Were-Porcupine

I managed to get Fringe working again after it hadn't been playing on Amazon Prime for me for some reason. Last night I watched the first season episode "The Transformation", one of the best episodes so far. A man transforms into what I might best describe as a were-porcupine on an airplane.

I like how the episode doesn't become about the main cast fighting this monster, or others like it, but just about them investigating what it is and how it came into existence. Walter has an interesting monologue about nipples.

I am noticing a slightly repetitive pattern on the show of Olivia in one tense situation while on the phone with Walter and/or Peter who are in another, slightly related tense situation and separate kinds of shit hits the fan in both places at the same time. It's kind of losing its punch, but otherwise I'm still enjoying the show.

The episode was written by Zack Whedon, brother of Joss, and J.R. Orci. It's available on Max, which I've decided to keep my subscription to for the time being because when I was in the middle of unsubscribing I was offered the chance to continue at 7.99 a month for a few months. This has happened to me a few times with different streaming services, you might want to try it.

Remembered Heat

I didn't talk about Norman Jewison when he passed away a couple weeks ago. I'm not really a fan, I didn't like Moonstruck. I did like In the Heat of the Night, though, and I watched it again last night. Jewison gives us a great showcase for two actors, Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier.

Poitier had such interesting mannerisms. The words he chooses to emphasise in his lines are often striking. He puts emphasis on "out" when he says he was heading out of town. The movie has strangely sensual forensic scenes in which Poitier slowly runs his hands over a corpse.

In the Heat of the Night is available on Amazon Prime, which now has ads unless you upgrade with an extra 2.99 subscription. I'm really thinking about not renewing when my yearly bill comes due in April. I'm starting to think all I need is The Criterion Channel. Do I really need to keep watching crappy Disney+ shows? I do want to see Andor season two but that won't be for a while. Doctor Who doesn't start until May, I think. It's such a hassle moving money from my Japanese bank to my American bank to pay for these things.

X Sonnet #1813

Deferring questions stilled the waterfall.
But ling'ring late, the brain was keen to run.
Assembled coppers know the one to call.
Behind the moon is stashed a silver gun.
The bacon lines suggest a grill to men.
Pathetic tracks would follow trains to feet.
As iron wheels replace the walking ten
The veg'table replaced the phony meat.
Beyond the war, we see a murky day.
The empty cart was holding icy treats.
A scream was quickly gulped into the bay.
The rotten wharf was full of splintered seats.
Remembered heat was touch and go at dusk.
Cicadas crowd a single ready husk.

Against Judgement

This week I've started watching season seven of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and season four of Angel, which originally aired simultaneously. I'm two episodes in on the Buffy season, which is the series' final season. Spike's back after reclaiming his soul. I always liked how he didn't announce it right away, that of course it was driving him mad and he seemed kind of ashamed of it.

It's also the most Christian the show ever gets with the second episode actually concluding in a church and Spike making direct reference to the God that presumably ordained that crucifixes should scald vampires on touch. It leads to a cool moment that underlines the fact that getting his soul back doesn't mean Spike has earned salvation or even forgiveness from Buffy.

He went to all that trouble and they never get back together. But it's not half as sexy now that he has a soul anyway, is it? Somehow Buffy and soulless Spike had better chemistry than any other couple in the Buffyverse. I put it down to the mystery of perversity. I'm often reminded of this bit from "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe:

PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart -- one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?

I might point out that, for all its lust, this is just what was missing from Poor Things. Bella always weighed her relationships by rational justification. Human beings aren't wholly rational.

'80s Dreamin'

Mark Harmon realises he needs to play baseball after Jodie Foster kills herself in 1988's Stealing Home. Among the many '50s nostalgia movies of the 1980s, this is certainly not one of the best. It's kind of relaxing, though.

Although Mark Harmon gets top billing, he has relatively little screentime as most of the film is told in flashback to when he was a kid in the '50s and '60s. He had a crush on his rebellious babysitter, Katie, played by Jodie Foster.

The music, awash in light jazz saxophone, never lets you forget this movie was made in the '80s, despite repeated uses of '50s rock songs. It sounds like Moonlighting.

The kids who play Harmon's character are pretty bland but it's nice watching Jodie Foster have fun, flirting with the kid and taking him swimming or lounging beside him in a swimsuit.

The best part of the movie is when Harold Ramis shows up in the last act, when Harmon finally takes over as the lead. The best line in the movie is at a bar when Harold Ramis looks at a reproduction of William-Adolphe Bouguereau's "Nymphs and Satyr" and says, "Would you look at the butt on that nymph!" I suspect the line was improvised.

In case you're wondering, the film never addresses the motivation or circumstances of Katie's suicide.

Poor and Weak

2023's Poor Things is the most hipstery movie I've seen in over a decade. It's like Filth and Wisdom meets The Red Violin. You know, if you've seen a lot of avant-garde films and taken a philosophy course and are aware of modern political trends (but weak on modern political thought) you might make a movie like Poor Things. I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. It was the waiting, I think, having to wait until the end of January to see it here in Japan. Mind you, it's not a bad film. Its gorgeous production design and Emma Stone's performance are worth price of admission alone. But it reminded me of a lot of eccentric comedies of the '60s like Candy or The Magic Christian that must have seemed so vital and revolutionary at the time but now are mainly quaint curiosities for insatiable cinephiles like myself. Poor Things is going to be talked about for a few years but will be almost entirely forgotten ten or fifteen years from now. Like most Oscar winners, actually, so that may speak well for its chances.

The first part of the film is the best, even if it is basically just a lavish remake of "The Offspring", the 1990 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode in which Data makes an android daughter for himself called Lal. Similar to Lal, Emma Stone's Bella Baxter is a little girl in an adult body whose rapid mental maturation is played for cute comedy, though she's allowed to be much sexier than Lal kissing a perplexed Commander Riker.

Emma Stone is so good. You can tell she really studied the movements of toddlers and you can see it when she wanders out onto a rooftop and climbs down to a lower surface first by abruptly squatting then slowly turning to lower one leg at a time from a backwards stance.

The film's based on a 1992 book which, apparently, differs significantly from the film but the concept of a pregnant woman who kills herself but is reanimated with her brain replaced by that of her unborn infant comes from the book. Frankenstein is certainly hip these days but while the movie fancies itself a disciple of Mary Shelley it owes much more to Frankenstein movies such as Flesh for Frankenstein or even Young Frankenstein. Most of all, Frankenstein Created Woman. Poor Things, the film, is like someone took a woke feminist interpretation of Frankenstein Created Woman and turned it into a movie.

Instead of Mary Shelley's creature angry at being alone in the world, Bella Baxter finds the idea of commitment only suffocating. Loneliness doesn't trouble her because she can masturbate and have an orgasm any time she likes. This is a philosophy the movie carries over as an ideal state for all women--Bella being emblematic of women in general is too subtle for the filmmakers who transpose this to every woman Bella meets, to the point when financial hardship leads her to working in a French brothel where the madam is just as confident in the supremacy of the sexual utopia Bella strives for. That'll show those misogynists who say women are all sluts and whores--No, no, women are just horny all the time and consider loyalty an outdated and artificial construct. Big difference.

Bella has occasional sex with a fellow prostitute who also happens to be a socialist. Since this is late 19th century France (or rather, a steampunk version of it), she would presumably be part of the Paris Commune that took over Paris briefly but don't expect this film to mention any potential negative consequences to socialism or communism.

It's all very shallow but still very pretty and basically enjoyable until the third act which goes off on a tangent suddenly as Bella takes revenge on her mother's abusive husband. Then it gets really tedious. Suddenly the movie thinks it's Django Unchained but without any of the nuance or Tarantino's ability to create complicated, interesting villains.

In using a fantasy version of reality, Poor Things simplifies and condenses arguments--as, for example, in a scene where Bella, dining in an expensive restaurant in Alexandria, is led to a window to behold the truth of poverty in the form of a great ditch where naked beggars are burying dead babies. But what director Yorgos Lanthimos likely regards as an elegant expedient comes off more as naively reductive. Of course Bella wasn't permitted to perceive such poverty when she wandered dazzled in the streets of Lisbon, likely because Lisbon has been a hipster mecca for fifteen or so years for some reason. So while for a couple scenes Bella is horrified that the beautiful and comfortable life she lives in is built on the backs of the poor, we never see her working soup kitchens or giving to charitable funds. In one scene, she hands over money to men who promise her they'll give it to the poor. We know they're tricking her but she doesn't, something the film possibly borrows from The Idiot without understanding its meaning, or not having the attention span to remember it by the next scene in which guilelessness is no longer ever a hindrance to Bella or her goals. Similarly, Bella is established early on as having a sadistic streak when it's amusing to the filmmakers but it inexplicably disappears by the time the brothel madam explains to her that some men like when women are forced to have sex they don't like. You sure you don't understand, Bella? Maybe you're just not thinking it through. More likely, Yorgos Lanthimos didn't think it through.

Poor Things is now in theatres.

X Sonnet #1812

Concerns were spread about a stranger's cake.
The time to worry changed the words of peace.
With extra sugar, batter's cool to bake.
Sadistic fire hardens ev'ry piece.
Distorted hats were spinning black above.
A soft and sooty cloud descends on hair.
Upon the broken path's a pointing glove.
The timid mantis spoke a bloody dare.
Remember candy, going off to sea.
A sweet and softer cloud accepts a head.
No harder thoughts emerge than roasted tea.
No trouble pricks the living wight or dead.
A special Sunday girl was fit and hip.
Ideas are easy things to fill a ship.

No, Not That Orifice

Thora Birch and Keira Knightley take their dates to an old bomb shelter. Horrific tragedy results in 2001's The Hole. It's a good premise and both Birch and Knightley are good in it but by the second half of the film the story sinks beneath the weight of lousy direction and weak writing.

Birch plays Liz, a student at a prominent British boarding school. Birch puts on an English accent and keeps it about 75% of the time. Liz is in love with an American student named Mike (Desmond Harrington). She and her simp friend, Martin (Daniel Brocklebank), seize the opportunity when Mike temporarily breaks up with his girlfriend to get Mike, Liz, Frankie (Knightley), and Geoff (Laurence Fox) locked up in the old shelter.

Much of the story is told in flashback as a traumatised Liz speaks of the experience to a police therapist (Embeth Davidtz). Blame for the fact that the kids were locked in the shelter is put on Martin.

The cinematography makes the film look cheap and made for television. It's especially ludicrous when Frankie complains about how terrible the absolute darkness is and meanwhile the place is lit like a department store.

Even if they didn't want to go the route of realism, there are better ways to suggest absolute darkness without showing it. A more general, hazy light maybe or just one or two flashlight beams.

Of course, there's more to the story than Liz is letting on and the truth turns out to be a real tragedy. Unfortunately, someone working on the film decided Liz needed to do an exposition dump in the climax like a Bond villain, dashing any hope at an effectively tragic tale. Oh, well.

The Fabulous Double Life

A wealthy woman is unaware she's leading a second life as a petty thief in 1945's Madonna of the Seven Moons. How could she not know? Well, she was raped when she was a student at a convent, fracturing her mind. What follows is melodrama of the very highest degree. It's a bit campy and kind of hilariously miscast and I enjoyed it.

Phyllis Calvert, who was 30 at the time of filming, plays Maddalena/Rosalina and Patricia Roc, who was also 30 at the time, plays her free-spirited, very modern daughter, Angela.

Maddalena is shocked when her daughter comes home from college wearing shorts. Angela tells her mother, whom she calls "darling", that she's being silly and ought to dress more daringly, especially as she's beautiful and "still young." I'll say.

Of course, Maddalena would be more shocked to learn that she herself occasionally changes into gypsy clothes and steals off to make love with an Italian thief named Nino, played by a very English Stewart Granger. Okay, Shakespeare set stories in Italy all the time and had everyone speaking English, but he made people from different class strata use different English. Nino's whole gang of thieves sound exactly as posh as all of Maddalena's social circle.

With all the melodramatic plot points, it really feels like I'm watching a group of English aristocrats enacting an idle role-play at a slumber party; "I say, let's all pretend we're gypsies in--oh, I don't know--Italy!" It works out to be pretty sexy, especially when Calvert is slinking around Nino's tavern, having pointless catty dialogue with the scullery maid Nino'd been sleeping with or helping him play Solitaire.

Madonna of the Seven Moons is available on The Criterion Channel.

What Did He Know and When Did He Know It?

Anyone out there still worshiping Roman gods? This entry might trigger you. It occurs to me right now that being triggered sounds exciting and pleasurable.

I've been reading Saint Augustine's The City of God again. I'd read parts of it before, parts that seemed relevant as research for Dekpa and Deborah, but now I'm ploughing through the whole thing. It's amazing how much time he spends trashing the Roman gods. It's so hard to imagine now a functioning religion around that pantheon but maybe it's Augustine we have to thank for that. He spends 400 pages on the topic in my paperback copy which, if memory serves (I don't want to get up and grab it), is just over 1000 in total. So many of his arguments seem a bit silly, some of them because I have the benefit of knowing the bloody history of Christian kings, crusades, and inquisitions in the centuries after Augustine's death. So his claim that an innate peacefulness makes Christians less prone to violent conflict is pretty weak. Though, even in his own time, someone might have pointed out that Christians hadn't had as much time in positions of power for any such propensity for peace to be tested.

He spends a lot of time griping about how numerous the Roman gods were, and how silly it was to have a whole god devoted to every single, minuscule subject. Why is it more reasonable for one god to be doing everything? I got to thinking, a lot of his arguments would fit atheism and then I got to thinking monotheism was kind of the atheism of the first millennium. If you think about how much people knew, it makes sense. A God whose plans and deeds seem contradictory or strange actually makes a lot more sense than Gods who are supposed to have predictable personalities. The mystery of God is a perfectly fitting concept for an existence that defies human ideas of rational progression.

In the midst of all the pantheon bashing, Augustine takes a moment to talk about free will versus God's knowledge of everyone's future. Augustine's thoughts on the subject were foundational to the debate over predestination. He argues that the Christian concepts differ from fatalism in that humans are free to make their choices entirely separate from the fact that God already knows what choices they're going to make. It's easy to see why this argument has never settled the dispute since, God being the one who created everybody, and therefore knowing the futures of everyone he created, He therefore created the choices of the people He made, which would be the opposite of free will.

Now, against the sacrilegious and impious darings of reason, we assert both that God knows all things before they come to pass, and that we do by our free will whatsoever we know and feel to be done by us only because we will it. (translated by Marcus Dods)

Augustine follows this with an argument that indeed departs from reason (and so why make an argument? one may ask). God knows causes but maybe not the order of them except He does but maybe not the influence of wicked will except He does. I was reminded of Milton's God in Paradise Lost.

They therefore, as to right belong’d,
So were created, nor can justly accuse
Their Maker, or their making, or their fate,
As if predestination over-rul’d
Their will dispos’d by absolute decree
Or high foreknowledge they themselves decreed
Their own revolt, not I; if I foreknew,
Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault,
Which had no less proved certain unforeknown.

It's a big part of the reason God in Paradise Lost comes off as oddly weak, even confused, like someone pathetically trying to cover his mistakes with bluster.

X Sonnet #1811

A mounting bill would build the pier again.
Decisive coins ennoble leather bags.
The lender's bowler floats a rainy spin.
Benignly look to see the letter sags.
They don't believe the crane was ever there,
The team assembled late by Pepsi brass.
Consorting shades resolve a phantom bear.
A weathered page was burnt from leaking gas.
Remembered moons were deadly orbs at night.
For seven daggers dropped the curtain low.
Condensing soup they'd salt with sweetened spite.
Contagion cracked the lover's trusty bow.
The thinking apricot was cut to brains.
In spring, the ghosts remember candy canes.

Nowhere to Look

Last night I read "Gorgon", the new Caitlin R. Kiernan story in the Sirenia Digest. It's a good story that combines several elements that tend to recur in Caitlin's work; there's dialogue with a possibly dead woman in a dream state, there's a reference to "The Lobster Quadrille", and palaeontology. That last one is not so common in Caitlin's work as you might expect given that she happens to be a palaeontologist but it always adds an appreciable extra layer of credibility whenever she does include it.

Like a lot of great horror fiction, it succeeds a lot by layers of suggestion rather than direct descriptions. I especially liked one character talking about a dream she had of a strange sea beast. It's a good story.

Speaking of dreams, last night I dreamt Maynard James Keenan had died. Some friends and I were trying to get to his funeral but we got stuck in an endless labyrinth of mall service corridors. Googling Keenan to-day, the headless I see are "Maynard James Keenan has been training in the popular mixed-martial art, known for its grappling technique", and "For the past 20 years, Maynard James Keenan has worked tirelessly to bring Arizona's burgeoning wine industry to international attention." Yes, the guy who wrote "Sober" is now in the wine business. I wonder how many people have made jokes about that.

Luck, Audacity, and Guinness

A young man of peculiar disposition climbs a wobbly ladder to success in 1952's The Card. Based on a 1911 novel, it stars Alec Guinness as the title character and it's one of the best Alec Guinness roles I've ever seen. The movie is endlessly amazing and watching him go to work, or deal with an unforeseen difficulty, is a continual pleasure.

After a brief introduction, we meet Denry (Guinness) at a shop window where he happens to spot a wealthy man drop his wallet. Instead of robbing him of it, he strides directly over to the man's place of business, returns the wallet, and asks for a job.

It's all above board and honest enough yet you can't help feeling that Denry somehow got something over on the man. Maybe it's his cat-who-ate-the-canary grin. Really, he's simply a man of remarkable luck who's able to see past social conventions to seize opportunities. After he gets himself invited to a countess' ball, and even has the audacity to ask the Countess for a dance, his boss later accuses him of wanting to dance with his betters. And with perfect innocence, Denry replies, "Well, yes, sir. Don't you?"

Glynis Johns plays Ruth Earp, a dance instructor whom Denry tries to trick into giving him free dance lessons. She, in return, tries to seduce him and just about bankrupts him when they go on holiday. By this point, he's become a rent collector and I was delighted by the simple, deadpan comedy of one scene where, during a storm, he, Ruth, and her friend, Nellie (Petula Clark), come across a closed off pier where men are struggling to save a boat that's run aground. They just want to be spectators--Denry bluffs his way in, pretending they're reporters, and hands his bag of collected rents (at this point he's a rent collector) to Ruth so he can go down among the fellows struggling to haul the vessel up from the waves, all the while grinning like the idiot we know he's not but still genuinely caught up in this silly adventure. Meanwhile, Ruth immediately starts spending the rents on chocolates for everyone. Of course. The set up is so obvious but also absolutely absurd--yet somehow credible. Guinness' performance is a big part of selling it.

The other most remarkable scene in the film is when Denry sees a repo wagon rolling out of control down a hill and takes it upon himself to try to stop it like an action hero. He manages to climb atop it but can't stop the thing from rolling into the canal. It's only then he hears a pathetic voice within and realises Ruth is inside, stranded upon her repossessed table.

Needless to say, Glynis Johns is wonderful in this movie, too.

The Card is available on The Criterion Channel.

A Light Rain

A teenage boy runs away to Tokyo and meets a girl who can control the weather in 2019's Weathering with You (天気の子, lit. "Weather Child"). There are some really interesting things about this movie, particularly in the first thirty minutes, but the premise starts to get too loose for the emotional weight to hold together. The filmmakers try to compensate by pushing the music up but it just becomes loud.

Hodaka (Daigo Kotaro) is the teenage boy. We meet him reading Catcher in the Rye on a boat to Tokyo. Again, director Shinkai Makoto presents a surprisingly familiar Japan. As Hodaka wanders around Shinjuku, there were several places I remember walking past myself.

He's unable to find a decent job and can barely afford lousy accommodations. Then he finds a gun in a trash can. He uses it to scare a yakuza who's trying to force a pretty girl into sex work. There are a lot of transgressions going on here I found heartening--Hodaka is never portrayed as a bad person for running away or for reading Catcher in the Rye. I'm more ambivalent, but no less surprised, about the fact that his use of a gun is portrayed positively throughout the film (mind you, this movie came out a couple years before Abe's assassination).

The pretty girl Hodaka rescued, Hina (Mori Nana), turns out to have magical powers; she can stop the rain with her will alone. Hodaka says they ought to monetise this, and it being early August, the rainy season, they do pretty well for themselves.

The first part of the film has a slightly Oliver Twist-ish quality, improved by the lushly detailed art and realistic obstacles Hodaka faces. It's precisely these qualities that makes the film disappointing as it shifts gears to lazier writing and new concepts are thrown at the viewer instead of development. We never learn why Hodaka ran away from home, we never learn much about Hina beyond the fact that she's really sweet and has a kid brother. So when we get to the climax and they're supposed to be falling in love (of course, since this is a popular modern Japanese film, they never actually proclaim anything or consummate) there's no emotional weight. This is paired with a natural disaster aspect as the weather starts to go haywire due to Hina's tampering and, just as in Suzume, the movie unwisely avoids showing or even mentioning deaths or injuries or even expensive property destruction that occurs due to these disasters.

The animation is really good, though. If Shinkai becomes just a little more courageous, I suspect he'll make something really good in the coming years.

Weathering with You is available on Max.

X Sonnet #1810

With giant lizards crushed, the hamster wins.
We never know what beasts emerged from mice.
But questions hang as heavy marks of sins.
So many thoughts return to change a price.
Eleven drummer babies prep the meat.
You never change a purse between a friend.
Containment fails when cheaper puppets meet.
So it's a worthless straw can never bend.
Resentful spirit rain restrains the grass.
A rising green insults the falling blue.
But fearful elves traverse the flooded pass.
Among the bones. are *they* remaining true?
The mutant cakes were waiting near the boat.
The hungry watched the frisky fattened stoat.

Pretty Little Caninae

Four teenage girls hit the streets of L.A. to grow up fast in 1980's Foxes. Two of the girls are Jodie Foster and Cherie Currie, the latter being lead singer of The Runaways, and the movie feels a lot like a Runaways album--skinny, ultra-pretty girls who are simultaneously fetishised and independent. It's sort of like a kitten in a leather jacket. Sweet, cute, and we'd all like it to be as tough as it thinks it is.

Currie's character, Annie, is at the heart of most of the film's drama. She's the wild one, rebelling against her abusive cop father. She looks for trouble repeatedly and repeatedly gets more than she bargains for.

Meanwhile, Madge (Marilyn Kagan) is in love with an older man, played by an unusually restrained Randy Quaid, who genuinely seems to like her. But maybe he's not so ready to have a girl in his life who's not really old enough for the responsibility of a relationship. That's the impression you get after her friends trash his home.

Foster is the most normal of the group. She has some half-baked drama with her mother, played by Sally Kellerman, who is jealous of how much prettier young girls are than she is. It's too bad the best the movie can do is have her say that out loud.

Scott Baio has a small role to do the hero stuff and Laura Dern has an even smaller role (her first credited role) as a girl who shows up to a party.

The movie only currently seems to be on YouTube. It would be nice to some of the more exploitative shots in high def. The score is by Giorgio Morodor and it's as sexy as his scores for Cat People and Flashdance.

Ways of Getting Away

Why clean your messy apartment when you can escape to your rich uncle's country cottage? It sounds like a good idea to the protagonists of 1987's Withnail and I. However, things aren't quite so simple for these two unemployed actors whose lives are endless strings of partially sedated chaos. Paul McGann and Richard E. Grant established themselves with this movie, their collaborative charisma making it a delightful experience.

In their squalid Camden flat, they reminded me of Holmes and Watson, if Holmes and no kind of useful genius. Withnail (Grant) certainly impresses himself.

McGann, as "and I", years before he starred on Doctor Who, was already rushing about in a panic, just trying to manage Withnail or his own high (the two are invariably under the influence of prodigious quantities of drugs and alcohol).

Withnail's uncle is a windbag named Monty (Richard Griffiths) who has designs on sleeping with McGann's character and shows up at the cottage to do so. Aside from that and a menacing poacher named Jake, I envied Withnail and his friend's countryside refuge. Even Monty is a charming companion before he tries to assault McGann.

Withnail and I is available on The Criterion Channel this month as part of their Handmade Films playlist.

The Days of Dastardly Deeds

Five Corners is a movie made in 1987 and set in the 1960s but feels like it was written for a 1930s melodrama. The Bronx set story stars Jodie Foster, Tim Robbins, and John Turturro in a world of misfit hoods and damsels in distress. It's entertaining.

I'm so used to seeing John Turturro playing pathetic losers and weirdos in Coen brothers movies, it was surprising to see him here as the bad boy whom pretty young Jodie Foster can't resist. That is until the film's most interesting scene when Turturro kidnaps some penguins from the zoo for her and kills one of them when she tells him he shouldn't have done it.

The characters in other scenes talk about an incident where Turturro's character saved her from a rape. There are several instances of girls almost being raped, even two girls who wake up naked in a strange apartment, but this isn't the kind of movie where such a crime actually occurs. This is a movie where a guy instead carries an unconscious girl to the top of a building in apparent reference to King Kong.

Needless to say with a cast like this, the performances are pretty good. Five Cornersis available on The Criterion Channel as part of a playlist of Handmade Films.

X Sonnet #1809

The Devil's wax is dripping down again.
Perverted jailers tempt the bird to flee.
But once provoked, the fight must needs begin.
From Doom would Jones ensure the captives freed.
As vengeful mirrors line the school with brains,
We hearken back to lizards sleeping late.
For ev'ry dream, the nightly music gains,
We fill a wretched zombie's grieving pate.
A dingy star explains the hand of dirt.
For clothing points, record a second tape.
If meaning floats, the paper's getting hurt.
The crowd is ever asking 'bout the ape.
A stylish set removed to diff'rent decks.
Assorted plaids were doomed to pair with checks.

Dare to Go Back

I'm two episodes into watching Daredevil again. I have so many other things I want to watch and I have so little time, I feel like I'm cheating, but I've really been in the mood for it.

One very simple thing I noticed about the series, which started in 2015, that's different from to-day's Disney+ shows, is it features stories about the hero trying to help people. Not on the periphery while he's trying to sort out his identity or get emotional validation--it's the point of the story. The first episode is all about Matt and Foggy helping Karen and figuring out one of Fisk's schemes and the second episode is about Matt struggling to stop a human trafficking ring. Sure, there's personal stuff, like flashbacks to Matt's past and we get insight into what motivates him. We have Karen and Foggy going out for drinks and her dealing with the trauma of home invasion. But all this is window dressing or circumstances to explain the difficulties inherent in the central problem--How do we not only help people, but how do we become people who want to help people? How do we mature in that direction, go from being selfish children to adults who look out for other people?

Also, with Karen, we have perspective on how good it can feel to be saved! Which is a central point people make when trying to describe why Superman is great. The superhero isn't always the reader's avatar. Sometimes you're empathising with the victim and you get the opportunity to fantasise about how nice it would be if someone were there looking out for you, someone you could count on. What a difference it makes when the makers of a show actually know what they're doing.

Daredevil is available on Disney+.

The Streaming Movie Who Lives Everywhere

13 year old Jodie Foster must defend her home from the world of adults in 1976's The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. It's a decent suspense movie with a surprisingly touching romantic subplot.

The first person to question why Rynn (Foster) seems to be living alone in a big house is an unmistakable child molester played very broadly by Martin Sheen.

After she finally gets him to leave, she has to deal with his mother, the woman who leased the house to her father. Rynn always tells people her father's working in the study and can't be disturbed or is away on a business trip to New York. When finally things lead to someone getting killed and Rynn having to dispose of evidence, she suddenly finds she has an ally in a geeky young magician named Mario (Scott Jacoby).

These two were really sweet together and I liked the blend of altruism and awkward lust that makes Mario immediately want to join forces with her against the adults, even before he understands what's really going on. It was good.

I'd been wanting to watch this movie since it was referred to on Twin Peaks in 2017. The mystery of Jodie Foster alone in the house is kind of tonally reminiscent of the mystery of Audrey Horne in the house with the writer. Rynn's father is also a writer, a poet.

A friend lent me his DVD but my lousy blu-ray drive doesn't like to play most DVDs. I tried watching it on Amazon Prime which has two versions--a totally free version and a "freevee" version with ads. The first one just didn't work at all, the spinning loading graphic just disappeared and left me looking at a blown up thumbnail. The freevee version had so many ads it made the movie unwatchable. Always the same ads, too. Every four minutes or so it seemed like I had to stop and watch the ad for the Ted series again or something for cancer medication. It broke up the tone too much and wasted a lot of time.

I did some googling and found the movie is totally free on both Tubi and Roku. I didn't even need a login for Tubi and there were no ads. I'm seriously starting to question my need to keep Amazon Prime.

Detective Goes North

I caught the first episode of the new season of True Detective last night--or is it truly True Detective? I'll come back to that. For the quality of the episode itself, I'd say any time Jodie Foster was onscreen it was good, other times it kind of sucked.

It's set in Alaska at the beginning of one of the long nights they get up there. A group of scientists at a research station mysteriously disappears while they're watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Somehow the DVD gets stuck in a loop during the big scene where Matthew Broderick lipsyncs to The Beatles. None of the detectives asks why the video was stuck in a loop so I guess writer Issa Lopez didn't want us to ask.

It seems clear HBO wanted to recapture the spark from season one and they booted creator Nic Pizzolatto to do it. The supernatural element is back and, despite the new setting, the episode hews closer to the model of the first season, except without any kind of non-linear storytelling or narration. It's also much more feminist, featuring two female detectives, both of whom have non-traditional, dominant roles in their personal and professional lives. Foster is always good and Kali Reis isn't bad but it doesn't feel organic as much as it feels like a corporate decision based on Twitter/X trends.

As if to add insult to injury, the opening credits say the show is "Based on True Detective Created by Nic Pizzolatto" followed by a credit that simply says, "Created by Issa Lopez". Well, is it True Detective or isn't it? An episode of The Twilight Zone written by Robert Bloch didn't make the series "created by" Robert Bloch. Nic Pizzolatto is still credited as executive producer, so is Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey and about a million other people. The line of people stuffing their fingers into the pie was kind of sickening. The theme song is Billie Eilish's "Bury a Friend", which is a song I like but still feels like an unimaginative choice. It's a song everyone watching already knows whereas it feels like previous seasons all introduced something obscure and striking, adding real character to the season.

Procedural scenes with Jodie Foster are good and Fiona Shaw has a nice creepy scene. But it really feels like the magic's not here this season.

True Detective is available on Max.

Earthquake Worms

A teenage girl finds she alone can protect Japan from a series of devastating earthquakes in 2022's Suzume (すずめの戸締まり). It's a bold idea to create a fantasy around Japan's infamously devastating, chronic natural disasters, one of which just recently struck Ishikawa. On that score, unfortunately I think director Shinkai Makoto strikes a too trivial tone, but setting that aside, the film is a cute romantic adventure.

On the way to school one day, Suzume (Nanoka Hara) meets a handsome young man (Hokuto Matsumura) who asks her the way to the nearest ruin.

Overcome with curiosity, she skips school to follow him. She soon discovers the young man, Souta, is a kind of wizard whose sacred duty is to fight sinister cloud worms who cause Japan's earthquakes when he's unable to shut the interdimensional doors they come through. Her curiosity leads to misfortune when the young man is transformed into a three legged chair after she sets loose a cat-like "keystone". Intended or not, there are definite shades of Eve eating the apple.

It's a very well animated movie with beautiful, detailed backgrounds. I don't remember another anime that so painstakingly captured a Japan I recognise as the one I live in. When Suzume was in Kobe or Tokyo I was able to recognise places I've actually been to. Director Shinkai Makoto pays tribute to some surprising anime by using music from their soundtracks--I noticed Kiki's Delivery Service and, of all things, Kare Kano.

Ultimately, I don't think the film's mythology is any comfort to the victims of earthquakes, which is a good example of why using kid gloves to talk about disasters in art is often a mistake. The film also doesn't have the emotional impact of Shinkai's Your Name or Garden of Words, but it's not a bad movie.

Suzume is available on CrunchyRoll outside Japan.

X Sonnet #1808

As globs of batter change to muffin shapes,
A timid foot has fallen late on ice.
Discordant thoughts arise from sour grapes
To chill affections guessed forever twice.
The blanket clutched a dusty chair for ghosts
To rest their dogs or drink to early light.
The sparrow lamps will make for nervous hosts
And shifty guests will start a secret fight.
Conditions shift as yolks traverse the shells
Of aging helmets, naught to show for mines.
But certain dreams were ringing copper bells
Upon the brink of matins, witness signs.
As triple eyes delivered late arrive,
A quiet force announced herself alive.

Many Rooms Occupied by Different Concepts

Sometimes life is a string of chaotic perversity with little sense of direction or purpose. 1984's The Hotel New Hampshire is one of several Tony Richardson movies that give this impression. But while his British New Wave movies, for all their idiosyncrasies, felt like they had real insight into normal life for young people in Britain in the '50s and '60s, The Hotel New Hampshire feels altogether surreal and disconnected from reality. Not in a bad way, though it does seem less remarkable than A Taste of Honey or The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.

Beau Bridges plays a hotel owner and father of the large family that staffs it, including incestuous siblings Rob Lowe and Jodie Foster.

There are a lot of big names in this movie. Wallace Shawn invites them to leave their American hotel to run one in Germany where they meet Nastassja Kinski who always wears a bear costume because she's uncomfortable facing her humanity. However, in Germany they also meet Matthew Modine, a Communist revolutionary who happens to look exactly like the boy who instigated a gang rape of Foster's character, and is just as despicable. But she's attracted to both of them anyway.

The family has a dog named Sorrow who constantly farts. His name is used in dialogue throughout the film to give double meaning to lines; after she's raped, Foster's character says she wants to sleep with Sorrow. She doesn't know yet that her younger brother, played by Seth Green in his first role, has had the euthanised Sorrow stuffed. Which symbolises . . . I sure don't know what.

The movie moves along quickly and mostly the family is shown laughing and bickering through tragedy and good fortune and various bizarre incidents. Overall, I was struck by a kind of tenacious flippancy. I guess that's one way to get through life.

The Hotel New Hampshire is available on Amazon Prime.

The Echo Chamber

I finished the last three episodes of Echo last night. The show went from so-so to stinking awful pretty fast. And it's all the same problems. In particular, I felt the presence of committee writing. It really felt like a car going down a road with five or six people all trying to take the wheel.

Vincent D'Onofrio will always be great as Wilson Fisk, which is probably why it's good idea not to lobotomise him, which is probably what one of the hands trying to take the wheel realised when Maya invaded his mind with her healing spell in the final episode. He screams, "What did you do to me?" Of course, she did nothing but archly scold him. Whoever's idea it was to have her heal his brain will just have to eat crow, but of course the first part of the idea was left in because you have to fill up the runtime somehow.

She had all the power of her ancestors at the end, much as Rey had all the power of her Jedi predecessors at the end of Rise of Skywalker. It felt just about as empty, too. I wonder which of the Disney brass is so in love with this idea.

The schizophrenia in the dialogue was really frustrating. When Maya and Fisk meet again, he tells her he understands her shooting him, it's what he taught her. And then, moments later, he's yelling at her because she dared to shoot him. Sure, people can be contradictory and hypocrites, but this didn't remotely feel natural, despite D'Onofrio's fine performance.

I thought Alaqua Cox was good too, though I understand she was too understated for some people. I thought she was subtle and it makes sense, given her history, that she would be emotionally withdrawn. But there's very little sense in the development path she's led on. When she calls Fisk a monster, he correctly points out she had no qualms about killing people for him in the past. So where was the moment when she decided to change her ways? Did she decide to? If she wants to take out Fisk for revenge, okay, but the fact that she would try to take a moral high ground smacks of writers who didn't know what they were doing.

They could've given her an arc in which the killer became a healer. But they didn't, they just dumped it on her in the end. I'm really not even clear on her moral position in the end, or the nature of her superpowers, for that matter, and I don't think the writers were either.

Echo is available on Disney+.