TV Thrills: Andor & Slow Horses

Welp, the Covid finally came for me so I had plenty of time to lay prostrate on my couch last week and catch up on all the TV I missed in 2022. If you've also missed these shows, I'm afraid to say you really do need to add them to your list, because they are excellent.

Andor: As I've mentioned many times on this blog, I'm not a Star Wars person, yet I have seen all the movies because my best friend is a fan and always takes me to see them. Well this time around, my best friend, my boyfriend, and finally, my boss, all jumped on the Andor bandwagon and kept telling me how good it was. And now, with no excuse to not watch, I found myself bingeing twelve episodes in three days and going huh, that was pretty great.

The show serves as a prequel to Rogue One. Let me assure you, I had no memory of that movie and didn't need to in order to follow this story. This show tells the tale of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) who is a bit of a wastrel and a rogue, taking on odd jobs and finding quick ways to make a buck. All he wants is to make a pile of cash so that he and his elderly mother can go live a life of luxury rather than living their current hardscrabble existence on one of the poorer industrial outposts of the Empire. But of course, when one of his jobs goes pear-shaped, Andor gets roped into a hell of a lot more than he bargained for. And eventually, our seemingly aimless rogue realizes that he may have a moral center after all and might be ready to join the Rebel Alliance. 

Created by Tony Gilroy, this is a splendidly cinematic show. There are a lot of characters and political machinations about the formation of the Rebel Alliance (this is who Luke, Leia, and Han will ultimately fight for, the Resistance against the evil Empire in the original Star Wars trilogy), but I paid no heed to any of that. Instead, I was simply captivated by all the wonderful action set pieces set across different worlds in this universe. There is an episode that features an insane heist sequence that will blow your mind. And as though this wasn't enough for the first season, they proceed to top that with an epic prison break sequence a few episodes later that is just as elaborate and ingenious. The show is firing on all cylinders in terms of spectacle and storytelling and whether you're a Star Wars fanatic or a complete newbie, you should find something to love. It's a damn good yarn.

Slow Horses: This show feels like The Thick of It but with spies. Based on a series of novels by Mick Herron, this is the story of Slough House, a division of MI5 that is where incompetent spies are sent when they are deemed too much of a liability on regular operations but don't need to be fired outright. They are meant to be glorified paper-pushers. But of course, composed of a bunch of people who did start out as intelligent and ambitious, they end up inadvertently taking on high-profile cases and having to see them through, albeit, rather disastrously.

The head of this unit is Jackson Lamb, who is played by Gary Oldman in quite the casting coup. In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Oldman famously played George Smiley, one of John LeCarre's most celebrated fictional spies, so it's hilarious to now see him as Lamb, a rude, downtrodden, slovenly man who seems to hate everyone in his department. He is a nightmare of a boss, but as the series progresses, you'll start to see that this is actually a man who cares a great deal about his fellow spies and doing the job well. Now, he is often dealing with incompetent people who can't do a good job, but a man can't have everything right?

This is also a show with fantastic action set pieces (the opening sequence in the pilot episode instantly hooked me, and suddenly I had watched all two seasons available - only six episodes each, so this is not a rigorous time commitment!) It's very British, very unsophisticated James Bond, and can also be very gory and shocking at times. There are some nasty deaths in that first season, and if you're squeamish, this may not be the show for you. But if you enjoy some tradecraft and bumbling spy narratives, this might be exactly what you need to settle down with this weekend.

Family Friendly Fare: Matilda the Musical & Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

2023 is upon us but if you do not want to watch anything too heavy and dour, here are two cheery options to throw on your movie watchlist.

Matilda the Musical: I got to see the musical on Broadway several years ago, and it was a rather delightful piece of set design and choreography. Which is what this movie also has to offer, with plenty of whirling dance numbers, and gorgeous production design. And of course, there are those lyrics by Tim Minchin, with rude and hilarious songs that the children sing with much gusto. If you like puns and wordplay, this is the musical for you.

Alisha Weir plays the wunderkind Matilda, an enormously smart little girl who is afflicted with enormously negligent and stupid parents. When she gets sent to Crunchem Hall, an enormously cruel school, she is fortunate enough to land in the first-grade classroom of Miss Honey, a compassionate and loving teacher who immediately spots what a bright girl Matilda is. Unfortunately, Miss Honey is no match for Agatha Trunchbull, the despotic headmistress who absolutely despises children, and what follows is a twisty tale where the children must fight back against the adults and intelligence and kindness have to battle against foolishness and evil. 

Fans of the original 1988 novel by Roald Dahl, or the 1996 movie starring Mara Wilson, may have their quibbles about various changes made to the original source material. But this is a musical and it's meant to be a bit more heightened and wild. The inclusion of Lashana Lynch as Miss Honey is wonderful, while Emma Thompson is having a great deal of fun swanning around the school and being perfectly hideous as the evil Miss Trunchbull. I will confess, I am still too partial to the 1996 movie, and no chocolate cake is ever going to beat the one that Brucie has to eat in that iteration. But if all you want is to sink into the couch and watch some children sing silly songs and wreak a plot of vengeance against a truly odious woman, you cannot go wrong with this film.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: This movie is truly excellent, no matter what age you are. My cousins and boyfriend were discussing it and trying not to spoil it for me (as I hadn't seen it at the time) and all they could vaguely say was "it has so many themes!" And now that I have watched it, I can concur. So many themes!

This is the story of Puss in Boots (still voiced with swagger by Antonio Banderas), who is now down to his ninth and final life. He is on the run from Death (yes, Death is literally a character in this film, so think carefully about what conversations you want to have with any young kids you to take to see it) and finds himself in a home for rescue cats, where a scrawny dog (disguised as a cat), Perrito (voiced delightfully by Harvey Guillen), takes a liking to him. When he then discovers that Goldilocks and the Three Bears, who here are a crime family straight out of a Guy Ritchie movie, are seeking a map to the Wishing Star, Puss realizes this could be his chance to get more lives. So he decides to head out on this adventure to find this star, only to encounter fellow thief and one-time (and perhaps once-again?) love interest Kitty Softpaws (charmingly voiced by Salma Hayek). 

This is a movie about the importance of friendship, living in the present, asking for help, not running away from your problems, loving your family, having a good conscience...I could go on and on. The fairytale characters that pop in and out are hilarious, always slightly subverting what you expect from them in some ways and then completely living up to the stereotype in other ways. The animation is beautiful, and of course you will get to see Puss and Kitty (and Perrito, to some extent) do their best cute, pleading, big eyes to warm the stone-cold embers of your heart. It's a sweet movie that is bound to impart a lesson that immediately speaks to some aspect of your life that you've been neglecting. I don't know how much kids are expected to get out of this film, but adults are in for an emotional and fulfilling ride.

Women Talking: Peeling Apart the Patriarchy

6 days into January, I may have already watched the best movie of the year. I'll try my best to explain further in this review why this movie is so sublime, but if you'd rather just take my word for it, I recommend you go watch it immediately. And try and take a friend - I was fortunate enough to watch with another woman, and when we were done, we spent a long half hour discussing this movie. We were women talking about Women Talking and it was magnificent.

Written and directed by Sarah Polley from a novel by Miriam Towles (that was horrifyingly inspired by real-life events in a Mennonite colony in Bolivia), Women Talking teases out its story in a beguiling fashion. We know that a group of women in a religious colony have discovered that the men and boys of the colony have been raping them at night. It is a horrific revelation and the police are called. The men are currently all in town, some having been arrested, others trying to post bail, and the women have gathered to take a vote - will they stay and forgive the men, stay and fight the men, or leave? When the vote shows a tie for the latter two options, a select group of women are appointed to sit together and talk through the final decision. And for the ensuing hour and a half we watch these women talk and deliberate about the horrors they have experienced, the dreams they still miraculously harbor, and their hopes and fears for the future. In flashbacks we start to piece together what happened to each of these women, what has been happening in this colony, and we start to get a sense of time and place, with increasingly startling and horrifying revelations.

Every actor is a marvel and each character is offering up such a unique and nuanced perspective on what has transpired. There's Salome (Claire Foy) who is roiling with rage and wants to stay and fight these men who have abused her and her children for so long. There's her pregnant sister, Ona (Rooney Mara), who is radiantly calm and intelligent and soft-spoken, and senses that leaving is the only true option that will give them their freedom. There's Mariche (Jessie Buckley), who cannot fathom leaving her life behind and thinks everyone needs to lean into their faith in God and forgive these men so the colony can move past this reckoning. And there are the older women, Agata and Greta (Judith Ivey and Sheila McCarthy), who are realizing they may have stood by while horrible things happened to them, their daughters, and their granddaughters but now is the time they must take a stand. 

The way that these women talk is absolutely wondrous. The conversations ebb and flow, they have bitter disputes but always come back to resolving their differences with words. They persuade, cajole, yell, cry, and startlingly, laugh. The laughter is the most wondrous piece of it all - how these women can find things to laugh about despite all this horror. There is one man in their midst, August (Ben Whishaw) who is the schoolmaster that the women have recruited to take minutes of their meetings and write up lists of Pros and Cons as none of them have been educated and know how to read and write. He and his questioning mother were excommunicated from the colony but he returned to be of service as a schoolteacher and now finds himself in this position or service to these defiant and brilliant women. It's a poignant reminder of how feminism is always in need of male allies and here August demonstrates what a difference it makes when you are a man who simply listens while women talk.

The film is also a work of art. I was enraptured by the dialogue but may need to watch it again to fully appreciate Luc Montpellier's cinematography as the camera keeps narrowing and widening its focus at different beats and how the scenes can be so bleak and gray when depicting certain horrors but then get saturated with more color as these women start to take a hold of their destiny. The score by Hildur Guonadottir is magnificent, perfectly capturing the somber and serious mood but bringing in the right amount of uplift and optimism to indicate the path forward. Guonadottir won an Oscar for her score for Joker, a film that I hated for its intensely male filmmaking, so I am pleased that perhaps now she will be recognized for her contribution to such a deeply feminist and female movie. I also got the novel from the library and devoured it in one afternoon, and Polley's script is a masterful adaptation - while the book is fantastic, Polley has played with the narrative structure in fantastic ways to make it a truly compelling cinematic experience. This is the exactly the kind of script a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar should be rewarding, hint, hint.

Women Talking feels like a long therapy session about the patriarchy. It's a reminder that one of the most effective ways to process trauma, whether individual or collective, is to actually talk about it. These women have spent their lives in silence, never talking about their bodies, never discussing the fact that they would wake up in the morning battered and bruised and suddenly pregnant. But now, they are talking. And there is a beautiful power in that.

Deft Dramas: Mood & Welcome to Chippendales

Over the holidays, I had the pleasure of watching two very different but equally compelling shows. Both are engaging, character-driven dramas that find a novel way to tell a tale about what happens when men and women get into the business of the oldest profession in the world.

Welcome to Chippendales: I was vaguely aware that Chippendales exists - I knew it as a successful chain of clubs where male strippers perform elaborate shows to titillate a screaming female audience. But this miniseries gives us the incredible history of Chippendales and how it was created in Los Angeles in 1979 by an Indian immigrant named Somen "Steve" Banerjee (Kumail Nanjiani, delivering an extraordinary performance). I was listening to Kumail on a podcast and he said, "don't read the Wikipedia article about Chippendales, just watch the show." And I exhort you to do the same. I had no idea about the wild and sordid history behind the meteoric rise and ultimately deadly fall of the franchise, but over the course of this eight-episode miniseries, you're in for quite the rollercoaster.

Alongside Nanjiani, we have the impeccable Murray Bartlett as his business partner, Nick De Noia, who comes on as a consultant to help choreograph a few routines and then becomes integral to the business, leading to a very testy partnership. There's the marvelous Annaleigh Ashford as Irene, a customer who is not very enthused by the strippers but wows Steve with her accountancy skills and ability to quickly find ways to keep costs down. She wows Steve in other ways too, but we won't get into that. And finally, Juliette Lewis rounds out the "four geniuses" as Denise, the costume designer who becomes Nick's right-hand woman and offers up even more creative inspiration for the shows that they are devising. 

And oh what shows they are. We get to watch the evolution of these dancers, initially stumbling like newborn baby giraffes and eventually morphing into gorgeous and coordinated Magic Mikes. The music budget for this show must have been insane but the soundtrack boasts just about every song you could imagine from this era. Frankly, when the pilot featured a dance set to ABBA's Gimme Gimme Gimme, I knew I was all in.

Created by Robert Siegel, he and his team of writers have crafted eight fantastic episodes that tell a story of greed, wealth, sex, privilege, racism, paranoia, and ultimately death. Steve is a fascinating character, one that you root for at the beginning and then are horrified by at the end. He faces discrimination but then manages to be a bigot himself; he wants to be rich, and can then never be rich enough; and it's wonderful to see the complex arc of this character and the others in his orbit as they get more famous and yet can't stand to be around each other. Such is the human condition, and Welcome to Chippendales tells this story with verve and a thumping disco beat.

Mood: This is a six-episode series created and written by Nicole Lecky, based on her one-woman play, Superhoe. That is a similar origin story to Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag, and let me tell you, Nicole Lecky had better have a similarly meteoric rise in fame. Because Mood is one of the most riveting, fascinating, and empathetic pieces of television I have seen in a while.

Lecky plays Sasha, a young mixed-race woman who is the only Black person in her household. She is still living at home with her mother, stepdad, and sister, and harbors ambitions of becoming a famous singer, but she can't quite seem to get her life together. Following a bad breakup with her boyfriend Anton, she makes some poor decisions that lead to her family kicking her out of the house. When she finally ends up becoming the roommate of a young white woman named Carly Visionz (Lara Peake), Sasha is slowly sucked into the glamorous world of being a social media influencer. Only to then find herself being pulled into the more shadowy, sordid world of cam girls and sex work.

It's hard to say more. This show opens up with the delicacy of a blooming bud, gradually unfurling its petals to give you a rich story of this woman's reckoning with her past in order to find her way again. The way in which Sasha is so gradually tempted into doing things she never thought she would do is breathtaking and by the time you get to Episode 5, your heart will be in your mouth as you realize just how slippery this slope is. And I haven't even mentioned the most surreal part of this entire program - it will occasionally turn into a musical, with Sasha belting out amazing songs and orchestrating elaborate music videos out of her surroundings as she tries to process her trauma through music and lyrics, making something beautiful out of the absolute chaos.

You must watch this show. It's a feat of acting, music, and brazenly audacious storytelling. It feels fresh and unique, but it is likely the story of far too many women on the fringes of society who have slipped through various safety nets and found themselves in this position. This is not a show that is judgy about sex work - in fact it portrays many women in the profession who are clear-eyed and know their boundaries and counsel Sasha because they can sense that she is in far too vulnerable a position. It's a magnificent portrayal of one woman and her journey into her own. It really is a mood.

New Year's Binge: Blockbuster, Wednesday, Bad Sisters, Fleishman Is in Trouble

I am not a fan of New Year's Eve and believe the best way to celebrate this "holiday" is on the couch bingeing some great television. If you are similarly minded, this post is for you!

Blockbuster: If what you're seeking is a funny, half-hour, workplace sitcom in the style of Brooklyn Nine-Nine or Superstore, then this is the show for you. Randall Park stars as Timmy, a man who loves movies and runs the very last Blockbuster Video store on the planet. For many reasons, this is a losing proposition, but the man is determined to make this video rental store succeed and with his motley staff by his side, we can cheer him on in his hapless quest. Over the course of ten episodes, you will be able to watch the usual sitcom tropes unfold - troubles with corporate overlords, employees whose ambitions don't line up with their current jobs, and of course, some flickers of romance.

The best part of this show is the specificity of its jokes. There was one line about how if someone wanted to listen to The Fray, they should just watch an episode of Grey's Anatomy. This is a show that will probably make sense to 1% of the population, but I am in that 1% and I cackled like a loon. This show is a broad and hearty comedy, full of warmth like a nourishing stew, but one in a while there's a surprise ingredient that pops up out of nowhere. It's a great cast of people who are clearly having a fun time working together and playing off these scripts. Creator Vanessa Ramos was a writer on Brooklyn Nine-Nine so she brings that show's warm, gentle, familial tone to this workplace. And of course, what is the thing I find funniest about a show about the last Blockbuster store, a place we all went to rent videos if we needed to see movies or TV? It's streaming on Netflix.

Wednesday: If you don't want something too sweet and saccharine, then you need to be watching Wednesday. The brilliant Jenna Ortega stars as Wednesday Addams, the moody, death-obsessed, teenage daughter of the Addams Family, and in this show, she is shipped off to Nevermore Academy, a private boarding school for outcasts after she is expelled for her extreme behavior at the regular high school she was attending. This is where her parents went to school, and she is furious with them (Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzman play Morticia and Gomez, in a pitch-perfect piece of casting), but over the course of eight episodes we will get to see our heroine make her stamp on Nevermore and go from social pariah to the belle of the ball.

The main story arc involves a murder, so this show is a mash-up of genres as a horror mystery comedy, with lots of spooky and supernatural elements. But of course there are also many love interests to deal with and teenage hormones flying about the place. Wednesday's roommate, Enid (Emma Myers) is an exceedingly cheerful werewolf, and the school principal is played by the marvelous Gwendolen Christie, who certainly has her hands full trying to contain all these rebellious teens under her roof. Christina Ricci also stars as a teacher at the school, which is a beautiful bit of casting as she originally played Wednesday Addams in the 90s movies. While the show was created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, Tim Burton is an executive producer and directed four episodes, so the show also has that feel of a spooky and inventive Burton movie, with gorgeous production design, costumes, and plenty of gothic humor. It's a compelling and eye-popping watch, and while you may need to close your eyes at some scary bits, overall, it's a hell of a ride. 

Bad Sisters: If you want a black comedy mystery without actual horror, then this is the show you seek. Once I started, I voraciously ate up all ten episodes with a spoon. Set in Ireland, this is a remarkable mystery that opens with the funeral of John Paul "JP" Williams (Claes Bang, who I was shocked to learn was Danish!). John Paul was married to Grace (Anne-Marie Duff), who has four sisters, Eva (Sharon Horgan, who also developed this show with Dave Finkel and Brett Baer), Ursula (Eva Birthistle), Bibi (Sarah Greene), and Becka (Eve Hewson). The sisters are all very close, and as the show progresses, we discover just how close. Because it turns out that JP was a horrible and abusive man, and every single one of the sisters hated their brother-in-law. Until they finally decide that they should murder him.

Brian Gleeson (who I just discovered is son of Brendan and brother to Domhnall! Yay Irish actors!) and Daryl McCormack (who earlier this year starred in the amazing Good Luck To You, Leo Grande) also star as Tom and his half-brother Matt, who run the insurance company that would have to pay out JP's life insurance policy. While his death has been ruled an accident, the brothers have reasons of their own to not want to pay out the claim, so they start investigating for possible foul play. Which means that this show takes place in flashbacks where we track what the sisters may have been scheming, and then we see the present day investigation where everyone is freaking out about getting discovered. This whole time you have no idea how JP died, whether or not he was actually murdered, and if so, which sister(s) did it. It's such a brilliantly inventive, funny, and captivating script, and the conclusion is rich and satisfying and ties up all loose ends. The tone is dark but hysterical and these actors do a brilliant job of bringing their characters to life and making you root for them every step of the way. You will not be able to stop until you see how it all ends, and then you'll be desperately hoping that someone else dies so we get another season of watching the Garvey sisters and their shenanigans. 

Fleishman Is in Trouble: I loved Taffy Brodesser-Akner's 2019 novel, so I was very excited to learn she had adapted it into a miniseries for FX. Starring Jesse Eisenberg as Toby Fleishman, Claire Danes as his ex-wife Rachel, and Lizzy Caplan as Toby's college friend Libby, who also serves as the omniscient narrator of the series, this is a show about middle-age, marriage, gender norms, and just how self-absorbed human beings can be when beset by their problems. 

It's hard to say much about this show without giving away vast swathes of plot so I won't even try. Instead, I'll just exhort you to go along for the ride. These actors are doing some incredible work, and Brodesser-Akner has written impeccable scripts that fully capture the spirit of her novel. This is a brilliant translation of page to screen and there are stunning visuals and narrative devices to keep the story engaging, and twisty, and surprising. The first half is very focused on Toby's perspective of his divorce and subsequent dating life, but oh boy, just wait until things turns around and you get to hear what Rachel and Libby have been going through. This show perfectly captures how you should never just listen to one person's side of the story when trying to determine what went wrong with a relationship and also gets at the very different experiences men and women can have on either side of coupledom. It's a wonderfully executed show, and a beautiful portrait of the joys and pitfalls of human existence. And since it's all set in New York, I had many moments of pointing at the screen and saying "I know that street!" This is not a show for everyone, and many will moan that it's just about a bunch of rich, white, privileged assholes who don't have real problems. So if you can't stand that sort of thing, stay away. But as a psychological study and examination of the patriarchy, this is an incisive and riveting piece of television, and I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. 

Oscar Hopefuls: Babylon & The Whale

It's that time of the year when all the Oscar movies are out in earnest and the awards chatter is at fever pitch. So over Christmas break, I took a gander at two high-profile pieces of Oscar bait and...oof. 

Babylon: Written and directed by Damien Chazelle, this movie is a quintessential ode to Hollywood, a love letter to the movies that is meant to tug at the heartstrings of sympathetic Oscar voters who love nothing more than to fete their own profession. As soon I saw this film was three hours long, I knew that I might be in for a rough ride and I was sad to discover I was right.

The movie follows a bunch of characters involved in the movies from the height of silent cinema to the birth of the talkies. The first half is the best part of this movie - that's when you simply get a frenetic, chaotic, music video-esque introduction to the world of Hollywood and its gaudy hedonistic excesses. There's a massive scene set at a party/bacchanal at a producer's mansion, and the technical wizardry and choreography required to stage those shots are truly staggering. And then there is an extended scene once the switch to talkies is imminent, where we get a bunch of filmmakers trying to deal with how to make a talking picture. I burst out laughing at one point and couldn't stop giggling for a minute as an increasingly irate director lost his mind about all the various technicalities that kept screwing up his shot. 

If that last scene sounds a bit like Singin' in the Rain to you, you're not wrong. I was very happy when I thought that maybe this movie would just be an R-rated version of that picture. However, the second half quickly fell apart and took more of an interest in the rise and fall of its various characters, who weren't all that interesting. The cast is spectacular, with the likes of Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, and Jean Smart swanning about, doing their best old-timey Hollywood acts. But gosh, this script is over-the-top and ridiculous and completely swallows its own tail by the end.

Babylon is such a self-aggrandizing movie that is so besotted with itself - and perhaps that's a meta commentary on the lavish insanity of the self-involved people it is depicting. But no. I don't think it's that clever. This is a movie that wants to hammer home the message that movies are great, but ironically, it is terrible. Go for the production design, costumes, thumping score, and impeccable cinematography by Linus Sandgren. But if you're expecting a rousing and uplifting story, you're out of luck.

The Whale: Yes, Brendan Fraser does some fantastic acting in this movie and deserves an award. But I did not like this movie. The tone is icky and feels like it is trying to shame a person for being morbidly obese and turn it into a personal failing rather than a broader public health and societal failure. And I didn't realize the script by Samuel D. Hunter was based on his play, but it did then make sense why this movie is so claustrophobic and contained, where we sit in Charlie's apartment and watch people come in and out of his life and offer up snippets of his personal life to sort of explain why he is the way that he is, but never going very deep.

The movie tells the story of Charlie (Brendan Fraser), a morbidly obese man who is homebound and dependent on his friend, Liz (the wonderful Hong Chau), who is a nurse, to drop by and check in on him. She is extremely frustrated because he refuses to get health insurance and go to the hospital, but they are best friends and she cannot abandon him. When his angry teenage daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink, who is having quite the year after her turn in Stranger Things) starts to visit him, that prompts more discussion of his past and what has now led him to his current state.

I simply couldn't get into this script or the dialogue. Everything felt so clunky and forced, and there was too much talk about how Charlie was "disgusting" and not fit for public consumption. Hollywood traditionally has such a phobia of fat people, and this movie feels like it's piling on to that narrative. Every time Charlie eats, it is sloppy and messy - that's unnecessary! Why must you show him wiping his hands on his clothes or smearing his face with grease? A person can be obese and still know how to chew their food and eat it neatly. If this movie had focused solely on an examination of Charlie's psyche and his emotions and the reasons he became the man he was, I could get behind it. But it became too much about "look at the fat guy." 

Fraser does a fantastic job of portraying the physicality of this role, and the strain and toll that all this excess weight does to a person's daily functioning. And then he also successfully gives this man a rich emotional inner life, grieving about his ex-partner, trying to foster a fragile connection with his child, joking around with his best friend. But director Darren Aronofsky doesn't let those moments live and breathe, always bringing us back to this fat suit and how gross this fat man is. I've had obese patients before and I know what barriers to care they face from health care providers who want them to take all the blame for their situation. Movies like this only further that narrative and make obesity seem like sort of carnival sideshow attraction. Fraser's performance is integral to ensuring that this man feels like a human being and not an animal (or...a whale, sigh), but with this script and direction, that's an uphill battle.

December Drama: Empire of Light, Bones and All, Pinocchio, Avatar: The Way of Water

December is proving to be a real grab bag of a month in terms of cinematic offerings. So strap right in for the following reviews about movies that feature drama, animation, fantasy, and some light cannibalism.

Empire of Light: I do not think this movie is objectively good, but my God it felt like it was engineered in a lab just for me. Set in 1980s England, it stars Olivia Colman (I'm already sold!), as Hilary, the duty manager at the Empire Cinema. We vaguely know that she has recently returned from hospitalization for a mental health condition, and she initially seems to be a rather quiet and lonely woman, diligently going about her day, but not getting much enjoyment out of anything. She is having an affair with her boss, played by Colin Firth (I am sold again!), but when a new young employee named Stephen (Michael Ward) is hired, sparks unexpectedly fly. 

This is a movie about a frustrated middle-aged woman with serious mental health issues and a young Black man dealing with how Thatcher's Britain has empowered all manner of right-wing nationalists. They have an unexpected connection, but the societal forces around them and their own internal struggles constantly get in their way. But the setting of this love story is this movie theater, this decrepit, but once glorious palace that lets everyone escape for a few hours in their lives. Toby Jones plays the cinema's projectionist, and the scene where he teaches Stephen how to change the reels is magical. And then of course, there's the scene where Colman sits in a theatre by herself getting a private screening of Being There. I could watch that woman's face all day because that is the look on my face every time I am at the movies. At the end of the day, this is a movie about how life is hard, but at least we can always go to the cinema for a pick-me-up. Inject that message directly into my veins.

Pinocchio: I don’t know how 2022 became the Year of Pinocchio, but I’m over it. After the disastrous live action movie starring Tom Hanks, I was wary of going into this animated take co-directed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson, from a script co-written by del Toro and Patrick McHale. It has gotten a lot of acclaim for the animation, so sure, go ahead and watch this movie because it is very pretty to look at. And Jiminy Cricket voiced by Ewan McGregor is a treat. But it‘s still the same damn story and I’m afraid my patience has been sorely tested by it this year.

The main update is that instead of the whole insane donkey and carnival sequence, we instead get a frightening look at “what if Pinocchio was drafted into a young fascist group, designed to help Mussolini create an army of Italian boys to defend the fatherland?” I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of war for this year, and could not be compelled to care. Again, people do seem to like this movie, so I fully acknowledge I didn’t watch it in the best frame of mind. If you are not burnt out on Pinocchio adaptations or have a true love of animation and del Toro’s storytelling, this could be the absolute perfect movie for you. But for me, at this point in 2022? No thanks.

Avatar: The Way of Water: Welp, this movie was exactly what I expected it to be. Visually spectacular, bloated, and ridiculous. It's probably going to make a bazillion dollars and I will have to watch the sequels for many years to come, but oh God I'm not pleased about it. The script is so cliched that there were multiple times the audience just laughed out loud at the silliness of a scene or a particular line of dialogue. Nothing happens in this movie that you can't predict, but of course the CGI is stunning. I watched it in IMAX 3D and it is mesmerizing and colorful and gorgeous, but did I need three hours of this? No. 

The movie picks back up on the alien plant of Pandora where the indigenous Na'vi people are yet again being threatened by colonizing humans. This time, they specifically want to kill Jake Scully (Sam Worthington) the human who decided to stay in his Na'vi avatar form and fell in love with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) in the first movie. Now they have children, both biological and adopted, and we will watch them flee from the humans to a new clan of Na'vi called the Metkayina who have a bond with the sea. Here, they will learn the way of water, how to dive and form symbiotic relationships with marine animals, and then proceed to have innumerable battles with the evil, grasping humans. If you like water and fighting, you'll have a grand time. I like water, but I certainly don't like extended fight sequences, so my patience wore thin by the halfway mark. Overall, this movie is self-indulgent and mediocre, and while I'm glad that James Cameron has perfected this motion capture technology, it's time for us to put it to good use in movies that have truly interesting stories to tell.

Bones and All: Here’s my one-sentence review of this film: I was expecting it to be more of a romance but it is heavy on the cannibalism. Directed by Luca Guadagnino from a screenplay by David Kajganich that is an adaptation of Camille DeAngelis' novel, this is the story of Maren (Taylor Russell), a young woman who is a cannibal, who is abandoned by her father (Andre Holland) after he realizes he can no longer protect her. She decides to look for her mother, who is presumably a cannibal herself, and on the subsequent road trip, she runs into Lee (Timothy Chalamet), a fellow “Eater,” and they fall in love, as they finally feel like they’ve found a kindred spirit. Along the way they run into other cannibals (there are weirdly way more than you would think), and those encounters either propel the plot forward or further add to the questions of the ethics and morality of cannibalism and the “rules” each individual abides by to feel like they are living their life the right way.

This movie creeped me the hell out and when I got home, I was exceedingly glad my dinner was meat-free. I’m not sure who the ideal audience is for this film - if you like romance, this movie has too much horror, but if you like horror, this movie has too much romance. It’s a real Catch-22. I found myself counting the minutes until it would be over because it would periodically drag and then suddenly get too gory. I can certainly give the director kudos for coming up with such a bizarre tone and filming it with such cinematic relish. And the cast is fantastic, with the supporting cast including brilliantly unnerving performances from people like Mark Rylance and Michael Stuhlbarg. But oh boy. I certainly did not eat this up with a spoon.