The fight for diverse and conscious voices

This Code 8 is the 2019 Netflix film. It tells the story of a world in which some people have one of a handful of super powers - fire, electricity, physical force, and some rarer ones like mind-reading. These powered people are cast into society's underclass in a world that's moving toward robotics replacing humans. Previously shut out of conventional work, powered people are now at risk of losing even the low-wage manual jobs like construction day labor that they rely on due to rising use of robots. At the same time, criminals are ramping up production and distribution of Psyke, a powerful drug made from the spinal fluid of powered people. 2.5/5 stars for stringing together some bog-standardard SFnal tropes and not doing anything innovative with them.

The 'powered people as underclass' idea is at least as old as the X-Men, when mutants became stand-ins for a variety of marginalized people in the late 20th century. SF and comics told allegorical stories about racism and classism through these fictional people, echoing similar themes in earlier written speculative fiction. Code 8 has nothing new to say in this regard and frankly seems disinterested in exploring that.

Instead, the story centers on Connor Reed (Robbie Amell) who's not only downcast for being powered, he's also the son of a powered criminal and his poor family can't afford treatment for the cancer that's visibly killing his mother. As desperate people will do, he falls in with a criminal gang and thing just go from bad to worse.

I found the movie overall depressing. Reed isn't exactly the typical "good guy among bad people". He's just less bad than one group of them, who are themselves less bad than the baddest bad guys. Even the cops aren't particularly admirable, showing themselves not only brutal tools of the oppressive state but fairly corrupt, willing to cut corners or even outright cheat to get what they want.

No one is so bad as to make the film unwatchable - they're just bad enough that I don't end up caring much about any of them. Connor's mother is probably the only good person in the film, but her role seems to be victim/motivation and although Kari Matchett does the best she can with the scenes she has, it's not enough to uplift the film as a whole.

Not entirely a waste of an afternoon, but not one I'd rewatch.

A violent fast-paced action shooter that discards plot almost entirely in favor of excitement. 3/5 stars for solid if uninventive work all around.

Luc Besson is credited with the original story, adapted into a screenplay by Adi Hasak, who is mostly known for TV work, and directed by Pierre Morel. It still feels like a Luc Besson film, and the lead role is one that feels written for a Bruce Willis.

Instead, we get Travolta, a choice I was not sure would work. Liking John Travolta is not guaranteed. I actually first saw Travolta in Saturday Night Fever and "Welcome Back Kotter". Since then he's played a lot of roles and I've often disliked them. Notable exceptions being things like Face/Off, Broken Arrow, and of course Pulp Fiction - he seems to do well when he has very capable directors.

Here he plays the "throw out the rulebook" experienced agent who drags along newbie James Reese (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Travolta fills out the role admirably - every time he does something you want to hate him for it turns out he has a good reason for it. He's aggressive and a bit obnoxious but it never turns into him being an outright asshole.

Early on we see that Reese has ambitions to be a "real" agent instead of doing the trivial fetch-and-carry chores he's assigned. Charlie Wax (Travolta) gives him that and more. Reese is, at first, being presented with a stark choice: go on living your current life, marrying the pretty woman you're engaged to versus be like Charlie and watch the bodies pile up.

The plot, such as it is, involves essentially Islamic terrorism and skates awfully close to racist stereotypes. That it avoids falling entirely into that cesspit is nice, but I still felt uncomfortable with some of the depictions. Partly, I think, this is due to the bad guys remaining faceless and largely nameless for most of the movie.

Not really much to say about this one. If you're in the mood for violent mind-candy you could do a lot worse, but I don't think this will bear re-watching.

Spoilers will be in a cut and comments. I know lots of people won't have seen this. I paid a stupid amount of money to get HBO Max and see it. I resent that, but Wonder Woman is my first fandom and I imprinted heavily on it. I was beyond excited that she'd come back on the big screen and while the first movie was far from perfect it was pretty good and had a lot of promise. This one misses the mark in almost every way. The cast are doing their best, but the script is just not good. It's incoherent on almost every level, heavy-handed, and requires very generous interpretation of what Jenkins is trying to do. (2/5 *wince* but I seriously would pay money to watch Gal Godot read a phone book so there you go.)

I credit Jenkins for trying to tread a new path. Right now our superhero movies are deeply divided between the wisecracking lightheartedness of the MCU, and the Deep Serious OMG DAAAARK of the Batman/Superman/Snyderverse. Wonder Woman is neither of these and I think Jenkins is trying to give us a flawed hero. Diana is a hero we can all admire, who inspires the best in us, but at the same time has her own deficiencies and struggles. Both the Marvel and DC television series have done a much better job of exploring heroes with flaws and nuance than the movies.

Beyond that, though, I lay the blame for this movie's failure on Jenkins. She's trying to be writer and director and producer and maybe that's too much for one human. I'd like to see a third movie with a new writer to love this character the way I think she should be loved. (*)

So rather than a celebration of a beloved character, we get a movie that is trying to be a morality play and is so heavy-handed it entirely loses track of sense. A lot of it is unnecessary and there's at least one creepy bit I need to tuck into the spoilers...

( On with the spoiler stuff )

(*) WB has said there will be a WW3 but Jenkins isn't signed because she's doing the Rogue Squadron Star Wars film. I'm afraid this film is going to be considered a bomb and Jenkins won't be brought back.

The Netflix adaption of the comic is, I'm told, less dark than its original - which I have not read. Taken on its own, then, this is a really unusual buddy/mentor movie with an SFnal twist and a great cast. (4/5 stars mostly for the lame villain)

The core of the story is Andy, played by Charlize Theron. Andy is the leader of a small band of immortal warriors, working in present day as mercenaries. Andy is the oldest of the team, and the most tired and cynical. She's seen everyone she loved taken from her, and despite the team's attempts to make the world a better place she's increasingly convinced that it's all futile.

In the world of this story, immortals just happen. Nobody knows why - one day you should be dead but instead you wake up. And can't die... until one day your body stops repairing itself and that's it. The lack of explanation or understanding leads to a sense of futility and fatality. Like, none of us asked to be born and none of us know when we'll die - just one day it'll happen. The Old Guard are that stretched out over centuries.

The action of the story centers around the "birth" of a new immortal, a young Marine in Afghanistan who should have died but doesn't. Andy and her team need to get to this woman before the villain, Merrick (played by Harry Melling), does. Merrick is a biotech genius megalomaniac who wants to discover the immortals' secret for his own commercial profit. As noted, this is the weakest part of the film. Merrick is exactly a comic-book villain and he exists solely to give us someone unambiguous to hate so we can watch as Andy kicks his ass.

The young immortal is Nile, played by KiKi Layne. Nile knows nothing of herself now, and nothing of this team. Andy is forced to crack open the built-up shell of cynicism and detachment to take in, care for, and help train this newcomer. Integrating a new person into a centuries-old team is not easy and nothing about the circumstances makes it easier. Andy's reluctant acceptance of her role as the old mentor, playing against Nile's young energetic transformation from her old life to her new, is solid. The film wants to keep things moving - it's an action flick after all - so we don't get as much screen time for these two as I would have liked. They're both authentic and they both captured my heart in different ways.

It's also worth noting that this film is queer AF. Andy is at least bi, and we learn the love of her life was another woman. The major on-screen romance is between two men of the team - Joe and Nicky (Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli, both well-known in Europe but not much in America). The two portray men who are still passionately in love with each other despite being together for so long. It's refreshing because we don't normally get gay love stories in our SF action films nor love stories that aren't about or with the main character. Just as with the Andy/Nile mentor/mentee relationship, this one gets less screen time than I would have liked but the script and the acting sell it authentically.

Also worth mentioning is Chiwetel Ejiofor's Copley, a super-spook who has been tracking the team in the present and uncovering its past. The way he and Andy interact is both surprising and satisfying. Andy is still the hub of the movie, and Copley is a fine spoke.

Some people debate the 27% Rotten Tomatoes rating. They're wrong. This film really is that bad. It's "may I have those hours of my life back, please" bad. Do not waste your time unless you want to MST3K something. (0/5 stars because no).

I remarked to Pygment on completing the movie(*) that I was surprised the film doesn't collapse under the weight of all the cliches it's carrying. I mean, literally there are so many cliches piled on top of one another that one of the characters in the film remarks on how cliche it is.

The "plot" makes no sense. I mean, none. Somehow you should accept that identical genetic sequencing means two people are the same. It's not clear if you're supposed to believe in rebirth (one of the characters seems to, some do not) or whatever but anyway, no. Somebody murdered their mother and so when an Earth girl shows up with a genetic sequence now they have to murder her too. I can't even.

The characters' actions make no sense. People who are supposed to be rich behave like proles or bad Bond villains, with nothing in between. Civilizations that have star-spanning technology and city-level instant building capability somehow don't use robots, like at all. Also, they have to harvest organics rather that just molecularly synthesizing anything. Because... not even Reasons. There are no reasons.

The tech is alternately absurd and very flashy and somehow people Doing It All Themselves is the right answer to everything because somehow the person is better than a machine always and in every way. Because... nope, still no Reasons.

The action sequences are also very flashy and also spectacularly dull and predictable. I get it, you're supposed to look at the pretty and not actually turn on your brain but it's just badly choreographed and badly shot and ... bad.

I credit the actors for trying. I blame the Wachowskis for trading on their reputations to get someone to fund this drek.

(*) We saw it outdoors courtesy of friends of ours who have a screen set up in their backyard. Yay for socially distanced movies; better choices next time.

Knives Out is a silly melodramatic mystery movie that involves not a lot of suspense, one or two twists you'll likely see coming, and an excellent cast having fun. 4/5 stars and if you enjoy Agatha Christie-type mysteries this is in your wheelhouse.

There's not much to spoil about this movie but I'll keep this spoiler-free. The movie revolves around the investigation and aftermath of the death of Christopher Plummer's Harlan Thrombey, the patriarch of a privileged eccentric Massachusetts family. Thromby researches and writes mysteries, lives in a household full of oddities related to his stories, and doles out his fortune to his children. On his 85th birthday, though, something changes and he's found dead that night. The question as always is "whodunnit" and also "why".

The detective in this case is played by Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc - a deliberately terrible-accent New Orleans PI. Benoit himself doesn't know who hired him via an anonymous envelope of cash so along with the central murder he also wants to solve that mystery.

Harlan's household includes children, their spouses, two grandchildren, and one nurse-assistant, Ana de Armas(*) as Marta Cabrera. Marta was, apparently, the last person to see Harlan alive and she is enlisted by Benoit to help his investigation as someone who (it seems) has no motives in Harlan's death. Each of the family members turns out to have motives and each is clearly lying. We see most of the movie through Marta's eyes and we learn what she knows. This puts us often one step ahead of the detective and police and I found it an enjoyable point of view when compared to typical mysteries that center the detective.

Because the movie doesn't go for high suspense - we learn as things progress what some of the more obvious lies are - the fun rests in the performances. Everyone is playing over the top melodrama, presumably on Rian Johnson's direction, and it's delightful to watch.

(*) I've been niggling at where I had seen her before but had to go to IMDB to remmber that she was Joi in the Blade Runner:2049 flop. She's also scheduled to appear again with Daniel Craig in the upcoming Bond film.

I would say that Far from Home (FFH) is the best live-action Spider Man movie of them all and comes close in quality to Spiderverse. I think the latter is better because it's so innovative and breaks ground while FFH is the culmination of a movie arc within a constrained universe. That said, FFH does approximately everything right. 4/5 stars and I'm glad Spider Man survived the snap.

FFH starts off with a premise that makes comics fans and those who know the story shake their heads. Wait, isn't that dude supposed to be a bad guy? In our universe, he's Mysterio and we know he's bad. In FFH he's from another Earth and is helping by doing heroics in the absence of the Avengers or SHIELD.

FFH has several jobs to do. It is the last movie of this phase of the MCU arc, so it has to tell us about the world after people come back from being snapped out of existence. It has to provide continuity with the story as we know it from the earlier movies, and it has to remind us that there are enough interesting things left to get us looking forward to what comes next. That it does all these things while still being a good movie in its own right and developing its own characters is a credit to Erik Sommers' screenplay. The movie is laugh-out-loud funny in places, manages to tackle serious themes well, and lets its characters grow and develop.

Tom Holland is a real stand-out in this film. He seems to have grown into the Spider Man/Peter Parker dual characters wonderfully. He's defining each and bringing the story to life through them. The movie provides a number of opportunities for Parker to reflect out loud on who he is and what he wants and he does it without ever coming across as explaining or lecturing the audience. He's soul-searching about some things, in mourning about some things, and trying to live a high schooler's life. Holland gets considerable help from Jake Gyllenhaal's "Quentin Beck" (Mysterio) who is old enough to be a father figure for Parker but stays back from that just enough. He's more a worldly advisor who likes Parker. It works well.

Zendaya continues to shine as MJ and I hope they'll do more Spider Man-MJ stories. There are several good ones in the comics. This version of MJ is the smart snarky girl who doesn't know how to deal with her emotions so she hides and redirects and reflects them. She's attractive without being overwhelming, and her character gets to be fleshed out in ways that feel natural to the story.

The other supporting characters are also good, notably Jacob Batalon as best-buddy/sidekick/confidante Ned, and Jon Favreau as the slightly comic Happy Hogan. I really appreciated the way Favreau shares in Parker's grief over Tony Stark's death without crowding or being awkward. The script gives Happy more of an "Alfred the Butler" role and though I'm still weirded out by how the MCU has de-aged and made attractive Marisa Tomei's Aunt May I think it's starting to work, largely due to how Favreau is playing it. Peter Parker, awkward teen romantic, gets to see adults demonstrating awkward romance that he has to "be the adult" for.

The movie wisely keeps this lightly funny - it could easily descend into farce or slapstick but instead it's kind of cute, kind of awkward and you get to laugh with the characters more than at them.

Finally, I want to say that the filmmakers have cleverly included a bunch of clues in the film. If something seems odd or out of place, pay attention because that's likely going to be part of the explanations given in the second half. And since that's spoilery it'll be below the cut...
( spoiler stuff and discussion )

The Men in Black series has always been silly fantasy, with nods to and parodies of popular (mis)conceptions and tabloid/schlock low concept alien and monster stories. At its best it's kind of whacky hijinks with silly tech and neat aliens. At its worst, it's rehashed and boring, relying on CGI to keep butts in the seats. Sadly, MiB:I falls mostly into that second camp. 2/5 stars

MiB:I had a lot of promise out of the gate, with popular leads Chris Hemsworth (Agent H) and Tessa Thompson (Agent M). Add in Emma Thompson as the head of the US branch (as Agent O) and Liam Neeson as the agent in charge of the UK branch (as Agent "High T" - yes, they did that). That alone should have made for a watchable fun movie. Unfortunately, the movie tries to do too much and doesn't do anything really well.

Part of the movie is M's story. After her family encounters aliens while she is a child, the Men in Black neuralize her parents but fail to get her. She grows up knowing they're somewhere and spends her brilliant early adult life trying to find them. Then she does and joins up, nominally as a probationary agent paired with the superstar Agent H. The rest of the movie kind of drops her story in favor of H's story - what happened to him and High T in the past, why T protects him from the consequences of his growing sloppiness, and so on and so on.

There's one moment where H stumbles over the "Men in black" phrase in front of M, trying for "Men... and women in black" but it falls flat. It's almost like the MiB has never had a female agent before, leaving one to wonder where O has been all this time and how she got to be head of the US arm... anyway, don't think about it too much.

The final third of the movie seems to want to be about High T and H resolving their relationship and past, with M being kind of a background observer. It's kind of dull but that may be because I want more Tessa Thompson in my life, a fact about which I am unapologetic.

So, OK, the script is sloppy and not particularly coherent, but at least the effects and aliens are good, right? Enh... sort of? The green-screen work is particularly terrible. The CGI is OK, but doesn't do anything particularly novel.

Rocketman is the story of the rise and fall of Elton John. Since the story is public and well-known I'm going to treat everything as not a spoiler. The movie's format and treatment were a surprise to me since the trailer didn't hint at any of it. If you'd rather be unspoiled by that you should probably not read the entire thing. I am not a fan of musicals and not a great Elton John lover. That said, the unpleasantness of this would be a drawback no matter what. (1/5 stars)

The movie begins with Elton John flouncing into what turns out to be an AA-style rehab group. The group facilitator asks what he was like as a child, and the story is mostly told through flashback. Elton John was apparently closely involved in the movie's production, so I'm going to assume this is some kind of "approved" biography, in which case his parents were fucking awful human beings, bordering on emotionally abusive, and his manager was a manipulative piece of shit.

Frankly, nobody in this movie comes off as particularly sympathetic or likable except possibly Bernie Taupin, John's lifelong collaborator. But Taupin plays a peripheral role in this telling, being offscreen more than on. Jamie Bell's performance is fine, but there's so little there it's hard to care much.

The movie mostly doesn't spare Elton John (Taron Egerton) either. He starts off by listing his flaws, including drug and alcohol addiction, and "problems" with shopping. He also comes across as deeply damaged, narcissistic, and borderline abusive to people close to him. You could say that given the trauma that's portrayed starting in his childhood he just didn't know better; he is simply repeating traumatic behaviors he learned, and never did mature as an emotionally adult human. Regardless of the reasoning, it's deeply unpleasant to watch.

Making it a musical doesn't help - it hurts. The movie is a full-on musical, with people breaking into song and dance numbers woven into the plot. My personal distaste for music aside, the result is something that is very hard to parse. Some scenes are quite literal, with standard dialog and action. John plays his music-as-music within a scene and it's "just" a song. In other cases, the music becomes part of a transformative scene. I'm pretty sure nobody actually levitated while listening to him play, so that part is allegorical. Then there are some other bits that are harder to parse - are we to take them literally, or allegorically?

One way to look at this is to compare with the recent Bohemian Rhapsody. Where that movie told the story of the music, Rocketman is trying to tell it story through the music. When the characters break into song it's often to give you the reactions/contexts/import of the lyrics as they fit into that part of the story. For example, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" is used in the film at the point where Taupin actually leaves John. This isn't precisely historical, but it's roughly accurate - Taupin wrote the lyrics to express his desire to get away from the glitz of rockstar-dom and back to his simpler life.

You get about two hours of this, and then the movie just... ends. John leaves rehab, and everything that's happened since (his second marriage, his kids) is just told via flashcards. This is the most unsatisfying kind of payoff I can imagine. Having endured vicarious abuse and nastiness for two hours, I'd like to see something better than "and then he left rehab mostly OK. The End."

There's no payoff in that, and no sense that you have shaken off or gotten past the nastiness. Maybe that's intentional? I don't know and mostly I don't care. I wanted big warnings up front and something better at the end.

Last night I had occasion to re-see "Orlando" at the MFA. They showed it because it's adjacent to the their "Gender-Bending Fashion" exhibit (https://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/gender-bending-fashion). The exhibit itself is fun, if a bit small and not entirely coherent about what "gender bending" is but anyway, movie. (4/5 stars and I can't think of a single person who'd read this journal and not enjoy this movie)

I've seen Orlando before, a couple times I think. It's the first Tilda Swinton movie I ever saw and I am forever after sad that she hasn't reprised the gorgeous long red hair she sports in this film. The MFA showed a pretty crap-tastic condition analog print of the movie. I still like analog better than digital for a lot of things, but a bad print is still bad and it's not clear to me why they couldn't get a clean print. My friend had not seen the entire film previously so there was the fun of seeing it with someone getting the full effect for the first time.

Despite being 27 years old now, Orlando remains an excellent film with themes and ideas that remain relevant. If you've not seen it you should track down a copy (it's on Amazon Prime if that's your thing). It's loosely based on Virginia Woolf's satiric novel of the same title. I enjoyed the book as well, though very differently from the movie. Orlando is a piece of art firmly rooted in the cinema - calling it an "adaptation" is even misleading. The gist is still the same: a young nobleman is given a perpetual estate by Queen Elizabeth along with a commandment to stay forever young, which magically happens.

The film follows him through episodes that span four centuries and two continents as he interacts with society first as a man and then as a woman. It has stunning visuals and rests heavily on Swinton's ability both to act within the frame and to break it by looking straight at, and then addressing, the viewer. There are moments of sadness, moments of deep irony, and moments of tragedy, all within a nearly comedic framework that gives us the (nearly revolutionary for its time) idea that a person remains the same person whether they're seen by the world as man, woman, or something entirely else.

Billy Zane is often given second billing. He plays Shelmerdine, a character that on the surface has no larger a part in the movie than others, but that is pivotal to the emotional impact of the story. On the off chance you haven't seen it I won't give things away, but when you do see it pay very close attention to the Orlando/Shelmerdine dialog which I think both serves to validate the in-film character and to provide the viewer with the film's core idea, all tied up in a neat bow for easy quoting.