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My Ten Top Kate Bush Songs

May 172017

May 17, 2017

No one asked for this, and I can’t think of why anyone would care, but I felt like it, so here you go.

Kate Bush is one of the great musical artists of the last ’50 years. She takes chances and when she gets it right, damn she’s good.

While she has a lot of good albums, I noticed my choices only covered a limited number. In some cases, their absence is because those albums are weaker (or were experiments that bore fruit later). In others, like for Aerial and 50 Words For Snow, it is because nothing stands above the rest. The albums are solid, but best listened to as a whole. Now it is also true that Hounds of Love is best listened to as a whole, being one of the greatest albums ever made, but its individual parts also rise above…most everything. So. starting at #10, my favs (after noting some honorable mentions of Wow, The Big Sky, Room For the Life, and This Woman’s Work):

#10 Cloudbursting

My first of multiple choices from Hounds of Love, Cloundbursting is a beautiful song of love of a son for his father, some strange science, and some nasty government action. It’s based on a true story, and the music video is pretty astounding too.

Lists, Thoughts

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

May 092017

Under attack from the people they just robbed, Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket (voice: Bradley Cooper), and Baby Groot (voice: Vin Diesel) are rescued by Ego (Kurt Russell), Peter’s long lost father. The team splits, with Peter, Gamora, and Drax going with Ego and his sidekick/slave Mantis (Pom Klementieff) to Ego’s personal world where Peter can bond with his father, while Rocket and Baby Groot become involved with Nebula (Karen Gillan), Yondu (Michael Rooker), and the violent infighting of the Ravagers.

Film reviews can be both useful and insightful, but with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, we are approaching pointless. Before seeing this film, you should have seen 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy along with at least a half a dozen other Marvel Cinematic Universe films. So unless Director James Gunn really messed up or started hanging out with Zack Snyder, you know generally what to expect and if you will like it.

And James Gunn did not mess up.

Which means if you liked the first film, go see this one. If you didn’t like the first film, you are an inhuman monster who should meet your end at the hands of the coolest of all heroes, Mary Poppins.

What can I add? Well, not only did Gunn not fall apart, he improved. Guardians 2 is more fun than its predecessor. It is the first MCU film that I’d label a comedy. There is a constant stream of jokes and they are all funny. Yet we don’t lose the characters in the humor. Gunn is approaching Joss Whedon (The Avengers) in his ability to work with an ensemble. Every character gets his time to shine. This is done by not wasting a moment. Every joke also reveals something about the character. Every fight has an emotional core. Every action serves two, three, or more purposes. This is efficient filmmaking. A violent and exciting fight between Gamora and Nebula is about the nature of sisterhood, while being a call back to Alfred Hitchcock and The Fast and the Furious franchise, and also a frame for over-the-top humor, and a way to expand Gamora while completely changing our perspective on Nebula. Now that’s how you jam ten stories into a two hour movie.

The music is front and center again. Hopefully you like Looking Glass’s Brandy. It is part of the soundtrack to my childhood, so I loved it. Brandy and Come A Little Bit Closer are the standout numbers, not only musically but how they are utilized, but fans of the first film’s music should be happy with all the songs.

Baby Groot is as cute as they come (and I find human babies ugly as sin), the new characters all work, and there are dozens of repeatable lines. But there’s no point in me dwelling on any of them. Just go.

And yes, there are five—FIVE—“post” credits scenes.

Reviews, Space Opera, Superhero Tagged with: Five Reels

Happy Death Day (2017)

May 082017

A snotty, nasty sorority girl (Jessica Rothe), who is obnoxious to her roommate and cruel to every guy she meets, and is sleeping with her married professor and ignoring her father, is murdered by a killer who wears a baby mask. She then wakes up just as she had the day before, and lives the day over, only to be murdered again. And again. And again.

Well, that was a surprise. A Slasher that is fun, clever, and well made. Huh.

I hate to say what everyone else has said, but Happy Death Day is Groundhog Day as a Slasher. And while that sounds like a reasonable idea, it plays out much better than expected. Slashers are all about the kills, but those kills often pale because we don’t know or care about who is getting killed. So here we get the same person getting killed over and over again. We know her, so it matters. And as she gets up again, we get as many kills as can be fit into ninety minutes.

Our lead, named Tree for no good reason, but also no bad reason, is a handful of Slasher stereotypes, but she wears them so well. You’ve seen characters like her before, but never done so well. Rothe owns the part and the film. This girl is a star. She has charisma to spare. When she was doing the most horrible, petty things, I still liked her, which means I was completely onboard with her arc. I wanted her to learn and grow, not to mention survive. Film isn’t about plot; it is about character and sometimes it doesn’t matter if it has all been done before if it is done better. And how often does the slutty girl in a Slasher get to be the hero?

The rest of the cast of mainly newcomers is nearly as good as Rothe, which means credit needs to go to the director. Who knew the guy who wrote the Paranormal Activity moves would be a skilled director? And that shows not only in his ability to get good performances, but in the shots. This is a low budget horror film, and it doesn’t look it.

Beyond an ample display of talent, Happy Death Day works because it knows what it is. It knows that Slashers are brain dead by nature and we are all familiar with Groundhog Day. So it doesn’t try to pretend it isn’t a Groundhog Day ripoff, but dives into that. It doesn’t act like Slashers are scary or clever or are anything more than murder porn. Instead it plays with all that, ending up as much a dark comedy as a horror film. Within the genre it has chosen, it couldn’t have been much better. Okay, it should have been R-rated. One gag would have worked much better with nudity and a bit more blood would have given it a bit of a kick, but that’s being picky. Happy Death Day is one of the best Slashers you’ll ever see.

Reviews, Slashers Tagged with: Three & 1/2 Reels

The Belko Experiment (2016)

Apr 292017

At a mysterious corporation in Colombia, eighty non-native office employees (including John Gallagher Jr., Tony Goldwyn, Adria Arjona, John C. McGinley, Sean Gunn, and Michael Rooker) are locked in and given orders to kill each other.

Written by James Gunn (of Guardians of the Galaxy fame) before he hit it big, The Belko Experiment isn’t Office Space meets Battle Royale as advertised, but is Lord of the Flies in a corporate setting and lacking in Gunn’s normal wit and humor. Perhaps that’s due to director Greg McLean who is known for bleaker fair. And that’s what we get. A one-note exercise in grimness.

The slide into violent anarchy is too quick and easy for a situation presented realistically, though since the focus is on the anarchy, it isn’t the speed that is the problem, but the realism. This would have been better as a cartoon or a dark comedy. Taken straight, and with the eventual kill-fest a forgone conclusion, the characters all become annoying—except those that just flip, like Sean Gunn (character names don’t matter) who starts empty all the water coolers to protect our precious bodily fluids.

People get nasty and start killing, but there’s no message beyond people are horrible. There’s no satire of the corporate world. People kill. People die. That’s all there is. They don’t even do that in interesting ways (or corporate-oriented ways; where is the death by stapler?). All that killing is presented well. The cast is excellent, filled with the best character actors around and the filmmaking is solid if not extraordinary, but it doesn’t matter. Professionally made nothingness isn’t all that much better than amateur nothingness. If you are thinking of hanging around so that the ending can explain it all, don’t bother. There really is no point to anything in the film.

Horror Tagged with: One Reel

Fast and Furious: Stupid Brilliant Distraction

Apr 142017

April 14, 2017

F & F
I live by distraction. Those of you who know me know I’m about five minutes from cracking up at any time. So…distractions. It’s hard to get much done in those 4 min and 59 seconds, but it lets me survive. But good distractions are hard to come by. Most things don’t work But movie do (now, anyway), but not any movie. Not most movies. Dramas don’t for the most part. Comedies are iffy. But light action/adventure—that’s the ticket. But there aren’t that many and I know too many by heart. I needed some I hadn’t seen to get me through this week. And the trailers for the Fast & Furious 8 made me look into that franchise.

Eugie and I had watched the first and didn’t hate it, but didn’t think much of it either. But I gathered things changed with the 5th film when they gave up street racing (which is really dull) and took up international fantasy capers. So I tried the 5th, and yup, it was pretty much the perfect distraction. So was the 6th and 7th. Now I need about fifteen more, but hey, I was happy to find three.

And damn those are some stupid brilliant films. Scene after scene is stupid. Not a little stupid. Mind bogglingly stupid. I thought the Casino Royale car flip was the dumbest, physics defying thing I’d seen in a film pretending that things were possible—that was before I saw the bus flip over a car in F&F 5. Nothing makes sense and the rules of the world do not apply. Friction on a safe? Nah. Also inertia is non-functional. I like how if the car hit another car, it would slow them down, but if the thing they were dragging hit another car, that other car would be destroyed and they wouldn’t slow down. Cool. The Rock just breaks off his cast and picks up mini-gun. Yes…because that could happen. People just appear in places. And half their problems would go away if they slowed down (really, they are being shot at and all they’d have to do is break a bit and they’d be fine, but nope). Thing is, none of these things are problems. And that’s half the brilliance. Captain America: The Winter Soldier was really stupid, but it didn’t seem to be. (It was also a good film.) Everything moved so quickly and plausible-sounding explanations were tossed around so that while watching, it seems to make sense. F&F doesn’t do that. It goes to the other extreme. It revels in its stupidity. There is zero pretext. Why are there girls in bikinis? Because girls in bikinis are nice to look at. Why are there helicopters and drones in downtown L.A.? Because that’s cool. Why… Yeah, let’s forget about “why.” No reason to specify the question because the explanation is always “because it looks good/cool.” The rest of the brilliance is with the characters. They are so childishly simple, but perfectly defined—and there are a lot of characters. And they talk a lot about family. A lot. So I knew exactly who everyone was—completely—and what they meant to everyone else. I stepped into F&F 5 barely remembering the characters (and most were new anyway) and I knew them all within a few minutes. Color coding helps: White guy, serious Black guy, funny Black guy, Latina, Asian guy, Jewish girl, ambiguous-race guy, Black-Samoan guy. I can’t even be annoyed at how they manipulated that as it scores so well on representation.

So each film is two hours of multi-ethnic characters wrapped tightly together as a family, doing absolutely impossible things and pointing to those things and yelling “see how cool that impossible thing was.” And apparently, that makes for a great distraction. I don’t think I’ll see the 8th in a theater—theaters are lonely now. But I’ll look for it on home video. And maybe I’ll try the 4th.

Thoughts

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Apr 092017

In the early ‘70s, Bill Randa (John Goodman), the only survivor of a ship destroyed years ago by a giant monster, is obsessed with finding giant monsters in the world. As his last chance, he puts together a team that includes ex-S.A.S tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), photographer Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), and a military contingent on their way home from Vietnam, lead by Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), to explore a storm covered, hidden island. Once there, things go south quickly, as they run into King Kong, and then a series of monsters before learning what is going on from Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly) who has been marooned on Skull Island since WWII.

If you are going to remake or reboot or re-whatever a film, then don’t do the exact same thing that was done before. The producers took that to heart. Unlike Jackson’s beautiful copy of the 1933 original and De Laurentis’s pathetic one, Kong: Skull Island is something else. It has nods to the previous versions, and enough familiar characteristics in the big ape to know we’re still talking about Kong (he does like tiny women), but this is a new story with different themes, different characters, and a different feel. If what you want is the same old King Kong, you will be disappointed.

So unlike earlier Kong films, this is full out action and adventure and only action and adventure, with an accent on the action. Nothing is settled by love or loneliness. Running, shooting, or if you happen to be a giant monster, biting and slapping are the only ways to express anything. And for a giant monster movie, that’s a plus. It’s two hours long and feels half that.

So Skull Island is all about excitement, but that doesn’t mean it is themeless. Environmentalism—particularly the negative effect humans have on the world, and the political arrogance and pointless anger that is the cause of wars are front and center. Randa’s comment that there will never be a time when Washington is so messed up got a solid laugh. The themes aren’t subtle, but I don’t think you want subtlety in a movie about a giant ape smashing giant lizards.

I couldn’t ask more from the special effects. The entire menagerie of monsters and critters are both “real” and cool. Nothing is hidden by darkness and fog. You want to see Kong? You’re going to see Kong, and he looks good. He also doesn’t quite look like a gorilla, but some other ape that stands fully erect, which makes for some powerful images.

And even better than the FX are the actors, which shouldn’t be surprising. When has Goodman or Jackson been anything else but good. Hiddleston is one of the three best male leads of this generation (I’ll leave you to guess at the others) and does an amazing job of bringing life to a fairly routine character. Brie Larson adds a bit of emotion and all of the secondary players nail their parts. I’ve complained with other recent ensembles that I didn’t know who was who. Not a problem here. Once the initial trimming was completed, I knew who everyone was and what it meant when they were in danger. With all that good work, there was a standout, and not the one I expected: John C. Reilly. He could easily have ended up being the unimportant comedy relief, but instead he’s the heart of the picture. He’s the one I cared about.

Strangely, all that fine ensemble work is also the film’s largest flaw. There’s no real focus. This could easily have been James Conrad’s story, or Mason Weaver’s, and it should have been. Instead it isn’t anyone’s story, including Kong’s. Once the wheels are set in motion, there is no protagonist. People—and giant apes—simply react. Packard comes closest to actually doing something and his choices are the least entertaining of the movie. I’d have liked to know a few of the players less well and gotten deeper into Conrad’s life and goals. Without that, the film is good, but it is also all surface.

You might figure a daikaiju action flick is best suited for fourteen-year-old boys, but this film was made for an older crowd. If you haven’t seen Apocalypse Now, a lot of Kong: Skull Island is going to go over your head (the filmmakers really, really liked Apocalypse now). Similarly, what weight there is to the film is only going to be felt by those who lived through the 1970s. For the younger set, they’ve got lots of monster violence, which I suppose is enough.

Note: Stay for the after credits scene. It is annoying to have to sit through around seven minutes of scrolling names (Marvel normally knows to put theirs in the far less aggravating mid-credits), but the after credits sequence does make a difference to the franchise. Kong: Skull Islandis part of the Monsterverse connected universe that includes Godzilla (2014), and the upcoming Godzilla King of the Monsters and King Kong Verses Godzilla, and it is in this film that the world is laid out (so if things didn’t make sense in Godzilla—and they didn’t—this helps…a little).

Giant Monsters, Reviews Tagged with: Three & 1/2 Reels

Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (2017)

Apr 052017

The Teen Titans—Damian Wayne (Stuart Allen), Blue Beetle (Jake T. Austin), Raven (Taissa Farmiga), Terra (Christina Ricci), and Beast Boy (Brandon Soo Hoo), under the command of current leader Starfire (Kari Wahlgren) and past leader Nightwing (Sean Maher)—have been working to take down cult leader Brother Blood (Gregg Henry). Brother Blood, in return, has plans for the Teen Titans, and has hired Deathstroke (Miguel Ferrer) to carry them out. And he has an ace as one of the Titans is a traitor.

Based on a pivotal comic in the DC universe, The Judas Contract suffers from trying to do too much in less than an hour and a half. To fit in two angsty teenage subplots, two romances, two villains, and a whole lot of rebellion and puberty, everything is simplified. The teens all are one-dimensional cut-outs. Damian rebels by making arrogant quips. That’s it. Blue Beetle whines because he can’t see his parents. That is his personality. Beast Boy likes Terra so moons around her. Add in a non-amusing quirk of constantly posting on social media and we’re finished with him. For an animated film attempting to hit a slightly older demographic (people swear…), the treatment of teenagers is insulting.

The problems are most prominent with the Terra-abuse subplot because they could have done a lot with that. There’s the suggestion of pain and sexuality as a replacement for emotional closeness, but there’s just no meat. There’s no attempt to examine her as an actual human or see how these issue play out in reality. Expand this section, and drop most of the embarrassing bits with Beast Boy and Blue Beetle, and The Judas Contract could have been something. But as is, they needed to cut the swearing and get the film a G-rating as the plot and character development is only suited for young children.

On the plus side, the voice work is reasonable, and the Nightwing/Starfire romance is funny and plays as the closest thing to real the film has to offer. Brother Blood is presented as a formidable and scary opponent. And the basic idea is good, though any accolades there probably should go to the comic book.

The Judas Contract isn’t terrible, but I can’t imagine anyone being happy with it. As with several previous DC animated films, they needed to decide if this was going to be semi-sophisticated flick for late teens and older comic book fans or a movie for the pre-pubescent crowd.

(Look here for my ranking of the top DC animated films)

Reviews, Superhero Tagged with: Two Reels

The Discovery (2017)

Mar 282017

Thomas Harber (Robert Redford) has discovered definitive proof of an afterlife. This has lead to massive numbers of suicides. Upon hearing his father has discovered something new, Harber’s truly annoying son, Will (Jason Segel), travels to a beautiful home that is supposed to be considered ugly for no reason. It is the cult-like base where Thomas carries out his research, now focused on what being dead is like. On the way he meets Isla (Rooney Mara) who manages the herculean task of being even more annoying than Will.

The Discovery has a great concept. Not about the afterlife as many films have touched on a secular afterlife. It is the social effect of everyone committing suicide that is the foundation for a great movie. This isn’t that movie. Once that idea is expressed, it all goes to Hell, which is kinda fitting.

Instead of examining that social situation, or the philosophical implications of suicide, or even the research angle, The Discovery spends its time with what is supposed to be Will and Isla’s love story. That could possibly work, in a different movie, but as both Will and Isla have no positive attributes, their dialog lacks wit or humanity, and Segel and Mara have negative chemistry together, it is the worst kind of slog. Since this is a movie about death, I just wanted these two to die, and do it quickly. Their abysmal discussions about people they’ve known that have died and how life is complicated take place during a side mystery as Will tries to prove in the cheapest and easiest to film way that his father is wrong. His detective work is almost as drab as the relationship.

Jason Segel is not a great talent. The star of How I Met Your Mother isn’t much of any kind of talent, which allows him to fit into this film perfectly. Redford does not fit. He’s slumming it and it shows in every scene. He’s not trying hard and he’s still on a different plane than the rest of the cast. But the low level of talent isn’t reserved for the actors. Directing, lighting, and cinematography are scraping the muck as well. The blue-green haze screams last year’s cell phone camera. The night scenes do indeed look like night as I couldn’t see a thing.

This isn’t a film that dares to ask big questions. It is conventional and conservative. It is so dead set on saying nothing that the only question it had me asking was when it would end.

Reviews, Science Fiction Tagged with: One Reel

Three Chinese Tomb Raiding Adventure Films

Mar 262017

An old sub-genre is getting a kick in China now—tomb raiding adventures stories. The newest incarnations are not examples of China just now discovering Indiana Jones, as some have suggested, but are part of a movement set off by an ebook: Ghost Blows Out the Light (2006). The series set records in China and physical books followed. There are eight novels so far. As different people own the rights to different parts of the series, there’s been a TV series and two movies, all with nothing to do with each other and all contradictory. They’ve also all done well at the Chinese box office. It’s amusing to see such excitement about tomb raiding entertainment in China as the mainland government has very dim views of both tomb raiding and of the supernatural. Censors have gotten involved, resulting in the films having self-loathing adventurers and Scooby Doo moments. Magic is fine when stuck in a legendary context, but not in the modern world; that’s why there are so many cinematic retellings of Journey to the West.

Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe (2015)

At an archaeological dig, Hu Bayi (Mark Chao) volunteers, along with other soldiers, to accompany Professor Yan and his daughter Ping (Yao Chen) down a dangerous tunnel. These leads to fire bats, avalanches, and a mysterious temple, and also the deaths of most of the party. Several years later Bayi and his childhood friend Wang Kaixuan (Li Feng) are given a chance to return to the area to uncover its secrets and stop additional deaths.

The only one of the three films without professional grave robbers, Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe is as much a horror story as an adventure tale. There’s an equal helping of Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” to go with the Lost Ark raiding. Bayi is a soldier at a legitimate, government-sanctioned dig and gets in over his head. While he ends up having a few special powers, he has no Laura Croft abilities. He’s a typical Lovecraftian lead, stumbling into things best left unknown. It’s easy to empathize with him, as well as with Ping—later renamed Shirley.

The opening act is dark and exciting and everything you’d want in an horrific underground tomb story. But things slacken off after that. The problem with Bayi not being skilled is he stops being a protagonist. Thing happen to him, but he rarely chooses or discovers anything. The answers to the big questions of the film are handed to him. Someone slips him an old academic paper of the professor’s that explains precisely what happened in the past. A librarian shows him the “magic.” The plot would have been far more engaging if Bayi had acted in some way to uncover the secrets.

Things pick up again at the end when it morphs into a creature feature, which only suffers from too many loose threads. The studio is clearly counting on making a sequel, but it’s a sequel worth seeing.

Perhaps the most interesting—and definitely the most fun—part of the film is its commentary on late ‘70s and early ‘80s communist fanaticism. With the cultural revolution still visible in the rear view mirror, Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe offers up a mob of singing, chanting, hard core party members who cheer on the actual workers while doing nothing productive themselves, and yet still exhaust themselves with their never ending propaganda. Similarly, the stage song on the wonders of Chinese oil production is clearly meant as a poke at a country that took itself far too seriously. As for those pesky censors, they are satisfied with a little science fiction lip service.

Mojin: The Lost Legend (2015)

Hu Bayi (Chen Kun), Shirley Yang (Shu Qi), and Wang Kaixuan (Huang Bo) are ex-tomb raiders living on the streets of New York. Their last failed mission drudged up painful memories for Bayi who now mopes in the “sick” West. Years earlier, Bayi and Kaixuan had been part of a youth corps during Mao’s Cultural Revolution where both had fallen for Ding Sitian (Angelababy). When their group stumbled upon an ancient site, everyone, including Sitian, was killed except for Bayi and Kaixuan. Upset with the current state of affairs, Kaixuan, who was opposed to giving up the business, takes a job with a mysterious cult that will allow him to search for a flower he’d promised Sitain he’d find for her. Bayi and Yang, seeing trouble, follow to rescue him.

Mojin may be based on the same books and characters as Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe, but you’d never know it if you weren’t told. These are action heroes and their comic relief in a full out action fantasy, where kung-fu, leaping three times further than any real human could, and shooting grappling hooks like Batman are the norm. No one blinks when zombies appear or green flame burns through rock.

Mojin starts with a lot of promise. There’s about as much depth as one could hope for in Bayi’s and Kaixuan’s troubled past and Shirley Yang looks to be a strong and beguiling character, with Shu Qi owning the screen. The cult leader is a fine villain and her Japanese schoolgirl assassin is straight out of Kill Bill. But things fall apart quickly. The sidekick’s humor is never funny, and the sidekick’s sidekick is an embarrassment (when your sidekick has his own sidekick, you can guess there’s going to be a problem). He never stops talking and I so wanted him to. He is either moaning and complaining or attempting juvenile jokes. It quickly reaches a point where the film plays better with the sound off. Yang, who looked like she would be the protagonist, turns out to be a worthless damsel, with Bayi repeatedly saving her, whether she wanted to be saved or not, as she screamed at him.

Once they all start traipsing about the temple, the focus is on mediocre CGI over story. characters shift in location randomly and survive in close up what definitely would have killed them in the far shot. Looking cool trumps making sense. After a while I just gave up and figured “stuff happens.” Some of it looks good. but it is much less than it should have been.

Like Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe, Mojin dips into politics, but in an odder and more uncomfortable way. My understanding is that the cultural revolution is seen as a dark time in China. That’s what I got from my Chinese stepfather. But Majin looks back at it with warm nostalgia. The youths went too far, destroying statues and chanting all the time, but this is presented as the foolishness of the young, not a problem with the larger political situation. Mao’s teachings are seen as great philosophy and several people, including Bayi, take solace from his words. “Why can’t we get back to the good old revolutionary days of Mao” isn’t the kind of message I’d expect Chinese censors to be comfortable with. Those same censors were no doubt happier with the grave robbers being mostly miserable, suffering for their profession, and ending up with no financial gain. Of the two sources of supernatural magic, one is Scoopy Doo’d away, which also allows for a hit at religion and cults, while the other is explained, though it makes no sense. But then the government concern isn’t that it make sense.

Time Raiders (2016)

An older Wu Xie (Lu Han—a Chinese/Korean boy band idol) is approached by a writer to tell the story of what happened when he was a teen. Wu Xie had belonged to a traditional family of grave robbers. His family had tried to keep him out of the business, but his flair for tinkering and exploring turned up the key to the Snake Empress’s tomb. The family set outs, accompanied by the sullen and secretive martial arts master Zhang Qiling (Jing Boran). Zhang Qiling is ageless, having lived so long that he’s forgotten his past, though he does recall his fight fifty years earlier with Hendrix (Vanni Corbellini), a Western arch-villain seeking immortality in the tomb.

Time Raiders (that’s “time,” not “tomb”) is based on a different, popular set of novels, ones that have also spawned a TV series. It also takes the adventure fantasy route, with characters routinely doing the impossible. As with many Asian action films, we have an angsty, manly-man hero who seldom speaks and often gazes off into the universe, when not kicking ass with his over-sized sword and Spider-Man-like danger sense. He is befriended by the young, cheerful, effeminate protagonist. Chinese eyes might see it differently, but for Westerners (and even more the Japanese), the homo-erotic subtext is overwhelming. That’s the only character development we get, so best to cling to it. The rest of the time is spent with over-the-top action fighting CGI opponents against CGI backgrounds. I like a bit of CGI, but I’d like some story to go with it. Here, CGI is king. Well, make that “baron” as the effects work isn’t bad, but isn’t good enough to support the feature on its own. At least someone should have told them that real room are not lit evenly everywhere like in a video game.

A few scenes are impressive (a Rube Goldberg machine to light the ancient tomb is fabulous) but none of it means anything or has any emotional power. For a cheap Saturday afternoon at home, Time Raiders plays out alright, but really would work best for children who don’t mind subtitles (or speak Chinese).

More interesting than the film is trying to making sense of it. Extensive time is spent on flashbacks and visions that the film never clearly explains and that, in a competent narrative, should have been left out. The masked man Wu met as a child is apparently supposed to have been Zhang, who has probably forgotten the incident. But so what? Why is that important? There is the vaguest implication that Zhang may actually be Wu, who has somehow time-traveled to the past and thereby given some meaning to the title. But that doesn’t help us with the censors. That Wu, as an older man, is miserable and his family is gone gives us our necessary lesson that grave robbing is bad. But Time Raiders doesn’t come up with a non-supernatural explanation for the Snake Empress or immortality. It does bring up her using electromagnetic force fields and keeps flashing into space to show stars zipping about and crashing into each other, but that doesn’t help. Rather, I suspect the filmmakers sold the story to the government in a simpler way: none of it happened. It is all a tale that Wu is telling the writer, one that he clings to instead of the truth, that his family all died while raiding a non-magical tomb and that it is his fault because he found the key. It is rare that some variation on “it was all a dream” is preferable to other options, but in this case, it is the only way to make the film mean anything.

Reviews

The Circle (2017)

Mar 192017

Mae (Emma Watson) gets a chance to escape her dead-end job due to her friend, Annie (Karen Gillan), getting her an interview with The Circle, an Appple/Facebook/Google-type company. The Circle is extremely helpful in all aspects of life, but equally intrusive. The employees act like members of a cult, led by the charismatic Bailey (Tom Hanks). Over the course of the film, Mae switches back and forth between embracing absolute surveillance and thinking that it may be dangerous.

As edgy and deep as your aunt’s Facebook posts, The Circle makes the bold statement that a complete lack of privacy is probably a bad idea. Not exactly the deepest of philosophies.

Perhaps this could have been interesting if the characters, mainly Mae, acted consistently. If the film was an examination of a woman falling into a cult and becoming a true fanatic, then it would be something. If it was a thriller following a woman trying to take down a dangerous corporation, or stuck within a shadowy organization, then again, it could be interesting. But any of those requires Mae to be a character, and she isn’t one. She just slips from one personality to the next, depending on what is needed for what passes for the plot at any moment. Her decisions seem random, but no worse than those of anyone else. Would the CEO of a powerful information technology corporation really think it was a good idea to use their anti-privacy tech to locate someone that is angry and hates them in a live broadcast? If so I’m betting a PR rep would jump in. This company rarely makes moves that a real company would make. No one else does either. Mae has millions of online followers who constantly comment in real time, and there is not a single troll. That wouldn’t be a problem in a different kind of film, one that wasn’t pushing a message about online communication, but here it is odd.

But neither reality nor the company matter. The film rises and falls on Mae, which means it falls. I was never “with” her. I never believed her or was interested in her. Apparently I wasn’t alone as reshoots were made in an attempt to make her human, but test screenings determined it had the opposite effect.

The old-foggy tone gets old really fast, and I’m the old-foggy they are aiming at. I’m onboard with shaking my cane at those damn kids on my lawn, or to be more precise, those damn kids looking at their phones but this pounds that in, as if I was getting knocked on the head with my own cane. The none-too-subtle metaphor has cites and tech and groups of people being bad while being alone anywhere in “nature” is good. Why do these millennials want to party and keep in touch when they could be standing around in a field somewhere gazing off at nothing?

With no mystery to solve, no character to follow, and no grand ideas to dwell on, The Circle is dull, and that’s the greatest crime a movie can commit.

Cyberpunk, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

Iron Fist (Netflix–2017)

Mar 192017

Naïve and kindly, but also bratty, Danny Rand (Finn Jones) returns to New York after having been declared dead years ago in a plane crash. He’d been rescued by monks and trained to be a warrior, eventually picking up the magical power of the “Iron Fist.” He is now the defender of the monetary from The Hand, but he left because he felt unsatisfied. His father’s multi-billion dollar company is now run by Joy Meachum (Jessica Stroup), a childhood friend, and Ward Meachum (Tom Pelphrey), a childhood bully who hasn’t improved. Unknown to most, their father, Harold Meachum (David Wenham), who died and was resurrected by The Hand, is pulling the corporate strings behind the scenes. While Danny slow—oh, so slowly—proves who he is, he gets involved with martial arts instructor Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick) who has her own secrets; this allows for Danny to spout off all kinds of Asian phrases to the Asian girl, making Danny look like douche bag of the year—although apparently we aren’t supposed to think that.

Remember the Phantom Menace? Remember how you asked for a new Star Wars movie that would emphasize trade negotiations? You don’t remember that? Yeah, that’s because it never happened. How about when you asked for a comic book martial arts film that would really focus on corporate legal arguments? Didn’t ask for that either? No one did.

So, we bring the MCU not down to street level, but to the most boring penthouse you can imagine. There’s legal wrangling as we watch Danny Rand ineffectually argue that he is the supposedly dead son of a billionaire. Like the other Netflix shows, Iron Fist forgets that it isn’t interesting for us to be ahead of the characters. We know the lead character is Danny, so waiting for everyone else to get up to speed just uses up time. That time could have been spent working out who these characters are and what makes them tick. But Iron Fists prefers the simple approach. How do we know that corporate asshole is an asshole? Show him cheating at Monopoly as a kid and yelling that “rules are for pussies.” This is not a nuanced show.

While Iron Fist is supposedly of a more adult nature then average programming, watching it felt like watching a kid’s show. Danny is an emotionally unstable ten year old. Sure, spending years in a monastery could leave him naïve, but he’s a spoiled child. And everyone interacts like children. Ward functions purely as a bully kid. Claire Temple, now in every show, gives us first grade morality (killing is bad!). Gee, thanks. Characters get very upset if they aren’t getting enough attention. The whole show would make sense if these were a group of children just reaching puberty. A substantial part of the back end of the series is about Danny throwing a tantrum. We’re supposed to take it as a combination of PTSD and moral evaluation, but it’s just a tantrum.

Iron Fist has the slowest start of any of the series. The first eight episodes crawl, with little of interest happening. Things pick up in episode 9 (far too late), but it then stumbles again before coming to a remarkably unsatisfying conclusion (Danny is only alive because henchmen seem to not shoot their guns sometimes in the middle of a fight…)

The villains could have elevated things, but they do not live up to their potential. The undying Harold Meachum ends up doing the same sort of corporate bad guy things we’ve seen in dozens of non-superhero films. And the mystery villain that pops up late could have been interesting if it wasn’t clear immediately that he was a villain. I don’t know why “smarmy” was the choice they made. He could have been multifaceted. But nope.

So this time, we have all the expected problems, but they are worse. Iron Fist is slow. The editing is primitive. The plot could fill 6 episodes, not 13. There are speeches and the same subjects keep getting brought up. It is the worst of the shows, so it needed theme to save it like Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. But it doesn’t get it. Instead, theme drags it down. First, its themes are confused. The whole “killing is bad” and “I must get past my anger” puts us squarely back in children’s programming. It dips a finger into currant American culture with the problems of massive corporations and then flops about like a fish. The series takes the stance that big corporations can be mean (edgy there…), but then groups anyone who wants to change the system into The Hand, labeling them as either evil or fools. What does that leave? The big message: Corporations are OK as long as good people run them, even if the good people are stupid (and yeah, Danny is stupid). Gosh, I wonder why no one ever thought of having good people run corporations.

Which brings me to the missing theme. The character of Iron Fist was created to profit from the popularity of Hong Kong martial arts films. But in the early ‘70s, Marvel was far happier to sell another White character then bring in an Asian one as they should have. So they race-swapped an Asian, giving us a White savior. He’s a White kid, but dumped into the mysterious Orient and their inscrutable ways, he becomes better then all the people who live there. Naturally he’s better. He’s White. He tosses around pop culture Asian saying and is the great White martial arts master. This is an old trope, that should have been dumped years ago.

So Marvel had a choice. They could propagate a racist trope from the ‘70s, that’s also a cliché that makes the character less interesting, or they could fix their forty year old mistake. They chose the former. They went with the cliché giving us something duller than it should be, and racist.

Being a racist cliché did not sink Iron Fist. It was already sunk from its plot and editing and childish characters. But, if they’d made the right decision, and made Danny an Asian or an Asian-American (probably the best choice), then we’d have something new for cinematic superheroes. Then we’d have a theme with something to say. And maybe that would have been enough to save the show (as happened to some extent with Luke Cage and Jessica Jones). Doctor Strange suffers from the same racist cliché (though to a much lesser extent), but it had enough else going for it that it didn’t need to be saved. It’s fun, if a touch uncomfortable. Iron Fist has very little going for it. So theme was its one chance, and a racial positive theme dealing with Asian-Americans would have been a game changer.

Instead, Iron Fist has to stand on some other qualities, and it has none that are strong enough to hold it up.

Reviews, Superhero Tagged with: One Reel

The MCU Netflix Series

Mar 192017

Marvel's Daredevil

Daredevil Season 1

Daredevil Season 2

Jessica Jones

Luke Cage

Iron Fist

Marvel’s MCU films are the most successful film series of all time. Each has been clever and exciting, with a touch of theme and a whole lot of character, while also allowing Mickey Mouse to dance around his new pools of money.

The related MCU “TV” series are a different matter and have had some success, but not the same level. Of the six, four stream on Netflix and are close kin. Agents of Shield and Agent Carter are different, and so should be looked at separately. But the other four, those can be evaluated together as they have many of the same traits.

Creating series for streaming, and for a lot less money than the films, allowed Marvel to do something different. This is usually described as “making entertainment for adults.” That doesn’t mean adult with regard to sex or violence, although they have a touch of both. And it certainly doesn’t mean with regard to plot. It is theme where things are different. Each show could examine socially troubling issues. This is most visible with Jessica Jones which delves into domestic and sexual abuse, and Luke Cage which looks at Black culture and racism. In all cases, theme and character take precedence over plot. It is the themes that make these shows worth the time.

All of the shows involve “street-level heroes,” superheroes with fewer powers than The Avengers and mostly lacking the preternatural skill sets. They do not face cosmic threats, but fight street crime and mob bosses. Their stories are focused on smaller areas and smaller events, and on the day-to-day trials of normal life. And happiness seems out of reach. There are no great celebrations. If they fail, things are bad. If they succeed, then things are a bit better, but still not great. These are not happy stories. With considerably smaller budgets than for a single MCU feature, there’s no big action scenes or wild CGI.

Beyond theme, the shows focus on tense situations and character. Unfortunately, the second part of that doesn’t work so well. The shows have plenty of time to look at the characters, but that doesn’t mean they use it well. Instead of delving into these characters, more often, the extra time is spent on speeches or revisiting the same thing over and over. It may be true that in reality people dwell on the same thing repeatedly, but that doesn’t make it good storytelling. In every case, the shows are too long. Running thirteen episodes, none of them should have been over ten, with six to eight being preferable. The plots do not require this much time to unfold. Often, to stretch out stories, characters make incredibly stupid decisions that not only slow things down, but make it harder to like them or believe them as characters. It doesn’t help that most scenes are too loosely edited. They drag. All five season (Daredevil has two seasons) would be improved greatly by tighter editing throughout, and the paring away of irrelevancies and excessive speeches. Cut them down to eight eps, and these would be gold. At thirteen, it is a matter of sorting the good from the bad. The good won out at the beginning, but as time has passed, the weaknesses are winning.

Daredevil: Season 1

Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) is a blind lawyer by day and an enhanced vigilante by night. In his law practice, formed with his college friend “Froggy” (Elden Henson) and aided by recent client Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), he defends the poor. As “The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen” he attempts to take down the mobs, searching for the kingpin of crime, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio). Fisk, a violent and driven man, plans to remake the city into something beautiful. His life is altered when he unexpectedly finds himself in love with art-dealer Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer).

Daredevil: Season One is the highpoint of the MCU on Netflix. It is written better, with wittier dialog, and shot better than the rest. It is serious, but not too serious. The fights are brutal but they are secondary. Much more time is spent on getting to know Matt Murdock and his pals than anything else.

It has the same flaws as the others, but to a lesser extent. I’d like to edit it down, and remove the most ridiculous decisions (You mean the guy that kills people who cross him might try to kill you if you cross him? Shocking). And there’s too many speeches and lots of repetition on the nature of a hero and vigilantism.

Matt Murdock is a middle of the road character, neither interesting nor annoying. And Froggy, the sidekick, is just that, a sidekick who fills up time. Then there is Karen Page, who’s like something out of the 1950s. She never thinks; she simply emotes. In this (and the second season) she just jumps in, crying about truth and how sad things are with no regard to how anything works and we are supposed to ride along. Bringing up THE TRUTH in a court case is not important if it is clearly inadmissible or irrelevant. She’s a bad trope from an earlier time.

What the season has is a great villain in Wilson Fisk, and most reviews fawn on him. People mistakenly think it is Fisk alone, the performance by Vincent D’Onofrio and his being a villain who is fighting for what he thinks is good. But it is the relationship between him and Vanessa that makes the show work. When Fisk kills the Russian boss, it isn’t for some empty scheme or due to daddy issues (see Luke Cage). It is because the Russian damaged his relationship—because Fisk was embarrassed in front of Venessa. That made it emotional. That gave it resonance. I believe everything Fisk does connected to her. And I believe her. They are the heart of the show. At times I wanted him to win. I understood him. I almost liked him, but I really liked them together. D’Onofrio may have been excellent, but Zurer is more. Hers is the finest performance in any of the series.

To add to a great villainous couple, we have a great henchmen in loyal James Wesley (Toby Leonard Moore). I could have watched thirteen episodes of the adventures of Fisk, Vanessa, and Wesley.

Daredevil: Season 2

Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), The Punisher, is a new vigilante in town, who has no problem killing. Daredevil decides he must take him down while Karen feels there is more to his story that needs to be revealed. Simultaneously, Matt Murdock’s old love, Elektra Notchios (Elodie Yung) has returned to town, her appearance corresponding to an increase in crime by a mysterious organization of ninjas known as The Hand.

Season 2 differed from the other 4 seasons of MCU Netflix series by theoretically having enough story to fill thirteen episodes, but only because it ran two completely disconnected, simultaneous plots. They not only didn’t fit together, they didn’t match in tone or theme. It made for a jangling viewing experience. The Punisher stuff is down to earth, violent, and supposedly emotional. The Hand subplot is pure fantasy, filled with vague mystical ramblings and superhero hijacks.

While the two stories could have filled thirteen episodes with plot, they didn’t. Neither story was fleshed out or even finished. The Punisher plot is very simple. The big bad was barely developed and his scheme seemed to be nothing more than heroine smuggling (at one point the big bad says it is more, but nothing more is given). It is a revenge story for a family we don’t know taken on bad guys who are never explained.

The second is even more undeveloped. It is vaguely about The Hand and their quest for their ultimate weapon. It’s filled with a fair amount of esoteric mumbo-jumbo: fate, immortality, ancient magic, and rising from the dead. But none of that goes anywhere. The great war, which we are told is very important, is kept ambiguous. The ultimate weapon is not explained at all. The bad guys are mostly unidentified. There are no stakes and no emotion.

So while there was enough story, they didn’t tell those stories. Instead, we again are given speeches, very slow cuts, and prolonged shots of nothing in particular. And of course, we get the same, uninteresting and done-to-death debate on superhero morality: Is killing ever allowed, and if one kills, then has he “crossed the line” from which he can never “return”? It’s tedious. A good theme could have obfuscated the glaring plot holes, but we didn’t get one.

Season 2 made it clear that Matt Murdock is not the draw. Daredevil just isn’t a great character. He is neither engaging nor likable. It isn’t a matter of him being too straight-laced or too obnoxious. Captain America is good and very likable. And Tony Stark is an ass, but also likeable. Matt Murdock sits in the uninteresting spot between them. Neither his endless moralizing, nor his slips from that morality, make him relatable, or cool. I never empathized with him. And without Fisk and Vanessa, there’s no magic.

Jessica Jones

Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) had retired from the superhero business to become a drunken private detective, though her main focus is personal: stop Kilgrave (David Tennant), a mind-controlling super villain who had kidnapped her and held her for months. Her plans are altered when Kilgrave forces his latest victim, Hope (Erin Moriarty) to kill her parents. Jones feels the need to prove Hope’s innocence which means capturing Kilgrave alive. She is aided by radio personality Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor) and by Will Simpson (Wil Traval), a police officer with rage issues.

Where in the other series, theme is the most important factor, in Jessica Jones it buries everything else. This is a thirteen hour examination of abuse. Mainly it is sexual and domestic abuse. With only the slightest of exceptions, everyone is either an abuser or abused, and most are both. Jones is a rape survivor, both literally and metaphorically. Her rapist, Kilgrave, was a child-abuse victim. So was Jessica’s best friend, Trish, who also is assaulted during the series. The guy who attacks her, Will Simpson, is a metaphoric rape victim and was abused by his doctors as well as suffering from PTSD. Jessica’s lawyer (Carrie-Anne Moss) is the abuser of two domestic partners. And that’s not nearly the end. This is a parade of suffering people.

But the show isn’t about the abuse. It is about the effects of abuse. It is about recovery, or the lack there of. It is about how people deal with abuse. It’s about their fear. How they hide. How they become alcoholics and drug addicts. How it stays with them forever even if they can move on. And it is very emotional stuff. I don’t think it has been done better.

Unfortunately, the plot is less interesting. It’s not that it is bad, perhaps being the best of the Netflix MCU stories; it is just slight. The basic plot could have been covered in two episodes. Kilgrave just wants to have a good time and desires for Jessica to be at his side. Jessica want to stop Kilgrave and free a girl whose been accused of one of his crimes. That’s it. Adding in the soldier with rage issues and Luke Cage should have required another hour. There’s not nearly enough story for thirteen episodes. Even slowing things down for mood and in-depth character examinations, Jessica Jones should have been six episodes, eight if they were pushing it. But never thirteen.

Like in Daredevil, the series is extended by having Jessica and company make stupid decisions, and they do. Very stupid. It is more excusable here than in the other series because all of the people are broken and making horrible decisions in general. But it isn’t excusable enough. It gets annoying. We, as viewers, are so far ahead of the characters.

So Jessica Jones is far too slow for multiple reasons. The dialog is OK, but nothing special. The plot is simplistic and it is hard to like these folks (sympathize with—yes, but not like). But the ever-present theme distracts from the many problems. And that theme is important, so I can let the show slide here and there. But that makes this a series to respect, not enjoy.

Luke Cage

Luke Cage (Mike Colter) is on the run, keeping his head down in Harlem, but when a friend is killed, he feels he must get involved. Cottonmouth (Mahershala Ali) rules the criminal underground from his music club and he… Wait. Wait. Scratch that. After getting to know Cottonmouth really well, it turns out he doesn’t count. OK, lets try that again. Corrupt politician Mariah Dillard (Alfre Woodard) has plans to rebuild Harlem her way and doesn’t care who gets hurt along the way. She… Damn. Wait. That’s wrong again. We just spent a lot of time with her but she’s a sidekick. Let’s try this one more time. Over-the-top, comic book villain, Diamondback (Erik LaRay Harvey) eventually shows up with some plan to sell weapons that I sure don’t care about. He also wants to hurt Luke Cage and just run around and be crazy. Yup, he’s the guy they settled with. For their gritty realistic show…Diamondback. The guy with less subtlety than Ronan. OK. Anyway, Luke has to stop him.

I’d like to say that representation isn’t the only important thing about Luke Cage, but it is. The superhero genre is very White. Asians hardly exist and (discounting Steel, as one should) the only Blacks are a couple of sidekicks. So finally we get representation for Black characters and Black culture and it is welcome. Just as story is secondary to showing what abuse is like in Jessica Jones, so story is secondary to Black representation in Luke Cage.

Cage himself is less engaging than he was as a secondary character in Jessica Jones, but that is the fate of the MCU Netflix lead. As a lead he’s now the guy who makes speeches. Lots of time is spent with him but little of it brings up anything new. He repeats himself. We see him doing what he has done before, just a lot more of it. In Jessica Jones, Cage was defined by his loss, by the death of his wife. Here he’s defined by a never-ending debate on the responsibilities of a hero. To slow down the series—and like its predecessors, it moves slowly—Cage spends a good deal of the show changing his mind on if he will fight or run.

I applaud the nods to old blaxploitation cinema. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of those watching miss that—you have to be a fan of the old films. But someone involved in making the show sure knew those films. The music is reminiscent of the past, as are many of the background characters, and shots. We even see Cage in his old blaxploitation costume from the comics, although that lasts only a moment.

Once we get past the diversity and Black culture, we are stuck with the plot and it is, like that of the others, not that interesting. There’s enough for four episodes, maybe more, but nowhere near thirteen. The story is far too predictable. We know who’s going to die before they do, and what that death will motivate. We know who will be a traitor—the same person in every other series and movie. We know how everyone will react.

The only surprise is the swapping of villains, and it isn’t a welcome one. The three villains are connected by a henchman, which is just the start of a string of coincidences. Cottonmouth is a red herring villain. At least he is fully realized, even if it doesn’t matter and he comes to nothing. Dillard is a corrupt politician and her scenes during the protracted time when Cage is missing belong in the TV show Scandal and as far away from a superhero show as possible. The third is Diamondback, a crazy guy who acts crazy just to be crazy. Worse—far, far worse—he is coincidentally connected to Cage in a way that reminds me of the worst excesses of Bond’s Spectre. I guess everyone in Georgia ends up in Harlem at some point. The show runs on coincidences. The main henchman just happens to have been in prison with Cage, and happens to have beat him, and happens to have been involved in a secret fight ring with him.

By the end, stupid is ruling everything. One gang decides to hit the big bad, but instead of just shooting, as might happen in the supposedly real world the show pretends to be showing, they monologue. No one is making decisions that approach reality, or sense, or are in any way interesting.

This is a series with a point that matters containing a story that does not matter. Who cares if Luke wins or loses? If Dillard wins it probably is better for Harlem then if she loses. If Cottonmouth had won, well, things would have been about the same, though with less street violence. And Diamondback’s plans pretty much just involve Luke Cage. I suppose the point is displayed there: For Blacks in the city—in America—all the fights and crime change nothing. The police are not your friends. The system is not your friend. White America is not your friend. That’s an important theme, but one that’s hard to make into an interesting story, and Luke Cage doesn’t manage it.

It’s not all bad and I might sound harsh, but mainly because so many are overlooking the show’s many, many problems. Mike Colter is handsome and charismatic. Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), who is in all four shows, is at her best here. Shades (Theo Rossi), the henchman, is fun and pulled me in whenever he popped up. He’s evil, but somehow he is also likable, which is true of all the best villains. There’s a few nice Black power moments. Method Man’s radio interview is memorable and gets to the heart of the show: a bulletproof Black man.

As for the climax, it is best to forget it.

Luke Cage, like Jessica Jones before it, gets many accolades for doing what other shows haven’t, and should have. But due to that, no one seems to be talking about if it is actually good at what it is doing. Well, when you are starving, then bread and water is a feast. When pop culture is where it should be with regard to race, Luke Cage will be seen as tasteless and chewy, but for the moment, it’s a feast.

Iron Fist

Naïve and kindly, but also bratty, Danny Rand (Finn Jones) returns to New York after having been declared dead years ago in a plane crash. He’d been rescued by monks and trained to be a warrior, eventually picking up the magical power of the “Iron Fist.” He is now the defender of the monastery from The Hand, but he left because he felt unsatisfied. His father’s multi-billion dollar company is now run by Joy Meachum (Jessica Stroup), a childhood friend, and Ward Meachum (Tom Pelphrey), a childhood bully who hasn’t improved. Unknown to most, their father, Harold Meachum (David Wenham), who died and was resurrected by The Hand, is pulling the corporate strings behind the scenes. While Danny slowly—oh, so slowly—proves who he is, he gets involved with martial arts instructor Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick) who has her own secrets; this allows for Danny to spout off all kinds of Asian phrases to the Asian girl, making Danny look like douche bag of the year—although apparently we aren’t supposed to think that.

So, we bring the MCU not down to street level, but to the most boring penthouse you can imagine. There’s legal wrangling as we watch Danny Rand ineffectually argue that he is the supposedly dead son of a billionaire. Like the other Netflix shows, Iron Fist forgets that it isn’t interesting for us to be ahead of the characters. We know the lead character is Danny, so waiting for everyone else to get up to speed just uses up time. That time could have been spent working out who these characters are and what makes them tick. But Iron Fist prefers the simple approach. How do we know that corporate asshole is an asshole? Show him cheating at Monopoly as a kid and yelling that “rules are for pussies.” This is not a nuanced show.

While Iron Fist is supposedly of a more adult nature then average programming, watching it felt like watching a kid’s show. Danny is an emotionally unstable ten-year-old. Sure, spending years in a monastery could leave him naïve, but he’s a spoiled child. And everyone interacts like children. Ward functions purely as a bully kid. Claire Temple, now in every show, gives us first grade morality (killing is bad!). Gee, thanks. Characters get very upset if they aren’t getting enough attention. The whole show would make sense if these were a group of children just reaching puberty. A substantial part of the back end of the series is about Danny throwing a tantrum. We’re supposed to take it as a combination of PTSD and moral evaluation, but it’s just a tantrum.

Instead, Iron Fist has to stand on some other qualities, and it has none that are strong enough to hold it up.

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