Last night's season finale of Fallout was really unsatisfying. It was written by Karey Dornetto, who wrote one of the better episodes of season one, and I suspect that the problems aren't her fault but rather the fault of producers who didn't want anything truly substantial to occur in the finale.
The fight with the Deathclaws was kind of cool though I wish they hadn't made them seem so easily dispatched. The scenes with Hank and Lucy seemed to end with something momentous but it's the kind of thing that could be easily reversed at any time. Meanwhile, Cooper has a "Our princess is in another castle" moment when he finds the cryogenic pods for his wife and daughter. I really don't much like this quest as his sole driving motive. I was also completely uninterested in the flashback of him getting arrested. That's no kind of cliffhanger when we've already seen him at the beginning of episode one hanging out with his daughter at a birthday party just before the bombs fall.
And just where the hell is Ron Perlman? They introduced his character for no purpose it seems.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Neil Gaiman hadn't been posting on social media for a year since allegations of sexual misconduct were made against him. Now he has posted, a couple days ago, on his blog. Among other things, he commends the efforts of a Substack journalist called TechnoPathology, who has been conducting an investigation of the coordinated smear campaign conducted against Gaiman. When I read the original articles that came out in 2024, I thought the case against Gaiman was thin at best but just in the introduction to his series TechnoPathology finds even more points that I was unaware of, such as clear undisclosed conflicts of interest, such as the fact that one of the accusers happened to be the best friend of the woman in charge of the original Tortoise Media article, or the fact that the voices most vociferously aiming condemnations at Gaiman were consistently of the same ultra-rightwing political and ideological persuasions.
Again, it's absurd the left has convinced itself that it shouldn't call something a conspiracy under any circumstances. Or was it anyone on the left who got that virus rolling?
TechnoPathology says he didn't originally create his Substack with the intention of exonerating Gaiman but rather with the aim of analysing how information is currently being manipulated, and how people consuming that information are in turn manipulated, in the news media currently. The "social internet" as I saw John Green refer to it in an unrelated video I watched this morning but which also touches on the tangle of cognitive biases we currently find ourselves in:
But while I'm unashamed of using the word "conspiracy" and I'm glad there's at least one person making an effort to expose the one maligning Gaiman, I still find myself most disturbed by the people whom I knew were no part of the conspiracy but who nonetheless turned on him at the first mention of allegations. Like Pavlov's bell. Can I ask if these psychological triggers for compliance were planned or incidental?
Happy Groundhog Day, everyone. Looks like we'll have six more weeks of winter, or the U.S. will. I'm not sure if the groundhog magic applies globally. Of course, here in Japan, February 2nd was yesterday. To-day is February 3rd, the Japanese holiday of Setsubun, when people throw soy beans at oni.
I actually watched 1993's Groundhog Day last night. Somehow it felt particularly good to revisit this year. Maybe because the Year of the Horse is so far living up to its reputation as a year of change and it's nice to rewatch a movie about things staying the same every day.
At one point, I looked at Andie McDowell and vividly saw her daughter, Margaret Qualley. I was tempted to wonder if Qualley is a more successful actress than her mother. I realised it might seem so to me because I watch more avant-garde movies, the kind Qualley tends to be in, while her mother was typically in mainstream films I'd never even consider watching. But she was a good actress. What am I saying? She's not dead. Apparently she's been on several Netflix series over the past few years, including one with her daughter called Maid, which, according to Wikipedia, was Netflix's fourth most watched show of 2021. I never even heard of it. There's that audience fractioning people talk about.
One sign you might be living in a communist country is that you're under constant surveillance. This is the problem faced by a married couple in 1969's The Ear (Ucho). Haunting, expressionistic cinematography captures two terrific performances as we watch the two characters whose fraught private lives are invaded by unseen men.
Ludvik (Radoslav Brzobohaty) is a prominent official in his country's communist party. He and his gregarious, hard drinking wife, Anna (Jirina Bohdalova), attend a lavish party where Ludvik learns that a colleague has fallen out of good standing with the regime and has therefore fallen out of the world. Whatever mysterious offense this colleague was deemed guilty of is never clear but other men in his circle are also being disappeared, naturally causing Ludvik to worry. As he and his wife head home, a series of little clues tell them something's not quite right. Their chauffeur has been swapped out for a man they've never seen before. At the gate of their home, they find neither of them is in possession of the house keys. Ludvik climbs the fence before Anna discovers the gate is unlocked. The power is out in their home even though it's not out in their neighbour's house.
Ludvik starts flushing documents down the toilet in a panic while Anna starts drinking straight from a bottle of vodka, laughing and griping. They both feel relatively sure there's no listening device in their bathroom, because that's what they've been told. Of course, it would be useful for those conducting the surveillance to give them the impression that there is a room which is not being surveilled.
The Ear was banned in its home country of Czechoslovakia until 1990 when the Soviet Union had lost control of the country. It's now available on The Criterion Channel.
This new Bruce Springsteen song has nearly four million views as I write this. For the first audio only upload, there are over 5 million views. These videos were released two days ago. It's the first new release from Springstreen to exceed a million views since 2023. Fascinatingly, most of the comments I see on the "Streets of Minneapolis" videos seem to be from Germany, Portugal, Poland, and even South Korea, alongside some statements from Minnesotans expressing gratitude for Springsteen's eloquent expression of solidarity. I think this song will be remembered long after 2026.
In a crisis situation, people often talk about how things seem unreal, even people who are direct witnesses. Some comments I've seen since the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have wondered why there hasn't been a more profound reaction to this violation of law, community, and social order in the United States. This song is an example of one way art functions. To say art is a mirror often makes it seem like art is insubstantial or meaningless but without a mirror you can't see yourself. Art is the mirror. Undeniably real things sometimes don't seem to take form until the human race finds some way to process it, to find and communicate the meaning to itself.
I see a lot of people reposting the line from George Orwell's 1984, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” It's an apt quote for how blatantly Trump, Noem, and their cohorts have lied. Unfortunately, it's too often also applicable to leftwing media. The two sides of the political spectrum in America have seldom been more at odds and yet, if you take a view from outside the bubble, they've also seldom been more alike. If you think back to the bizarre excuses and gratuitous exultation in the wake of Charlie Kirk's shooting, it's easy to see the left is just as capable of reckless rancor. Overall, it's clear a new kind of rhetorical methodology has come to dominate the landscape. It's brought us to this point where laws are increasingly unable to serve their function as abstract processes, a civilised substitute for the physical violence of war. There's too much bad faith. Springsteen's known for being something of a partisan but he's a genuine artist and his song can't help but evoke the plain reality.
Two innocent people were murdered by people endowed with authority.
It's not just murder, it's a crack in the social order. There are only two possible outcomes now; civil war, or the mechanisms of American justice rally to hold the guilty accountable. The latter seems almost impossible at this point.
I was a little hesitant about Alex Pretti at first because I didn't see any of the video of his murder for a few days. I saw he was a guy in military colours with a black cap low over his face and I heard he was carrying a gun. I'm not disputing his right to carry a gun but he certainly seemed like a guy who was there to start shit while there was nothing ambiguous about Renee Good's murder. But then I saw one of the many videos of Pretti being shoved to the ground, being disarmed, and then just being executed. As I saw Sam Harris say in a video, it doesn't matter if Alex Pretti were the worst person in the world. He was restrained and there was no reason for ICE to use deadly force. Even Anakin Skywalker had a better excuse for executing Count Dooku.
Yeah, I'll use a Star Wars reference. Again, art is what helps us see reality. That's one way we can tell good art from bad art.
I guess that partly explains why one man dressed as Batman to protest ICE. I guess we've reached a turning point when political speakers are more likely to dress as Batman than as the Joker.
X Sonnet 1979
Where shuffling feet attract their ragged shoes
The walkers want a rubber stop to clear
The fragile floor, inviting scratching clues
To win a prize beside the puzzled bear
Who turned his head in time for pastry shows
Designed to teach a penguin how to talk
Discerning birds who wear tuxedo bows
And stamp the brutal ice to hotly walk
Away from cold, ahead to ifrit town
Partaking of the fire beer and gin
Which renders peace beneath pierrot's crown
Of lollipops and someone's stupid grin.
We play it all beneath the common house
And petty brains prostrate before the mouse.
Catherine O'Hara has passed away at the age of 71. She's best known for playing mothers, particularly in Home Alone and Beetlejuice. She was in the sequel to Beetlejuice just two years ago and she seemed so vital, her comedic timing and line delivery just as snappy and quick as they were back in the '80s. She was also recently on The Last of Us and Schitt's Creek, neither of which I've seen, but she was clearly very active still. So far no details seem to have been released about the sudden illness that took her life.
She was one of the many famous comedic performers of the '70s and '80s who came up through SCTV, possessing that rare combination of beauty and great comedic instinct. A lot of videos are being uploaded on YouTube of her and I was fascinated by this David Letterman interview from 1983:
A guileless, innocent young Irishwoman is taken in by a kindly English serial killer in 1999's Felicia's Journey. Directed by Armenian-Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan, it's based on a book by Irish author William Trevor and the concept seems like a metaphor for the history of Irish/English relations. I don't know if that was intended but it's in any case an oddly sweet, understated Hitchcockian delight.
Bob Hoskins plays Joseph Hilditch, the manager of an expensive catering company. It's not hard to see some economic commentary when the portly Hopkins is shown loading up his shopping cart with groceries before going home to make a weird, elaborate plate of pork ribs in his enormous kitchen just for practice. Meanwhile, the young Irishwoman, Felicia (Elaine Cassidy), is wandering the streets looking for the young man who ran out on her. She's come to Birmingham looking for him, even though the only information he gave he was that he works at a lawnmower factory. I doubt any viewer will have any illusion that such a factory exists which makes it all the more tragic that Felicia's faith never wavers until the proof is incontrovertible. Elaine Cassidy's performance is always credible, though, and you always worry for her, especially when Hilditch takes an interest in her as we're gradually let into some of the more disturbing aspects of his personality, such as his collection of secretly recorded videos of previous girls he's cared for.
I think the Hitchcock influence is quite intentional. I was often reminded of Hitchcock's Suspicion and one shot very nearly replicates the one of Cary Grant carrying a sinister glass of milk up the stairs at the end of Suspicion. Hoskins gives a terrific performance, of course. I'm so used to him playing tough guys. Here, he affects a slow, perpetually smiling, saccharine but somehow also genuinely warm demeanour, just right to set Felicia's worried heart at ease. But he also gives nuance to a character that might otherwise have been simplistic.
The two characters are both archetypes and mostly the story succeeds from Egoyan's pacing and compositional juxtapositions. But there are some curious, haunting depths to Hilditch's character.
Felicia's Journey is available on The Criterion Channel as part of an Atom Egoyan playlist.
Last night's new episode of Fallout was another mixed bag though I'm starting to think the negative qualities of this season are less to do with the varying abilities of the various writers but more to do with a general lack of desire or ability to give firm narrative direction to the season overall.
I liked the stuff between Lucy and her father. I liked how things were complicated by the realisation that he really was a good father. This is added to the fact that Lucy really doesn't have a good argument as to why he shouldn't deploy his brainwashing tactics to pacify the violent gangs of the wasteland. But this also means when Lucy betrays him the lack of rationale for her betrayal is conspicuous. If this were a good Star Trek episode, this would be the point where Kirk or Picard makes a great speech about free will. Fallout defaults to "Just 'cause."
Meanwhile, despite Ron Perlman being introduced as a super mutant in the previous episode, he's totally absent from this one without any explanation. It feels really odd. It's like they made this episode before the previous episode and didn't know Perlman was going to be in it. This episode also has to deal with the problem of the Deathclaws on the Vegas strip and here it's heavily implied that the monsters are somehow confined to the strip. There's no explanation or comment on how or why. It did lead to a good action sequence, though.
Although I continue to dislike the flashbacks for Cooper, I did like the backstory established for Stephanie as a Canadian who was hardened by the annexation of her country by the United States. This is a a detail from the first game and I liked that they brought it back. Sadly, it's also no longer so far fetched. I also like how it gives some complexity to Stephanie's character.
A man and his wife carefully and prudently map out getting away from all of life's responsibilities in 1985's Lost in America, a film co-written by, directed by, and starring Albert Brooks. At times, this comedy is more of a fascinating thought experiment than it is a funny movie but it's thoroughly enjoyable.
David (Brooks) is so sure he's about to be promoted to senior vice president of the ad agency where he works that he's already sold his house and is in the process of buying another one. When it turns out his boss wants him to move to New York from Los Angeles instead, with no change to his salary, he has a meltdown in the office. He visits his wife, Linda (Julie Hagerty) at her workplace and she's bewildered by this turn of events. Shortly thereafter, the two go over their finances and determine that they can liquidate their assets and live unemployed in a mobile home for the rest of their lives.
Back in the '80s, when the American economy wasn't the nightmare it is to-day, this probably seemed like a plausible daydream to a lot of people. Albert Brooks decided to see what it would be like if one actually did it and he thought through all the angles. When that wasn't quite exciting enough, he has Hagerty's character lose almost all their money gambling in Las Vegas.
David wants to have a life like Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, a movie he refers to repeatedly, but, for people like him, it turns out to be an existence of constant anxiety. It's some really impressive work from Albert Brooks whose performance somehow manages to have the energy of a young Jack Lemmon even while he's in charge of directing duties. Julie Hagerty is a perfect foil as an unflappable but invariably supportive ditz.
Lost in America is available on The Criterion Channel.
What if this life is just a computer simulation? It's not a new idea, sure, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1973 series, World on a Wire, is based on a 1964 novel. Fassbinder does a lot of interesting things to conjure the sense of a simulated world with minimal special effects and I like the ambiguous sense of panic undergirding the whole story.
Klaus Lowitsch plays Fred Stiller, the new technical director at an institute housing a supercomputer that hosts a complex simulation. But the truth of the matter isn't even that simple.
The production design features a lot of reflective surfaces and a pretty consistent blue/white/orange colour scheme. There are suggestions of artificiality in the dialogue and the people whom Stiller interacts with. Why do beautiful blondes keep turning up? Why is Stiller consistently compared to James Bond?
It's understandable why people would want to escape an entirely simulated existence but mainly on an instinctive level. Would the real world really be better? How could they know? At least life in the real world wouldn't just be someone else's interpretation of reality of how reality ought to be. That's the real suffocating part of it, I'd think. No-one can come to grips with reality when everything is fake. The film may be less a commentary on technology and more of a satire of a country dominated by propaganda. It's one of those things that makes me think science fiction may be the only genre capable of honestly analysing human society.
World on a Wire is available on The Criterion Channel.
A lone bellhop finds himself spending News Year's Eve handling four strange predicaments in 1995's Four Rooms. An anthology film consisting of four stories directed by Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino, it features the bellhop played by Tim Roth in each one. Unsurprisingly, Tarantino's is by far the best segment but the other three all hold points of interest.
In the first, a coven of witches checks into the hotel and Ted the bellhop (Tim Roth) finds himself seduced by a topless Ione Skye, the lead from Cameron Crowe's Say Anything. She looks fantastic in this movie as one of the witches. The other four instruct Ted to "make her smile" and there's an amusing moment when he tries to make funny gestures before finally getting that they mean he should have sex with her.
One of the witches is played by Madonna. It's a very small role yet somehow she won a Razzie for Worst Actress. Like Lady Gaga's nomination for Machete Kills, this feels like misogyny, or at least resentment directed at Madonna. She's hardly in the movie long enough to establish herself as a bad actress, let alone the worst actress.
The second story is the least interesting. Ted accidentally enters a room where a man (David Proval) is holding his wife, Angela (Jennifer Beals), hostage, gagged and tied up. Ted has to think fast to save himself and there are some funny moments.
The third story, from Robert Rodriguez, has Antonio Banderas and Tamlyn Tomita as a wealthy couple who leave their two children (Lana McKissack and Danny Verduzco) alone in the room, paying Ted to look in on them routinely and answer their calls. The kids are both talented and they have an amusing running gag about smelly feet that turns out to be something more sinister.
Finally, the Tarantino segment has Ted going up to the penthouse where Tarantino himself plays a big shot called Chester Rush. He's having a party with Angela (Jennifer Beals, the same character from the second segment), a guy named Norman (Paul Calderon), and an uncredited Bruce Willis playing a guy named Leo. Pacing, dialogue, and composition quickly show how Tarantino's filmmaking instincts set him apart from the average director. The plot hinges on an obscure Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode in which Peter Lorre and Steve McQueen make a bet with one of them staking his finger on a chopping block, the other his new car. The whole segment builds up to a moment when Ted might actually have to cut off Norman's finger. Tarantino builds it up beautifully with long tracking shots punctuated precisely with quick cuts at the appropriate moments.
How many martial artist ballerinas have there been in fiction? There was Summer Glau's character on Joss Whedon's Firefly. There was a South Korean movie on Netflix a couple years ago. My own webcomic, Boschen and Nesuko, features a ballerina martial artist. Now there's one in the John Wick universe played by Ana de Armas in 2025's Ballerina. Much like the John Wick movies, it's almost a feature length action sequence on conspicuously stylised soundstages. It's fine, as far as that goes, but somehow de Armas' character, Eve, doesn't connect as well as Wick. Maybe it's the lack of profound weariness that Wick seems burdened with throughout the series.
This movie was directed by Len Wiseman of the Underworld series and it certainly seems a perfect fit. Returning John Wick cast members include Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, Anjelica Huston, and Keanu Reeves himself, and they're all good. Equally so are new characters played by Gabriel Byrne and Norman Reedus. But, sadly, Eve sucks the air out of the film. Which is odd because I really like Ana de Armas. I think the trouble is that the film is, like the John Wick movies, really asexual and sex appeal is one of de Armas' best assets. She was so memorable in No Time to Die because of it. She can't draw on that asset here and nothing else is introduced to compensate, not the peculiar weariness of Wick nor anything else. There's no hook. Maybe her being a ballerina was supposed to be it but nothing really comes of that. She's a ballerina but in her action scenes she's usually wearing some nondescript dark street clothes and all of her fighting moves just look like the usual kicking and karate chops. Maybe it would be silly to have her fighting in a tutu. But they needed to go somewhere with the concept. Maybe bladed ballet slippers? Maybe they didn't feel like they needed to try so hard when they already had the brand recognition.
Ballerina is available on Amazon Prime in Japan.
X Sonnet 1976
In avocado news, the things are green.
The skin is dark and bumpy, be afraid.
'Tis not a yam nor yet a giant bean.
Its pit a ball of life that God hath made.
For God creates the greener things at hand.
From frogs to Hulk, they owe their lives to Him.
The crowning grace enlarged a jolly man.
He sells his peas without the stain of sin.
For what is green if not a second hue?
'Tis chlorophyll imbues the tree with blood.
The light reveals a yellow mixed with blue.
Its ostrich roots invade the safety mud.
So wander forth and think of spring to-day.
That's all a goblin has betimes to say.
The full list of Oscar nominees was released earlier this week. Of the movies I've seen, I'm not especially fond of any. I suspect One Battle After Another will sweep the awards. If nothing else, Teyana Taylor is a shoe-in for Best Supporting Actress. And she was good in the movie, the stuff between her and Sean Penn was the best part of the movie. And I'm glad the Oscar category is still called "actress" instead of "female actor" like the Golden Globes. Where are the people who used to be angry about "female" being somehow a sexist term? I suppose in a couple years it'll be "woman or girl actor". Whatever sounds the most inelegant, the most like a crude AI translation.
The Oscars, as usual, are all about politics, both Hollywood's internal politics and U.S. politics at large. One Battle After Another arrived just as ICE was solidifying its reputation as America's less competent version of the Gestapo. Everyone's gonna feel good sticking it to them, even if it is ultimately an impotent gesture. Maybe this year someone will make a really good movie about how fucked up the ICE situation is. At any rate, I'm sure more than a few people will try.
I'm not surprised Kokuho wasn't nominated for Best International Picture, though it did pick up a nomination for Best Makeup. I think the film was in part crafted specifically with the intention of getting international awards attention but the makers of the film lacked an understanding of the politics of American and European cinema. Japan previously won Best International Feature Film with 2021's Drive My Car, which fit the mould much better with its story from the iconoclast Murakami Haruki and featuring an ambiguous relationship between a man and a younger woman. At its heart, Kokuho is a very conservative film.
I think Frankenstein has a solid chance at winning Costume Design and Production Design but I don't think its screenplay has received more than polite affection.
I'm getting into the final episodes of season two in my latest Twin Peaks re-watch. Gordon Cole, the FBI chief played by David Lynch, has returned which I think also signalled a return of David Lynch's creative presence, though he wouldn't direct another episode until the final episode of the season.
This also follows from the death of Josie Packard, a mysterious character whom one assumes has importance to the series as a whole because she's the first character we see in the first interior shot after the opening credits in the first episode. She's gazing into a mirror wistfully. The common interpretation of this scene is that it's an introduction of the show's preoccupation with doubles, with people who have split personalities, multiple personae. After Josie's death, Harry, who was in love with Josie, has a conversation with Catherine in an episode co-written by series co-creator Mark Frost. I feel like Catherine's analysis of Josie may be close to the concept Lynch and Frost discussed for her when originally creating her character.
HARRY: What made her do the things she did? What was she after?
CATHERINE: I've been asking myself a lot of the same things.
HARRY: Catherine. I need to understand.
CATHERINE: Well, I think that, early in her life, she must have learned a lesson that she could survive by being what other people wanted to see, by showing them that. Whatever was left of her private self she may never have shown to anyone.
HARRY: So all the stories, the lies were--
CATHERINE: Well, who knows. They may not have seemed untrue to her. What she needed to believe was always shifting to suit the moment. In spite of all the things she tried to do to me and my family I find it curiously hard to hate her for it.
That certainly fits with the character we saw throughout the series and with actress Joan Chen's performance. I feel like every time she asked Lynch or Frost for her motivation for any given scene she must have been told, "She's afraid." Almost every scene of dialogue she had after answering questions about Laura was her pleading with someone. It makes sense that the demoniac character of Bob appears to drag her into the underworld. Yet at the same time her compulsive duplicity gives her a strange form of innocence, maybe the innocence of a shark who doesn't stop to wonder why she can't stop swimming.
Last night's new Fallout was pretty good, I'm relieved to say. It would've been a lot better if they hadn't introduced Deathclaws rampaging throughout the town a few episodes earlier because now it doesn't make sense that they're totally absent from the streets of New Vegas. The episode also featured some of the pointless flashbacks I don't like. But the stuff that was good was really good.
We find Cooper (Walton Goggins) still impaled on a pole in the street that Lucy (Ella Purnell) had shoved him onto with a powerfist. I liked how people just walk by him indifferently. Who would want to get involved with the noseless ghoul struggling for his life and sanity?
Meanwhile, Lucy has a moral quandary when she wakes up in her father's (Kyle MacLachlan) home base. He gives her a pretty vivid demonstration of why lobotomising everyone is a viable path to peace.
And, of course, I was really pleased to see Ron Perlman finally show up. Perlman was a glaring absence from season one. He had been in every major Fallout game since the first one came out in 1997, typically providing the narration for the introduction and epilogue. Here's the one from the first game:
It's kind of a shame the show has changed the nuclear war from being one between different countries over resources to some kind of convoluted internal U.S. conspiracy. Trump unabashedly going after Venezuela and Greenland for their resources is both apocalyptic and cartoonish, the kind of juxtaposition of enthusiastic stupidity and horror the distinguished the tone of much of the Fallout games. However, the plot in the Vault in last night's episode kind of went back to that concept as the denizens foolishly squander their remaining water supply on an inbred support stack club. It hit just the right point between absurd and undeniably plausible.
I was going through my iPod a few days ago and came across Where's Neil When You Need Him?, a 2006 album featuring various singers and groups performing songs in tribute to the works of Neil Gaiman. Nowadays, perhaps the answer would be, "Why would we need him?" At least, certainly that would be the answer on Reddit forums formerly dedicated to him. But where is he? This month marks one year since the last time Gaiman released any public statement aside from court filings. His once prolific social media presence is gone.
Am I the only one who finds this creepy? Leaving aside for a moment whether you consider the allegations against him to be true (they seem flimsy at best to me), isn't it weird that a guy one day had a highly vocal and passionate fanbase and over the course of a very short time was abandoned by them? It seems like a lot has been devoted to talking about how one should be wary of the sense of personal connexion to a famous creator. Maybe the famous creator ought to be just as wary of a fanbase. Maybe it's just another indicator of an increasingly shallow culture. I'm not sure.
I saw people who once expressed their deep, emotional connexion to Neil's work just rhetorically wipe their hands of him. It's like in The Court Jester when the character is hypnotised to change personalities at the snap of a finger. Or the clones in Revenge of the Sith turning against the Jedi when triggered by "Order 66". Could this be psy-ops? Mass brain washing? Surely that's crazy. But is there an angle from which this doesn't look crazy?
I used to love watching Ang Lee movies constantly. Around 25 years ago, if I wanted a guaranteed good time, I'd pop in Eat Drink Man Woman or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. So it's weird that it's been so long since I watched one. The Criterion Channel has had 1997's The Ice Storm online for a couple months and I started watching it again and was amazed how I kind of forgot about this movie that I used to watch repeatedly. It's a Thanksgiving movie and I never even think of it when Thanksgiving rolls around. It's weird.
The last Ang Lee movie I really got excited for was Lust, Caution, which was a decent movie and one I ought to watch again since I've been reading about that period in Japanese history, it would be nice to get the Chinese perspective as well on Japan's occupation of Manchuria. But after Lust, Caution, Life of Pi was just okay and then I didn't even feel interested in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk and Gemini Man. I have no idea why.
I'd forgotten how funny The Ice Storm is. Almost every scene concludes with an excellent punchline of some kind, which is strange because when one thinks of it, whether one has seen it or not, one tends to think of it as a grim family tragedy, which it is as well. But it's also really funny. My favourite character is Sigourney Weaver's character, Janey. Of all the confused and conflicted characters, she knows exactly what she wants and has little patience for all these crazy people. She's having an affair with Kevin Kline's character and tells him bluntly she already has a husband and doesn't want another one when he starts trying to chat with her after sex.
I love her reaction in this scene when he tries to talk about his wife suspecting their affair. Her facial expression clearly says, "Why are you even talking?"
Janey's all physical and is impatient she has to put up with this world of abstract thought and morals. My favourite part is when she catches Christina Ricci's fourteen year old character exposing herself to her son. So she pulls her aside and babbles about how her body's a temple and then goes on to a vague story about kids in ancient tribes being sent off into the woods to "learn a thing or two."
This ensemble movie kind of sits at a junction of Hollywood history. It has these two '80s stars, Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline, and then a bunch of up-and-comers--Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, and Katey Holmes. And they're all good in it.
The Ice Storm is available on The Criterion Channel.
