Superman & Lois (2021) s01e05 – The Best of Smallville

Way to go on the distracting cliffhanger, “Superman and Lois.” After a reasonably complicated—so many emotions—episode, the cliffhanger is a hard, survive-or-perish number for one of the characters. Maybe not the most fragile character, though the episode does put likable if uneven Sofia Hasmik in more danger than is preferable. But still.

Hasmik’s got the indomitable reporter arc this episode. Elizabeth Tulloch’s having a combination date night and mom night, so Hasmik picks up the slack. Only Hasmik doesn’t have a Super-beeper. She’s following recently returned from the dead Clayton James, who’s the prime suspect in a town arson job. It leads to a very contrived Superman fight sequence, which proves a nighttime flying fight at super-speed in a cornfield (so the corn debris can garble the fight visuals) is not a good Superman fight sequence. It’s too bad because otherwise, Rachel Talalay’s direction is pretty good. I remember when she started on “The Flash” for the CW; she was terrible.

Though she’s not very good with the actors. They don’t need a lot of help this episode—the heavy lifting is Inde Navarrette being way too aware of having an alcoholic dad, Erik Valdez, and a callous mom, Emmanuelle Chriqui, is going to do her damage. But Jordan Elsass has his first string of selfish teenage boy scenes; Elsass had been the ever considerate super-twin, so it’s kind of a breaking bad arc. Elsass is fine and has the requisite emotion, especially with the previous episodes’ character development, but Talalay doesn’t know how to help the performance. Baby steps, I guess. She does direct the heck out of the Tulloch and Tyler Hoechlin scenes.

And Hoechlin does a lot better this episode. Possibly because there are a bunch of flashbacks to his teenage years. They hired very teenage Dylan Kingwell for the flashbacks. Kingwell’s playing older than Elsass and Alex Garfin, but he’s clearly younger. Maybe the Kryptonian aging thing—which they use to explain Hoechlin looking early thirties but playing mid-forties—means Kingwell looked thirteen when he was eighteen, which would explain why (unseen) flashback Chriqui dumped him for Valdez.

A couple developments on the Chriqui and Valdez front, in addition to Navarrette’s awareness. Valdez gets wasted because his best friend is in critical condition after the aforementioned fire. Chriqui gets shitty with him about all of it, making her a lot less sympathetic than usual. She’s also changed her mind on (also unseen) Adam Rayner because he’s performatively nice. Meanwhile, Valdez—playing a cracker—drunkenly sings Navarrette a Spanish lullaby, so maybe there’s more to his backstory. Smallville’s got enough Black people in supporting parts to suggest the white people leads aren’t all a bunch of racists, but there aren’t any Hispanic characters so far. It’s a diverse but not inclusive show.

Michele Scarabelli—who appeared in the pilot—is very good as Ma Kent in the flashbacks. Especially since Kingwell’s a little asshole. “Superman and Lois” is, in addition to being about Superman being a C- dad, is about Superboy being a dick teenager to his widowed mom. Interesting flex.

Oh, and Wolé Parks finally comes back. Daisy Tormé is terrible as his digital assistant. It’s hard to be so bad as a digital assistant the performance makes the regular actor better, but Tormé’s awful enough. Parks isn’t very good, though. It turns out—thanks to a reveal—the part’s tricky, and Talalay doesn’t direct actors, so maybe he’ll get better.

Interesting show canon details—Smallville was incorporated in 1949, so long after Action Comics #1, and Lex Luthor does exist. Somewhere out there.

The family drama, albeit unevenly executed at times, is compelling. “Superman and Lois” might finally get going in a few more episodes. Might.

Departures (2008, Takita Yôjirô)

Departures suffers for its DV photography. Suffers. Hamada Takeshi cannot figure out how to light for the video and, as a result, the film never looks good. Maybe if director Takita were somehow taking it into account, but no, Takita just pretends it doesn’t look like an ornate Hi8 camcorder production.

With some competent mise-en-scène, Departures might be able to get away with its other big problems. Though the score—composed by Joe Hisaishi—definitely part of the wanting audiovisual tone—would also need to upgrade. Otherwise it’s just a disaster third act and middling acting from its leads, sometimes due to the script, sometimes due to Takita not directing them, sometimes just the actors.

The film’s about failed cellist Motoki Masahiro returning to his hometown after his latest failure. Except Departures opens in a flash forward revealing the film’s actually going to be about Motoki becoming an encoffiner and the antics of the job. An encoffiner is a class of mortician who prepares the body to be placed in the coffin, including doing makeup, usually with the family watching. The film immediately establishes it’s a solemn, ritualistic, respectful ceremony.

And then veers into transphobia as a joke, though who knows how the scene would play if Motoki were capable of emoting. He’s capable of reflecting, with Takita setting up the object, event, or person for Motoki to respond to with reflection, but Motoki can’t reflect without stimulus.

Then the film flashes back to Motoki’s latest orchestra collapsing (he went with a bad one because he’s not very good) and him having to convince wife Hirosue Ryôko they should move to his hometown. There’s no subplot about returning to the hometown outside running into old friend Sugimoto Tetta, who’ll end up shunning him for being in the funeral trade, but Departures avoids a “returning home” plot for Motoki like the plague. Maybe it just cut. Like when he finds out coworker Yo Kimiko worked for Motoki’s mom for years before she died and he doesn’t tell her the connection. Motoki’s got no interest in the dead single mom who sacrificed all to raise him. He just obsesses on his dad leaving when he was five because dudes.

He’s going to have a terrible arc with Hirosue, who seems utterly personality-less (she just giggles for the first half of the movie), only to discover she’s actually got lots of thoughts she hasn’t been sharing because they’re have screwed up the narrative. Hirosue’s not good. She also doesn’t get a single good scene in the film. They cut away from potentially good scenes occasionally, but usually she doesn’t even have them set up. It’s mildly annoying.

The real star is Yamazaki Tsutomu, the encoffining boss, who hires Motoki for his initial gumption and is convinced Motoki will be great at the job for some reason. Also Motoki can’t remember what his dad looks like so is it impossible Yamazaki’s his dad? No, not impossible. It’s a mystery to be solved it turns out, because Koyama Kundô’s script goes for the predictable and obvious every single time. Sure, sometimes there’s a skipped scene to finish a character arc, but you can always guess what would’ve happened. I guess at least Departures isn’t patronizing… but it’s almost stranger it isn’t.

Yamazaki is great. Motoki is middling. Every time you want to cut Motoki some slack because the direction and photography is wanting… you realize Yamazaki is excelling under the same conditions.

Then there’s Hisaishi’s score, which you might think would leverage a lot of cello. Nope. Piano. Even during scenes where Motoki is playing the cello onscreen, eventually there’s some kind of non-diegetic accompaniment. It’s like… pick an instrument you at least want to have run the score. There’s no reason Motoki couldn’t have been a mediocre pianist. It also would’ve made for a more visually interesting scene with he sits alone outside playing to nature.

Departures is what happens when you don’t balance your character study right. And you don’t have the technicals down. And you don’t have the right leads.

But Yamazaki is outstanding and there are a bunch of great ideas. Just with a muddy result.

Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s06e02 – Meat: The Legends

I wasn’t thrilled when I saw Rachel Talalay’s name on the director credit but it’s good direction (not just for Talalay but in general). The episode is split between the Legends in the fifties trying to find an escaped alien and Caity Lotz and Adam Tsekhman crash-landing on an alien world. Lotz and Tsekham are a very funny odd couple. Their storyline, involving Amelia Earhart (Jennifer Oleksiuk), is somewhat lacking but Lotz and Tsekhman have a lot more chemistry than it seemed last episode when they got paired off.

The main story is about an alien goo in the secret sauce at a hamburger joint. While Jes Macallan (assuming the team leader position quite well) frets about using new cast member Lisseth Chavez to communicate with the goo to find Lotz—it’s barely a plan—the rest of the cast makes themselves comfortable at the burger joint. At least, Nick Zano, Tala Ashe, and Shayan Sobhian. Everyone else—Matt Ryan and Dominic Purcell—just sort of roam around, getting the occasional one-liner.

The burger joint plot line is mostly about Ashe and Sobhian figuring out how to work together without pestering each other, which provides a nice bit of character development with Zano’s roller-skating waiter in the shorty-suits providing the comic relief. Eventually the entire town becomes meat-hungry almost zombies (zombies who can run—and, presumably, recover from their meat lust) and raid the burger joint, requiring everyone to work together as a team. There’s a bit of a deus ex machina moment but it’s fine. I mean, Ashe and Sobhian are going to be the Wonder Twins, after all, some narrative shortcuts are fine. Especially since the plot device is a welcome cameo.

Chavez does rather well in her first outing on a mission (rather than being a mission), bringing the right amount of personality to the fight scenes and so on. I’d been a little worried last episode they’d pair her off with lovesick Zano but if it’s in the cards, it’s not yet. Chavez’s character arc is all about working with the Legends in general and Macallan specifically, with Chavez the only one being frank with Macallan (minus Purcell for a beat and also minus knowing it’s “Legends” so there’s time traveling chicanery in their futures).

The fifties tone is great. Talalay brings a whole bunch of energy to it, even though they’re basically at one time specific location—the burger joint and its parking lot—and otherwise they’re at various residences, which don’t need much time adjusting.

I was on board with the season’s gimmick—outrageous aliens in history—just because it’s “Legends,” but this episode shows they’re going to be imaginative with it; I’m a lot more confident, particularly since the show took the time with Sobhian and Ashe. Now they just need to figure out what to do with Zano. Especially with Chavez playing sidekick to Macallan.

And great guest turn from Kirsten Robek.

Parade (1974, Jacques Tati)

Parade somehow loses the plot after intermission. Given the plot is just a night at the circus, usually showcasing director Tati’s pantomiming, it shouldn’t be possible to lose such a thing. But Parade does.

Maybe intermission not coming halfway through the film should be a sign. And at least the post-intermission material sails by relatively quickly, even as the content itself starts to strain. Probably because it’s entirely focused on the orchestra, which wasn’t in the opening half, and the film kind of gives up on the idea of verisimilitude and narrative distance.

Obviously, being a combination of a videotaped live performance and—I guess—staged and filmed material (i.e. not all the shots from the live videotaping), Parade gets some stylistic allowances but post-intermission, all of the insert shots fail. The lengthy orchestra sequence has numerous problem framings where people and settings change, not to mention lighting, and no one seems too concerned with it, which is rather strange given at least the dedication to showcasing the talent in the pre-intermission part of the film.

The first half has at least three good Tati pantomimes and another one where he’s “in character” too much and it feels like it should be in a movie, it has a great magician sequence, and a phenomenal juggler sequence. Plus there’s a cute mule sequence. The cute mule sequence goes on way too long and gets cloying at the end, but there are some really good laughs in it. It’s also where the audience starts losing the plot themselves and can’t quite gin up the enthusiasm.

Not audience as in Parade watcher, but the audience in the film, the live circus audience there for when Tati videotaped. There’s a whole subtext just to their attitude as the film progresses and it’s hard for it not to be contagious. At times it’s difficult to get enthused about the onscreen action—Tati showcases the performer doing a bit, not the performer, so all long shots—because the audience has checked out and they’re a big cue as to how impressive an act should play.

There’s also this “subplot” involving two kids at the circus—who happen to be the only two kids at the circus; the audience is otherwise entirely some very groovy French hippies from the early seventies who all came on moped—and it seems like Tati’s saving them up for something and it goes nowhere. It goers nowhere fast, which is kind of nice—once Parade gets tiring post-intermission, which is in the last third, it’s at least a speedy run downhill.

Parade has some great parts—and some exceptional performers—but it doesn’t come together, which is a bummer. It seems like the initial impulse could’ve gone somewhere. Instead, it ends with a bunch of tedious gag inserts and manages to screw up Tati’s exaggerated dancing, which should be a great sequence. The videotaped portions of Parade are its best, capturing the speed and grace of the performers. The filmed sequences never match the intensity.

Like I said, it’s a bummer.

Trafic (1971, Jacques Tati)

For the first hour, Trafic has a lot of gems. The film opens with a car manufacturing plant with a lot of nice, precise composition and editing, and director Tati maintains an interest in the goings-on of cars and their drivers. The action centers around an auto show in Amsterdam (presumably filmed at a real auto show for some of it) and there are a handful of wonderful montage sequences showing off the latest and greatest in technology. But more the old standards—how’s the trunk work, how’s the door work, how’s the hood work—with Tati going a little absurd but never completely there. Usually because they cut away not because the scene couldn’t go totally absurd, it’s just not there long enough.

During that first hour, there are these various gag setups without any follow through; instead Tati finds something else in the action, like how people yawn when driving or, you know, pick their noses. A lot. The nose picking montage would break a lesser film but Trafic can manage it just fine. In fact, when the subsequent montages break out amongst the random drivers driving unobserved… nothing can quite beat the nose picking. Though they never really try as hard again either.

Tati plays a car designer whose company is sending him to the auto show to help exhibit their camping car. It’s a station wagon with a camper built into the back of it and there are all sorts of gadgets. The film takes a long time to get around to introducing the gadgets, but once it does, they’re amusing and all a little silly. But their reveal comes after the first hour, when Trafic is starting to sputter about aimlessly. When it does find the plot again, it’s an entirely unpredictable one, which would be fine if it were good but instead the last thirty plus minutes of the film embraces all its weakest elements.

First and foremost is Maria Kimberly. She’s playing the public relations person in charge of presenting the car. She’s always changing her clothes—in her adorable little car—and it’s immediately a tired gimmick because Kimberly’s obnoxious. It’s not her fault she’s obnoxious, the character’s obnoxious, but she’s profoundly unpleasant to be around. All she does is whine, under-act, change her clothes, have guys ogle her. She’s got this dog with her the whole movie, occasionally getting into antics, and it takes an hour for it to be believable she’s the dog’s person she’s so indifferent to it.

Kimberly, Tati, and Marcel Fraval are in charge of getting the model camping car to the auto show. Except the car company’s truck is a junker and it starts breaking down immediately, leading to multiple mechanic stops. At one point Tati could juxtapose incapable, glamorous Kimberly—who the film establishes in her first scene as an inept jerk—with a female mechanic who has to do all the work while her dad sits and watches the Apollo 11 mission on TV, but the female mechanic doesn’t even get a credit. She also doesn’t get anything to do. While the film holds together for an hour, Tati seems done trying to do any juxtaposing—flashy new auto show cars against cars in junk yards—around thirty minutes in. Trafic is frustrating because you can see it starting to go downhill. It’s very clearly happening and for a while it seems like Tati’s got to have it under control because he’s so unconcerned.

And then it crashes and never recovers. Worse, there’s a crash and a recovery in the narrative, so the whole thing becomes a self-analogy.

In the end, Trafic doesn’t work out. It’s got a solid enough first hour—a little soft near the end but certainly recoverable—then the rest is one miss or another. Except this utterly sublime moment where one of the subplots pays off unexpectedly and brilliantly and magically and then Kimberly ruins it.

But by that point, the only thing more surprising than Kimberly messing it up would be Tati trying to patch Trafic after her latest puncture.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018) s02e13 – Deus Ex Machina

Four episodes until the finish and “Chilling Adventures” is still bringing in new worlds—in this case, the Parliament of Worlds in Celestial Realm, where Metatron (Pollyanna McIntosh is fine but would you really recast Hans Gruber) is witnessing a crisis unfolding. Hell and Earth are having dimension-quakes because of Kiernan Shipka splitting into two, one for Hell, one for Earth. Also somehow involved is the latest Eldritch Terror, the Cosmic, which is creating duplicate realities on a collision course for the already on a collision course Earth and Hell (and Heaven).

It’s such a big bad event, Shipka’s willing to tell aunts Lucy Davis and Miranda Otto how she created a time duplicate of herself and they’ve been coexisting all season. Some solid Parent Trap jokes, some not so solid Parent Trap jokes. But everything’s incredibly dramatic because McIntosh seems Heaven-bent on killing one of the Sabrinas to save reality even though it might not really save reality.

Meanwhile, Lachlan Watson gets a really bad subplot—undercooked and wrong ingredients and so on—with boyfriend Jonathan Whitesell. Whitesell’s fellow hobgoblin, Natalie Grace, has come to Earth to bring Whitesell back into the Fairie Realm in order to save him from the ends of the worlds except… it’s unclear why the Fairie Realm would survive.

Far more effective and harrowing is Michelle Gomez’s subplot about baby daddy Lucifer (Luke Cook) tracking her down in order to figure out what’s going on with his newborn son. Gomez earlier told Davis she was planning on hiding in the witch academy until the kid turned sixteen—Gomez and Davis are so good together—but it doesn’t seem like Cook’s going to agree.

The episode’s got one good arc for two Sabrinas, which adds up to Shipka’s best acting in a while on the show… alongside some of her more rote acting as her Earthy variation finds herself rekindling a romance with Gavin Leatherwood with only a few hours before the ends of the worlds. Shipka has a lot more fun as the Hell variant and that Sabrina gets a far better arc throughout.

But it’s a strong episode. Good performances from Cook–he’s a lot better this season, with the show treating him as a somewhat docile sardonic relief—Otto, Chance Perdomo obviously.

And the cliffhanger’s excellent.

Doom Patrol (2019) s01e03 – Puppet Patrol

Try as it might, this episode doesn’t lose all the second episode gains over the pilot. It does seemingly revolt against them—facing off team mom April Bowlby with serious superhero Joivan Wade but have it be all about how she’s just too negative and, like, needs to get with the team spirit stuff. Maybe do some cheers. And it’s all they’ve got, Wade and Bowlby, who are pretty much the only reliable actors “Patrol”’s got. Especially after this episode.

They’re stranded in a motel where they can argue and ostensibly character develop—if they’re trying to play up some kind of romantic thing, there are going to be numerous hurdles but it’d be a big swing if they try it (last episode didn’t exactly imply it but there was some passive energy in that department). The rest of the team—Diane Guerrero, Matt Bomer, and Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan as Robotman—is in Paraguay looking for Alan Tudyk, who was last seen there eighty years earlier or so. We saw Tudyk arrive there in flashback—speaking of Tudyk, he’s not narrating this episode; Wade does the opening recap but the narration only made it two episodes.

Wonder what that note from the focus group says.

Anyway.

Robotman and company—Robotman predated Hellboy, right, has there ever been any discussion of their similar personality types—infiltrate Nazi scientist Julian Richings’s superpowers clinic (amusing but not good enough bit part for Alec Mapa as a guy who’s been saving up for some powers and now it’s finally time). There’s some character revelations, some wanton destruction, and a really convenient Dr. Manhattan chamber for Bomer to play around in as he tries to get rid of the electrical being living inside him….

It’s Bomer’s episode. He gets all the flashbacks, covering him being terrible to both lover (Kyle Clements) and suffering wife (Julie McNiven). Bomer’s not good. The material’s not good, but Bomer’s also not good. He exceeds the range required for muffled Invisible Man guy. Not so with the dramatic. It’s not well-written, it’s not well-directed, but Bomer also can’t do it.

The character—not taking the more asshole moves in the flashback into account—gets empathy, but Bomer’s performance doesn’t get the requisite sympathy. He’s just not good enough.

If you’re good with Nazi jokes… there’s a great puppet show?

Enter the Fat Dragon (2020, Tanigaki Kenji)

Enter the Fat Dragon is about Hong Kong super-cop Donnie Yen (already in a pound of makeup before he puts on the fat suit, presumably to look more age appropriate for love interest Niki Chow) who goes too far one too many times and finds himself busted down to the evidence room. After Chow dumps him—they’ve been together ten years and just now about to get married and he ruins their engagement photo shoot with his opening action sequence (it’s a bigger deal because she’s an actress whose profession he doesn’t respect)–Yen hits the junk food hard, which is clearly a big change for him since he started the movie junk food shaming subordinate then boss Louis Cheung for eating a slice of pineapple. Pretty soon he’s put on a hundred pounds; Yen started the movie at a cool one-fifty, because it’s in the opening narration.

It’s weird for a fifty-seven year-old man to talk to you about his weight at the start of a movie but whatever.

He’s clearly only supposed to be thirty-five.

Anyway. Dragon is a movie from 2020 where star producer hyphenate Yen thought it was a great idea to put on a fat suit and do wire-fu on an absolutely fantastic Japanese street set. It took a while to realize it was a set, but once I did, I kept getting distracted with the great detail in the background cast. Whoever designed the set, built it, directed the extras, just phenomenal work.

Lee Kin-wai’s the art director, so maybe it’s Lee Kin-wai’s department.

There’s an okay fight scene on the street set, going on the rooftops and such. Tanigaki’s direction gets most of the martial arts action, but doesn’t do anything interesting with it. It doesn’t showcase Yen well, which might more be because he doesn’t get any close-ups in the movie because of all the make-up he’s clearly wearing.

And some of the other action is fine. It’s too rush—Dragon runs just over ninety minutes and hurries through subplots. But it’s obvious we’re not missing much.

After a while—and all the junk food in the vending machine—Yen goes to Japan on his redemption assignment, a prisoner transfer (throughout Dragon feels like a mix of an eighties action movies, James Bond, and whatever else I’ve forgotten—just never Enter the Dragon, outside some forced references). The transfer goes wrong thanks to dirty Japanese cop Takenaka Naoto and Yen’s stuck in Japan—he also loses his luggage, leading him to ex-Hong Kong cop Wong Jing. Wong—who also cowrote—is a big lovable dope who loves the restaurant owner (Teresa Mo) across the street. Together they’re basically joint foster parents to lovable teen orphan Lin Qiunan. Every Chinese person Yen meets in Japan is great and every Japanese person he meets in Japan is a villain.

The main villain is Joey Iwanaga, who’s more enthusiastic than the role needs or the movie seems to care. He’s Yakuza and behind Yen’s prisoner transfer problems; he’s also Chow’s new boss.

It’s never good—though there are a handful of great laughs, most of them exceptionally cheap because Enter the Fat Dragon is slapstick. Some of the way they “get away” with Yen being clumsy in the fat suit is having him be clumsy before the fat suit, when he’s just in that pound of make-up. Most of the slapstick’s not good.

The end is a large scale action finale; not good either. There may even be a Superman: The Movie nod.

Dragon’s bad slapstick with a lot of cheap jokes. Not the expected ones, but still cheap ones.

Yen’s not able to even make micro-expressions in his makeup so he hasn’t got much of a performance. The martial arts stuff looks good enough it’d be nice if the movie had a good director.

Chow’s eh. Even though they’re even more age inappropriate, Jessica Jann—as Takenaka’s Chinese national interpreter but not accomplice—and Yen have more chemistry than he ever has with Chow. It’s not her fault; she’s kind of a villain? She’s shallow because she doesn’t want him to be a super-cop, which somehow manages to become a subplot, though I guess you need it for the reconciliation arc.

The first act kept having… not exactly potential, but enthusiastic possibilities only it never takes them on. Instead—outside that great street set and some technical aspects of the finale–Dragon never really does anything. It’s milquetoast.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018) s01e06 – An Exorcism in Greendale

The opening showdown with Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) confronting Ms. Wardwell (Michelle Gomez) about Wardwell being a witch, spying on Sabrina, saving Sabrina from the sleep demon. Wardwell gives her a questionable tale about how she’s fulfilling a promise to Sabrina’s dead dad to protect her, which Shipka doesn’t quite buy and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be buying it either. But am I not buying it because I’ve read the comic and know more of what’s up or because of the show’s handling of Gomez, who’s definitely “protecting” Shipka but also actively working to harm those around her.

Turns out it doesn’t matter because Gomez joins Shipka’s witch gang by the end of the episode and it works out, albeit with Gomez as an unrevealed black hat in the operation. Because it turns out Shipka’s going to need all the witch help she can get this episode, as she tries to organize an exorcism to save friend Lachlan Watson’s possessed uncle, Jason Beaudoin.

What’s interesting is how right after Gomez goes from lying to Shipka about her backstory, Shipka goes and hangs out with her friends—Watson, Ross Lynch, Jaz Sinclair—and finds out whatever demon is possessing Beaudoin has been terrorizing them in their dreams. At this precarious moment in their friendships, Shipka proceeds to gaslight her mortal pals about the demon invading their dreams. It’s maybe the first time on the show Shipka’s ever appeared unsympathetic. It’s frankly disquieting to see her do it. Sure, she runs home and tells her family she’s got to save the humans and all but… still.

Especially since Shipka’s then got to back things up with Lynch especially, as he thinks he once saw the same demon in the mines, not yet realizing they really are just tunnels to Hell and who knows who he would’ve seen as a kid. Lynch and Shipka then go down into the mines to try to figure out what happened to Beaudoin, which at one point gives Lynch the great line, “this isn’t The Goonies.” Even if it doesn’t seem like the right line for a sixteen year-old in 2018 to spout.

Meanwhile Sinclair has a weird freakout she’s not religious enough.

Lots of Exorcist references throughout the episode, including a great shot of the suitcase and some not so welcome projectile vomit. The way the exorcism plays out with Shipka, Gomez, and aunts Lucy Davis and Miranda Otto is fabulous.

Even with the iMovie Vaseline smudges appearing at the end, it’s definitely the best directing I’ve ever seen from Rachel Talalay. Though I didn’t know she directed it when I was watching, so maybe I wasn’t looking out for issues as much. It’s a good episode. Though I wish Watson’s arc, which involves Beaudoin being… gay maybe… possibly queer… ish, was better. Whatever Joshua Conkel and MJ Kaufman are trying to do there doesn’t work. Especially with Beaudoin’s demon calling Beaudoin a sodomite, especially with Sinlcair’s religiosity becoming a plot point.

Malcolm (1986, Nadia Tass)

Malcolm has strange plotting. The film runs just ninety minutes—like you don’t really believe that official ninety minute runtime and it doesn’t feel like they’re rounding up from eighty-nine either. The film’s light and it seems to be coming from the drama. There really isn’t any. There’s charm instead. Almost cuteness.

The title Malcolm is Colin Friels, a thirty-ish Autistic man (though the film never describes his diagnosis or even if anyone understands he’s got one—1986 after all) who lives alone since his mother’s died. He’s a mechanical genius with a fascination about Melbourne’s trams. He even works for the trams for a while… but off-screen. The movie opens with him getting fired for building his own one-person tram. Strapped for cash, he has to bring in a lodger. He takes the first one who comes to see the room–John Hargreaves.

At this point, Malcolm seems like it’s going to be about kindly neighborhood shop owner Beverley Phillips getting Friels to socially develop thanks to Hargreaves. It seems like it for about three minutes, which is a long time in Malcolm. But then Hargreaves brings home girlfriend Lindy Davies and she stays. Like a day after Hargreaves comes in. It isn’t clear why Hargreaves and Davies weren’t just looking for a place together. Character motivations are not writer (and cinematographer) David Parker’s strong suit. Neither is the cinematography, just to get it out of the way. Malcolm has very flat cinematography. The film’s able to get through the flat lighting and the script’s absence of characters’ ground situations because of director Tass. She’s okay with composition, but she’s great at directing her actors. Friels, Davies, and Hargreaves all turn in these fantastic performances and, along with the mood (which is the script, is the direction), make Malcolm work. Even though both Friels and Davies kind of get the story focus shaft. It instead concentrates on Hargreaves, which doesn’t make any sense because the whole point of his life being different than before is specifically because of what Friels and Davies are now doing in it.

Hargreaves is really good. He gives the best performance in the film, which he shouldn’t, but he isn’t able to transcend the script. The part isn’t good enough. The closest the movie gets to dramatics often involves Hargreaves saying something shitty about Friels behind his back and Davies giving him hell for it, leading to offscreen bonding between Hargreaves and Friels. Eventually Hargreaves has some personal growth and isn’t a dick to Friels anymore but we sure don’t get to see it. There’s the potential for character development, then there’s a jump ahead past it. Multiple times. Parker and Tass are too obvious in what they’re not addressing. They draw attention to what they’re not doing and then still manage to be too deliberate in how they showcase the gadgetry.

After Davies moves in, Friels starts making different gadgets and machines to impress Hargreaves because apparently Friels thinks he’s cool. Or something. We never find out because whenever anyone wants to have a serious talk with Friels, they do it offscreen so Parker doesn’t have to write the dialogue. After the first act, Friels basically becomes a (necessary) third wheel in Davies and Hargreaves’s story, which is mostly from Davies’s perspective because Hargreaves doesn’t do anything interesting on his own. Not even when he does things on his own; the movie can’t make them seem interesting.

Hargreaves has a scummy bar friend—an astonishingly third-billed Chris Haywood, who gets about four minutes on screen and never a close-up. Haywood’s just around for when Hargreaves needs to do something away from Friels and Davies. Until Hargreaves reaches the point he realizes he’s got to grow and then he just runs away to different areas of the house.

Another success of Tass’s direction is the lack of claustrophobia, even when there ought to be.

Whenever Friels shows Hargreaves a new gadget, it’s an action set piece. They’re really cool sequences, often involving remote controlled cars or objects. Editor Ken Sallows always cuts the action well. They’re the film’s pay-off moments and they work.

But they really shouldn’t be the film’s pay-off moments. They supersede the characters. For the finale the actors don’t even get to participate in the big action sequence.

It’s a great sequence though and when the actors do come back, they’re able to make up for the lost time goodwill-wise.

Malcolm doesn’t succeed in spite of itself, it just doesn’t aim high enough. It also adjusts its aim lower as the film goes on. Its potential deflates as it goes.

But it’s really cute, really charming, often rather funny. Excellent performances from Hargreaves, Friels, and Davies. Nice score from Simon Jeffres.

Just wish the script were more interested in the characters.

This post is part of the Blizzard of Oz Blogathon hosted by Quiggy of The Midnite Drive-In.