What's To Watch? - Mar 18 - Our monsters, imagined, and real

 

     Just past the mid-point of March - the Ides, then St. Patrick's Day now just behind us. Much in the news to depress us, the majority of which are matters where our only controls are on how we choose to react to and weather them. Being aware of them is worthwhile, but living with them constantly is needlessly harmful, an act of self-terrorism. Let's see what and who else is out there to spend some time with. As with last week's post, as I get around to watching some of the items I'll aim to come back and add follow-up notes in this deep blue font.

     A couple, quick, updates first:
     This week saw the fourth season finale for Star Trek: Discovery on Paramount+, wrapping the latest challenge with a cooperative effort that reminds us of the inspirational ideal behind Roddenberry's Federation, and otherwise establishing a new plateau for us to assemble on when season five comes around.
     A follow-up on the HBO Max semi-historical pirate comedy Our Flag Means Death (which I'd previewed a couple weeks back): While elements of it were fun from the start, I would advise giving it through episode 4 before deciding whether or not its working for you. That's the point when we start to have the series lead we've been following from the start, would-be gentleman pirate Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby), playing off against seasoned scourge of the seas Blackbeard (Taika Waititi), as the interaction reveals things not only to the audience but the characters themselves, and the blended crew gets more time to interact and react to the relationship forming between their captains. Certainly, if you find yourself hating it, then go find something else, but I wanted to at least point out that it begins to gel with episode four.

     Arriving today on Hulu is a new erotic psychological thriller starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas. It's Deep Water (2022 R 2h 33m)

     Over on Netflix, we have a couple new imports.
    From Sweden there's a new, war-torn, post-apocalytic action movie starring Noomi Rapace: Black Crab (2022 TV-MA  1h 50m). Six soldiers sent to transport a mysterious package across a frozen achipelago.

     From Poland, we have an eight-episode first season of a fantasy series about a past-haunted woman joining a professor and his band of gifted students, investigating the paranormal and battling demons. A world of Slavic folklore, ancient monsters and bloodthirsty deities. It's Cracow Monsters.

    For more domestically-produced monsters, also on Netflix, the animated series Big Mouth gets a spin-off this week. Expanding the world of unseen, mostly destabilizing human influences beyond mere hormones, it's Human Resources. As with the core series, there's a fine assortment of voice talent.

    Also among the new Netflix material today is Jason Segel, Jesse Plemons and Lily Collins in a crime thriller about a man who picks a bad time to try to burglarize a tech billionaire's vacation home: Windfall (2022  R language and some violence  1h 32m)

     New to Amazon Prime today is a horror thriller, in which two African American women share disturbing experiences at a predominantly white college in New England. Writer/Director Mariama Diallo's theatrical directorial debut, it stars Regina Hall and Zoe Renee: Master (2022  R language and some drug use 1h 38m)

     Next Thursday, the 24th, Paramount+ will see the arrival of a new series, adapted from yet another hugely popular videogame series I recognize on sight, but have never played, it's Halo.

     The appeal of a new science fiction series is diluted (for me) by also being a military one.
     Anyway, as I understand it, it's set in the 26th century, and pits the Earth against an alien threat called The Covenant. While drawing on the same core concepts - and especially on the visual elements of armor and weaponry - it's set up as separate from the videogame canon, so as to allow each to develop independently. While I haven't seen an explicit statement, unless this is a sudden departure from Paramount+ fare, I expect this 9-episode first season will be playing out in weekly installments. A second season was authorized back on February 14th, so they seem to be committed to it. On the other hand, the first showrunner for the series (Kyle Kinnen) separated from it back in 2018, the one for season one (Steve Kane) will be exiting after this season, with David Wiener (who was showrunner for the now-cancelled Brave New World series over on Peacock) being the showrunner for season two. I'm too completely on the outside of all this to know the details of why there's been so much behind-the-scenes movement.

      This past Wednesday, the 16th, saw big changes here in the U.S. to the Disney+ platform. The addition of parental controls now allows them to include material harsher than PG-13, and with that we have the appearance of what until March 1st were Netflix-exclusive, TV-MA, Marvel shows. Presumably they are now in their forever home.
     They made the set-up quick and easy, though I was happy I'd recently reminded myself of what my Disney+ password was -- having set it up in my devices a couple years back, and letting the rest of the family know at the time, I hadn't had a reason to remember it in the interim. It was a quick set to TV-MA, which is an umbrella that includes the MPAA (movie) ratings of R and NC-17, so in modern view, pretty much everything, since NC-17 replaced the old X rating way back in 1990.

     Originally created to be part of the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe, with occasional references to major events from the movies - particularly the devastation that befell New York City during The Avengers (2012) - these series have since shifted into a gray zone, and can't currently be considered to be canon.
     We've so far only had Charlie Cox reprise his role of blind attorney Matt Murdock (but not his alter ego, Daredevil) in last year's Spider-man: No Way Home, and Vincent D'Onofrio appearing as some version of Wilson Fisk/Kingpin during last year's Hawkeye series on Disney+. We'll see as time rolls on whether they and any of the other characters show up in any of the other mainstream movies and streaming shows, though there have recently been unconfirmed reports that a fully in-universe version of Daredevil, in a series called The Devil of Hell's Kitchen, has recently been fast-tracked for development, and that it would include the key, main cast from the Netflix Daredevil show. We're waiting for official word.
     Regardless, there's a great deal of quality work done here, with really only the first season of Iron Fist being (somewhat justly) panned. Most of the other problems had to do with how some seasons laid out their story arc -- pacing issues, and the problems that arose from deciding on 13 episode seasons rather than deciding on a story and fitting the number of episodes to that. Of course, as ever, your mileage may vary. Forgive the overly-posed promotional image from 2017, but I wanted shot with the four main characters together.

   Here are the series, in viewing order, for any who end up being interested:
         Daredevil season 1 (April 10, 2015; 13 episodes)
         Jessica Jones season 1 (November 20, 2015; 13 episodes)
         Daredevil season 2 (March 18, 2016; 13 episodes)
         Luke Cage season 1 (September 30, 2016; 13 episodes)
         Iron Fist season 1 (March 17, 2017; 13 episodes)
         The Defenders limited series (July 31, 2017; 8 episodes)
         The Punisher season 1 (November 17, 2017; 13 episodes)
         Jessica Jones season 2 (March 8, 2018; 13 episodes)
         Luke Cage season 2 (June 22, 2018; 13 episodes)
         Iron Fist season 2 (September 7, 2018; 10 episodes)
         Daredevil season 3 (October 19, 2018; 13 episodes)
         The Punisher season 2 (January 18, 2019; 13 episodes)
         Jessica Jones season 3 (June 14, 2019; 13 episodes)

    On the general topic of streaming services, it appears the ink's dry on the contract for Amazon Prime to purchase the vast holdings of MGM. All of the specifics, and how soon Prime subscribers will have access to the estimated more than 4000 movies and 17,000 tv episodes in the package, remains unclear.
     In a mildly surprising turn, the European Union has already approved the deal, but the U.S. government has yet to weigh in on the matter as a point of potential anti-Trust. At this point, as a consumer, I'm much more interested in seeing existing streamers aggregate more content, rather than yet another streamer forming.

    As a quick aside before the final offering, I'll again remind TCM viewers that we still have nearly two weeks to go in March's 31 Days of Oscar. That link pops up a page with the complete listings, each title itself a clickable path to more info on that particular film.

     While the way last week's post's inclusion of a 1973 tv movie didn't go at all as I'd originally intended, the exercise was amusing enough to me that I'm going to take a similar step this week: Revisiting a tv movie I remember seeing when it first aired, but which I haven't rewatched in nearly 50 years. The things I mostly remember about it were that it starred Alan Alda, the device used as a murder weapon, and the killer's motivation, revealed in the penultimate scene. On that last point, I remember it leading to some brief thought on how small towns can do a number on people (depending on their reputation) and how for some people a bad, public experience can fester over the years in a way that's almost equal parts comedy and tragedy, because the real damage is ultimately self-inflicted, by giving an incident the weight and power to twist and harm us. The wisdom to simply laugh it off, and/or accept some mild self-effacement and otherwise chalk it up to experience, can elude us if we don't allow ourselves the simple human right of fallibility.

     This one's another ABC Movie of the Week, and so was another Tuesday night - this time it was October 2nd. The opening scene is a murder, and we see pretty much how it was done and the face of the killer, so the remainder of the movie is largely meeting the rest of the cast, and a trail of new victims - all presenting initially as natural cause deaths among the elderly - and watching as the small-town sheriff's (played by Alan Alda) suspicions mount.
     I haven't yet rewatched it, just doing a few quick checks on some details, but already it's interesting to see one, huge perspective shift that's come with the passing of years: The victims - again, all elderly, such that passing away from heart failure in their sleep didn't immediately raise red flags - end up being high school graduates from 1928. So, as this was 1973, that's 45 years in their past. Here in 2022, my own high school graduation is nearly that long ago. So, while I was 12, eternally young and assuredly immortal, when I first saw this, now I'm essentially in the same age pool as the geriatric victims (and the killer) in this movie. There's a cruel twist for ya. Reality slaps you down, but it's the dismissive snicker after it fells you that stings.
     As mentioned, this aired early October of 1973, and so was shot between the first and second seasons of M*A*S*H (over on CBS). While We of The Future know that show went on to wild success and 11 seasons, nearly all of which with it as a top 10 show in the ratings, its first season it was dragging, coming in way down the ratings list at #46, and was very near cancellation.  This tv movie

was intended as a potential series pilot, and aired the Tuesday between the third and fourth episodes of that second season of M*A*S*H, when the fate of that show was still very uncertain despite improved prospects thanks to it being moved from its Sunday night time slot to a Saturday one, where it had a lead-in from All In The Family, which was already in its third year of being tv's #1 show.
     Along with Alan Alda, the movie's main characters are played by Louise Lasser and Edmond O'Brien, but the cast includes Lloyd Nolan, Will Geer, and Ruth Gordon. among others. It was directed by John Badham, who would go on to much success with a fairly diverse slate of films: Saturday Night Fever (1977), Dracula (1979), Blue Thunder (1983), War Games (1983) and Short Circuit (1986).
     Sitting handily on YouTube, it's Isn't It Shocking? (1973)

     ...and that does it for this week.
     We're past the mid-point of March, but still have nearly two weeks to go. Spring begins Sunday, and while it's no set assurance of better weather, I'll be happy to welcome it at least as a concept.
     I've been trying to assemble these pieces for the next few months as I go, as I become aware of premiere dates for various shows and movies, and the process has left me a bit unstuck in time, momentarily forgetting if something is imminent or off in June, and trying not to miss mentioning things in a timely manner, though I know I will.
     Let me know if you get to see any of the things I've mentioned above - for good or ill - and come back next Friday, when among the offerings will be previews of a Julia Child biopic series, and a new MCU series centered on a man who comes to realize he's not his head's sole occupant, and the other boarders are alarmingly violent. Until then, take care. - Mike