What's To Watch? - Mar 11 - Second Acts

 

    Approaching mid-March, we lose an hour to the time bank of Daylight Saving Time this Sunday, so we have one hour less to work with this weekend. Better get started!
     This week's subtitle, "Second Acts", came to mind because it applies to the first three items I had decided to showcase/preview this week: Upload, The Adam Project, and The Girl Most Likely To... It also quickly proved apt for Raised By Wolves. If it applies to anything else that ends up woven in here, well, that's a bonus.

    More items delayed by the pandemic continue to arrive. Among them is the second season of the sci-fi comedy drama Upload, over on Amazon Prime. The 10-episode first season dropped all at once back on May 1, 2020, (I wrote a little about it the following week, way back in the first year of this blog project) and just a little under 22 months later we finally have season two.
     In this series, set just a little over a decade into our future now, the technology to record and upload the consciousness of a human being to a mainframe capable of maintaining a virtual reality is well in play. A young computer programmer dies suddenly, he finds himself uploaded to a very expensive, resort-style afterlife... albeit at the request of and on the dime of his possessive, still-living girlfriend, Ingrid. Coming to grips with one's own physical death, and the ramifications of being a truly "kept" man - an unliving possession, dependent on someone feeding a meter - can't help but have a nightmarish edge to them, especially as one's afterlife lacks the privacy of the one Earthly, mortal one. Potentially under the thumb of a jealous god is not an enviable version of paradise. There are other characters and story angles in play, too, and even some question as to how he ended up dead in the first place.
     Check the link above to the 2020 blog piece for generally non-spoiler info on the first season. Here's the trailer for this new, seven-episode, second:

     Today on Netflix we have the latest Ryan Reynolds-framing project, a science fiction adventure where a kid meets his time-traveling older self, who needs his help.
     It's The Adam Project (2022 PG-13 1h 46m)

     The project started as a spec script back in 2012, and was originally looking as if Paramount was going to develop it as a Tom Cruise vehicle. At least one studio shift and multiple rewrites later, it's whatever this is, almost certainly retooled to better fit this lead.
     An ultimately enjoyable movie, best taken in at an emotional level, as things increasingly happen the way they do simply because the plot demands it. Any story involving time travel is going to have its, generally at best slippery moments, and this one definitely does, but it also has more than a few of the logic-skipping and time-bending conveniences of many an action flick. If you are an analytical stickler about details, and/or are not likely to be in a forgiving mood, then this likely won't be a movie for you. It's intentionally made to be a family film.
     Walker Scobell, who plays Adam at 12 years old, is a solid choice. He's very believable both facially and in how he interpreted the character, as someone who would grow up to be the Ryan Reynolds adult version.
     This is another Ryan Reynolds & director Shawn Levy team-up, such as the recent-to-cable Free Guy, and it's largely on the audience strength of these that they'll be working together on Deadpool 3, the first of the series to be produced as part of the MCU.

     Late to the table, I recently began watching HBO Max's sci-fi series Raised By Wolves. Set roughly in the mid-twenty second century, Earth has essentially been destroyed in a religious war

between Mithraists and Atheists. When Earth was rapidly becoming uninhabitable, the Mithraists had constructed huge space arcs with hibernation facilities, while a lone Atheist conceived a plan for repurposed androids to take a smaller, much faster ship to Kepler-22b, with a cache of frozen human embryos and specialized equipment for bringing them to term once they arrive. The show's initial focus is the latter group. Family, human development, the effect of dogma on development (be it a strict religious one, or an equally strict hyper-rationalist one that rejects any mystical possibilities), and the human tendency, perhaps even need, for some level of faith, are all subjects in play.
     The ten-episode first season ran from starts of September to October 2020, while the eight-episode second season will be finishing up next Thursday. Critical word is that while season one was good, season two is better. I'm interested in getting a feel for how much of this was from fine-tuning of the material, and how much, possibly, a consequence of some parts of the initial audience weeding themselves from the process. I'm nearly through season one, and I've been enjoying it, even with a variety of uncomfortable themes. Seeing the (idealized) humanity in the unhuman, and the inhumanity so frequently in the human, is a recurrent and increasing theme. Also, though it's sad that after all this time it's a lesson people so desperately need to learn, rigid dogma of pretty much any stripe is dehumanizing, and so a bad thing. Dictating a specific faith is arguably equally as bad as dictating that someone have none.
     Here's the trailer for season one:

     While, especially depending on where one lives, winter is continuing to walk a wobbly line, spring's soon to at least technically arrive. I've found a utility in some entertainments about harsh, survival experiences, especially those based on historical events, to help claim some comforting contrast. A little over a century ago there was a great deal of interest from explorers to press into the icy, forbidding wildernesses at Earth's poles. We were recently reminded of one such expedition to the South, with the rediscovery of an Antarctic expedition's sunken shipwreck from 1915. A few years earlier, at the other end of the Earth, there was a Danish excursion to recover the records from an ill-fated earlier expedition to explore the Northern region of Greenland. A first attempt does not go well, so when the team leader mounts a second try, only one of the crew opts to accompany him. The story (with some license taken) of what happened is addressed in Against the Ice (2022  TV-MA 1h 42m), and appeared on Netflix a little over a week ago.
     It stars, and was co-written by, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, likely best known and remembered as Jaime Lanister from the almost miraculously famous until it imploded at the end Game of Thrones.

     I'm going to try to remember to check on Hulu tomorrow (March 12th) to see what shows up when I search for Multiverse, as a movie by that title is listed as arriving then. My best guess is that it'll be this one from last year, which looks interesting enough. For many of us this is another case of a well, well, well-worn fantasy path from other media that's been getting a great deal of mainstream attention of late, but there are reasons why so many of us have been drawn to it - to the prospect of potentially infinite timelines, where all realities have been played out, and other versions of us have walked different paths. Not having seen this film (and, as noted above, not even knowing for sure if this is the one they'll be showing) I can't yet vouch for it. I'll come back to edit this once I know for sure.
     Having checked, yes, it's this film. Strictly speaking, it's from 2019. Much of the confusion seems to arise from this Canadian production originally having been titled Entangled. With so much recent, mainstream emphasis on multiverse theory it was likely a good move to shift to this much more on-the-nose title. The original, I presume, was a blend of quantum entanglement theory and a clever reference to the human aspects of this. I've only watched the first five minutes - long enough to have become very irritated with one of the four main characters - but it has some promise. I'm not going to get my hopes up as to the complete story arc, though, both because of the subject matter and what I've generally come to expect from small productions. Still, I hope they surprise me. I'll aim to come back and add some notes after the trailer once I've watched the rest of the movie.
     Anyway, as of Saturday over on Hulu it's Multiverse (2019 R 1h 30m)

     Simply because I was recently reminded of it, and I was further encouraged because I saw it was sitting on YouTube, I'll close this week with a 1973, made-for-tv movie, a dark comedy co-written by comedian Joan Rivers. It starred Stockard Channing in what was functionally her debut role -- her previous parts being uncredited. Her main co-star in the film is Ed Asner, though the cast is rich with familiar faces, especially for those of us substantially over 40. Jim Backus, Joe Flynn, Fred Grandy, Chuck McCann, Carl Ballantine, Ruth McDevitt, Cyril Delevanti, Warren Berlinger -- even if you don't recognize the names, the faces will likely pop for you.
     Originally airing November 6, 1973, it's The Girl Most Likely To... (74 min.)

     I remember enjoying it then (though not being thrilled with the ending) and as I can't recall having seen it again later I'm curious to see how it does or doesn't work for me nearly 50 years later.
     Oh, man! Pee-yoo! Every now and then we revisit something from childhood, or near enough to it, and find that there's some combination of it having aged terribly or simply been a mess all along. With The Girl Most Likely To... it's much more a case of the latter. That it was a story from a comedian

becomes clear, because it's all about getting to the punchline - which in this case ends up being the homicides - and nothing like logic or reality is going to get in the way.
     Still, it's almost amazingly bad, and the best I can think of is that at the time I lumped it, conceptually, in with some then-recent elaborate revenge films, and took this film as a sort of first draft for a much more clever run of murders. The penultimate death in the series of killings in this movie, where she traps a plumber in a bathroom as it was filling up with water, is the closest to being one of those elaborate death-traps. I think I was so immediately editing it in my head with how she should have done it - including making sure the room would be water-tight - that it was rewritten in my memory. I'd completely forgotten the final one, with the exploding 8-ball, which ended up making no sense since had the detective not shown up she would have been killed even more certainly than the victim, as she was standing nearer the ball.
     So, instead of the criminal mastermind repeatedly advertised, what we have is another case of a stupid person's idea of a smart person. Well, more than one stupid person, it seems, as Joan had a co-writer, and then there was the director... I can only guess that whenever anyone objected to the details someone said, eyes rolling in exasperation, "It's a joke!"
     There's no reason I'll ever need to revisit that again. 
     One of those synchronicitous or merely coincidental items: November 6 will be both the 49th anniversary of this movie's debut, and the day we get back that hour banked by Daylight Saving Time this weekend. If that inspires you to use that banked hour, in early November, as an hour of vengeance against those who wronged you... it would at least make for a good story.
     Another reminder for TCM viewers, March continues to be the 31 Days of Oscar month, and as that link will remind you there's a great deal playing out each day. Each of the films listed on that page is a hyperlink. Clicking on it will pop out a new screen with info on that movie.
     That's as much as I have time for this week. The pile of reminder notes for things I haven't gotten to continues to grow, and I remind myself that that's a good thing, indicating how we're awash in entertainment possibilities.
     While I was pleased that I'd made a long-needed step a week ago, I'm disappointed that something in there must have gone wrong, because nothing but silence has followed... so I have to wind myself up all over again, carve out the necessary time if I can, and make follow-up contacts today. It's draining.
     After taking care of that, I'll reward myself with things like this week's Star Trek: Picard (I've already watched this week's Discovery) the (already?!) final two episodes of this latest season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and probably move back over to Raised By Wolves after that. (I have a lot of housework to avoid!)
     Picard's latest episode - the season's second - picked up the pace and set the agenda for this season's reality-shaping story arc. Next week's Discovery will close out season four. In general it's been giving us a fine mix of the best aspects of Trek both with respect to heart and mind, and I'm more forgiving of the Big Complication one character's been bringing, that the audience could see coming for a while, than it appears many of those leaving comments in various threads are. Next week will be the big season finale, with plenty to conjure with from any ramifications of this first contact with a vastly technologically-advanced race, and several of the relationships. The fifth season was formally ordered in January, and so is loosely planned for a 2023 release. There's some small disappointment that these seasons appear to be shrinking (15 episodes first season, 14 for the second, 13 each for the third and fourth, and only 10 for season five), but I'm willing to see this as less of cutting back and more of refining a process. It's still too soon to say how much is coming almost entirely from pandemic protocol restrictions, and how much is baking in as standard. As I look around it does seem to be that 8-episode seasons are becoming more common. What is this, the BBC? Okay, well, there are far worse outlets to emulate.
     On the whole I greatly enjoyed this latest season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I would have liked it to have been more than eight episodes. Filmed under COVID restrictions they kept the filming locations narrow, and focused largely on family themes, and that worked for me given the generally excellent cast. I can't say it wasn't uneven, but in a broad view it leveled out to an entertaining continuation of the story.
     While I know there are some historical reference points they give a nod to along the way, I've tried to be careful about digging in on potentially plot-spoiling details. As Lenny Bruce has been a recurring, mostly peripheral character since the first season that's one of the more obvious points of potential reference. This season was all set in 1960, so the Kennedy/Nixon race is part of it, and I'm guessing that they needed to accelerate some elements for the sake of the planned story arc, hence Lenny getting his Carnegie Hall shot months earlier in this timeline than in reality. The blizzard we see does match up, historically, with Lenny's big comedy concert, but that was off in February of the following year. In the episode, though, it all appears to be happening in early November, very near and perhaps even on election day -- where nothing like that weather was happening. Historically, had there been any such weather on election day 1960 (even rain) it very well could have tipped the tight election into Nixon territory; that's what the stats tell us when it comes to Democratic turnout. (Digression over.)
     Oh, and should you want to listen to Lenny's actual 1961 Carnegie Hall performance, poorly-aged warts and all, roughly 1 h 44m, here it is (what an age we live in):

    I'm a little upset that the fifth season, which is to be the final one, was reportedly only formally renewed on February 17th. I can only hope that during the long, long delays a great deal of advance work was being done on that final season -- at the very least that plots were firmed up and the scripts primarily drafted - I have to believe there's some degree of improvisation/organic adjustment that goes on once the actors get the script and begin running lines. If we have to wait a day more than a year for that final season... well, I'll still watch, but it'll feel like the unnecessary delay it is. Either way, I know it'll be here and over all too soon, regardless of how the time between may seem to drag.
     Take care, I hope you found something above of interest, and to see you back next Friday. - Mike