John Adams, TV mini-series (2008)

John and Abigail Adams, during their younger days in the
Boston area. There's never any doubt as to just how tough
people had to be just to survive in those days. Without some
North Face gear and a Costco nearby, most of us probably
would have been dead inside a month.

A great, dramatic look at one of the less glamorous founding fathers of the United States, looking at some of the seminal moments during the United States' formation and its earliest decades as an independent country.

Based on the book by best-selling biographer David McCullough, John Adams is a 7-part mini-series that dramatizes the many key actions, momentous occasions, and shifting relationships in the long life of the U.S.'s second president. It was this show that taught me, along with probably millions of other people, just how many critical moments in U.S. history involved Adams in one way or another. It's not always dramatic, often depicting Adams's moments of intense boredom and isolation from more important events. And there are plenty of moments dedicated to his relationships with his wife and children, which can often be slower and more tender. But if you enjoy a sense of an authentic, well-rounded look at an important historical figure, then it's hard not to like this.

The show is divided into its seven episodes based on fairly distinct periods in the life of John Adams and the country:

1. His time as a respected lawyer in Boston, before the actual start of the Revolutionary War.
2. The events that build up to the Founding Fathers deciding to declare Independence from Britain, officially declaring war against the most powerful army in the world. 
3. The Revolutionary War, most of which Adams spent in Europe trying to gain support from potential ally nations such as France and Holland.
4. After the U.S. defeats the British, Adams is back in the U.S., representing Massachusetts and negotiating with other states' representatives to form the new government.
5. Adams's eight years as the country's first vice president, serving under George Washington.
6. Adams's single four-year term as the country's second president.
7. Adams's twenty-five years of post-presidential "retirement," mostly back on his farm in Massachusetts. 

George Washington's inauguration in Philadelphia. David
Morse's turn as the country's quiet but beloved first president
was just one of the countless great performances throughout
this series.

Across all seven episodes, we see how Adams was a highly principled, honorable man who stuck to his convictions with intense ferocity. Ferocity, in fact, which often repelled colleagues and sometimes even friends and allies. By all accounts, the man had a vicious temper which often cost him greater support. The show does nothing to sugarcoat this part of his nature, often showing his frequent blowups at anyone who spends more than an hour or two with him. This is one of several aspects of the show which set it apart from many other biopics - it makes very clear that, in more than a few ways, the subject was not always easy to like. But this also drives home the fact that his merits were strong enough to overcome them. As disagreeable and pugnacious as the man could be, John Adams's integrity was such that he reached the highest offices in the country. Even modern historians rate his presidency as generally a positive one, despite only being one term.

All of this is brought to life through amazing film techniques and production values, on every possible level. The acting is impeccable, with Paul Giamatti turning in a masterpiece performance as the stocky, snarling, combative man of rule and law. Playing his wife - noted mind Abigail Adams - was Laura Linney, who exhibits every bit of the intelligence, tenderness, and toughness that the real Mrs. Adams apparently had. And every one of the many supporting actors nailed their roles, from the most famous to the lesser-knowns and unknowns from over two centuries ago. If you know anything about this time period, there's plenty of fun to be had in seeing how founders like Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and others are depicted, and there's plenty to be learned about those people we don't read much about in our history books in school.

The writing is incredible. While the show is based on David McCullough's biography, the scripts were all written by Kirk Ellis, who seemed to have a brilliant eye and ear for distilling key moments into efficient scenes, taught with gravity and emotion. My wife, a poet with an especially keen ear for anachronistic language, was extremely impressed by the authentic diction used throughout the show. This was probably due in part to Ellis's drawing from Adams's and others' original notes and correspondences. However it was done, there's a wonderfully genuine, erudite sound to the dialogue that reminds us of just how learned and articulate this country's leading minds were at the time.

In the third episode, we're treated to more humorous moments,
such as the sore thumb John Adams trying to bully his way
through a wildly decadent France. His partner, Ben Franklin
(far left) had no such trouble in the libertine country.

Then there are the visuals. The sets and costumes are amazing. Not in a dazzling way, but rather they looked like they could have been the very real places the events depicted occurred and the very real clothing that these people wore. I can't be sure, be it seems that there was no artificial lighting used at all - only candlelight when necessary, giving an even deeper sense of authenticity to the look and feel of everything. Going a step further, the showrunners decided not to use any type of makeup or cosmetics that didn't actually exist at the time. We see freckles and skin discolorations, badly stained teeth, and frizzy hair aplenty. Some viewers might find this unpleasing to look at, but I enjoyed the almost tangible reality of it.

The only thing about this entire show that got to me a bit by the final couple of episodes was a minor visual element - that the show uses a ton of closeups. And I don't mean regular closeups. I mean "you can count each scraggly hair in Paul Giamatti's nostrils and ears" kind of closeups. For much of the show's length, this shoulder-to-shoulder proximity works well to convey intimacy, but there was a point where it eventually made me feel a bit claustrophobic.

This is just a great show, and it always will be. I would love to see the same treatment given to several other key figures in this country's history, or any country's history for that matter. Short of reading a thorough biography of a key historical figure, this is maybe the best example of how to tell such a story in cinema. 

Blue Velvet (1986)

Director: David Lynch

Pretty riveting, dark neo-noir type film which is the most accessible film I've seen from noted surrealist David Lynch.

I recall watching this one once before, about 20 years ago, though I had zero recollection of the second half of the movie. This means that I either fell asleep, or that I left the friend's house where we were watching it before it was over. Whatever the case, I'm happy that I finally went back to it.

The movie follows Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), a young man who returns to his cozy American town from college after his father is hospitalized after falling ill. While walking in a field near his neighborhood, Jeffrey makes the grisly discovery of a human ear lying on the ground. He takes the ear to the police, but can't seem to leave it at that. With the help of a police detective's daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern), he employs some amateur sleuthing techniques to dig deeper into the mystery. Before long, he is wrapped up with the sultry lounge singer Dorothy (Isabella Rosalini) and a maniac criminal, Frank (Dennis Hopper). Jeffrey is inexorably pulled into a dark, underground criminal world filled with drugs, violence, and depravity of a level that belies the otherwise peaceful-seeming town.

Blue Velvet is still pretty hypnotic, even after nearly 35 years, and certain elements almost seem like a practice run for some of what we would see in the original Twin Peaks  TV show 4 years later. The most obvious one is the notion of dark, twisted forces lurking beneath the tranquil, All-American, white picket fence veneer of the setting. You have the attractive young couple in Jeffrey and Sandy, who seem to be falling in love, and we see more than a few nods to the idealist view of relationship from American suburbia from the 1950s and early '60s. It doesn't take long, though, before things get weird. Like, really weird. No sooner does Jeffrey sneak into the lounge singer Dorothy's house for some intel on a possible murder than he finds himself in a closet, peeping on her undressing, then seeing her brutally victimized by the unhinged, sexually warped madman, Frank. This dizzying dichotomy of light and dark has long been a part of David Lynch's works, and Blue Velvet was his earliest and probably still his most accessible example of it.

Then there are the technical merits of Blue Velvet. The movie just looks so good. And I don't mean to say that it's easy or always pleasing to watch. It's not. There are just too many disturbing and violent behaviors going on to say that you "enjoy" watching it. Still, it doesn't take an expert to see that the costumes, lighting, sets, and cinematography are masterfully designed and executed. There's such a rawness to most of the scenes involving Frank that most films won't employ. When Frank is terrorizing then raping Dorothy, there are no edits or camera maneuvers to spare the viewers of just how horrific he is. Similarly, when Jeffrey is basically abducted to the apartment where Dorothy's child is being held captive, there is such a skeevy, dangerous vibe that one can't help but feel like Jeffrey has ended up in some deceptively drab-looking circle of Hell. An easily overlooked part of these disturbing sequences is the lack of music, creating a silence that intensifies the horror. On the flip side, there are other scenes and moments that are very lush and stylized, showing off Lynch's range of techniques.

Frank, menacing over a terrified Dorothy. Frank is one of
the most frighteningly raw psychotics you'll ever see in film.
And Lynch doesn't let you off the hook by stylizing him in
any way - he's just a mad dog nutbag, on unflinching display.

I always find it hard to explain my feelings on the acting in David Lynch's movies, since there's such a range. There's almost always some campiness to be found in his works, which inherently requires some overacting and scene-chewing from the actors. And sometimes camp filmmakers just put bad actors in their movies, either because they find the amateur acting funny or because they just like the way an actor looks on film, despite a lack of acting ability. I think David Lynch has always done all of these things, and Blue Velvet is no exception. All that said, the four main performers - all rock-solid professionals - are perfect. And there's also a great, smaller turn we get from Dean Stockwell, the bizarre, perverted "ringmaster" at the aforementioned apartment scene (I must admit that this character can accurately be branded as a classic example of homophobia).

Like every David Lynch movie I've seen, I can only recommend it to people who are ready for something that's more than a little odd, twisted, and challenging in some respects. While the over-arcing story follows your typical crime thriller, the telling is much grittier, bizarre, and in your face than more popular fare in the genre. The best starting place for those who haven't seen Lynch's work is the original Twin Peaks TV show. If the darker elements of that program don't freak you out, check out Blue Velvet. From there, Lynch's work mostly gets darker and more surreal, so it's a logical next step. 

Spaceship Earth (2020)

Director: Matt Wolf

A documentary about the then-hyped Biosphere 2 project that ran from 1991 to 1993. It was just OK.

Those of us born before 1980 or so probably remember the Biosphere 2 project, staged in Arizona in the early 1990s. Seven "biospherian" specialists locked themselves in a large, airtight structure for two years, to see if they could survive in a simulation of what might be a life station used to live on and explore other planets in the future. The biosphere was filled with various terrain types, plants, and even animals, to replicate small-scale versions of Earth's real landforms, structures, and ecosystems. It was billed as an exciting leap forward in scientific discovery - one which would provide invaluable data to future scientists who would be designing life-sustaining environments for space explorers. What Biosphere 2 ended up being, though, was mostly a failure that many ultimately saw as a fraud, conceived and executed in bad faith by a controversial, cult-like figure.

There was actually the material here for a much more fascinating documentary. In going back to trace the origins of Biosphere 2, some intriguing questions are raised. It mostly went back to a man named John Allen, a charismatic, endlessly energetic man who built a community around himself in the late 1960s. Allen, trained as a machinist in the Army Corps of Engineers and educated in anthropology and business in several places including Stanford, had grand ideas about melding multiple scientific and humanistic disciplines in order to create a better society. This society would bring together scientists, tradesmen, and artists to cooperate in order to build whatever they felt they might need to survive, thrive, and fulfil their survival and creative needs as humans. They set up a commune-like area in New Mexico. They actually built their own large ship that successfully launched from a port off the California coast. They traveled to different cities around the world and constructed buildings as contractors. And all the while, they would engage in free-flowing artistic performances, such as original plays, improvisational activities, primal screaming, interpretive dances, or whatever else they dreamed up. All of this was under the eye of founder John Allen. Early on, they had actually come into contact with famed American architect R. Buckminster Fuller. Fuller had conceived of the concept of a "geodome," in which humans could survive without any contact from the outside world. Allen's group toyed with this over the years, and eventually found the financial backing to bring it to life. Hence, Biosphere 2's construction and the media storm around it in the early 1990s.

John Allen's "Merry Pranksters"-style
group of devotees doing one of their stage
productions. This was a rather odd crew
of folks who I had far more questions
about than the film answered.

Again, there's a lot of interesting stuff happening here. The problem for me was twofold: First, there were so many unanswered questions about John Allen, his close associates, and their projects that are never fully or clearly answered. The documentary never fully explains exactly where or how the various members of the commune learned their trades, and we don't know where the funding for their various and sometimes-large-scale projects came from in their early years. Then there are just questions about what life was like on a daily basis. I think most people, upon hearing the description of Allen and his group will inevitably think "cult," and the show doesn't do a whole lot of close analysis on this question. It is raised a bit later in the movie, but not with enough rigor in my view. Secondly, there is an overall lack of outside perspectives on everything about Allen, his group, and their projects, including Biosphere 2. The overwhelming number of the views expressed are from Allen, his friends or associates, or the actual experts who became the biospherians. In other words, almost all people whose bias is going to lean heavily towards defending the project and the group behind it. Getting some sober, objective viewpoints from credible people who were critical of the project would have helped balance things out more, as any good documentary should do.

In a more general sense, I came away from this documentary sort of shrugging my shoulders and almost asking "so what?" By the show's end, it was clear that too many questions were raised about Biosphere 2's scientific legitimacy for it to feel like any massive loss for humans' knowledge. And not enough evidence is presented to contradict the notion that Biosphere 2 was much more than an ego-driven project for Allen and a few wealthy financial backers. In short, while I was curious about several elements covered in the documentary, I'm never given enough information to care all that much about any of them.

Maybe the simple fact is that the subjects themselves - from Allen to the commune to the Biosphere 2 project itself - just weren't nearly as intriguing as we might be led to believe. But I actually felt that there is probably a more fascinating story to be told; it's just that Spaceship Earth didn't do the best job of telling that story. 

Before I Die #643: BlackKklansman (2018)

Director: Spike Lee

Well-done and compelling movie on an ever-more relevant and important topic, though maybe a movie that got just a tad more positive acclaim than maybe it earned.

BlackKklansman is a dramatic adaptation of the incredible, real-life story of Colorado Springs County, Colorado, police detective Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) - the first black member of the force, who joined in the late 1970s. Though initially relegated to the drudgery of clerical work, where he is subject to some nasty racism at the hands of a few colleagues, Stallworth soon proves his merit in an undercover operation to gather intel on a Black Student Union (BSU) meeting in the area, where he was to gauge the tone of the room in response to a speech by a prominent civil right leader. After a promotion, he conceives the idea to gather information on local white supremacist groups, namely the Ku Klux Klan. On a whim, he calls a phone number (actually listed in the phone book), puts on a southern accent, and poses as someone interested in getting involved with the KKK. The receiver of the call buys Stallworth's story and invited him to a meeting. The obvious problem is that Stallworth is unmistakably a black man, so he convinces his captain to bring a couple of partners into the operation. Their captain taps two veteran cops, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) and Jimmy Creek (Michael Buscemi) to work with Stallworth. Flip assumes the physical role of Ron, and he steadily embeds himself within the local cell of the KKK. Meanwhile, the real Ron continues his correspondence over the phone, soon having long talks with none other than David Duke, the Grand Wizard of the Klan, based in Louisiana. Ron and Flip eventually learn of the Klan's plan to make a violent statement by bombing a local Black Students' Union meeting. Ron and Flip have to act quickly to prevent this, all while Ron has been placed on guard duty for none other than David Duke, who is in town to visit the local KKK chapter.

This is a good movie whose subject matter and import are important enough to outweigh a few of the movie's minor shortcomings in terms of narrative or artistic choices. Though the real Ron Stallworth's story unfolded over 40 years ago, this 2018 film still feels all-too relevant, given the massive Black Lives Matter protests which have erupted in the wake of the brutal killing of George Floyd at the hands of police officers. This has touched off the nasty reminder that virulent racism is still all-too present in this country, and it was even more so back in the early 1970s. While BlackKklansman reportedly takes certain liberties with the story, many of the elements regarding the KKK's racist views and plans to kick-start a race war were all too real. This was still a time and place where the KKK was comfortable enough holding a sizable conference at a hotel, where Klan organizer and leader David Duke railed about the superiority of the white race, feeling confident that such meetings would help swell the Klan's numbers to those of its heyday in the early 20th century. Detective Ron Stallworth not only had to deal with these in a professional manner, but he also had to maintain a level head in the face of open racism in his workplace. The messages about racism are not always subtle in the movie - a hallmark of most Spike Lee films - but their importance can't be refuted. Perhaps the most powerful moments are when Harry Belafonte, himself a longtime civil rights activist, plays an older activist recounting

Flip(left) inspects the KKK membership card that Ron
Stallworth (right) has just received in the mail. Actors
Adam Driver and John David Washington have solid
chemistry and bring these characters to life.

There were also some fascinating complexities introduced in the tale. The fact that Stallworth's first assignment is to gain intelligence on "his own people" at the BSU gives you some idea of the tightrope that a black police officer - especially an undercover one - has to walk on a daily basis. This question of betrayal runs through the rest of the picture, and even if Lee gives us perhaps an oversimplified solution to it, the larger questions remain of where a person's loyalties lie: to one's own long-oppressed minority group or to the society as a whole, including the predominant oppressors themselves. The Flip Zimmerman character also offers us a chance to see where a Jewish perspective fits into racism and bigotry. This is an area that the film could probably have delved more deeply, but there is enough of it to illustrate a shared grievance between two groups who have been systematically oppressed for centuries and even millennia.

There are plenty of production merits to the film, as well. The acting is great by everyone involved, most obviously John David Washington and Adam Driver. The 1970s sets and costumes are all on point, brought out even more by the sharp cinematography. In short, the film is very pleasing to take in, visually, and it should come as no surprise that the soundtrack has plenty of fun late-1970s disco and R&B jams to give a fun vibe during appropriate scenes. These help to accentuate the much tenser scenes when Zimmerman is directly inside the secret meetings and safehouse of the KKK.

BlackKklansman earned a ton of critical acclaim upon its release in 2018, being nominated for most of the biggest awards for film. For my part, I thought it was a very good movie, but I don't quite put it on par with other worthy Oscar winners or nominees (though 2018 wasn't an especially strong year, so it made sense for that group of nominees). While the story is undoubtedly fascinating, relevant, and told skillfully, there wasn't anything that I found to be especially novel about the movie, outside of Stallworth's story. It's worth seeing, for sure, but I would warn most new viewers not to expect some mind-blowing experience about race relations.

Idiot Boxing: Sex Education, seasons 1 and 2 (2019-2020)

Left to right: Maeve, Otis, and Eric. The story
usually revolves around these three, but many
of the other characters are given the spotlight.
And this never feels like wasted story time.

I've never watched a ton of high school romantic comedy shows or movies, but of the ones that I've seen, Sex Education may be the very best to date.

To be clear, I'm a pretty typical Northern European-descended male in his mid-forties. I'm not a great fan of "young people" drama or romantic films or TV shows. But while Sex Education is all of those things, I quickly grew to love it and looked forward to watching another episode nearly every night with my wife as we "binged" through the first two seasons.

The show takes place in a fictional, wondrously beautiful town somewhere in England. We mostly follow Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield), a 16-year old boy whose divorced mother Jean (Gillian Anderson) is a noted sex therapist. Despite his mother's profession, Otis is concerned about some of his own sexual hangups; however, this doesn't stop him from eventually starting to give out sexual advice to some of his classmates at school, for a fee. This idea is the brainchild of a glaring, standoffish classmate, Maeve (Emma Mackey), who needs the money to support herself due to absentee parents. Highly amused by the entire operation is Otis's best friend, Eric (Ncuti Gatwa), the son of parents who immigrated to England from Africa, and who is openly gay. Otis, Maeve, and Eric quickly discover just how many of their classmates have questions and concerns about their sexual activity (or non-activity, as it were), and just how complicated it can all make everyone's lives and relationships with each other.

I wish this show, or something very much like it, had existed back when I was in high school.

Sex Education is an eye-pleasing, well-acted, and well-rounded look at sexuality. Most of it is teen-centric, but the adults are certainly not immune to having their sexual foibles and hangups examined, either. Taking place in a wonderfully picturesque, unnamed, fictional town in England, the show's primary premise is that nearly all teens are either sexually active or want to be, and that very few of them are able to handle the psychological or emotional demands that go along with the physical act of sex. In the show, this is where Otis and his better-than-nothing advisory role comes in. While Otis actually has some decent, thoughtful advice, the idea of an inexperienced virgin doling out tips about sex is inherently funny. But the show's humor goes well beyond Otis's hustle as an amateur sex counselor. The writing is often hilarious all around, involving nearly every other character. It's no surprise that much of the humor is based around sex, but it is hardly ever of the raunchy variety. Rather, it embraces the notion that sex is, essentially, a rather silly and funny act most of the time, and there are a ton of practical-yet-embarrassing questions that we all have about it. Yes, it carries deeper emotional significance at times as well, but the simple mechanics and vulnerability of it all puts people in weird and comical positions, both literally and figuratively. Sex Education has plenty of fun with these facts.

The main quartet of "rich, mean kids" at the school. Like many
of the characters, they don't evoke much sympathy most of the
time, but we get to see certain vulnerabilities and insecurities
in each and every one of them over the course of the show.

The acting is top-notch, perhaps most notably with Gillian Anderson, best known to most audiences from her turn as Agent Dana Scully in The X-Files TV show. Her character, Doctor Jean Anderson, initially seems like a self-possessed, progressive person in nearly every way. But it isn't long before we see that she, like everyone else in the show, is flawed in ways that have negative consequences for her and those around her. This is just one area where the show gets its other half right - the dramatic aspects. Though the drama is often of a "high school teen" variety, with breakups, makeups, and the testing of friendships, it often goes beyond simple, romantic tropes. The intelligent, standoffish Maeve is eventually revealed to be dealing with serious family issues and near poverty. Otis's best friend Eric is forced to deal with violent homophobia. And in perhaps the subtlest and most quietly fascinating example, the school headmaster's son Adam - an alpha male bully - is gradually shown to be dealing with as much inner turmoil as anyone else in the school, if not more. Almost every character is, over the course of the first two seasons, shown to have layers that go beyond the familiar teen show archetypes, and many of them have to deal with very serious modern issues around gender and sexual orientation.

Regarding my statement about wishing a show like Sex Education had existed during my high school years: I have to admit being envious of younger generations in this regard. Our culture has, to a degree, loosened up its attitudes towards these things, which is of immense help to anyone who has questions about sex. And let's face it - nearly every teenager has infinite questions about it, stemming from hormonal overloads that very few teens can manage effectively. I was no exception, and I was constantly in fear of seeming uncool or inexperienced, with nowhere easy to turn. In hindsight, my issues were fairly garden-variety, but the crippling anxiety that most teens have prevented my seeking out any useful knowledge from qualified adults, or even talking about them with friends or family. Had a show like Sex Education existed and been popular, I think plenty of people like me and my friends would have had a medium through which to open up countless constructive conversations.

A third season has been confirmed, which excited me. I have to think that this show may only have another season left in it, at least with the current cast playing the high schoolers. But it will be great to see most of the main players finish out their senior year and see what other topics the show addresses. Highly recommended, as long as one is comfortable with close looks at sexuality. 

Twin Peaks (2017)

Spoilers Ahead! Fair Warning. 

Director: David Lynch

It's simple: if you enjoy David Lynch, you'll enjoy this show. If not? This one is highly unlikely to win you over.

I recently posted my reviews of the original Twin Peaks show and its prequel movie, Fire Walk with Me, as my wife and I worked through them. The original program was canceled after only two seasons and 30 episodes, then left in the ether for well over two decades. Then, lo and behold, it was resurrected by Showtime.

Sometimes referred to as Twin Peaks: The Return, this long-awaited continuation of the quirky, dark TV series does actually pick up roughly 25 years after the final episode of the original, which aired back in 1991. That final episode ended with a wild ride of surrealistic madness, capped off with buoyant, boy scout FBI Agent Dale Cooper seemingly getting trapped in another realm while an evil doppelganger had taken his place in our world. The 2017 resurrection series jumps ahead in time the same 25 years that had passed between the airing of the two series. In the strange "Red Room" limbo where Cooper was stranded in 1991, he is finally sent back out to reclaim his place in our world. The problem is that the evil version of Cooper has been there, long building and overseeing a criminal enterprise and planning how he will avoid being pulled back into the Red Room. In our world, a series of new, bizarre murders starts to bring back together many of the people in Twin Peaks and within the FBI who had previously known and worked with Cooper, especially dealing with the Laura Palmer murder.

Unless I wanted that summary to stretch into a 20-page exposition, I had to keep it laughably short and simple. Twin Peaks: The Return consisted of 18 episodes, all between 50 minutes and an hour, and it takes no end of strange, surreal twists, and is told in typically David Lynch, non-linear style. This makes any concise, clear summary all but impossible. At least, not one that conveys the show's distinguishing characteristics. This is a long, all-David Lynch production, and it contains pretty much all of the "Lynchian" elements that one might expect.

In short, my wife and I enjoyed watching it.

Andy and Lucy are among the many original characters 
to return. They're also part of several of the stranger,
stilted, and seemingly disconnected scenes and sequences
that we get over the course of the 18 episodes.

If you ever saw the original show, or a few of Lynch's more surreal films like Eraserhead, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive, among others, then you have a sense of what to expect. So many scenes and moments will leave you questioning what, exactly, is going on, especially in terms of the plot. Thanks to shifting perspectives, unclear identities, multiple identities, non-linear narrative, and outright surreality, Twin Peaks is far from a traditional narrative. Sure, it contains more than a few familiar mainstream elements of crime dramas - mysteries surrounding murders, some tense confrontations between hardened criminals, narrow escapes from death - but the precise combination and presentation of them in all uniquely David Lynch. Characters act and speak in strange, often stilted ways. The pacing of many sequences is bafflingly drawn out at times. Many of the odder elements are never clearly explained. Such non-traditional spinning of a story can be enjoyed, tolerated, or rejected. I actually enjoyed much of it, and was able to tolerate the rest. But I also understand why some people would reject the show.

Probably the most obviously bizarre elements are the supernatural/surreal ones. In Twin Peaks, David Lynch has created his own cosmology - one which we viewers are not meant to completely understand, in my view. It involves industrial machinery, electricity, deep space, atomic science, and several immortal beings that are able to move between alternate dimensions and planes of existence. I won't pretend to understand it all, but I greatly enjoyed the mental exercise of stitching together the images and implications presented in the show. While there are plenty of these supernatural elements to be found through the entire 18-episode series, the most mind-blowing and dazzling episode was Part 8, which is almost completely done in black and white, with sparing dialogue, and is a parade of images and settings which can only be understood as "not of this world." That is, except for some scenes at the beginning of the atomic bomb detonation in 1945, and some bizarre, ash-covered demon-like figures who appear later, in 1956. The rest is a hypnotic, dreamlike tour through alien landscapes and perception-altering imagery. Honestly, watching it was not unlike taking hallucinogenics, and I was transfixed.

One of the many striking and puzzling images from the
markedly surreal eighth episode. Some viewers would be
turned off by the strangeness of it, but I was dazzled by the
imagery and dreamlike nature of this chapter.

But what about the more grounded elements? What about Dale Cooper and the crime stories? This is where, I suspect, some viewers lost their patience with the show, which I can understand. During many of the periods on "our world," David Lynch often chose to draw scenes out to frustrating lengths. A ten-minute sequence of a few people trying to find a key to an apartment. Two full minutes of a guy sweeping up a bar floor. An interminable argument between Audrey and her husband that stretches out, piecemeal, over four or five episodes and ends up going seemingly nowhere. And there are plenty of other examples. For me, these were things that I tolerated, but I totally understand how some people found them infuriating. In my case, I found that they did somewhat fit into the overall off-beat vibe of the entire series. Or at least, they fit just enough that they didn't get on my nerves too much.

A significant part of the fun here is seeing which characters and actors return from the original show, and what their characters are up to. Amazingly, the overwhelming majority of the original actors were around and signed on for it. Some of them don't show up until much later in the season, and very few of them have any great roles. In fact, almost none of them have any more than maybe 30 minutes of total screen time, across all 18 episodes. I have to think that this was much more about David Lynch just wanting to show faithful fans of the original show that these characters are still around, even if most of them no longer have any real connection to the greater events swirling around Agent Cooper. Whatever the case, my wife and I certainly perked up when seeing an original cast member turn up, however inconsequential their presence may have been.

The alienness of the Red Room serves as a microcosm for how
a viewer might feel while watching this show. Familiar elements
mixed in jarring, inexplicable ways can both attract and baffle.

I do have to point out something which my wife initially noticed about the entire show, and which is hard to ignore once perceived, and that is the role of women. David Lynch is clearly an artist who has a deep passion for the styles and character archetypes of popular Americana from the 1950s and 1960s. This has long been a huge part of his style: blending those classic, romanticized elements of U.S. culture with the twisted, pitch-dark demons lurking beneath their surface. Unfortunately, he also seems to keep his female characters almost always restricted to the old, limited roles of popular stories from those bygone decades. With very few exceptions, the women in Twin Peaks are either victims, objects of lust, mentally unstable, or various combinations of those three. A few others may only be attractive window dressing, such as Agent Tammy Preston in The Return, who does little more than pose like a model for David Lynch's Gordon Cole character to gaze at from time to time. As our culture changes in its attitudes towards representation here in the 21st century, it becomes harder and harder not to notice such a clear imbalance in gender roles in TV and films like this.

As implied, this show is a tough one to recommend. I certainly can't suggest that anyone start with this revival of the show, before watching the original. The original program will give you a beginning sense of whether you care for David Lynch's general style or not. More than that, though, I would recommend also seeing one or two of Lynch's relatively more accessible films, like his neo-noir thriller Blue Velvet or even the aforementioned Lost Highway. Those two contain some of the challenging, surreal elements that the director uses more in Twin Peaks: The Return. If you dig those earlier movies, then you'll probably like the resurrection of Twin Peaks. 

A Mighty Wind (2003)

Director: Christopher Guest

Really funny mockumentary from arguably the genre's most accomplished practitioner, Christopher Guest.

A Mighty Wind is a fake, humorous documentary that chronicles the organization and execution of a commemorative reunion of folk musical acts, following the death of an influential producer who had been connected to the performers. Through interviews and Ken Burns-style still photos, bands with names like Mitch and Mickey, The Folksmen, and The New Main Street Singers tell of their own rises to fame during the 1960s, when the form was at its peak and their acts were on top of the popular music world. Not long after their heydays, though, all of the groups broke up, disbanded, or underwent large-scale personnel changes. So they all face the challenge of overcoming past divisions and grudges, in order to put on a reunion performance that isn't an embarrassing farce.

While I haven't seen all of Christopher Guest's documentaries, I've seen and loved his best-known ones for years. This is Spinal Tap and Best in Show are tough to top, in terms of phony documentary comedies. Still, there are others of his that I'd never seen. My wife and I watched the first 15-odd minutes of his scripted comedy For Your Consideration, but it didn't grab us. We jumped over to A Mighty Wind and found exactly what we were looking for. I don't find it quite as good as Spinal Tap or Best in Show, but it's not far behind.

As with most good mockumentaries, moments of awkward-
ness are offset by either silliness or, in the case of A Mighty
Wind, sappy earnestness between some of the musicians.
Here, Levy and O'Hara crank up the cheese as they practice.

I think one's enjoyment of this movie simply comes down to whether you like mockumentaries or not. There's always more than a little improvisation involved here, with the actors all given rough ideas of where a scene needs to end up, but little else in the way of a script. This allows them to more naturally riff and flow with their characters, making everything feel more like an actual, unscripted documentary. In unskilled hands, such an approach can be an unmitigated disaster. Fortunately, though, Christopher Guest and his frequent collaborators are among the grandmasters of improv comedy. The core trio of Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer have always been together, and they once again make up a musical trio in this movie. Other Guest mainstays fill up the roster: Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Bob Balaban, Jane Lynch, John Michael Higgins, Parker Posey, and others prove why Guest taps them as often as possible for these projects, as they nail their oddball, disaffected roles with aplomb. I will say that Eugene Levy's take on the quirky, socially inept Mitch Cohen wore on me just a tad, with his strangely high-pitched voice and somewhat forced discomfort, but he still provided laughs. The others were all great, especially the recently-deceased Fred Willard. But viewers who prefer tightly-scripted films may grow frustrated with the "loose" feel of this kind of movie.

The subject matter of folk musicians was a great choice. While the movie exaggerates the scale of folk music's popularity in the 1960s a tad for comedic effect, the fun part of it is making these popular groups exceedingly corny and sappy, even when singing about intensely dark topics (not unlike some very real folk groups of past and present). I'm fairly sure that the actors did a fair bit of their own playing and singing, but whoever did it was pretty great. As funny as the lyrics are, the actual musicianship is solid, which just makes the hokey words and sentiments that much funnier. It's sort of like having a really good "straight man" off of whom the "funny man" comedian gets their laughs.

This was a really enjoyable entry into the mockumentary canon. I only which I'd seen it sooner. 

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Still a disturbing, hypnotic portrayal of addiction in a couple of forms.

The movie follows four people in Brooklyn - Sara Goldfarb, her son Harry, his girlfriend Marion, and his closest friend Tyrone. Harry, Marion, and Tyrone are all heroin addicts who have plans to become dealers and attain some self-sufficiency; maybe even get rich. Sara is obsessed with getting on television, in particular on a self-help show focused on looking better. To do so, she begins a ruthless regimen of diet pills that results in erratic behavior and a fracturing of her mind. By tale's end, all four people are horribly broken: Sara is in a psychiatric institution after a complete mental breakdown; Harry has had his arm amputated due to an untreated infection from his intravenous drug use; Marion has taken to completely sexually degrading herself for heroin, and Tyrone has landed in prison.

A simple summary of this story doesn't come close to conveying this film's strengths. This was Darren Aronofsky's second feature-length film, after his brilliant, claustrophobic, black-and-white Pi, about a harried mathematician. With Requiem for a Dream, he took his artistic skills to draw a frantic parallel between addiction to hard drugs and addiction to seemingly innocuous substances like television or diet pills. Unlike most "drug" movies, this one doesn't end with a third-act redemption. The quartet of addicts all hit rock-bottom, at least one of them irrevocably, and that's where the story ends. Even the then-controversial and surprisingly popular Trainspotting - which predated Requiem by a few years - had a more uplifting ending. Aronofsky's film does depict the apparent bliss that addicts feel when they get their fix, be it hard drugs or less obvious means of stimulation, but those euphoric moments are brief and easily forgotten by the film's end.

This description should make it clear that this is not an "entertaining" film. It's never fun to watch people fall into pits of addiction from which they won't or almost certainly won't save themselves. This is why I've only seen this movie twice - the first time in 2002 and then again 18 years later. It's just tough to stomach in many ways. Still, there is an artistry and skill to its execution that I had to see again, and I'm glad that I did. As hard as it is to watch, I have to admire how the story puts TV and diet pill addiction on the same level as heroin addictions, and arguably has worse consequences for its victim, Sara. And the cinematic techniques used to convey the sense of paranoia, panic, and fevered desperation that Sara experiences are nerve-wrackingly effective. As her mental state deteriorates, Sara's faded little apartment living room soon feels every bit as confining as a sweatbox at a Floridian penitentiary. With equal skill, the masterful editing of the movie's visuals and sound gives a sense of the shifts between sobriety and intoxication of various characters. It's often amazingly hypnotic, just on an aesthetic level.

Sara chats with her son, Henry, before things start to go
gradually off the rails for both of them. Just one part of
the grand tragedy is that Henry, himself addicted to heroin,
is the only person who later sees the telltale signs of addiction
in his mother.

There did seem to be a bit of buoyancy missing from the movie, mostly in the first act. Not that it was necessary, or that there needed to be much of it, but I couldn't help wonder if spending just a little more time seeing the characters be happy with one another might not have made their tragedies even more poignant. For the most part, we just see them suffering and fairly tense right from the start, and things only get worse as the story unfolds. Part of this feeling probably comes from the fact that the actors do such excellent work, which should come as no shock when you see the cast: Ellen Burstyn was nominated for a ton of awards for her performance as Sara; Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly play Harry and Marion, and the surprising but highly capable Marlon Wayans plays Tyrone. These four do such great work that, grim as the tale is, it pulls you along in the hopes that somebody manages to escape their fates.

I've long been a huge fan of Darren Aronofsky, and I like every one of his films, to one degree or another. While I don't have Requiem for a Dream among my favorites of his (those would be The Fountain and The Wrestler), Requiem for a Dream is an excellent film on a dark subject. If you're one who isn't put off by difficult, and depressing subject matter, then I recommend that you check this one out. 

Boogie Nights (1997)

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

I think I just unintentionally kicked off a Paul Thomas Anderson retrospective, after being reminded myself of just how great Boogie Nights is. 

This was far from a first viewing for me. I'd probably seen Boogie Nights a good five or six times before this, but it had been probably near a decade since my last viewing, and it's been airing on Showtime lately. So before I knew it, I was once again following the rise, fall, and return of fictional porn star Dirk Diggler.

To summarize the rather epic story: Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) is a young man who lives in Los Angeles and washes dishes in a nightclub, but who has dreams of being a movie star. Eddie isn't particularly bright or talented, acting-wise, but he is endowed with an especially large penis and the ability to "perform" with prodigious frequency. These assets catch the eye of Jack Horner, a successful producer and director of pornographic movies. Eddie is soon whisked into a world of his dreams, with other porn stars who quickly embrace a befriend him, and Eddie soon proves himself highly adept at porn acting. Adopting the stage name Dirk Diggler, he rapidly rises to the top of the profession, such as it is. A few short years after his dizzying, whirlwind ascent, Eddie starts to be corrupted by many of the porn industry's seedier elements. Drug use is rampant among many of his co-stars and the hangers-on of the porn industry. Sexual deviancy, including that of the repugnant and illegal variety, is always on the periphery or looming over the business. And the inner turmoil and interpersonal dysfunction of many of his associates eventually rub the shine off of Eddie's success. Deep into a cocaine habit, Eddie steadily spirals out of control, falling out completely with Jack and having his life hit a pretty nasty rock bottom. After a couple of frightening close calls with death, Eddie throws himself on Jack's mercy, begs for help, and is given a chance to get back on his feet within the industry that made him.

Boogie Nights is such a surprisingly entertaining movie that it still dazzles me. The description above might suggest a movie that is about nothing more than a sleazy industry, and the rise, fall, and redemption of someone within it. While all of those things are parts of the film, it does far more than that. In the same fashion that Martin Scorsese did with Goodfellas and Casino, writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson found and brought to the fore the many human elements in such a tale. Not only that, but he imbued the story with so much humor that it's hard not to find yourself smiling and laughing for the majority of the film. Most of the humor, again not unlike Scorsese gangster pictures, comes from the characters not knowing just how dumb they are and sound. Eddie and his fellow porn stars are nearly all very sweet but also very naive, shallow, and oblivious to their own shortcomings in many ways. Maybe it's Reed Rothchild's blatantly false claims about how much weight he can bench-press, or Buck Swope's endless aping of dead fashions, or Eddie's ear-splitting attempts at a music career. In so many ways, these characters make themselves the butt of jokes, thanks to all of them enabling each other and bubbling themselves off from a greater sense of reality. The clueless bumbling is often hilarious.

Some of Jack's actors and crew. This group likes to think of
themselves as a cool, tight-knit family, but they are nearly
all unable or unwilling to take a hard look at themselves
or the problematic aspects of their business.

But it's not the comedy alone that makes this movie so great. It's that Paul Thomas Anderson, as he's done in other films, finds a perfect balance between effective comedy and affecting drama. As comically dopey as many of the characters are in Boogie Nights, many of them actually evoke sympathy from viewers. This is no more obvious than with the protagonist, Eddie. He's clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he's relatively innocent and genuinely sensitive in ways that most of those around him are not, including a mother who viciously puts him down. When things start going south in Eddie's life and career, it is actually sad. Just as sad are the ways in which his friends' and colleagues' lives devolve, as well. The most obvious is his frequent porn co-star, Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), who adopts a maternal tone with the younger porn actors around her, while having her own personal life fall to pieces, thanks in no small part to her wildly irresponsible life choices. When we see her sobbing outside of a courthouse, after rightfully losing a custody hearing, it's obvious that she is a woman in pain. It doesn't alleviate the blame she has earned, but it does humanize her effectively. And there are several other such examples with other characters who are initially easy to dismiss as simply dumb and self-destructive, but whom you eventually see more as real people with deep personal and even psychological problems.

I don't know if a caveat is necessary for a movie that is more than two decades old, but I should offer one to those who haven't seen the film but are considering watching it: this movie is about the pornographic movie industry. And it doesn't pull too many punches when it comes to sex. While it's not extremely graphic, there is certainly more than a little nudity and even several simulated sex scenes. And it is obviously the background against which the entire story takes place. For those uncomfortable with the sex industry, this movie may be too much to take. However, the film doesn't completely ignore some of the downright immoral and illegal aspects of and people involved with the industry. This gives us a picture that's more complete than just the wild rise and fall of the actors. The character of prime producer and director Jack Horner, portrayed in an Oscar-winning performance by Burt Reynolds, is the clearest example. He does show concern about his actors, to a point. But it's a mistake to see him as some sort of nurturing father-figure, as much as he seems to view himself that way. Ultimately, he's exploiting young people by ignoring their destructive tendencies up to the point that they start biting into his profits. Yes, he gives second chances, enjoys harmony, and wants to make films that have more "story" than your average adult picture. But he also enables his actors' drug habits and self-delusions, never really thinking about whether he is helping them become healthier or not. Some of this is painfully obvious, but much of it is merely implied and easier to miss under the veneer of the "happy family" that we see at the end of the movie.

I have to mention the cast of this movie. Without getting specific, all you need to do it look at a partial list of the top-billed actors: Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle, William H. Macy, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. These are the most prominent (some of them before they were to become even better known for film), but this list gives you some idea of the acting talent present here. It's tough to top, and each and every one of them bring their A-games. This crew could make a bad script with bad direction decent. With Boogie Nights, they made a great script with great direction an all-time great movie.

I doubt that I'll ever get tired of watching this movie. In nearly every way, it's an exemplary piece of film craft. Watching it again has, I think, sparked a desire to go back and re-watch several of Anderson's other movies, just to revel in just how masterful a filmmaker he is, and Boogie Nights is really where he first proved it. 

Before I Die #642: Eraserhead

This was the 642nd film that I've seen out of the 1,222 movies on the "Before You Die" list that I'm gradually working through.

Director: David Lynch

A relentless work of disturbing film art. Enjoyable? No. The work of a master? Unquestionably.

No summary or synopsis of this movie does it justice, but I'll give you the basic characters and "plot," as much as such a thing is possible. Henry is a rather awkward, lonely man who gets his girlfriend Mary pregnant. Mary has the baby and moves in with Henry, but the baby's incessant crying drives Mary to leave Henry with it for a night. From that point, Henry's mind seems to break, and it becomes more difficult to distinguish Henry's reality from his panicked and lust-fueled delusions.

Honestly, that's about the best I can do, though one could even debate such a simple explanation of the plot of Eraserhead. There are countless ways to interpret what you're watching here, thanks to a level of surreality that would become a hallmark of director and writer David Lynch. The movie is all in black and white, which already creates a starker tone than a color film. But this movie goes light-years beyond that. With carefully-chosen shooting locations, meticulously-crafted props and sets, and masterful use of light and shadow, this movie brings you into a nightmarish landscape that is a thoroughly-realized world of its own. This may seem an odd thing to say, since a natural reaction to much of Eraserhead is, "What in the hell is going on here?!", probably quickly followed by the question, "How much more of this can I take?" The story of Henry is presented in such a dark, horrific, disorienting manner that it is disturbing, almost from its opening moments. At the very least, it is challenging, with very few aspects that are straightforward or easily interpreted. Just to give a simple idea, the film opens on Henry floating in space; we get closer to a planet superimposed over his head, then enter a building on that planet. In that building is a man pulling various levers. These images are followed by something that seems to be a spermatozoa moving along, eventually entering a pool. We are shortly after seeing Henry go about what passes for "everyday life" in this movie. Right away, we're being asked to put some serious thought into what we are seeing. And the movie never lets up in this regard. Every person, every location, and nearly every image suggests broken people in a broken world, with terror seeping into every fiber of all of it.

Even an ostensibly "normal" scene like sitting around the
dinner table is humming with a foreboding sense of
eerie alienation and isolation. As weird as these scenes are,
they are among the tamer ones in the movie.

If this sounds like a difficult viewing experience, it is. In fact, this was my second attempt at watching this. My first attempt - about 15 years ago - was a failure after getting about 40 minutes into it. My brain just wasn't up to the task, even though I had seen and even enjoyed a few of Lynch's later films (which I'll be rewatching and reviewing soon). If you're not ready to see this as a piece of art to be studied - if you're not ready to grapple with multiple disturbing, perplexing images and sequences, then Eraserhead will not be for you. I must say, though, that on this successful viewing, I was fairly compelled. I think I found a better, objective perspective from which to watch a movie like this. This is not a movie to be "enjoyed," in my view. At least, not in the same way that a mainstream action or adventure movie is. Not even in the same way that a drama is. Rather, Eraserhead is a film that you allow to pull you in, in order to ponder over what vision its creator is bringing to life. And I don't think anyone can dispute that David Lynch had a cohesive vision here. Not cohesive in an obvious, narrative way, but cohesive in terms of tone and mood. Once I locked into this, the film became more fascinating. I certainly didn't "understand" all of it. Not even close. But I enjoyed the mental exercise of theorizing what the story and images were representing, and what it was saying about its protagonist.

This is certainly one of the more challenging, least accessible movies that I've ever seen. I can only recommend it to people who enjoy surrealistic art, and who don't mind dark and disturbing energy flowing through a movie. In the coming weeks, I'll be watching more David Lynch and coming up with an overview of several of his films and TV shows. I'm fairly sure, though, that Eraserhead will reign as his strangest picture. 

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

Director: Tony Randel

This was just not a very good movie.

About two years ago, I decided to go back and watch the original Hellraiser, and I found it to be a film with a few clear strengths and a few painfully obvious weaknesses. Its sequel, Hellbound, released a mere 15 months later, shows a tentative grip on the original's merits, but has even more warts than its predecessor.

The original movie told the tale of the young woman Kirsty, whose stepmother Julia and Julia's former lover Hank had killed her father in order to resurrect Hank and rescue him from a literal hell in which he had trapped himself. It was a grisly tale that ended with Kirsty barely surviving with her life, though she managed to doom Hank and Julia back into the sadomasochistic netherworld from which Hank came. Hellbound continues to follow Kirsty, shortly after the events relayed in Hellraiser, who has been placed in a psychiatric hospital. We soon learn that the hospital is under the care of Doctor Phillip Channard, a psychopath obsessed with the puzzle boxes which Hank had used to open a door to hell. Dr. Channard uses the patients in the hospital to experiment with the boxes, eventually learning how to open one of them and releasing Julia, who is stripped of her skin in the same way that Hank was upon his initial return. Channard allows himself to be taken into Hell by Pinhead and the other horrific Cenobites, with Kristy and another patient, Tiffany, following in order to stop whatever grand plan Channard has. We see the landscape of Hell, learn that Pinhead and the other Cenobites were once themselves humans, and watch Dr. Channard become a new, even more powerful form of Cenobite. Channard kills the other Cenobites in a bid to take over their realm, and even bring its nightmare tortures to our world. Channard is foiled, though, when Kirsty and Tiffany use the puzzle box to destroy Channard's power source, and him with it.

This sequel was pretty bad. The few strengths it showed were really just lifted from the previous film, and the weaknesses of Hellraiser were mostly here again, a few of them in worse form. As grotesque as the visuals are in the Hellraiser films, one has to admit that creator Clive Barker's concepts and mythology around the Cenobites and Hell are unique and morbidly fascinating. And the neo-goth, sadomasochistic fetish aesthetic was a novel visualization of the entire frightening notion. Combined with the gut-wrenching body horror elements depicted, an iconic horror world was created. These things are the main draw in Hellbound, but they were already created and shown in the previous movie. Hellbound's greatest contribution to Barker's world is the deepening of the mythology. We learn some key pieces to Pinhead's origins, and we see what their realm actually looks like, and these were fairly compelling. The effects and visuals in the sequel are of the same quality, which is to say quite good, but again this was nothing new. It did seem, though, that the actual cinematography and any set designs not part of the horror sequences were rather drab and cheap.

Here's Channard, undoubtedly trying out one of his awful
one-liners. It's like the writers asked, "What if we mix Pinhead
with Henny Youngman? That's be pretty scary, right?"

Nearly every other aspect of the movie I find weak. Like its predecessor, the acting is spotty at best, and sometimes downright bad. This isn't helped by a rather lame script that never really offers good answers to any of the more interesting questions that might come up. I mean, you have a ton of material just sitting there regarding human psychology around pain and arousal, and it is never explored with any sort of depth. The really painful parts, though, are how the film turns its main villain - Dr. Channard - into a lame, Freddy Kruger wannabe. Yes, Pinhead cracked off one or two iconic lines in Hellraiser: "We have such sights to show you," and "Time to play" are all-timers. Well, I guess the filmmakers took that bait and ran with it, because in Hellbound, you have the transformed Channard Cenobite flying around, shredding people left and right, and spouting lame, hokey one-liners in every scene. It's pretty cringe-worthy for a story that has the potential to be truly horrifying in more of a Lovecraftian way, rather than a campy way.

So my Hellraiser itch is now fully scratched. It may come as a surprise to you that there are ten - that's right, ten - movies in this series so far (I think I knew of four or five of them). After watching the second one, though, I feel absolutely no need to go any further. For fans of dark horror, it's well worth checking out the original. But don't give in to the temptation to watch more. If my experience with Hellbound and the overall reception of the subsequent movies are anything to on, it's best to just leave well enough alone. 

Rocketman (2019)

Director: Dexter Fletcher

Solid musical biopic covering the first thirty-odd years in the life of massively popular musician Elton John. Rocketman is entertaining and very well crafted, even if it left a few things to be desired. This was part of a little musical kick that my wife and I have been on in the last few weeks - a kick which has included watching Purple Rain and the 2018 version of A Star is Born. 

For those somehow unaware of the exact origins of the smash hit songs Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road, Tiny Dancer, and a ton of other tunes we all know and can sing the chorus to, this movie is a dramatic, glitzy telling of their performer, Elton John. John, born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, had an emotionally (and often physically) distant father, a rather self-involved mother, and early on exhibited exceptional talent as a pianist. After spending most of his teen years playing in cover bands and as a backup pianist for visiting rock and rhythm and blues bands, Dwight delved into a solo career, adopting the stage name "Elton John." He was soon introduced to aspiring lyricist Bernie Taupin, and the two very quickly proved to be an incomparable songwriting duo. Within two years, the pair had composed two hit songs, and soon Elton was finding himself entering the brighter spotlights of worldwide fame and fortune. However, the prodigious musician and performer still struggled mightily with his own sexual orientation and relationships with other people, being a gay man in a time when it still wasn't very acceptable to be known as a non-heterosexual. Elton's forms of self-therapy included booze and drugs, along with lavish spending sprees on ever-more flamboyant outfits and other material possessions. After a rock bottom moment in the mid-1980s, Elton eventually sorted out most of the serious issues in his life, getting him back on track to having healthier relationships and returning to being a great performer.

Elton John's famously flamboyant outfits often belied
the psychological and emotional distress he was experiencing.

The movie Rocketman covers this period in John's life in fun fashion. I actually wasn't expecting it, but it takes the more traditional musical approach of having song and dance numbers break out, spontaneously, regularly throughout the movie. This has never been my favorite style of musical, as it usually feels inorganic and forced. Still, I grew used to it with Rocketman, as it's a logical representation of a person's whose mind works in musical ways. Also, none of the songs is full-length, always being a one- or two-minute segment of one of John's best-known hits. For me, it also helped that I've always liked the man's music. I've never been a fanatic, but I've enjoyed his songs enough to tap my toes along and even sing or hum a few bars when those familiar sounds kick off at many points in the movie. And the visuals and choreography are as glitzy and dazzling as you would expect from a film about one of the showiest pop musicians of all time.

The story itself doesn't do anything especially novel with the narrative of fame. A young, bright-eyed, and talented person overcomes difficult beginnings to reach unimagined heights of notoriety. Their personal demons and the trappings of fame lead to self-destructive behavior. They navigate those treacherous waters and come out the other side, a bit more whole. Rocketman sticks to that telling of the story Elton John's first thirty-odd years of life. It is fairly refreshing to see that we live in a time when someone's sexuality can be openly explored, along with the more standard struggles with family life and other personal obstacles. This film does a nice job of not flinching here, or making John out to be some sort of angelic victim.

One can't help but notice that, while the movie uses plenty of tunes from the Elton John catalog, it is not John's voice that you hear. Perhaps for reasons of sonic integrity, lead actor Taron Egerton does all of his own singing. He does a solid job of it, considering Elton John always had such an amazing and distinct vocal style. Still, it's not Elton John, and it stands out a bit. Egerton does, however, do a great job in terms of his overall performance, hitting the range of emotions required in depicting John as sometimes painfully vulnerable and sometimes brashly confident. The rest of the cast also does great work, especially Jamie Bell, who plays Bernie Taupin.

Rocketman was good fun. You'll have to look elsewhere if you want an objective, definitive life story of Elton John, but this is an entertaining and often touching look at the making of a 20th-century pop music icon.

Idiot Boxing: Insecure, season 4 (2020)

Issa Rae continues to head up a great modern dramedy.

This season sees Issa continue her attempts to forge a place for herself and figure out exactly what she wants in life - something that plenty of people entering their 30s struggle with. In Issa's case, it takes three main forms. Professionally, she is trying to coordinate a large community event and benefit, including food and entertainment. It forces her to work far more autonomously than ever, which of course has its pros and cons. Swirling around this is her relationship with longtime best friend, Molly, which has grown rockier for a few reasons. In addition, Issa's previous longtime boyfriend Lawrence has returned on the scene, with a very solid job and a new girlfriend - a girlfriend with whom Issa begins working in order to better coordinate her large-scale community event.

Since its first season back in 2016, this has been a must-watch show for my wife and me, and this newest season did nothing to change that. The humor is as sharp and consistent as ever, and the drama is solid enough that even someone like me - who's not big on relationship drama - can get wrapped up in it. As you would hope in the fourth season of a show that started with its main character in their mid- to late twenties, it's less about horrible decisions and more about the struggles that come with their increasing maturity and reevaluation of their relationships with each other. The big rift in this season is between Issa and Molly, triggered by Issa's furtively having Molly's boyfriend Andrew give her a bit of help with her event. This isn't helped by the fact that Molly's relationship with Andrew hits

Molly plays an even more prominent role this season, even
having an entire episode all to herself. Along with the return
of Lawrence, Issa's shifting friendship with Molly is a key
component to this fourth season of the show. 

some choppy waves, or that Issa has to navigate a strange triangle between her ex and now extremely eligible bachelor Lawrence and Lawrence's girlfriend. Yes, it's drama, but I never felt like anything was overly forced or in the melodrama category.

The comedy elements of the show? Still completely on point. Yet again, this season highlights Issa Rae's comic skills, and yet again, there are a ton of great supporting characters who bring the fun. The writing hasn't lost its edge, even if the main characters' blunders are a bit more subtle, and their struggles more of an internal nature. And this is where Issa Rae's masterful control of her physical movements, facial expressions, and comic timing shine once again.

Even though I feel like this show will run its course in one or two more seasons, I'm still completely on board and fully looking forward to the next chapter. 

Idiot Boxing: What We Do in the Shadows, season 2 (2020)

The crew celebrates Nandor's 800-somethingth birthday in
typically foolhardy fashion.

No Spoilers, so read away!

A still funny but slightly lesser sophomore season from the brainchild of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi.

The show still focuses on a quartet of vampires living in Staten Island, New York. Three of them embody the classic vision of vampires, hailing from the Europe of centuries past and exhibiting an unfailing sense of superiority, despite the fact that they are often hopelessly out of touch with modern times. They are also looked down upon by nearly every other vampire in the vast underworld community of nightwalkers. The fourth - the energy vampire Colin Robinson - may be more in tune with modern times, but is so horribly boring that he's equally derided by his vampiric peers. The big twist at the end of the first season was actually about Guillermo, the semi-pathetic familiar to the especially dim-witted, 800-year old vampire Nandor. Guillermo, long awaiting his master to fulfill his dream and turn him into a vampire, learns that he is a descendent of the renowned vampire-slayer Abraham Van Helsing. This syncs up with the fact that Guillermo had accidentally slain several vampires through the course of the first season, including the powerful and feared (but also completely deranged) "Baron."

This second season follows a similar rhythm to the first. Each mockumentary-style episode is mostly stand-alone, with the overarching story continuing to be Guillermo's attempts to reconcile his still-present desire to become a vampire with the fact that he is a world-class vampire killer. This is a skill that he finds himself using more than he would like, as many other vampire clans are constantly sending assassins after Nandor and the other vampires in their home, due to the belief that it was they, not Guillermo, who killed The Baron. Mostly, though, each episode has its own self-contained focus.

Laszlo squares off against a dangerous rival in a sleepy town
pub in Pennsylvania, where he's been hiding out in the episode
"On the Run." This was my favorite episode of this season.

I thought this season was still quite funny, though not as consistent as the first season. Of the ten episodes, there were a few that I found were noticeably less funny than most entries into this still-young series. Oddly, it was the first three episodes - "Resurrection," "Ghosts," and "Brain Scramblies" - in which I found more gags that were only so-so, mixed in with some really good moments. Once it got to the middle part of the season, things picked up noticeably. "Colin's Promotion" was a good one, in which Colin Robinson works his way up the chain of command at work and sees his energy-siphoning powers grow immensely strong. And "Witches" was a solid entry with plenty of sexual humor - something that is always Laszlo's strong point. My personal favorite, though, was "On the Run," in which Laszlo flees Staten Island, fearing for his (after?)life. The always-over puffed up vampire takes refuge in a small Pennsylvania town, and there are a ton of hilarious moments as he "blends in" with the locals.

Season two also had a bit of a "reveal" at the end of it, which I won't spoil for anyone, and a third season has been confirmed. However, I seem to recall reading that show co-creators Jemaine Clement or Taika Waititi may step away from the show going forward. If that is, indeed, the case, then I hope whoever picks up the reins can keep the show going strong. It's really one of the best comedies that I know of on TV right now, and one could see it remaining so for several more seasons. 

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Director: Wes Anderson

A solid Wes Anderson movie that's mostly carried by a brilliant comic performance by Ralph Fiennes.

As the final leg of our unplanned, incomplete return to Wes Anderson's movie catalog, my wife and I rewatched Grand Budapest Hotel for the first time since seeing it in the theater back in 2014. Before this, we had returned to The Darjeeling Limited, Rushmore, The Royal Tennenbaums, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Now, the itch has been fully scratched.

Grand Budapest is a chronologically layered tale, beginning in the 1980s and quickly jumping two levels backward into the past, ultimately landing in the 1930s for the majority of the film. There (and then), we follow M. Gustave, the famed concierge of the luxurious Grand Budapest Hotel, through a wild adventure involving an invaluable painting and the viciously greedy family that covets it, all set to the backdrop of a rising, Nazi-esque fascist movement throughout this fictitious segment of Europe. Helping Gustave much of the way is the hotel's eager bellhop and concierge-in-training, Zero (Tony Revolori).

This movie is arguably Anderson's most sweeping, romantic picture. At least, romantic in Wes Anderson's unique way. More than any other of his live-action pictures, Anderson constructed an entire world. Yes, it's based on familiar elements of pre-World War II Europe, but the setting feels more exotic and romantic than anything we've seen from him. On top of that, this is the only Anderson film that doesn't hinge on the dynamics of a dysfunctional family unit. Instead, we focus on a uniquely charismatic, if not exactly honorable, figure in Gustave. He is an extremely polished, charmingly eloquent, and amusingly immoral character whose great tragedy is only that his era is slowly slipping away. Bittersweetness is always a part of Wes Anderson's movies, but never before had he examined the bittersweetness of feeling oneself slowly and inexorably becoming an anachronism. And it is a hilarious and touching study.

M. Gustave in the foreground. Ralph Fiennes's performance
here ranks among his very best, which is no mean feat for
such an accomplished actor. Ronan and Revolori do
excellent work here, as well. 

As one might expect, all of Wes Anderson's gifts as a visual filmmaker are on display, perhaps more than any other movie. By the time Grand Budapest - his seventh full-length live-action movie - arrived, we knew to expect the meticulous and vibrant sets and costumes, and carefully considered cinematography. What really jumps out, though, is Ralph Fiennes's performance as Gustave. Anderson's movies have often featured memorable turns as his quirky and flawed characters: Gene Hackman as Royal Tennenbaum. Jason Schwartzman as Max Fisher. But Fiennes turns in what I think is the best main performance of any Wes Anderson movie. It can't be easy to make an immoral hedonist like Gustave so amiable, but Fiennes pulls it off. Part of this is the great script, but even more of it is Fiennes's ability to shift registers and emotional tones with incredible agility. One moment, he's using wonderfully flowery and elevated language to wax poetic and profound, and in a blink he gives up and drops a completely resigned, "fuck it." And you feel that sad "fuck it" right along with him. It's brilliant, touching, and hilarious, and it happens several times throughout the movie.

As much as any Wes Anderson movie, this one features countless great actors filling in major and minor roles, alike. There are plenty of Anderson film mainstays like Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, and Harvey Keitel. But we also get an early and memorable performance by a then-less-known Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn, Ladybird) and a nice turn by Tony Revolori as Zero the diminutive bellboy, whose character is revealed to be made of far sterner and deeper stuff than we might initially believe.

This second viewing reminded me of how much I enjoyed this one when I first saw it. While it doesn't quite rise to the level of Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums among Wes Anderson's canon, in my mind, it's in that close second-tier along with The Darjeeling Limited. This is one that I would happily recommend to someone who has seen and enjoyed one or two of Anderson's other films, and I'm sure to return to it in the future.