Melchior Wakenstede is not a doctor but he understands herbal remedies. When all
else fails, he can sell a cup of wine, which always helps his customers feel
better. Being a man of reason, by Medieval standards, the Sheriff immediately
deputizes Wakenstede when a knight is murdered in the castle. Of course, discovering
the guilty party and bringing them to justice are very different propositions
in Elmo Nuganen’s smash Estonian hit, Melchior the Apothecary, which
screens again during the 2023 Palm Springs International Film Festival.
Knight
Clingenstein just arrived in Tallinn from Gotland, but he already managed to
make enemies with some of the locals. However, the coins stuffed in the mouth
of his severed head were from Gotland. Wakenstede pretty quickly figures out
the how, but the question of who remains.
In
addition to a local merchant Clingenstein swindled (through force), Wakenstede’s
inquiry takes him to the local monastery, where the brothers gave shelter to a
hunchback who shared some nasty history with the knight. However, he is most
likely not the mystery “Prisoner of Tallinn,” Wakenstede finds references to.
Nor is it the sole remaining inmate of Tallinn’s municipal dungeon. That would
be Rinus, the mad leper who murdered Wakenstede’s father.
Obviously,
this is a highly sensitive scandal. Even the shrewd Wakenstede could use some
help, but the Sheriff is entirely out of his depth. Providentially, a prospective
apprentice presents herself to Wakenstede under the assumed (and masculine
name) of “Gerke.” It is pretty obvious to viewers she is a woman who will fall
for the apothecary, but apparently people’s gender-bending radar was not very well
attuned during the Middle Ages.
Frankly,
the business of Gerke’s passing is not very convincing, but the mystery is
definitely intriguing stuff. The secret is not quite as erudite as The Name
of the Rose (the original novel, at least), but the Medieval historical
conspiracy underpinning it all will definitely appeal to fans of Umberto Eco
and Arturo Perez-Reverte. It also shrewdly depicts the competing powers of the
Medieval Church and state, with Wakenstede and his allies caught in the middle.
Marten
Metsaviir does not look very Medieval, but he instills Wakenstede with a lot of
charisma and smarts. He also develops some nice chemistry with Maarja Johanna
Magi, as Keterlyn Kordt (a.k.a. Gerke), which hopefully will deepen over the
next two films. Yes, all three were shot back-to-back during the pandemic—a gamble
that paid off, considering the first two have already done huge box office in
the Baltic Republics.
You don't see a lot of hospitals in science fiction, aside from James White’s
Sector General novels. Dr. Ben Song would have preferred to keep it that
way. He is a theoretical physicist (time travel scientist) rather than a
medical doctor. However, he will have to practice as best he can when he leaps
into a first-year resident’s body in “Paging Dr. Song,” this week’s episode of Quantum
Leap, which airs tonight on NBC.
It
turns out delivering the baby in the cold-open will be the easiest task presented
to him, while he inhabits the good doctor. Somehow, this leap involves three
patients, who have not checked in yet. He finds Eli Jackson rather quickly, but
the retired corporate lawyer wants to check out immediately, rather than
transfer to oncology for the cancer treatment he urgently needs. Song will have
to convince him, but he will need help from Jackson’s estranged daughter, who
happens to be his host’s mentor, third-year resident Dr. Sandra Turk.
“Paging”
builds to a climax involving a subplot in which an experimental drug the
hospital is testing will cause the death of one of Song’s patients. It is your
basic Big Pharma demonization, but it feels rather dated in the era of Covid
vaccine controversies. Seriously, do the writers want to encourage greater
skepticism and distrust of the pharmaceutical industry at a time when only 68%
of the United States is fully vaccinated?
On
the plus side, this episode again draws on the military background of Song’s fiancée
and holographic guide, Addison Augustine, who helps coach Song before breaking
some hard news to a patient. Caitlin Bassett is terrific delivering the second-best
speech of the series so far, right behind Magic Williams’ explanation of his
experience as one of Sam Beckett’s original Quantum Leaps.
Nobody is ever going to forget David Bowie starred in Nicolas Roeg’s The Man
Who Fell to Earth, so, wisely, the creators of this series avoided any need
to accuse the “Wild Eyed Boys” of “toxic fandom.” Their series adaptation of
Walter Tevis’s novel builds on the 1976 film, instead of trying to tear it down
(in a way that is somewhat akin to the 2022 Quantum Leap series). Let’s
give thanks to Bowie, for being such an icon. Decades after Thomas Jerome
Newton arrived on Earth, another alien from Anthea comes looking for him in
Alex Kurtzman & Jenny Lumet’s 10-episode The Man Who Fell to Earth, which
releases this Tuesday on DVD.
It
turns out Newton was an adept, whereas Faraday is just a drone on Anthea. Yes, this
series’ intergalactic sociology is as didactically class-conscious as afternoon
tea at the Glasgow Labour Party HQ. Environmental catastrophe is also on the
horizon for us, but it is already choking Anthea to death. Newton was supposed to
be the planet’s best hope, but he has gone dark, thanks to human fears and his
own adoption of earthly vices. Faraday is supposed to get him back on track. Of
course, his name really isn’t Faraday. He just picks it up from the intake
officer, who processes him after he is arrested for being naked and weird.
Aside
from Newton, the only name Faraday has in his mental rolodex is that of Justin
Falls (presumably short for “Justina”), who should have invented cold fusion,
but came up tragically short. According to his instructions, Faraday is
supposed to help her finish the job, but he needs the double-secret patents
locked in the vault of Newton’s old tech company. Falls was already taking care
of her daughter and her ailing father, but she reluctantly agrees to guide
Faraday on his quest.
After
Newton went-off the grid (and we mean way, way off), the Flood family took over
the company with the CIA’s backing. Yes, the CIA are the bad guys, yet again.
Spencer Clay is the worst of them—and also the most neurotic. Newton has been one
of his two driving obsessions, so when he discovers the arrival of a new
Anthean, he hopes Faraday can lead him to Newton.
The
reclusive weirdo really is out there somewhere. Occasionally, he will even communicate
with Faraday, his former drone back in the day, through the Force, or whatever.
Who could credibly step into David Bowie’s platform shoes? Actually, the
casting of Bill Nighy is pretty shrewd. He has a similar physicality and he projects
the right degree of oddity. Each episode is titled after a Bowie song too, so
Kurtzman and Lumet definitely show the proper respect.
The
first six episodes or so are surprisingly engaging, thanks in large measure to
Chiwetel Ejiofor’s distinctive performance as Faraday. Instead of cutely quirky,
like Starman or Brother from Another Planet, he is so alien (literally)
he is almost non-functional. Naomie Harris portrays Falls with toughness and sensitivity
that successfully counterbalances him. She is definitely one of the best things
going for the series. Plus, Martha Plimpton has a terrific guest shot in the
first episode as Officer Faraday and Zoe Wanamaker is a showstopper as Watt,
Faraday’s unlikely advisor.
Some of these graduating Spetsnaz recruits have likely gone on to commit war
crimes in Ukraine, or died as cannon fodder. Dima Ilyukhin, the filmmaker’s
cousin, was already the latter, having been killed during one of Putin’s black
ops in Dagestan. Alexander Abaturov contrasts the Spetsnaz militarist indoctrination
with the grief and despair of Ilyukhin’s family in The Son, which
premieres this coming Tuesday on OVID.tv.
There
is no commentary on Dagestan or the related operations in Chechnya and Crimean
Ukraine, so Abaturov never directly criticizes Putin’s fascist military campaigns.
However, he captures the tragic results for Ilykhin’s family in scenes of
unvarnished intimacy, which definitely would not be good for Putin’s business, if
more Russians had the opportunity to watch it.
Frankly,
the training sequences do not look particularly extraordinary or damning. Yes,
the process is physically and emotionally demanding. That is what military
discipline is like. Still, I hope someone in the U.S. military eventually
watches this film, in case they pick up on something lost on us civilians.
Regardless,
anyone can see the anguish of Ilykhin’s parents. Surprisingly, his mom seems to
be handling it better. She even seems to be settling into the role of grieving
military mother and the minor leadership status it entails. However, his father
appears to be literally and profoundly inconsolable.
She mostly lives out of her truck, like Frances McDormand in Nomadland,
but she can send people to jail with the bang of a gavel. Kim Wheeler is one of
the last traveling circuit court judges in America, who has just been appointed
to dispense justice in a network of remote rural Nevada communities.
Unfortunately, her predecessor met a rather untimely death. Since Wheeler is
probably even more principled when it comes to applying the law, she inevitably
becomes a target too in Reba McEntire’s the Hammer, which premieres
tomorrow night on Lifetime.
Technically,
Wheeler should have been nick-named “The Gavel.” Regardless, she did indeed go
viral when she knocked a crazed defendant cold when he charged the bench on her
first day. Apparently, the nomad lifestyle suits her fine, since she never
wants to stay in proper motel rooms when traveling the circuit with her bailiff.
Awkwardly,
her predecessor died in the trailer park bordello owned by her mildly estranged
sister, Kris. Now that she is back in the area, Wheeler tries to patch things
up with her, but it is probably too late for her dementia-plagued father,
especially since the judge has yet to forgive him for abusing her as a child.
Frankly, the abuse-themed sub-plot rather clashes with the TV movie’s generally
light-hearted sassy tone.
The
biggest case on Wheeler’s docket is the negligent homicide charge lodged
against tech entrepreneur Bart Crawford’s surly and entitled son. The late
judge refused him bail and Wheeler declines to over-turn his judgement. That
definitely makes Crawford a prime suspect, but the judge still finds him
strangely fun to drink with.
Indeed,
somewhat logically, the best scenes showcase the chemistry between McEntire and
her real-life off-screen partner Rex Linn (who recurred on CSI: Miami and
co-starred in the Oscar-worthy Zombeavers), as Wheeler and Crawford.
This is not exactly the most complex screenplay ever filmed, but the uncertain
direction of their relationship is entertaining to watch.
James Cameron's mega-expensive Avatar saga owes a debt of gratitude to William
Cameron Menzies’ 1953 cult classic. Up to that point, science fiction had always
been the cheapest of the B-movies. His film was the first alien invasion movie
filmed in color and possibly the first science fiction film overall, depending
on how you define science fiction and whether you allow far less vivid earlier
color processes. The SuperCinecolor process became obsolete soon after it was
produced, so it presented considerable restoration challenges, but it looks
terrific in the new 4K-restored Invaders from Mars, which ships on
BluRay this month from Ignite Films.
Little
David MacLean wants to be a scientist like his indulgent father George, which
is why he is constantly watching the sky late at night. This is how he happens
to be the only Earthling who witnesses an unusual meteorite-like object crashing
in the dunes behind his house. Through the same telescope, he sees his father sucked
into the sand. The next morning, his father returns, but he is not nearly as
cool as he used to be. Likewise, the two police officers investigating his
reported disappearance return from the dunes behaving in a similarly cold,
withdrawn, and contemptuous manner.
Before
long, young MacLean finds other adults in town acting equally suspiciously, including
the chief of police. (It is important to note Invaders predates both Don
Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the Jack Finney novel it was
based on.) However, Dr. Patricia Blake is at least willing to hear him out and they
soon learn his pseudo mentor, astronomer Dr. Arthur Kelston, already harbored
suspicions an invasion could be underway.
Invaders
deserves
a place in the holy quartet of alien invasion films, alongside Body Snatchers,
The Thing from Another World, and the George Pal-produced War of the World, which Invaders beat into theaters by a few months. Each film
has its own merits and its own unique spin on the alien menace.
Menzies
keen visual sensibilities definitely sets this film apart from subsequent
knock-offs. Perhaps most acclaimed for his art and production design work,
Menzies took a rare double credit as director and production designer on Invaders—and
he put his stamp on nearly every scene. At times, he harkens back to the German
Expressionists, with sequences like those in the police station, using scale sets
built to accentuate a child’s perspective. Given how much consideration went
into the look of the film, it is nice to be able to better appreciate it with
the new restoration.
Arguably,
Invaders does not get the credit it deserves as a cultural trail-blazer.
Beyond employing expensive color for formerly trashy sf, it depicts Dr. Blake
as MacLean’s savior. She is a doctor, not a nurse. She is also sufficiently
intuitive to recognize little David is absolutely terrified—and the adults
around him are very strange. Helena Carter plays her with smarts and
sensitivity, but her character was not presented as forcefully in the cheap-looking
reshoots ordered a year later for the European market, without Menzies’ participation.
(Ignite includes then as bonus content, but they add little to the viewing
experience.)
Is there a more frightening prospect than watching a stranger’s home
movies? At least Paul Owens never breaks out the old school slide tray. To be
fair, he puts his father’s old VHS camcorder footage to creative use, achieving
a Boyhood-like effect in LandLocked, which releases tomorrow in
theaters and on-demand.
As
he explains in a video tape, Mason’s father arranged to have their old family
home demolished a year after his death. It is still packed with the memories
and detritus of the years they spent living there, so Mason has come to pick
over whatever might be worth taking. While rummaging, he comes across a
camcorder that mysteriously records scenes from their past.
Despite
visits from his brothers, Mason becomes increasingly obsessed with revisiting
and capturing the past. It seems like their family history was mostly happy,
but there are hints of something ominous lingering over the house. Something
bad must have happened, right? Why else would his father want it razed to the
ground?
There
are a few scenes of some kind of supernatural or fantastical something.
However, LandLocked is mostly about mundane ghosts—the artefacts and
stains that stubbornly persist, reminding us of the past. It is a thoughtful
genre film, but Owens (screenwriter-director-cinematographer-everything else)
sometimes gets lost down the same rabbit hole as his protag (and real-life brother).
Nevertheless, the marriage of the vintage home movies with the original footage
is eerily realistic. It is more than “found footage,” but it is more believable
than most found footage films.
Deep sea oil rigs are an effective setting for movies like ffolkes and
The Burning Sea and series like Brazil’s Ilha de Ferro (“Iron
Island”), because when something goes wrong out there, the crew has to fix it
out there. Far off in the Scottish North Sea, Kinloch Bravo station boss Magnus
MacMillan has all the usual personnel challenges, but his team must also face a
fantastical (and perhaps even primordial) threat in creator David Macpherson’s
six-episode The Rig, which premieres Friday on Prime Video.
Many
of the crew, especially Baz Roberts were already upset, because they were
bumped from their scheduled rotational flight home, to accommodate a corporate
meeting arranged by company hack, Rose Mason. Unfortunately, that chopper won’t
be coming anyway when the weather takes a freakish turn and all the
communications signals cut out.
Tempers
flare when Roberts is hurt during the storm, perhaps because Mason’s
not-so-secret workplace lover, Fulmer Hamilton did not fully follow procedures
and protocols. On the plus side, Roberts physically recovers at a superhuman
pace. However, he seems to have a personality-altering “infection.” Between creepy
Roberts and Lars Hutton, an openly insubordinate, crusty old field worker, MacMillan
will have unnecessary distractions inside the platform, diverting his attention
from the growing danger outside.
As
you might guess, there is an environmental angle to all this ominous chaos, not
unlike Larry Fessenden’s The Last Winter, but Macpherson and his
co-writers present and explain it with much more intelligence. They are clearly
sf-literate, considering MacMillan’s trusted manager Alwyn Evans is often seen
reading John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes.
Despite his frail, dissolute image, Edgar Allan Poe fared rather well as an Army
enlisted man, rising to the rank of Sergeant Major. Rather unconventionally,
his success as a soldier convinced his patron to secure Poe an appointment to
West Point, where he effectively started over, as the Academy’s oldest cadet.
He is now probably the most celebrated cadet to be court martialed and
expelled. As this films starts, Poe has not yet completely sabotaged his
officer prospects, but he is happy to assist Det. Augustus Landor’s
investigation, at the expense of his studies in Scott Cooper’s The Pale Blue
Eye, which premieres Friday on Netflix.
Remember,
Poe’s reputation as a drunken basket case is largely the result of a slanderous
biography, written by his greatest literary rival, Rufus Wilmot. However, all
objective sources agree Poe did not thrive under the Academy’s discipline. The
cadet found strung-up in a noose presumably had it worse. It certainly looks
suspicious, especially when the body is subsequently mutilated in a ritualistic
manner, so the Superintendent (a position that would be held by Robert E. Lee
and William Westmoreland) recruits retired New York City Det. Landor to investigate
death, which becomes the first of several violent crimes.
Despite
Poe’s poetic soliloquys, Landor recognizes the cadet’s intelligence, so he
recruits him to be his eyes and ears. Eager to help cast an unflattering light on
the military academy, Poe immediately accepts. However, as Poe ingratiates
himself with the dead cadet’s social circle, largely through heavy drinking, he
falls for Lea Marquis, the sister of the Academy’s alpha cadet and the daughter
of West Point’s physician, the questionably competent Dr. Daniel Marquis.
Essentially,
Pale Blue Eye is a mystery, but Cooper’s adaptation of Louis Bayard’s
source novel cleverly incorporates elements of gothic horror and the occult.
Yet, the final revelation sequence rivals the conclusions of some of the best
Agatha Christie films.
Compared
to William Mosley in Raven’s Hollow and John Cusack in The Raven,
Harry Melling might be the most Poe-looking movie Poe yet. Melling still portrays
Poe as a bit of mess, but a romantic, romanticizing mess, rather than non-functional
Wilmot-suggested mess. However, Christian Bale is even more compelling as the
grizzled and tormented Landor. He slow
burns like nobody’s business. Plus, Toby Jones is appropriately squirrelly and
off-puttingly nebbish as Dr. Marquis and Timothy Spall is suitably gruff as
Superintendent Player.
It is nice to see some filmmakers resist the temptation of virtue-signaling.
Of course, even if Jean-Marc Mineo made a show of cutting ten minutes of “gun
violence” from his latest film (like James Cameron claims he did), there would
still be one-hundred six minutes of guns blazing left. Basically, the other two
minutes consists of our hero sitting on the couch watching cartoons. He has
been difficult for his wife and daughter to live with since he came home from a
mission-gone-bad, but when terrorists take his family hostage, he immediately
reverts to action-mode in Mineo’s Last Resort, which opens this Friday
in theaters.
Michael
Reed was left for dead in Syria, but it was his captors who ended up dying.
Since then, he has been such a mope around the house, his wife Kim is planning
to leave him. She even went to the bank with their daughter Anna to open her
own account. Unfortunately, they are taken hostage by a group of Islamic terrorists
led by Cooper, a ruthless mercenary. It turns out they are really after a WMD
stashed in one of the safety deposit boxes. Of course, Cooper thinks he can
stall and deceive the Bangkok police, but Reed easily infiltrates the bank and
starts knocking off Cooper’s gun-toting extremists, one by one.
Admittedly,
Last Resort is not exactly original (the Die Hard elements are so
obvious, they hardly need pointing out), but it goes about its business with
gusto. It delivers dozens of shoot-outs and fight scenes that are all executed
with energy and clarity. This is quality VOD-action workmanship. Mineo and much
of the cast and crew previously collaborated on Bangkok Revenge. Since
then, they have learned to play to their strengths. There is considerably less
extraneous drama in Last Resort, and even more action.
Are we suitably prepared for a potential encounter with an alien
intelligence. Sure, there are plenty of governmental and UN protocols. That was
true for global pandemics too, but when one actually happened, a lot of that
went out the window. Also, do we really feel comfortable with the prospect of
the United Nations managing first contact? After all, the current UN Council on
Human Rights includes China, Cuba, Sudan, and Kazakhstan. (Russia was a member
too, until April of last year.) Scientists might handle the science the way
this hypothesizing hybrid-documentary suggests, but the political leaders are
another question. At least, screenwriter-director Nic Stacey encourages us to
think about the issues and process in First Contact: An Alien Encounter,
which premieres Wednesday on PBS.
It
all (hypothetically) starts with a transmission that does not act like any
other signal our interstellar telescopes have picked up before. However, there
is still some precedent for it, like the 1977 “Wow! Signal” detected at Ohio
State University. Earth had never picked up any similar since then—until (hypothetically)
now.
Over
the course of 12 days, Stacey’s fictional scientists determine the object’s
trajectory and identify potential star systems that could be the source, based
the elements they detect. Meanwhile, real scientists, like George Mason
University Prof. (and Baking Impossible judge) Hakeem Oluseyi explain
the underpinning science and technology that drives their investigation.
In
many ways, First Contact is very similar in tone to Michael Madsen’s
docu-essay The Visit, but it actually creates a case study to show how
this could all play out. It is worth noting, nobody explicitly refers to Chinese
sf writer’s Liu Cixin’s “dark forest” concept that argues any first contact
must be assumed hostile, because the potential downside is so profound.
Unfortunately,
the pacing of First Contact is also comparable to Madsen’s
unapologetically cerebral Visit. However, Stacey is much more concerned
with the impact first contact would also have on the public consciousness,
showing how each new revelation is reported in the media—and reacted to by
social media.
If you could travel through time, preventing Clifford Brown’s fatal auto
accident and the plane crash that killed Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, and the
Big Bopper could be musically rewarding ways to use that technology. Dr. Ben
Song will have that chance when he leaps into the body of the bodyguard working
for Carly Farmer, a fictional late 1970s pop singer. However, even after he
saves her from a freak stage accident, someone still murders her a few days
later. Despite Song’s efforts, the killer remains lethally persistent and motivated
in the “Fellow Travelers” episode of the Quantum Leap continuation series,
which premieres tonight on NBC.
Despite
the title, this episode does not feature the rival leaper introduced in “Salvation or Bust,” or 1950s Communist sympathizers. This is basically the Quantum
Leap take on The Bodyguard, with Farmer being a Carly Simon-like vocalist,
who is starting to fall for her bodyguard, Jack Armstrong. Farmer basically
understands her manager is a snake, but she does not realize he has manipulated
her to turn against her former-junkie sister Jamie.
Unfortunately,
someone is also about to frame Jamie for the murder of Farmer. Each time Song
prevents her death, the mystery killer simply murders her “again” the next day.
This happens to be a particularly cleverly-written episode, because much of the
dialogue exchanged by Song and Addison Augustine, his fiancée and holographic
guide, appliers both to Armstrong’s efforts to save Farmer and Song’s
revelation that his unsanctioned premature leap was intended to save her life
at a future date. If only he could imagine the details.
Many laid claim to inventing it, including a police officer and an academic. Somewhat
ironically, it was the cop who worried about its civil liberties implications.
The academic was the weirdo who created Wonder Woman. Right from the start, the
so-called “polygraph” was controversial, but it eventually supplied some work
for ambulance chaser F. Lee Bailey, who hooked people up to it on his early
1980s reality TV show. The history and disputed authorship of the polygraph is
chronicled in writer-director Rob Rapley’s The Lie Detector, which airs
Tuesday as part of the current season of American Experience.
John
Larsen was a rookie cop with a PhD, who actually wanted to make policing more
scientific and less thuggish. On the Berkley, CA police force, he had a
reformer Chief, who was open to his potential creations. A lot of shrinks had
already created dodgy lie detectors, measuring one thing or another, but with
the help of his high school intern, Leonarde Keeler, Larsen put them all
together and created the iconic print out of the subject’s responses.
Yet,
Larsen quickly started second guessing his invention after it supposedly help
solve a rash of thefts at a Berkley women’s dorm. He would argue his device
only measures strong emotional responses and not necessarily lies. However,
Keeler broke with his one-time mentor, applying his lie detector with great fanfare
in Los Angeles. William Marston was an inventor of one of the half-baked
predecessors, but he could talk a good game. Eventually, the three became
bitter rivals of each other in the media.
Rapley’s
documentary is only one-hour long, but it tells an interesting story. The
subject definitely raises issues regarding civil liberties and law enforcement,
but it does so in a reasonable, levelheaded manner. It helps that all of his
talking heads are real experts, rather than cheesy celebrities trying to virtue-signal.
Hong Sang-soo’s films do not usually
bring to mind the career of American actor Neal McDonough (seen in films like 1922
and the series Yellowstone), but one of his latest characters also happens
to be an actor who refused to perform in love scenes. While McDonough admirably
takes his commitment to his wife seriously, Young-ho maybe got ahead of himself
with his girlfriend Ju-won. Of course, communication is awkwardly imperfect for
everyone in Hong’s Introduction, which screens during MoMI’s Curator’s Choice series.
At a mere sixty-six minutes, Introduction has
the virtue of being Hong’s shortest film released this year—out of a whopping
total of three. It also happens to be improvement over The Novelist’s Film.
It still lacks the playfulness of his best films, but the cagey temporal jumps
harken back to the old Hong. He also rather deviously has his characters
withhold information until late in their conversations, to keep viewers
somewhat in the dark.
In the first part, we see Young-ho cooling his
heels in his semi-estranged doctor-father’s waiting room, hoping to ask for
money to allow him to study abroad. Part 2 is a flashback, wherein he visits
his (future ex-) girlfriend in Berlin, where she is studying fashion. Hong
flashforwards again in Part 3, revealing his relationship did not last, despite
his self-defeating on-screen abstinence.
Dionne Warwick almost sang a Bond theme,
but “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” was replaced by Tom Jones’ “Thunderball” at the
last minute, because the producers were so literal-minded. Nobody mentions it
in her documentary, probably because she had 56 other singles that hit the
charts, making her one of the top-selling recording artists of all time.
Warwick looks back on her life and career in David Heilbroner & Dave Wooley’s
Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over, which airs Sunday night on CNN.
Warwick is widely considered the first vocalist
to fully crossover from R&B to pop. Her long association with the
song-writing duo Burt Bacharach and Hal David is the major reason why. They
have been dismissed as loungey, but tunes like “Alfie,” “I’ll Never Fall in
Love Again,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” and “Always Something There to
Remind Me” are quite interesting musically. If nothing else, Heilbroner and
Wooley will convince viewers the time has come for an in-depth documentary
profile of Bacharach.
Jazz fans will also be interested to know
Warwick was twice married to jazz musician William Elliott, who was a sideman
with Willis “Gator” Jackson and co-led a session with Joe Thomas. Their first
marriage was sort of a false start, but the second take lasted twelve years—and
Warwick’s memories of it sound mostly positive. It was with Elliott that
Warwick had her two sons, Damon and Elliott, who are far and away the doc’s
funniest interview subjects.
Everyone reaches a point where they
decide they have to start acting like grown-ups and accept responsibility. For most people, that is the
time when they start showing up to work on-time and paying their bills. Maxine
Ann Carr faced this crossroads when the police started suspecting her fiancée,
Ian Huntley had abducted and murdered two ten-year-old girls in Soham. The vast
majority of the British public following the case would argue Carr arrived at
her turning earlier, when she knowingly provided Huntley a false alibi and
therefore bears some moral and legal culpability as an accomplice after the
fact. Writer Simon Tyrrell tries to maintain some ambiguity during the
three-part Maxine, which is probably why so many British viewers hated
it. Be that as it may, Maxine premieres for American audiences tomorrow
on BritBox.
The working-class Huntley somewhat swept Carr
off her feet, but he quickly showed his abusive and controlling true nature. Nevertheless,
Carr remained loyal to him, largely accepting his evasive excuses regarding his
past legal troubles. Somehow, he managed to get a caretaker
(janitorial/maintenance) position at a Soham school, because his background
check was never carried out, due to bureaucratic snafus. Carr also found
employment as a teacher’s assistant, since she had a clean record.
Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells were two of the
girls she helped teach, so maybe she really was as upset by the news of their
abduction as she presented to the world. She had been out-of-town when they
were abducted, but she agreed to pretend otherwise, thereby alibiing Huntley.
Initially, Tyrrell and director Laura Way lead us to suggest she genuinely
believed he was innocent, but legitimately concerned he would be scapegoated
because of his record. However, his dodgy behavior just gets progressively more
and more suspicious.
Neither the victims nor their grieving families
appear in Maxine in any dramatically substantial way. That does mean
they are not Tyrrell’s focus, but it also somewhat limits the intrusive gawking
Nevertheless, the limited-series clearly has some degree of sympathy for Carr, consciously
portraying her as a victim of abuse. For what its worth, Huntley looks
absolutely irredeemable right from the start and only gets worse as time goes
on.
In retrospect, local journalist Brian Farmer,
who acts as the conscience of the series, probably should have been its central
figure and protagonist. Ironically, he guilt-trips a bottom-feeding London tabloid
reporter for exactly the sort of sensationalistic exploitation the Maxine series
has been ripped for.
Jordan Peele's latest film exists in an
alternate reality where the Fry’s Electronic big box stores are still in
business. Unfortunately, the California-based chain closed in February 2022,
before filming even started. They blamed the pandemic, but it was really the
lockdown that killed them. More chaos comes to California, specifically
Hollywood ranch country, in Jordan Peele’s Nope, which screens during
MoMI’s Curator’s Choice series.
The Haywood family has handled horses for
Hollywood productions for years, but OJ and Emerald’s late father Otis Sr. was
the face of the business. Business has been off since he was fatally killed by
debris mysteriously falling from the sky. Since then, his adult children have
been forced to sell horses to Ricky “Jupe” Park, a former child actor, who now
hosts a western-themed amusement park. They have also lost horses to apparent
UFO abductions.
Emerald convinces O.J. documenting alien
activity could reverse their precarious fortunes. Naturally, they drop by their
convenient neighborhood Fry’s Electronic, where Angel Torres fixes them up with
surveillance gear. After installing everything, he taps himself in too, because
he wants to believe. Unfortunately, the supposed UFO always cuts electric power,
but he sees enough to officially team-up with the Haywoods, joining with them
to recruit acclaimed cinematographer Antlers Holst, who is famed for his
ability to get any shot. Holst also happens to own his own hand-cranked IMAX
camera, so he definitely has the right gear.
Peele spends a disproportionate amount of time
on Park’s backstory, particularly when his chimpanzee co-star went nuts a
killed the entire cast of his sitcom, leaving him as the sole survivor. It is a
masterfully brutal and surreal flashback scene, but it clashes with the
reserved emotional tone of the rest of the film. The metaphor also becomes
heavy-handed, when Park’s sense of his own charmed life leads to spectacular
tragedy. Nevertheless, it is some of Terry Notary’s most interesting simian work,
since The Circle.
Many pie-in-the-sky interpretive theories have
been applied to the sneaker seen balancing on its toe throughout the chimp’s
rampage. You name it, someone thinks it symbolizes it. However, the truth is
probably simpler (and sort of cooler). Peele produced the latest Twilight
Zone reboot, which several times referred back to Rod Serling’s original
series. Most likely it is an homage to the episode “A Penny for Your Thoughts,”
in which otherworldly things happen while a dropped coin remains standing on
its edge, where it landed.
Nevertheless, Nope, like Us, lends
itself more to creative analysis than his over-hyped Get Out, which is a
major reason why both are substantially superior films. Even though it looks
like an alien abduction movie, Nope is indeed a horror film, which Get
Out was not (it is a slightly fantastical thriller that is never really
scary). When it fully reveals itself, there is an atmosphere of menace to Nope
that is seriously creepy.
Carl Laemmle would be appalled to see
the Hollywood film industry he largely created now catering to the CCP regime,
at a time when it was committing genocide in Xinjiang—but maybe not surprised.
He truly was the only original mogul who criticized Hitler before the advent of
WWII. Unfortunately, he had already been forced out of Universal by that time. Filmmaker
James L. Freedman documents the mogul’s amazing life and career in Carl
Laemmle, which airs late-night tomorrow on TCM.
Born and raised in Laupheim, Germany, Laemmle
immigrated to America before Ellis Island was designated as a hub for new arrival
processing. After some scuffling, he entered the movie business when it was
still based on Nickelodeons and largely considered disreputable. A good portion
of Freedman’s doc chronicles Laemmle role as a scrappy trust-buster, breaking
Edison’s monopolistic hold on the motion picture industry. It is a good thing
he did, because Edison was dead-set against producing feature-length films,
whereas Laemmle was eager to push the envelope of film production.
With his son Carl Jr. in charge of production,
Laemmle’s Universal’s produced some everyone’s favorite films, notably
including the classic Universal Monster movies. That is exactly why a lot of
viewers will be turning in. Some might prefer a deeper dive into Universal
Monster lore, but the Laemmle doc still does them justice. However, Freedman
focuses his familiar talking heads (including Leonard Maltin and Peter
Bogdanovich) much more on Laemmle’s social and historical significance, first
as the David who took on Edison’s monopolistic Goliath and then as a critic of
Hitler and sponsor of Jewish refugees from Germany.
Tam always kept a good head on his
shoulders, until he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Now he keeps his head
on the body of a murdered assassin, thanks to the breakthrough technology of
“Uncle” Ma (who technically isn’t either). That muscle memory is a trip, but it
will be awkward when the dead man’s nasty associates will come looking for him
in Victor Vu’s Head Rush (a.k.a. Loi
Bao), which releases today on VOD.
Like Condorman’s alter ego, Tam used his superhero
graphic novels as his own wish fulfilment fantasies. He also wrote bizarrely
tragic historical epics about fathers dying in battle that will be little
comfort to his wife and pudgy son as they wrestle with his prognosis. However,
Uncle Ma has the technology. He just needs a viable body, which very
conveniently delivers itself, along with a hail of bullets from his murderers.
It is a good thing Tam and Ma happened to be in the right forest at the right
time, because they are able to sneak the body back to his lab for a head
switcheroo.
Suddenly, Tam knows Kung Fu, but his hands need
to relearn how to draw. He also might be getting flashes of the previous
tenant’s memories, especially when he visits a pretty young emergency room
doctor after some of his early heroics. Inevitably, Tam starts saving children
from burning buildings and the like. He also does a lot of parkour. However,
his new body won’t be so much fun when an organ trafficking gangster starts
threatening Tam’s family.
Since Charlie Nguyen ran afoul of the
government censors, Vu has assumed the responsibility of nearly single-handedly
driving Vietnamese film industry. He has been working his way through the
catalog of genres, so it was probably inevitable that he would give superheroes
a go. Frankly, the action in Head Rush is
pleasingly gritty compared to the films coming from the Hollywood legacy
corporations, including quite a bit of slickly choreographed gunplay.
The biggest drawback is Vu’s predilection for
melodrama, which remains undiminished in Head
Rush. Like clockwork, the film comes to a screeching halt so Tam’s wife can
lecture him about calling undue attention to himself or suspect him of getting
up to some hanky-panky with Dr. Young-and-Available. Seriously, give us all a
break. On the other hand, there are at least two wildly over-the-top third act
revelations that perfectly reflect the spirit of superhero comic books.
Trombonist Trummy Young played with Armstrong and Ellington, so when he partially-retired
to Hawaii, he naturally became the big jazz cat on the local scene. Naturally,
he would get the call for a jazz-themed episode of the original Hawaii
Five-O. He even has a brief speaking part, but the star of the episode is
jazz diva Nancy Wilson, who did a fair amount of guest shots during the 60s and
70s. Her best was probably the “Trouble in Mind” episode of Hawaii Five-O,
which airs Tuesday on Me TV Plus.
Wilson
plays Eadie Jordan, a popular jazz vocalist much like herself, but hopefully
not totally like her. She will be playing some high-profile gigs at the Waikiki
Shell with her pianist-musical director-ambiguous lover, Mike Martin, who was
just paroled on a drug charge. What McGarrett doesn’t know is that Martin has
always been clean. He just took the wrap for Jordan.
This
is a bad time to be strung out in the 50th State, where a batch of
lethally poisoned smack is in circulation. That is why Kono was casing the
little club Jordan and Martin came to score. Martin ends up cold-cocking him to
protect her, even though he knew it would jam him up with the law.
It
turns out square-looking McGarrett is an Eadie Jordan fan—a real fan who knows
every obscure record she cut. That changes the dynamics of tonight’s episode,
from a typical cops-versus-dealers story to a race to save Jordan from herself.
More than most episodes of the era, “Trouble in Mind” depicts drug addiction as
a health issue, just as much as a law enforcement problem.
In
fact, even the dealer who is the episode’s ostensive villainous figure is
surprisingly sympathetic—and ultimately almost as tragic a figure as Jordan. He
too is a former jazz musician, who boosts he still has his 802 Union card (the
New York musicians’ local).
Wilson
gives a truly bold performance as Jordan, probably drawing on the infamous
struggles of Billie Holiday and other musicians she may have known. She performs
bluesy renditions of “Trouble in Mind” and “Stormy Monday,” as well as a brassy
arrangement of “Spinning Wheel,” very much like the cover she released the year
before. Morton Stevens is credited with the music for this episode. Having
arranged for Sinatra and many of his Rat Pack fans, he clearly had a good feel
for old standards. This is definitely the “jazz episode” of Five-O,
because Wilson and Young are also joined by bassist Red Callendar, who also
gets a line of dialogue.
