A drunken Shakespearan actor stumbles into Italy in Federico Fellini's 1968 short film Toby Dammit. Very loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's "Never Bet the Devil Your Head", it serves as a nice companion piece to Fellini's 8 1/2, which was about a director, and Dolce Vita, which was about a paparazzo. This movie covers the actor's perspective with Terence Stamp playing the title character, a man succumbing to alcoholism and in the midst of a media blitz. It's delirious and unnerving.
From the beginning, when we meet Toby on the plane, to when he's stumbling out into the airport, Fellini cuts from one aggressive zoom to another as various bizarre and/or eager objects and faces seem to rush at Toby. He also starts to have visions of a mischievous girl, drawing him towards a grim fate.
Toby Dammit was part of an anthology film that also included segments by Louis Malle and Roger Vadim. For some reason, The Criterion Channel is showing Toby Dammit in isolation. I've seen the Roger Vadim segment, Metzengerstein, at some point but not William Wilson, the Louis Malle story. I strongly suspect Fellini's is the best of the three, though. It's a vigorous assault of ingenious filmmaking.
Even though I knew this week's Fallout wouldn't be as good as last week's, I was still looking forward to it. That goes to show how good last week's was. Sadly, the writer on this week's, Owen Ellickson, is no Jane Espenson. But the episode had some things I liked.
Last week ended with a cliffhanger, Lucy and Cooper staring down a Deathclaw on the Las Vegas strip. Although the Deathclaw had just been shown tearing through the side of a building, Lucy and Cooper somehow escape by dodging behind a wall of scrap. After a flashback, we see them hanging out in a market area and Cooper gets a drink at the bar where the bartender opines about the Deathclaws being just another gang running things. So . . . are they not wild beasts? Do they have human intelligence? Why did that one tear through the side of a building then?
The episode also annoyingly brings back some random characters from season one, an old woman and a young hipster guy. What are the odds of the hipster guy turning up in Vegas around the same time as our main characters? This is the kind of writing that makes a world seem too small. Also, I just didn't like this character. He doesn't fit in the Fallout universe, he belongs at a craft brewery in a gentrified neighbourhood.
I did like the scene in which Lucy has a mishap with her gun in the shop. Her line in which she wonders who she is had a kind of an Alice in Wonderland quality. Ellickson previously wrote for The Office so his dialogue for the Vault people seemed fitting enough.
I dozed a bit while watching the 1970 version of Twelfth Night with Alec Guinness and Ralph Richardson, though the twelfth day of Christmas was last week. It's on YouTube now, on the The Shakespeare Network, embedded above. I've already written about it once, back in 2018, when I watched it on Amazon Prime where it was labelled as a 1969 production. I wonder who's right.
Guinness is so good as the hypocrite Puritan. It's a shame he's not so widely remembered for his comedic talent. It's hard to imagine anyone playing Sir Toby better than Ralph Richardson, either, the kind of sadistic Falstaff. As I said in my 2018 review, Malvolio, Guinness' character, is an ass but he doesn't deserve the treatment Sir Toby dishes out for him. It kind of reminds me of horror movie morality in which someone receives punishment disproportionate to their sin, like the girl who sleeps around and gets murdered for it. I wonder if someone could reinterpret Twelfth Night as a horror movie. Imagine Malvolio's love for Olivia treated as something sad and tender while Sir Toby and his cohorts are the vicious yokels from The Hills Have Eyes or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I'd be interested in seeing such an interpretation. In any case, I think it's clear why Sir Toby never inspired the affection Falstaff received.
The 4k version of this Twelfth Night production also looks much better than the one on Amazon Prime did. Why is free stuff so often superior these days?
Of course I've been watching Twin Peaks again and last night I came to the episode directed by Diane Keaton from February 9th, 1991. Diane Keaton died in October last year and, as I soon learned, Annette McCarthy died in 2023. McCarthy played Evelyn, the femme fatale character who tries to frame James for the murder of her husband. McCarthy was 64 when she died. Her birthday was April 12, one day after mine. She retired from acting in the early 2000s and became "an executive chef" specialising in Italian cuisine. This role on Twin Peaks was the highest profile role in her career.
And I feel relatively assured in saying it's the role most Twin Peaks fans hate the most. I certainly have always maintained this subplot was the lowest point of the lowest segment of Twin Peaks as a whole. After the groundbreaking first season and the resolution of Laura Palmer's murder, a film noir pastiche was certainly not an out of the way idea, but it was executed without any of the effective weirdness David Lynch is known for and generally feels like a cheap late night Showtime movie. Which is no surprise considering David Lynch was notoriously absent for most of season two, although McCarthy's Wikipedia page says that Lynch personally cast her.
All that considered, I have to retroactively admire how evidently Diane Keaton really tried to make something of Evelyn. Her segments of the episode suddenly feel very much anchored in her point of view beginning with an extreme closeup of her feet in black heels and fishnet stockings that slowly tracks up to an extreme closeup of her veiled face. And yes, as I said recently in another review, you can always tell when the director is an actor if there are lots and lots of closeups. There are lots of closeups of Evelyn, not just of her face but also of her body, particularly her legs. I wondered if they would seem more exploitative if I didn't know a woman had directed the episode. It's kind of impossible to know but in any case the shots successfully convey a sense of entrapment, like Evelyn is encased in her funeral garb much as she's trapped in the murder scheme. Keaton also likes to overlay slow motion footage on other footage, in Evelyn's case, footage of her distant, numb expression behind the funeral veil seems to dominate her in other scenes, as though she yearns to escape her own coldness.
The episode also features the conclusion of the plot about Ben Horne believing he was Robert E. Lee and Doctor Jacoby pretending to be Ulysses S. Grant in order to support the fantasy. That's something you couldn't do on television to-day. It's also interesting because, with the two original cast members of West Side Story, Richard Beymer and Russ Tamblyn, in the roles, it's the most Twin Peaks actually felt like a reunion for them.
Anyway, I expect to be tired of watching Twin Peaks at some point in the 2050s.
Like most Americans, I assume, I'm still thinking about the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis. Since I wrote about it last week, new footage of the incident has emerged, most significantly footage taken by the ICE agent himself, whose name is Jonathon Ross. One frustrating thing, trying to find a clip to embed here, is that most of the clips of it include narration of someone "explaining" what you're seeing, and that narration chooses to omit or include things depending on the speaker's political perspective. Here's a right wing version and here's a left wing version.
NBC News Chicago has an unedited version:
But, of course, it's immediately followed by a reporter explaining what you saw.
From my own perspective, I think it's deeply bizarre that anyone on the right thinks this exonerates the ICE officer. Good's last words being "I'm not mad at you," hardly sound like harassment, however you look at it. What it does sound like to me is Good and her wife speaking to the ICE agents as if they were naughty children which, to be fair, is a perspective I certainly agree with. They do act like children, just children with deadly weapons. I suspect Ross may even truly believe they were harassing him by not speaking to him as though he were their superior. In other words, they were being "uppity".
And the right is using this as though it's exoneration. A glance at the headlines on Breitbart shows this to be so, one yesterday saying the footage "destroys" the left's position.
But turning to more moderate, less tacky right wing sites, I was fascinated by the articles ruminating on the ultimate unknowability of truth, like this editorial at The Free Press; "The videos leave room for reasonable debate about the nature of the incident and who was at fault." I really don't think it does. And I'm not partisan. I've called bullshit on left wing claims before, like when that white kid was vilified for just standing and smiling at a Native American talking to him in Washington D.C. a few years ago. I said it was disgusting then when the Washington Post published a photo of the kid's face labelling it "The New Face of Evil" and I say it's even more disgusting how the right now is trying to distort what is very clearly happening in this footage from Minneapolis.
There's an article on UnHerd I thought was really interesting, "ICE Theatrics are Getting Real". The author, Malcom Kyeyune, likens the public discourse between right and left as something like professional wrestling in the U.S. In other words, a kind of improvised theatre. I think there's a lot of truth in that. He makes a good point about how ICE has changed tactics from wearing plainclothes and operating quietly to effecting a highly visible, military mode. As I said last week, ICE is clearly employing, or attempting to employ, psychological tactics to inspire terror and/or respect. Perhaps the rhetoric on the left is consciously designed to undermine that. I would advise the left not to try so hard. Once you start lying, even in support of the truth, you start to gut your own position in the eyes of people you haven't swayed yet.
X Sonnet 1974
The image shows assured what dreams are for.
The picture plainly scuttles ships of bliss.
The overriding cloud has ploughed the core.
The purple haze produced a lover's kiss.
No questions could invade the empty room.
Acoustics could forbid the telling clock.
We dance about the hall of silver doom.
We bicker long about the puppet's sock.
Assembled players weave a coat of points.
The joust begins with reeds of brittle straw.
It ends with ruined knights with broken joints.
When all are gone, the ghost declares a draw.
But after us, will yet the fires burn?
Our stupid might compels the Earth to learn.
Once again, a morally naive Victorian is forced to confront the reality that scandalous people are just as human as she is in 1949's The Fan. It's an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's 1893 play Lady Windermere's Fan directed by Otto Preminger with a screenplay co-written by Dorothy Parker. Reviews quoted on Wikipedia lament the absence of a great deal of Wilde's famous dialogue in the adaptation. It is a shame but Preminger was a great director and the film features George Sanders, an ideal Wildean actor, and Jeanne Craine, one of the most beautiful actresses of all time.
It was also Madeleine Carroll's final role and she plays the typical Wildean problem character, a woman with good intentions and a scandalous secret life, Mrs. Erlynne. Carroll was a good sport for taking the role as it requires a woman believably old enough to be Jeanne Crain's mother. Carroll was 19 when Crain was born in 1925, so it's plausible, but this was a time when many aging actresses sought only roles that defied their age. After this film, Carroll retired from acting to devote herself to helping people who lost their homes during World War II, so it seems like she was a woman of good character all around. The film actually begins with some incredible footage of war ravaged London though the bulk of the film retains the play's Victorian setting. Preminger and his screenwriters chose a framing device set in contemporary London for Mrs. Erlynne to narrate the story to Sanders' character, Lord Darlington.
Crain plays Lady Windermere whose husband, Lord Windermere (Richard Greene), is secretly supporting Mrs. Erlynne financially. Gossip spreads and, of course, distorts the truth so that when Lady Windermere gets wind of it, she's led to believer her husband is having an affair with the woman. When the truth is revealed, Lady Windermere is forced to confront the shallowness of her moral rigidity.
Without Wilde's dialogue, the story is a fairly simplistic moral tale but it's beautifully shot with some nice performances.
Here's a scene featuring Sanders and Crain that retains a lot of Wilde's dialogue though it lacks some of the best lines:
Unfortunately, it's missing this wonderful line:
LORD DARLINGTON: Do you know I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world. Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance. It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious. I take the side of the charming, and you, Lady Windermere, can’t help belonging to them.
A brash young painter and his corrupt lawyer fight the rise of tabloid journalism in Kurosawa Akira's 1950 film Scandal (醜聞). It's not considered one of Kurosawa's best films but I don't agree with one assessment on Wikipedia that says it doesn't rise above the efforts of average directors. There are still plenty of interesting creative choices and a boldness in its intentions.
I came across my old blog entry about the film from 2009 which made me want to watch it again. Having lived in Japan now for almost six years, I have a better idea of just how much gossip and social interpretation dominate the culture but perhaps it was just beginning to take on its current form when Kurosawa decided to make this movie criticising it. Like most of his films in the five or six years following World War II, he was preoccupied in one way or another with the introduction of Western cultural elements in Japan. He portrays the idiosyncratic brashness of Mifune Toshiro's character, Aoe, the painter, as admirable. "It's fun to be rude," says Aoe at one point who feels no qualms about meeting the beautiful young singer, Miyako (Yamaguchi Yoshiko), in her hotel room. But rudeness isn't so fun when a photo journalist secretly takes a picture of the two of them together and the tabloid creates a story about how they have an illicit love affair. Then he storms into their office, punches the editor in chief, and sues the lot of them.
The problem at work is that freedom of independent thought and action requires a citizenry of sufficient cultivation and maturity to function. Again, I found Aoe's comments on artistic nudes in Japan to be interesting: "I'm just beginning to have doubts about nude art in Japan. We lack both the tradition and the healthy spirit to accept the naked body. People say our nudes lack proportion. What they really lack is spirit."
This is equally interesting in a Japan where the trend is turning away from nudity. There's the curious case of the recent Ranma 1/2 adaptation which is almost identical to the adaptation from the '80s except that it has no real nudity. '80s Japanese anime is renowned outside Japan for its copious nudity and I wrote a few months ago about the extraordinary number of nude statues throughout the country, with nude statues of women and girls being gradually removed from public viewing. Perhaps the powers-that-be are right in their belief that the instincts of the common Japanese citizen are too prurient, but I've always been of the opinion that censorship is more likely to exacerbate a problem than to alleviate it.
Kurosawa was reportedly dissatisfied with how the film changes focus in its second half and becomes a story about Shimura Takashi's character, the lawyer. It's kind of a dry run for Ikiru but more Dickensian as Shimura's character has a pure-hearted, bedridden daughter to care for. So he accepts a bribe from the tabloid to throw the case in order to lavish her with gifts. I was also surprised by how heavily Christmas and New Year's are featured in the film, it ended up being surprisingly appropriate seasonal viewing. I didn't expect to be watching Mifune Toshiro riding a motorcycle with a Christmas tree but I appreciated it.
I mentioned a few days ago how abhorrent I found the practices of ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in the US. Yesterday came the footage of an ICE officer killing a 37 year old American citizen, Renee Good.
Since the incident is captured on video, it's easy to see the difference between how Trump and the head of ICE, Kristi Noem, have characterised the incident and how the incident actually unfolded. On few occasions has Trump's reckless disconnect from reality been so apparent and egregious. On his ironically named "Truth Social", Trump insisted that Good "violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense."
That's not what I see in the video. That's not what the mayor of Minneapolis saw in the video, who called such statements "bullshit." What I see in the video is panic. Good panicked at the sight of an ICE officer trying to open her door for no reason, and another ICE officer panicked when Good's car grazed him as she tried to flee. Her panic response was an attempt to flee, his panic response was to open fire. He wasn't reacting from an instinct for self-preservation, he was reacting in anger that this woman might escape his grasp. That's what it looks like to me. This impression is corroborated by dozens of accounts of thuggish, childish behaviour from ICE, such as forcibly feeding pork and expired food to Muslim detainees, and the multitude of accounts of ICE arresting and detaining individuals on meagre evidence and a vicious, dishonest interpretations of the laws they're sworn to enforce.
Both the ICE officer and Renee Good panicked but the ICE officer, as a member of law enforcement carrying a deadly firearm, had a responsibility not to panic. Training for ICE has reportedly become hasty and slipshod and I'd say evidence for that is clear in the video. One of the most important aspects of law enforcement training is instillation of methods for deescalating a situation, of employing psychological methods to inspire calm in all involved parties before violence might occur. What I see in the video are ICE agents looking for a reason to be violent, which fits with their reputation, a reputation that Renee Good was doubtlessly aware of and which played no small part in her panic. This is a consequence of an agency using fear as a tool. A "terrorist" uses terror as a tool and the term obviously fits ICE better than it does Good or the angry witnesses. ICE is state sponsored terrorism.
I am often critical of leftwing rhetoric but obfuscation from the right is more destructive because the right holds more power in the US. The fact that lies from the right are so transparent, so lazy and arrogant, is not a good sign. It's a sign of their impudence, of their disregard for any who might not believe them. The atmosphere is thick with lies, like a nightmare.
On the other hand, even the traditionally rightwing New York Post has this sympathetic portrait of Renee Good.
Turns out Jane Espenson can still write good television. "The Demon in the Snow", the new episode of Fallout, actually had a good flashback scene, some genuinely funny dialogue, and a really impressive set.
Lucy and Walton Goggin's Ghoul finally reach the New Vegas strip and it looks to me like they replicated the location in every precise detail from the New Vegas video game. I got a kick out of it. Lucy getting hooked on buffout also felt like vintage Fallout humour. All in all, the show has never before felt so much like the game.
And we finally get Deathclaws. Interestingly, the flashback establishes that Deathclaws were created before the nuclear war as Walton Goggins is shown encountering them on the Alaskan front, a conflict between the U.S. and China that had been established in the games. I liked that the episode actually featured some Chinese soldiers.
It's kind of implied that the Deathclaws are a secret U.S. weapon, which I didn't find interesting. Maybe I'd prefer that the Deathclaws' origins remained a mystery. I remember how scary they were in the first Fallout game I played, Fallout 2, and in every subsequent game, usually when a Deathclaw showed up, you knew you were about to become a bloody smear on the desert. I also liked the whole menagerie of body horror, limb and organ conglomeration monsters randomly encountered in the wasteland. You really only need the context of the nuclear wasteland to explain their presence, anything more robs them of menacing mystery.
I won't make a Worst Of list for TV shows but I did see two shows that deserve to be on one, Daredevil: Born Again and Alien: Earth. Which of the two was worst? Alien: Earth certainly. I can't remember seeing another TV series that was so badly written and conceived. It was a combination of half-baked political ideas, poorly understood concepts borrowed from other shows or movies, and tedious caricatures presented as characters. Daredevil, at least, had stretches of good quality, mostly involving Wilson Fisk, and it suffered from being retooled after half of it was already shot.
I didn't see ten shows I hated, though. Who has time to watch that much television? I never understand how people have time to binge watch so often but, then again, I do play a lot of Skyrim.
Anyway, the criterion for inclusion in my top ten is that the season must have concluded within the year. 2025 must have been the year in which it aired its final episode, only then does it become a full work.
That's why my number 10 is Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (Wikipedia entry). Here's a show that really didn't stick the landing, which had a plot that didn't make sense. Or the beginning, which looked too much like real world suburbia. But Jude Law's take on Long John Silver was fun and some of it really did capture the charm of kids on a pirate adventure, even if those kids were terribly written. Especially compared to the ones on . . .
. . . my number 9 pick, which is Stranger Things: Season Five (Wikipedia entry). This season was dominated by plot business, getting the characters from point A to point B, but the writers still found time to write Derek and Holly and even Dustin like real children. I loved the scene of Derek meeting Holly and Max in the woods and immediately bragging that he's friends with Mike and all the cool kids now.
At number 8, I have Star Wars: Visions, Volume 3 (Wikipedia entry). Thankfully, the producers decided to return to the first season format of episodes produced entirely by Japanese anime studios. It's a mixed bag, but the episodes made by Production I.G. and Studio Trigger are great and an episode by Ohira Shinya is a bold change of pace.
At number 7 is Only Murders in the Building, Season Five (Wikipedia entry). This seemed like the most comedic season with very little pathos, except a bit between Martin Short and Meryl Streep. But it worked, it was very funny. The season may have my favourite group of guest stars. Renee Zellweger is surprisingly well cast as a villain.
Number 6 is Doctor Who, Series Fifteen (Wikipedia entry). Yes, it's convoluted, yes, Russell T. Davies seems completely out of touch, but occasionally the madness was fun and, even if it seems Gatwa is ultimately not especially fond of the show, he was still a pretty good Fifteenth Doctor.
Number 5 is Etoile (Wikipedia entry). While it may have lost its way in the second half, this one just has too much going for it to go any lower on the list. Amy-Sherman Palladino's crackling dialogue with the beauty of ballet and the interesting opportunity it affords for political and cultural commentary made the show really captivating. After the success of The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel, I'm not sure why Amazon buried this one.
Number 4 is The Sandman, Season Two (Wikipedia entry). Despite the ambiguous controversy that has somehow disappeared Neil Gaiman, or perhaps because of it, the show did fairly well on Netflix. Despite the decision to jettison much of the source material in the second half leading to a lot of boring filler, there's enough left over from the legendary comic series to make this a rewarding viewing experience.
Number 3 is Wednesday, Season Two (Wikipedia entry). Better written than, but somehow inferior to, the first season, this one's a bit like Skeleton Crew in that its beginning and ending are the weakest parts. But I loved that asylum escape episode in the middle and Fred Armison and Joanna Lumley are terrific additions to the cast. Hopefully next season the writers will be allowed to make Wednesday vulnerable again.
Number 2 is Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, Season Two (Wikipedia entry). The surprise return of one of the most transgressive Japanese anime series of all time wasn't quite the revelation of the original but it was a welcome reminder of the early 2000s when Japanese animation studios were trying some really exciting things.
And number 1, of course, is Andor, Season Two (Wikipedia entry). It's still hard for most people to believe that Disney allowed Star Wars content this good to be released under their stewardship. It's been a while since popular science fiction has been this thought-provoking, this full of engrossing moral conflict played out between intriguing characters. It somehow fits perfectly within the Star Wars universe and seems to harmonise with the increasingly violent and strange political circumstances of our real world. This thing is a hell of an accomplishment and I don't expect to see a show as good for a long time. But we'll always have Andor.
I'm not going to do a "Worst Of" list this year. There just weren't enough movies I truly disliked. Really, the only one I can think of is that animated Predator movie, Killer of Killers, and even that one had its moments. Instead, my two top ten lists this year will be of the best movies and TV series. First up, movies.
Runner up for the top ten is Kokuho, which I think at least deserves an honourable mention for being the highest grossing live action Japanese film of all time. And it was an interesting movie in a variety of ways. It doesn't belong in my top ten but it was a valuable experience.
My number 10 is O'Dessa (Wikipedia entry, my review), the movie starring Sadie Sink as a wandering guitarist in a post-apocalyptic U.S. In a movie industry dominated by left-wing rhetoric, this was one of them. But Sink is one of the best stars to come out of Stranger Things, certainly more captivating than Millie Bobbie Brown, and it's nice to see her on screen.
At number 9 is The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Wikipedia entry, my review). Reed Richards was miscast and the movie somehow can't muster enthusiasm for its source material. But the Silver Surfer was sexy and Galactus was kind of badass.
My number 8 is One Battle After Another (Wikipedia entry, my review), pretty much on the strength of the first 25 minutes of the movie. Someone should make a series in which left and right bicker all day and then have really kinky sex at the end of it. I can see John Waters doing it.
K-Pop Demon Hunters (Wikipedia entry, my review) is number 7. It's a charming animated adventure with some catchy tunes.
Number 6 is Guillermo Del Toro's adaptation of Frankenstein (Wikipedia entry, my review). It's a fundamentally flawed rendition of the source material but its costumes, makeup, and production design are so magnificent I couldn't rank it any lower. The performances were good, too.
Number 5 is Fushigi no Kuni de Alice to: Dive in Wonderland (Wikipedia entry, my review). Here's yet another Alice in Wonderland movie but it's an unabashed riff, taking the concept in a new direction and meaningfully tying it to AI, virtual reality, and social media. I'm not sure I agree with the film's outlook but it delivered its message in an inventive way that was also pleasing to Alice geeks like me.
Number 4 is Thunderbolts* (Wikipedia entry, my review), the best Marvel movie of 2025. This movie would've been even better if the first act were a little more tightly written and if Florence Pugh didn't look like Tidus from Final Fantasy X dressed as a janitor.
The best superhero movie of 2025 is Superman (Wikipedia entry, my review), my pick for third best movie of the year. James Gunn had the audacity to directly import the gaudy optimism from the comics and it works. It's certainly a breath of fresh air after a string of DC movies that weakly imitated Christopher Nolan. Finally, something with a pulse.
But it wasn't as fun as Honey Don't!(Wikipedia entry, my review), which I have as number 2. Margaret Qualley is so charming and so lovely in perfect costumes among a great cast delivering razor sharp dialogue. It's everything you want from a slice of high brow pulp fiction.
Finally, my number one is David Cronenberg's latest film, The Shrouds (Wikipedia entry, my review). It's a grim and unsettling film but certainly not without humour. Cronenberg's lack of belief in the soul goes to a logical conclusion by establishing a grief culture in which people actually want to watch their loved ones decay. As he further explores the implications, Cronenberg also offers his take on AI, Few other filmmakers have a reputation that so uniquely qualifies them for analysis of AI and he certainly comes up with food for thought.
That's my top ten movies of the year. I'll post my top ten shows within the next few days.
Lest I neglect American propaganda, last night I watched 2025's One Battle After Another, directed by the eternally overrated Paul Thomas Anderson. Arguably, it's not so much propaganda as an adventure set in a world that was created by left-wing American propaganda. As is often the case with Anderson's movies, it has one aspect I found interesting while I could have done without 85% or so of the rest of the movie.
The first 20 or 25 minutes or so are really interesting and I was pleased to see someone finally address the weird sexual energy between the American right and left. Ever since so many leftwing women became obsessed with seeing Trump's penis after his first election (I typed election, right), I was amazed that very few of them seemed aware of what was motivating their compulsion. And, of course, rightwingers have always lusted after leftwing celebrities, even if they would pull their media braids, so to speak.
Now here's the character of Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), a leftwing American terrorist who holds the rightwing Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn) at gunpoint and demands he have an erection. Their taunts and manoeuvres slowly morph into a secret affair. They meet in hotel rooms and bathroom stalls while her comrades are raiding detention facilities to liberate illegal immigrants and his subordinates are trying to stop them. Finally, I thought, someone's delving into the subconscious underpinnings of this maniacal, two-headed American beast.
Maybe that was even Anderson's intention. But after this first segment, the characters are firmly located in the picture painted by leftwing news media of an American government secretly controlled by a white supremacist group versus a "resistance" of freedom fighters. It's removed from a reality that's populated by a racially diverse rightwing faction and a leftwing faction whose most significant acts of violence have not involved freeing innocent immigrants but assassinating or attempting to assassinate podcasters and government figures.
The film is very loosely based on a Thomas Pynchon novel from the '80s but I couldn't help thinking of Star Wars. The Sean Penn character is kind of like a Darth Vader character relentlessly pursuing a new young heroine called Willa (Chase Infiniti), who was raised believing she was the daughter of Perfidia and fellow terrorist Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) but who, of course, might secretly be the daughter of Colonel Lockjaw. I was actually expecting a scene where Lockjaw said, "No, Willa--I am your father."
All the white characters are portrayed as pathetic dweebs. But when was the last time Leonardo DiCaprio played a character who wasn't a putz?
Regardless of what I think of the movie, though, I want to take this opportunity to say how much I'm sickened by the actions of ICE under the Trump administration. The big news this week is that Trump has suddenly taken over Venezuela, deposing its dictator, Maduro. And Maduro was a bad guy, to be sure, But the brutal tactics of his police are not dissimilar to the deeds of ICE in the U.S. involving the draconian enforcement of immigration laws on average people who've done nothing truly wrong. These people absolutely should be taken to task in art and in court, which is why I wish the filmmakers, like Anderson, who decide to do so would make a better effort than preaching to their own echo chamber choir.
I hear One Battle After Another is on HBOMax in the U.S.
X Sonnet 1973
At times, the mirror pair look after two.
The glassy green of ghosts would catch her eye.
She rubs her neck and glances round the clue.
A candle stub has sunk below the pie.
It seems the kitchen fell behind the wall.
Or somewhere buried back, beyond the light.
She seeks to walk along the phantom hall.
And find in there what ghostly meats she might.
But food beyond the looking glass is wrong.
It twists her gut and turns her eyes around.
So backwards brains inform an eerie song.
It seems she sees the hard intrusive sound.
But no-one stalks the kitchen, hall, or glass.
Could naught but dust await the wayward lass?
That's none other than Macaulay Culkin, appearing on last week's new episode of Fallout. I like this scene and how Lucy immediately starts lecturing them about culture, fairness, and the pronunciation of "Caesar". Evidently, she doesn't know that the hard "C" is the original Latin pronunciation. She just assumes she knows better. Culkin is good in the role though I feel like he should be speaking louder.
The episode brings in not only the Legion but also the New California Republic and the robot Victor, all elements featured in the Fallout: New Vegas game, feeling pretty true to the source material. Kumail Nanjiani, the Man Who Guest Stars in Everything, appears in the episode in an amusing plot with Maximus at the Brotherhood of Steel. How many things has Nanjiani been in now? The MCU (The Eternals), Star Wars (the Obi-Wan Kenobi series), Only Murders in the Building (season four), Ghostbusters (Frozen Empire). I don't think he's been on Star Trek yet, has he? Not according to his Wikipedia entry, though apparently he's been on The X-Files.
I'm still annoyed by the way Walton Goggins just slowly struts around all the time. And he even got shot for it this time, too. You'd think he'd have learned this lesson a long, long time ago. There were very few flashbacks in the episode, though, which is nice.
The upcoming episode on January 7 was written by Jane Espenson. That's exciting. Espenson, who cut her teeth writing some of the most memorable episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, seems like a perfect fit for Fallout. I only wish she'd written more episodes. Or maybe she sucks now, I don't know, I'll have to see how good the episode is on the 7th.
A young man finds fame and fortune playing women in kabuki performances in 2025's Kokuho (国宝, "Living National Treasure"), the highest grossing live action Japanese film of all time. That still puts it well behind several anime and American movies in Japan but it's certainly a milestone, and a surprising one, especially considering the film is not a family film. It's been playing for about half a year now and tickets at the cinema a couple blocks from me are still regularly sold out. I finally had to buy a ticket a day in advance to see it. Yet I'm guessing you, western reader, have never even heard of this movie. What's all the fuss about?
I half expected the theatre to be mostly empty when I arrived. I thought maybe they were using the strategy of some recent religious films in the US, of certain generous patrons buying up tickets for showings in order to inflate the box office, but the theatre was not mostly empty, it was about two thirds full. There have also been those suspiciously successful propaganda films in China over the past several years. Is Kokuho propaganda? Yes, though it's contrary to the more worrisome recent political trends in Japan. I think people going to this movie are basically voting for a certain vision of Japanese national identity contrary to the rising tides of xenophobia and homophobia.
But is it any good? It's competently made. The director is, significantly, of Korean decent. Lee Sang-il retains a Korean name although he was raised in Japan. The fact that the public is supporting a film made by a man of foreign blood reflects a rejection of the anti-foreigner rhetoric growing in prominence in recent years, particularly anti-Korean rhetoric.
The film also hearkens back to a time when Japanese attitudes about gender were much different. Ironically, the homophobia one encounters in Japan nowadays borrows from western conceptualisations of gender. As the film shows, it would not have been out of the way for a yakuza boss to patronise kabuki "onnagata" performers, men who specialised in female roles. The practice began in the 17th century when it was decided that female performers incited too much lust in the male audience, though the introduction of men and boys in the roles of women resulted in some same sex relationships. You won't see that in Kokuho. Instead, the main character, Kikuo, is a tough guy, a son of a yakuza, no less, who gets violent when a guy from the audience tries to put his hands on him.
Cinephiles will doubtlessly by now be thinking of Farewell My Concubine, the 1993 Chinese film about a man who becomes famous for playing women in the Beijing Opera. I have no doubt that Farewell My Concubine provided Kokuho with its basic blueprint. Kikuo's yakuza father dying at the beginning of film before he's taken in by a kabuki master is similar to Cheng Dieyi, the protagonist of Farewell My Concubine, being taken in by the Beijing Opera troupe after being abandoned by his prostitute mother. In both stories, there's the traditional link between the performing arts and the criminal underworld, collectively known as "the floating world".
Watanabe Ken plays the kabuki master whom we meet visiting Kikuo's father before he becomes Kikuo's master. What a revelation to see Watanabe in a Japanese film again. All the years of his stilted, stiff line deliveries in American films melted away and he was that lively fellow from Tampopo again. It goes to show just how hard English is, I don't think Watanabe ever really learned it.
A crucial difference between Farewell My Concubine and Kokuho is that Farewell My Concubine was an arthouse film. It was made during that remarkable thaw period of the '90s when a slew of movies from China captivated foreign cinephiles with their unvarnished historical perspectives on the terror and destruction wrought by ideological regimes in China throughout the 20th century. Kokuho, on the other hand, is intended as a cultural affirmation in service to an empowered faction. So, despite its attitude about foreigners and performative gender roles, it's a deeply conservative film. One can see that in its uniform position for female characters in submissive roles but also in its focus on the suffering of the characters it's exhorting the audience to respect.
Both Farewell My Concubine and Kokuho, like nearly all movies about the backstage life of theatre performers, owes a debt to Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes and I would have advised the makers of Kokuho to draw some influence from the breadth of emotional experience depicted in that film. Kokuho starts to feel very one-note by the end and, with a run time of around three hours, it can get to be quite gruelling as we watch the characters scream at each other in the street or deal with limbs that had to be severed due to gangrene. Farewell My Concubine has a lot of that, too, but it was counterbalanced by a sensuality that Kokuho lacks. Ultimately, Kokuho is more interesting for what it was intended to be than for what it is.
There's a small but significant role in the film for real life kabuki actor Nakamura Ganjiro IV. Cinephiles are better acquainted with Nakamura Ganjiro II, grandfather of the man we see in Kokuho, although stage names, as we see in Kokuho, are not necessarily a blood inheritance. Nakamura Ganjiro II had several prominent roles in the Golden Age of Japanese Cinema. You may have seen him in movies by Naruse Mikio, Kon Ichikawa, or Ozu Yasujiro. In fact, in Ozu's 1959 film, Floating Weeds, he appears as the leader of a kabuki troupe alongside Kyo Machiko, a woman playing women in kabuki. In 1959. But nevermind that now.
Nine and a half years after it premiered on Netflix, Stranger Things concluded its fifth and final season last night. With a massive cast that has accrued over the course of its run, the series writers had a real challenge in front of them to tie everything up. There are some fundamental flaws in the writing of season five but it has some new ideas I appreciated and provided viewers with a satisfying conclusion for many favourite characters.
As I've noted in previous seasons, episodes not written by the Duffer Brothers, the series creators, tend to dip in quality significantly and the brothers are forced to do awkward cleanup in subsequent episodes. A prime example in season five is episode six, written by Kate Trefry, in which it is revealed that a character who had clearly died somehow did not and woke up in the hospital with minimal injuries. This character then manages to foil some monsters with a propane tank in a washing machine in an extremely improbable way.
In the subsequent episode, the brothers had a lot of other plot stuff to handle and they had to address this character's survival and what it means to the other characters. We don't get any explanation for how the character survived and Mike describes it as a "miracle" with a touch of, I think, meta-irony.
There's a lot of disjointed weirdness throughout the season but I really liked the subplot about Holly (Nell Fisher) and Derek (Jake Connelly). Their being trapped in Vecna's dream realm was a nice, paranoid fantasy. It kind of reminded me of an anime series called The Promised Neverland. Derek was the most interesting character this season and I liked how the show successfully made him come across as a real junior high school bully who's slowly turning over a new leaf--and then he has to navigate the complex and difficult situation in the dream house.
I felt like most of the original characters had had their arcs completed a season or two earlier so their plots this season didn't pack much of a punch for me. I did like that the Dungeons and Dragons references this season were to D&D modules I was actually interested in which I was a kid in the '80s and '90s, Ravenloft and Dragonlance. Maybe this will inject some life into plans to make one of those into shows or movies. D&D recently came under new ownership so there has been talk of new hope for some of their older properties.
Happy New Year, everyone. This is around the time I post my "Best of/Worst of the Year" lists but I'm going to hold off for a couple days. Though I sure saw a lot of new movies and TV shows in 2025.
What can I say about 2025? It was my sixth year in Japan, my first year in Kakogawa. It sure is a lot easier to get used to a new town in Japan when you've lived in another one for five years. I feel healthier now than I've felt at any other time in the past fifteen years. My health gradually improved over five years in Kashihara but now that I'm forced to walk two hours most days I feel even better.
I developed a taste for beer over the spring and summer and then completely lost interest in beer except as an ingredient for frying fish. I was craving takoyaki for months and had some every Friday and then one day completely lost my taste for takoyaki. I'll just follow my urges and see where they take me.
I've listened to more audiobooks on my iPod while I've been walking. I must have listened to Seamus Heaney read his translation of Beowulf about a dozen times. I'm speaking to more of my native English speaking colleagues than I did in Kashihara and every time I delight in the opportunity to "unlock my word hoard" to borrow that eternal phrase from Beowulf.
I also listened to Lord of the Rings in its entirety and The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. Japan's love of normalcy has helped me appreciate anew what a deeply weird thing an American's life is.
My addiction to Skyrim shows no signs of letting up. The constant stream of new and interesting mods sees to that.
Good luck in 2026, everyone. I hope it's memorable for good reasons. If not that, I hope you live through it, at least.
A pair of small time gangsters join a raucous party in a converted barn when they're attacked by vampires in 2025's Sinners, not From Dusk Till Dawn. Director Ryan Coogler has been quite upfront about his influences, citing Robert Rodriguez, director of From Dusk Til Dawn, as a major influence. But does Sinners amount to something more than the sum of its influences? No, but it's a pleasing diversion.
Really, it's like From Dusk Till Dawn through the lens of a modern left-wing partisan. It's set in the '30s but the characters don't talk like '30s characters but rather like 2000s college students playing a table top RPG set in the southern U.S. in the '30s. Two men are shot in the street and bystanders barely react. Two shop owners are unperturbed, one of them at first unaware anything had occurred because he was inside the shop at the time, the filmmakers apparently unaware that the sound of shots ringing out in the middle of the street would've been loud and unusual. Yet the characters can't hide their emotions when talking about racial inequality. Of course, we never see any police.
Michael B. Jordan, for no reason I can see except to show off his acting chops, plays identical twins Smoke and Stack, World War I veterans who've become gangsters in Chicago. They come back to the film's setting, Clarksdale, Mississippi, to open a juke joint. They employ their young cousin, Sammy, played by Miles Caton, who's the best part of the film. While all the dialogue and the other performances feel very modern, Caton actually sounds like an old-fashioned blues musician and it was a pleasure watching him perform. However, he's at the centre of what I'd nominate for "cheesiest scene of 2025" when the magic of his guitar conjures people from the past and present, including a gaudily dressed electric guitarist and a Beijing opera dancer.
The action scenes are decently handled and Ryan Coogler is a competent director. Much as his Black Panther was really an echo of Thor, this film is an echo of From Dusk Till Dawn that plays it much safer. One of the pleasures of From Dusk Till Dawn, and a lot of '90s arthouse cinema, is the feeling that anything could happen at any moment. Sinners stays firmly on a track already laid down, its path further narrowed by the constraints of modern political neuroses. But for some people, diluted excitement might actually be preferable. If you're afraid of being offended, this movie's probably safe. At least until the list of politically sanctioned topics and manners changes again.
