A Good Place for Obnoxious People

Sam Raimi has used the venerable genre of the desert island scenario to discuss modern socio-political tensions in 2026's Send Help. He does so in a way more complicated than you might expect and it's a film refreshingly free of sympathetic characters. It's basically a cage match between two of the worst examples of both sides of the aisle. It really put a smile on my face.

When Linda (Rachel McAdams) complains about the the systemic sexism that led to her getting passed over for the promotion to vice president she'd long ago been promised, her coworker, another woman, barely seems to listen and kind of shrugs. Another coworker comes by talking about karaoke and Linda tries to invite herself along. Her coworkers awkwardly end the conversation.

Linda's new boss, Bradley (Dylan O'Brien), makes crude jokes about Linda behind her back. He's a spoiled young dick but when he says to her she lacks the people skills a vice president needs he's clearly right. This kicks off a see-saw series of escalating extremes. In one scene, Bradley or Linda does something obnoxious or psychotic that you would think clearly establishes them as the villain and then, in the next scene, the other character does something even worse. Raimi matches this lack of a moral centre with the delirious, cartoonish style he's famous for. Some people complained about the obvious cgi of the boars Linda hunts on the island but the complaints miss the point. These boars are far more expressive than real boars would be because they fit the extreme, stylistic tone of the film. They're more like Deadites than animals.

On the island, Linda has the edge on Bradley because she'd trained and studied in the hopes of becoming a contestant on Survivor. We know this because Bradley and his bros are seen laughing at her audition video on the plane. Bradley gets his comeuppance when he clearly lacks any of the survival skills necessary to get by on the island. Yet he still acts like he's God's gift to Linda. One exchange of dialogue I particularly like is when she points out he'd be dead if not for her and he replies smugly, "Yeah, and then where would you be?" causing her to ask with real consternation, "What does that even mean?" He never seems to realise that what he said was nonsense. Meanwhile, Linda starts to take on a resemblance to Kathy Bates in Misery.

Send Help is available on Hulu in the US.

Her Best Feature

A teenage girl is horrified when her best friend becomes a demon in 2009's Jennifer's Body, which Roger Ebert described as "Twilight for boys." Which is a really funny thing to read at the end of a long Wikipedia entry in which its director and screenwriter spend a lot of time talking about how they wanted to make this a feminist subversion of a male dominated genre. I enjoyed the movie. Its screenplay by Diablo Cody is peppy and occasionally insightful and it's always a pleasure seeing Amanda Seyfried.

It's funny she's supposed to be the unsexy nerd of the duo comprised of herself and Megan Fox. Megan Fox is pretty but, for my money, Seyfried is by far the more beautiful. But in any case, they're both beautiful girls which makes it odd that the movie tries anything like the dynamic it does: the popular hot girl and her mousy best friend. Well, Seyfried did dress as a mouse in Mean Girls.

Her character's nickname in this movie is "Needy", an indication of the abuse she cheerfully puts up with from Fox, the titular Jennifer. The two survive a fire at a tavern that kills nearly everyone else. The band playing at the venue is headed by the evil Nikolai Wolf (Adam Brody) who lures the already obnoxiously narcissistic Jennifer into the woods to perform an unspeakable demoniac ritual to upgrade her into a real demon.

I liked how the populace of the town builds a false narrative around the fire in which the band, which fled the scene almost immediately, is cast as heroes. It reminded me of Donnie Darko and Ghost World and I sympathised with Needy for having to be surrounded by idiots.

The film supports two alternate interpretations, one in which Jennifer becomes a succubus, killing one boy after another to maintain her power, and another in which Needy is losing her mind and turns her friend's repulsive personality into hallucinated demoniac antics. There are things which go unexplained, like the fact that Needy seems to have a psychic connexion with Jennifer. This kind of reminded me of Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt but mostly the story reminded me of Carmilla and American Werewolf in London.

Jennifer's Body is available on Netflix.

Wise Mollusc, eh?

It's only been a few years since the UK declared that octopuses are sentient beings and already there's a pro-octopus propaganda film on Netflix. 2026's Remarkably Bright Creatures stars Sally Field as a woman who works as a cleaning lady at an acquarium. She befriends a captive octopus, not knowing about his intelligible thoughts voiced by Alfred Molina. It's a sweet little film, even if it might come from the Cthulhu lobby.

Lewis Pullman, son of Bill, is also in the movie as a drifter, Joan Chen has a small role, and Colm Meaney plays the proprietor of a convenience store. He's also Sally Field's love interest in a subplot. It turns out Meaney's just seven years younger than Sally Field. It made me want to watch Deep Space Nine. I'm glad he hasn't gotten roped into the Alex Kurtzman Star Trek stuff. Or has he? I haven't been watching.

The performances are good across the board. Field's character is struggling with the loss of both her husband and son and Lewis Pullman and the octopus help her work through it in surprising ways.

Remarkably Bright Creatures is available on Netflix.

Legitimate Graphics

I got a Comixology subscription recently through Amazon and grabbed a few titles with covers that appealed to me, like this one:

I'd heard of Fables but knew next to nothing about the series, I was lured entirely by the bodacious naked lady, who turned out to be Rapunzel. Fables is one of those postmodern series that came out of the '80s and '90s that turned classic fairy tales and fantasy into modern pulp fiction. Though apparently this series ran from 2002 to 2015. The issue I got is a story from 2012. I enjoyed it. It felt very Buffyish with fantastic characters speaking in modern lingo to one another between action sequences and sex scenes.

One thing that took me very much by surprise is that the story largely takes place in Japan. Not only that, but a lot of it takes place in Nara prefecture, where I lived for five years. Of course, I noticed things the writers and artists got wrong. Inaki Miranda and Barry Kitson, the pencilers, and Adam Hughes, the cover artist, produced some beautiful work but somehow they generally couldn't make people look Japanese. One of them also depicts raccoons among Japan's mythological creatures despite the fact that raccoons were only recently introduced as an invasive species. I suspect this comes from a mistranslation of "tanuki" as "raccoon". Wikipedia now has a proper place for the "Japanese raccoon dog" which differs significantly from a raccoon. But I've seen old dictionaries that simply translate "tanuki" as "raccoon".

It's funny how errors about foreign cultures are more charming the older a work of fiction is. I'm quite happy to enjoy the 1940 Thief of Bagdad, chock full of British impressions of the middle east, but this early 2000s impression of Japan from Americans comes off as awkward and hokey. I think it's less because I've had experience in Japan and more because I've had experience as an American fantasy writer. I see the errors I've made in historical details on Dekpa and Deborah and I cringe. I feel a sympathetic cringe for the creators of Fables.

I enjoyed how they turned Rapunzel into a Japanese style hair monster somewhat like Sadako in Ring and then had her become a babe again.

Anyway, it was a pretty diversion.

And Then They Went Home

We all know the story. A group of teenagers gets rowdy on prom night, they take a risky journey to somewhere new, and they engage in sexual shenanigans except for one virtuous girl among them. Then a possibly supernatural killer starts picking them off. Now imagine that story but without the possibly supernatural killer ever showing up and you would have something like 1985's Out of Control. There's not much to recommend the film aside from an early appearance by Sherilyn Fenn but there is some life in the dialogue in the first act that deceives the viewer into thinking the movie's going somewhere.

The group consists of four guys and four girls. The rich one, Keith (Martin Hewitt), has a plane and invites the others to join him on a jaunt after the prom. There's a bad storm and they crash land on a deserted island. The only signs of humanity are an abandoned cabin and a crate filled with vodka and Spam. They get drunk and play strip spin the bottle, the real reason for the movie to exist, and everyone ends up at least partially naked except for Sherilyn Fenn's character, Katie. Two of the guys fight over the prom queen, Chrissie (Betsy Russell), after she takes her panties off.

Some bad guys show up, some arms dealers, but they're so ineffectual they're hardly worth mentioning.

The credits say "Introducing Sherilyn Fenn" but she'd been in two movies the previous year, most notably The Wild Life, written by Cameron Crowe and starring Chris Penn, Eric Stoltz, and Lea Thompson. The biography section of Fenn's Wikipedia entry makes no mention of Out of Control and says 1988's Two Moon Junction was her first starring role. Maybe she'd rather people not remember Out of Control. Maybe she'd be happy to know I'm struggling to remember it even now.

Out of Control is available on Amazon Prime.

Sonnet 1992

A tale of frogs is told in slimy chunks.
Entangled tongues would eat the juicy fly.
But whims of wings would fail the saucy hunks.
Their noses dive untimely from the sky.
Selecting clouds results in picture books.
Arrangements brought the fluffy cotton stuff.
Selections cool on giant metal hooks.
Across the bridge, the thief effects a bluff.
A dragon guards his pass from angry trolls.
The snow prevents the beast from winning well.
We put his bones in sacred earthen bowls.
Then digitised his brain to make a sale.
Decisions fell to bearded men above.
Their thoughts reveal the hand beneath the glove.

What is Born in the Wake of Death

I also watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas again recently. I was thinking it could work as a good companion piece to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It helps that they're both buddy films. It's also fitting given that Terry Gilliam, Fear and Loathing's director, was a mentor to Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time's director. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood portrays an America at the point of a loss of innocence and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is set in the aftermath. You can throw The Wicker Man in between and maybe preface the group with Terry Southern movies like Candy, The Magic Christian and Easy Rider. Maybe Vanishing Point would fit in. I should programme a film festival.

Another theme could also be Las Vegas. You could show Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with Showgirls and Twin Peaks: The Return. Too bad Kyle MacLachlan's not in Fear and Loathing or it could be a Kyle MacLachlan in Las Vegas festival. I've always thought it would be fun to pair Honeymoon in Vegas and Leaving Las Vegas for a Nick Cage/Las Vegas double feature.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas would work as the epilogue. It has Hunter S. Thompson's narration delivered by Johnny Depp ruminating on the fundamental change in American culture at the end of the '60s, represented by the Manson killings in Tarantino's movie and by the culture of Las Vegas in Gilliam's. When the spirit of transgression is deprived of the spirit of love and benevolence. You could add in Winstanley to show how similar the phenomenon was to England in the 1640s and 1650s. But perhaps no other culture was so burdened by postmodernism as America was. But maybe postmodernism is just another way of saying self awareness. The rage of Caliban seeing himself in the glass, to borrow a phrase from Oscar Wilde. Though in Fear and Loathing's case it's horror. Or, well, fear and loathing.

The Cat will Catch You with His Eyes

A magical cat comes to town and reveals all the hypocrites and envious tyrants in 1963's The Cassandra Cat. It's obviously a political allegory but it also succeeds in being a fairly charming children's film.

The film's protagonist is a meek elementary school teacher named Robert (Vlastimil Brodský) who's dominated by his cold blooded boss (Jiří Sovák) and lover, Julie (Jiřina Bohdalová). Robert's boss tells him to teach the children that individual perspective is irrelevant and that morality is black and white. He also wants Robert to teach the children about taxidermy in what seems to be a metaphor for the senseless preservation of tradition.

One day, Robert invites a charismatic old storyteller and castle caretaker named Oliva (Jan Werich) to the class. Oliva also appeared at the beginning of the film, speaking directly to the camera to preface the film with a "once upon a time" soliloquy. He proceeds to tell the class a story from his youth when he met a beautiful woman named Diana who carried a cat wearing sunglasses. He fell in love with Diana and when the cat's sunglasses were removed they revealed the true nature of everyone in town. People with love in their hearts turned red and liars and hypocrites turned purple or yellow. A commotion outside interrupts the story and everyone goes to see that a parade of performers has entered the town led by a truck bearing a beautiful woman (Emília Vášáryová) carrying a cat wearing sunglasses sitting beside an old man in a top hat who looks exactly like Oliva.

The woman turns out to indeed be Diana and Robert falls in love with her, the course of the film mirroring the story Oliva told.

The surrealistic and fantastic story is aided by pretty colour cinematography. I think I would've enjoyed it more without the political aspect because it introduces a logical contradiction. If truth is relative, then there would be no fundamental nature for the cat to reveal. In the end, the cat would not be much different from Robert's boss.

The Cassandra Cat is available on The Criterion Channel.

Does Anyone Know?

Spicy '90s cinema often seems so quaint now. I watched Atom Egoyan's 1994 film Exotica again, which is his most famous film, though it's by no means well known in the mainstream. Last time I watched it it was because I was so into his Chloe with Amanda Seyfried that I wanted to see the film that put him on the map and, as I recall, I found it nowhere near as satisfying. I still don't find it the kind of visceral, sexy fun that Chloe is but I found myself more compelled to puzzle out just what he thought he was getting at.

It doesn't feel like it's set in anything resembling real life, but none of Egoyan's films do, which is part of their charm. Exotica is the name of a strip club in the movie which I doubt much resembles any real life strip club. Egoyan has said he was interested in the "ritual" of strip clubs, the girl stripping and the man encouraged to look but not touch. The patrons of Exotica are all quiet men, solemnly sitting alone at their tables while naked or partially clothed women's bodies gyrate before them like animated sculptures. It's about as different as you can get from the noisy, party atmosphere you see in other movie strip clubs, like in Anora or even Flashdance. I don't know, maybe Canadian strip clubs are different.

Exotica is set in Toronto. Bruce Greenwood plays Francis whose fixation on a dancer named Christina (Mia Kirshner) seems to go beyond sexual. Actually, by the end of the movie, you may wonder if there's anything sexual about him at all. It's only by default that one figures there must be. Elias Koteas plays Eric, a DJ at the club who provides a ruminating, running commentary. Christina's shtick is to wear schoolgirl uniforms complementing her small frame and youthful looks. "What is it about schoolgirls?" Eric asks the audience and starts talking about innocence and purity.

In a scene with a character played by Sarah Polley, Francis explains that the difference between adults and children like herself is that adults have "baggage" which contributes to certain base level of tension in any extended interaction between two adults. Perhaps this is why he prefers the company of girls to women, or women he can convince himself are girls.

Of all the characters, Christina remains the most enigmatic by the end of the film, which is fairly normal for movies about a man obsessed with a woman or girl, though just about the opposite of what I found so interesting about Chloe. It's the enigma itself the feeds the flame of obsession, the give and take between the fantasy the man projects on the woman and the reality of her personality and motives. Sometimes the two meet, sometimes there's the shock of discord when any difference is discovered. Sometimes it's this give and take that gives a relationship piquancy. In this case, Christina is quite eager to be the fantasy for Francis, temporarily, night after night, but it's most definitely not sexual. Or isn't it? The movie's choice to avoid suggesting it in any way only makes me wonder at it any more. It is a strip club, after all. Crucially, we learn absolutely nothing about Francis' wife. We don't even know if they're separated or divorced.

The information we have about Francis is so tightly controlled as Egoyan spools out the mystery. Not unlike the stripper on whom the patrons project their fantasies, we are compelled to project our own ideas on Francis. Surely we're not crazy for assuming he's horny if he's paying a stripper to give him a private dance. What I'm not sure about is if Egoyan is ultimately saying there's nothing sexual about Francis' motives or if his problem is a vast iceberg of unexamined sexuality. Maybe this movie just needed to be longer.

Anyway, Christina's strip tease to Leonard Cohen is still cool. Though not especially sexy.

Exotica is available on The Criterion Channel.

The Kill that Keeps On Killing

Well, it was nice to get a little decent Marvel content in Punisher: One Last Kill last night, even if it did feel more like John Wick content. Perhaps the key was dialling the ambition way down from where it was on Daredevil and focusing on telling a simple vignette. It helps that Jon Bernthal seems very passionate about the character, enough that he co-wrote the teleplay with Reinaldo Marcus Green, who directed. Green is the director of the Academy Award nominated film, King Richard, which I haven't seen, but One Last Kill does come across as more competently directed and less sloppily edited than a lot of other recent Marvel TV content. And, thank Christ, the fight choreography is good.

A lot of the reviews are talking about how simple the 44 minute special's story is; some are saying it to the show's credit, some to the show's detriment. I liked it. Yes, Frank obsessing over the death of his family is well trodden territory, but it's worth remembering that the thing that defines Frank Castle is that the pain never dulls. I appreciate the perspective from some commentators that it was a mistake to have Frank actually be able to identify and kill the people who killed his family. It is a better idea for him never to get that closure so that the target of his revenge just becomes all murderers. But Bernthal sells the angst and intensity pretty well.

In one of my Daredevil: Born Again reviews, I pointed out how Disney seems loath to portray children in emotional distress nowadays. Despite being very stridently labelled as TV-MA, children play a prominent role in One Last Kill and it's fascinating. I wonder if the people at Marvel were using the TV-MA label with a big wink. After all, it is just ultra-violence, and immature minds never took that as inspiration to do anything, right? And they shouldn't . . . right?

You do kind of see kids in distress in this story. It might be that the limits of the distress shown are more to do with the abilities of these child actors. Good child actors are extremely rare and when one is found they tend to show up in everything, which was why Dakota Fanning was in practically everything during her childhood. So maybe these kids just lacked the chops to show that emotional depth.

But this lack of emotional depth makes it slightly eerie how children are positioned as moral arbiters in this story. It's Frank's vision of his deceased daughter calmly and sternly enticing him away that prevents him from killing himself and it's the little girl hugging him at the end of the episode that signals to Frank, and the audience, that he's done the right thing.

This Punisher story is one of the most reminiscent of Death Wish that I've seen. His enemies are thugs composed of pure malevolence. Perhaps we can thank the fact that the director is a black man that these fodder for Frank's bullets, blades, and ballpoint pen aren't exclusively white guys. But, with respent to the dog that's killed and the shopkeeper that's brutalised, it's worth remembering how the murder and abuse of innocents has been used in political propaganda in the past. It was a key aspect of Battleship Potemkin, perhaps the most famous propaganda film of all time, particularly in the famous staircase shot, which was referenced in season two of Andor. As I said when I was discussing the Punisher a couple weeks ago, I can enjoy the catharsis of Punisher style violence in fiction but I can recognise the difference between reality and fiction. After the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondence Dinner, I wonder if many people lack the critical thinking skills to do so. In theory, that's why we have maturity ratings.

Punisher: One Last Kill is available on Disney+.

Pardon My Parton

Dolly Parton has been cropping up in my life lately. The executor of my father's estate worked for her and her brother, Randy, and on Mother's Day my mother wanted to watch Steel Magnolias. That movie has an impressive ensemble. In addition to Parton, there's Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah, Sally Field, Julia Roberts, and Olympia Dukakis, though I would say having Olympia Dukakis in your movie is nothing to brag about. Apparently she died in 2021 but her career seemed to really peter out after the '80s ended. There's something very '80s about her, some register of stately smarm that resonated with critics in the '80s but then dissipated around 1990 or so.

It'd been a long time since I'd seen Steel Magnolias so I don't remember much about my original opinion of it. I thought Parton and Daryl Hannah were the strongest parts of the cast this time. I don't think Parton has a lot of range as an actress but she's especially good in supporting roles. I really liked The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, though. I was listening to "Hard Candy Christmas" this past Christmas.

Nowadays, I guess she's known to the younger generation as the old lady in the second version of Sabrina Carpenter's "Please Please Please" music video (not to be confused with The Smiths song of the same name. Yeah, I know, no-one does).

More recently, Sabrina Carpenter was seen performing with Madonna. Nice to see there's a young artist that the pillars of an elder generation are enthusiastic about supporting. One might debate over whether this is good for either the younger or elder artists or if this is a Dial of Destiny thing. Maybe the lesson here is "Seize the moment."

The Ease of Employment

A pair of sisters from a small town find sexual and romantic adventures in the big city in 1931's Working Girls. A quaint and innocent story is thinly layered over a more sinister depiction of the way of the world.

The term "working girl" had already been established as a euphemism for a sex worker by this point, according to various web sites and Google's AI, though it wasn't as well known as it became after 1950 or so.

20 year old June (Judith Wood) is the elder sister, by one year, of Mae (Dorothy Hall). The two apply for the same stenographer job. June proffers Mae as the more educated of the two, having completed two whole years of high school. The employer, Dr. Von Schrader (Paul Lukas), despite having advertised for applicants of exceptional education and experience, hires Mae after examining and taking pity on her for her wet feet. Uh-huh.

June almost as swiftly gets a job at a telegraph office just by getting behind the counter and getting to work, fumbling her way through the technical terms. Strangely, the two women find men to be endlessly accommodating throughout the film though, once they start dating, not terribly faithful.

Working Girls was directed by Dorothy Arzner from a screenplay by Zoe Akins based on a play by Vera Caspary and Winifred Lenihan. That's right, all women, a very unusual thing in 1931.

Working Girls is available on The Criterion Channel.

Sonnet 1991

The throat's as dry as hands beneath the beach.
A message fell behind the meaning man.
A movie made at dusk was starring Stacy Keach.
But horses changed the time to suit a plan.
To scratch a watch is just to feel the time.
Without the candle scope, a flame is dim.
You mix potato paste with juicy lime.
And scatter salt along the bev'rage rim.
A troupe of dancing dames create the night.
The colour moon replaced the greyish ball.
But older orbs now host a random fight.
A politician kneels and heeds the call.
Arenas decked with ducks were wooden bliss.
At centre stage, behold a splendid kiss.

Ted Turner

Ted Turner died four days ago at the age of 87. He's responsible for the formation of a number of prominent American television networks, including CNN and TNT. For me, his greatest achievement was TCM, Turner Classic Movies, to which, as a cinephile, I owe a great debt for introducing me to the world of classic film.

After taking a lot of deserved criticism for airing colourised versions of classic films on his other networks, Turner launched TCM in 1994. When I was a young man coming out of high school and starting college, TCM was a invaluable resource, a basic cable channel that aired films from the golden age of cinema totally uncut and with no commercials. Before internet piracy and, later, the launch of sophisticated streaming services, TCM was really the only pure resource for the history of cinema for the average person. People like Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery, who worked at a video store, arguably had comparable or greater access but for most people TCM was the gateway to education in cinema.

I used to have stacks of VHS tapes I'd used to record movies on TCM. I remember watching marathons of Charlie Chaplin and Joan Crawford movies. Those were formative experiences of mainlining cinema for extended periods of time. The influence of TCM on a generation of cinephiles and filmmakers can be seen in the support the channel's received from prominent people in the industry such as Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. So, thanks for that, Mr. Turner.

Initiating Normal Speech Routine, "Common Man Coarse Banter", ENGAGE

We need a rule against Democratic politicians cursing because they don't know how to do it. Bill Maher had two prominent Democrats on his show last night, John Fetterman and Donna Brazile, and both of them seemed like they'd just learned how to speak yesterday. I think Fetterman might be taking too many testosterone supplements or something because in his one on one interview with Maher he couldn't finish a sentence. He pulled himself together by the time he returned for the "Overtime" segment at the end but he was still unable to give a cogent response to the "male crisis" question.

Donna Brazile, meanwhile, seems like she's been training by watching '70s sitcoms. I laughed when Dan Crenshaw called it "weird" when she suggested he was "in Tim Cain's ass". This shouldn't have been Crenshaw's point to score. Brazile didn't use to talk like that, I checked videos of her on YouTube from eight or ten years ago. It seems clear to me strategists are telling Democrats they need to make their rhetoric more natural and "street" as a response to Donald Trump's sideshow carnival barker routine but there are few things more unnatural than people studying very hard to sound natural. It's like a drunk trying to pretend he's sober. We're so screwed.

What Makes a Man to Wander?

A couple months ago, I was talking with a group of foreign teachers in Japan--teachers from the US, Australia, the UK, and Africa--about one of the students I was tutoring in the US before coming to Japan, a Latino man who wanted to pass the English test required to join the US border patrol. The teachers expressed astonishment that such an odd, paradoxical person existed. But they're actually pretty common. According to Google's AI, about 50% of border patrol officers are Hispanic and 30% of ICE is Latino. One might also remember how well Trump polled in Latino communities in the US. A number of reasons could be offered for this, including the fact that many families flee Mexico and other countries because of a perception that lawlessness has freer rein in countries south of the US border. It may not be so surprising that many immigrants or second or third generation individuals might want to join law enforcement specifically to ensure the old familiar problems don't follow them to the US. In light of that, it's particularly a shame both agencies have been guilty of lawlessness and cruelty themselves.

I found myself thinking about this while watching The Searchers again last night. John Wayne's character, despite his clear pathological hatred for American Indians, can speak Indian languages and is familiar with many of their customs and cultural beliefs. The more sympathetic young man played by Jeffrey Hunter, Marty, who's part Cherokee, is actually much crueller to the Indian woman who attempts to take him for a husband than Wayne's character, Ethan Edwards.

What a remarkable film The Searchers is. John Ford's direction, the majestic and anxious compositions, the pretty yet melancholy score, and above all the hauntingly obsessive character of Ethan Edwards make the movie compulsively watchable. A lot of commentaries on the film suggest that Ethan was in love with his brother's wife who's slaughtered in the Indian attack at the beginning of the film along with the rest of Ethan's brother's family, with the exception of the young daughter, Debbie, the captive Ethan and Marty search for throughout the film. I think that's a fair interpretation, but there's more stuck in his craw than that. There's plenty in the sense of his cultural displacement, his disenfranchisement, and the devaluation of his passions, that can make him a sympathetic character to anyone who feels out of step with their own culture. The introspective person might see the flaws in Wayne's character not as alien things but as modes of thought one might fall into if one is not careful.

Dare to Write

Last night's Daredevil: Born Again finale may have been the dumbest hour of television I ever watched. "The Southern Cross", written by Dario Scardapane and Jesse Wigutow, presented nonsensical, overly dramatic events driven by vague or utterly nonexistent character motives and weird, extremely hazy conceptions of legal process.

Someone finally states what Karen is charged with; Matt mentions to the court that Karen is charged with aiding Daredevil. Aside from testimony regarding Karen's character, absolutely no evidence is presented to establish this fact. A witness in the previous episode said that Karen had been seen with Daredevil in Matt Murdoch's apartment. All of it is extremely weak and a halfway competent lawyer should've been able to either get the case dismissed or, at the very least, ensure that Karen received a meaninglessly light sentence, possibly no more than a fine for public disruption or aiding and abetting assault of a police officer.

Instead, Matt throws a hail Mary and reveals his identity as Daredevil to inform a court that he, Daredevil, is actually a hero, corroborated only by extremely suspicious video testimony and the fact that he had saved Wilson Fisk's life. On the grounds that Daredevil is actually a hero, Karen's case is dismissed. On the grounds that Matt Murdoch is Daredevil, he's arrested. They may as well be throwing dice.

Most of the time, when writers have a superhero's secret identity revealed, it's a sign of creative bankruptcy. That's certainly the case here.

So Fisk murders a bunch of random bystanders and, in his rage against the ruthless injustice, Matt gently suggests that Fisk be at his liberty in some other location, away from New York. Yeah, that oughta do it. Good job.

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

Dead Processing

So, yeah, I watched Evil Dead 2 again. As a cinephile, what movies were coming to mind while going through my dead father's possessions in his home? Yes, of course I thought about The Seventh Seal and Tokyo Monogatari, two of the greatest, most contemplative movies about death. But neither of them really addresses the vicious mockery of death, the betrayal of one's own body. Evil Dead 2's no-holds-barred blend of comedy and horror captures something of the impression I get better than a more literal depiction of physical decline.

The fact that the film is about a man trapped alone in a house (in the first act) in which every object at any point might reveal itself to be a threat or a mockery makes it seem even more pertinent.

It seems like the movie's been on a lot of people's minds lately, judging from how many new videos are coming up about it on YouTube. Or maybe that's just the Evil Algorithm, possessing my reflection to drive me mad.

In the Air Again

The skies were remarkably clear for most of my flight back to San Diego yesterday, which was by far the shortest flight I've taken this year, lasting only about six hours. I was content just to watch the United States slowly scroll by beneath me. I never thought I'd be so happy to see desert again.

I think I'll have to bump the Knoxville airport up in my ranking. They had handy little laptop stations in the waiting areas by the gates, plenty of them so there were always at least four available. I got there plenty early so I actually sat down and played a little Skyrim.

Going though security was easier, too. They didn't even make me take my laptop out of my briefcase. They also let me hold onto my hat instead of putting it through the scanner. I noticed several people with cowboy hats and I bet in southern states there's been a lot of people raising ruckuses about putting their Stetsons through the contraption. A woman had to inspect my knapsack because it had a bag of my father's coin collection inside, which I expected, so I'd put the coins in a clear bag. She complimented me on the copy of Lord of the Rings I had in the bag, though my bags were not inspected due to the presence of books. This was a first--it turns out books generally look suspicious on a security scanner.

Let's see how long I can stay in one time zone now.

On a Mountain

To-day's my last day in Tennessee, I fly back to San Diego this afternoon. I don't know when I'll ever be back again so yesterday I had lunch at the Cracker Barrel because I never had and it seemed like an indelible part of the cultural identity of the U.S. south. I liked it. I love restaurants that have random knickknacks on the walls. And the food was good too, I had the fried catfish. I don't think I'd ever eaten catfish in my life before.

The pictures I'm posting are from the mountain where we, my father's best friend and I, took his and his girlfriend's ashes to be scattered at a campground that had been special to my father as a child. He had gone there frequently with his parents. My father's love for his parents was obvious in the many pictures and keepsakes he kept of them as well as in the song lyrics he'd written about them. He was a musician and had a rock band.

His friend told me how my father had told him about riding his bike downhill on this mountain, which is not a small mountain and it has many dangerous looking spots on its roads. I had an impression of a happy, carefree young life in the '60s in the forest with parents whose love he had absolute faith in. This mental image sits beside my imaginings of him dying alone in his bedroom, his piece of mind broken down by his failing health and declining physical mobility.

Certainly the creek in which his best friend deposited his ashes is a better place than that grim bedroom. He was a great fan of The Lord of the Rings so I read from a large red, leatherbound anniversary edition my mother had given him decades ago.

We didn't see anyone else at the campsite, which was closed off. Even before it'd been closed off, it had for some time no longer been a place frequented by campers.

Stache if you Moust

It's come to my attention that people, both in America and Japan, need to be better educated about facial hair.

I've had a handlebar moustache for almost two years now. I use pomade to make the ends go up. A few days ago, I went into a Subway sandwich here in Newport, Tennessee and a bearded young man said he wanted to grow a moustache like mine but when he tries to the ends grow down. I assumed he meant his moustache tended to look like Daniel Day-Lewis' in Gangs of New York.

It wasn't until later that I realised he believed many moustaches just naturally flip up on the sides. He also complained that hair tended to grow in the very centre, not realising many guys, like myself, shave a small spot just above the mouth.

In Japan, in order to manipulate some students against me, certain teachers induced students to ask me if I use wax or shave the centre of my moustache, in order to mock my vanity. There are many double standards, particularly for foreigners, so the common use of toupees and hair colouring by teachers is not generally mocked (though there were several prominent news stories from five or six years ago about students being punished for colouring their hair or wearing ponytails).

One teacher who didn't like me tried to convince students I modelled my moustache after Friedrich Nietzsche after I showed Nietzsche's picture in a powerpoint. Her implicit argument was that I would therefore eventually turn out to be a cruel and unforgiving teacher if I were allowed to remain at the school.

I think there's an impression among many that those who wear beards are wild men who don't bother shaving. This is not so. When you think of a beard, odds are you picture Commander Riker, so let's look at him.

See how he has a fairly sharp line at the bottom? That's because he shaves there. Allowing hair to grow there results in the notorious "neckbeard". But the grooming doesn't stop there. Moustaches must be cut or they will make it difficult to put food in your mouth, though some still prefer moustaches that overhang the lip, most famously Sam Elliot.

Many people, like myself, for greater ease at meal time, will shave a small area in the centre above the mouth. This also helps create the classic handlebar shape. Even if you don't shave that, many men must also shave the corners of their mouths or hair will point directly into the mouth every time they open it.

The handlebar moustache with the upturned tips became popular in the 15th century and remained so up until the first years of the 20th century.

Sonnet 1990

Antenna times convey the shape of doors.
A whiskered wraith remits a bolt of shroud.
The planet's swamps deploy a fog of spores.
A hunter's shape's revealed amidst the cloud.
A pattern's weak beside the cast of pods.
They cast a coat of tiny talking homes.
They close their doors against the threat of odds.
And fill the cracks that line the ceiling domes.
A painted hero holds a court of hue.
The browser crashed against the broccoli box.
Its Bowser's dash that makes your point of view.
His heavy car is filled with fallen rocks.
An engine pulls itself against a hood.
The maiden never shaves but thinks she should.

Wicker as a Renewable Resource

Did you have a good May Day? I observed it as I usually do by watching the original 1973 Wicker Man. How strange that it's become a comfort movie for me, that I find myself whistling melodies from its score about a month ahead of time in anticipation. One reason is that its among a few works of fiction that most accurately resemble my experience living in Japan.

The Wicker Man is essentially about a cult. Most likely influenced by the Manson Family, this post '60s film finds a conservative Christian cop visiting an island, Summerisle, where the inhabitants follow a New Age religion founded in the 19th century loosely based on the beliefs of the pre-Christianised inhabitants of the British isles. Among their beliefs is in the efficacy of human sacrifice.

Japan's problem with cults has been fairly well established though there is an apparent effort to downplay it in media. It wasn't long ago that former prime minister Abe Shinzo was assassinated by a man angry at how his mother was taken advantage of by a cult to which the prime minister belonged. In Japan's educational system, there's a war between forces eternally seeking to modernise the country and forces that value cultivated ignorance. So it didn't come as a surprise to me that a few years later a poll revealed that many students were unaware that Abe was dead. The reason so many Japanese people are vulnerable to cult indoctrination is that many aspects of mainstream education and morality resemble the qualities of a cult.

Like the inhabitants of Summerisle, many of the core aspects of modern Japanese culture are the result of social engineering. It's an ongoing effort but there were two primary waves, first in the 19th century and then in the aftermath of World War II. A key difference between Summerisle and modern Japan is the existence of the internet and the inhabitants' access to global media. There are many people in Japan who know how deranged the faux-traditionalist subculture is though many are understandably reticent to talk about it publicly. I wonder if Summerisle would survive the introduction of the internet.

What The Wicker Man captures so well is the attitude of the locals to the foreigner. Their shifting goal posts for Sergeant Howie to prove his arrogance in assuming the role of "King for a Day". They lure him in by fabricating a story of a missing child. It's not arrogance that prompts Howie to search for the girl but the inhabitants are so secure in their moral superiority to Howie's barbaric Christianity that the rationale continues to make sense to them. It's still a perfect justification for their efforts to humiliate him and, finally, murder him.

Getting to the Top

A woman's pursuit of adrenaline leads her into the clutches of a deranged cannibal in 2026's Apex. This latest iteration of "The Most Dangerous Game" is pretty good with capable direction by Baltasar Kormakur and uncompromising performances from Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton.

Eric Bana's briefly in the film as Theron's husband. The two are a couple who like seeking thrills around the world. We meet them climbing the Troll Wall in Norway. When a blizzard hits, Bana's character is killed and the film jumps ahead a few years to find Theron on a quest to kayak alone in the wilds of Australia. This gives her some interesting subtext (though one could say this is "fridging"). It's too bad Bana couldn't have stuck around, though. He's such a good actor but you hardly see him anymore.

The film is shot almost entirely from the point of view of Theron's character as she at first grimly paddles through rapids, the rush achieved under the shadow of unrelenting grief. Then, as she meets Egerton's character in the jungle after her pack is stolen, it becomes a story of her fight for survival.

Egerton's performance is impressively deranged and I loved the reveal of his especially abnormal predilections, though it verges on cheesy when it's revealed he wears dentures to conceal his sharpened teeth. I'm not saying he wouldn't sharpen his teeth, I just don't know why he'd conceal it when he's hunting a woman alone through the jungle.

Anyway, the suspense is good and never lets up. Apex is available on Netflix.

Blank Page

Yesterday, ahead of watching the new Daredevil: Born Again, I was seeing a lot of articles crop up about how dismal the ratings are for the series this season, much lower than for the first season. It doesn't surprise me. The show has kind of a cheap aesthetic, less unified and streamlined than in its previous incarnation, and it lacks the amazing action choreography that was a calling card of the old series. But primarily the problem is the writing. It's not the wokeness. Andor had progressive, revolutionary politics but now Andor is the benchmark of quality at Disney+. Daredevil: Born Again, meanwhile, makes me think there's some credence in the theory that Disney's secretly having AI write scripts. Last night's episode was credited to Heather Bellson, but it, and many other episodes, feels sort of like a theoretical model of what a show like this should be.

It's missing all of the character development that made the old series so interesting. The episode focuses a lot on Karen, though it's still a mystery why the law firm retroactively included her name, especially since there's no question of her mounting her own defense when she's in a courtroom in this episode. We get a reference to her brother but viewers will be lost if they didn't see or don't remember the episode in season two of the old series that gave her character a prolonged flashback. Similarly, no-one would understand why Bullseye would want to do a "good deed" unless they saw how his character developed in the third season of the old series. The show leans on this stuff but doesn't have anything new to introduce.

There are some interesting performances by Matthew Lillard and Michael Gandalfini but Lillard's character never becomes more than an extended cameo. Gandolfini has an arc but what motivates him? Is it just his attraction to BB? BB, meanwhile, had only one interesting moment, in the previous episode, in which she felt conflicted about what to do with regards to Gandolfini's character.

I guess you could describe the show's fundamental problem in that way; the characters are rarely in situations where they need to make meaningfully difficult decisions. There's an emerging conflict between Matt and Karen but that's another one that started in the old series and on the old Punisher series. Here's an opportunity for the show to make a meaningful comment on the use of violence in politics but Matt's side of the argument is really hazy. Is he conflicted over whether or not he should kill people? Not really.

Also, what, exactly, is Karen charged with? The courtroom dialogue in particular feels disconnected. The opening statements both conclude with "Guilty" or "Not Guilty." But of what? Out of curiosity, I asked Google's ever diplomatic AI, which responded:

In Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, Episode 7 ("The Hateful Darkness"), Karen Page is arrested and faces charges related to aiding vigilante activity following a protest clash, heavily pushed by Mayor Wilson Fisk. She is processed and held in the 15th Precinct, where Fisk confronts her, seeking to punish her for past actions and current defiance.

The fact that the charges are vague could've been part of the drama. It could've been something her lawyers mentioned. It's almost impressive how well the show evades committing to specific plot details. Why are there so many people at the trial or is it only a hearing? Why is everyone interested in this one woman arrested at a protest?

What Disney needs to do is not only hire good writers but give them time and autonomy to develop their ideas. The impression I get is that's something they really don't want to spend money on.

The sad thing is, especially after the shooting on Saturday, this show about a lawyer who's also a masked vigilante who believes in not using lethal force, could've been the most relevant series of the year. Its irrelevance shows the extent of Disney's blunder.

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

Media and Punishment

This past weekend, a another man attempted to assassinate Donald Trump, this time at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Also this past week it was announced that Gerry Conway, the writer who created the Punisher (along with two artists), passed away.

The Punisher is famous for being the Marvel character who kills people in the name of justice. Critics on the left have generally disliked the Punisher who was introduced in an issue of The Amazing Spider-Man in 1974. He was similar to a popular character type appearing in films of the period, the uncompromising enforcer, the justified revenge killer, as seen in movies like Death Wish and Dirty Harry. The Punisher is a popular character in the U.S. military and law enforcement, a fact which Marvel writers and artists have long been uncomfortable with.

And yet, for years now, political assassins in the U.S. have almost exclusively been left-wing. Violent video games are often also blamed for inspiring shooters but the White House Correspondence Dinner shooter, Cole Allen, was so opposed to violent video games that he developed a video game he specifically labelled as non-violent. Of course, these correlations are statistically irrelevant and anecdotal.

In his manifesto, published in The New York Post, Allen labels Trump a paedophile and a traitor. The reference to paedophilia is presumably to do with Trump's association with Jeffrey Epstein. There are also claims from individual women that Trump engaged in sexual behaviour with them when they were minors. However, unlike other criminal charges that have been levelled at Trump, it hasn't been proven that Trump did commit sexual crimes against minors.

In that first Punisher story, the issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, Conway, perhaps unintentionally, shows the flaw in the Punisher's M.O. He targets Spider-Man and seeks to kill him because he believes Spider-Man is a murderer. It's only Spider-Man's extraordinary powers that prevent the Punisher from killing him before the vigilante realises his mistake. This is one reason that executions are not left in the hands of individuals. Individuals are more prone to error, are more prone to being biased and influenced by emotion.

Of course, Trump has shown repeatedly that he is above the law. Cases against him, both for personal wrong-doing and overextentions of presidential powers, have invariably melted away, leaving him unscathed. What choice do we have in such a case? Allen evidently decided there were no other choices.

I am someone who enjoys violent video games and I like many Punisher stories, particularly the first season of the Netflix series with Jon Bernthal. However, I recognise the difference between cathartic fiction, which presents a simple narrative, and complex reality, which is often distorted by the individual's need for simplicity and emotional gratification. For real life, I prefer to take the example set by Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings who checked Frodo's wish that the villainous Gollum had been killed by reminding him that even wise people cannot predict the outcomes of such actions. One might ask how often assassinations have led to positive change or how often they've instead merely instigated cycles of violence.

I think Cole Allen's demon was more likely born of news media that increasingly present simplified narratives of good and evil in the political spheres. This is one reason I've always preferred fiction.

Ai of the Beholder

A friend of mine on Live Journal, poliphilo, recommended the above AI movie this morning. I hope he doesn't mind me picking on him, he's a really nice and insightful guy, but I can't get it out of my mind that he said the above film, The Patchwright, is like "Blade Runner- only better." I strongly disagree. To me, this statement is like saying "Oasis is like The Beatles, only better."

It's worth noting it's not an entirely AI generated film. It's not a case of someone opening an app on their phone and writing the prompt, "Make a twenty minute cyberpunk movie," and pushing a button. It has a director, presumably someone who crafted compositions and made editting decisions, as well as writers and human voice actors. Generally I find AI produces inferior product but I'm not categorically against the idea of people being able to use it to craft films of apparently quality production values at a tiny fraction of the traditional cost. But the film's story is derivative to say the least. A cyborg treasuring memories that aren't necessarily his, questioning the nature of memory and human sentiment and the significance of the individual, is Rachel's story from Blade Runner retold.

Sure, originality isn't everything, but I don't find this a better version of the story, for some reasons that may be subjective. I don't like excessive closeups and one reason I think Blade Runner does a better job at establishing a sense of a world space is that it features more shots establishing space, it has more dialogue scenes in which multiple characters are simultaneously visible and in which a majority of the screen isn't dominated by their faces but by the environment.

Patchwright favours portraying older and more grizzled characters, which seems less plausible in a world in which people customise their appearance as preferences generally lean towards more youthful looks. This has long been an aspect of computer generated imagery; weathered skin, objects with tiny bumps and pronounced textures, have tended to look more impressive for about 25 years. Youthful beauty tends to manifest in less detail rather than more.

In terms of visual design, I don't find the film more impressive than Blade Runner either. The aesthetics of the costumes, makeup, and facial prosthetics draw from very obvious influences, including Ghost in the Shell, Alita: Battle Angel, and David Lynch's Dune. Honestly, I don't think Blade Runner is even a fair comparison. Director Zack London has more in common with the makers of Alien from L.A. or City Limits or dozens of other Blade Runner and Mad Max knock-offs from the 80s and 90s. The only difference is that computers give him access to better special effects.

Though, on that subject, I remember how impressive the opening scene from Final Fantasy VIII looked when I saw it in a shop window in 1999. Now it looks pretty cheap and quaint. I suspect AI will also age poorly.

I also don't like the performances, but this may also be subjective. The facial expressions seem over-exaggerated and lack the subtle nuances of real actors. But one could accuse Baz Luhrmann films of the same thing.

Anyway. Sorry poliphilo.

It's Newport

I've been in Newport, Tennessee for nearly two weeks now. Yesterday I took a walk around the little downtown area.

But can one truly ever leave Japan? I keep having to stop myself from saying "ohayo gozaimasu" and "sumimasen" to people. I have been saying "Excuse me" more than Americans tend to.

Downtown is about a dozen very old buildings. There's a courthouse, lots of little law offices, bail bonds places, pawn shops, and bars.

This is one of the buildings I dimly remember from childhood. I was born in Tennessee but my parents divorced when I was very young and I think I was four years old when I moved permanently to San Diego, California.

That's me with a Big Bird birthday cake I also dimly remember. A lot of the time I've spent here has been going through my father's many, many, many photos of family and friends. That's one improvement of our digital age. Mountains of photos can now be stored in a few kilobytes.

That's the old train station which you can also see on Newport's Wikipedia page in a photo dated 1939.

Some of the old buildings are pretty cool.

A lot of places were closed because it was Sunday morning although the churches I passed were quiet. A lot of places looked permanently closed.

Another place I dimly remember is this old car wash.

I remember it being about as creepy when I was a kid.

The really strange thing about visiting Tennessee is that when I last visited six years ago, just before leaving for Japan, I visited my grandmother, her husband, my father and my father's girlfriend. Over the course of those six years, all of them died. The executor of my father's estate is his best friend from high school and he did most of the work dealing with my father's things while I was in the process of getting back from Japan as fast as I could, which was still almost a month. Now I have no family here, it feels like a completely different town.

Face It

It's often said that Batman has the best rogue's gallery of any superhero. I was watching the much lauded and influential Batman: The Animated Series from the early '90s last night, the two parter that introduced Harvey Dent/Two Face. The character has such a simple concept but, as with the Joker and Poison Ivy, it seems to be an infinite resource for stories.

The Animated Series follows some of the reconceptualising of the character's origins that had been established in the late '80s comics, making the two halves of his personality the result of childhood trauma that's exacerbated by his disfigurement. The climax of the story has Harvey arguing with his fiancee; he argues life is dominated by chance and she insists he has the responsibility to take control of his life. That's an interesting way to go with the character, I wonder if it's an argument from one of the comics.

I went back and read the 1942 introduction of the character in the comic. Apparently the story was written by Bill Finger, Batman's co-creator, though Bob Kane, Batman's other co-creator, is credited as Two Face's sole creator for some reason. He was originally named Harvey Kent, his name obviously changed to avoid confusion with Superman, though interestingly his introductory comic features a scene in which he attacks a movie theatre where people are watching a Superman cartoon.

I actually find his derangement more interesting in the original comic. The "childhood trauma" angle sounds very much like late 20th century pop psychology. In the original comic, his fiancee is a sculptor and she's not the saint she's portrayed as in The Animated Series, nor is she a villain. She's horrified by his appearance. A lot of people would be. We act like we're above valuing people by appearance now but you don't see Hollywood stars without perfect teeth, often even if they're playing a character whose teeth would realistically be unsightly. A lot of the importance we put on appearances is something we don't consciously acknowledge which is a very effective way of rendering Harvey a fundamental outsider, someone society can't even consciously contemplate. This is an idea explored in Abre los ojos and its remake, Vanilla Sky.

It's also interesting how the comic shows Two Face actively performing good deeds when his coin toss ends up on the unblemished side. He robs a gangster and gives the loot to charity. Usually the coin coming up "good" just means he refrains from killing someone, as in the Christopher Nolan movie. It would be interesting to have a longer story in which the concept of his duality being truly random is played out. Though, really, it could never be truly random because Harvey always chooses the parameters. He chose the gangster, he chose the charity just as he chooses the particular crimes and the particular targets. The coin chooses good or evil, but it's Harvey who defines that good and that evil.

Sonnet #1989

The domino entreats the icy die.
From piece to piece, the plastic game divides.
In other times, the iv'ry turned a try.
The shady rule within the alley hides.
The darkened clouds above the hill advanced.
The grass was cold beneath the heated air.
Within the earth, the stormy spirits danced.
And launched their darts aloft with noise and flare.
The thunder thoughts defined the shape of land.
As lightning burned the anxious felon clouds.
A rain descends and turns to active sand.
The atoms seek a match to light the shrouds.
Continued motion shows the normal street.
But something waits beneath our busy feet.

Battle of the Blondes

Sydney Sweeney goes to work for a haywire Amanda Seyfried in 2025's The Housemaid. Many reviews say the first two thirds of this movie are good and the last act is ridiculous and lame. Those reviews are correct.

It kind of reminded me of the 1972 Hammer film, Fear in the Night, a gaslight movie from the point of view of a young woman who goes to live in an expensive old house with her husband in an attempt to start a new life. The first two thirds of the movie is a terrific sequence of developed tension. Then the inevitable twist changes the narrative and distances the audience from the point of view character, thereby diluting the sense of credibility in every threat it tries to establish.

The Housemaid begins with Millie (Sydney Sweeney) as a desperate young woman living in her car who can hardly believe her luck when ridiculously wealthy Nina (Amanda Seyfried) hires her to live in her home and perform general chores for Nina, her husband, and her prepubescent child, Cece. Shortly after Millie takes residence, Nina's personality flips and she becomes a psychotic, tyrannical boss. Nina's husband, Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), is the only solace and voice of reason and Millie finds herself increasingly drawn to him.

I will say I went into this movie assuming that a third act twist would somehow reveal that Nina is the true sympathetic character and that Andrew was the true psycho. I won't spoil the movie for you to say whether or not that ended up being true but it did mean I had my eyes peeled in the first two acts to spot anything that might undermine such an eventual twist. And there were many things. I won't say whether or not my prediction was accurate but I will say the last act is ridiculous and jettisons all the tension accrued in the first two acts by suddenly asking the viewer to ignore almost all of the character development from the first part of the film.

This film was directed by Paul Feig. Yes, the same Paul Feig who directed the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot almost everyone hates and who directed a slew of unpopular comedies. Somehow, the one good movie he made, Bridesmaids, has apparently made studios want to keep giving him chances. The Housemaid did well at the box office because it stars the two most beautiful blondes of the past twenty years. The idea of Sydney Sweeney in a sexy thriller was the primary draw. You know that won't stop someone from looking at all the Sydney Sweeney fans lining up to see the movie and saying, "Wow, people sure like Paul Feig."

Feig very reluctantly delivers the sexy scenes people wanted but, viewer be warned, he does his best to avoid indulging the so-called "male gaze". He goes so far as to put Sweeney in a hilariously unflattering, boxy dress for the big romance sequence. The sequence, in which she goes to a luxury hotel with Andrew, still kind of works because the threat of Nina has been well established at that point so the tension is ever present. There are many components of a good movie here.

Money in the Snow

An embarrassed young woman asks a handsome stranger to pay for her drink, not knowing he's hiding from the law in 1956's Nightfall. This low budget Jacques Tourneur film noir is a slightly delirious, cock-eyed suspense story centred on characters played by Aldo Ray and Anne Bancroft. The two have a surprisingly sweet, effective chemistry that pairs well with the film's weird, convoluted crime plot.

Ray plays Vanning, a World War II veteran who's being pursued by two tough guys (Brian Keith and Rudy Bond). Circumstances throw him and Bancroft's character, Marie, together but despite the two obviously criminal thugs chasing him, Vanning won't take Marie's suggestion that he call the police. Unbeknownst to Vanning, a man working with the cops has already been shadowing him.

The backstory is given piecemeal in intermittent flashbacks. Vanning had been up in the mountains with his friend when the two had a tragic encounter with bank robbers. There's some terrific shots of snow covered mountain scenery.

Like a lot of noirs, though to a lesser extent than in a movie like Detour, the improbable convolutions of the plot become more interesting if you read the protagonist as a not entirely reliable narrator. And Vanning has plenty of motive to add varnish to his past when he's talking to the beautiful young woman who miraculously enters his life. Ray and Bancroft are so cute together. The first time he kisses her when she's lying on his couch is so innocent and simple that it's impossible not to root for these two, whatever the truth might be.

Nightfall is available on The Criterion Channel.

A Modicum of Daring

Last night's new Daredevil: Born Again was one of the better written of the Born Again series. It's kind of a low bar, though, and there were a few weak bits in the teleplay by Devon Kilger and Jesse Wigutow. But I appreciated how the story got weird at points.

This episode had some of the best moments for characters introduced in Born Again. There was some nice tension in BB's visit to Blake's mother's house. It was the first chance BB had to make a difficult decision, for the actress to convey some kind of internal conflict, and she felt real for the first time. Blake's assumption that the data drive he found in BB's coat was connected to the Fisk parody broadcasts was pretty extreme but not in a bad writing way (even though it was clearly ADR), more like a legitimate paranoia way. Blake's actually shaping up to be an effectively tragic character.

I really liked the moment when Cashman tells Heather to choke him. There's an eroticism in the scene that makes her trauma uncomfortably confusing, as real trauma often is. It makes Cashman into a truly Satanic character and makes Heather a lot more interesting than she ever was in season one.

I like Jessica Jones a lot, especially the first season of her series, but her first scene in this episode was annoying and her meetup with Daredevil felt superfluous. The scene with her daughter annoyed me because it introduced yet another peculiarly fearless kid like Leia in Obi-Wan Kenobi or Ant-Man's kid in Ant-Man 2 or a dozen other examples. I suspect there's a mandate from Disney that discourages writers from portraying children as frightened. And the scene introduced another annoying potential "pass the torch" kid character. The only one of those that's been any good was Yelena and Thunderbolts tanked despite being a good movie.

The fight scene between Daredevil and Fisk was good though I think they've long since milked that white painting dry of all dramatic potential. I also liked the continuation of Karen turning into more of a Punisher sidekick than a Daredevil sidekick, despite the fact that her dialogue was some of the stuff I was able to predict before it came out of a character's mouth.

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

Desmond Morris

Desmond Morris died a few days ago at the age of 98. I've never read his books but his Human Animal series from the '90s, along with James Burke's Connections, left a lasting imprint on my perception of human nature. He was criticised for the broadness of his inferences sometimes but perhaps those critics failed to notice that every episode began with a title card describing the programme as "a personal view". Much of his work was opinion and you can judge for yourself the validity of his opinions. I was watching the second episode this morning and I don't think I agree with his assertion that eating a meal alone is invariably an inferior, anxious experience, though I wonder if my preference for watching movies or reading books while eating provides a substitute for companionship.

I find his thoughts on the contrast between carnivorous and herbivorous diets fascinating. The idea that carnivores have more leisure time comes with a lot of implications for the nature and development of abstract thought and any example of behaviour outside of actions taken purely in the interest of survival.

It's strange how innocuous shows like this seemed in the '90s when there's been little of the type or quality ever since.

He's Probably the Man You Need In Some Kind of Crisis I Think

A man of ambiguous occupation is probably the one force standing in the way of an ambiguous menace ambiguously tied to another man of ambiguous occupation in 2007's Michael Clayton. This is a good example of a movie that's a little too clever for its own good.

George Clooney stars as the eponymous protagonist. He's referred to as a "fixer". At one point, a police detective remarks that Michael has cops thinking he's a lawyer and lawyers thinking he's a cop. He works for a firm headed by a character played by Sydney Pollack and they're tied up with what Wikipedia calls an "agricultural conglomerate" called U-North who are up to some kind of shady shenanigans. Michael's colleague, Arthur (Tom Wilkinson), knows something about U-North so he's being tracked. He's also losing his mind. He strips naked during a deposition and runs across a parking lot for some reason.

Tilda Swinton plays someone involved with U-North. I wasn't really sure what her motives were for most of the movie but I think she was a villain.

There's so much cloak and dagger and double talk and people being cagey that it all boils down to people walking around and looking intense, it all kind of greys out. Star Wars was a really good thing for Tony Gilroy, Rogue One and Andor tethered him to something solid. He's obviously very clever but sometimes cleverness can fly off into the clouds and that's what happens with Michael Clayton.

Michael Clayton is available on The Criterion Channel.

Short of Middling

I'd heard "Meridian", a 1994 episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, was unpopular both with fans and with people who worked on the show. Watching it last night, I could see why, but it has its moments.

It has, like many episodes of '90s Trek, an A and B plot. The A plot is based on the Gene Kelly musical Brigadoon about a Scottish village that magically appears once every century, its inhabitants not experiencing the intervening period of time. Kelly plays a modern guy who falls in love with a girl in the village played by Cyd Charisse.

In "Meridian", the crew of Deep Space 9, cruising about in the Defiant, their little warship, witness an entire planet suddenly appear out of nowhere. The inhabitants turn out to be a standard group of Star Trek humanoids in vaguely Renaissance alien costumes. Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) falls in love with a local guy played by Brett Cullen. First he's going to go off with her to Deep Space 9, then she's going to stay with him on the planet. It doesn't work out, of course. There's no weight to the tragedy because neither the actors nor the characters have even an ounce of chemistry. There is an effective scene of Dax bidding farewell to her old friend Sisko (Avery Brooks), though it's undercut by the lack of effectively established motive on Dax's end.

The B plot involves Quark (Armin Shimmerman) trying to get a holographic scan of Kira (Nana Visitor) so he can make a pornographic simulation featuring her for a client who's been lusting after her. This disgusting endeavour is played for laughs and both Quark and the client get their comeuppance in a satisfying way, though I gather many fans feel Quark ought to have received severer punishment.

The client is played by legendary genre actor Jeffrey Combs, best known for the '80s adaptation of Lovecraft's Re-Animator. It was the first of many characters Combs played on Deep Space Nine and Enterprise. Combs appears at a minute and ten seconds into this clip from the beginning of "Meridian".

People Under the Moon

That's my grandfather, on the left, in his moonshiner days. Apparently moonshiners generally wore fedoras. An old man at a local deli two days ago got a kick out of seeing me in mine as it reminded him of his own grandfather, also a moonshiner. I've been going through a lot of family photos at the home of my recently deceased father here in Tennessee.

Here's one of me around 25 years ago, unknowingly emulating my grandfather's style. I'm with my father and grandmother.

There were lots of photos of me, most of which I didn't care for. I kind of like this one in which I have some fish.

Sonnet 1988

Approaching time returns the leaves to dust.
They left a shade about the living wights.
A dappled tomb resists encroaching rust.
A troupe of empty sockets take the sights.
A ragged band descends the verdant hill.
The gang still play guitars, trombones, and drums.
They form a ring around a copper still.
The morning liquor quites the group in sums.
But living viewers, note the silence reigns.
Beyond an echo, spirit voices speak.
As spirits fill a cup and deathless veins.
A figure plants a flag atop the peak.
As songs unheard enrich our quiet dreams,
The dust will dance in palid morning beams.

Postmadamism

Western music seems to be entering an era of pretty young ladies. I say "seems to" because I don't entirely trust my impressions anymore since the algorithms are always putting together a particular tapestry of what it is it thinks I want. Sure, I like pretty young ladies. But doesn't everyone? Hasn't everyone always? From Juliet to Marie Antoinette to Madonna. Now YouTube is feeding me Olivia Rodrigo, Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter. I was watching Rodrigo's new video in which she dances around Versailles in a frilly postmodern frock and asked myself if I would enjoy this song sung by a balding old man. Probably not. That doesn't make it bad, though. "Pretty" "young" and "lady" are all relevant parts of our existence and engaging with all three is certainly valid.

She makes a lot of references to older songs in her lyrics, in this case The Cure's "Just Like Heaven". In "deju vu" she references Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl". In both cases, she also claims to have special insight into the songs. She says she knows why Robert Smith wrote "Just Like Heaven" and she boasts that she introduced the music of Billy Joel to the ex-boyfriend who's now introducing him to his new girlfriend. She's the very model of the postmodern major hipster. But, hey, I do like watching her and I dig her references.

Chappell Roan seems like the artsier alternative though I'm not sure how much depth there really is in her most popular song, "Pink Pony Club", about a young drag queen in west Hollywood. We can all applaud her espousing progressive sexual values but would the song have been as popular had it been performed by an actual drag queen? Maybe not, but I find something heartening about it anyway. And there's her seemingly Caitlin R. Kiernan inspired video for "Casual" that makes me feel like, "Hey, this young person likes the things I like."

The lyrics of the song at first seem to have little to do with the content of the video but both seem to be questioning how to categorise a developing relationship.

"You said, "Baby, no attachment"
But we're
Knee deep in the passenger seat, and you're eating me out
Is it casual now?
Two weeks, and your mom invites me to her house on Long Beach
Is it casual now?"

In both this and Rodrigo's "Drop Dead" and Sabrina Carpenter's "Manchild" the singer's primary point of concern is how to define a relationship, what label to give it or a partner, or what significance to derive from shared interests. Did Mick Jagger wonder what satisfaction was when he complained he couldn't get any? Did David Bowie need to know how to label the relationship with the Rebel Rebel who didn't know if she was a boy or a girl? These young artists seem to live in compulsive analytical space. Perhaps this is just what the children of postmodernism look like. Though it may be fruitful to compare "Manchild" to "Mannish Boy", "Manchild", both song and video, is kind of peak postmodernism.

Magic and Resentment

I've been watching Ingmar Bergman's 1958 film The Magician over the past several weeks, sometimes just parts of it, sometimes the whole movie. I first wrote about it back in 2019 and I don't have much to add to that review except I didn't mention how Bergman shows what the travelling magician does is an expert version of what all the other characters do in their daily lives.

The consul's house which the Magician, Vogler (Max von Sydow), visits is filled with servants, functionaries, and their wives. There's an old woman who claims to know witchcraft and gives a "love potion" to a young man which is really rat poison but provides the social lubricant necessary for him and a servant girl to sleep together, which they both already wanted to do.

Magic and stories are used as pretext or diversion. The wife of one of the officials becomes obsessed with Vogler and wants him for her lover until she sees him without the wig and false beard that everyone already knew was fake anyway. It's not the revelation of his deception that disturbs her, it's the revelation of her self-deception, her indulgence in a fantasy that he only provided an inspiration for.

But it's still primarily the obsession of Dr. Vergerus (Gunnar Bjornstrand) with proving Vogler a fake that fascinates me. Again and again, Vogler is easily proven a fake, if it weren't already clear from his wig and beard, but again and again, Vogler demonstrates his power over Vergerus. If Vergerus is so sure there's nothing to Vogler's abilities, why does he want to dissect Vogler? Why does he shrink in fear away from Vogler when he encounters him in the attic?

The most frightening thing about the film, for an artist, is how authentic it is. No matter how effective an artist is, however ingenious his ability to give the audience a valuable experience, "rational" observers with unshakeable faith in their own ability to think logically, will be there to deride the artist as a fraud and freeloader.

The Magician is available on The Criterion Channel.

Daredevil: Watch Again

Here comes the nostalgia. The new episode of Daredevil: Born Again, written by Jesse Wigutow, relied heavily on past content. If you like to linger thoughtfully over past episodes of TV series, you may enjoy this episode more than the less sentimental among us.

We have duelling flashbacks with Matt recalling his times with Foggy and Wilson recalling his first meeting with Vanessa. In between, there's the sloppily written story of Blake, Michael Gandolfini's character, kind of leaking information to the press about Vanessa being in critical condition. Most of the dialogue between Cashman and Blake indicates Cashman and/or Fisk is upset about Vanessa's location being leaked to the press and Blake is suspected of having doing so but at some point in production the makers of the show must have realised BB found the location with no help from Blake so they looped in some dialogue of Blake telling BB that Vanessa was in critical condition while Blake was facing away from the camera. Either way, it seems odd that Blake is their prime suspect for the leak in a hospital full of people. It seems odd they had any expectation of keeping a lid on the information.

Foggy fans got their wish to see the man again and Foggy haters like me got their wish to not see Foggy resurrected. So far. A story about Foggy helping a disagreeable client in the name of justice parallels Matt's present struggle with Bullseye. It's funny, I call him Bullseye but keep referring to Matt as Matt. They're showing him in the costume a lot more so maybe they want me to think of him primarily as Daredevil. I guess the old Netflix series did too good a job moving the show away from a costumed superhero show.

The Fisk/Vanessa stuff felt like it justified flashbacks a little better but going over her decision to exhibit the white painting was kind of like a Star Wars prequel explaining more than anyone ever wanted or needed. Vincent D'Onofrio gives a really good performance in the episode, though.

Oh yeah, and we get to see Fisk's old right hand man, Wesley. Were there people out there who really wanted to see him again?

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

The Hot World

My world tour continues and this morning I'm in Newport, Tennessee. It's going to be unseasonably hot here, around 30 Celsius, in the 80s Fahrenheit. It was also unseasonably hot in southern California and in Japan.

I've been in six different airports over the course of two weeks so I figured I may as well rank them.

6. San Diego International Airport, California, U.S.A.

This one ought to get points for nostalgic value but when I decided to walk from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2 I found I had to go through a labrynthian detour due to construction. There was also no currency exchange onsite.

5. McGhee Tyson Airport, Knoxville, Tennessee, U.S.A.

I saw this one only briefly but all the shops were closed already when I came in at around 9:20pm. Why?

4. Los Angeles International Airport, California, U.S.A.

It got the job done but was surprisingly lacking in local colour.

3. Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, Michigan, U.S.A.

I had to quickly make a connecting flight but I had to cross the whole big airport to do so which meant I went through its big glowing sci-fi underground tunnel which runs beneath the planes to connect the A concourse with B and C. That was cool.

2. Narita Airport, Tokyo, Japan

Quick and easy baggage check, lots of great food, and a konbini where I could buy ziplock bags for my chargers. Very handy.

1. Icheon Airport, Seoul, South Korea

From the whimsical, musical buggies to the pretty stewardesses to the infinite number of liquor shops, there's absolutely nothing to complain about regarding this one.

The Money Eaters

A young stockbroker pursues an alliegience with a notoriously ruthless colleague in 1987's Wall Street. Director and co-writer Oliver Stone dives into the world of stock trading to tell a surprisingly simplistic moral tale. Other than a couple clever one liners, this movie's mainly entertaining for its '80s cheese value.

Charlie Sheen plays Budd Fox, a lowlife stockbroker working in a vast, noisy office of cold callers, and his father, Carl, is played by Charlie Sheen's real life father, Martin Sheen. While Budd aspires to be the deadliest shark in the tank, his father is a salt-of-the-earth union leader who don't truck with his boy's uptown dreams. The two Sheens together ham it up and make you say, "Hey, that's Martin Sheen with Charlie Sheen."

But Budd meets another father figure, a slimy bigshot named Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas, who has the film's two immortal lines; "Money never sleeps" and "Greed is good," which perhaps best sums up '80s right wing philosophy. It's that absolute faith in the idea that somehow everyone relentlessly gourging on all they can grab will all work out for the best, despite what you might think. However, things turn out exactly as you might think, if you have a halfway decent moral compass.

Now Oliver Stone's friends with Vladimir Putin. That tracks. Wall Street could almost be Soviet propaganda.

Wall Street is available on The Criterion Channel.

Refreshed San Diego

I wandered a bit more around San Diego yesterday. I went down to Mission Valley Centre Mall because they have a currency exchange place and I had a stray 5000 yen in my wallet which turned out to be around 28 dollars in American money. The Mission Valley area is one of the posh areas of San Diego. Not the poshest, that would be La Jolla, but a lot posher than Chula Vista or El Cajon. There are two malls, Mission Valley Center and Fashion Valley, and they illustrated neatly the rising disparity between commoner malls and upper class malls. Fashion Valley was always the one for rich people but Mission Valley had the usual kind of anchor stores, Macy's and Robinsons May, even a Montgomery Ward way back in the day. Now all the department stores are boarded up, empty buildings, the food court's gutted, and the Ruby's Diner that used to occupy the centre has been razed. Meanwhile, anything that's closed in Fashion Valley has been replaced by something more expensive.

One thing that surprised me is all the closed Starbucks. I guess people got really tired of Starbucks. But the coffee company really did overdo it. I guess the days of Starbucks across the street from Starbucks are over. It seems like there's no shortage of Starbucks within other businesses, though.

Conversely, I was surprised and pleased that Barnes and Noble is still open and doing well. The generic editions of classic novels are really pretty and I was sorely tempted to buy the Chiltern Classics edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray but lugging my collection of books to the post office is too fresh in my memory.

Most editions feature a portrait of a young man. Not doing so seems wiser to me as no picture is going to measure up to Wilde's descriptions.

I found myself consciously forcing myself to break Japanese habits. I actually walked while drinking coffee. This is something I have seen some young people do in Japan but it is still very rare and frowned on by older generations. I also noticed I was unconsciously walking on the left side of the path as you're supposed to do in Osaka and areas west of Osaka.

I completely missed COVID in the US. I was a little surprised to see a couple women still wearing medical masks.

I noticed in the men's rooms the toilet stalls tend to be more often occupied than the ones in Japan. I think American men are defacating more. It may simply be that they're eating more.

I had a teriyaki chicken plate at Fashion Valley for 11 dollars. The food court stuff is still not terribly expensive though that would be very overpriced in Japan, especially since it wasn't very good. I missed some American food. I got a proper sandwich at Submarina a few days ago and it was fabulous. Still, nothing compares to Japanese food.

It's strange seeing so many people with tattoos, which are still considered gang symbols in Japan and even gangsters usually keep them covered. I'm not fond of tattoos and still can't imagine why I would want one but I love self expression and individuality. I guess, in a nutshell, that's what I missed most about the US. Self expression and individuality.