Fargo (2014) s04e04 – The Pretend War

It’s the end of the first act, with normal guy Andrew Bird making a big mistake and now everything afterward is never going to be the same again, which is kind of what “Fargo” stays consistent about, season to season.

I think.

Bird pays off he and Anji White’s debt to Chris Rock—in one of those excellent Rock scenes, which happen once an episode if we’re lucky—with money he got from outlaw sister-in-law Karen Aldridge. It’s not going to go well for anyone involved.

But that scene, which is inevitable and therefor not a spoiler (right?), comes towards the end of the episode. The rest of the episode is arranging things for the next act. Mobster brothers Jason Schwartzman and Salvatore Esposito getting their supporters together for the big face-off, check. A contrivance to let E'myri Crutchfield discover Jessie Buckley’s secret, check. More icky-bad with Buckley and Schwartzman, check. Something with Ben Whishaw, check.

There’s a lot of good stuff in the episode. Lots of good acting. A great sequence where Jeff Russo mimics Danny Elfman more than Carter Burwell. Excellent direction from Dearbhla Walsh again. And the first showdown between Timothy Olyphant and Esposito is outstanding, albeit a fairly easy scene since they’re both playing caricatures. Superbly, but still.

Glynn Turman and Francesco Acquaroli get another one of their consiglieri meeting scenes and this time Acquaroli gets the monologue. It doesn’t have the depth of Turman one last episode, but Acquaroli’s excellent.

What else. Oh. Jack Huston’s dirty cop. He’s got a tiny subplot about trying to get Olyphant to go to Chicago (hunting Aldridge) instead of hanging around Kansas City. It’s fine for the Olyphant stuff but it’s a little unbelievable no one’s noticed Huston’s incompetent, obviously corrupt cop being incompetent and obviously corrupt. Huston’s trying. Olyphant makes up for some of it but still. Huston being bad, Schwartzman being both bad and miscast, and Buckley and Whishaw being blah? Almost everything excellent in “Fargo: Season Four” has to do the additional work of propping up something bad.

The episode opens with either a Barton Fink homage or the closest they’ve gotten to one (I recognize). There’s also a bit of supernatural thing going on in the episode, which makes for some really effective scenes both times but so far pointless ones.

Maybe it’s just playing in the very familiar period piece gangster wheelhouse, but lots of scenes this episode feel rote and not the “playing with them being rote” rote either. Excellent performances, good dialogue, strong direction; they make up for a lot, but Hawley’s “Fargo” tends to find new things mixing old things together and this time… at best he’s spotlighting the ingredients well. So far there’s nothing new coming out of the oven.

Like a pie. Sort of.

Fargo (2014) s04e03 – Raddoppiarlo

I’m sad “Fargo” turns out to need Timothy Olyphant so much. I noticed him in the credits online but figured they’d cut him out so much he was barely appearing, but he gets the opening of this episode. Before disappearing. He plays a Mormon U.S. Marshal who can’t shut up about religion and eats carrot sticks. Olyphant’s great, but it’s an easy part.

Especially since Olyphant’s teamed with Jack Huston’s dirty cop who has OCD instead of a character and Huston’s fairly bad. He’s in it more and it’s bad he’s in it more.

Olyphant and Huston resolve the previous episode’s cliffhanger, which leaves an open thread, but is mostly a rather good house search with the cops looking for Karen Aldridge and Kelsey Asbille. Anji White gets her first great scene lying to Olyphant about their location (Aldridge is her sister) and it gets the episode off to a great start. Huston or not.

And this episode’s pretty solid throughout. Everything except the Jason Schwartzman and Jessie Buckley stuff works. The Schwartzman and Buckley stuff is based entirely on the premise you think Schwartzman’s doing a good job with his acting, which it seems hard to believe anyone thinks. Otherwise they’d give him something real to do instead of sensational and busying.

Like Glynn Turman, who’s quickly become “Fargo: Season Four”’s most essential cast member. He’s so good but he’s also a lot more competent than anyone else—at the end of the episode he’s got to hash things out with boss Chris Rock and Rock doesn’t know anything Turman doesn’t so why isn’t Turman boss.

Turman also gets this stupendous—seriously, not sure the last time I used this adjective—monologue about being a Black man in the Army post-World War II. It’s in a consigliere meeting with opposing gang’s Francesco Acquaroli. Acquaroli’s real good too but, wow, Turman. It’ll be hard for “Fargo” not to be his de facto show.

This episode also gives Ben Whishaw his first big outing.

He could do worse.

It helps it’s a great sequence—director Dearbhla Walsh continues the season’s excellent direction trend, possibly surpassing Noah Hawley. The sequence where Whishaw’s got to go out and shoot somebody he doesn’t think they should be shooting but is scared Gaetano Bruno is going to shoot him if he doesn’t do the hit… phenomenal stuff. Feels like Miller’s Crossing without feeling like it’s referencing Miller’s Crossing.

Salvatore Esposito’s got a little bit to do, E'myri Crutchfield has a surprising little to do. The episode’s got two big set pieces and Walsh excels at both of them. Despite Schwartzman’s continued ineptness and it not featuring Crutchfield’s, you know, narrator enough… it’s maybe the best episode of the season so far.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016, Taika Waititi)

I kept waiting for something to go wrong in Hunt for the Wilderpeople. The first act is this exceptionally tight, efficient narrative—but with time for montage digressions as director (and screenwriter) Waititi gently examines lead Julian Dennison as his life goes through a pastoral upheaval.

Dennison is a tween on the edge of teen and has been bopping around the foster care system his entire life. He’s at his last attempt at a home placement—Rima Te Wiata is going to take him; she just happens to have a farm on the edge of the New Zealand bush (New Zealand bush being rainforest). So city boy to the wilderness.

We also meet intense but not empathetic child services worker Rachel House (and her suffering flunky Oscar Kightley); they’re going to both be important later on. Especially for absurdist—but good absurdist—humor.

And then there’s Sam Neill; he’s Te Wiata’s husband who she didn’t tell child services about (but they don’t care, apparently). He’s a gruff, tough, farming guy who’s not into the foster dad thing but loves Te Wiata. Waititi leans heavy on making Neill mysterious in the first act, but we soon find out the social awkwardness around Dennison isn’t just for dramatic impact; Neill’s an odd duck. It’s a particularly choice part because no matter what, there’s a hard limit to how much Neill’s going to have to do. The character’s got insurmountable constraints, which gives Neill and Waititi a lot of room to flex without having to worry about breaking through.

Also it’s not Neill’s movie. It’s Dennison’s movie.

Waititi splits Wilderpeople into chapters, with the first playing more like a short subject, complete with its own epical structure. The chapters end up working out, especially in the second act, which has Neill and Dennison thrown together by tragedy, on the run from House while trying to do right by Te Wiata.

Most of the film takes place over uncounted miles of New Zealand rainforest, with occasional stopovers at ranger stations or whatever, and Waititi makes the bush feel like a consistent, familiar setting without it actually ever being the same spot. Except when he does one of the really cool, digitally enabled composite shots—the camera pans in a circle, capturing the characters in the space at different times. Sometimes because they’re lost, sometimes because they’re found, sometimes because they’re on the run. Usually there’s great music accompanying it. If there’s not great music, then it’s just great sound. Wilderpeople, technically, is pristine work.

So while Dennison and Neill play fugitive—no one-armed references but a great Terminator one (though nothing compared to a First Blood riff, which is out of nowhere but absolutely phenomenal because Waititi makes it absurd, hilarious, and also exactly what the scene needs). Waititi’s rather good with the asides and outbursts. They always end up fueling something new in Wilderpeople, even at the very end.

The film’s a bit of a character study grafted to a wilderness adventure, complete with faithful dogs, stupid hunters, and bush folk vs. city folk wisdom. Oh, and Dennison having his “I like girls differently now” moment, after he meets Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne. Ngatai-Melbourne’s only in it for a bit but she’s fantastic and gets to show Dennison’s able to maintain the high level of acting even without the precise structuring of his scenes with the foster family. Dennison’s great, full stop, but Waititi’s also made a film where it’s so strong on everything else it could get away with him being one note.

He’s not, which surges Wilderpeople ahead.

Along the way, we find out more about Dennison, Neill, and Te Wiata while they’re finding out about each other and themselves. Maybe if Te Wiata and Dennison weren’t so good in the first act when they’re doing their getting to know you scenes, Neill would be able to steal some of the thunder but he’s very much there to give Dennison a frequent foil. It’s an exceptionally well-acted film, with Waititi’s direction of those actors as integral as the performances to its success.

The third act falls apart a bit because of course it falls apart a bit; once the film hits a certain scale, it’s inevitable the conclusion is going to be rough. Waititi holds it together through a bit of a too fast segue to the superior epilogue.

Wilderpeople’s fairly great. Waititi’s direction, his script, Dennison, Neill, Te Wiata, House, Ngatai-Melbourne, editors Tom Eagles, Yana Gorskaya, and Luke Haigh—lots of spectacular work on display.

All Rise (2019) s02e02 – Keep Ya Head Up

This episode feels more like the first episode post-pilot rather than first episode post-second season premiere. They’re leaning into the social distancing more, but also less masks and more spit shields so you can see the actors acting. And the show’s seemingly more committed to its 2020 direction, with J. Alex Brinson somehow all of a sudden becoming a far better character in his new role as D.A. office flunky. It’s Kimberly A. Harrison’s script. Harrison has some great stuff in the episode, either for lead Simone Missick or, as it turns out, Brinson.

Everyone else has okay enough material—Lindsay Mendez seems to have lost her season two subplot already and is now playing wing-woman to newly virtual dating Marg Helgenberger (the show also brings in Peter MacNichol to make a joke about fifty-somethings e-dating)—but it’s almost like Missick went to the writers room and told them she’d like an Emmy nomination. She’s got some great scenes this episode, even if all the hard questions about racism and good white people end in non sequiturs (most jarringly with Helgenberger but also with Wilson Bethel).

Bethel doesn’t get to have his arc, which is the point, as he’s centering everything about the episode’s big case around himself. Brinson gets the scene telling Bethel what he’s doing—trying to use this case against a racist high schooler attacking protestors with a baseball bat for not being white to be a better white friend to Missick—and it’s a good scene. Harrison writes the hell out of it, Brinson acts the hell out of it.

Harrison had foreshadowed it—not least of all because it seems like Bethel’s FoxNews Blonde girlfriend Lindsey Gort is probably a MAGA Karen underneath it all—another big change in this episode is “All Rise” just pointing out most white people are either actively racist or complicit in it. Hopefully that change’ll stick. Or maybe they could hire better white ladies—the two new regular ones, Gort and Audrey Corsa—are super-bland.

The courtroom judgement scene where Missick has to figure it all out is pretty good and it certainly seems like this new season is just going to be about Missick’s disillusionment with the American “justice” system, which is a legit goal but it’s also CBS so we’ll see.

Some good performances in the supporting cast—Robyn Lively gets the redemptive terrible white parent arc, which is good since Joel Gretsch is one-note as the blandly racist and generally obtuse surfer dad. Samantha Marie Ware is very “eh” as the law clerk, though the writing on the character isn’t any better.

Guest star Ryan Michelle Bathe continues to be one of the show’s primary assets but she’s a guest star and they’ve promoted much lesser characters (with much lesser performers) to regular. “All Rise” seems to have found its—inevitably problematic—niche. It’s definitely more compelling this year. But also de facto a lot more exploitative. In that CBS night-time drama way.

Bastille Day (2016, James Watkins)

Bastille Day is an abject waste of time from the start, which opens with some very bad “video stock” only it turns out to be supposed to be “bad” video from a smartphone. Not even getting into the opening sequence, a terribly directed one, seems more appropriate for an eighties Porky’s rip-off more than a pulse-pounding espionage thriller. Except Bastille isn’t even a pulse-pounding espionage thriller. It’s a buddy flick, only without any of that fun chemistry between the buddies.

Bastille’s buddies are top-billed Idris Elba, as an American CIA lifer who is more a blunt instrument (it doesn’t matter, director Watkins and co-writer Andrew Baldwin’s espionage details suggest they didn’t even bother checking Wikipedia), and Richard Madden, as an American ex-pat pickpocket in Paris. If Elba and Madden had okay American accents, it wouldn’t matter they’re not, except their accents are terrible. Occasionally the most amusing thing about Bastille is wondering what they must’ve sounded like between takes, when they aren’t retching out Watkins and Baldwin’s insipid dialogue with their very shaky accents. Elba seems more like he’s doing an impression of an American actor than giving a performance, which is a bummer because he comes in late enough to save the movie from Madden and then doesn’t.

Madden’s performance isn’t even serious enough to call a performance so no time on that aspect, sorry. Though it is also fun watching him strain to emote as you can watch him consider making that decision, then not doing it.

It’s impossible to say, of course, how much is director Watkins’s fault. Watkins is really, really bad at the directing. So maybe Elba and Madden would be great if they’d just had the petty cash buyer or graffiti artist take over directing. It certainly wouldn’t be any worse.

Though I do suppose neither Madden or Elba get anywhere near as bad as Kelly Reilly, who hopefully locked her agent in a metal box and dumped them in the ocean after this one. She’s atrocious. And paired with Anatol Yusef, who’s so bad as the Paris station chief (they don’t have station chiefs, the writers didn’t Google deep enough), I spent the movie wondering if he was the producer’s nephew or something. He’s not. He’s a professional actor. He does dramatic moves with his glasses professionally. It’s rough.

The story involves Madden getting involved in a terror attack—Bastille’s politics are dumb but also occasionally, unintentionally insightful—which leads to Antifa (or are they) getting involved with CGI-enhanced demonstrations before, you guessed it, Bastille Day. Elba is the super-agent saving the day without involving the French, namely bureaucrat José Garcia.

Throw in a damsel in distress (presumably native French speaker Charlotte Le Bon, who’s better at delivering her lines in English than Madden for sure) and a scary bad guy leader (Thierry Godard) and you’ve got a movie.

Though Bastille Day is a long ninety-two minutes. It gets even worse after the action sequences start and it turns out they did actually hire someone who can choreograph big guy Elba in fight scenes, Watkins just can’t direct them. At all. There are a couple potentially, actually good fight scenes and Watkins sinks them both. Though editor Jon Harris tries hard to mess them up too. Harris’s never any good at the cutting but during the action scenes he’s downright annoying.

Bastille Day is dumb and even if you’re sympathetic to the actors, it’s not like they haven’t given better performances elsewhere. A still photograph of Madden, for example, probably exhibits a lot more depth than anything in this movie. It’s a bad, dumb script, with some truly incompetent direction from Watkins.

Save Me (2011, Lena Waithe)

Save Me is the story of a kid (Jaheem Toombs) whose house burned down and the rest of his family died and he goes to ask the man who saved him (Sam Bologna) why he saved him and the man doesn’t tell him so the kid lies about it to his new best friend. There are some ostensible layers to it—Toombs’s Black, Bologna’s an old white man—they’re artificial. Waithe’s giving the impression of raising questions, ones she can’t bother even imagining the answers for.

The photography—by Matthew H. Sanders—is about the only solid part of the short. Waithe’s direction is hyper-focused on the actors, who—at best—aren’t very good and are often worse. Save Me occasionally feels like Waithe’s out to embarrass Toombs, who’s been living in foster care since his family burned to death and he’s got a kindly social worker (Stacy Lutz). They have this game where he gives her a quote and she tells him who said it. The gimmick becomes important later on.

Shame Toombs doesn’t seem to have any idea why he’s saying the quote or who and why he’s quoting the person, other than Waithe thinks it’ll be a good detail.

When people use “workshop” as a pejorative, they’re talking about the script to Save Me. Cultural references are more important than the flow of the dialogue, which is fine because the musical accompaniment is more important than the scenes. Despite being in every scene, Toombs’s the film’s least defined character. Waithe’s doing a character study where she’s avoiding character as much as possible. So what should be a great showcase for Toombs is instead a series of opportunities for him to fail.

Then there’s the cloying finale, which has Toombs forgetting how to skateboard; though I suppose that plot hole is a great metaphor for the short itself.

The Mandalorian (2019) s01e08 – Redemption

It’s a good thing series creator and episode writer Jon Favreau has seen Terminator 2, otherwise this episode wouldn’t have an ending.

It’s not clear who decided they ought to straight rip off the flashback sequence from For a Few Dollars More, Favreau or episode director Taika Waititi (who’s better than the worst directors on the series but nowhere near the best ones), but suffice to say… Waititi’s not Sergio Leone and composer Ludwig Göransson is definitely not Ennis Morricone. Unlike George Lucas, who synthesized Ford and Kurosawa with movie serials and special effects… “The Mandalorian”’s Western homages are forced, desperate. And, based on the flashback sequence here, a waste of time.

But… hey… maybe that one’s Boba Fett?

Speaking of movie serials, “The Mandalorian: Season One” does successfully mimic movie serial plotting. You can lop off two or three of the episodes from the middle and run the rest together for a complete narrative. This episode, which spends its first five or six minutes (after ripping off Troops to the point Kevin Rubio ought to try to sue, I mean, it’s Disney, why not) dialing back all of last episode’s cliffhanger’s impact, not just involving the danger to Baby Yoda but also for the heroes. Going to be a returning villain in Season Two new villain Giancarlo Esposito is supposed to be maniacally murderous but he’s more than willing to go for a coffee break to pad out the run time and give our besieged heroes a chance to come up with an escape plan.

It’s a dreadfully predictable episode, especially since Favreau gives the characters lots and lots of dialogue about their situation. They have to argue and plead with one another over and over so their course of action is never a surprise. There aren’t any surprises in the episode.

Unless you count the special Kenner mail-away R2 unit with legs and maybe how no one in the main cast has ever heard of the Jedi (despite Luke Skywalker saving the universe with it and, really, at least Carl Weathers being old enough to be alive when there were Jedi around—the Star Wars timeline is kind of weird how an entire galaxy managed to forget space wizards in, what, eighteen years). Oh, and the “May the Force Be With You” saying.

Emily Swallow’s back as the Mandalorian armorer. She ought to be a series regular. She’s at least fun. She also has zero problem with droids and, no spoiler, the lesson of “The Mandalorian: Season One” is droids are all right. And Baby Yoda is cute.

Is Baby Yoda cute this episode? Definitely. Favreau and Waititi try hard to make lead Pedro Pascal seem protagonist-y enough to shoulder the series burden but… a) there’s not much to shoulder (the show ends up aiming about as high as the unable to hit anything stormtroopers, which is a really weird trope to bring up considering the heroes are supposed to be in so much danger) and b) Baby Yoda. There’s no reason to watch this show except for Baby Yoda. And Baby Yoda delivers.

Also… Favreau’s got some obvious eighties action TV mentalities someone ought to edit out of the scripts (like he’s got an editor)—no explosion means survival, duh. It’s Disney Star Wars, it’s not going to be challenging but… come on. It’s got to be smarter than “Knight Rider.” Or it’s got to have a lot more Baby Yoda per episode.

Supergirl (2015) s05e09 – Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part One

With the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, the CW Arrowverse achieves one of those DC Comics’s successes—they promise they understand, they promise they get it, they promise they’ll do it right, then it’s terrible. Not just regular terrible but also profoundly inept in some manner. See, you know, DC Comics’s comics for the last… twenty years? Twenty-five? Depends on if you want to see “Zero Hour” as the last chapter of the old or first chapter of the new. And Warner’s even done it with the movies–Batman & Robin and Justice League being the most obvious examples. They say they know what they’ve got, then they show they don’t. The fail the project’s potential.

Like, I hoped it would be better than the regular production values on “Supergirl.” It’s worse. Melissa Benoist gets to play second fiddle to Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch’s “Superman Family” backdoor pilot, which is fine because Hoechlin and Tulloch are a hell of a lot less obnoxious than the regular cast this episode. Even though it’s a regular “Supergirl” director (Jesse Warn), somehow Jesse Rath’s totally different. Like no one’s on the same page with the character, actor, writers, director, and it makes his every expository deliver simultaneously exasperating and enraging; the show doesn’t have to be so bad, why aren’t they trying to at least not make it its worst. They ought to be showcasing their strengths.

The show’s shockingly inept at introducing the other heroes, which kind of makes sense since you’ve got to spend time with the regular cast since you’re not paying them all to crossover… but maybe mix it up a bit. Ruby Rose and Katie McGrath doing something has a lot more potential entertainment value than McGrath and Chyler Leigh sniping at each other over McGrath’s supervillain potential. Brandon Routh and David Harewood doing something would beat Routh playing second fiddle to Caity Lotz (who gives the episode’s best performance) and Harewood still having his stupid wisdom lines.

Nicole Maines and Azie Tesfai only show up to herd people out of the waterfront area, which has become the show’s biggest and stupidest action trope now. Is it a Vancouver fun run or something, shooting “run from the huge waterfront in the Kansas City stand-in city” every week?

Basically no one gets anything good. Hoechlin and Tulloch excepted. Hoechlin even gets to be sad about Benoist’s long-lost mom dying because guest star Audrey Marie Anderson (who’s terrible and going to be in all of the crossover episodes, which is really bad) didn’t have enough energy in the Dilithium crystals to save her. It’s a poorly plotted episode. Like, I get there needs to be a bunch for Stephen Amell because it’s his last crossover but they pad they heck out of his scenes. He and future daughter Katherine McNamara have the same conversation at least twice, maybe more, and when it gets time for Amell and “Flash” Grant Gustin to have their big crossover moment they don’t get one because there’s not time, there’s already the “Superman Family” pilot in session.

Worse, it’s cheap. They fight the “shadow demons,” which were the “Crisis” comic disposable baddies but they’re like medieval-ish ghosts… like, cheap CGI model ones. All the action sequences with them are terrible, even worse than the “meet Batwoman” action sequence the show goes with. Warn’s never been a good director but they really should’ve gotten someone else.

They also should’ve hired a good composer special for the crossover. The music is truly horrific.

The CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths is off to its most inevitable start… it’s a shitty DC event crossover.

And while the opening cameos with Robert Wuhl (from Batman 1989) and Burt Ward (from “Batman: The TV Show), along with the clip from “Titans?” They set up a false expectation of competency. Maybe not technical prowess, as the green screen shots are terrible, but they at least suggest the crossover gets its entertainment potential.

Then it fails. Over and over.

Outside convincing me to maybe try “Superman Family” and to reassure me I’m not missing anything on “Arrow,” the show’s greatest success is providing a solid jumping off point.

Supergirl (2015) s05e01 – Event Horizon

Not much has happened since we last saw our heroes; Kara (Melissa Benoist) still hasn’t told Lena (Katie McGrath) about being Supergirl, even though she really, really wants to tell her, she really does… meanwhile Lena has created a talking AI to bitch at about how much she hates Kara for never sharing the secret. Chyler Leigh’s romance with Azie Tesfai is going full steam ahead, while Jesse Rath and Nicole Maines’s one is in a holding pattern (he won’t kiss her, just wants to shake).

Meanwhile Julie Gonzalo has bought CatCo and is making things miserable for the staff—she wants clicks, not hard-hitting journalism. So Mehcad Brooks is raring to quit.

But otherwise, not much has happened. More than most shows, this one feels like a direct follow-up to the previous season closer. Same show, slightly different supporting cast.

Leigh pushes Benoist all episode to tell McGrath the truth, McGrath’s super-Alexa pushes her to kill the human race (wait, no, maybe just Supergirl; the Alexa is a tad too obviously ready to Skynet). When the show finally gets to its big soapy showdown between Benoist and McGrath, full of tears and so on, it’s actually not bad. Benoist is really good. McGrath is good. They act the hell out of the soap opera. Unfortunately, whenever McGrath’s supposed to be Luthoring it up and plotting against her friends, she’s not good. Worse, the contrast between backstabber McGrath and plotting McGrath just reminds how much better “Supergirl” used to be at the friendship stuff. The histrionics at this point are way too over-the-top, so it’s impressive how well Benoist handles them, but they weren’t always turned so high.

And then there’s something about J’onn (David Harewood) having an evil brother (voiced by the “Justice League” cartoon’s Phil LaMarr, who doesn’t do a great job… the Martians are already goofy as hell, LaMarr just makes it worse). But mostly it’s McGrath being two-faced and Benoist being naive.

Peter’s To-Do List (2019, Jon Watts)

Peter's To-Do List is some next level lazy. It’s an “all-new” short film included on the Spider-Man: Far From Home home video releases. It’s actually just a montage mostly cut from the movie; better yet, the footage also appears in the deleted scenes section of the disc. There are no opening titles, no end credits, nothing new.

But it’s a good montage. It’s not like it’s at all bad, it’s well-made, It’s funny, it moves well. It’s just not “all-new.”

And it’s not particularly essential. Or even inessential. The important stuff from List do appear in the movie proper, so it’s just like… why. Well, I get why—Sony has a long history of aggrandizing deleted scenes to create special features (including extended versions of the movie made without filmmaker involvement, just reinserting deleted scenes).

Where To-Do List is… potentially interesting is in its positioning and promotion. “All-New Short Film” is a claim and a promise. To-Do List fails the claim but maybe not the promise. It’s Tom Holland being adorable as he goes around trying to get ready for the Far From Home part of the movie. He’s got a list of errands to run, culminating in taking down a bunch of gangsters. That sequence is rather good—and it’s impressive to see how, even in under four minutes, Holland and the filmmakers are able to maintain this consistent tone between Holland’s mundane tasks and his technologically accelerated fisticuffs with bad guys.

Tack on some titles, some credits (which would be difficult, I imagine, because then they might owe residuals), To-Do List would almost be “all-new.” With the right titles and credits anyway.

It’s even lazier than the old “Marvel One-Shots,” which was a series of short home video exclusives mostly made out of cut scenes and Clark Gregg shooting inserts. That series eventually got better. But I don’t think even the laziest one was as lazy as To-Do List.

I mean, technically it’s Recommended but only because it’s an incomplete. Hell, throw on a teaser for the rest of the movie and it’s basically a concept trailer. Instead, it’s a short mid-quel (defined by Petrana Radulovic as “side adventures taking place during the events of the original film”), just made out of cut footage….

So lazy.

But an amusing three and a half minutes.