committed to Hyun-soo.

In fact, Sleep is a rarity among horror films, which genuinely respects the for-better-or-for-worse vows. Indeed, the film is largely all about how two main characters act accordingly, under extreme conditions. As Soo-jin and Hyun-soo, Jung Yu-min and Lee Sun-kyun truly act like a couple who share considerable history together, as well as the in-jokes and shorthand references that come with it. The poignancy of their chemistry further elevates with the realization Sleep represents one of the final films of the late Lee, whom many friends and colleagues believe was recklessly hounded to his death by the police and the tabloid press.

Planet of the Apes: The Trap

For the third episode of Planet of the Apes, the design team had to create a rubble-strewn post-apocalyptic San Francisco city block. Today, they could just film on-location in the Bay City—if they dared. Of course, Virdon hopes to find something, anything computer related, while Urko hopes to find (and kill) the astronauts in “The Trap,” which first aired fifty years ago today.

While taking shelter in a village notorious for offering fugitives sanctuary, Virdon notices some of the children playing with circuitry or whatever. Of course, he hopes to follow the wiring to a super-computer, but Burke wants to hit the road. That leaves Galen to break the tie. Being a naturally curious and adventurous chimpanzee, he sagely observes: “an unanswered question is a very difficult thing to live with.”

That is a good line and in general, this is a well written episode (by Edward J. Lakso).  Initially, Urko has the jump on the three inter-species fugitives, but an after shock causes a cave-in, trapping Burke and Urko inside a subway station. The apes and humans above and below must work together to rescue them before their air expires, but the gorillas frequently violate the truces they agree to.

The previous two episodes were hard on humans. However, “The Trap” shows apes behaving in ways they like to ascribe to humans. We start to get the idea human nature, in all its ugly manifestations, has nothing to do with the relative hair on your body. Rather, it is all about how those on the top of the food chain conduct themselves.

Frankly, the abandoned San Francisco does not look very much like San Francisco. The fight choreography, especially the astronauts’ dubious flying kicks, have not aged well either. However, this episode explores the fundamental themes of the franchise as well as any of the films.

Lee: The WWII Photojournalist History Forgot

Lee Miller practiced journalism at a time when reporters drank like fish, told the truth, and didn’t care about anyone’s feelings, especially their own. Frankly, for Miller, those things were all basically intertwined. She lived hard, but documented even harder truths, most notably the crimes against humanity committed during the Holocaust. Yet, she died in relative obscurity. Fittingly, Miller’s career is chronicled, warts and all, in Ellen Kuras’s Lee, which opens tomorrow in theaters.

In the early thirties, Miller was a former model-turned fashion photographer, greatly enjoying the Bohemian lifestyle Europe offered. However, most of her smart-set friends were still deeply concerned regarding the rise of Hitler. That was especially true of Roland Penrose, a gallerist and poet, who much more serious about life than her other friends, especially when it came to her.

Settling down in London with Penrose, Miller pitched her current events and slice-of-life photojournalism to British Vogue, where she was championed by Audrey Withers, partly because she recognized Miller’s talent and partly because she annoyed the insufferable Cecil Beaton.

Soon, Miller publishes legit coverage of the war’s homefront impact to high acclaim. Yet, getting to the war itself proves tricky, because of 1940s attitudes. Nevertheless, when she finally reaches France she finds her greatest ally in a male rival, David Scherman of Life magazine, with whom she developed a healthy collaborative relationship and a somewhat odd but scrupulously platonic friendship.

Together they covered the liberation of Paris and documented evidence of the mass murders committed at Buchenwald and Dachau. Obviously, these scenes are horrific, but Miller had other reasons for her depression and emotional detachment, as will be revealed in the wrap-around interview segments (which are conspicuously stilted).

Regardless, reviewing Miller’s career should be a “teachable moment” for contemporary “journalists.” One can only wonder how the acerbic Miller would react to American Vogue’s infamous puff-piece profile of Syrian First Lady Asma al-Assad, which described the First couple as “wildly democratic.”  Miller was a thorny figure, but her WWII journalism is impeccable.

Wolfs, on Apple TV+

Think of them like Winston Wolf in Pulp Fiction. Of course, these two fixer-cleaners are not as cool as he was, even though they both think they are. Naturally, that means they prefer to work alone, but, like it or not, they must team-up in director-screenwriter Jon Watts’ Wolfs, which starts streaming tomorrow on Apple TV+.

Margaret is a very un-New York-like tough-on-crime DA, who picked a kid in the hotel bar she frequents—so, maybe she is not completely unlike some New York politicians. Rather awkwardly, the “Kid” got high and back-flipped into a plate glass table killing himself. In a panic, she dials the number of a fixer she was given for extreme emergencies. Soon, “Margaret’s Guy” arrives to take charge of the situation.

He inspires confidence, until “Pam’s Guy” crashes the party. The unseen Pam is the owner of the swanky hotel, who is keen to avoid scandal. Apparently, she saw it all on the secret cameras illegally installed in Margaret’s room. Obviously, Margaret worries that Pam’s Guy does not necessarily have her best interests at heart. Pam might even want leverage over the prosecutor, so the women cut a deal, agreeing their guys must work together to make the problem go away.

Predictably, they have their differences, but the job seems relatively straight, until Pam’s Guy discovers several blocks of extremely pure narcotics in the Kid’s bag—enough for a drug ring to come looking for if they simply destroyed it. Then things really get complicated when the Kid miraculously revives.

Wolfs is an amusingly cynical throwback to the dark gangster capers that Harvey Keitel specialized in during the 1990s, both in terms of theme and title. It is dialogue-driven, but there is still plenty of violence. After making bank with Spiderman, Watts returns to the scale of Cop Car, doubling down on the noir ambiance. Frankly, this is what the unsuccessful Brad Pitt fixer-heist movie Killing Them Softly should have been like.

Obviously, Watts also had the advantage of Pitt and George Clooney honing their bantering rhythm over the course of what feel like several hundred Ocean’s movies. They both have fatalistic sarcasm down cold—and it still works. Watts’ dialogue is sharp to begin with and they punch it up with their snarky deliveries.

Apartment 7A, on Paramount+

In Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, Terry Gionoffrio was an in-joke. The troubled woman was one of Minnie and Roman’s Castevets’ pet projects, whom the title character initially confuses for Victoria Vetri, the actress who played her (under the name Angela Dorian, which Vetri also used for her Playboy modeling). Now Gionoffrio gets her own film, a prequel that sometimes overlaps with Polanski’s classic. Of course, her arrangement with the Castevets will be just as Faustian in Natalie Erika James’ Apartment 7A, which premieres Friday on Paramount+.

Gionoffrio came to New York with a dream and a talent for dance, but neither gets her very far, even before she takes a bad landing on her ankle. Desperate for a part, she came to the Bramford (a.k.a. the Dakota), hoping to plead her case with Alan Marchand, a Broadway producer living there. Instead, she faints into the arms of the Castevets, who immediately recognize the potential usefulness of her youth and desperation.

Out of the goodness of their hearts, they offer to put her up in their spare apartment, rent-free. They clearly have boundary issues, but Gionoffrio simply cannot refuse. It turns out to be a heck of a deal when Marchand casts her for the chorus line of his latest production. Her luck is changing, but she still gets bad vibes from the Bramford, especially when Gionoffrio starts to suspect someone secretly enters her apartment when she is not there.

It might seem sacrilegious to make a prequel to a classic like Polanski’s film, but there was already a made-for-TV sequel in 1976 and a miniseries in 2014 that adapted both Rosemary’s Baby and Ira Levin’s sequel, Son of Rosemary, so ample precedent has already been set. As it turns out, James and co-screenwriters Christian White and Skylar James do an excellent job on the micro level, rather seamlessly weaving the narrative of this film around the unforgettable events of the 1968 classic.

However, they are not as successful on the macro level, failing to land the moments of feverish weirdness and terrifying demonic dread that made Polanski’s film so powerful. Frankly, the tension only really elevates during an apartment invasion sequence that is entirely human in nature.

Chicago P.D.: Ten Ninety-Nine

Chicago is a great city for a workaholic cop like Sgt. Hank Voight. He always can count on a steady stream of heinous crimes that merit the attention of his intelligence unit. Since surviving a serial killer’s abduction at the end of season eleven, he feels compelled to make the most of his “bonus time” by fighting crime to the fullest possible extent of his human capabilities. Of course, that means the rest of the team must keep up with him in “Ten Ninety-Nine,” the twelfth season premiere of Chicago P.D. (of the One Chicago programming block), airing tonight on NBC.

The first four and of half minutes of tonight’s episode features no real dialogue and only a bit of muffled incidental chatter. We do not need any talking to understand how driven Voight is, as we watch him circling in and out of his office, only pausing long enough to change his shirt. He is like a man possessed.

Since this is Chicago, there is no shortage of crimes, but many of the ones crossing his desk involve a deadly new “bad batch.” He also might have an informant, nicknamed “Rabbit,” who witnessed a gruesome multiple homicide at a trap house, which might be related. Having survived death, Voight might have the right insight to reach him.

Presumably fans were sad to lose a regular cast-member at the end of last season, but “Ten Ninety-Nine” delivers a heaping helping of what makes this show work, steely Jason Beghe as hard-charging Hank Voight. This is episode is a great showcase for his charismatic hardnosed persona.

When Houston Had the Blues

When it comes to the blues, people always think of Memphis, Chicago, and the Delta and Piedmont regions, but rarely Houston. Yet, Houston was home to the blues kings, both of them: Albert King and Freddie King. But wait, there’s more, including Lightin’ Hopkins and Bobby “Blue” Bland. At this point, you should be wondering why was this documentary even needed? Of course, it is always nice to celebrate the blues, wherever they might hail from. In this case, Houston finally gets its due in Alan Swyer’s When Houston Got the Blues, which releases today on VOD.

It is hard to think of a bigger name in blues than that of Hopkins, except maybe Bland. Indeed, several musicians and commentators nominate Bland’s Two Steps from the Blues as the definitive Houston blues album. In the 1950s and 1960s, the city was a major regional musical hub, largely concentrated in the 3^rd and 5^th wards.

In addition to the majority black neighborhoods, Houston also received an influx of French-speakers from Louisiana. That is how the city became a launching pad for Zydeco, as personified by Clifton Chenier (who honed his art while working in the Port Arthur oil fields) and his son C.J. (who poignantly remembers his father, while speaking for Swyer’s camera). As Texas-born Marcia Ball explains, their Zydeco was essentially Chicago blues adapted to Cajun/Creole instrumentation.

Plus, Houston was home to the Texas Tenor tradition exemplified by Illinois Jacquet, Arnett Cobb, Don Wilkerson (a longtime member of the Ray Charles Band, who also recorded a one-off Blue Note album), and David “Fathead” Newman. Arguably, the Texas Tenors are a bit more jazz than blues, but they have enormous “crossover” appeal.

Succubus, Co-Starring Ron Perlman

Critics like to ding 1980s slashers for their alleged puritanical punishment of promiscuity. Yet, modern horror movies are little different whenever sexting or booty-call apps are involved. The randy and unfaithful typical face swift and violent chastisement. In most cases, the age-old principle—if it seems too good to be true—also usually applies. That is certainly the case for Chris, who knows his app match is way out of his league, but he keeps video-chatting her anyway in R.J. Daniel Hanna’s Succubus, which releases today on VOD.

Newly separated, Chris feels like a loser, but this is one of nights the depressed father has custody of his little baby. That probably ought to be the focus of his concentration, but he lets his overbearing dude-bro buddy Eddie talk him into opening a hook-up account and starting “swiping” women. Awkwardly, he accidentally swipes one of his (technically still) wife’s friends. He also swipes on Adra, who keeps her features shrouded, but her body makes Eddie drool like a dog.

Weirdly, Adra seems very interesting in Chris and eager to meet in person. However, he must come to her. Implying some vague peril, Adra insists she cannot take off her dark glasses, due to some unexplained injury. Somehow, disgraced academic Dr. Orion Zephyr urgently sends him warnings not to trust her, having somehow detected their contact. However, Chris is in no mood to talk to an older guy who looks like Ron Perlman.

It is no secret, except to Chris and Eddie, that Adra is something very demonically different from what she presents herself to be (its titled Succubus, after all). Despite their thick-headedness, the film is a surprisingly suspenseful supernatural variation on Unfriended-style online horror.

There is a lot of “ScreenLife”-ish scenes, but there is enough real time action to alleviate the potential staginess. Perlman’s entrance as the questionable Zephyr, who is not exactly the cavalry, is also a highly effective de-stabilizing development.

Before Dawn: ANZACs in the Trenches

It is scandalous it took us so long to dedicate a proper memorial to the American servicemen who served in WWI, but at least when we finally did, we did it right. Arguably, WWI perhaps looms larger in the Australian public consciousness, thanks to Gallipoli (the battle and the film). They were in France too. Farm-raised Jim Collins is one of the Australians fighting a war of inches behind French lines in Jordan Prince-Wright’s Before Dawn, which releases tomorrow on DVD/BluRay.

Collins and his mates want to enlist, because they believe it will be an adventure that will lead to later dividends. He assumes his father opposes because he wants to keep him on the farm. However, when he reaches France, Collins realizes this war is nothing like he imagined—and it will not end anytime soon.

In a baptism of fire, their corporal takes Collins and three mates on a mission into no man’s land on their first night in the trenches. Only Collins returns. He blames himself for at least one of their deaths, because he could not kill a German soldier who looked even younger than himself. Consequently, he takes greater risks to save other Allied soldiers, as the weeks drag into months and even years.

There is a lot that works in Before Dawn, but just as the generals were fighting prior wars with new technology, Prince-Wright is largely hemmed in by the cinematic vocabulary of the various film versions of All Quiet on the Western Front. Few films have successfully broken out of the trench straight-jacket, but it has been done by the likes of 1917, The Blue Max, and, ironically, the animated Sgt. Stubby (which is probably the best of the lot).

Nevertheless, the gritty realism of Before Dawn packs a punch and the warfighting special effects are impressive, in an immersive kind of way. Prince-Wright conveys a visceral sense of how the mud and muck were a constant, demoralizing presence, as well as the sudden randomness of death.

Levi Miller credibly portrays Collins’ harsh maturation, but never in a way that truly surprises the audience. Instead, Myles Pollard somewhat overshadows him as the battle-hardened and also secretly battle-scarred Sgt. Beaufort, who maybe should have been the focal character, as perceived by Collins.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan’s Island

Among anime fans, Mobile Suit Gundam is considered the granddaddy of the mecha genre. Yet, during its initial series run, budget shortfalls constantly forced producers to cut corners. Series director Yoshiyuki Tomino believed the economizing was particularly conspicuous throughout the fifteenth episode, so he withheld it from most subsequent distribution packages. However, he still believed the story had potential. Years later, this interlude from the Earth Federation’s battle against Zeon separatists gets a feature-length remake in Yoshikazu Yasuhiko’s Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan’s Island, which releases Tuesday on BluRay.

All you really need to know about the Battle of Jaburo is recent momentum has favored the Federation, but Zeon has a major game-changing counter-offensive planned. According to his orders, Captain Bright Noa dispatched Amuro Ray and his comrades Kai Shiden and Hayato Kobayashi on a “mopping up” operation, targeted suspected sleeper operatives on Alegranza, perilously near their Canary Islands base.

Unfortunately, after the disoriented Ray separates from his unit, he is ambushed by a vintage Zaku, a Zeon mecha suit. Per protocol, Shiden and Kobayashi must leave him behind. However, he will not face the sort of peril they fear. Instead, Cucuruz Doan, the pilot of the Zaku, helps nurse Ray back to help and offers him hospitality in his farm, a refuge for two dozen or so war orphans.

While Ray is eager to rejoin the war, Doan has declared his own separate peace. He bears Ray no ill-will, but he will not do anything that could bring warfighting back to his island. Consequently, Ray wastes days searching for the Gundam Doan hid alongside his Zaku. Yet, as Ray comes to know the orphans, he better appreciates Doan’s desire to protect them and his aversion to the ongoing war.

Of course, war inevitably returns to Alegranza, whether Doan likes it or not. Having lost contact with their sleeper operative, Doan, the sinister Zeon commander M’quve deploys a unit of Zakus to take charge of the doomsday weapon buried in the island’s subterranean caverns. Ray’s friends are also on their way, since Captain Noa conveniently feigned engine trouble, to facilitate the unsanctioned rescue operation he knew they would launch.

The contrasting ways Ray and Doan relate to war gives this film some intriguing philosophical heft. It is easy to see why Tomino considered the original episode lost a lost opportunity. The storyline is also easy to carve out of the overall series narrative. However, much of the business involving the orphans is a way too precious.

Batman: Soul of the Dragon

Happy Batman Day. The original Batman Day was celebrated on July 23^rd, to commemorate his Detective Comics debut, but it was subsequently moved to September, for marketing reasons. There have been many Batmans—Adam Westverse, Frank Miller’s Dark Knight, Matt Reeves’ The Batman, etc., so maybe there can be multiple Batman Days too. This Batman Day, fans can celebrate with the 1970’s martial arts Batman, who fights evil with a Richard Dragon who now looks amazingly like Bruce Lee, in Sam Liu’s Batman: Soul of the Dragon.

Before he became the Caped Crusader, Bruce Wayne trained under the mystical O’Sensei in his hidden Himalayan sanctuary. He studied with five other disciples, Dragon, Ben Turner (a.k.a. Bronze Tiger), Lady Shiva, Jade Nguyen, and Rip Jagger (a.k.a. Judomaster). (If you are wondering, DC’s Karate Kid, who predated the 1980s movies, exists in a far-future timeline.)

Obviously, when Wayne returned, he donned the Batman costume to instill fear in criminals’ hearts, while Dragon became a globe-trotting secret agent. Some of their fellow disciples made disappointing choices, like Lady Shiva, who now controls the Gotham Chinatown crime syndicate. However, she still guards their old master’s sword, which also serves as a key to unlock the portal to the dimension of Naga, the apocalyptic snake god.

Ominously, the leader of the Kobra cult wants to do exactly that, so Batman, Dragon, Lady Shiva, and Turner must band together again to stop them. Although he is the last to join them, Turner is most familiar with Kobra, having targeted their criminal operations for years.

Soul of the Dragon lovingly recreates the look and vibe of vintage 1970s martial arts films, first and foremost, by deliberately designing Dragon and Turner to resemble Bruce Lee and his Enter the Dragon co-star, Jim Kelly. While not slavishly imitative, composer Joachim Horsley’s soundtrack also clearly evokes the vibe of Lalo Schifrin’s classic theme as well.

For further authenticity, genre fans will happily recognize experienced on-screen martial artists Mark Dacascos, Michael Jai White, and Kelly Hu (Sammo Hung’s Martial Law) supplying the voices of Dragon, Turner, and Lady Shiva. (You can hear White’s enthusiasm for the subject matter and the films that inspired Jeremy Adams’ screenplay in all his scenes. He was also familiar with the character, having played him on a recurring basis on CW’s Arrow.) Just as fittingly, James Hong (Rush Hour, Kung Fu Panda) adds the appropriate sage crustiness as O’Sensei.

Brilliant Minds, on NBC

This season’s newest TV doctor, Dr. Oliver Wolf, is transparently modeled on Dr. Oliver Wolf Sacks, the late motorcycling-riding gay neurologist of Jewish descent. So far, the series has explored all those aspects of his personality, except his Jewish heritage. It is hard to figure why they overlooked that one, right? Regardless, creator-writer Michael Grassi wisely focuses on the doctor’s patient-centered approach and his issues with authority in Brilliant Minds, which premieres this Monday on NBC.

Once again, Dr. Wolf will lose his job, because he did the right thing. In pilot episode prologue, that means taking a dementia patient to his granddaughter’s wedding, hoping if he seats his patient behind a piano, his memory will briefly reawaken. It sort of works, but he gets fired anyway.

Wolf wants to revel in his depression, but his old college friend, psych department chair Dr. Carol Pierce guilt trips him into joining her on-staff at Bronx General. His first case there tantalizingly offers similarities with Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, but, disappointingly, Dr. Wolfs identifies an earthly neurological explanation regarding Hannah Peters’ strange belief her children are not really her children.

Somehow, Wolf and Pierce get along, but he immediately clashes with Dr. Josh Nichols, a veteran during the “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” era, who is not privy to Wolf’s “face-blindness,” another similarity he shares with the real-life Sacks. Since he is reluctant to discuss his condition, Dr. Wolf’s new skulls-full-of-mush neurology interns, Drs. Kinney, Nash, Dang, and Markus just assume he is aloof and anti-social. Coincidentally, Dr. Markus has his own rare neurological challenge, which will be revealed in a few episodes.

The series credits Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars as sources of “inspiration,” but only the second episode, “The Disembodied Woman,” about a woman losing her proprioception, or sense of body control and positioning, is faithfully drawn from one of Hat’s case-study essays. Although the third episode, “The Lost Biker,” shares some thematic similarities with Sacks’ “The Lost Mariner,” the circumstances of each patient’s new memory-forming issues are considerably different.

“The Blackout Bride” presents some of Dr. Wolf’s most extreme methods, when he takes MDMA to understand his patient’s perception of events, but rather awkwardly, it turns out to be laced with PCP. Notably, this episode also introduces an apparently unresponsive patient, impressively portrayed by Alex Ozerov-Meyer, whom Wolf struggles to reach over an as yet unresolved multiple-episode story-arc.

Arguably, “The Haunted Marine” might be the best of the first six episodes, thanks its compassionate handling of military themes and Joshua Echebiri’s sensitive but refreshingly restrained performance as neurologically-troubled veteran, Steve Hill. However, the teen characters and immature melodrama of “The Girl who Cried Pregnant” make it the comparatively weakest.

The kind of medical detective work and deductive diagnoses depicted in the series remain tried and true grist for medical drama. To a great degree, viewers can think of Brilliant Minds as a House M.D., but without the pill-popping, excellent musical taste, and withering sarcasm.

Planet of the Apes: The Gladiators

Even in the year 3085, the rabble and the hoi polloi still enjoy a spot of blood sport. The apes rule the planet, but this local chimpanzee prefect unknowingly applies the techniques of ancient Roman emperors to keep his humans docile, believing his human gladiatorial games satisfy their bloodlust. Peerhaps the two time-warped astronauts saw Spartacus during the 20^th Century (the film, not the later series that betrayed its revolutionary values), but even if they do not want to fight, they still must survive the arena somehow in “The Gladiators,” the second episode of Planet of the Apes, which premiered exactly fifty years ago today.

Virdon, Burke, and their new chimp friend Galen could have avoided all this week’s trouble, if they had minded their own business. Instead, when Burke saw a stronger human manhandling a younger but weaker man, he jumped in, only to have the other turn on him too. We soon learn local gladiator hero Tolar was training his reluctant son Dalton for the arena. Initially, our three cross-species friends got away clean—except that Virdon dropped the flight-recording cartridge, which he stubbornly insists on retrieving.

Of course, they send in Galen to charm Prefect Barlow with his eccentric traveling scholar routine. As usual, at least one of the astronauts cannot help getting captured again, requiring a rescue. This time it is Burke, but in this case, it means he has a date in the arena with burly Tolan.

“The Gladiators” (written by Art Wallace) has a particularly Roddenberry-esque tone, thanks to the way the astronauts inspire Dalton to embrace his long-simmering Pacifist ideals. Frustratingly, Roddenbery would have joined the series as a creative consultant, but it was canceled right before his input could be reflected in new episodes.

In addition to Mark Lenard still snarling up a storm as Gen. Urko, “The Gladiators” has a second Star Trek connection in John Hoyt, who played the first Enterprise doctor, Dr. Philip Boyce, in the failed pilot turned Captain Pike two-parter, “The Menagerie.” He serves as a sly, old foil for Galen as crotchety Barlow. It is quite an episode for guest stars, because William Smith, maybe best known for appearing as Conan’s father in Conan the Barbarian, plays Tolan, whose son, Dalton was played by Marc Singer, which sort of makes Smith the Beastmaster’s dad too.

Transformers One, in Cinema Daily US

The animated prequel TRANSFORMERS ONE builds towards a rousing fight for freedom, but it also archly depicts the tendency of revolutions to turn sinister. The origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron has both the touch and the power, for super-fans and newcomers alike. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

A Very Royal Scandal, on Prime

Prince Andrew’s Epstein scandal interview will be taught in PR seminars for decades to come as a text book case illustrating why it is often best to keep your client silent and out of the media. The Prince thought it would be a great opportunity to air his “alibis,” but the world widely considered it an absolute train-wreck. As the Queen’s private secretary puts it, Andrew’s sit-down with BBC2’s Emily Maitlis turned into a real “dog’s dinner.” Yet, the once popular Royal should only blame himself, at least judging from director Julian Jarrold’s three-part A Very Royal Scandal, which premieres today on Prime Video.

At the start of the mini-series, it sure looks like it is good to be a Prince, who always enjoys the finest of everything. Unfortunately, money is tight, because of debts run up by the Duke of York and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, with whom he still cohabitates. However, what his mummy and the UK government will not pay for, his pal Jeffrey Epstein usually covers. Yes, that Epstein—the sex-trafficking sex-offender, whom the Prince met him through his childhood friend Ghislaine Maxwell.

Frankly, rumors swirled regarding the Prince’s relationship with Epstein for years. However, they exploded in the British tabloid press when one of Epstein’s victims released a rather candid photo of her and Andy, looking randy. Andrew and his private secretary Amanda Thirsk want to tell his side of the story, but Sir Andrew Young, the Queen’s private secretary and de facto head of the Royal’s private secretarial service cautions otherwise. However, as criticism mounts, Prince Andrew defiantly agrees to an on-camera sit-down with Maitlis, with the understanding the BBC will analyze the photo he argues has been deep-faked.

As everyone knows, the Prince’s interview made Frost-Nixon look like a triumph, comparing to the cringe of Whitney Houston’s “crack is whack.” However, Jarrold and screenwriter Jeremy Brock make it clear what really undermined Andrew was his arrogance, tone-deafness, and lack of compassion for Epstein’s victims. Perhaps for legal reasons, there is a good deal of ambiguity regarding what exactly the Prince did and did not do, as well as how much he knew and when he knew it. Regardless, it is clearly awkward to explain how you met your sex offender friend. Obviously, it was beyond the Prince’s rather limited abilities.

Still, Michael Sheen’s portrayal is surprisingly interesting because he so fully exposes the Royal’s insecurities and resentments. Sheen also leans into his protectiveness of his daughters and the complex emotional entanglements binding him to Ferguson, even after their bitter, Palace-mandated divorce. Instead of evil or scary, he comes across like a weak and pathetic cry-baby, who was poorly served by his lifelong insulation from responsibility.

On the other hand, Maitlis emerges as a one-note caricature: a hard-charging crusader for the truth, who simply cannot help rolling her eyes at dissembling answers, especially when they come from Conservative politicians (but no such outrage for Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-Semitism). Frankly, Ruth Wilson largely relies on two huge Princess Leia-like hair-curlers to humanize Maitlis, who arguably nearly matches the Prince’s arrogance, in her own way.

The Substance, Starring Demi Moore & Dennis Quaid

A lot of people might want to be like Dorian Gray, but few would care to be the portrait. Yet, a fading celebrity accepts a Faustian bargain that functions quite similarly. She is the “primary,” but her “better self” gets to have all the fun in director-screenwriter Coralie Forgeat’s The Substance, which opens this Friday in New York.

Elizabeth Sparkle is sort of like Jane Fonda, if she never stopped doing aerobics videos. At one point, she was a top actress, but for many years, she paid her bills hosting a daytime exercise show. Unfortunately, the odious network executive Harvey (whose Weinstein-ish name cannot be a coincidence) fired her for being insufficiently young and hot. While recovering from a subsequent minor fender-bender, a dodgy orderly slips her a card for a mysterious service that promises to bring out her best self, through the injection of a “substance.”

The titular substance produces what it promises quite literally, when her more alluring shadow self emerges from Sparkle’s back. She and “Sue” as her offspring calls herself, must scrupulously respect their symbiotic relationship. To maintain balance, each gets seven days out in the world, while the other remains in stasis, before they switch. Without a timely switch, Sparkle cannot safely generate the spinal fluid Sue needs to sustain herself.

Of course, Sue quickly replaces Sparkle on her former show, immediately igniting the ratings. Predictably, she resents the time she must concede to Sparkle, so she starts to cheat. When that causes Sparkle irreversible physical damage, it launches a cold war between the two linked selves.

To a large extent, the first hour of The Substance plays like a better episode of Black Mirror, but the closing half-hour is a relentlessly gory assault on the senses (and some would say good taste). Weirdly, the film revisits some themes of Fargeat’s less extreme short Reality+, in which a chip allowed users to project an idealized image of themselves for twelve hours, but she completely immerses her latest feature in grisly body-horror.

Last Shadow at First Light, on IndiePix

Not eveery ghost wears sheets and rattles chains in the attic. When you think about it, nearly everyone is haunted by something. Those are our ghosts. Young Ami is haunted by more ghosts than the teenaged girl deserves. By far, her presumed dead mother is her most persistent ghost, either figuratively or literally, in Singaporean-based screenwriter-director Nicole Midori Woodford’s Last Shadow at First Light, which premieres this Friday on IndiePix Unlimited.

When the 2011 Tsunami struck Japan, Ami’s mother Satomi rushed to the coast, hoping to save her parents (Ami’s grandparents), who were tragically lost to the waters. For a year, Satomi stayed, trying to make amends and hopefully find her parents, while Ami stayed with in Singapore with her father, Wen Yong. For a while, Satomi sent little Ami audio tapes, before falling silent.

For years, her father told Ami her mother had died. However, the uncertainty torments her, especially when her fragmentary spectral visions of her mother increase in frequency. Eventually, Wen Yong realizes Ami’s profound need to resolve the truth of her mother’s fate in Japan, but since he must care for her other ailing grandmother, he arranges for her Uncle Isamu (his brother-in-law) to accompany her. Isamu is not exactly welcoming, but they share a kinship, because he is similarly haunted by his late wife, who was also swept away by the tsunami.

If ghosts exists, which is doubtful, then they most likely resemble the way Woodford [largely, but maybe not exclusively] depicts them—as memories and regrets that are so potent, they manifest themselves into ghostly visions. Nobody needs an exorcist in Last Shadow Arguably, Ami sorts of hopes to do the opposite. Regardless, the film’s examination of grief will absolutely devastate most viewers, especially those who have recently suffered a loss.

Omni Loop: A Different Kind of “Red Pill”

Zoya Lowe’s pills should carry a heck of side effect warning: could cause small internal black holes. Obviously, that can be fatal. However, she will not die, because of their time travel properties, taking her back one week in time. As a physicist, she always wanted to figure out how they worked, so she constantly repeats her final week, in hopes of completing her research in director-screenwriter Bernardo Britto’s Omni Loop, which opens Friday in theaters.

Each loop starts with Lowe’s husband Donald and her daughter Jayne taking her home from the hospital and trying to make her comfortable, but she has gone through it so many times, she now just goes through the motions. However, she finally snaps out of it when she literally runs into Paula Campos, a young student carrying the quantum physics textbook she wrote with her husband.

Campos also has access to a dusty but adequate lab, so Lowe convinces her, with the benefit of repeated time loops, to help her analyze her mystery pills, so she can finally crack the code of time travel. Frankly, Lowe has no idea where they came from. They were given to her when she was a young girl, under mysterious circumstances, and have always defied conventional analysis. However, Campos’s campus has an incredibly unusual very-science fictional asset that could provide a new way of looking at Lowe’s pills. Awkwardly, it is now also home to her cranky old academic advisor, Prof. Duselberg.

Omni Loop represents a dramatic departure from most time travel and time loop films, particularly in terms of the acutely human scale of the narrative. Britto develops several highly original sf wrinkles, but it is the emotions that really make a lasting impression. There might be a few logical gaps, especially if you are theoretical physicist, but it hardly matters, because the film works so pwerfully as such an honest family drama.

Trapezium, in Cinema Daily US

As the anime adaptation of a former Japanese idol's serial novel, TRAPEZIUM takes a very deep dive into the rigorous training of prospective idols. It is a serious animated teen drama, but subject matter might somewhat limit its appeal among anime fans. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

Johnnie To at MoMA: Sparrow

Kei is no street urchin. However, the pickpocket usually earns enough from his work to leisurely idle away the rest of his time like the smooth gentleman he appears to be. His small four-man crew usually works unobtrusively. Unfortunately, when he notices an enigmatic woman, her crime lord captor notices Kei and his gang in Johnnie To’s Sparrow, which screens as part of MoMA’s ongoing retrospective.

With four razor blades and a few well-timed distractions, Kei, Bo, Mac, and Sak score a tidy but not exorbitant sum. It leaves time for Kei to practice photography with his vintage Rolleiflex on Hong Kong’s picturesque (but sadly disappearing) side streets and out-of-the-way cul-de-sacs. One day Chung Chun Lei steps into his viewfinder, making quite an impression. The next time he sees, Kei tries to follow her, but old sinister Mr. Fu always has eyes on her.

He also has Chung’s passport locked in his safe. It is uncertain how physical their dysfunctional relationship is, but his possessiveness is crystal clear. As a result, his chief enforcer Lung has all four pickpockets badly beaten. Of course, that rubs Kei the wrong way, especially when he figures out why.

In some ways, Sparrow (slang for pickpocket) is a perfectly representative Johnnie To film, featuring several of his regular players, including Simon Yam as Kei and Lam Suet as Lung. Yet, in other ways, it is absolutely atypical. Compared to most of To’s films, Sparrow is relatively quiet. The dialogue is rather sparse, but the soundtrack is spritely and often downright jazzy. Perhaps in an even greater departure, these gangsters never wield guns, but that hardly means anyone is safe.

Despite the noir themes and periodic violence, Sparrow also exhibits a slyly comedic visual sensibility, deliberately echoing the likes of Jacques Demy and Jacques Tati. There are several elaborate sequences that share an aesthetic kinship with dance just as much as action choreography. The climatic pickpocketing challenge is an especially grand crescendo.

Am I Racist?—Matt Walsh Doing the Work

If your public rhetoric is different from what you say in private (and the way you say it), you will likely be embarrassed if anyone points out the contrast. Such should now be the case for the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) industry. When addressing the media, they present their programs as a way widen opportunities for all Americans. However, in their [high-priced] workshops, they proclaim America is an inherently racist nation that is beyond redemption. Somehow, starboard gadfly Matt Walsh was there to record it, posing as an apprentice DEI activist in the documentary Am I Racist?, directed by Justin Folk, which opens today in theaters.

Considering the vast resources devoted to DEI and “anti-racist” organizations in recent years, how could it possibly be that race relations are worse now than they were twenty or thirty years ago? This is the question Walsh (celebrated/notorious for What is a Woman) sets out to investigate in his gonzo, Borat-like style, going undercover in the seminars, “doing the work” of antiracism. Rightly, Walsh keys in on the cringy vacuousness of that hollow phrase as a symbol of the movement.

Frankly, some of those workshops more resemble Maoist struggle sessions than anything remotely educational. However, they are highly profitable. Walsh literally has the receipts to prove it. Some of the rhetoric is also highly “problematic,” as the practitioners themselves might say.

For instance, Saira Rao, co-host of the “Race2Dinner” dinner parties (at $2,500 a plate) literally says: “The entire system has to burn. This country is not worth saving. This country is a piece of sh*t.” That is a direct quote. Nothing is taken out of context. (It is also worth noting Rao and her co-host Regina Jackson were dropped by the agents because of rhetoric deemed anti-Semitic, like the claim “Zionist” doctors deliberately give sub-standard care to black and Muslim patients.)

On the other hand, it should also be acknowledged Walsh often acts like a disruptive jerkweed. Having talked his way into the catering crew for one of their parties, Walsh breaks more plates than Zorba the Greek at a wedding reception. Frankly, some scenes would work better if Walsh just let the “DEI” hucksters hang themselves with their own extremist discourse.

Still, there are two or three scenes that are both jaw-droppingly revealing and mind-blowingly funny. Lucky Robin DiAngelo, the (white) guru of the “anti-racist” industry, gets to be the centerpiece of the film. After she explains how white people can only choose to be “more or less racist” in any given moment, Walsh challenges her to join him in giving a cash reparation to his black producer. Her reaction is priceless and it will dog her for the rest of her career—deservedly so.

Planet of the Apes: Escape from Tomorrow

In retrospect, Friday September 13, 1974 was an amazing night of television. That was when Planet of the Apes and Kolchak: The Nightstalker premiered as original weekly TV series. Both were probably better than viewers had a right to expect, yet neither survived to a second season. Strangely, Disney has yet to provide Planet of the Apes a streaming home, even though franchise fans appreciate the full ape makeup and the return of Roddy McDowell, as a new character. Of course, the social dynamics (primates over men) remain the same, much to two astronauts’ surprise, in “Escape from Tomorrow,” the first episode of Planet of the Apes, which premiered exactly fifty years ago.

Three astronauts entered a vortex, hurling them into the year 3085, if not later. Their autopilot returns them to Earth, but the neighborhood changed during their absence. Unfortunately, only two survive the landing, Col. Alan Virdon and Maj. Peter Burke, but Farrow, a kind but simple-minded human, drags them to safety before the apes arrive. Naturally, they dismiss his warnings regarding the apes until they see them for themselves.

Evidently, other astronauts from the past found their way to the apes’ future world some years prior, causing great panic and commotion. Consequently, Gen. Urko wants to kill them as soon as possible, whereas Councilor Zaius wants to interrogate and study them first. However, his new deputy, a clever chimpanzee named Galen, is so fascinated by the intelligent humans, he inadvertently befriends them.

Back in 1974, nobody had VCRs to revisit movies at home, so the writers could take liberties with the franchise continuity. It is debatable whether it fits cohesively with the original five films, but the look of the sets, costumes, and makeup are certainly consistent. Zauis is the only holdover character, with Booth Colman replacing Maurice Evans. Galen is a new character for McDowell, who previously played Cornelius and his son Caesar, but his personality and function as a human ally are quite similar.

Shrewdly, the nicely paced pilot (written by Art Wallace and directed by Don Weis) does not waste a lot of time with backstory and it immediately introduces the apes, who are what we’re all here for. The three main characters’ escape from Urko is a relatively self-contained story, but it sets up the continuing plot elements, like Virdon’s quixotic ambition to reconstruct their flight recording, in hopes of somehow returning to his family in the past. It also features a great guest-starring turn from Royal Dano (a staple of 1970s episodic TV), who poignantly expresses Farrow’s gentle nature.

Dan Da Dan, in Cinema Daily US

GKIDS' theatrical presentation of DAN DA DAN: FIRST CONTACT is a deliciously delirious Reese's peanutbutter cup mash-up of UFO and supernatural elements, held together with unruly humor and two highly relatable teen chracters. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.