History of the World: Part I (1981, Mel Brooks)

History of the World: Part I is funny about twenty percent of the time. The eighty percent of the time, it isn’t funny, it’s either because the jokes are too homophobic, sexist, racist, or punny. If you’re not laughing out loud, you’re ready to hiss.

Since twenty percent doesn’t quite qualify as a mishmash, it’s good the film’s a technical success. The matte paintings alone are an achievement, but Woody Omens’s Panavision cinematography is a delight. Writer, director, producer, and usually star Brooks does an okay job with the direction. Of course, if he doesn’t, he’s got Omens, editor John C. Howard, or composer John Morris to cover for him. But—at least as far as direction—Brooks is solid.

The film’s a pageant, starting in the Stone Age with a profoundly ahistorical 2001 sequence led by caveman Sid Caesar. Orson Welles narrates the whole movie, but never more than the caveman sequence. Welles’s outtakes are probably hilarious. Following that sequence, it’s off to the Ten Commandments and Brooks. It’s a short, funny scene, which Brooks brings back later. Despite Moses, the Last Supper, and the Spanish Inquisition, History’s pretty hands-off with religion, even though every time Brooks touches on it, the scene’s a winner.

Especially the Spanish Inquisition musical number.

But History spends the most time in Ancient Rome and the French Revolution—also note there’s no American history—which go on so long Brooks, the writer, needs rescuing. Literally.

In Ancient Rome, Brooks is a stand-up philosopher who gets a gig at Caesar’s Palace. The casino. Get it? He teams up with escaped slave Gregory Hines and vestal virgin Mary-Margaret Humes (who deserved an Oscar for pretending to lust after Brooks) for misadventures involving emperor Dom DeLuise and empress Madeline Kahn. Kahn’s mostly great. DeLuise is fine, but way too many of the jokes in his scene—it’s a billed cameo—are homophobic. Brooks, the writer, often runs out of ideas once he gets to a scene and tries to cover it with bad jokes and cleavage.

The Spanish Inquisition musical number comes between Rome and the French Revolution. It’s Brooks’s best writing in the film and, since it doesn’t have a chance to go stale, his best performance.

The French Revolution sequence involves Brooks playing both the King and the King’s pissboy, who holds the bucket for nobles to pee in. When the Revolution’s clearly on the horizon, noble Harvey Korman has Brooks, the pissboy, stand in for the King at the guillotine. Korman’s good—though Andréas Voutsinas’s much funnier as his sidekick—while Brooks is one-note. Pamela Stephenson plays a busty young woman who needs to curry the King’s favor (physically). When she discovers the pissboy isn’t going to force her, they have a few scant moments to become love interests before the Revolution—led by Cloris Leachman as Madame Defarge (which could’ve been the whole movie)—knocks down the door, leading to another chase sequence.

The finale’s contrived and hurried—despite a gigantic cast and elaborate production, Brooks entirely runs out of ideas before the ninety-minute mark. It only worsens in the epilogue, which promises Part II and completely deflates Part I.

The best performance is easily Hines, followed at a distance by Kahn, Voutsinas, and Korman. Both Stephenson and Humes are fine; they’ve just got terrible parts. Stephenson’s better, though. Despite the more objectified, exploitative part, she’s got some character, while Humes is just… madly in love with Brooks.

History’s got its moments, but nowhere near enough. Especially since the bad jokes are really bad. Again, thank goodness Brooks has his crew to make up the difference.

Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000, Kenneth Branagh)

It’s a funny idea, and it would explain a lot about Love’s Labour’s Lost, but I don’t think screenwriter, director, and co-producer Branagh cast Alicia Silverstone on a bet regarding whether or not he could get her to deliver an okay monologue.

He succeeds and she succeeds, but just okay, and it takes most of the movie. No, outside Adrian Lester, Natascha McElhone, and maybe Carmen Ejogo, Branagh doesn’t seem to have any actors in the leads he’s happy with. He’s one of the eight leads, of course, and he’s delighted with himself. He shows off somewhere in the late second act; he and McElhone get to do a scene from a great Shakespeare production in a middling adaptation on a disappointing set.

Branagh’s Labour’s is set just before World War II. Unlike some adaptations, the World War II setting will be necessary to the film’s narrative. Unfortunately, not so much to the character development because Silverstone’s the Princess of France, and asking her to do character development and deliver one okay monologue is a bridge too far.

Okay, real quick, here’s the setup. Top-billed and “lead” Alessandro Nivola decides, with war looming, he’s going to lock himself up in a library and learn for three years. Obviously, in the original play, there wasn’t World War II looming, but the effect in this Labour’s is to make Nivola seem like a foppish Eurotrash jackass who doesn’t care about the Nazis. Or would if Nivola had any character development. The film’s a musical—supposedly a thirties musical homage but not at all because there are usually only six performers and the movie’s Panavision—and Nivola manages to sing, dance, and monologue just well enough for his performance not to be a failure. He doesn’t succeed at anything, though, not even on a curve, especially not as far as romancing Silverstone.

See, Nivola and sidekicks Lester, Matthew Lillard, and Branagh have sworn off women for their academic pursuits. Silverstone and her sidekicks, McElhone, Emily Mortimer, and Ejogo, are on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan (or whatever Nivola’s country’s called, sadly not Freedonia) and they read the boys won’t be able to talk to them. Because of Branagh’s staging, directing, and Silverstone’s acting, the intentional trickery falls flat. There are multiple disguise sequences, which Branagh also messes up. He does a great job directing some of the film—not the musical numbers, except when it’s Nathan Lane, who’s the GOAT, and somewhat Timothy Spall, who feels like a Branagh idea gone wrong, not a studio casting mandate.

Oh, right, another thing: the songs performed by these not singers and dancers (except Lester and Lane) aren’t original to the film. They’re doing covers of thirties show tunes, which weren’t written with World War II or, you know, the King of Navarre’s romance troubles in mind. There are some good numbers (very much not dinner theatre Fosse) but never particularly good. Never good enough to cover the problems. So why do them?

Though when they’re not doing a musical number, Branagh relies on composer Patrick Doyle’s score to do all the film’s emoting. Even during Branagh and McElhone’s scenes.

The film barely runs ninety minutes and manages to plod through much of that runtime. Unfortunately, it takes way too long to get anywhere with the romance pairings—the musical numbers are asides, irrelevant to the plot—and then it’s time for the movie to end. Except, Branagh’s still doing a World War II movie, and he somehow brings it to a satisfactory conclusion. Miraculously, given the film’s annoying newsreel footage summary device… not to mention the very uneasy previous eighty or so minutes. It’s a hell of a save.

Performances: Branagh, McElhone, Lane; they’re great. Lester’s good. Spall and Ejogo get an incomplete. Nivola and Silverstone pass, him likable, her sympathetically. Lillard and Mortimer aren’t entirely unlikable, but they’re too thin to be sympathetic.

Technicals are all good. Alex Thomson’s photography’s great. Utterly wasted but great. And editor Neil Farrell is up to Branagh’s considerable requests for cutting the film into something sensical.

Whoever did the lackluster sets… it’s not their fault. Either Branagh didn’t have the money he needed, or he was bullshitting his way through the project. Seems more like the latter.

But one hell of a save for that finale.

Elmer Gantry (1960, Richard Brooks)

Elmer Gantry is all about possibilities. Possibilities for the plot, for the performances, for the film. Director (and screenwriter) Brooks watches the film along with the audience, specifically the performances. Everyone’s just waiting to see what Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, and Shirley Jones are going to do next. Sometimes, Brooks emphasizes the performance with quick cuts—the first act has some spectacular sequences, with editor Marjorie Fowler, Brooks, and composer André Previn in divine sync—sometimes, he lets the camera sit. Perfectly lighted scene (courtesy John Alton) and Lancaster or Simmons monologuing.

Though it’s not all monologuing. Gantry’s got some wonderful banter sequences; the film’s practically designed for them.

Set in the 1920s, the film opens with Lancaster amusing a bunch of traveling salesmen. They meet up for Christmas every year because Lancaster knows where to find the best booze (Prohibition-time) and the best women (bored housewives). Lancaster’s holding court, telling dirty jokes, and having a great time; only then the Sisters of Mercy come in asking for a donation, and the heathens are shitty to them. So Lancaster does a sermon, surprising the bar (and helping him seduce a lady) with his seemingly devout religiosity. The scene establishes the character, that duality, and Lancaster’s exceptional way of essaying it.

The film will explore the contradictions in the appropriately lengthy second act, but first, it’s got to get Lancaster to church. Lancaster resists even as he sees posters for traveling tent revivalist Simmons alongside his own sales route. He ends up there one night out of boredom (and a busy housewife) and becomes immediately enraptured by Simmons. But Lancaster’s not her only admirer, though he’s the only one who’s planning to do anything about it. Both Arthur Kennedy and Dean Jagger revere Simmons. Jagger’s her business manager, a good Christian who thinks he’s enabling a prophet. Kennedy’s the atheist newspaperman tagging along with the tour.

Lancaster can’t give Simmons to give him the time of day—he’s too much of a smooth talker—until he seduces her band leader (Patti Page) and weasels his way along with them. But he still can’t convince Simmons he’s godly, except she doesn’t care, it turns out. She’s more than willing to put a smooth-talking bible thumper on stage if it gets butts in seats and pledge cards signed. There’s a business angle to it; after all, local churches pay Simmons and Jagger in advance to bring the revival to town.

We don’t find out about that side of things until around halfway through, when—thanks to Lancaster’s fire, brimstone, and sexy sermons—the local big city asks Simmons to bring her show to them. The film stays in the big city (Zenith, a recurring fictional city in novel author Sinclair Lewis’s work), which makes sense because it’s where Kennedy’s newspaper is based and Jones lives. Jones is an ex-lover of Lancaster’s with a very big, very sharp, very justified ax to grind. The film introduces her early, as Lancaster and Simmons start making news together, raising expectations for when she’ll figure into the main plot. Jones is exceptional.

So’s Simmons. Somehow, Simmons manages to give just as showy a performance as Lancaster (or Jones), but they’re absurdly extroverted, and she’s reserved. It’s Simmons’s revival, no matter what Lancaster or Jagger thinks. However, Lancaster and Jagger’s prickly relationship turns out to be one of the film’s sharpest, subtlest subplots. So good.

Kennedy’s good, too; he’s just not extraordinary. Lancaster, Simmons, and Jones all give these singular performances, while Jagger and Kennedy excel closer in character parts. Of course, Jagger and Kennedy’s characters are mostly reacting to the others, which also affects how they function and what they can do with the parts. The film’s practically overflowing with great performances; for instance, Page never gets enough.

All the technicals are excellent. Brooks’s direction is patient, enthusiastic, and reserved. He never rushes a scene or a delivery. He gives Lancaster and Simmons time for their preaching; the film’s about these characters’ relationship with religion, internal and external, and Brooks wants to showcase it. Done wrong, it’d be anti-climactic; Gantry doesn’t do it wrong, quite the opposite.

Alton’s photography, Fowler’s cuts, Previn’s music, all superb. Dorothy Jeakins’s costumes too. Lots of character development in the changing outfits, sometimes subtle, sometimes not.

Lancaster and Simmons are the whole show. Brooks and his crew are just trying to create the optimal narrative distance on Lancaster, specifically on his experiences with Simmons. Even when she’s not around, when it’s Lancaster and Jagger, Kennedy, or Jones, Simmons’s presence is always felt. She’s the show; they’re all spectators, except Lancaster wants to be on stage too. Kennedy and Lancaster have a great friendship throughout, two cynics on different paths.

As far as who’s better, Lancaster or Simmons, it depends on the scene. Though we get to know Lancaster better through the film, whereas Simmons gets to keep some secrets, which makes her performance inherently more complicated. They’re both so damn good. And then Jones. So damn good.

The whole picture. So damn good.

Grantchester (2014) s07e03

Since Tom Brittney directs this episode, I sort of expected him not to be in it very much. And he’s not; instead, it’s an Al Weaver plays detective episode, which is more delightful than the last time he had such an episode (he was in prison investigating). This time the case is weighty—someone is murdering unhoused men—but Weaver at least gets to be enthusiastic in the investigatory pursuit for a while.

Plus, he’s teamed up with Robson Green, which is fun.

Because otherwise, Green’s just getting drunk and sad about his marital problems. Brittney’s also drunk and sad about his relationship problems. Neither of their respective partners show up in the episode (it’s a minimal cast)—though Brittney’s smaller arc is all about bonding with potential love interest Charlotte Ritchie. Ritchie’s Green’s niece (his wife’s niece) and is in town to help out with his kids. However, in this episode, she’s around because son Isaac Highams carves his initials in the church pews, and Tessa Peake-Jones loses her shit about it.

Of course, Peake-Jones is particularly touchy because she just got a cancer diagnosis (in 1960), and the only person she’s told about it is Weaver.

The A-plot’s the mystery, the B-plot’s Weaver and Peake-Jones, the C-plot’s Brittney, Highams, and Ritchie.

There’s some great stuff in the B-plot. There are crowd-pleasing moments—like Peake-Jones telling off a hoity-toity waiter—but it’s a rough, excellent arc for Peake-Jones and Weaver, who’ve always had “Grantchester”’s most sincere relationship, with lots of ups and downs. The episode also examines how Weaver’s coping with losing the church from his life after last season, something his café owner-arc has obscured this season.

The mystery has Green and Weaver investigating at a local university, where Green gets into it over universities as “places for debate” with professor Rowena King. She proudly drove a student to mental collapse. It’s a very current issue for the show (especially “Grantchester,” which is usually historical), and they do a fine job with it.

There’s also a young instructor at the university, Tom Glenister, who figures in. He and the main suspect used to do outreach to a nearby unhoused community. Some of that arc—mainly how the good samaritans in town can’t run soup kitchens because homeowners complain about property values—is still too relevant.

Green’s got a mini-arc with initial suspect Steven Blake, who Green knows from somewhere but lost track of him, and now Blake’s lost everything. It’s nice to see Green get to character develop without Brittney (and his representative religiosity) around.

Though this episode does finally have Brittney back giving services in the church. Although the episode starts with Weaver explaining it’s wedding season, which probably gives Brittney the sads (since his girlfriend is engaged to someone else), it doesn’t end up being important. When they finally do get back to church, it’s for something else entirely, and it’s a great “Grantchester” service sequence. Very limited—it’s Brittney and three other cast members, not the town—but excellent.

It’s a good, way too relevant mystery, the Peake-Jones, and Weaver arc is outstanding and beautifully acted, and Brittney and Ritchie are charming together. Are they too lovely together? We’ll see. It helps Ritchie’s also really funny.

This very quiet, very limited episode is the best of the season so far.

The Equalizer (2021) s02e10 – Legacy

Based on the Legacy title, I thought we might be getting Chris Noth’s character dying offscreen. Sadly no. They also mention him a few times, which is kind of weird. It implies the viewer’s supposed to remember the character, though—presumably—Noth won’t be back.

The episode opens with a flashback to the Tulsa massacre in 1921 when white Oklahomans murdered probably a couple hundred Black people and burned their houses to the ground after stealing all the valuables they could. The flashback shows a couple such white Oklahomans stealing a portrait. It’ll turn out they stole a lot more (basically stealing a profitable Black shipping business), but the portrait’s the Legacy.

Quincy Tyler Bernstine is the great-granddaughter of the portrait subject, and her grandmother’s on her death bed. Can Queen Latifah get the portrait back before Grandma dies? Bernstine knows who’s got the portrait—shipping magnate Ward Horton, who got it from his family, just like he got the shipping business, which they stole from Bernstine’s family back in Tulsa.

Bernstine tried getting the cops to reclaim the stolen property, but they said they couldn’t find it, though no one—including NYPD detective Tory Kittles—thinks they’d have been honest with the Black people when they can suck up to a rich white guy. But it turns out the cops didn’t lie, and Horton really did move the painting before they searched his place. He put it in “The Vault,” where wealthy New Yorkers hide all their valuables from customs. So Latifah’s got to break in and get it, only she can’t do it on her own, so she calls old acquaintance, occasional partner, and very special guest star, Jada Pinkett Smith, to help her.

Pinkett Smith is an infamous thief who can break into anywhere, steal anything. And she annoys the hell out of Latifah.

Meanwhile, at home, one of Laya DeLeon Hayes’s white friends (Cristina Angelica) shows up wanting her help claiming she’s a minority student so she can get a scholarship. Hayes tells her what for, which puts the friendship in turnaround. Lorraine Toussaint eventually offers some sage advice, and Hayes gets to a resolution point. Unfortunately, it’s a resolution with a lot less impact than the subplot initially implies.

The same thing happens in the A-plot. After the startling Tulsa opening, it soon becomes all about Pinkett Smith’s guest spot, with Bernstine mostly disappearing. Though not as much as Kittles, who’s barely in this one, unfortunately.

Horton’s a fairly great villain (especially for “Equalizer”) and makes up for Pinkett Smith being one-note, writing-wise.

I haven’t seen Set It Off, so I’m not sure if there are any direct references to that film—where Latifah and Pinkett Smith also do heists—but they definitely have more chemistry playing off one another than when Pinkett Smith’s hanging around Liza Lapira and Adam Goldberg.

Also, the plotting on the heist execution’s weak (script credit to Talicia Raggs). It’s way too amateurish and haphazard for Latifah, even if Pinkett Smith’s messing her up.

It should’ve been better, not just as a very special guest star episode, but given the first act’s promises.

Beverly Hills Cop (1984, Martin Brest)

Beverly Hills Cop opens with a montage of Detroit street scenes. Kids playing, people talking, walking, Black and white. It’s beautifully cut—even at its most tediously cop action movie procedural, the editing is always glorious (though there’s lots of technical magnificence in Cop—and is well-done enough you even forgive the film for Glenn Frey’s The Heat is On. The thing about really tightly chosen soundtracks is when a song doesn’t fit the characters, and Glenn Frey is definitely not what Eddie Murphy’s Detroit super-cop puts on the stereo hi-fi. It’s okay enough. And the montage is excellent.

But it’s nothing compared to the first action sequence, which has a cigarette smuggler wreaking havoc in a stolen truck on the streets of Detroit, all the cops in pursuit, Murphy swinging around the back of the trailer, The Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance” blaring, every shot cut perfectly to the music. It’s mesmerizing. And director Brest makes sure to show off Murphy’s reaction shots. After that opening scene with the cops arriving to set off the truck chase, the entire movie is pretty much watching Murphy figure out the story. Brest just sets the camera on him and waits for Murphy to lead the scene to its finish with his deliveries and expressions. So when Lisa Eilbacher is just staring at him on the job, waiting for him to find the next clue, it makes perfect sense. He’d be just as transfixing to the people around him.

Brest directs Cop with a spotlight on Murphy, leveraging Bruce Surtees’s very grim and gritty photography (even for an action movie) and Murphy’s ability to make the comedy work. Because everyone’s Murphy’s sidekick in a series of sketches. Well, until the third act. And it’s sluggish through the second act when Murphy teams up with Beverly Hills cops and buzzkills John Ashton and Judge Reinhold. The movie takes a while to really loose Ashton and Reinhold as a comedy duo—they’ve got a whole slapstick number at one point, with Harold Faltermeyer’s scorekeeping the energy up until they’re able to take it through unfunny into a good gag. And the last one before the big action finale.

It’s a decent big action finale, with Murphy able to deliver the thriller goods while Ashton and Reinhold take over the comedy. There are a lot of reasons Beverly Hills Cop could never get made today, not least of which being if a bunch of white guys with assault weapons are shooting at a Black man (even one with two white friends) on their Beverly Hills estate… would the cops even show up? Cop ages rather strangely. Starting with none of the white cops just shooting Murphy when they don’t recognize him. It’s uncomfortably optimistic.

But there’s also the Beverly Hills angle. Cop’s able to treat it as an absurd foreign land, where every car is a Mercedes, every person white but polite, and the cops tattle on each other for infractions. It leads to a lot of funny scenes. Murphy, Brest, and Cop can get quite a bit of material from it. The big changeover in tone comes after the strip club scene, which isn’t the worst eighties action movie strip club scene, but it’s still utterly pointless. Cop doesn’t have female characters—Eilbacher’s art gallery director is only female because they wouldn’t have been able to sell a straight male art gallery director. She and Murphy don’t have any romantic chemistry; they’re just old friends. The first act of Cop is very much about old friends. And it’s definitely not about girls. If you look in the end credits, it’s Eilbacher then fifteen guys (and only one Black guy) before you get to the next female character. Murphy spends the entire time in the strip club flirting with the waitress, and there’s not even a reaction shot. Cop’s about boys.

To be incredibly fair to it and what they pull off: Beverly Hills Cop takes place over four days, three of them consecutive, and there’s only dull moment is trying to figure out if Bronson Pinchot is intentionally stalling the scene. Brest and the editors time everyone else in the movie with Murphy, but Pinchot against him, and it’s almost like a dig to make Pinchot more unlikable. Like maybe he was actually too likable, and they screwed it up for a laugh. But the laugh is he’s foreign and an art gallery clerk.

Paul Reiser does better in his bit part as Murphy’s Detroit sidekick, but he’s really just there to dump exposition and set up jokes.

The best supporting performance is probably Ronny Cox as the Beverly Hills captain. He’s got the least to do in terms of action but the most character while doing it. Then probably Steven Berkoff’s off-putting but successful villain. Then Eilbacher holds her own against everyone and helps maintain Murphy’s energy even when he’s in Beverly Hills. Ashton and Reinhold are both good, likable, funny. Reinhold’s got a couple long comedy bits, but they eventually pay off enough. Brest doesn’t care to showcase anyone else. He just wants to watch Murphy, which makes sense because Murphy’s almost indescribably good. Nonpareil. It’s a profoundly successful showcase (and very unfortunate he and Brest never teamed up again); Beverly Hills Cop is no crappy blue Chevy Nova; it’s the perfect star-making vehicle.

The great technicals just make it better. Cop’s unimaginable looking different from Surtees’s contrast heavy but still muted photography or playing differently than how Arthur Coburn and Billy Weber cut it. Not to mention the Faltermeyer score. Or the often great soundtrack (Patti LaBelle contributes the two other big songs, not Frey).

And Brest’s direction is excellent. The film’s a singular success.

Much Ado About Nothing (1993, Kenneth Branagh)

Much Ado About Nothing has a machismo problem. It’s not writer, director, and star Branagh’s fault; it’s just the historical patriarchy. Though Branagh does try to do some initial counterbalancing, opening the film with a quote about the sexual dynamics. Still, that moment only carries through the first scene, setting up Emma Thompson’s character… And to the degree it’s Shakespeare’s fault, well, again, what can you expect from the sixteenth century. But everything until the end of the second act, when the machismo boils over—and then whenever Branagh and Thompson are on screen together and then whenever Branagh gets to show off his directorial chops—everything else about Ado is pretty much golden.

The story’s set in gorgeous Tuscany, with Branagh and cinematographer Roger Lanser somewhat muting the brightness, but only so Patrick Doyle’s music can emphasize the light when they find it. Branagh and Lanser have this striking repeated technique of bringing the actor monologuing into direct sunlight by the end of a monologue. The actor walks around to find that lighting; otherwise, their face is, if not in shadow, at least in overcast. Doyle’s also going to score based on the pace of conversation or content, which is phenomenal stuff to watch and hear. Much Ado constantly impresses. And not just when Branagh manages to make Keanu Reeves into a reasonable enough villain.

Reeves is a jealous prince, out to ruin half-brother Denzel Washington’s day. Not his life—there’s no overthrowing Washington’s command of the nobles—just messing around with him to make him miserable. Reeves and Washington not having an onscreen relationship should be a sign the characterizations will have problems. Still, given Branagh’s able to give Reeves at least one good scene (though having him shirtless and dousing him in oil qualifies as sleight of hand) and Ado being so much endless fun, you don’t think about it.

The plot involves Washington, his nobles, and Reeves arriving at a friendly town. Richard Briers is the governor, a sweet old guy with a marriage-ready daughter, Kate Beckinsale, and a sharp-tongued, great-hearted cousin in Thompson. Brian Blessed’s his brother and sidekick, though mostly only in the third act. Robert Sean Leonard, sidekick to Washington, has the hots for Beckinsale, but he’s shy, and so Washington’s going to court on his behalf. Actually, Washington’s going to broker a marriage. While Much Ado is great and all, it is just a situation comedy involving Washington messing with his friends to amuse his other friends. Specifically Branagh and Thompson.

While Leonard and Beckinsale’s romance is first act stuff, with Reeves and his cronies failing to make Leonard believe Washington’s courting Beckinsale on his own behalf, so they have to work a secondary plot throughout. The second act focuses on Washington’s attempts to bring banter rivals, Branagh and Thompson, together. Just to prove he can, which ought to be another warning for Washington’s character, but it’s so much fun, and Washington’s infinitely charming, no red flags.

Reeves’s eventually successful plot will force Branagh into Thompson’s against the bros, and the second act is often glorious comedy with Branagh and Thompson monologuing and mooning. Thompson’s the film’s best lead performance, able to bring fire to the third act no one else can muster. Branagh’s excellent as well, but he’s not as good as Washington at Washington’s best. Washington’s part is on literal mute for the third act, while Branagh gets a character arc. The supporting cast is good or better, but almost entirely with third-act problems. Briers is excellent, but he’s got a not-great guy arc in the third act. Beckinsale’s good, but she disappears just as she becomes the natural protagonist in the plot. Leonard’s good (with a bunch of caveats and asterisks) since it was Branagh’s job to figure out how not to make Leonard come off like a dick, and Branagh punts on it. And then Reeves is not unsuccessful. Reeves’s chief goon, Gerard Horan, will end up more important than Reeves and Horan’s solid.

The best performance in the film, of course, is Michael Keaton. He’s the local constable. However Keaton and Branagh came up with the characterization—where Keaton mixes sight gags, affected delivery, and physical presence unseen since a Marx Brother—is Ado’s finest achievement. Keaton’s singular. And he never steals scenes, always leaving space, particularly for Ben Elton as his sidekick. Elton’s hilarious too. Branagh’s balance between Keaton’s subplot’s belly laughs and then the gentle romantic comedy is exceptional. Much Ado About Nothing is expert work.

Shame the resolve is all about every guy taking the agency away from one woman or another as women are, after all, just property. Except for Thompson. Sort of. In those plot constraints, when Washington becomes a de facto conquerer (at least from his own perspective), Leonard is just an obnoxious, brutish dickhead… I mean, it’s Shakespeare. Branagh’s not going to change it. And he does try to leverage Thompson against it, which is almost successful. She can’t overcome the failure of two significant, third-act events, stray threads Branagh didn’t even need but for adaptation’s sake.

Slight bummers. But an expertly produced motion picture, with some superlative performances and masterful filmmaking.

Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s05e07 – Mr. Parker’s Cul-De-Sac

Mr. Parker’s Cul-De-Sac is an exemplar of “Legends of Tomorrow.” Writers Keto Shimizu and James Eagan provide a great script—just the right amount of subplots, just the right pace—and the cast is outstanding.

The episode opens on a red herring to get things moving. In the Wild West, Adam Tsekhman is cleaning up after a Legends outing from two seasons ago and is attacked by an unknown figure. In the present, Caity Lotz and Jes Macallan get the alert and go to save him, which gets them out of the way so the episode can get moving on the main plot, which involves Brandon Routh planning a date night to propose to girlfriend Courtney Ford. On their way to the Wild West, Lotz assigns Tala Ashe the job of helping Dominic Purcell get over someone trolling his romance novels online. That subplot, which only lasts half the episode, is phenomenal. Ashe is spectacular this season and this episode’s no exception. Plus it lets Purcell play straight humor, which is great too.

Routh’s date night goes wrong because it turns out Tsekhman ran into a resurrected Neal McDonough, whose attack has present day consequences for Tsekhman, who’s helping Routh with the date night. Phasing in and out of reality consequences. But then McDonough shows up at the date night because he’s looking for daughter Ford, who’s become a hero this season and last, only McDonough thinks she’s a demoness or something. So she’s got to pretend she’s bad and has enslaved the Legends (well, Loitz and Macallan) so he doesn’t realize she’s gone good.

So the episode then turns into this hilarious riff on Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Matt Ryan having to pretend to be Ford’s boyfriend (she’s hiding good guy Routh from McDonough). Only Routh is babysitting Ford’s charge, Madeline Hirvonen (Ford’s a fairy godmother), and thanks to him making her watch Mr. Rogers knock-off “Mr. Parker’s Cul-De-Sac” and Hirvonen latches onto the “Love is Love” message and gets Routh ginned up to declare his love for Ford in front of McDonough.

It’s really funny, really well-acted, really well-written. And then the last act has about five metric tons of heart in it, right after a warlock battle.

Like I said, it’s an exemplar of the series. Great guest spot from McDonough, but also a fantastic showcase for Ford. So good.

And somehow I forgot about Ryan’s whole “going to Antarctica” subplot, which is hilarious. No one can pack forty-three minutes like “Legends.”

And there are puppets. How did I forget the puppets.

The Witcher (2019) s01e06 – Rare Species

So this episode, set sometime after the last episode as far as Henry Cavill and Anya Chalotra are concerned but still before the first episode as far as Freya Allan’s storyline (there’s some exposition about the political situation leading up to the attack in that first episode, but still just proper noun-filled blather), is where “The Witcher” all of a sudden seemed like it was revealing itself to be a romance novel. Only it’s not—the wife reminded me romance novels have a particular structure and the show doesn’t follow it; it just looks like a romance novel whenever Cavill’s making eyes at Chalotra; he makes all their embraces look like a romance novel cover, which seems to be the point of the show.

Anyway.

This episode’s probably the best in the series so far. Like… it’s an actual good hour of television. They’re all going dragon hunting. Cavill and now steady but still unaging despited the indeterminate advance of time between episodes Joey Batey join up with fun old man Ron Cook (who’s got two sidekicks of his own, warrior women Adele Oni and Colette Tchantcho) while Chalotra’s babysitting royal idiot Jordan Renzo. There are also a group of dwarves and another of “Reivers,” who are just crappy humans. It’s a race to kill the dragon. The casting is mostly good, especially with the dwarves and even though Cook isn’t great, he’s fun. It helps. And Chalotra, Batey, and Cavill have a good dynamic together. Plus Cavill and Chalotra are effective making eyes at each other.

Though there is a scene where Cavill’s got to fall asleep and it’s so awkward you wonder if he’s never actually fallen asleep in real life. Like, he doesn’t seem to know how to do it.

Meanwhile Freya Allan’s in danger with the assassin as they go through the forest. Not the blissful forest from the last couple episodes but the crappy forest where you wonder how Allan and her elf sidekick, Wilson Radjou-Pujalte, aren’t freezing. Radjou-Pujalte is better this episode. Allan’s arcs have, frankly, been crap for the majority of the season at this point, despite her being established as the protagonist in the first episode. This episode’s suspense arc doesn’t make up for the previous episode’s weak plots for her, but it does start to get her on solid ground.

Decent CGI with the dragon and an okay surprise at the end… like I said, it’s an entertaining hour of televised amusement. Took the show long enough.

There’s another Batey song over the end credits and I’m even more convinced they paid him with exposure because there’s no good reason to have the song there. Or maybe someone thought Batey’s bard—who lionizes Cavill over the years through song—should be more important than the script writers did. “The Witcher”’s got a lot of problems with narrative perspective, narrative distance. It’s never good enough to really matter but still… the problems are there, even if they don’t matter much overall.

Oh, and now revealed to be main villains Eamon Farren and Mimi Ndiweni (his mage, who has history with Chalotra) really aren’t anywhere near good enough. Like, Farren’s terrible, sure, but if Ndiweni were stronger she could cover it. Only she’s not strong. At all. Ineffectual would be the appropriate descriptor. How “Witcher” manages to cast so many parts well, then so many parts poorly… it’s unfortunate, as uniform performance quality would help a bunch.

The Witcher (2019) s01e05 – Bottled Appetites

This episode has storylines converging, something I really thought they’d wait to do until the season finale cliffhanger. Instead, Henry Cavill and Joey Batey run across Anya Chalotra in their quest for a cure to Batey’s magically inflamed throat. The episode opens with Cavill trying to find a djinn’s bottle so he can wish for sleep—the episode’s set an indeterminate time after the previous one, at least for Cavill and Batey (something Batey mentions but with an intentional lack of specificity, maybe because Batey still looks the same age—I’m assuming Cavill doesn’t age normal because he’s a mutant). Because Cavill and Batey are bickering, things go wrong with the djinn and Batey gets a magical owie; they need a mage, Chalotra turns out to be the mage.

Since we’ve last seen her, she’s become a rogue mage who’s trying to recover her ability to bear children, something you have to give up to be a mage. At least if you’ve got a uterus. It’s unclear if gonads get snipped.

Chalotra’s ostensibly a prisoner but has been mind controlling the populace and keeping them going in an Eyes Wide Shut party with season two “Game of Thrones” level nudity.

Cavill’s fun playing the tough guy, especially with Chalotra and Batey around—not sure there’s so much been character development in the series as better writing for what Cavill can do and do well. Plus Chalotra and Cavill trying to get the djinn stuff sorted out lets Cavill play hero in a better situation (he’s trying to save sympathetic regulars—Chalotra and Batey—not fighting for what’s right). There’s a lot with the three wishes and some emphasis on the third mystery wish. “The Witcher”’s predictable, but in a well-executed sort of way.

Now for the poorly executed stuff. Princess in hiding Freya Allan is still in the magical forests of Endor playing with the… oh, wait, wrong franchise. She’s still in hiding with the forest Amazons and since they’re warriors, the bad guys can’t get in. This episode finally gives chief bad guy Eamon Farren a lot to do. Shame he’s terrible. At least when he’s on horseback wearing his silly bird head—it looks like something Gonzo would wear—he’s not emoting or delivering dialogue. He gets off the horse this episode and gets some shapeshifting monster to help him go after Farren.

Adam Levy’s back as the Allan family mage; he’s good. Wilson Radjou-Pujalte’s around as Allan’s young elf friend. He’s not good.

Shame there are only three episodes left, as the teaming up of Cavill, Chalotra, and Batey has paid off better than anything else in the show so far.

Last thing—apparently there are songs (bard Batey’s) over the end credits now. His “Witcher” theme song was a few episodes ago but this one has what the wife described as a poorly written Nick Cave song over the end credits. What’s strange about the songs is they’re done without fanfare, like they promised Batey to put his songs in without paying him for exposure.