Every record label that means something to fans has a very distinctive style
and sound, like Blue Note, Pacific Jazz, and Stax. That was certainly true of Casablanca
Records too. They recorded Buddy Miles and Hugh Masekela, but they are best known
for disco. Yet, their biggest, most profitable outlier was KISS, even though
they took a while to catch on. Timothy Scott Bogart brings his father Neil’s tenure
at the label to the big-screen as an ill-advised movie-musical in Spinning
Gold, which opens today in New York.
Neil
Bogart died at the premature age of 39, but he still tells his own story in his
son’s musical memory play. He was born Neil Bogatz in Brooklyn, but he was
eager to leave his modest roots behind. Music became his business, first as a
one-hit teen idol and then as an executive for MGM and Buddah records, where he
signed Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Isley Brothers, and Bill Withers, all of
whom get more screen time in Spinning Gold than a lot of Casablanca
artists, such as the Village People, Cher, and Lipps inc. (Considering the notorious
reception for the Village People’s 1980 film, Can’t Stop the Music, maybe
we shouldn’t blame T.S. Bogart for not tempting fate in that respect).
Fatefully,
when Bogart struck out on his own with Casablanca, his distributor, Warner
Music, tried to undercut their sales, so they started handling sales and
distribution in-house, at least according to the film. They had three acts that
would eventually be huge: KISS, Donna Summer, and George Clinton’s Parliament,
but all three struggled with their initial releases.
It
will be interesting to hear what KISS thinks of their portrayal in Spinning
Gold. They might either dig it or hate it. It could go either way. Ledisi
has a nice number as Knight (“Midnight Train to Georgia,” of course), but the
scene of Bogart shouting and gyrating to the sounds of Edwin Hawkins’ choir
(another Buddah signing) is pure cringe. At least it is rather amusing to watch
Sebastian Maniscalco mumble through his scenes as producer-composer Giorgio
Moroder, but Tayla Parx does not bear a strong resemblance to Donna Summer.
In
a way, Spinning Gold is a lot like Cadillac Records, simply replacing
Bogart’s relationship with Summer for that of Leonard Chess and Etta James. Bogart
and Summer kept it professional, not counting her orgasmic “Love to Love You”
session, another embarrassing cringe fest, but he rather openly carried on an
affair with Joyce Biawitz, KISS’s co-manager, who seemed to have an office at
Casablanca (presumably for the sake of convenience).
Fonseca
is fine as Biawitz and Michelle Monaghan plugs away valiantly in the thankless
role of Bogart’s thankless wife, Beth Weiss, but Jeremy Jordan (who was very good in Broadway's Bonnie & Clyde) dominates the film,
in the worst way possible, preaching to the choir and projecting to the back
balcony as Neil Bogart. His performance is exhaustingly showy. [Timothy Scott]
Bogart desperately needed to tone him down, but instead, it looks like his
direction consisted of texting “100%” emojis.
Apple TV’s TETRIS provides some entertaining international intrigue, but
it is also a good story of naïve capitalism triumphing over socialism and
corruption. EPOCH TIMES review up here.
Everyone knows SpaceX will beat NASA to Mars by decades, if not centuries. A new
start-up plans to do it sooner. Nobody has ever heard of them, which should
signal problems to their prospective recruits. Nevertheless, Alex McAllister is
eager to go. Supposedly, they can make the journey cheaper, because their
colonists are only going one way. For the depressed twentynothing, that is a
feature rather than a bug. He is still probably the only person who believes he
is Mars-bound in Kyra Sedgwick’s Space Oddity, which opens tomorrow in
New York.
McAllister
is still openly grieving the accidental death of his popular big brother, for
which he partially blames himself. At least training for the Mars mission has
given him a renewed sense of purpose, or so his mousy mother tells herself. On
the other hand, his father Jeff is openly skeptical of the mission. He would
much prefer his son take over the family flower farm, since his brother cannot
and his sister Liz moved away to become a high-powered corporate PR flak.
Since
he will be dead to the world, part of McAllister’s preparations involve purchasing
life insurance—nobody bothers to explain just how his heirs would produce a
death certificate to collect. The box needs to be checked regardless, so he
walks down to Mike Taylor’s insurance office, where his daughter now works.
Daisy Taylor already had an annoying meet-cute with McAllister, so she indulgently
tries to craft a policy for his unusual circumstances. The more they see of
each other, the more she thinks she might like him, but he still isn’t ready to
rejoin life on Earth.
Alexandra
Shipp is enormously charismatic, so it is altogether unfathomably that she
could fall for a loser like McAllister. As awkwardly portrayed by Kyle Allen,
McAllister hardly seems capable of tying his own shoes. Frankly, walking and chewing
gum at the same time would be well beyond him, let alone astronaut training.
Not surprisingly, his chemistry with Shipp is unconvincing, despite her game efforts.
If the "aliens” let you see them, you have probably made some bad life
choices, because it means you are sufficiently isolated, both socially and
geographically, so that the “visitors” are not worried about what you might try
to tell anyone. Maggie’s dad Lloyd is a case in point. He lives in the Oregon
woods obsessively documenting “UFOs” in the night sky. The situation is a bit
of a concern to her, but staying with him is a great way to hide from the rest
of the world in Alex Lehmann’s Acidman, which releases tomorrow in
theaters and on VOD.
Apparently,
local kids mockingly call Lloyd “Acidman,” as Maggie deduces from the spray
paint defacing his ramshackle cottage. She was not able to warn him of her
pop-in visit, because Lloyd has gone completely off the grid and has no phone.
He is definitely surprised to see her, in an awkward, not especially welcoming
kind of way.
However,
he starts to warm to her, largely thanks his dog Migo, who sort of acts as their
mediator. He even trusts Maggie enough to take her out for a UFO sighting,
watching tiny specks of light vaguely moving along the horizon. So, Maggie
clearly recognizes the situation is not ideal. Unfortunately, this maybe isn’t
the most stable period of her life either.
There
is a good chance one of both of them could use some counseling, but the
screenplay (by Lehmann and Chris Dowling) never gets that far. Instead, the film
focuses on their halting attempts to reconnect as father and daughter. The UFO
themes are handled more in the tradition of UFOria than Close Encounters.
This is an achingly well-intentioned film, executed with great sensitivity, but
it is all very small in scope.
This is a very Cornish film, but at least it was not produced in the Cornish
language, which would have been a “performative” gimmick. Yet, in a way, it
hardly would have mattered considering how little dialogue there is in this 16mm
exercise in isolation and dread. The lonely landscape and Cornwall’s tragic
history contribute to a woman’s descent into madness during the deliberate course
of Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men, which opens Friday in New York.
We
only know the woman as “The Volunteer,” who has come to the deserted isle of
Enys Men (which translates to “Stone Island”) to observe the wildlife,
particularly a patch of wildflowers. It is a methodical routine, with little
variation, at least initially, but that appears to be what the Volunteer wants.
At night, she still maintains her personal rituals, including reading A
Blueprint for Survival, a 1970s environmental tract that may have directly
contributed to her impending doom. Her only company comes from the occasional
scheduled supply runs from the “Boatman,” who seems to mean more to her than a
mere deliveryman.
Jenkins
repeats this pattern over and over again, so the audience can pick up small
deviations when they first start to develop. It begins with small lichen appearing
on the Volunteer’s wildflowers. Then the fungi starts growing on her long-healed
scar. Here and there, we see ever-so brief flashes of visions or
hallucinations, harkening back to the Bal Maidens and the isle’s long-deserted
mines.
A
pat description of Enys Men might be “experimental folk horror.” As a
filmmaker, Jenkins clearly exhibits avant-garde and ethnographic sensibilities.
The film has a remarkably vivid sense of place—nearly to the exclusion of
everything else. Yet, he milks a palpable sense of mounting dread from the
eerie standing stones and abandoned monuments, quite skillfully.
Jughead Jones suddenly found himself back in high school. The good news is he
did not wake up naked on the last day of finals, for which he hadn’t studied
for. Instead, he is in an alternate 1950s Happy Days-style universe—and he
is the only one of his friends who remembers the first six seasons of Riverdale.
Jones and the Archie comics gang go back to high school, where fans
always remember them, in the seventh season of Riverdale, which
premieres tomorrow night on the CW.
At
the end of last season, Jones’ psychic girlfriend Tabitha Tate and their
friends tried to save the Earth from Comet Bailey, but they failed. At the last
second, Tate managed to send them back into the alternate past, so they can
regroup and hopefully develop a plan B. However, only Jones initially remembers
their past/future, whereas the rest of the group is busy living in the
alternate 1950s.
According
to Jughead’s narration, 1955 was a terrible time to be a teenager, but he has
no idea how wrong he is. Before the Progressive Era, there were no “teens,”
just people who were old enough to work all day in factories and those who were
not (as the doc Teenage explains). Even for teens, there was little work
available during the Great Depression, while eighteen-year-olds faced the prospect
of military service during the Korean War, and the two World Wars. It was also in the 1950s that the
segregationist policies initiated by Woodrow Wilson were finally effectively
challenged, notably with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Ed decision and Eisenhower
sending troops to integrate Little Rock schools in 1957. Seriously, 1955 is
pretty choice-year to land in, given the grimmer possibilities.
Yes,
the nation was still far from perfect, as the season premiere, “Don’t Worry
Darling,” makes abundantly clear with its focus on the Emmitt Till murder. The
Tate who doesn’t remember Jughead spends most of the episode trying in vain to
cover the lynching in the Riverdale school paper, with Betty Cooper’s help. It
is decent student drama to supplement Jughead’s efforts to figure out their situation,
while he still remembers. For those coming in cold, Cole Sprouse’s nebbish
charm as Jones and Camilla Mendes’ femme fatale turn as Veronica Lodge definitely
standout amid the established ensemble.
However,
there is not a lot fantastical or menacing business going on in the second
episode, “Skip, Hop, and Thump!,” which focuses on several characters’
repressed sexuality. The percentage of Riverdale students identifying (secretly)
as lgbtq is statistically unlikely, but Riverdale has always existed in a world
of its own. At least, at the very end, it introduces a promising storyline that
will presumably become a major focus throughout the final season.
As
we learn more fully in “Sex Education,” it seems that Jones’ comic artist
friend will be suspected of killing her awful parents in a way very much like
that depicted in one of the horror comic books they just started freelancing
for. This is definitely a geek-friendly arc that directly pays homage to EC
Comics and their battle with the Progressive, Puritanical Comics Code.
Grown adults who wear spandex richly deserve to be mocked. Unfortunately,
satire has been choked unconscious by woke social justice warriors, just as the
superhero genre peaked. Hollywood no longer has defiantly rude satirists like
Mel Brooks. The closest we can get is the post-modern bizarro wackiness of
Quentin Dupieux, from France. Whenever a rubber-suited monster attacks, the Tobacco
Force is there to stop them in Dupieux’s Smoking Causes Coughing, which
releases this Friday in theaters and on-demand.
Usually,
the fab five can rely on their marital arts skills to defeat the human-sized
kaiju they fight. However, when all else fails, they can call on the carcinogenic
compounds for which they are named, to give their foes an immediately fatal dose
of cancer. Benzene is the oldest, so he considers himself the group’s leader.
Mercury is a family man, whereas Menthanol is a luckless loser with the ladies.
Ammonia is the baby of the team, whereas Nicotine carries a torch for their boss,
Chief Didier, even though he is a human-sized rat, with greenish slime oozing
from his mouth.
After
their last rocky encounter. Chief Didier orders them off on a team-building
retreat. As they pass the time, they tell a series of campfire stories that are
meant to be scary, but are really just indescribably bizarre and random, very
much like Dupieux’s films. Unfortunately, while the Tobacco Force cool their heels,
their intergalactic nemesis, Lezardin, is planning Earth’s final destruction.
In
this case, a comparison to Brooks is quite apt, because sometimes Dupieux’s
gags are riotously funny and sometimes they fall excruciatingly flat, but he
keeps blasting them at the audience with a scattergun, regardless.
In the 1970s, criminals seeking to escape justice, like the mastermind of
the Fountain Valley mass murders, not infrequently hijacked flights to Cuba,
where they were sheltered by Castro’s Communist regime. Unfortunately, Dr. Ben
Song suddenly finds himself serving as a flight attendant aboard one such
hijacked flight, but their destination is a watery doom. Obviously, Song needs
to save the passengers, but he must do so without the help of Ziggy, the
project’s AI in “Friendly Skies,” the latest episode of Quantum Leap, premiering
tonight on NBC.
In
the previous episode, Janis Calavicci finally figured out the source of the Quantum
Leap project’s leak: Ziggy, their AI. Despite Ian Wright’s whining, Magic
Williams takes Ziggy offline, insisting they rely on the rest of the vast
computing power at their disposal. That might slow the team down a bit, but it
is pretty easy to figure out what Song is supposed to do.
His
flight went down somewhere in the Atlantic, while in a dead spot for
communications. At first, there are several possibilities, but again, the
hijackers make it rather easy to figure out once the hijackers reveal themselves.
It
turns out passenger attitudes towards flight attendants were not particularly
enlightened in 1971. However, there is more to this episode than gender issues.
The hijackers, who will potentially kill every soul onboard, are explicitly
motivated by class warfare rhetoric. In fact, they have expressly chosen this
flight because the airline owner’s son is among the passengers. Initially, Song
assumes he is a spoiled brat, but he slowly learns there is more to the awkward
teen than he realized.
The Morpho is like the Polybius of fortune telling machines. One day, it
just appeared in Deerfield’s general store. For a handful of quarters, it
promises to tell your “true potential.” Some are impressive, like the “royalty”
card received by Cass Hubbard, but for some, their Morpho cards become a source
of shame. Soon, the Morpho machine turns the town upside-down in creator David
West Read’s ten-episode The Big Door Prize, based on M.O. Walsh’s novel,
which premieres Wednesday on Apple TV+.
Dusty
Hubbard is a likeable, mildly under-achieving high school history teacher, who lives
happily with his wife Cass and their daughter Trina. When the Morpho appears,
he intuitively resists, especially because he is somewhat intimidated by his
wife’s “royalty” potential.
His
student Jacob Kovac is not a Morpho fan either. Poor Kovac already has more
than enough to deal with. He can hardly talk to his father Beau, who is still
bitterly grieving the death of his identical twin brother, the school’s star athlete.
Unbeknownst to anyone else, Jacob Kovac was cheating with his brother’s neglected
girlfriend, Trina. They are trying to secretly continue their relationship,
while grieving as the town expects. However, the Morpho seems to know, judging
from her card. Jacob’s card is something radically different, but it carries even
more stressful implications.
Father
Reuben has a complicated response to the Morpho machine. He understands the
importance of interpreting signs. Indeed, he was led to Deerfield by signs that
seemed prophetic at the time. While the series has a somewhat ambiguous
attitude towards the priesthood as a chosen profession, Father Reuben himself
is an entirely sympathetic character.
It
is hard to precisely categorize Big Door Prize, but Read (a writer and
producer on Schitt’s Creek) uses the fantastical element to create a surprisingly
funny small-town sitcom. Admittedly, the neuroses of both Dusty and Cass Hubbard
are often grating, but Read and the writers constantly puncture their pretensions
and expose their self-importance.
On
the other hand, there is some terrific chemistry that develops between Djouliet
Amara and Sammy Fourlas as Trina and Jacob. We clearly root for them as a
couple, despite all the complications of their relationship. Likewise, Damon Gupton
and Ally Maki are weirdly engaging as Father Reuben and Hana, the town’s new bartender,
who seems wholly unphased by the Morpho phenomenon—but something about the good
Father might just be getting to her.
This is another example of how DC films have been much more rewarding than Marvel
films. Most Marvel films build to an incomprehensible third act of whirling,
swirling CGI, after foisting off meaningless character cameos, to establish
films that won’t be released for months, if not years. In contrast, DC had The
Batman, which is more like Se7en than a traditional superhero movie
and Joker, which wore its Scorsese influences on its sleeve. DC animated
films have been especially willing to break established molds and formats.
Following in the tradition of Batman Ninja and Superman: Red Sun,
Batman gets a Lovecraftian twist in Christopher Berkeley & Sam Liu’s Batman:
The Doom that Came to Gotham, adapted from Mike Mignola & Richard Pace’s
limited comic series, which releases Tuesday on BluRay.
Prof.
Oswald Cobblepot is not the Penguin in this universe, but his Wayne Foundation-funded
arctic exploration turned out rather badly. By the time Bruce Wayne and his
adopted orphans arrive to investigate, only Cobblepot and another crew member
still survive, but they under the control of an ancient, cosmic demon. Wayne tries
to bury the evil in the Arctic, but it remains hidden in the soul and body of
his deranged prisoner.
Back
in Gotham, Wayne receives a warning from Etrigan, the not-entirely evil demon,
about the scope of the supernatural threat facing Gotham. It seems Ra’s al Ghul
(the traditional occult supervillain of the Batman franchise) is trying to
usher one of the elder gods into our world, via Gotham, of course. To stop him,
Batman enlists the help of Oliver Queen, who is not the Green Arrow this time
around, but he is a bow-hunter. He also shares a fateful connection to Bruce
Wayne.
The
way a lot of these alternate-world DC films reconceive their characters to fit
a radically different context is often quite clever. In this case, it does not
take much shoehorning to fit in Ra’s al Ghul, Jason Blood/Etrigan, and Kirk
Langstrom/Man-Bat. Probably, nobody is more greatly reinvented than Queen, but
it is hard to imagine many hardcore Green Arrow fans objecting, because he is the
film’s best character.
Along with Pele, he was the personification of New York sports in the
late 1970s. Reggie Jackson’s play on the field and his contentious relationship
with Yankees manager Billy Martin were welcome distractions from “The Summer of
Sam.” However, Jackson nearly became a notorious murderer himself, when he was brainwashed
to assassinate the Queen in The Naked Gun. That is way more movie
references than most athletes get, but Jackson was always at the center of the
New York media’s attention, whether he liked it or not. Jackson looks back at
his career highs and controversies in Alex Stapleton’s documentary Reggie,
which premiers today on Prime.
For
baseball fans, hearing Jackson take a call from Pete Rose at the beginning of
the film might just overshadow everything that follows it. Jackson always shot
from the hip, despite taking flak for it, so his candor in Stapleton’s film
should not be a surprise. Jackson has a lot to say about black participation in
Major League Baseball, both past and present. He also has a lot to unpack from
his own career, including five World Series rings and two World Series MVPs.
Jackson
won three World Series in Oakland, made the post-season twice with the
California Angels and now works for the Houston Astros, but he will always be
remembered as a New York sports legend. Therefore, it is fitting both Derek
Jeter and Aaron Judge make appearances to discuss Jackson’s mentorship.
Surprisingly,
the late George Steinbrenner’s image might be somewhat burnished by the film.
On the other, it might lower Billy Martin’s stock. Regardless, watching Reggie
will bring slightly more mature fans right back to the time when the
manager was constantly generating NY tabloid headlines, right alongside Jackson.
Love him or hate him, a good Billy Martin doc is seriously overdue.
Jackson
has a lot to say about the state of the game and society, which is important,
but the fun parts feature Jackson reminiscing with his friends and teammates,
like Rollie Fingers and Dave Stewart. There is also a lot of material that will
be new to more casual baseball fans, like Jackson’s unsuccessful bid to buy the
LA Dodgers, which didn’t fail due to a lack of money, considering Bill Gates
and Paul Allen were part of his management group.
Among gangster films, this one is unusual, because almost none of its
characters went to prison, but the director did. His crime was being Ukrainian
in Crimea, which is weird, considering all decent countries recognize Crimea as
part of Ukraine. Tragically, Putin saw it differently. Sentsov’s 2015-2019
stint in a Russian prison earned the director the Sakharov Award from the European
parliament. Today, the film’s leading man is fighting for his country on the
frontlines. Obviously, the current Ukrainian government has an antagonistic
relationship with Russia, but that was much less so during the lawless 1990s,
when Sentsov’s film is set. Life is hard and so is our protagonist’s head in
Sentsov’s Rhino: Ukrainian Godfather, which releases this Friday.
There
was a time when Rhino was a bullied little boy named Vova. However, the older
he got, the tougher he had to be. His upbringing under his alcoholic father was
not easy, as we see in an absolutely amazing time-lapse tracking shot that must
quite a challenge to set-up. At first, Vova was just a street thug, but when he
tangles with the wrong mobbed-up gym, he enlists with a rival gang for
protection.
While
his nickname is initially a source of embarrassment, its brutish implications are
helpful to his reputation. After a period of slow but steady advancement, Rhino
starts to make some aggressive moves of his own, which have violent consequences.
In fact, he will regret many of his life choices, as the older, world-weary
gangster confides to his mysterious companion, during the looking-back-in-retrospect
flashforwards.
Rhino
is
too naturalistic to be a proper slam-bang gangster movie, but it is also much more
violent and plot-driven than the average art-house social issue film. It very
definitely tries to capture the vibe of 1990s that cause the disillusionment
that contributed to the troubles of the 2000s. Had this period been more stable
and transparent, it is less likely a Russian-aligned thug like Yanukovych could
have risen to power. Indeed, this film is absolutely marinated in regret, on
both the individual and collective levels.
In lighthouse and deep-sea oil rig movies and series, like The Vanishing
and The Rig, characters often feel like the rest of the world might have
disappeared, leaving them stranded forever. For the rag-tag crew aboard this
post-apocalyptic ocean fort, that is a very real possibility. Their relief is distressingly
late and some of them are starting to act a little stir crazy in Tanel Toom’s Last
Sentinel, which opens this Friday in theaters.
The
seas have risen, but the two tiny surviving nations remain perpetually at war. It
is just four of them manning this remote, seabound military outpost (modeled on
WWII Britain’s Maunsell forts), but Sgt. Hendrichs will not let any of them
slack off. Cpl. Cassidy tries to be an intermediary between him and the grunts,
Sullivan and Baines, but it isn’t easy. Their relief is way, way overdue, but
when a ship finally arrives, unannounced, it is a cause of concern rather than
relief. In fact, Hendrichs almost uses the fort’s super weapon to blow them all
up.
That
would have been a mistake, but the empty vessel is still disconcerting. At
least it isn’t full of rats, like in Three Skeleton Key. It also holds
some supplies, as well as a good deal of mystery. Regardless, it is still a
sea-worthy ship, but Hendrichs is not about to let the squad abandon their post.
The
basic concept of this Waterworld-like world is familiar, but the
execution of the Estonian Toom (an Oscar nominee for the short film, The Confession)
is notably strong. The initial encounter with the derelict ship is surprisingly
tense, as are several subsequent sequences. The isolated setting is definitely
eerie and the spartan set design is highly effective. It all looks great, but
unfortunately, some of screenwriter Malachi Smythe later plot points stretch
credibility.
Vicky Soler is sort of like Inuyasha or Goku from Dragon Ball, but
instead of an anime hero, she is a bullied biracial French girl, who happens to
have an uncannily powerful sense of smell. She can identify and reproduce
anyone’s smell—and maybe even use that aroma to travel into their past. Her
family’s traumatic history turns out to be a really bad trip in Lea Mysius’s The
Five Devils, which opens Friday in New York.
Vicky’s
mother Joanne is distant, but that just makes her daughter even more codependent.
Her parents have a polite but obviously passionless marriage—to the point that
even Joanne’s crusty old father is offering her Dr. Ruth advice. Young Soler
has saved her mother’s scent, via some of her excess body lotion, which she
uses for a hit of motherly togetherness whenever Soler cannot be bothered with
her daughter. However, her latest huffs take her back in time, to her mother’s
high school years.
Those
time-travel interludes take on greater significance when she finally meets her
Aunt Julia, her father Jimmy’s sister, who was recently been released from
prison. Everyone in their small Alpine town seems to know about Julia Soler’s episode,
except Vicky. Regardless, she soon gets an eyeful of her mother’s erotically
charged relationship with Aunt Julia, before she married Vicky’s father. Weirder
still, the teenaged Aunt Julia of the past, appears to know when Vicky is
watching.
Five
Devils
is hard to exactly classify because it contains slippery elements of time-travel
science fiction, dark fantasy, and magical realism, but the underlying
fantastical engine driving the film mostly works. When you get the full picture
of the ironic cycle the family is caught up in, it really is quite compelling. Viewers should still be
warned, the first ten or fifteen minutes of scene-setting and dramatic establishment
are rather cold and standoffish, but once the film gets going in earnest, it is
strangely hypnotic.
Most young filmmakers are desperate for their first directing credit, but for
the journalists and documentarians who constitute the The Myanmar Film
Collective, identifying themselves would have lead to imprisonment, torture,
and death. Laudably, the non-Burmese who also contributed to this documentary,
also declined credit, as an expression of solidarity. Their brave underground films
shame the international media, who have largely under-reported the human rights
abuses following the February 1 coup. Here’s a “trigger warning:” reality is
brutal in The Myanmar Film Collective’s Myanmar Diaries, which premieres
Friday on OVID.tv.
One
thing is crystal clear from all the constituent parts of Myanmar Diaries—the
military regime has turned the nation into a true police state. No other words
describe the conditions the Burmese people live under. Several of the most
visceral and shocking segments were shot on smart phones or handheld devices.
Frankly, most or all of them should have gone viral worldwide, but most viewers
will likely see them here for the first time.
The
audience will witness protestors shot down, mothers dragged out of their homes
while their scared children cry and wail, as well as a defiant man
live-streaming his attempt to hold back the warrant-less police trying to break
down his door in the dead of night. On the other hand, we also see the
resistance, who clearly represent the vast majority of the people. By far, the most
memorable is the outraged auntie, who defiantly gives the “anti-riot” cops a verbal
dressing down sufficient to shame them all back to the stone age.
Perhaps
less consistent are the impressionistic interludes that express the fear,
paranoia, isolation, and loneliness of ordinary Myanmar citizens. You could
argue without irony that the entire film counts as a “horror” movie of sorts,
but the most successful interlude uses the visual vocabulary of horror movies
to represent people’s current fear.
In the original Quantum Leap series, Dr. Sam Beckett encountered “evil
leapers,” who were trying to set wrong events that had gone right. Dr. Ben Song’s
rival, Richard Martinez, a.k.a. “Leaper X,” insists he is not one of them, but
he would say that, wouldn’t he? Regardless, Song finds himself reluctantly working
with his presumed antagonist in “Ben, Interrupted,” tonight’s episode of Quantum
Leap.
This
time around, Song’s host is a private detective going undercover in a notorious
1950s mental asylum, sort of like Nelly Bly did, but without a good exit strategy
in place. Fortunately, Song has the Quantum Leap team and their AI, Ziggy, to
help guide him. His mission is to rescue his client’s sister, who was committed
by her husband, for the sake of a quick and easy divorce. However, Song probably
won’t be able to leap if one or both of them is lobotomized.
As
a further complication, Martinez leaps into the body of one of the thuggish orderly-enforcers.
He claims he wants to help, but Song is understandably wary. Nevertheless, he
does not have a lot of options.
This
is the first episode in a while that really digs into the “Leaper X” subplot. In
addition, there is also more intrigue and drama involving Janis Calavicci, who
apparently assisted Song make his unsanctioned leap. That means this episode
really involves time travel, rather than mere small-bore family melodrama. The
stakes are also huge, at least for Song.
This is the first cinematic foray into the Indonesian “Satria Dewa” superhero
universe—and probably the perfect time for it, considering how stale the Marvel
and DC franchises are getting. At least this is something different, inspired
the Mahabharata, albeit in a very modernized kind of way. Our hero still
fights the Kaurava, but now they are more like an evil, genetic secret society
in Hanung Bramantyo’s The Legend of Gatotkaca, which releases tomorrow
on DVD.
Yuda’s
mother Arimbi barely saved her son from a sinister supervillain, but the battle
cost her memory. Since his teen years, Yuda has cared for her, dropping out of
school to earn money. He therefore hoped to at least vicariously enjoy his
well-heeled friend Erlangga’s graduation, but instead the valedictorian is
mysteriously murdered on-stage.
Many
of Jakarta’s best and brightest have recently fallen victim to a serial killer,
who has the cops baffled. Of course, it is not really a mortal agent doing the
killing. It is the Kaurava secret society, especially Beceng, their chief
costumed assassin, who is knocking off those who carry the rival Pandava gene.
Beceng also killed the father and brother of Dananjaya, who is sort of like the
Hawkeye of the Satria Dewa universe. As Yuda starts asking questions, he meets
the small band of Pandava resistance against the Kaurava cabal, led by Dananjaya.
Yuda
also forges and alliance and perhaps something more with Agni, the daughter of
Erlangga’s professor. With all their help, Yuda will unlock the secret of his
mother’s mysterious heirloom, which holds the power of Gatotkaca, but he still
has a lot of butt-kickings in-store for himself, at the hands of Beceng and the
Kaurava.
Or
something like that. Bramantyo and co-writer Rahabi Mandra lean into the series
lore, presumably to please pre-existing franchise fans, but they often leave
newcomers a bit confused. Regardless, if you consider the film a Sanskrit
fusion of The X-Men and Underworld, you might generally get the
idea. In fact, many of the Javanese elements make a refreshing change from the vanilla
superhero movies Marvel and DC have been churning out (more Ant-Man and Shazam
movies, really?).
The
action is also pretty intense. Let’s put it this way, Yayan Ruhian (“Mad Dog”
from The Raid) plays Beceng—and he hasn’t lost a single step. He
definitely delivers in the fight scenes, making a spectacularly nasty bad guy.
Swedish-speaking Finnish writer Tove Jansson’s Moomins characters are popular throughout
Europe and maybe even more so in Japan, where there have been numerous anime
adaptations and one of two Moomins theme parks. However, they have a smaller
cult following here in America, mostly from fans of Japanese animation. The British
dub for Sky TV could still find an audience here, if a streamer picked it up,
given the voice talent (including Kate Winslet and Taron Egerton during earlier
seasons). For Moomins lovers, three episodes of the third season screen again
today during the 2023 New York International Children’s Film Festival.
Moomins
look like hippos, but they are trolls—of the pre-social media variety. They are
also quite sweet-tempered. It is mostly Moomins in Moominvalley, but they are a
few other creatures, like the Kangaroo-looking Sniff and some humanoids, who
are referred to as “Hemulens.” Perhaps for accessibility’s sake, the three
episodes selected for NYICFF feature the Moomins helping their human friends.
In
“Toffle’s Tall Tales,” Moomintroll (son of Moominpappa and Moominmamma) and
Sniff help the five-year-old-looking little boy Toffle, who was changed to
non-binary in this series (to appease the new kind of woke trolls), find a safe
place to stay while the residents of Moominvalley hibernate. Their journey gets
thoroughly complicated by Toffle’s penchant for spinning outrageous yarns. Conveniently,
Jansson has been dead since 2001, so she had no feedback on the revision to her
original character.
In
“Miss Fillyjonk’s Last Hurrah,” Moomintroll misdiagnoses a tiny chicken bone
lodged in her throat as inevitably fatal, so instead of trying to cure her, he
convinces his severe spinsterish neighbor to finally enjoy some adventures in
life, while she can. It is a very O. Henry-ish “carpe diem” episode, but
pleasantly so.
Finally,
in “Snufkin and the Fairground,” Moomintroll’s best friend (who displays
anarchist tendencies in Jansson’s books) takes over a popular amusement park,
after the previous owner resigns. Not surprisingly, he turns out to be a weak
manager.
The Twilight Zone had
its share of extra-terrestrials, but first contact and alien invasion were really
specialties of The Outer Limits. The was true right from the start—the very
start. The first episode aired that under the title, “The Galaxy Being” was
very slightly re-edited from the unaired pilot, appropriately known as “Please
Stand By.” That “being” was from another galaxy, who did respond well when he
suddenly found himself in our world. In honor of the show’s 60th
anniversary, the original pilot screens tonight at UCLA.
Sit
back and enjoy, because cosmic forces will be controlling the transmission we
are about to watch. Allan Maxwell is a brilliant scientist, who uses his radio
station as a cover for his underground SETI research. Basically, his DJ-brother
Gene “Buddy” Maxwell programs polite jazz and bachelor pad-ish easy listening.
It was probably a good spot on the dial to hear Joe Bushkin and Eddy Duchin, if
you could pick-it up. Dr. Maxwell deliberately keeps the output low, so it does
not interfere with his own experiments.
Much
to his surprise, Maxwell’s microwaves create a link through which he and a
mysterious alien from Andromeda start communicating. The scientist could continue
their trans-galactic exchange all day, but his wife insists he attend their
local town’s long-planned awards ceremony in his honor. He turns the station’s
output down even further, to maintain a stable connection, while the “Galaxy
Being” “holds the line,” but the fill-in DJ cranks it way up, inadvertently
dragging the alien into our world. Havok soon follows.
Obviously,
the network picked up Outer Limits, but they had creator Leslie Stevens
(who wrote and directed the pilot) somewhat water-down its intensity. They also
cut a line from the Galaxy Being that suggested his people might just come to
Earth and kick our butts, now that they knew of our existence. That is
especially unfortunate, because it represents one of the earliest pop-culture manifestations
of Cixin Liu’s “Dark Forest” concept, decades before the Chinese novelist’s Three-Body
trilogy.
Playing pinball is sort of like the video game experience, except the ball and
flippers are actually real. The game seems cool in a retro way now, but it was
some of the most fun you could have for a quarter in the early1970s.
Unfortunately, it was still banned in New York City, thanks to the Puritanism
of the Progressive reform movement. Inexperienced GQ journalist Roger
Sharpe played a major role in legalizing the game. Sharpe’s campaign for pinball
respectability is quite charmingly dramatized in Austin & Meredith Bragg’s Pinball:
The Man Who Saved the Game, an MPI-supported film, which releases today on
VOD and in select theaters.
As
a divorced twenty-five-year-old with hardly a quarter to his name, Sharpe came
to the City with vague dreams and limited prospects. However, when he finally
found a pinball machine, in an adult bookstore, the college pinball wizard
started to get his groove back. Then the store was raided—for the pinball
machines, not the porn.
By
this time, Sharpe had secured a junior writing position at GQ. He also
started dating Ellen, a very pretty but somewhat older single-mother working in
the same office building. First, Sharpe parlays his pinball outrage into his
first major GQ piece. After that, he is able to secure a book deal for
his illustrated pinball history. In the process, he interviews all the founding
fathers of the much-maligned pinball industry. As a result, he starts to make a
name for himself as a pinball expert. Soon, the trade industry group covering
pinball approaches Sharpe to testify on behalf of the game in front of the New
York City Council, but Sharpe is leery of potential negative attention.
Given
the title, it is probably a safe bet that Sharpe “saves the game,” or at least
contributes to the repeal of New York’s ban. However, the Braggs still make the
drama surprisingly pacey and entertqainingly grabby. Their use of the older, third-wall-breaking
Sharpe to offer sly commentary on the unfolding action works much better than in
previous films. Thanks to Dennis Boutsikaris’s portrayal of the somewhat more
mature and graying Sharpe (who was onboard with the film, as an executive
producer), all the exposition is weirdly fun and amusing. Frankly, we could
listen to an entire multi-part documentary, featuring Boutsikaris adopting
Sharpe voice, to talk about pinball history.
Yet,
throughout the film, the Braggs give equal weight and significance to Sharpe’s
relationship with Ellen and her son, Seth. As Sharpe, Boutsikaris explicitly
says there are things that are more important than pinball, in almost exactly
those terms. That means the younger Sharpe has more to do once he “saves the
game,” which is a refreshing break from the typical climatic testimony cliché.
As
Roger and Ellen, Mike Faist and Crystal Reed (also very good in Swamp Thing)
have insanely appealing chemistry, right from the start. Their relationship necessarily
has its ups and downs (otherwise this would be a pretty dull film), but viewers
immediately start rooting for them. It is also worth noting the work ethic and
values espoused by Ellen, who at one point explains how she grinds away as a
secretary to provide for her son, in order to avoid resorting to welfare. That
is really quite something to hear in a film.
Faist
and Reed are terrific handling the grounded romantic comedy. Bryan Batt and
Mike Doyle also deliver a lot of snarky laughs as Harry Coulianos and Jack Haber,
the now legendary art director and editor of GQ. Among other things, Pinball
nicely recreates the groovy milieu of 1970s magazine publishing.
The Norse Wolf Cross looks satanic, but it is actually Pagan. Either way, it
is a handy symbol for a horror movie. Hunter White was found with one when her
adopted father, a cop, responded to a call, regarding a baby wailing in a cemetery.
Having taken DNA tests and done extensive research, she secretly visits Norway
in search of her roots in Alex Herron’s Leave, which premieres on
Shudder tomorrow.
White
told her father she was leaving to start college at Georgetown (where The
Exorcist was set, a completely unrelated fact), but she is headed to Norway
instead. Her DNA is 99% Norwegian and she discovered Cecilia, a Norwegian Death
Metal vocalist, was playing in Boston the night she was abandoned. Despite a
rocky start, Cecilia turns sympathetic, deducing White is the birth daughter of
her now-institutionalized bassist, Kristian, and Anna Norheim, the girlfriend
her presumably murdered in a particularly grisly fashion.
From
there, Hunter follows the trail to the Nordheims, who are welcoming, but also
suspiciously hardcore fire-and-brimstone Christians. Some supernatural force
keeps telling White to “leave,” as per the title, but she keeps ignoring it.
That’s right, this film teases good old fashioned satanic panic, but turns into
to be all about evil Calvinists. It does not do itself any favors in this
regard. The film starts with the frighteningly evocative scene of White’s
discovery in the graveyard, but that is just about the film’s first, last, and
only scary moment. The rest is a bunch of silly stuff with sinister Evangelicals,
including a patriarch pushing eighty, who somehow consistently overpowers the
twenty-five year-old White.
When watching this documentary, the parallels between the Soviet Union’s
response to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the Chinese Communist Party’s
response to the Wuhan Covid outbreak look eerily comparable. Reports were
covered-ep and whistle-blowers were silenced, resulting in thousands of deaths
that might have been prevented. Yet, Nobel Prize winning oral historian
Svetlana Alexievich’s book was not just an expose. It also thoroughly documented
and expressed the love and grief of survivors. Luxembourgian filmmaker Pol
Cruchten adapted her book with his artistically rendered documentary, Voices
from Chernobyl, which premieres today on OVID.tv.
The
words are spoken in French, but they are adapted from the Ukrainian and Russian
of survivors—if “survivor” is the right term. Many widows of reclamation
workers and fire-fighters remain in mourning years after the disaster.
Alexievich also talked to a teacher, who explains how damaged her young
students have been by the incident. Physically, they are under-sized and
sickly, while psychologically, they are preoccupied with death.
Counter-intuitively, she are her colleagues are oddly pleased to see any signs
of traditional school children misbehavior, since it signals signs of inner
life.
We
also hear (or in many OVID viewers case, read in subtitles) the words of the
chief of the Belarusian nuclear authority, who had cautionary reports regarding
the Chernobyl disaster stolen from his office. Had the authorities acted on his
warnings, it would have saved hundreds of lives—maybe thousands, but the
Soviets preferred to pretend nothing was wrong, in hopes of avoiding an
international propaganda disaster. The lives of thousands of Ukrainians were
disposable towards that end. Remember, good old Mikhail Gorbachev was General
Secretary at this time—you can see his rotting portraits abandoned throughout
the wreckage of Pripyat Cruchten’s cameras capture.
Instead
of talking heads, Cruchten superimposes the words of Alexievich’s interview
subjects over scenes of ghostly Pripyat or carefully composed tableaux,
symbolically representing the horrors of Chernobyl. Stylistically, it is a lot
like experimental hybrid films, such as Scars of Cambodia or Into the Crosswind. Cruchten’s cast are more like interpretive dancers than
traditional thesps, but there is definitely something acutely expressive about
their screen presences.
Drive-ins were widely considered the big winner of Xi’s pandemic, because they
were the only theaters open during the shutdown—but not so fast, mister. It
turns out they also suffered from the same supply chain issues and staffing
woes that affected every other company. Often, opportunity turned into
frustration, but drive-in proprietors carried on. Writer-director-everything-else
April Wright follows eight drive-ins as they plug away amid the pandemic’s
aftermath in Back to the Drive-In, which releases today on VOD.
If
you have seen the documentary At the Drive-In about the Mahoning Drive-In in Pennsylvania, you will be familiar with the general state of
drive-in business. Converting to digital was a challenge for most, if not all,
but it was necessary to keep screening the latest Hollywood studio tent-poles.
Some, like Bengie’s Drive-In still largely feature new releases, except during
the pandemic shutdown, when they had to rely on older films.
However,
many drive-ins have found success with repertory programming. After all, what
sounds like more fun to watch on a hot summer night, a timeless favorite like Jaws
or Jurassic Park or the next Marvel product, carefully sanitized for
the Chinese market? In fact, the Greenville Drive-In really embraces the retro
rep spirit, designing special cookies and cocktails to accompany films like The
Great Lebowski (obviously, they were serving White Russians that night).
All
the featured drive-ins share a number of problems, like supply chain issues.
Everyone seems to have problems stocking staple items like popcorn cups. Of
course, they also complain about the cost of doing business with the studios.
However, the Wellfleet Drive-In on Cape Cod must contend with heavy fog that is
unique to their location.
One
of the cool things about Wright’s film is seeing the new Drive-Ins spring up, like
the Field of Dreams Drive-In the owners literally build in their Ohio back
yard. The owner-architects of the Quasar Drive-In in Nebraska emphasized nostalgia
in their design, incorporating vintage equipment acquired from shuttered
drive-ins around the country. Good luck to them both.
Honestly, the new leadership at Warners probably saved the DC franchise by axing
the unreleased Batgirl movie if reports were correct it killed off
Michael Keaton’s Batman. He was a lot of people’s introduction to the Caped
Crusader and superhero movies in general. Seriously, they bring put him back in
the mask, just to murder him? That would have produced some massive ill will. However,
killing off a hardly seen Batman in a CW show based on a DC video game is
another matter. Yes, Batman is about to die (violently), but his adopted son
and a rag-tag band of rejects hope to find his killer and clear their names in Gotham
Knights, developed by Natalie Abrams, Chad Fiveash, and James Stoteraux,
which premieres tomorrow on CW.
Turner
Hayes’ birth parents were also murdered, which was presumably why fellow “orphan”
Bruce Wayne adopted him. The wealthy philanthropist never revealed his secret
identity to Hayes. He seemed determined to keep his adopted son separate from his
Dark Knight world. Yet, he still trained Hayes extensively in martial arts and
fencing. The now-privileged teen only learns the truth when Batman is murdered,
presumably by Duela, the slightly unhinged daughter of the Joker and Harley
Quinn, and her current running mates, Harper Row (known in the comics as
Bluebird) and her trans brother Cullen.
Just
as Hayes and his platonic bestie, Stephanie Brown, start using the Bat-computer
to investigate possible payments to Duela’s crew, he finds himself framed as
the source of funds. Barely escaping the crooked cops trying to kill them, Hayes
reluctantly convinces the outsider-weirdos to team-up to prove their innocence.
In addition to Brown, they have an ally in Hayes’s classmate Carrie Kelley, who
also happened to be the final Robin—and isn’t wanted for murder.
Based
on mysterious coins that keep turning up, Hayes and company deduce the real
culprits are the Court of Owls, which is sort of like Gotham’s Illuminati, the
secret power pulling all the strings. Working with Duela and the Rows is not
easy, but as they start interfering with the Court’s criminal enterprises, they
gain a reputation as a new vigilante group dubbed the “Gotham Knights,” by a
press that is unaware they are also Gotham’s most wanted.
Gotham
Knights is
definitely a mixed bag, but the stuff that works makes it compulsively
watchable. As Hayes, Oscar Morgan too much of a cold fish to be a compelling
lead, but Olivia Rose Keegan is entertainingly twitchy and erratic as Duela.
Frankly, Navia Robinson portrays Kelley/Robin with the kind of grounded
charisma that should have made her the lead of the series, whereas the constant
whining of Fallon Smythe and Tyler DiChiara as the Row siblings gets to be a
chore to sit through.
Fortunately,
the series also gets some help from adults. Misha Collins is terrific as
District Attorney Harvey Dent, who will slowly start to believe Hayes’s claims
of innocence. Of course, since his name is Harvey Dent, he will have his own
issues to deal with. Doug Bradley (of Hellraiser fame) has one of the
best guest-starring turns of the year in episode six, playing Joe Chill, the
gunman convicted of killing Bruce Wayne’s parents, who wants to speak to Hayes
before he is finally executed.
1989 was a great year, except maybe here in New York. The city was about to descend
into a period of chaos, ended by Giuliani’s election in 1993. Dr. Ben Song will
not do anything to prevent that this leap. Instead, as a public defender, he
scrambles to save a young man who will be wrongly imprisoned for manslaughter
in “Ben Song for the Defense,” tomorrow night’s episode of Quantum Leap.
The
clever thing about this episode is it breaks format slightly, without really
breaking format. Since Addison Augustine’s military background was so helpful
to Song in the previous episode, she hands the holographic baton over to her
Quantum Leap Project colleague Jenn Chu, because of her knowledge of the legal
system. Chu got her legal degree while serving time, so the former hacker
certainly has some insights.
Unfortunately,
Song’s host is so overworked, because crime in New York is starting to explode,
she hardly has the time to give Camilo Diaz’s case the attention it deserves.
No, that is not how the series’ writers room spins things. Regardless, Song has
to get Diaz off, so he can save his younger brother from the gangs trying to
get their hooks into him.
There
is some decent courtroom drama in “For the Defense,” which harkens back to
classic episodes of the original series, such as “So Help Me God.” However, the
writers cannot help including little digs at the 1980s, which leads to some
credibility issues, like Song’s host being in a romantic same-sex relationship
with the second chair Assistant DA on her case.
A SPY AMONG FRIENDS is a carefully crafted espionage thriller that depicts the treachery and hypocrisy of Kim Philby. It turns out it was easier to admire the workers' paradise from afar than to live under it. EPOCH TIMES review up here.
This classic tale is all about a prince trying to save a princess and it
starts with a monster attack. We typically do not see it this way, but Mozart’s
most popular opera is a total quest fantasy. Therefore, maybe it isn’t totally inappropriate
to combine it with elements of Harry Potter, just slightly goofy. Young Tim
Walker does not simply study Mozart’s opera, he journeys into it in Florian
Sigl’s The Magic Flute, produced by Roland Emmerich, which is now playing
in Los Angeles.
Walker,
a Sensitive Andrea Bocelli copycat, has been granted rare permission to join
the student body of Hogwarts-like Mozart Academy of Music, because of the
recent death of his alumnus father. Before he died, Walker’s father asks him to
return the rare Magic Flute manuscript he nicked from the school’s
library. He tries to sneak it back his first night there, triggering the
mystical portal to the world of The Magic Flute.
Accepting
Prince Tamino’s quest, Walker constantly sneaks out of his room at 3:00 to
reinsert himself into the opera. His disappearing acts thoroughly confuse his
sidekick Papageno, the opera’s comic relief. Meanwhile, in the real world, his
flakiness annoys his roommate, Paolo, and his prospective girlfriend, Sophie.
The
look of both worlds is quite amazing. The “Potterizing” of The Magic Flute is
sometimes quite clever, but Walker really ought to be better prepared for the
trials he faces, considering how intently he studies the titular Mozart opera.
Regardless,
probably the best part of the film, both in terms of special effects and vocal delivery
is the Queen of the Night, played by real deal opera diva Sabine Devieilhe. She
definitely rises above the often-awkward-sounding contemporary English
translation of Mozart’s libretto.
Nobody
else can match her range, but wisely, Jack Wolfe and Niamh McCormack really do
not try, as Walker and his potential real-world love interest. Instead, they
perform some likable vintage pop. Their romantic chemistry is lightweight, but agreeable.
Who better to catch a serial killer than an eighty-something year-old
anthropologist? It probably makes more sense than asking another serial killer
for help, especially since Dr. Mackles is an expert in Muti, the traditional spiritual
medicine practiced in Southern Africa. It appears there is a rogue practitioner
committing sacrificial murders to benefit his clients in George Gallo’s The
Ritual Killer, which releases today in theaters and on VOD.
The
guilt Det. Lucas Boyd carries after his daughter’s death has left him nearly
non-functional, except when chasing violent criminals, who then bear the full
brunt of his rage. He and his partner start investigating a trail of bodies
mutilated with surgical precision that lead to the mysterious Randoku. The
large, scarred man definitely stands out, but he is still frustratingly hard to
catch.
To
interpret the African writing and exotic spices found at a crime scene, Boyd
enlists the help of Dr. Mackles, an African Studies professor, who is clearly
freaked out by them. Initially, he tries to play cool and beg off the case, but
he inevitably starts advising Boyd on the Muti aspects of the ritual sacrifices.
That
all sounds like a passable premise, but the screenplay (unpromisingly credited to
three scribes: Bob Bowersox, Francesco Cinquemani, and Luca Gilberto) proceeds
in such an orderly straight line, it turns into a total snooze. At least the
one moment of lunacy at the end gives viewers something to remember, but the
rest is the stuff of mediocre 1990s TV-movies.
The
legendary Morgan Freeman looks about as bored playing Mackles as he did in the
underwhelming Vanquish, which was also helmed by Gallo (maybe Freeman
should stop working with him). The saving grace is Cole Hauser, whose hard-boiled
brooding as Boyd is better than the film deserves.
