What We Do in the Shadows (2019) s03e03 – Gail

I’m feeling a lot better about this season. Or, more accurately, I feel like I don’t have to worry about this season. Given the significant changes—filming during Rona, Jemaine Clement leaving the writers room—I’d forgotten the standard season-to-season change. They’ve been away for a while, the momentum’s slowed, the energy’s changed. But they’re doing just fine. No small thanks to the script, credited to Marika Sawyer, which does an excellent parsing out of the cast for the episode.

The main cast will all come together eventually, but most of the episode has them split. Natasia Demetriou and Kayvan Novak have to work together on Vampiric Council business—in this case, updating the website—so Matt Berry and Mark Proksch have their own adventure together. They’re both selflessly—though verbosely—keeping the other company as the household adjusts to the new normal of Demetriou and Novak working together.

Except, of course, Novak is skirting his Council duties to hook up with his previously never mentioned regular lady friend for the last forty years, guest star Aida Turturro. Despite being the center of all the drama, Turturro actually doesn’t do much. She gets talked about a lot—all the men are convinced Demetriou doesn’t like her because women are all jealous of each other, which might not be as funny of a joke if Demetriou and Turturro weren’t great (and if it didn’t have a female writer credited)—and Harvey Guillén’s hilariously jealous of her getting Novak’s attention. She’s much more the subject of the episode than an active player.

It’s mostly Novak’s episode. While Berry and Proksch split their subplot, the rest supports lovestruck Novak, with Guillén and Demetriou fixating on him for different reasons. The resolution will bring in one of the series’s regular villains, and the episode wrings all the potential out of it well. Novak’s got to deal with some worst-case scenarios and does so in his wonderfully obtuse manner.

There are lots of terrific laughs; each actor—except Guillén, who’s very supporting this episode—gets at least five. Then some outstanding ensemble laughs. Plus, Kristen Schaal is back. She’s almost a regular, which I really hope continues. More than anyone else at this point, Schaal’s the audience’s avatar. And, despite not having a bunch to do, Turturro’s fantastic; great guest casting.

Again, lots of credit to the script for the character balancing and better incorporating the Vampiric Council arc into the episode plots. And maybe just giving Berry enough to do.

Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles (2001, Simon Wincer)

Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles is a terrible movie. But it’s not offensive, which makes it peculiar. It’s cringeworthy, with most of its L.A. jokes being about ten years too late. It even has a movie studio finish–an awful sequence–which doesn’t rip-off of Beverly Hills Cop III, but does make one remember what happens when franchises go stale… but try anyway.

Los Angeles is the very boring story of Paul Hogan and Linda Kozlowski taking their son (Serge Cockburn) to America for the first time. Kozlowski’s filling in at a newspaper and Hogan is just going to hang out. Then there’s this dumb story about Jere Burns and Jonathan Banks being corrupt movie producers. I think it’s supposed to be mysterious. It fails on that front.

Kozlowski is awful, though I suppose it could just be the awful script. Hogan’s innate charm carries him through pretty well. There’s no action though; he’s an sixty year-old man after all.

Simon Wincer’s direction is more appropriate for an episode of a crappy television show than a film. That ending action sequence I mentioned earlier is unbearable. It’s boring. Wincer doesn’t have a single well-directed sequence in the entire film.

He gets no help from his crew, either. David Burr’s photography is lousy and Basil Poledouris’s score is embarrassing for someone of his ability.

There are a couple of surprisingly good laughs at the end, especially considering the dearth of humor preceding them.

It’s embarrassing for everyone involved.

0/4 ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Simon Wincer; screenplay by Matthew Berry and Eric Abrams, based on characters created by Paul Hogan; director of photography, David Burr; edited by Terry Blythe; music by Basil Poledouris; production designer, Leslie Binns; produced by Hogan and Lance Hool; released by Paramount Pictures.

Starring Paul Hogan (Mick Dundee), Linda Kozlowski (Sue Charleton), Serge Cockburn (Mikey Dundee), Alec Wilson (Jacko), Aida Turturro (Jean Ferraro), Jere Burns (Arnan Rothman), Jonathan Banks (Milos Drubnik), Kaitlin Hopkins (Miss Mathis) and Paul Rodriguez (Diego).


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OTHER CROCODILE DUNDEE FILMS
OTHER FILMS DIRECTED BY SIMON WINCER
OTHER 2001 RELEASES

Denise Calls Up (1995, Hal Salwen)

About ten years ago, the best independent movies–as Fox Searchlight wasn’t around yet–were coming out of Sony Pictures Classics. Denise Calls Up has disappeared. It’s not out on DVD and the VHS is out of print. Hal Salwen is similarly gone–his last film is available, pan and scanned, on DVD, but the one he made after Denise has never been released. The New York independent filmmakers of the 1990s–the only good independent industry of the 1990s–have mostly disappeared….

Denise is an odd film. It’s structured around phone calls. The film is, watched today, a monument to the call waiting-era, which is now mostly replaced by e-mail. Except a film about a bunch of people e-mailing each other doesn’t allow dialogue, which means there wouldn’t be much for the actors to do. Denise gives its actors a lot to do. I think this film is the first one I ever saw Liev Schreiber in. Schreiber–to some degree–caught on and managed to resist Hollywood crap for a while, always doing smaller work. But this film is also the first place I saw Alanna Ubach, who was around for a minute (particularly Clockwatchers), then disappeared. These two are the only ones I’m going to mention, but everyone in the film is great. I can’t figure out how Salwen got such good performances out of them, given the telephone-only talking nature of the film.

While the telephone-specific elements of the film may or may not be outdated, Denise‘s theme of isolation in American culture is more than valid, probably moreso today. Salwen’s an exceptional filmmaker too–Denise is particularly well-edited and the location manager is my hero–it’s unthinkable that he hasn’t gone on to anything more. I hope Sony gets around to releasing it on DVD, just so more people can see it.