Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s07e05 – It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Scientist

When I read Matt Ryan was leaving “Legends of Tomorrow” as John Constantine but returning in a different part, I initially assumed it was Constantine-adjacent. But it’s not. Even after he started showing up in the opening credits photo roll—“Legends” does a speed-roll of the regular cast without text—and then appeared in every episode’s “starring” list; it seems like a very weird CW “you’re a regular but not getting paid for every episode” deal, I figured it’d have something to do with Constantine.

But this episode, when he finally shows up as a socially awkward, shy, and goofy scientist who can’t stand up to boss Thomas Edison (Chris Britton)? Well, it seems reasonably settled. Ryan really is playing a new character. It also has me wondering if his Constantine being retired means they’re trying for another movie.

Either way, Ryan’s new character is a fine addition. The rest of the cast keeps confusing him for a different departed “Legend” of yore, which becomes a fun running gag. There are high stakes this episode, ones it actually goes about resolving instead of dragging out for half the season, and the first act of the season seems to be coming to a close. Five episodes in seems a little late for my tastes, pacing-wise, but it was worth the wait. Especially once they stop messing around and reveal why Amy Louise Pemberton is so worried about getting to the team in New York.

Because they’re going to blow up after stealing Ryan’s time machine prototype, a fact Pemberton always possessed, had presumably told Olivia Swann and Lisseth Chavez about at least an episode ago, maybe two episodes ago, but the audience is just now finding out. It’s kind of a bummer they used such an eventually obvious, cheap device, but it’s also a fun subplot for Pemberton, Swann, and Chavez in this episode. They’ve got to get to New York by tomorrow and are running two weeks behind, so Swann casts a luck spell, and they have all sorts of adventures. It trades entirely on the trio’s considerable charm.

Especially since the main plot ends up being so heavy. After a fun introduction to Ryan’s new character, setting him up as a comic foil for Caity Lotz, it becomes this dire race against time—literally, of course—as Lotz has to save the team from her own impetuousness.

There’s also some relationship stuff for Tala Ashe and Nick Zano. Not high drama, but compelling and a nice side bit for Adam Tsekhman’s shipper gag. “Legends” is very good at being self-aware, maybe never more so than with Tsekhman, who just gets it.

The episode’s a little disappointing, if only because it’s such an excellent done-in-one time travel episode; the finale is a little too cryptical. The audience knows more about the season villain than the heroes, but the heroes know more about the next stage than the audience. It’s like they forgot to include an establishing shot somewhere.

Very solid direction from Andrew Kasch, and Lotz and new Ryan have good chemistry. The concept’s strong, even if the landing is rocky.

East of Eden (1955, Elia Kazan)

As intentional as Kazan gets with his direction of James Dean, he’s orders of magnitude more intentional on Julie Harris. Harris is top-billed and the natural protagonist, but Dean’s a supernova. He’s the lead, he’s the star, he’s dynamite, a press agent’s dream. Only he’s got a really quiet part for most of the movie; he’s an extrovert we only ever get to see as an introvert because the movie’s from 1955 (and about 1917) and when he’s not being a top-notch farmhand, he’s bedding every Hispanic girl in town. The film manages to find some honesty in how racism is playing a factor, but it can’t exactly address it.

It’s not just it’s 1955… men are men, after all. And East of Eden is a gloriously turgid mix of toxic masculinity, chauvinism (in both senses), and some kind of religiosity. The religiosity is mostly in the ground situation and revealed backstory; it’s important and it informs everything, but more in how it protects Dean’s twin brother, Richard Davalos, and their father, Raymond Massey, from ever having to take personal responsibility. Massey’s been a single dad since they were born—their mother died in childbirth, he told them—and he’s parented with the Bible. Except Massey’s a very kind, empathetic, curious person—Massey’s performance is startling in its earnestness and warmth, even when he’s being a complete jackass to Dean—so he’s had to arrange his life a certain way. It works with Davalos, who models the piety of his widower father as a way to navigate through as well—masking his core-deep insecurities and jealousies—but not with Dean. Because Dean’s the same as Massey, only Massey wants Dean to be like dear departed mother, Jo Van Fleet.

Who, it turns out, lives just a train ride away.

Van Fleet is a successful madam in the shitty coastal town, while Massey and sons live in the more Christian in-land farming community, where you can meet a nice girl like Harris.

The film opens with Dean following Van Fleet home, where she sends out Timothy Carey to deal with the lurking teen. Carey might be looped; he’s uncredited and Eden’s full of looped audio (quite obviously because Kazan wanted something just right; the film’s exquisite in its precision); either way he’s awesome. He runs Dean off, with some exposition to at least foreshadow and establish this plot line with Dean and Van Fleet. It’s a great sequence.

Once Dean’s back on the right side of the mountains, the film introduces Davalos and Harris. They’re a morally upstanding teenage couple, very chaste, very appropriate; Harris finds Dean concerning—so peculiar he’s scary—while Davalos just thinks his twin is a hilarious goof, at most a prankster.

Davalos and Dean is Eden’s most complicated relationship and the one the film gives the least amount of time. The film’s about Dean getting up the courage to confront Van Fleet, but more about how the many-layered revelation of Van Fleet affects Dean’s relationship with Massey. And, unintentionally, Davalos and Harris. They become collateral damage in this brewing family drama no one realized was brewing. Van Fleet’s the catalyst for the explosion, which is appropriate as she’s the one who got it brewing in the first place.

At least, the way the men see it.

Once Dean has a heart-to-heart about his parents with sheriff Burl Ives (who’s phenomenal in this picture), he starts trying to play the good son. And those attempts—the successes of those attempts—are going to bring ruin to everyone. Some more ruined than others. And there’s enough ruination going around it’s not all Dean’s fault. He is, after all, a sixteen or seventeen year-old kid who has a lot going on in his life and the easy access to alcohol. Massey’s good and evil dichotomy runs Dean and Davalos’s lives, with Harris’s outsider perspective and questioning starting to make Dean ask some questions. In conjunction with the rest of the world making Dean ask some questions too.

War’s almost on and Dean has a profiteers take on it. Davalos and Massey are devout pacifists, but Dean’s a mercenary. Only he’s not because he doesn’t understand what’s going on because he’s a kid. He’s a drinker and a fighter and a lover, but he’s still a kid, something Van Fleet sees in him and is willing to help him too. The relationship with Dean and Van Fleet, Dean and businessman Albert Dekker, with sheriff Ives, they’re all helping push his character development. Right up until we remember Adam had two sons (literally, of course, Adam is Massey’s character’s name) and then everything explodes. Even though we’ve only ever seen Davalos from Dean’s perspective and in Dean’s scenes… he’s had his own subplots brewing and boom.

The third act is then this tightly constrained melodrama where Kazan does everything he can to max out the intensity without getting too loud. And it’s where that direction of Harris gets so important.

Harris has figured out what’s going on with this family and she knows how to fix it but she has to get Dean, Davalos, and Massey to do that work. So it’s not just Dean’s going to be a golden god and get all the camera’s attention, it’s also the story doing it too. It’s treating Harris as a function.

Kazan doesn’t let it.

He, cinematographer Ted D. McCord, and editor Owen Marks figure out this way to showcase Harris, especially in the second half, when it becomes obvious she ought to be the protagonist of this story. Except men.

Harris is great. Dean is singular. No one’s made the adjective. Massey’s great. Ives, Van Fleet, Dekker. Davalos is fine. He functions. Lot of help from Kazan. With everyone else, it’s Kazan figuring out how to best convey his actors’ performances; with Davalos… he’s making it work.

Lois Smith is excellent in a small part.

Technically, it’s almost perfect. There’s a repeated shot of Dean riding the train back to the bad town two scenes and a few hours after we saw it used for him coming home to the good town; it’s now night, the shot’s day. It’s bewildering. Kazan and crew make up for it. He and McCord do a lot with camera angles, including some really awesome showy stuff; the repeat footage gets a pass.

And Paul Osborn’s script. Like, East of Eden has got to be a pain to adapt, but Osborn finds a chunk of the story (presumably the end, I’ve never gotten through it) and writes this great family drama; when I said earlier Kazan had to defend Harris against the script, it’s not Osborn working against her even, it’s the plot. Osborn makes sure Harris has excellent material. It wouldn’t work otherwise.

It’s just not easy to contend with Dean and his presence in the film, visually onscreen and then in general with the plot. He’s so exceptionally good and the film’s able to do so much more because it can leverage him.

East of Eden’s exceptional. I think I’d forgotten just how exceptional.

The Match Factory Girl (1990, Aki Kaurismäki)

The Match Factory Girl is a hyper-focused character study. It opens with the visually fascinating process of a match factory before introducing lead Kati Outinen. Technically protagonist, obviously more subject. She quite noticeably doesn’t talk for the first twenty minutes or so, which says more about her situation than her character—no one’s interested in what Outinen has to say.

She works, rides the bus home reading romance novels, then cooks and cleans for mother Elina Salo and stepfather Esko Nikkari. When she’s feeling adventurous, she goes out to the neighborhood dance hall and waits in vain for a man to ask her to dance. Then it’s back to work, back to the romance novels, back to cooking and cleaning; she even gives her paycheck to Salo and Nikkari ostensibly for rent, but they clearly don’t work. We don’t get any exposition laying it out, but when we meet Outinen’s brother, Silu Seppälä, he’s got a couple informative lines.

Director Kaurismäki’s script fills in very little on Outinen’s ground situation; outside Seppälä, there’s a little bit implied about the relationship between Outinen and Salo, done through set dressings and lingering shots, not dialogue. From the start, when Outinen’s just moving through her days, Kaurismäki juxtaposes those silent activities against television news coverage of Tiananmen Square. Heavy contrast between events in the world and Outinen’s despondently mundane existence.

At least until she decides she’s had enough and she’s going to get something for herself. She gets a pretty dress, which leads to trouble at home—and establishes the financial situation Salo and Nikkari, as well as some of the extent of the abuse Outinen has been suffering at their hands—and then to Outinen breaking bad. Of course, Outinen’s breaking bad is just, you know, going out and having a bigger beer than usual at a night club and not the local dance joint.

At the night club, Outinen meets greasy yuppie Vesa Vierikko; after a night together, she thinks they’re dating, he does not. Lots of complications ensue.

Match Factory Girl doesn’t even run a full seventy minutes, so when Kaurismäki veers off the predicted trajectory for the third act, it all of a sudden becomes a (muted) thrill a minute. We’ve spent the entire film seemingly understanding at least Outinen’s capabilities but as her environment becomes more and more hostile to her… she goes a different route. The story’s always tragic in one way or another, but Kaurismäki takes it to new heights (depths?) of tragedy by the end.

Outinen’s fantastic. She’s good throughout but the big character “change” in the third act is entirely through her performance whereas Kaurismäki’s direction has been doing a lot of framing until that point. It’s still a character study at the end, just with Outinen running the show instead of Kaurismäki and… oh, he edited it too. So Kaurismäki. Timo Salminen’s photography is excellent but it’s all about the editing when it comes to how Kaurismäki crafts the narrative distance.

The supporting cast is all good. But they’re all entirely in support of Outinen, even when she’s not in the shot with them—which only happens a few times.

Exceptional work from Outinen and Kaurismäki. It’s amazing what they can do in an hour and nine minutes.

Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana (1994, Aki Kaurismäki)

I spent much of Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana waiting for the character, played by Kati Outinen, to forget her scarf because I thought the title was Don’t Forget Your Scarf, Tatjana. I knew the film only ran sixty-two minutes and so assumed there’d be some scarf-forgetting. Oops. Is there scarf-forgetting? No spoilers. But it definitely focused my attention on Outinen’s scarf and potential forgetfulness, which isn’t really her character at all.

Tatjana is a road movie, with Outinen and her friend Kirsi Tykkyläinen traveling the Finnish landscape, teamed up with locals Matti Pellonpää and Mato Valtonen. Outinen is Estonian, Tykkyläinen is Russian; Outinen speaks a little Finnish, Tykkyläinen none, so they take what they can get with traveling companions. While the film opens on Outinen and Tykkyläinen—and the scarf—the action immediately moves to Valtonen.

Valtonen is a seamster, existing on stolen puffs from his mother’s cigars and an endless supply of coffee. When he runs out of coffee, he promptly locks his mom (Irma Junnilainen) in the closet so he can steal from her purse—Valtonen, the actor, is forty-ish in Scarf; it’s unclear if his character is supposed to be much older or younger, but he’s clearly a grown ass man stealing from his mother’s purse, not to mention locking her in a closet. He’s expecting a package of coffee (or thinks his mom’s getting one), but instead unwraps a twelve-volt coffee maker. And, as one does, decides to try it out in his car on a test drive.

See, Valtonen’s car is in fellow child grown over Pellonpää’s shop. Once they get the bill settled and Pellonpää dons his rocker leather jacket, they hit the road. They have a fairly nondescript test drive, with Valtonen guzzling coffee and Pellonpää drinking bottle after bottle of vodka—until they meet Outinen and Tykkyläinen. The women need a ride to the harbor to catch a boat and it’s not like the men have anything better to do.

So begins their quietly devastating journey, where the men never quite understand the women—both Valtonen and Pellonpää seem fundamentally incapable of expressing themselves in a way anyone else can understand; they aren’t even friends with each other, just fellow stalled travelers—and the women soften to their absurd, slightly tragic ferrymen.

Tatjana’s got its fair share of absurdities starting out—at no point does it seem like mom Junnilainen is in any actual danger in her closet prison—so when the road trip takes multiple full days, it never seems unlikely. Director Kaurismäki doesn’t have time in an hour to wait for the audience to catch up, either you’re keeping pace or you’re left behind, and the quartet finds themselves in these mundane but exquisitely peculiar situations together.

It all wraps up beautifully, with Kaurismäki getting to amp up the absurd in such a way to make it all the more grounded.

Gorgeous, deep, lush black and white photography from Timo Salminen. Great direction (and editing) from Kaurismäki. The acting from the four leads is good. Tykkyläinen has the showiest part—and it’s still not very showy—and is a lot of fun.

Tatjana’s a great use of an hour.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020, Charlie Kaufman)

Once I’m Thinking of Ending Things makes it painfully, obviously clear what’s actually going on with nondescript Oklahoma intellectual artsy girl Jessie Buckley, her pseudo-intellectual, experience matters more but wait is actually smart or is he boyfriend Jesse Plemons, his weird parents—Toni Collette (who somehow manages to be the only person in the not-untalented cast to give a consistently good performance—hashtag, it’s the script’s fault) and David Thewlis (who, along with Plemons, seems to be doing an advertisement for “Fargo: The TV Show”)—and possibly creepy high school custodian Guy Boyd for the third or fourth time, the film becomes something of a waiting game. Waiting to see if director and screenwriter Kaufman can actually make anything out of it or not.

He does not.

It’s a big hill to climb, considering the script is all about presenting caricatures and his direction of his actors isn’t any better. Though it’s not like you really want Kaufman to put more effort into lionizing flyover country; he clearly wouldn’t do a good job of it.

The film actually seems structured to resist criticism, like Kaufman’s laughably bad 4:3 composition. Things is a Netflix streaming exclusive, Netflix streams in 16:9, Kaufman is a rebel who shoots in 4:3. Shame he doesn’t showcase his actors in their tight close-ups as much as have them showcase his pat dialogue; though I guess quoting Pauline Kael en masse is a flex for certain people. Stars Buckley and Plemons do get better eventually, but not permanently and it’s so obvious why they’re better the improvement just ends up annoying.

The film opens with Buckley narrating about her six week relationship with Plemons, who she either met at a trivia night or somewhere she saw in a Robert Zemeckis movie (Kaufman throwing poop at Robert Zemeckis is as good as the film gets so you can stop if it doesn’t connect, or if you don’t get the reference because then you’re not going to get the seventy-five other conversations when Kaufman tries to appeal to a “New Yorker” audience like it’s 2002 and the David Foster Wallace thing is a lot)….

Anyway.

The film opens with Buckley and Plemons driving to his parents. It’s like twenty minutes of them in the car in one shots talking to each other but not because Buckley’s interior monologue is running the whole time about how much she wants to dump Plemons. Then the parents, where Thewlis opens with a variation of his “Fargo” performance (which is just a mainstream Thewlis anyway) and does some refinements. He at least shows the capacity for range. Collette does wonders with a superficial role, showing the range but also the ability. Plemons and Buckley don’t have exhibit any range, which is kind of fine. At some point you’re glad it’s not better actors being wasted in the film.

Then there’s a second car ride where Kaufman decides to do some two shots so the actors get to… act together (he doesn’t do much actors acting together with the parents either; if anything, Ending is two hours and fifteen minutes of a director not actually knowing how to direct a movie). Plemons and Buckley get immediately better and then even better as the script gets weird for a moment and it seems like the obvious reveal isn’t coming.

The obvious reveal, of course, does arrive, albeit with some solid cushioning. Kaufman doesn’t do a great job with the reveal sequence but it shows more imagination than anything else in the film has to that point. The two hour mark or so.

Good photography from Lukasz Zal—not his fault Kaufman can’t compose a 4:3 shot—not good editing from Robert Frazen—but not his fault Kaufman can’t shoot scenes—not good production design from Molly Hughes, especially not for 4:3. Jay Wadley’s music is… fine.

Outside Collette being great just because, there’s no reason for Ending Things. Other than seeing what proud pseudo-elitist hipster streaming cinema looks like in 2020.

Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s05e13 – I Am Legends

Did you know you needed a “Legends vs. Zombies” episode of “Legends of Tomorrow”? Because I did not know I needed such a thing. I also didn’t realize I needed to see how much range Adam Tsekhman can exhibit on the drop of a… carrot. I’ve always liked Tsekhman but in a comic relief sort of way; they’re underutilizing him. They really need to bring in tough Tsekhman.

And give him Amy Louise Pemberton as a partner.

But Pemberton and Tsekhman in a bit.

Following the disappointing Animal House 2020 episode they did, the Legends find themselves stuck in England because hellspawn Olivia Swann had to betray them out to evil sisters Sarah Strange and Joanna Vanderham.

The Legends only have 24 hours of immortality to get to the ship and stop the sisters, only they’re stranded in Constantine Manor and Matt Ryan doesn’t believe in cars. Bumming rides is his thing. You’d think he’d know a teleportation spell.

Anyway, on their way to London to a time bureau safe house (weird but welcome Rip Hunter mention this episode), Vanderham figures out what they’re doing and sends zombies to destroy them.

So the episode’s the Legends fighting their way to London, figuring out how to do it without enough gas, Ryan and Tala Ashe argue-flirting, and Tsekhman trying to save the day with Pemberton’s help.

Pemberton, who usually just voices the ship’s computer, gets to do an in-person performance and she and Tsekhman and perfect together. Also more bi-inclusivity for “Legends.”

But it then turns out Sara (Caity Lotz) has been lying to co-captain for life Ava (Jes Macallan) about not seeing the future and the Legends are in real trouble. Can they defeat Swann, Vanderham, and Strange not to mention a swarm of zombies?

On one hand, they’re the Legends, on the other hand, it’s the second-to-last episode of the season and there is some required dramatic tension.

Really good episode. Makes up for Animal House 2020 flopping so hard.

Perfect cliffhanger too. Oh, and the costumes. Great costumes.

And whoever thought to put in the George A. Romero zombie.

And the Trash (from Return) zombie. Just wonderful touches.

Watchmen (2019) s01e08 – A God Walks into Abar

This episode of “Watchmen” gets, quite nicely, to the heart of the matter. As the episode goes through its meme-ification of Dr. Manhattan (albeit prestige HBO series starring recent Academy Award-winner Regina King memes), where King and Dr. Manhattan—who’s always visibly obscured when he’s not assuming the appearance of his surprise reveal identity—sit and talk (he walks into a bar to find her, her name’s Abar, it’s… really dumb writing) and there’s not just no chemistry between King and the disembodied voice in the performances, there’s none in the direction or the script. More on Nicole Kassell’s direction in a bit.

But in general, the episode reveals that great conundrum of Watchmen, i.e., what the hell do people who like terrible things like “Watchmen: The HBO Event Series” like about Watchmen the comic book and is it the same thing as people who don’t have terrible taste and, if so, where’s the disconnect. I get the show is mimicking Alan Moore’s narrative devices for Dr. Manhattan only doing them shitty and nonsensically on television but so what. Damon Lindelof’s story for the show is basically the same as what they did in Star Wars: The Force Awakens; you, fanboy turned show runner, can’t imagine what comes next so you just regurgitate the source material and package it in a new shiny, then stir the vomit for nine episodes.

“Watchmen” goes the extra mile of adding the racial subtext so it can claim some indisputable seriousness but… no. Really no.

This episode reveals not just the inevitable creative bankruptcy of the project, which—frankly—has already been laid bare (so I guess this episode just revels in that shiny bucket of puke), but also how little scope Lindelof had for it. Less, arguably, than any other Watchmen spin-off. Insert eye-roll emoji.

Oh, right, Kassell. So besides the not great direction between King and Dr. Manhattan on their various encounters, there’s also the Regina King with an automatic weapon taking out white supremacists action sequence, which the show sets up—in dialogue—to be some spectacular action sequence.

It is not. It’s not incompetent, but it’s also not any good. It’s long enough to get boring, boring enough to wonder why it isn’t better directed, better choreographed, better written. “Watchmen” manages to stay out of the incompetent—the actor playing Dr. Manhattan does way better than he should, all things considered (his scene with Jeremy Irons presents the first sympathetic Irons in a while, because the show reveals the bad Irons ideas aren’t Irons’s), even if it comes at the expense of King, who just got the show taken away from her permanently (she’s now an entirely unreliable narrator)—but it’s always in the inept.

At least since the third episode or whatever.

I’m so glad no one listened to me when I said watch the show after the first episode. I’d be so embarrassed.

Watchmen (2019) s01e02 – Martial Feats of Comanche Horsemanship

As good as “Watchmen” gets at dissecting the comic book, learning from its anatomy, figuring out how to adapt it to live action—though this episode is nowhere near as uncanny as the previous one with composition—the show, pardon my French, fucks with the viewer. Alan Moore comics don’t fuck with the reader, they explore and they reveal (without ever being about the reveals). “Watchmen: The TV Show” is all about narratively cheap but big budget cliffhangers. It’s not exactly frustrating or disappointing—because it’s HBO after all—but means whatever the show creatives learned from the comic… they didn’t learn enough. And “Watchmen: The TV Show” is going to suffer from it. This episode, written by Nick Cuse and show creator Damon Lindelof, is all about surprises, even when they should be obvious to the characters if not the audience.

“Watchmen: The TV Show,” like a TV show, is going all in on the money shot reveals, where it’s stage play Dr. Manhattan’s junk or the clone reveal or… the flashbacks to the cops getting attacked by the white supremacists. Turns out Regina King and husband Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (he’s really the guy from Aquaman, I can’t believe it, he’s good in this show) didn’t adopt some white kids because it’s a better reality but because the kids are her dead partner’s kids. It’s One Good Cop. But without Michael Keaton and Rene Russo.

Makes you wonder how their Batman Forever would’ve been.

Anyway.

The show also reveals—again, the show’s exposition is all about the reveals too, whether it’s DNA tests or tough talking cops—the reparations are for victims of hate crimes or descendants of hate crimes. The show opens with a newsreel about the destruction of Black Wall Street. It’s not clear how Black Wall Street is going to figure in to the Watchmen aspect of the show, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s a good plot device and, actually, completely reasonable for big budget Watchmen fanfic. I don’t think Moore would’ve ever done it because Lindelof’s exploiting the idea whereas Moore never exploits things. So Tulsa because White people in Oklahoma are racist who aren’t ever going to take responsibility for their great-grandparents’ murderous racism so they Klan up to take on the federal government only with Rorschach masks. Kind of a big deal, but also something the show is happy to keep as ground situation, which is concerning. How seriously is “Watchmen” going to take this aspect of the story, which is the whole point of Regina King so don’t end up giving her a shit part.

Like Tim Blake Nelson. He’s maybe going to have a shit part. Or not even enough of a part to have a shit part. Don Johnson’s got some “say it isn’t so” reveals in this episode but you know he’s going to come out of it fine because Don Johnson can do amusing shit-stain.

All of a sudden I really want to watch Tin Cup, which isn’t out on Blu-ray, which is dumb.

Yeah, Nelson… Nelson’s either going to really pay off or he’s going to be a waste. He can be a waste in a few ways, but so far it’s unclear how he could pay off. “Watchmen: The Limited TV Series” is nine episodes; we’re almost a quarter done. There’s only so much time; the longer the show goes on more concerned with turning Easter eggs into plot points… the less it seems likely the show’s going to add up to anything. And there’s a very low bar here. “Watchmen” just has to not screw up its actors’ performances, it just can’t screw up the production design as far as the adaptation, it never actually has to be good. It just can’t be embarrassing. DC and Warner Bros. have been humiliating themselves on Watchmen adaptations for what seems like decades but really has only been eleven years.

King is shouldering the globe, but it’s far from steady.

It also doesn’t hurt, despite not great material, Lou Gossett Jr. is awesome.

Watchmen (2019) s01e01 – It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice

The only times “Watchmen” doesn’t feel calculated are when you can’t imagine the shot as a David Gibbons comic panel. Every couple minutes you can feel how the sequence of shots would feel as a Watchmen comic, showing how just because DC Comics could never figure out how to do it without the original creators doesn’t mean episode director Nicole Kassell and show creator Damon Lindelof can’t figure out how to do it while adapting it to another medium. Though, to be fair, the secret might be in adapting it. Especially since the show creators don’t just have decades of comic book adaptation tropes to avoid they’ve also got the actual Watchmen: The Movie as one hell of an example of terrible Watchmen adapting.

The show figures out what the movie couldn’t, primarily in terms of acting (get good actors and then get good performances out of them) and come up with a sound design not focused around selling a soundtrack album. “Watchmen: Episode 1” often sounds a little like an eighties John Carpenter movie, just with less synth. It’s disquieting in all the right ways.

In fact, there’s nothing the show does wrong but only because it’s positioned itself rather securely. Its ambitions are only in delivering itself as a product. “Watchmen” doesn’t allow itself performance anxiety, just a base execution anxiety. The show doesn’t worry about giving stars Regina King and Don Johnson great parts, it just worries about never giving them bad ones. It also gives Johnson Frances Fisher for a wife, which does a lot of immediate character development. Everyone else is background, even Tim Blake Nelson who seems like he’ll be great as the thing progress. So far Yahya Abdul-Mateen II—as King’s homemaker husband—is perfectly fine, which I was initially worried about because he was so bad in Aquaman. But, no, having a director who cares about acting helps.

The only Watchmen comic character to show up so far is probably Jeremy Irons as Ozymandias. Probably because they’re teasing it. “Watchmen: The TV Show” might try to get away with not explaining all the pertinent history. Lindelof has utterly changed the context—the show’s set in 2019 in the Watchmen: The Comic Book universe, some thirty years after the events, with Robert Redford being president for thirty years (vs. Nixon) and having gotten reparations through, which has led to a Rorschach-inspired white supremacist organization. So in “Watchmen: The TV Show” universe it takes actual reparations (and Black people apparently not having to pay taxes) to get white men so steamed up but in reality it only took a Black president, which would make for great, pseudo-intellectual water cooler talk, which is what “Watchmen” is sort of all about.

Lindelof, Kassell, and everyone else do their corporate overlords great service with the show… they’ve finally turned Watchmen into a crossover property, something not a single DC Comics creator could do.

Also, given the Black Wall Street massacre finally getting mainstream coverage… can we stop listening to white centrists from Oklahoma yet?

Body Heat (1981, Lawrence Kasdan)

Sumptuous is unfortunately not the right word to describe Body Heat. I wish it were because sumptuous just sounds hot, temperature-wise. And Body Heat is all about heat. It takes place in during a very hot Florida summer, its cast dripping with sweat, constantly in search of a cool breeze or a cool drink. Functioning air conditioning too.

The film opens with lead William Hurt watching a building burn in the distance. Lots of arson for insurance money going on in the small city. Hurt’s a lawyer, the type who defends arsonists and general fraudsters. He’s not good at his job, but he’s charming, good-looking, and likable enough. He’s maybe too objectively stupid to be particularly sympathetic, but the liability and charm goes a long way. Despite his questionable lawyering, he’s a local ladies man, regaling pals Ted Danson and J.A. Preston with his exploits. Danson’s the county prosecutor who regularly beats Hurt in court but there are no hard feelings, they’re good friends. Preston’s the town’s single detective; he looks on Hurt a little more paternally than fraternally, which gives the relationship some texture. Hurt’s relationships with Danson and Preston, which never have enough drama to even be C plots, are one of writer and director Kasdan’s great accomplishments in the film. There’s a history between the men, a warm one (not a Heat pun), and as it gets more and more strained, it’s affecting to watch. Hurt’s friends see the best in him, even when he doesn’t.

For texture Danson gets a whole Fred Astaire wannabe thing, dancing in and out of rooms, or just while he’s walking along. It’s a fun character trait.

Again, Kasdan’s got all sorts of wonderful details. Plus Danson—not a short man—is great at the dancing.

Things start getting complicated when Hurt sets his sights on married woman Kathleen Turner. She’s an ideal conquest—her husband’s out of town during the week—and she’s able to keep up with Hurt’s innuendo banter. Kasdan does a phenomenal job with the innuendo banter; you wish there was more of it but Hurt’s able to seduce her pretty quickly so things go quickly from banter to lovey-dovey talk. Hurt’s rather receptive to the lovey-dovey when it comes from Turner. The film establishes in the first scene he’s not from his regular paramours, but they’re also not stinking rich and have actual jobs; as long as its a week night, Turner and Hurt are able to just have sex marathons, breaking only when physically exhausted in her luxurious house.

Sumptuous is the right word to describe the house.

And things carry on pretty well, even after the film introduces Turner’s husband (an appropriately nebulously creepy Richard Crenna); Hurt and Turner even survive getting busted by her best friend (Kim Zimmer) and niece (Carola McGuinness). But then Hurt runs into Turner and Crenna at a restaurant, leading to an incredibly awkward dinner, and then they start talking about how much nicer life would be if Crenna weren’t around anymore. After all, Hurt knows plenty of lowlife criminals (Mickey Rourke, who’s awesome in a small part) and he’s tapped into the law and order side thanks to Danson and Preston.

Can Hurt and Turner go from a passionate affair to something more dangerous? Well, maybe the more appropriate phrasing is can they successfully go from their passionate affair to something more dangerous.

The film’s got a fantastic lead performance from Hurt, who’s so charming, good-looking, and likable it isn’t even initially obvious he might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer. And Turner’s always playing him for some reason, it’s just not clear what. Body Heat has no illusions about its leads’ affair. John Barry’s booming, sweeping, jazzy-ish score is never romantic. Tragic, sure. But never romantic. Even if Turner is capable of it, there’s never a sign Hurt could be.

She’s hot, sure, but rich and hot is twice as good.

Then there’s the lush Richard H. Kline photography—the film looks sharp but muggy, like through a heat haze—and Kasdan’s spectacular direction. Kasdan goes all out with composition, both for static shots and the swooping crane shots. All of them cut together sublimely, courtesy Carol Littleton. Body Heat is a technical marvel.

Then there’s the script. Outside the lovey-dovey talk, where Turner turns the tables (no pun) on Hurt, it’s all sharp, deliberate. Kasdan does a great job directing the actors. Big parts, small parts, everyone in Body Heat gives an outstanding performance. The way Hurt delivers the dialogue is something special. The filmmaking elevates Heat from its thriller and suspense tropes already—but Hurt’s performance (along with Turner’s, though in a different way) make it a singular picture.

It’s pulp but it’s not. It’s too humid to be pulp. The pulp gets waterlogged. Body Heat is exceptional.