New TV shows!

I didn't have a chance to get a third movie in this week.  I'm about a third of the way through NCIS season 2, season five of Arrow, season 4 of The Librarians, and nearly finished with seasons 3 of The X-Files, season 2 of The Orville, and season one of The Umbrella Academy.  Last night, Tyler and I did finish the brand new A Discovery of Witches, based on the book series by Deborah Harkness.  And I finished watching season one of Will and Grace. 

As you can see, that is a lot of television which is why I almost never review it.  It takes up so much time, even with no commercials and the ability to binge watch. 

Will and Grace was one of those 90s shows that my parents weren't interested in and I had very little awareness regarding.  I don't know why, but I had seasons 1 and 2 on the server so I thought I'd go ahead and give it a shot.  (Maybe Christy?  I think she watched it.)  I'm pleased to say that it still mostly holds up.  There's a lot of humor based on old LGBTQ+ stereotypes but the core relationships between Will, Grace, Jack, and Karen are worth watching.  It's currently streaming on Hulu.

A Discovery of Witches starts out pretty slowly.  It's only eight episodes, though, so when it picks up it does so with breakneck speed.  Tyler kept asking me questions because I had read the book series but it was so long ago that I barely remembered anything.  I ended up skimming through the novel to try and answer some of the topics alluded to but not covered in depth.  Which is not to say you have to have read the book beforehand.  He enjoyed it perfectly well without any of the extra information.  Since it is very new, I will give the overview of the plot.

Diana Bishop (Teresa Palmer) is in Oxford doing research on alchemy when she accidentally calls forth a book that had been considered lost for centuries.  All of a sudden, magical creatures are swarming all over her trying to get her to call the book back for them, including Matthew Clairmont (Matthew Goode), biochemist and 1500-year-old vampire looking for answers as to why the species of witches, vampires, and daemons are declining, and Peter Knox (Owen Teale), a witch looking to use the book to destroy vampires forever. 

If you have the patience, it's available on cable from AMC and BBC America with commercials.  If you are not patient, it's available through Shudder or Sundance Now as add-ons to Amazon.  Shudder is a streaming service I've been thinking about for a while now so it was worth it to me to go ahead and start shelling out $5 a month for all the horror my little heart can stand.  If you're not ready for that kind of commitment, you can use the 7-day free trial to binge and then cancel.

The Intouchables (2011)

Happy Easter, all my pagan and Christian friends!  Here's a completely unrelated movie.

  If you're noticing an uptick in depressing/Awards movies, it's because I'm hitting a pocket of them in my queue.  They all seem to clump together like wet spaghetti.  I'm sure I'll be back to my nonsensical picks any time now.

Phillippe (François Cluzet), a rich quadriplegic, is tired of all the pity from his caretakers so he hires Driss (Omar Sy), an ex-con with no experience, to be his companion and the pair form an unlikely friendship.

This is based on a true story and, for being awards bait, it's a pretty entertaining film.  So much so that an American remake called The Upside with Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart was made earlier this year.

Omar Sy is ridiculously charismatic even as he leans heavily into the stereotypes that define this film.  (Driss basically stalks Phillippe's assistant, Magalie (Audrey Fleurot), despite her repeated refusals, which is gross.)  Cluzet does a very good job of emoting, considering that he's not allowed to move more than his eyebrows and mouth.  The story is heavily invested in his emotional journey but it feels like a lot is conveyed through exposition and not through the film itself.  The daughter, Elisa (Alba Gaïa Bellugi), is kind of a throwaway character and I would almost rather she not have been included at all if her entire purpose is to be a bitch to Driss and then come around after he makes fun of her for a failed suicide attempt.

So it's not without its problems but it's still a pretty decent watch if you want a feel-good foreign film that you don't have to think about very hard.

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

  I put off seeing this one as long as I could because I just knew it was going to be depressing.  I was right, but it's also beautiful, lyrical, and features a heart-shattering performance from Regina King.

Nineteen-year-old Tish (KiKi Layne) is initially afraid to tell her family that she is pregnant, especially since her boyfriend, Fonny (Stephan James), is in jail awaiting trial on a fraudulent rape charge.  They are overjoyed to hear the news, however, especially Tish's mother (Regina King), and the whole family doubles down on their efforts to get Fonny released before the baby is born.

There are so many amazing performances in this film.  Layne and James are so starry-eyed towards each other that you can't help but feel for them.  Teyonah Parris is a scene stealer as Tish's older, fiercer sister Ernestine.  Ed Skrein channels his inner Francis as a racist cop while Emily Rios gives a compelling vision of trauma as Fonny's accuser.

The ending is more realistic than happy which sucks, but that's the world we live in.  It's streaming on Hulu currently.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

  I was late to the Melissa McCarthy lovefest.  I didn't like Bridesmaids and movies like Identity Thief, The Heat, and Tammy just looked too stupid for me to enjoy.  Ghostbusters:  Answer the Call was the first time I actually found her watchable and that was mainly superseded by how much I hated Kristen Wiig.  However, if she does more movies like Can You Ever Forgive Me?, I might have to revise my opinion.


Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) has fallen on hard times after publishing a couple of well-received biographies.  The market taste has shifted, writers like Tom Clancy (Kevin Carolan) are making millions by churning out the same formula, and Lee is too set in her ways to be anything but embittered.  Desperate for money to pay for her sick cat's treatment, Lee accidentally discovers the lucrative world of personal correspondence memorabilia.  She begins forging letters from renowned literary celebrities like Dorothy Parker, Fanny Brice, and Noel Coward, selling them to collectors, and drinking the profits with her friend, Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant). 


McCarthy seems like she was born to play this role, imbuing the crass and socially awkward Israel with enough sympathy to keep viewers rooting for her to succeed in her criminal endeavors.


This is very much Oscar bait and will most likely be unfortunately consigned to the scrap heap of other prestige dramas but it is very much worth your eyeballs.

Shazam! (2019)

  Another step in the right direction for DC!

Billy Batson (Asher Angel) has run away from 23 foster homes looking for his mother (Caroline Palmer) who lost him at a carnival when he was a child.  He is placed with Victor and Rosa Vasquez (Cooper Andrews and Marta Milans) as a last-ditch effort to keep him off the street.  In the group home, Billy is latched onto by Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer), a fast-talking, wisecracking superhero fanboy, who is the closest thing Billy's ever had to a friend.  A friend he needs more than ever when a mysterious wizard (Djimon Hounsou) gives Billy the last of his magical power, transforming him into the adult Shazam (Zachary Levi).  Billy and Freddy immediately put the new powers to use, turning Shazam into a viral social media star but Billy's inability to trust others threatens to break up their dynamic duo just as failed magical candidate Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong) arrives to destroy the powers of Shazam for good. 

I think this film should be enshrined in the same pantheon as The Goonies, Stand by Me, and Monster Squad as teen boy movie tributes.  Male friendship is front-and-center along with explorations of different kinds of masculinity, transitioning from boy to man (literally and figuratively), and the impact of positive and negative male role models. 

It is by far the funniest DC movie to date, and unlike previous attempts, the humor feels seamlessly integrated into the film.  Levi has always been a great comic actor but Grazer is less than half his age and able to match him beat for beat.  That kid is going places.  Angel has more of the emotional burden of the character to carry and acquits himself well, even if that necessarily makes him less fun.  Strong is really just a phenomenal all-around actor, capable of humor, pathos, and menace. 

This is the first DC film that I would comfortably recommend taking older children (like 11+) to see.  Some of the Seven Deadly Sins might be a little much for younger viewers but there's really not a lot of actual shown violence and maybe only two instances of the word "shit".  They didn't even use their one allowed f-bomb.  There's a mid-credits and a post-credit scene as well, but the post-credit is kind of worthless frankly compared to the mid-.

Mary Queen of Scots (2018)

  This, friends, is the Christy pick for April. 

Mary Stuart (Saoirse Ronan) returns to Scotland after being widowed to take the mantle of Queen.  Like her famous cousin, Elizabeth (Margot Robbie), Mary struggles with keeping her power from grasping hands who would seek to usurp her and put a man on her throne.  This is further complicated by politics that would pit the two female monarchs against one another.

This is not a new story or even a new take on the story and that cannot help but drag the film down.  It's bolstered by excellent performances by Ronan and Robbie, gorgeous scenery, and sumptuous costumes.  It's also the first English historical epic I've seen to feature a truly diverse cast, LGBT acceptance, and a real exploration of the precariousness of these royal women.  Unfortunately, none of that is enough to save it from being overly long, punctuated with boredom, and still reliant on overused tropes.

Mary herself is not a very likeable character and it's hard to sympathize with her when she constantly puts her foot in her mouth.  In fact, pretty much everyone in this film is kind of an asshole.  Dudley (Joe Alwyn) and Darnley (Jack Lowden) are petulant, cowardly whiners as the love interests to Elizabeth and Mary, respectively.  Guy Pearce is manipulative, James McArdle is entitled, and the only one who seems like he's having any fun at all is David Tennant.  And not just because he gets to wear a giant beard and use his real accent.

Out of all the amazing women in history, why do we keep returning to the same dry wells?  There are thousands of untold stories from every culture in the world of warrior queens, savvy diplomats, and puppet masters.  Where's my Dolly Madison biopic?  Boudicca?  Hatshepsut?  My non-Disneyfied Mulan?

Skin (2018)

  This won Best Live Action short at this year's Oscars.  It has a great twist that in any other timeline would be comedic but here is definitely being played as serious.

Jaydee (Ashley Thomas) smiles across a supermarket aisle at a little white boy (Jackson Robert Scott), sparking a confrontation from the boy's white supremacist father (Jonathan Tucker), who calls his friends and attack Jaydee in the parking lot in front of his wife (Shelley Francisco) and son (Lonny Chavis).  Later, a group of Jaydee's friends abduct his attacker in front of his son, drug him, and tattoo every inch of his skin black.

I was really trying to prepare myself for this film to end violently.  The setup is there and there's been too many real news stories that start exactly like this for me to hope for a happy ending.  As it was, the ending felt like a surprise and yet inevitable, which is good.  My only real complaint is that the majority of characters aren't referred to by name and one of those names is wrong on IMDb.  I just find that irritating.

Wild Guitar (1962)

  I have no idea where this movie came from.  It was on the server and I couldn't place the name so I started watching it.  Five minutes in, I knew I had not put it on the hard drive.  It didn't seem to come from any of the collections I've bought and it absolutely isn't something my ex would have downloaded.  It's not even a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode.  I am at a loss.

Bud Eagle (Arch Hall, Jr.) is a young singer-songwriter who moves to Los Angeles to get his big break.  He meets Vicky (Nancy Czar), an aspiring dancer/actress, who gets him a shot on a local television show for new talent.  Bud is a hit and is quickly signed by the unscrupulous Mr. Macauley (Arch Hall, Sr.), who begins to systematically isolate the naïve young man while raking in profits for himself.

This was filmed at probably the same time as Eegah, which did become an MST3K episode, and you can see that some of the props were re-used as well as the cast.  Arch Hall, Jr. is a walking embodiment of nepotism with the kind of permanently petulant expression that makes him ripe for parody.  He might have fared better in television, a teenage Dennis the Menace, maybe, something where you only had to look at him for thirty minutes minus commercials, but apparently he was only interested in a music career.

The problem with Wild Guitar is that it's not even enjoyable B-movie trash.  The plot is paper-thin, the leads aren't attractive, the music is bargain basement and all of that could have been forgiven if it weren't for some really cringy choices, like the created fad of teens wearing eagle feathers as accessories to show support for Bud, even if Macauley himself says they're only turkey feathers.  Then there's the resolution of the story, where Bud uses a tape recorder to get Macauley's confession to payola and cooking his books to cheat his clients and then ....doesn't go to the cops with it, instead using it to blackmail Macauley into being more fair.  So, the message is "we don't want to stop corruption, we just want our share of it."  Classy.

I have since dispatched this film back into the mysterious depths from which it emerged. 

Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

  This is one of my favorite vampire movies and I'm really surprised I haven't reviewed it here already.  Bethany came back this weekend so we could finish our Dracula marathon.  We watched Shadow of the Vampire, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Dracula Untold, and about half of Interview with a Vampire before she called it quits.

In 1921, acclaimed German filmmaker Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (John Malkovich) sets out to make a knock-off of Dracula after the widow Stoker refused to sell him the rights to the novel.  Unbeknownst to the cast and crew, Murnau has made a bargain with an actual vampire (Willem Dafoe) to star in his film as Count Orlock.  Murnau eventually realizes that the creature's bloodlust is not worth the verisimilitude he brings to the role.

This is really a love letter to F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu, one of the greatest vampire films ever made.  It bears almost no resemblance to the truth, other than the names of the actors and the filming locations, which only adds to the fun of it in my mind.  It's also a great showcase for Dafoe as he hams up Orlock's general air of creepiness and obsession with the film's lead actress, Greta (Catherine McCormack).  I honestly love this movie and I really wish more people would see it.

High Noon (1952)

  This is one of those classic films that everyone should see, even if you don't like Westerns.

Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is newly married to a beautiful Quaker woman (Grace Kelly) and ready to turn in his badge and settle down to a quiet life as a shopkeeper when he receives word that Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald), a murderer Kane sent to prison five years ago, has been pardoned and is coming back to town on the noon train.  Kane has just over an hour to pull together a posse of men to stand up to Miller and his gang, but no one in town is willing to help him.

This is set in the Old West but it is barely a Western.  Kane goes through a host of emotions and they are written in bold across Gary Cooper's face.  You really see the frustration, the anger, the bewilderment, as he tries to get someone, anyone to stand with him.  The supporting cast is just as good, with turns from Lloyd Bridges, Lon Chaney, Jr., and Katy Jurado.  It also has a very young Lee Van Cleef, giving excellent villain face, even though I don't think he says a word on camera.

I am really shocked this didn't win Best Picture but I'm pretty sure it's been vindicated by history.  It's currently streaming through Amazon Prime and I really encourage everyone to check it out.

Blue Ruin (2013)

  This feels just as bleak as Last Emperor or Interstellar but it clocks in at a snappy hour and a half so it's already an improvement.

Dwight (Macon Blair) has been living on the streets for a long time.  He receives news that his parents' murderer, Wade Cleland (Sandy Barnett), has been released from prison and immediately ditches everything, buys a map, and sets out on a mission of vengeance.

It's a very pared down movie that reminded me of Winter's Bone.  There's the same kind of harsh clarity of purpose, backwoods family drama vibe.  It's almost Shakespearian.  I don't think it will unseat Winter's Bone as my frame of reference, though.  It just doesn't feel like it had the same stakes.    It's currently streaming on Netflix if you feel like giving it a shot.

The Last Emperor (1987)

  This is the second almost three hour depressing drama I have seen this week.  I am on a roll.

Henry Pu Yi (John Lone) was crowned Emperor of China at age three.  He grew up being told that he was the undisputed son of Heaven, a godlike figure to over a billion subjects, but as he aged, he began to see the tapestry of lies that made up his life.  He wielded no real power, not even as a figurehead, and was constantly prevented from achieving any real perspective or autonomy, despite the efforts of his tutor (Peter O'Toole), which made him a ripe target for exploitation during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria during the '30s and '40s.  Accused of collaboration and treason, the deposed emperor is imprisoned by the post-war Communist regime, where his life story is told through a series of flashbacks.

So this movie swept the Oscars in '87, winning all nine of its nominations.  It was directed by the late Bernardo Bertolucci and is considered to be a sweeping epic and one of the highlights of his career.  Roger Ebert gave it 4/4 stars.  It is a very good movie for costumes, casting, set design, and production values.

It is also extremely depressing and has some very creepy, gross depictions of women that are treated like throwaway scenes.  For instance, the emperor has a wet nurse until he is around 10-years-old and is shown nursing from her.  We are meant to be saddened, not relieved, when she is taken away on orders from the emperor's inherited concubines.  That's gross and profoundly unnecessary, yet still somehow on brand for the guy that decided to "surprise" his lead actress with butter used as anal lube for a rape scene.  The actress developed a drug problem and the director got an Oscar nomination.

Also, if you don't have at least a passing familiarity with Chinese history from the turn of the last century, you might want to keep a Wikipedia tab open.  The movie just assumes you know and doesn't give any context to help you out if you don't. 

The themes of helplessness, isolation, and autonomy still resonate strongly but aren't worth the ordeal of sitting through three hours of misery porn.

Interstellar (2014)

  I was planning on doing a Dracula marathon on Saturday, seeing as Bethany has never seen any movies starring my favorite vampire.  I was even going to be good and limit it strictly to Dracula and not just inundate her with every vampire movie I own (plus I'm pretty sure it would have violated something in the Geneva Conventions about holding people against their will).  But after only seeing the 1931 progenitor and cherry-picking differences from the concurrently-made Spanish version, Tyler made his objections clear.  No more Dracula or he would quit the field.

Democracy sucks.

Instead, he proposed one of his favorite movies, Interstellar, and should he ever read this blog I will state that my opinion of the movie does not extend to my opinion of him as a person, or his taste in movies.

This is my new least favorite Nolan film.

In the near future, humanity is eking out a miserable existence on farms as crop after crop is lost to blight.  Some sort of apocalypse has decimated the population and the survivors struggle to cope.  Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a former NASA engineer and widower trying to do right by his two children.  A gravitational anomaly in his daughter's (Mackenzie Foy) room leads him to the discovery that NASA has not been disbanded but has moved underground to a secret facility headed by Professor Brand (Michael Caine) and his daughter (Anne Hathaway) dedicated to preserving humanity.  They have previously sent probes into a wormhole near Saturn, believed to be an overture from some benevolent extraterrestrials, to a new solar system, followed by manned expeditions to potentially viable new planets.  Now they need Cooper to pilot a new craft to assess which of the three best options should be humanity's new home. 

This is possibly one of the best representations of the science behind space travel but Jesus Leapfrogging Christ, is it a depressing slog.  Tyler was thrilled to bits because of the film's reliance on real science, lack of romantic subplots, and sheer antipathy towards human relationships.  Bethany and I were less misanthropic.

Personally, I was also annoyed by the tropes of Genius = Asshole, Bad Dad = Loveable Scamp, Straight White Male Savior Complex, Dead Minority Castmember, and AI as Slave Labor.  (#JusticeforTARS).  I was not thrilled by the downgrade from Timothee Chalumet to Casey Affleck as young and old Tom or the sidelining of David Oyelowo as a principal with three lines, but it was nice to see Topher Grace in more stuff.

Look, visually, this movie is as stunning as you expect a Christopher Nolan film to be.  It just veers into a misery watch on par with The Dark Knight Rises and no amount of scientific accuracy makes that worth it for me.

CHIPS (2017)

  As much as it may seem like it, this is not the Christy pick for April.  Nor is it an April Fool's joke.  My friend Bethany picked it off the server while we were deciding what to watch.  Fortunately, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Don't be misled.  It's still bad.  But it's an enjoyable kind of bad, not a burn-my-eyes-out kind of bad.

Agent Castillo (Michael Pena) is used to running undercover operations for the FBI so when he is assigned to the California Highway Patrol to investigate what are believed to be dirty cops involved in a series of armored car robberies, he is nonplussed.  He is less enthusiastic about his new partner, Jon (Dax Shepard), a former Motorcross rider with a failing marriage and a litany of physical problems on probationary hire.  Jon uses therapy speak, can't move when it rains, and pops pills nearly constantly, but manages to have some useful insight into the case.  Begrudgingly, Castillo opens up to his new partner and the pair pool their knowledge in order to stop the ring of thieves.

Rest assured, this is profoundly stupid movie based on a TV show that never really needed to be remade.  Ponch and Baker are terrible at their jobs and are only made bearable by the charisma of Pena and Shepard.  Plotlines are introduced only to be summarily dismissed, unless they can be ridden into the ground as jokes, and legitimately moving moments are squandered by the same impulse.  Dax Shepard has a host of famous friends but doesn't seem to know how to just let them do their jobs without rushing through.  The only one that mostly escapes is Rosa Salazar, who is becoming enough of a star now that this will soon just be a blip on her IMDb page.

For a Saturday of day-drinking with friends, this isn't the worst way to spend your time.  I will have to re-watch it when I circle back to the Cs to see if that's the only mitigating factor, however.