A quick couple of notes on last week's offerings:
Free Guy turned out to be good, light fun, as advertised, with several, little, pop cultural elements in the mix. I wanted something ultimately feel-good, and it worked well enough as that that I was forgiving of some late-movie time-bending.
It was good to have The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and co. back after all that time, though I found I was enjoying seeing many of the supporting characters more than the lead. I probably missed Susie (Alex Borstein) and Abe (Tony Shaloub) most of all. I'm looking forward to this week's pair of episodes once I clear some morning obligations out of the way Friday, and will then try not to lament that with the fourth episode we'll already be halfway through the current season! (Twenty six months was just too, dang long between seasons! Now I'm waiting to see if the latest "return to normalcy" lands us back into a new pandemic variant cycle.)
Netflix continues to invest in international programming as it builds its library of content.
In a new film from France, a corrupt cop goes to extremes to cover up an accident, only to receive threats from a witness, getting in deeper and deeper. It's Restless (2022 1h 35m) A little thread-pulling revealed that not only is this a remake of a 2014 Korean film A Hard Day, but that in the interim it had already been remade, in China, as Peace Breaker (2017). Clearly, a popular story. I expect that if I dug a little deeper I'd find there's a U.S. version somewhere in the works, or that there will soon be if this latest version gets much traction on Netflix.
Also arriving today (again on Netflix) is a 6-episode, Brazilian teen fantasy about a 30 year-old woman, returning to her childhood home, and finding her adult mind sent back in time to her 15 year-old body. She sets about trying to use her knowledge of the future to fix the lives of family and friends, but each adjustment brings unintended consequences as she finds out each time she sends her mind back to her 30 year-old self. It's Back To 15 (2022 TV-14) Not sure that's really for me, though I imagine we all regularly entertain the "If I knew then what I know now..." fantasies that are at the heart of this.
Just-arrived on HBO Max is a film that, sans pandemic, I would have happily gone out to see in a theater late last year: Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch (2021 R 1h 48m). That's a near-certain watch for early this weekend.
Starting next Thursday (March 3rd) on HBO Max is a period comedy adventure series (a 10-episode season) semi-based on the story of Stede Bonnet, a wealthy landowner from Barbados who - around his 29th year, and facing marital problems - decided to buy a ship, pay a crew (he had no maritime experience) and become a pirate. We've all had mental days like that, right? Becoming known as "The Gentleman Pirate" he met with mixed success, was wounded, and befriended during his convalescence by Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard. It's Our Flag Means Death New Zealand actor and comedian Rhys Darby plays the lead. I was unfamiliar with Darby, and I must confess that when I first watched the trailer I was wondering "what in Hell happened to Hugh Jackman?!" as he looked like a curdled version. Taika Waititi, who is also an executive producer for the series and directed the first episode, plays Blackbeard. The main cast includes Kristian (Hodor!) Nairn, Rory Kinnear, and Trainspotting alum Ewen ("Spud") Bremner. Recurring actors include former SNL players Leslie Jones and Fred Armisen. It all looks like brisk fun, with episodes set to run around the 30 minute mark.
As it'll be premiering so close to next Friday I almost left it for next week's piece, but I'll want to jump on this right away, and so wanted to keep it in mind earlier. I know I can't be the only person with either an odd, irresponsible schedule, and/or insomnia, who may very well find themself awake just after 3am (Eastern) Thursday, ready to watch the opener before trying to get another hour or so of sleep in advance of that day's professional charade. That's how I watched probably at least half of the episodes of Peacemaker, which ended on the 17th.
Back over to Netflix, looking down the road into the year, they're emphasizing the investment they're making in new films. They put together this fourth wall-breaking mixed trailer to showcase a cross-section of it, emphasizing productions with prominent, big-screen names. It's a nice enough sampling to look through for some items you may opt to look up to see when they'll be arriving. Almost all of them are still in post-production stages, with few having fixed premiere dates announced.
In the mix I was reminded that I still haven't gotten around to the first Enola Holmes, and that I forgot they were making a Knives Out 2. I'll be interested to see how they've chosen to adapt Winsor McKay's early 20th century Little Nemo in Slumberland material into the Jason Momoa-starring Slumberland; the most immediate changes being the gender-flip for the child lead, and a horned Momoa playing Flip, who was a top-hatted, red-nosed Irish clown in the strip.
Another stressful week for me, personally, almost down - each day the potential for so much more damage! - I've in part found myself revisiting films I hadn't watched in a while. Three of note, with no immediately obvious to me linkage between them:
Fail-Safe (1964) was a more intense revisit than I recall ever having with it. For some reason this may have been the first time I just casually gave myself over to the Sidney Lumet-directed adaptation of the 1962 novel, where I wasn't constantly juxtaposing scenes and elements with the same year's Dr. Strangelove.
Likewise, it was almost like a temporary, selective amnesia that I was allowing the characters to be the characters they were, and to not impose later roles and genres on the various actors as I tend to do reflexively most of the time. General Black, played by Dan O'Herlihy, for instance, whose nightmare bookends the film. Larry Hagman as Buck, the linguist assisting the president is another. Walter Matthau as the academic, vehemently anti-communist Professor Groeteschele was permitted to exist cleanly in this role, without my memory overlaying sarcastic, comedic flourishes. Even Sgt. Collins played by Dom DeLuise, an actor we came to associate almost exclusively with comedies, was allowed to play a serious, dramatic part without heckling from my brain. It was a good state to take it all in with surprising freshness. I plan to try to cultivate this faculty more for a variety of personal projects in the years to come, to allow me to experience something familiar with some temporary sense of novelty, shedding the flippancy of presumed familiarity.
Here's the trailer from 1964: Of course, the desire now to rewatch Strangelove sometime soon is pretty strong, too. I'm also (mildly) interested in a Fail-Safe remake done in 2000 that I was either unaware of or otherwise hid from myself for some reason. I haven't tried tracking that down as yet.
The folk mockumentary (or faux folk music documentary) A Mighty Wind (2003 PG-13 1h 32m) was also a highly successful, fresh rewatch situation for me. I'd remembered it favorably, but had generally thought of it as yet another project to pull most of the main cast from This Is Spinal Tap and Best In Show together, rather than appreciating it for the wonderful piece of work that it is. The largely improvised work, and singing performances from the cast, were all brilliantly, humanly delivered, the comedic notes sharp, and in general I came away from the rewatch with a far higher opinion of the film than I'd had from back in 2004 or so when I'd first seen it. A Mighty Wind is currently, formally, on Cinemax, but I also seem to have it available on demand because of my HBO subscription.
A third film I'd almost randomly found my way back to this week also happened to be from 2003, and, again, was something I likely only saw late that year or in the following year, when it came to cable. It was the dramatic comedy The Station Agent (2003 R 1h 30m). A modest production, it was almost certainly the first thing I saw Peter Dinklage in. Here he plays Finbar McBride, a train enthusiast who is willed a railway station by an old friend and co-worker, and relocates there. Protectively introverted, a survival mechanism as a dwarf in a society where too many people fail to see and treat him as a person, it's mostly a story about the people he ends up connecting to in this new life. Patricia Clarkson and Bobby Cannavale round out the core trio of the main film, with Michelle Williams becoming an important supporting character, along with (then) child actress Raven Goodwin, and Paul Benjamin as Henry, the friend whose bequest set the stage for the story. The Movie Channel and Showtime currently have The Station Agent, though it should also be more widely available for sale or rent.
Late additions: Not that there's much time to work with on the first item, but I wanted to remind people that with the close of the month, midnight Monday, all of the original Marvel series (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Punisher, and The Defenders) will be leaving Netflix. It's entirely too much to take in in the time remaining, but I had to say something.
Here in the U.S., odds are high that they'll end up over on Hulu, which is where Disney puts any of their content that exceeds PG-13 material for the U.S. market, but I haven't seen any announcement. There may be some "Disney Vault" fuckery in play, where they'll want to keep them out of reach for a little while so it's more of an "event" when they make them available again. That used to be the play when they were focused on selling physical media, but now it can be used to help drive subscriptions to streaming services. There's also the lesser element that they've become unofficially non-canonical for the MCU.
Over on TCM, their annual 31 Days of Oscar spotlight will begin Tuesday. If you follow that link, you'll see the schedule for their channel, and info on how as of this year it's expanded to fare over on HBO Max.
That seems to be enough for this week. Knowing that next Tuesday will be March 1st I almost rolled into more items that'll be appearing before next Friday, but time's fleeting and they'll keep. I already have more things waiting for me than I'll have the time for before then!
Stay safe, well, and if any of the above caught your attention, I'd be happy to hear about it. - Mike
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