Good Bye, Lenin! (2003, Wolfgang Becker)

Somewhere near the end of the second act, Good Bye Lenin! starts having some narration problems. At first they seem like a little bit too lazy writing or, given Lenin has five screenwriters, a too many hands situation. There’s just a disconnect between protagonist and narrator Daniel Brühl’s experience and what the film’s doing. Then, as Lenin enters its muddled third act, it’s clear the disconnect is either by design—which seems unlikely unless the point is to make Brühl into a narcissist—or director Becker missed the boat.

Lenin doesn’t just ignore the most interesting points it raises—with some optics because they’re all for the ladies and despite the movie being about Brühl being an exceptional mama’s boy—it doesn’t even do right by Brühl. Ostensibly, the film’s about listless East German young adult Brühl’s complicated history with reunification; his mom, played by Katrin Sass, who the film manages to diss, showcase-wise, which is incredible given she’s in it all the time–she was a Party member who spent her life spreading the good word and then she was in a heart attack-induced coma when the Wall fell.

When she wakes up, the doctors tell Brühl she can’t handle any excitement, which he takes to mean he’s got to lie about the Wall falling to keep her alive. So it’s a bunch of hijinks. Eventually it gets real, with Brühl and sister Maria Simon learning maybe mama Sass told them some lies too. And then it flushes all the real for more hijinks, including Brühl’s romance with nurse Chulpan Khamatova. Khamatova has a “subplot” about having problems with Brühl’s elaborate scheme to lie to Sass, but it’s really just a scene and the end of even the pretense of agency. Sass doesn’t get a name in the credits—she does in the film, but she’s just mama in the credits—and despite the female characters outweighing the male, the film doesn’t even try to beat Bechdel. Even when it’s not about Brühl, Becker’s there to make sure it’s not about anyone else in the meantime.

When it seems like Lenin’s about Brühl’s experience with the Wall falling, it’s good. When it seems like it’s about Brühl and Simon’s family secrets drama, it’s better. When it’s about Brühl gaslighting Sass? It’s always running out of steam. Especially once everyone starts calling Brühl on the gag going on too long, only then the gag just keeps going on too long. There’s also the subtext about Brühl—and many of the former East Germans—wishing things would go back to the way they used to be. Not everyone wants to drink the literal Coca-Cola.

Lenin does zilch with it.

Sass is great. Simon’s really good. Florian Lukas is adorable as Brühl’s buddy, who helps him make fake newscasts for Sass’s benefit. That subplot’s a double-edged sword once Lukas’s video production techniques become more interesting than the main plot.

Brühl’s fine. He doesn’t have a character arc. He doesn’t learn anything. Taking those considerations into account, he’s fine.

Good supporting turn from Burghart Klaußner, who the movie positions like a deus ex machina, but then ends up just being background.

Good Bye Lenin! ought to be a lot better. It does Sass incredibly wrong, and doesn’t do Simon or Brühl any favors. Maybe they needed a sixth screenwriter.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) s01e06 – One World, One People

Turns out forty-five minutes is the just right length for a Falcon and the Winter Soldier, even if Sebastian Stan gets startlingly little to do in the final episode of a show where his character’s name is in the title. Stan ends the series with less of a character arc than either extremely shallow villain Erin Kellyman or murderous Captain America Wyatt Russell (it’s really bad but I think Chris Pratt’s better than Russell, who manages to be worse with less than dialogue than with more here).

A lot of the episode is Anthony Mackie’s, which is fine and good and maybe even great, if it wasn’t all a bunch of respectability politics for the Black guy in the end and failing upward for the white one. No real spoilers but let’s just say there’s a Don Cheadle-sized hole in the episode, which seems to be more about setting up casting in subsequent Disney+ Marvel shows than resolving anything for the protagonists.

There’s a bunch of action; most of it’s really bland superpeople fighting in cities at night stuff—though I guess there are some cool flying sequences—before there’s a big warehouse fight section. The warehouse fight section, which involves a reveal I called last episode, is fairly bad. I was actually expecting it to be good—director Kari Skogland did what I thought was a Welles homage a couple episodes ago but I think it must’ve been a mistake. The action directing this episode wouldn’t fly on an Arrowverse show.

Good acting from Mackie, which is all that matters (mostly because no one else has enough dialogue for it to matter), and it’s nice to see Carl Lumbly but the resolution on him is peculiar.

Everything about the show, however, ends up being a cop out. There’s no significant character development—the entire cast (so Daniel Brühl, Adepero Oduye, Emily VanCamp, even Julia-Louis Dreyfus) pops up in the epilogue to remind viewers they were on the show (in Oduye’s case) and they can return for future MCU ventures (everyone else).

Last episode I thought Falcon and the Winter Soldier would’ve worked better as a movie, but not anymore; not with such a nothing finish.

There’s some cool technology special effects (who doesn’t want to see Iron Man-tech but from Wakanda) but it’s barely in it and doesn’t get a good showcase because Skogland’s really bad at the action scenes here.

Again, no spoilers, but there is no Poe and Finn get girlfriends at the last minute—even though there’s a threat—but there’s also no real resolve to Stan and Mackie’s character relationship arc because Stan’s not in the episode enough for them to do one. He and Mackie have like two and a half scenes together and I’m being generous counting one of them. The half is because there’s no dialogue just music for a montage. And the generous one is one of the boring action scenes.

Falcon and the Winter Soldier seems to be promising something more interesting will be coming for everyone involved—except Oduye (oh, wait, I don’t think she gets any dialogue here)—which is never a great way to end five hours and forty-five minutes.

Stay for the end credits if you want a whiff of a “surprise.” No wonder they ran WandaVision first.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) s01e05 – Truth

A couple things real quick. First, given how much this episode’s opening resolve of the cliffhanger feels like the actual dramatic beat—and is a brutal (in a good way) fight scene—it really seems like the best version of “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” is a two and a half hour movie and not a six hour limited series. Especially given how badly the Erin Kellyman arc goes this episode. There was no reason to spend so much time on it just for her to do a Batman & Robin villain team-up arc. Though I suppose there’s a potential twist with one of her allies (for next time, because after the opening action, there’s no more action this episode).

Second, Wyatt Russell is a rather bad actor. Admittedly, if he were any better the show might all of a sudden be making a lot of statements about what it means to be a United States soldier out in the world, but, wow, he’s bad here. He seems to have learned tough guy acting from watching his dad in Tango & Cash.

On to the actual episode, which has Anthony Mackie going to Carl Lumbly’s house to have a heart-to-heart about what it means to be a Black Captain America. It’s an all right scene, mostly because Lumbly’s great and Mackie works well with him, but there’s no actual character development to the sequence. It’s just to give Mackie a reason to go back to the U.S. (also because the MCU has “Star Trek” teleporter technology to get the cast around the globe—most of the present action, if they weren’t cheating, would be people on airplanes).

After Mackie sees Lumbly, he goes back to sister Adepero Oduye’s to resolve that story arc from the first episode. It’s very much “fix the house to fix the relationship” stuff, albeit very amusing once Sebastian Stan shows up to help. Oduye gets to do a bit of emotional labor for Mackie and she’s good, but she never gets to have much fun in the series. Outside grinning at Stan, who turns on the charm to flirt with his new best friend’s sister.

There’s a way too fast resolution to Daniel Brühl’s arc, but he’s just going back into the guest star drawer until the MCU needs him again and he didn’t really have any character development so it’s not too much of a loss. He does manage more subtext in a single take than pretty much anyone else this episode but still… outside Russell, it’s because no one else gets quite the material.

Though Mackie and Stan do get to have a heart-to-heart, which isn’t anywhere near as well-written as it ought to be—credited writer Dalan Musson seems to know what scenes he needs, just not how to write them—before Stan goes off so Mackie can have a Rocky training montage (sadly, even though the episode’s got Henry Jackman’s best music in the series to date, the episode whiffs on a perfect Gonna Fly Now sequence).

Even with the lackadaisical pacing and repetitive exposition dumps, it’s maybe the best episode. Best or second best. Presumably they’ll be able to wrap everything up next time with a big fight in New York City.

Of course, if Michael K. Williams comes back as his Incredible Hulk character it’ll be the best show ever. Kidding. But one can hope.

There is a big fun cameo from Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a shadow villain, presumably setting up future appearances. Though Louis-Dreyfus then does take part in the show’s continued shitting on Gabrielle Byndloss (as Russell’s wife), who’s only there to remind us even though Russell certainly seems to be a white supremacist, he does have a Black best friend and a multicultural wife so he couldn’t possibly be… could he?

Anyway. It’s not impossible next episode will be good, though it’s very unlikely it’ll be good enough to make the first half of the series worth it. Mackie, Stan, and Kellyman deserve better from the franchise, while the audience deserves an apology for the Russell casting.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) s01e03 – Power Broker

This episode feels the most like an overlong section of a movie, as heroes Sebastian Stan and Anthony Mackie have to break bad guy Daniel Brühl out of prison so Brühl can help them. The show’s quick about the breakout, then slow about everything else. Including having multiple expository dumps for supporting cast members to give them something to do—otherwise new Captain America and fascist thug Wyatt Russell (sidekick Clé Bennett is starting to notice him breaking under the stress) and hippie revolutionary Erin Kellyman (who goes from feeding refugees to mass murder faster than a Thanos snap) wouldn’t have anything to do this episode.

Of course, while Mackie and Stan are in the episode the entire time, they’re just there to give Brühl someone to out act. Show’s called “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” (admittedly, Stan gets a whole bunch more than Mackie here) but it’s the Brühl hour, with asides to also returning to the franchise Emily VanCamp.

The boys have to go to a lawless twenty-first century pirate’s paradise, Madripoor (from the X-Men comics, but they don’t spend the entire episode pretending Hugh Jackman’s going to show up at least), where they find VanCamp’s been living since her last outing (Captain America 3, also where Brühl showed up).

There’s a lot of action for VanCamp, there’s a very happening party, there’s Brühl lecturing Mackie about what it means to be a Black man in America, there’s a surprise guest star at the end. It’s fine. Nothing about it seems like they needed to make a six episode series. The episode’s got a couple action beats you could keep, the rest is just filler and promise of eventual (not this episode or maybe even this season) “payoff.”

Director Kari Skogland does well with all the action, but really she just sets the shot and lets Brühl walk through the scene and away with the show. If he was always going to be this compelling a guest star, they should’ve brought him in earlier. He and VanCamp bring a decisiveness the show’s been lacking. Not to fault Mackie or Stan, of course; it’s the script. Derek Kolstad’s script very definitely centers on Brühl, centers on VanCamp. It’s like “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” is trying to prove the case Mackie and Stan shouldn’t have their own show, let alone movie.

Maybe it’ll change next episode.

Again, whatever, it’s fine. But it’s also pretty lazy.

Also, there’s a very strange, very pointless supervillain mask moment; it’s pointless in the narrative, it’s pointless for the character, really doesn’t belong. It’s just for the trailers. Actually, there are a number of made-for-the-trailer shots this episode. But they usually aren’t pointless. “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” is overly verbose as is, the show doesn’t need to add any more padding.

The Alienist (2018) s02e08 – Better Angels

There are enough ups and downs, twists and turns, decisions and take-backs, once it’s clear who’s going to live, who’s going to die, who’s going to marry, who’s going to not, the rest of the episode—when “Angel of Darkness” tries pretending it’s been a hangout series of Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning and not a pilot for Fanning and her female detective agency… it could just stop already.

There’s some actual good stuff in the episode for Fanning, who gets to do an alter ego with the criminal thing opposite Rosy McEwen, which could be amazing if they only had better writing and directing, ends up not being a waste of time. Fanning’s worth watching through the character development.

There are some very big developments with long-term ramifications for the series (which is currently out of source novels so it maybe doesn’t matter and is just the show being exceptionally cheap in the last half hour ever) and the show executes them effectively enough. It goes through the right pay-off motions and resolves all the outstanding romances satisfactorily enough. I mean, for the show, not for me. There’s no scene where Lara Pulver and Brühl are actually good and not the equivalent of white bread in soured milk. But, script-wise, whatever, it’s fine.

McEwen and Frederick Schmidt have an okay conclusion. Not great. McEwen’s arc for the episode is rather anticlimactic.

And the rehabilitation of Ted Levine is now apparently complete. It seemed head in that direction last episode but here they make it explicit. It seems inevitable after Levine’s first scene has him espousing a rather Marxist take for the character vis-a-vis workers’ rights. “Angel of Darkness”’s attempts to instill 2019 TV values in an 1898 is occasionally annoying but rarely worth an eye roll.

It’s TNT, after all. And, you know, if only Fanning is able to come back for another series….

That’d be just fine.

Or, better yet, she could get a part in a better project.

The Alienist (2018) s02e07 – Last Exit to Brooklyn

Rosy McEwen and especially Frederick Schmidt are a lot better this episode. They’re on the run and having couple’s arguments over their new “adoptee.” Schmidt wants to take a reward for the baby’s return—with Ted Levine acting as the go-between, of course, without the good guys (Dakota Fanning, Daniel Brühl, and Luke Evans) knowing about it, also of course—and McEwen wants to kill him for even suggesting the thing.

The previous episode ended with McEwen and Schmidt Brookyln-bound, and Fanning sure it meant something, like McEwen was going home to familiar territory to counterattack or something. But—and the episode, script credited to Tom Smuts and Amy Berg, just skips over it—McEwen doesn’t have some rosy history back home. In fact, we soon find out from her mother, Matilda Ziegler in a “probably too good for ‘The Alienist’” performance, things didn’t end well for anyone.

So are they in Brooklyn to catch a ship? There was nowhere else? It’s unclear. There’s definitely a plan. It’s just not discussed. And seems like a bad one.

Thanks to Levine (of course to extremis), McEwen finds out the Scooby gang has been around her mother’s place and retaliates, leading to some pretty intense sequences, especially for this season of “Alienist.” Yes, it finds another kid—Brooke Carter—to throw into a dangerous situation, but Carter’s not exactly in danger (yet, presumably)—but director David Caffrey does do a good job with McEwen and Schmidt as a late nineteenth century romantic criminal duo. Given how flaccid the subplots for the main cast—Brühl is in his chemistry-free romance with Lara Pulver, who’s comically affectless, while Evans and Fanning try to figure out their whole thing. Evans’s father-in-law-to-be Matt Letscher is getting impatient.

Though it’s Letscher’s best performance in a while. Maybe not having him opposite Levine helps.

Big cliffhanger setup for the finale. There’s a lot of intriguing Fanning acting this episode and Evans is more likable than as of late. This season of “Alienist” feels like they had enough for four episodes and stretched it to eight.

Better than ten, I guess.

The Alienist (2018) s02e06 – Memento Mori

Thank goodness this episode isn’t by the writer I like—though no blame on credited writer Alyson Feltes, whatever’s wrong with “Alienist” at this point isn’t going to be fixed by a better scene here or there. In addition to having to sit through Daniel Brühl and Lara Pulver on another date, where he kink-shames and she corrects him—see, the first season would just let them be close-minded nineteenth century bigots instead of trying to reinvent them (unless the source novel got a little woker)—but as the conversation turns to sex… Brühl seems to forget he used to have a live-in de facto sex servant last season.

It’s both a weird omission and also not. “The Alienist: Season Two: Angel of Darkness” tries hard to make its heroes as heroic as possible given their constraints. With Brühl it gives him so little to do—though there’s something with kid patient Lucas Bond this episode—while Luke Evans has had his nothing plot engaged to cultural menace Matt Letscher’s illegitimate daughter Emily Barber and waited for a chance to romance Dakota Fanning again. The plotting of this season is entirely ginned up. I wasn’t even a fan of the first season’s mystery but at least it was a mystery. This episode sets up the grand finale and it’s all fairly ho-hum.

Rosy McEwen, who in addition to wanting a baby and being willing to kill the ones she doesn’t like, plays Lady MacBeth for criminal type Frederick Schmidt. What’s funny about Schmidt is he’s this broadly cast nothing character when he technically ought to be the second most important villain. But terrible plotting. Also Schmidt probably couldn’t handle it. McEwen’s fine. She’s got better moments and worse ones, but even having better ones puts her ahead in “Alienist.”

So the last two episodes are apparently going to be everyone teaming up to save a rich baby—the last rich baby wasn’t rich enough for everyone to get involved, just the good guys, but now Ted Levine is along but he’s not going to take orders from Fanning because she’s a she. And, oddly, it does seem wrong. I’m not saying for sure “The Alienist: Season Two: Angel of Darkness” is abjectly ahistorical, but… it sure seems abjectly ahistorical. The show’s verisimilitude is a shrug in “what do you expect, it’s basic cable.”

The Alienist (2018) s02e05 – Belly of the Beast

Did I say nice things last time about Lara Pulver, who plays the object of Daniel Brühl’s affection. I need to take them back. She and Brühl go on an Absinthe date and it’s a very underwhelming scene.

We’ve just recovered from the cliffhanger postscript and the whole city is looking for Rosy McEwen. Everyone’s busy and distracted enough—both the character and the writers, it turns out—they let Dakota Fanning gets away with not really calling the cops to a crime scene. Instead Douglas Smith (who looks so underwhelmed to be here) and Matthew Shear stand-in for the cops, which doesn’t seem likely.

The writers distraction has to do with keeping Ted Levine away from Fanning even though they ought to be on a collusion course. Levine has a pretty nice moment—for him on this show—opposite Michael McElhatton as the show closes down one of its plot lines. I was wondering how they were going to serialize the story and apparently we’re getting the first four episodes doing one thing, the second four episodes doing something else. With some crossover. But with McEwen established as the main villain now… well, time to concentrate on the “Angel of Darkness.”

So it’d be nicer if McEwen were better. Or if the narrative weren’t weird about her. She and boyfriend Frederick Schmidt’s sex life gets a very unnecessary emphasis, while trying to gross out the audience. And Fanning and Brittany Marie Batchelder. Black woman Batchelder gets some more to do, including having Matt Letscher and daughter Emily Barber—Barber is ostensible man of action Luke Evans’s fiancée—be racist at her just to show off how awful rich people were in 1898 or whatever, but nothing after that message is delivered.

The conclusion is thriller stuff for Fanning and Evans, adequately directed by Clare Kilner, and while the episode’s fair for this series… if I’d noticed Gina Gionfriddo co-writing when I watched it… I might’ve gotten hopeful. I’m glad I didn’t see her name so I didn’t have to be disappointed.

The Alienist (2018) s02e04 – Gilded Cage

I did go into this episode somewhat hopeful. It’s not the same writer as last episode, but it’s the same director (Clare Kilner). Sadly, outside some good direction to Luke Evans, who still has zippo to do in the show—though he gets a subplot about supporting Black female reporter Brittany Marie Batchelder at the New York Times in the late 1800s and… I mean, okay, there are some jokes. The show doesn’t make them. But it’s not hard to roll your eyes at the show’s desperate attempt to elevate Evans to professional respectability without actually giving him anything to do for himself.

It’s fine, I mean, Batchelder is good. Better than most of the cast. But she really ought to be working with Dakota Fanning because it’s Dakota Fanning’s show.

The episode’s main plot is Fanning’s detective Melanie Field undercover at Michael McElhatton’s hospital, which is also an abortion clinic for the rich guy’s mistresses, whether they want an abortion or not. There’s some actual tension and suspense with that storyline, which is something for “The Alienist: Angel of Darkness.” The first season was viciously cruel to its characters. This season is a lot less intense for them (and the viewer), despite the whole kidnapped baby thing. Especially since it seems possible the currently kidnapped baby is going to survive. It seems long (halfway?) into the season to kill it later.

Oh, there’s also Evans’s engagement ball, which Fanning kind of crashes and kind of ruins by being supportive of Evans but not romantically interested in him, a very evil thing for a woman to do, no doubt. Lots of jokes at Evans’s fiancée Emily Barber’s expense. Though no creepy stuff this time for her and dad Matt Letscher. I’ve cooled on Letscher on the show. The characters are all very one note, especially this season’s characters; even Ted Levine in his leprechaun impression is better than the new players.

There’s a potentially interesting development after the big—and narratively destitute—suspense sequence. It’d help a lot if Field were better or the writing were better. The episode introduces Lara Pulver as a love interest for Daniel Brühl, which is not a great sequence but if it keeps Brühl from messing up the main plot, I guess it’s fine.

The episode is decidedly lesser than the previous one, but… at least it’s half over. And maybe the previous episode’s writer will be back. Fingers crossed anyway.

The Alienist (2018) s02e03 – Labyrinth

Okay, whoever oversees “The Alienist” and thought to hire Gina Gionfriddo to write this episode but not the whole series… is it good this person hired a competent writer, or is it bad they knew to hire a competent writer but chose not to the rest of the time. Given the show is all about Dakota Fanning and her late nineteenth century female detective agency—Gionfriddo writes Fanning so well I want a team-up with “Miss Fisher,” time differences be damned—someone should’ve thought to get a writer who can write for Fanning. And Gionfriddo does a fantastic job with it. It does from being peculiarly not as bad as usual to actually not bad to wait a second to oh, wow, it’s actually good. Is “Alienist: Angel of Darkness” going to be good now?

No.

No, it is not. Because even though Gionfriddo writes this great arc for Fanning as she goes to visit Michael McElhatton’s hospital of horrors, where she meets and bonds with nurse Rosy McEwen, everything falls apart once Fanning checks in with Daniel Brühl. There’s a big exposition dump as Fanning recounts everything, which manages to be double negative—not only is it an utter waste of the audience’s time, having Fanning report to Brühl’s got some optics. Or would, if anyone was pretending Brühl’s important to the story. Oh, wait, he gets Bruna Cusí to almost sort of remember something important but not really and it takes up half the episode and they pretend it’s thrilling and dangerous.

Except it’s not.

The good stuff is the McEwen and Fanning bonding stuff and the Fanning detecting stuff. The rest of it is just “Alienist” crap, complete with Matthew Shear’s ostensible C plot turning out to be an absolutely nothing subplot because “Alienist” loves to feint at subplots for the familiar background players. Always has.

And Luke Evans?

He’s in this show still.

It’s unclear why. Even more so than Brühl. Just give Fanning a show. And hire Gionfriddo to run it.