Open the door.

Alien: Romulus – 3/5

The Alien franchise is in an odd place of wanting to return to basics, essentially a slasher movie with cooler art direction, a formula that could just be repeated ad infinitum, but still this desire to expand beyond what is. Are you stalker or are you cinematic universe. Mostly, this succeeds as a return to basics, minus the Gen Z cast that feels out of a Facebook ad, this modern idea of what 'cool' looks like. But then it wants to connect to the other films through uncanny valley Ian Holm! And then the alien/human hybrid that looks like the Engineer! I don't mind the Ian Holm in theory; these types of movies work well when there's a whisper of a wider world, something to be curious about but never needing to be discovered. But it's bad visual effects which just remove you from the movie's present in its insistence to fold in the past. And then the Engineer hybrid looks stupid, shades of Alien: Resurrection, and serves as this both more subtle but more obvious attempt to connect to the other, lesser (?) movies which pushed this simple franchise into a more complicated place. I think there's two ways to view worldbuilding: how can you expand this world, and how can you expand what is possible within this world? One is more finite, a way to innovate within limitations. I think it should do more of that.

Don't you know what he did?

Last of Us S2 — 2/5

I really enjoyed the themes of season 1, but I also thought the episode-to-episode enjoyment of the series was fine. Serious people in a serious world, no room for joy. Here, that, minus any new compelling theme. It, I suppose, still follows the idea behind season 1—love as a destructive force—but it's just Ellie's revenge trip, minus nuance, minus any builds on top of that. Just that, over and over. I think this is a season that had the capacity for compelling philosophical conversations of individual needs vs the group—the fragility of community—and that's really only touched on here or there, up to everyone ultimately rationalizing and helping this damaged girl destroy everything she touches. I think we're supposed to have this revelation of 'oh shit, Ellie's the bad guy!!' but it makes that point too obvious, and unfortunately for this show, I have always struggled to follow a story with a bad guy as the hero. Ellie shows regret once, and then immediately has a greater regret that she hasn't been able to kill another. Okay. No lessons learned.

I'm free, and all it took was a bullet to the head.

Companion — 3/5

I think when movies have an easy logline — boy's girlfriend is a robot, say — then going into the movie requires the patience of waiting for everyone else to know what you already went into the movie knowing. I now, 41 years later, understand the easy appeal of those loglines as a way to get people in, but the trade-off is an ultimately unsatisfying first twenty minutes as we twiddle our thumbs until shit happens. And from that moment where shit happens—a totally fine movie to be enjoyed passively. It knows what it is and does it well enough.

The guy you didn't count on.

Jack Reacher 2: Never Go Back — 1/5

ugh christ, i just realized this was the sequel rather than the original. I wanted to watch this because I'm interested in exploring Christopher McQuarrie's relationship with Tom Cruise, because I fucking love 'Edge of Tomorrow' and have such extreme disinterest in the entire Mission: Impossible franchise, and 'Jack Reacher' seemed to fit into this interesting low part of Cruise's career where he could have very easily been stuck in DTV vehicles for men to watch other men fighting other men, and I'd heard enough 'hey, it's not bad' to risk entry. ugh this was trash, it was such a long two hours, and I watched the wrong fucking movie, jesus. Feels like where this lines up with Mission: Impossible is with Tom Cruise thinking people like him because he's Perfect Guy. So smart!! So talented!! And he never says anything interesting!! At least 'Edge of Tomorrow' showed the long slough of becoming flawless. The smile at the end of that movie is one of my favorite cut-to-credits moments cuz he fucking earned that shit-eating grin.

It's interesting but I'm not interested.

Love on the Spectrum, S3 — 3/5

This is my reality television trash. It's heartwarming to see these little sweet, awkward weirdos find people who match up to them. And the show, over the years, has done a good job of laying out the spectrum within "...the Spectrum." But I'm probably less interested in it than I have in other years; it's all the same beats, and this could very well be the last season I watch of it. Here's a free idea you'll never read: focus on the parents? They're interesting, and they've shown a massive amount of patience in raising these people.

Honey babe.

Drive-Away Dolls — 1.5/5

I don't think I realized how sad it was to see the Coen Bros. break up until I saw this. What a pale imitation! What a lacking! And yet, there are times when you can see what one brother clearly brought to the team, if only to then off-set that with something uninteresting. There's a very short car crash sequence that's about as fun-with-cameras as you've see with them, but that's mixed with some of the worst editorial decisions you've ever seen from them. Margaret Qualley is out here trying to have a good time, as good as anything in their lighter comedies—but she's paired with a poor man's Ayo Adebiri who cannot go tit nor tat with her energy, and leaves you constantly questioning why these two people would even be friends, much less romantic partners. It feels like someone watched a Coen Brothers movie and said 'yeah yeah, I get it, some quirky characters with competing traits, some off-color jokes taken seriously.' Bleh. It makes you realize that half of one thing isn't still worth half, it's just a broken thing, worth almost next to nothing.

Yeah, I had a great past, I'm fine.

Thunderbolts* — 3/5

It's two movies: a darker movie about depression and anxiety and mental illness through the guise of a superhero movie... and then a light buddy team-up comedy! One of these works! And works well enough that I walk away disappointed that the other side didn't work as well (or even needed to be there at all?). The comedy is technically there, the action scenes are technically there, but it lacks an energy. (Frankly, it's the same lacking I felt in 'Beef'? The end-credits scene directed by the Russo's has a back-and-forth liveliness that the rest of the movie never really captured.) It's trying to be a big tent-pole blockbuster but the smaller parts of the movie befit it better. Florence Pugh is great, and is the most defined characters and motivations of these post-Endgame superheroes. She just wants to matter! But she's also small, in relation to the larger Marvel Universe. But at least that's understood. She's the core of the movie, and only some of the people she's paired with fit her mold. Red Guardian, USAgent, Sentry all fit inside her world, and the movie would have been fine to just focus on them. But it needs to be bigger, so it adds Ghost, who's barely there (that's a pun!!), and Winter Soldier, who I love but who's lost all character motivation, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who is fine but doesn't add to the larger theme of the movie. And the too-many-people just don't gel which, sure, is the joke at the center of the movie, but I don't really like that joke. But, as with the best of these things, there was enough in here to like, and these are characters I'd like to see again.

The Math

That Moves Like A Man.

It doesn't go anywhere. You see the same things over and over. So you might as well get off.

Babylon — 2/5

Yeah yeah, you like making movies about the pros and cons of being an artist. Listen, I love that as a theme!!! I think it's great!! But where La La Land and Whiplash (which has grown in my eyes since my so-so review) manage to capture the greatness underlined with unhappiness, the trade-off that has to occur, the deal at the crossroads with the relative devils to live fulfilled but still unsatisfied lives... here it's just trainwreck. There's no sense of the highness that comes with the low, the low that are capable of highs, the majesty at the swamp. The first thirty minutes, arguably, can speak to that, but it's all just hedonistic excess, the party you want to be invited to, blown pupils from staring directly into the light, but it doesn't feel like the world I want to be a part of, so despite my enjoyment of the energy, it doesn't hook me and then when the rest of the movie tears the hook out of the fish's mouth, I in turn don't feel the pain that I think he wants me to feel. Maybe it's just a problem for me. I think your enjoyment of the movie comes down to whether you'd want to be at the party at the beginning of the movie. It's not for me. And so it's that album the artist makes after they're rich and famous and all they talk about is how much money they have and how hard it is to be famous. True, for them, and for some, but they've crossed into the void of unrelatability. In the end, it's just a bigger and lesser version of 'Hail, Caesar!'; it's final scene a poor approximation of 'Cinema Paradiso.' It's the Cary Grant quote about the trolley. It's a collage of all the worst things about the things you love.

Also, I feel bad for Margot Robbie. I feel like she's a genuinely great actress, and she does a good job in everything she's in, but the worlds around her rarely match up to what she's bringing to it, and this one doesn't fit her at all. She's outside of time and space.

Chaos

which through randomness offers beauty and clarity, and therefore isn't random at all.

Artists create the world.

Critics shape it.

We can be the good guys, or we can be the guys who save the world.

Invincible S3 — 3.5/5

There's an adage in comics that Peter Parker can't win for losing. "With great power must also come great responsibility" drives his character, but 60 years of stories are driven by the simple story trick of "every time something goes right, something goes wrong." I love it. And I don't think Spider-Man owns that trick; as seen on this show!! The one we're talking about right now!! Mark Grayson is Spider-Man vis-a-vis Superman, a normal guy with immense power who just needs to pay his rent and go out with girls, all while the world falls down around him. It's a great premise, and I could watch it play out for 60+ years.

The world is coming.

Court of Gold — 3.5/5

This is a small thing, and a mostly foregone conclusion, but the show is just a nice hagiography on people who love their country, and the game of basketball. I don't know if I loved the series as much as I just like everyone in it more than I did going in. Hard-ass shit-talker Kevin Durant crying about how much basketball means to him reshapes him entirely in my mind. But it's that "mostly foregone conclusion" that makes for interesting television. The series serves as a signal that the world's caught up; this feels like a final hurrah not just for aging basketball players, but for America on this particular stage. It gets harder from here.

We all have ADHD, and anything else would be boring as hell.

The Pitt — 4/5

Jesus Christ, I love this fucking show. It feels like addiction. You understand why these people have trouble coming into work, and then leaving, because everything is important all of the time, everyone needs you; everywhere demands your attention. It's those moments at work where I'm addicted to the little red circle on Slack or Outlook that demand my immediate response. Breaking away only means having to catch up later, so you just sit there, responding, responding, responding; better to be in the motions of it than having to re-find the groove. Better to skip a meal, better to hold in your piss, better to not have a life beyond this. Only, unlike my pissant job, someone could actually die! The show is a natural place for drama, most of it feels unforced, and even in those times when it feels like it's adding drama for drama's sake, the energy of the show just makes you forget it. It's life or death! What better way to find out who these people are?

Nah, I'll do it, but... get it together.

Catastrophe S1 — 3.5/5

I have such a raging hard-on for likeable people being likeable together. It's high stakes treated like low stakes, and a tone that I can only describe as affability. I like these people, and like having them in my life. And the final minutes of the final episode are a wonderful rug pull. It was the thing we choose not to see in others because they just seem so good together.