Tag: Timothy Dalton

Doom Patrol (2019) s01e07 – Therapy Patrol

For “Doom Patrol,” there’s before Therapy Patrol and after Therapy Patrol. It doesn’t just have an exceptional reveal at the end, which informs the entire episode–Therapy is fragmented, following each character as they prepare for a morning’s team briefing—and the reveal doesn’t just explain the whole thing, director Rob Hardy and writer Neil Reynolds manage to package it in just the right way for optimum success.

But the episode’s also got great April Bowlby, who gets this awesome combination of comedic, dramatic, and special effects sequence. And Matt Bomer’s character is finally, finally, finally paying off. It’s episode seven, so it’s a tad delayed, but the show finally addresses all of the awkward flashbacks to Bomer’s past—a closeted Air Force flier trying to prove he’s got the right stuff—and turns out to be an amazing resolution. Or development. Especially once you start realizing what’s going on and the show just keeps at it until it’s the right moment.

The rest of the episode is pretty much the same way. Great Robotman stuff from Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan, great Joivan Wade stuff.

Wade’s performance is a little looser than it could be—especially given how great Bowlby and Bomer get—but it’s an exceptionally affecting subplot, which has Wade getting back onto social media for the first time since his accident four years before.

Meanwhile, Robotman is fixating on his former mechanic (I think) who was sleeping with his dead wife (who Robotman killed in a car accident) adopting his daughter. The showdown with the mechanic, played by Alan Heckner, figures into a couple of the other character threads. Including the big finish.

Diane Guerrero has some stuff too, which I’d been dreading, but it’s nowhere near as bad as I feared. It’s quick, in fact. They hurry through Guerrero’s stuff because there still needs to be time for the team to try talk therapy. So after doing all this great character subplots, the episode brings it all together and lets them talk amongst themselves….

Which might not be a great idea given their temperaments.

It’s a fantastic hour of television. Like I said… before Therapy Patrol, after Therapy Patrol. My expectations for the show have gone way up.

Doom Patrol (2019) s01e06 – Doom Patrol Patrol

I failed to appreciate how nice it was to have Diane Guerrero not playing her regular character, Jane. Or Hammerhead. Hammerhead is the tough one. Guerrero’s not good at either of them. She’s also not good as the Babydoll one. She’s good as the blue-eyed one, nothing else.

Especially not when everyone else in “Doom Patrol” is starting to settle nicely into their roles. Though Brendan Frasier’s “performance” hinges on his ability to swear with the right inflection, but his audio gets processed anyway so… it’s like the Matt Bomer in the Invisible Man mask. Is he really doing it?

Riley Shanahan’s good in the physical Robotman performance this episode. Phil Morris shows up to run some upgrades on son Cyborg (Joivan Wade) and he ends up talking to Robotman about his bad design. Again, excellent performance from Morris, which sort of elevates the whole thing. Wade’s got a better handle on this material too. All the males awkwardly bond and well. Good character development.

While Morris is upgrading Wade, Guerrero has taken Bomer and April Bowlby to track down the “Doom Patrol,” who turn out to be a fifties or sixties superhero group with some connection to Timothy Dalton. They find now retired heroes Will Kemp, Jasmine Kaur, and maybe Lesa Wilson (it’s like they budgeted the episode and said only two of them get to talk) teaching school at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.

Kidding! Grant Morrison wouldn’t be that obvious. It’s not like Alan Moore ever wrote X-Men.

Alimi Ballard—who’s always been flat in the guest spots I’ve seen since “Numbers”—turns in a really nice performance as the school’s headmaster and Dalton’s man on the ground. Only things aren’t what they seem with the mutants… sorry, sorry, metahumans… or their professors.

Some eventually excellent material for Bowlby even if she does get some absurd dialogue about the sixty years she’s spent as a literal hermit. Ditto Bomer but it doesn’t matter for Bomer. It gets in the way of Bowlby, which is a mistake.

Also is a mistake is playing her off Kemp, who’s exceptionally flat.

There’s some iffy stuff in the end song montage–Just a Perfect Day, I forgot to mention the Bowie and Bolan in previous ones; the music’s mostly great.

But the content’s iffy. Especially Guerrero’s should be hard but is instead quizzically soft cliffhanger. She’s got a lot of character reveals to work through but the whole point of her character is not to do actual character development.

Otherwise, solid episode.

Doom Patrol (2019) s01e05 – Paw Patrol

Is Diane Guerrero’s core identity—“Doctor Harrison,” who’s got ice-blue eyes like she’s from the “Star Trek: TOS” Shatner pilot or maybe someone in X-Men—supposed to be the far and away best performance Guerrero gives on the show or is it unintentional? But also the best character for her to play? Because Dr. Harrison doesn’t play well with the rest of the cast—there’s also no explanation for the lack of aging between the present and the late seventies because no on in “Doom Patrol” ages.

I wonder if there’s a note about that decision. “Doom Patrol” makes a lot of little (and big) decisions and it’d be interesting to know how they reached them. In a good way. Because “Doom Patrol” never feels over-produced. There’s a particularly nice fluidity to this episode, which concludes a two-parter about the end of the world—an all-seeing eye is going to wink everything out of existence with a resolution–if comics accurate—is either Grant Morrison trying to make fun of Alan Moore or so desperately try to rip him off Alan Moore has to say his name or think about him or something.

And if it’s just the show… I mean, it’s from Swamp Thing Annual. Like. Come on.

Back to the compliments. The show just brings Alan Tudyk and Timothy Dalton back without any fanfare—Shoshana Sachi is probably the best writer the show’s got—and beautifully integrates them into the already running plot. See, Tudyk and Dalton can’t just let the world end if they’re going to destroy the world in their rivalry to… be rivals.

Dalton’s really good. He’s not as good with Joivan Wade as one would hope—did they not audition Wade from this episode, they should have—but having him back, as literally shoehorned as it may be, is just what the show needs to kick the character development into gear.

Much better performance from Mark Sheppard but it’s only because Sachi doesn’t goof around with the stupid magic stuff they did last episode. It helps immensely.

Brendan Fraser’s getting a little too one note. Especially with the constant cameos. It’s hard to miss him when he won’t go.

And it’s a bummer we’re not going to get Guerrero’s best performance full-time. The end of the episode even double-downs on what we’re in for.

Finally, nice work on April Bowlby. She’s had iffy material for a while, she’s getting better grounding here.

Like I said, “Doom Patrol” is going to be bumpy. This episode’s a bump up.

Doom Patrol (2019) s01e04 – Cult Patrol

No way, Willoughby Kipling (Mark Sheppard) is a real comic book “Doom Patrol” character. Is he a desperate Constantine rip-off in the comic or just in the show? I seriously thought they had to really quick come up with a character when they couldn’t make the Constantine cameo work. Like I thought it was seriously they couldn’t decide whether to let Matt Ryan be on the show.

Same they didn’t push for it.

Sheppard’s a disappointment. He’s not all-bad, he’s just lackluster. The character is buffoonish. So if it’s accurate, it’s “Doom Patrol” writer and character creator Grant Morrison having a piss at Alan Moore and managing to cover himself in his own stream like usual, and if it’s inaccurate, writers Marcus Dalzine and Chris Dingess are just doing a bad job.

Doesn’t really matter because the episode’s still pretty effective and walks back last episode’s walk back of April Bowlby’s agency. She spends this episode disinterested in helping Sheppard stop the apocalypse—involving teen sacrifice Ted Sutherland, who’s pretty good in a role where it doesn’t matter but Sutherland is good, which helps Bowlby because he’s what inspires her to become a hero. She’s got a pretty cool hero moment; it comes with a lot less asterisks than the rest of the team’s heroic displays. Joivan Wade gets a fairly big set piece where he bonds with Sheppard in a fight against a bunch of inter-dimensional cultists trying to get to Sutherland.

It’s appropriately amusing. The show’s hitting a lot of solid character development moments, it’s just also still got some liabilities.

Matt Bomer’s around trying to get his electric spirit under control enough to help with Diane Guerrero and Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan as Robotman go into the alternate dimension. There they face off with these live action Muppet types. Maybe not Muppets, but if Henson Company made a fantasy TV series with live action actors in it in the late eighties. However you’d accurately describe it, it’s a delight.

Fraser and Guerrero are in a funk because Fraser killed a bunch of Nazis last episode and doesn’t feel bad about it. It’s eh. Neither of them are really good enough for it to matter and their cliffhanger is awesome so it’s fine. Better than last episode, not as good as the one before, but better than the pilot for sure. “Doom Patrol”’s rocky.

Glad it’s got a solid effects budget.

Doctor Who (2005) s04e18 – The End of Time: Part Two

I don’t know much about “Doctor Who”’s casting history but I did happen across how this episode is Tennant’s last because he quit. So when he’s going through what seems like an eon of histrionics before becoming the new Doctor—you’ve never appreciated Christopher Eccleston’s exit more—which includes him whining about not wanting to leave….

He wanted to leave. He wanted to leave and writer Russell T. Davies gave him a very embarrassing send-off for it.

Eccleston they at least waited to embarrass until he’d left.

Or it was Tennant’s idea, which is a strange, bad choice.

But no one gets off “Who” very well, not as they bid the Doctor farewell… I guess no spoilers but let’s just say they manage to crap on Freema Agyeman one last time.

The episode’s really well-paced again—this Christmas and New Year’s specials feel like four episodes, not two—and there’s some more good stuff with Tennant and John Simm. Every once in a while, you get a great glimpse of how great Simm and Tennant could’ve been as alter egos… if only for different directors and writers.

Bernard Cribbins figures in big. Like, annoyingly big. He plays the big scene like a comedy sketch, which director Euros Lyn can’t compensate and the whole thing backfires. That backfire continues into the pseudo-epilogue, pseudo-prologue.

I’ve already heard enough about the series to have some concerns for where the show’s headed next—even before I knew Alex Kingston was going to be a regular—and the end tag does nothing to dissuade those concerns. Not just the new Doctor, but the inane scale of the regeneration, which never pretends to be anything but a cliffhanger setup but it’s a bad one. It’s a bad choice.

Tennant had been lucky with the Christmas specials (until now, obviously). They were never bad. Not like when “Who” is bad.

But the show gets you every time. No one escapes a shitty farewell.

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?

Doom Patrol (2019) s01e02 – Donkey Patrol

So presumably someone at Warner Bros. watched the “Doom Patrol” pilot and thought it lacked a certain something. Whoever realized what it needed was Jovian Wade’s Cyborg deserves a bonus. Who even thought to ask if the character was available given the Justice League movie.

And it’s not like Wade’s great—he’s fine and amiable—or even a particularly likable character—he’s mostly a dick to everyone he meets—it’s just he’s got the exact right chemistry for what “Doom Patrol: The Show” needs. Wade also brings with him Phil Morris, who’s really good as his slightly shady dad who’s manipulating him—Wade learns during this episode—into his crimefighting career. Morris has big plans for Wade, who’s going to make it to the Justice League in five years.

Not the movie presumably.

Morris is great.

Also great this episode is April Bowlby, who is definitely able to pick up and carry the show just like I figured she’d need to do. The comedy just works better with Wade throwing a different kind of wrench in things. Also doing his part is Matthew Bomer, who has a great comedic sequence this episode when he tries to leave town only his electro-alien inhabitant says no.

Again, unclear if it’s really Bomer under the mask, but I at least saw some lips moving this time. There’s no way it’s not looped in though. He’s got to be muffled.

So if the new guy’s just what the show needs, if Bowlby and Bomer are doing all that heavy lifting, how are Brendan Fraser (voicing Robotman while Riley Shanahan does all the physical acting) and last episode’s de facto lead Diane Guerrero. Well…

Guerrero starts the episode really strong.

Then goes into a coma or something. She’s not talking. Once she starts talking again… it’s not great. It’s not terrible, but you do wonder who else they tested. As for Fraser and Shanahan? It’s almost like writers Neil Reynolds and Shoshana Sachi only wanted to give Robotman and Guerrero so much. There’s a big effects sequence when the rest of the Patrol go into a goat’s belly—just watch it—but maybe making the Robotman helmet move is really costly.

Shanahan’s physical performance is better here. Fraser’s just playing potty-mouth Fred Flintstone though.

Wait!

He didn’t play Fred Flintstone! Wow.

Okay. Well. He’s doing a rehearsal for it.

There are some really well-directed sequences—Dermott Downs—and some surprisingly great music—Kevin Kiner and Clint Mansell—so even with Alan Tudyk’s narration still being cheap “Rocky & Bullwinkle” and with some optics about Bomer’s closest sixties homosexuality, “Doom Patrol” is on the rise.

Doom Patrol (2019) s01e01

Alan Tudyk is “Doom Patrol”’s red herring. So far, anyway. He’s in the prologue, which has him getting powers from a Nazi scientist in the forties, and then he narrates. There’s always narration. Some of it’s good, some of it’s bad. When it’s good, when Tudyk’s not being to snide, it nears Jean Shepherd. When it’s bad, it’s like bad “Rocky & Bullwinkle.” Jeremy Carver’s script has a handful of easy jokes in the action, but most of them are on Tudyk in the narration. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.

Tudyk’s also got the job of introducing the cast. First, there’s Brendan Fraser, who’s not going to be long in the show—at least in front of cameras—he gets into a major race car wreck (he’s a race car driver) and dies. Weird millionaire very much in the sixties sense when rich people could have boring mansions Timothy Dalton resurrects Fraser from his brain. It’s a whole Robocop homage sequence, which also introduces some of the other cast in background, principally April Bowlby. Bowlby’s probably going to be the make or break on “Doom Patrol.” If she’s good, she’s going to be able to hold up a lot of it.

She was a racist, elitist fifties movie star who somehow got zapped with magic and loses control of her body. Like it melts, but while expanding. Blobs out, really. Presumably by the present day—oh, other thing, none of the “Doom Patrol” members age apparently, hopefully I remember that bit later. Anyway, presumably by the present day she’s not such a hideous human being on the inside. Lots of dry wit from Bowlby.

Then there’s Matt Bomer, who spends the present wrapped up in Invisible Man garb, and apparently is possessed with an energy monster from space. Not clear what the energy monster does but cause trouble. Bomer’s all burnt up because his plane crashed back in the sixties, though it’s unclear exactly what happened after the crash. There’s also a hidden gay life subplot, which… plays weird. So far. Like, the character development’s all fake because Carver’s being so manipulative with the reveals but… whatever. It’s fine. Bomer’s good—is he actually under all those bandages, because Fraser peaces out to let Riley Shanahan do the Robotman stuff, and they have to loop Bomer’s dialogue anyway.

The last member of the team is the newest one, Diane Guerrero. She was at the mansion before Fraser got there, meaning she’s like seventy or so. At least sixty.

Guerrero’s like thirty-two. A young looking thirty-two because she’s playing a punk.

I mean, she and Fraser—once he’s the Robotman—are cute enough but the show’s internal logic is less a “trust us” and more a “who’ll notice,” which isn’t reassuring.

Excellent special effects—like, surprisingly good—and okay direction from Glen Winter help. It’s all setup this episode so who knows what the actual show will bring…

Definitely some Alan Tudyk.

The Rocketeer (1991, Joe Johnston)

Joe Johnston never getting recognition for The Rocketeer astounds me. Johnston creates a perfect adventure film, a now neglected and abused genre. Additionally, Johnston never fetishizes the historical setting. The late 1930s, Nazis as villains setting is practically its own genre at this point (strange how after a half decade, there are so few choices of undeniable evil for storytellers to use–well, at least ones white Americans would care about), but The Rocketeer never lets it get goofy. Johnston lets other, familiar trappings of the era (at least as it’s celebrated in film)–the radio, the friends at the cafe–take precedent. The Rocketeer puts more stock in California oranges than the more sensational possibilities.

And this emphasis is in a film featuring the FBI teaming up with the mob to shoot it out with Nazis in the middle of Los Angeles.

Past Johnston, the beauty of The Rocketeer is in the script, which is odd, given the screenwriters’ other work. The film starts gradually, with a beautiful flight sequence (James Horner’s score, again highly derivative of his other scores, is essential and wonderful). Having Alan Arkin helps, the script’s still responsible for immediately establishing the characters. Only during the first forty-five minutes of the film is it unsure… it’s good, but it isn’t fantastic. The big problem is the attention given to Jennifer Connelly. She’s the girlfriend and she’s kind of there. The Rocketeer makes an odd choice of introducing she and Bill Campbell’s relationship to the viewer when it’s on shaky ground. And the viewer doesn’t know it’s on shaky ground.

And here again is where The Rocketeer is strange. That instability agitates the plot until all the elements meet–not a revolutionary process, but in The Rocketeer it isn’t about set pieces, it isn’t about melodrama, it’s about actual human concern. The film’s enthralled by the idea people care about each other and it’s infectious.

Eventually, Connelly becomes a leading lady. I was entirely unimpressed with her as the film started and the exact opposite when it ended. It’s kind of a cheat, since the viewer gets to see her become that lead. Connelly’s transition kicks off the film’s third act, which is the finest adventure film act I can think of. It’s absolutely perfect, doesn’t make a single wrong move.

Campbell’s good in the lead–making the goofball dreamer real while still endearing him. He and Connelly are great together (better as the narrative progresses and a sequel with them as leads would have been lovely). Arkin’s fantastic, he and Campbell have some great scenes. Terry O’Quinn’s also good as Howard Hughes. Where Campbell really succeeds, coming in a practical nobody with some (supporting) TV experience, is maintaining himself as the lead when he’s got to contend with Timothy Dalton. As the villain, Dalton’s incredible. In anything else, he would walk away with the picture.

Dalton gets a lot of help from the script–there’s stuff in here I couldn’t believe I was hearing under a Disney Pictures banner. The script’s got some great dialogue and a lot of Disney-unfriendly one-liners. Dalton gets almost all of them. But the script’s also got a lot of discrete sensitivity and some wonderful little details.

I was concerned with The Rocketeer, not having seen it in ten years and the film’s online supporters waning in recent years. Even with the strong filmmaking, the narrative seemed troubled. It never occurred to me it might just be a real script.

License to Kill (1989, John Glen)

Occasionally, I feel like the English language doesn’t allow for–without a lot of adjectives–a reasonable description of something. In this case, I can’t possibly describe the heights of stupidity License to Kill’s screenplay reaches. I mean, for a film to feature a South American drug kingpin with a base more appropriate for Dr. No, it has to be pretty stupid. But for it to feature a chemistry-free, love-at-first-sight romance (between Dalton and Carey Lowell, whose character is terribly written and whose performance is nowhere near as bad as Talisa Soto’s) after a bar fight… it’s simply incredible. The “modernizing” of the Bond villain to the drug kingpin is ludicrous, even if Robert Davi has some good moments, really good ones, but to throw people to leftover sharks from Jaws: The Revenge….

License to Kill is so dumb, I forgot to open this post with the line I’ve been waiting to use–my friend refers to License to Kill as James Bond’s Lethal Weapon. Between Michael Kamen doing the music and Grand L. Bush having a thankless, minuscule role, it really is an attempt to Americanize James Bond and it’s a failure. John Glen doesn’t get how to do action scenes or fight scenes. He gets how to do great special effects scenes–or the second unit director does–but otherwise, Glen is a liability to a ultra-violent Bond film. I mean, Bond’s not just killing people in this one, he’s torturing them.

The setup with Bond in Florida for Felix Leiter’s wedding, not to mention giving him friends, really does work. It works so well, I forgot it was Priscilla Barnes (she’s okay–her character is apparently a complete drunk–but a “Three’s Company” connection is a little distracting). But everything falls apart when, instead of killing all the bad guys, Bond makes off in a hydroplane in a well-executed special effects and stunts sequence. The writers don’t get it, the director doesn’t get it… Dalton barely gets it.

Dalton’s performance as Bond is quite good, creating a character who can believably have friends as well as everything else (though he does not come off as irresistible, something the script requires of him). Desmond Llewelyn has a lot to do as Q becomes a field agent and he’s a lot of fun–even if he is a little odd in the otherwise dark story. Wayne Newton’s fantastic as a televangelist in an overblown cameo.

As a tonal shift, License to Kill is a mistake (the script belongs in a direct-to-video movie from the early 1990s, starring a soap star who thought it’d be his breakout role), as is setting the film in the United States. It’s over two hours, but it’s boring… it’s nice Dalton can pull off a boring James Bond and it’s too bad he didn’t make more… but what’s the point? It doesn’t work as action adventure and it doesn’t work as revenge action.

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by John Glen; written by Michael G. Wilson and Richard Maibaum, based on characters created by Ian Fleming; director of photography, Alec Mills; edited by John Grover; music by Michael Kamen; production designer, Peter Lamont; produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Wilson; released by United Artists.

Starring Timothy Dalton (James Bond), Carey Lowell (Pam Bouvier), Robert Davi (Franz Sanchez), Talisa Soto (Lupe Lamora), Anthony Zerbe (Milton Krest), Frank McRae (Sharkey), David Hedison (Felix Leiter), Wayne Newton (Professor Joe Butcher), Benicio Del Toro (Dario), Anthony Starke (Truman-Lodge), Everett McGill (Ed Killifer), Desmond Llewelyn (Q), Pedro Armendáriz Jr. (President Hector Lopez), Robert Brown (M), Priscilla Barnes (Della Churchill), Don Stroud (Heller), Caroline Bliss (Miss Moneypenny), Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Kwang) and Grand L. Bush (Hawkins).

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