Not to be confused with David Fincher or John Woo’s films, Choi Jae-hoon’s The Killer follows a hitman who’s roped into looking after his wife’s friend’s seventeen-year-old daughter. What should be an easy babysitting job turns dark, however, when the young girl gets lured into a sex trafficking ring, and the hitman must use his deadly skills to save her. Oh, and the film is a comedy… sort of. I watched this on Amazon Prime because I wanted a slick-looking action film, and there are, indeed, some very impressive action sequences. With his wardrobe, impeccable hair, and droll demeanor (which occasionally recalls “Beat” Takeshi Kitano), Jang Hyuk looks cooler than cool mowing down thugs, pimps, and other ne’er-do-wells. I just wish he was in a better film. In one scene, one of The Killer’s characters references Lee Jeong-beom’s The Man from Nowhere, arguably the best “deadly man protecting a young girl” movie ever made. I’m unsure if Choi Jae-hoon intended The Killer to be a parody of The Man from Nowhere or an attempt to create a similarly hard-boiled film, and that ambiguity is frustrating. In the end, The Killer’s tonal shifts and various implausibilities prove to be just a bit too much.
My Cultural Diet
Lloyd Alexander’s Westmark trilogy — which takes place in a pseudo-historical alternative to Revolution-era France — comes to a middling close with The Beggar Queen. But perhaps that’s too harsh. Much like the previous book, The Kestrel, The Beggar Queen isn’t bad. But it toes the line between being palatable for kids and delving into the horrors and brutality of war. Alexander can’t make up his mind which way to go, and so it ends up just being a bit meh and all over the place. Towards the end, it feels like Alexander has even become bored with his own story, and so stuff just starts happening and resolving in a fairly perfunctory manner. I do realize that my assessment may be due to being a 47-year-old. If I’d read this as a 12-year-old, then I could easily see how it would’ve felt so “adult,” and thus, so much better than all of that other “kids’ stuff” I’d been reading. Indeed, my biggest regret with the Westmark novels is probably that I didn’t read them as a 5th or 6th grader first.
Although I watched a few episodes of the cartoon series back in the ’90s, I don’t have any real strong attachment to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I mainly watched Mutant Mayhem out of curiosity over its style of animation. There are bound to be comparisons to the Spider-Verse movies, but Mutant Mayhem’s style, though technically impressive in places, feels more unpolished and juvenile, as befitting the characters and subject matter. Between Mutant Mayhem, the Spider-Verse films, and Netflix’s Arcane, we’re entering a really cool new era that bridges the gap between traditional and CG animation, though I prefer those other two titles.
It may have won the Hugo Award for best novella, but I was surprisingly underwhelmed by All Systems Red. The concept is very promising: a security robot hacks its programming and becomes self-aware, which poses some thorny questions given its incredibly deadly — and, ahem, murderous — nature. But the actual storyline felt rather pedestrian, as the titular Murderbot struggles to help his latest clients, a group of researchers whose expedition on a distant and hostile planet has been compromised. There are hints at a broader storyline, but I don’t feel a deep need to check out the rest of Murderbot’s diaries.
While I enjoyed Westmark, I struggled with The Kestrel. At less than 250 pages, The Kestrel is not a long book, but Lloyd Alexander aims for an epic scope as the nation of Westmark faces betrayal and invasion by the neighboring nation of Regia. The book’s characters are all caught up in the conflict, particularly protagonist Theo, who joins up with the anti-monarchy freedom fighter Florian and slowly begins to lose his humanity amidst the horrors and brutality of war. The Kestrel felt rather fragmented at times, as Alexander hops all over the place in order to keep track of the growing conflict. That, and I never quite got a handle on the book’s tone; it switches from grim battles and moments of anguish to scenes with a pair of child thieves that, while not exactly light-hearted, still felt like they were from another novel entirely.
This is an interesting curiosity piece from 1988 that was brought to my attention by Instagram’s algorithm. Directed by Makoto Kobayashi — who wrote the original manga and helped create the mechanical designs — Dragon’s Heaven begins with a 5-minute prelude filled with live-action miniatures à la Masato Harada’s Gunhed and a sweeping orchestral score by Yasunori Iwasaki. It then transitions to the animated story, which is set in a post-apocalyptic future several thousand years from now. There, a young woman and an ancient robot must join forces to defend a desert city from invading forces led by the robot’s arch-nemesis. Story-wise, Dragon’s Heaven is pretty silly and threadbare, but it’s worth watching for the unique mecha designs and visual style, which eschews typical anime aesthetics for something more reminiscent of, say, Moebius. Following Dragon’s Heaven, Kobayashi would go on to work on numerous anime titles including Last Exile, Samurai 7, and Steamboy.
Here’s the thing about Netflix’s Lupin: You have to suspend your disbelief. And I mean, really suspend it in order to overlook all of the hand-waving and glossing over the complexities of the protagonist’s various heists and schemes. And for the most part, you won’t really mind doing so because the series is so darn charming thanks to Omar Sy’s lead performance. Unfortunaely, the disbelief is harder to suspend during this third season, which finds debonair thief Assane Diop (Sy) racing to save his family from an old enemy. The season gets increasingly convoluted, including an awkward storyline in which a disguised Diop charms his ex-wife. The threat from Diop’s past never actually feels all that threatening, the constant flashbacks are a bit much, and the season never quite earns the emotional pay-off that it’s so clearly trying to achieve. There are some interesting twists and wrinkles, though, as Diop tests his allies’ loyalty and forges some unlikely alliances. Not surprisingly, season three ends on a cliffhanger that totally sets up Lupin’s fourth (and hopefully final) season.
If you were to ask me why I started watching this Netflix anime about a young woman who suddenly finds herself betrothed to a seemingly ruthless man she’s never met, I’m not sure I could give you an answer. (The algorithm works in mysterious ways, I guess.) Given the premise, there’s loads of melodrama as our young heroine — who arguably possesses one of the breathiest and most forlorn voices in all of anime — moves from an abusive household to one that holds the promise of something more. Naturally, romantic triangles and dramatic misunderstandings ensue. The series’ exploration of abuse and trauma adds an interesting wrinkle as does the incorporation of supernatural elements and alternate Japanese history. In the end, however, My Happy Marriage can’t quite integrate all of these elements; it can’t seem to make up its mind what it wants to be. A second season was recently greenlit, which I might check out to see if the storytelling gets any stronger.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Earth faces an extraterrestrial threat and so humanity, desperate for soldiers, begins putting children through brutal training in order to turn them into deadly warriors. (Halo, anyone?) Orphans’ first volume isn’t bad per se, and there’s an interesting mystery or two that I assume get fleshed out in later volumes. But overall, I feel like I’ve read this storyline many times before.
While DC’s live-action superhero titles have left me rather underwhelmed — sorry, Synder Cut fans — I’ve really enjoyed their animated titles over the years. (Justice League Unlimited is currently streaming on Netflix; go watch it!) Constantine: The House of Mystery takes place immediately after the events of 2020’s excellent Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, and finds everyone’s favorite cynical occultist trapped in the titular House as punishment for meddling with the universe. I appreciated the fact that, despite its short runtime, Constantine: The House of Mystery takes its time setting things up (with bloody and darkly humorous results). On the flip side, the short runtime means that the resolution, as well as Constantine’s final realization concerning his bastard self, feels rather perfunctory. Ultimately, Constantine: The House of Mystery is not required viewing, but it does feel like a nice little bonus for Hellblazer fans with its spin on Constantine’s conflict with the Lords of Hell.
As I left the theater, I wasn’t sure I liked Oppenheimer at all. It’s technically impressive, but what else would you expect from Christopher Nolan? It’s helpful, though, to realize that Oppenheimer is as much about J. Robert Oppenheimer’s public fall and political disgrace as it is about the atomic bomb, if not more so. Which might explain why the actual Trinity test, which the first two-thirds of the film inexorably builds up to, feels surprisingly anticlimactic, especially when compared to the surreal visions that often plague Oppenheimer. Nolan’s film walks a fine line between lionizing Oppenheimer’s brilliance and ambition and excoriating his pride and moral failings, and I’m not sure it does so successfully. Subtlety isn’t Nolan’s strong point, and so he reminds you — over and over — that Oppenheimer was complicated; he inspired scientists around the world and oversaw one of humanity’s most ambitious projects even as he failed his wife and children. It’s a bit of a mess, frankly, on this first viewing, and Nolan’s exposition-heavy dialog doesn’t help. That said, Nolan’s films are often growers (e.g., Tenet), so I wouldn’t surprised if I become more appreciative after repeated viewings. Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Matt Damon’s standout performance as Leslie Groves, the general in charge of the Manhattan Project. Damon stands out amidst the film’s packed cast, and his scenes with Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer crackle with an energy that’s sorely lacking elsewhere.
When I was in 6th and 7th grade, the recently launched KPTM TV station made up for its dearth of original programming by showing lots of old movies. One of those movies was Don Coscarelli’s The Beastmaster, starring Marc Singer as a well-oiled warrior who uses his ability to communicate with animals to battle an evil cult. I never made it too far into the movie back then, mainly because the bird people freaked me out. Watching it now, though, it’s actually kind of charming. Don’t get me wrong; The Beastmaster is cheesy in a very MST3K kind of way, but there’s something refreshing about its lack of sword-and-sorcery pretensions. (And it’s certainly better than, say, the Ator movies.) I mean, you’ve got a muscular dude running around the wilderness in a loincloth with a tiger and eagle in tow, rescuing a beautiful maiden played by Tanya Roberts and fighting his enemies with a huge sword and some kinda-sorta martial arts. My inner twelve-year-old loves that stuff, but the adult me can appreciate Coscarelli’s scrappy filmmaking, which made the most of what he had. (Coscarelli is also the man behind such cult classics as the Phantasm series and, of course, Bubba Ho-tep.)
Part of a crop of early/mid ’00s anime that told downbeat, darkly philosophical tales, Ergo Proxy errs a bit too far on the side of philosophizing. (Heck, it has characters named after Ignatius of Loyola, Jacques Derrida, and other famous philosophers.) Its dark, dystopic storyline is existential in the extreme, and as a result, the series often seems far more interested in posing philosophical quandaries than actually telling a cohesive, captivating story filled with characters that you care about. Technically speaking, Ergo Proxy has aged pretty well; the CG-enhanced animation and character designs still look good after two decades, and Yoshihiro Ike’s moody electronic score really does enhance the series’ already considerable mood and atmosphere. Indeed, the series’ sense of style often proves more substantial than its actual substance. Which is ultimately frustrating, though, because what is gleaned when Ergo Proxy sets aside the philosophizing and just focuses on actually telling its story is really cool and intriguing. I can’t help thinking that with a bit more focus and a bit less heavy-handed seriousness, Ergo Proxy could have made its overall points in a much more affecting and entertaining manner.
You go into Yes, Madam! expecting to see Michelle Yeoh (billed here as Michelle Khan) and Cynthia Rothrock in action as competing cops. Unfortunately, the film spends an excessive amount of time focused on the annoying hijinks and endless bickering of a trio of hapless ne’er-do-wells (played by John Shum, Mang Hoi, and Tsui Hark) who get mixed up with a hitman, his boss, and some incriminating microfilm. But when Yeoh and Rothrock do appear on-screen, watch out. The two ladies — who, of course, can’t stand each other when they first meet — are a joy to watch whenever they take on the film’s assortment of thugs and gangsters. Given that Yes, Madam!‘s a Corey Yuen film, the action is inventive and frenetic, and I rewound several scenes just to marvel at the deft moves and onscreen chaos. (I’m giving the film an extra star for the final brawl alone.) But the aforementioned hijinks are too annoying, the humor too slapstick-y (especially the police brutality), and the film ends with a tonal shift that feels more appropriate for a John Woo, heroic bloodshed-type film than an action comedy.
I appreciate the desire of director James Mangold et al. to send out one of cinema’s most iconic heroes in epic fashion. But Dial of Destiny is packed with so much stuff that it drags; adventurous globetrotting has never felt this sluggish. The Indiana Jones movies are famous for their rollicking action (think of Indy hanging onto that Nazi truck for dear life in Raiders of the Lost Ark or Temple of Doom’s mine cart chase), but Dial of Destiny’s major action sequences — a de-aged Indy (which actually looks pretty good) punching Nazis on a train, a tuk-tuk chase through Tangier — just go on and on and on. And on. And on some more. The film is not without delights (e.g., the always-great Mads Mikkelsen, Sallah, Antonio Banderas’ cameo) but it’s true saving grace is, not surprisingly, Harrison Ford. You can tell he wants to do right by Indy, and so he infuses the character with a sorrow that’s quite affecting, such as when Indy asks why he should stay in a world that’s passed him by or when he mourns a friend’s death. It’s just too bad the script also has him utter nonsense like “I’ve come to believe it’s not so much about what you believe, it’s how hard you believe it.” (The last few years of American politics should make it abundantly clear how utterly nonsensical that sentiment is.) Dial of Destiny is better than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and maybe even Temple of Doom, but it could’ve — and should’ve — been so much better. Indiana Jones deserved as much for his final film.
While I was reading Strange Skies Over East Berlin, I realized that I’d actually read it before. Which might suggest that this series is ultimately forgettable. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. But I will say that I wanted to like this more than I did. An American spy living undercover in East Berlin is given a new mission: track down a mysterious alien vessel that crashed behind the Iron Curtain. But what he ultimately discovers could spell doom for the entire human race. I really dug the series’ premise of a world-weary spy forced to reflect on his morally dubious career after encountering bizarre alien phenomena; imagine John le Carré (The Spy Who Came In From the Cold) writing an episode of The X-Files. Sadly, the series barely scratches the surface of its potential. Some that’s undoubtedly due to its short length, at just four issues. Brevity and efficiency are good things, but in this case, the resulting storyline and characters are just a little too thin, and left me wanting more.
I watched this on VHS almost 25 years ago, and something about it stuck with me over the years. So I was disappointed when it didn’t quite live up to my memories. Visually, Haruki Kadokawa’s Heaven and Earth is often stunning and even feels like the platonic ideal of a samurai movie, be it the quieter scenes when characters are framed against falling cherry blossoms or wandering through a snowy forest, or during massive battle scenes employing thousands of extras and hundreds of horses. (The film was released in 1990, so no CGI here. The battles were filmed in Canada, though, so it’s a little weird knowing those are the Rockies looming behind all those samurai.) Story-wise, however, this retelling of the historic conflict between two Japanese warlords (Nagao Kagetora and Takeda Shingen) falls flat. There’s potential for interesting arcs — Kagetora renounces all earthly pleasures, including love, to achieve his goals, only to later abandon his throne in fear of what the war is doing to him, spiritually — but the movie never really develops them. As a result, it’s hard to get too emotionally involved in the movie’s storyline; it’s very remote and detached. That, combined with the running narration and captions, makes Heaven and Earth feel more like a made-for-TV documentary than an epic samurai film à la Akira Kurosawa or Masaki Kobayashi.
I’ve liked Michael Moorcock’s Elric novels for years. They’re grim and deeply cynical — Moorcock wrote them, in part, as a rejection of Tolkien’s high fantasy — as well as deeply imaginative and fantastical. But this is the first Elric comic I’ve read. Let’s start with the positive: Julien Telo’s artwork possesses a moody edge that’s quite apropos for the doomed albino, and some of his designs (e.g., the Melnibonéan dragons) are really cool. The storyline, however, is a mixed bag. The Dreaming City adapts the first published Elric story, in which he leads an attack on his former home of Imrryr, while awkwardly incorporating elements from The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, specifically Elric’s journey to the ancient city of R’lin K’Ren A’a. The Dreaming City also downplays the Elric saga’s inherently tragic nature in order to highlight its decadence. Nowhere is this better seen than the decision to turn Elric’s lover Cymoril into a vengeful harpy clad in topless armor (which even the storytellers admit is clichéd) or changing the nature of her death. That said, highlighting the sentience of Elric’s cursed runeblade Stormbringer with a feminine aspect is an interesting decision that more explicitly states what Moorcock intimates in his writings.
It’s obvious why Wednesday was such a huge hit for Netflix: Jenna Ortega’s acclaimed performance as the eponymous goth-y heroine. The series lives or dies on Ortega’s shoulders, and she acquits herself well as the creepily aloof character. (I also really liked Gwendoline Christie as the harried Principal Weems.) Combine that with the world building (i.e., Wednesday is sent to a Hogwarts-esque private school for vampires, werewolves, and other monsters) and a conspiracy involving the neighboring town’s puritanical founder and her own father’s criminal past, and I was never not entertained. That said, Wednesday is pretty one-note, with our heroine struggling to maintain her icy exterior even as she (reluctantly) bonds with her classmates. (Another minus: the series’ macabre humor loses its punch half-way through the season.) A second season’s in the works, but honestly, the season one finale does a weak job of setting it up. As such, the show’s team have their work cut out for them if they want to recapture this season’s spark.
Ever since reading Reckless, I’ve been on the lookout for more crime noir comics. Image Comics’ Newburn features artwork by Jacob Phillips, who was the colorist on Reckless, and a story by Chip Zdarsky (Daredevil, Sex Criminals). The premise is interesting — Easton Newburn is a former detective who now works as a neutral private investigator for the city’s biggest crime gangs — and there’s all of the back-stabbing, double-crossing, and noir-ish intrigue you could ask for. But Newburn is far from a sympathetic antihero, as is his assistant Emily, so it’s hard to really care about their fate even when they’re in the crosshairs of one gang or another. Which is a shame, because the premise feels rife with thematic material (e.g., power, corruption, politics). So far, Reckless remains my favorite crime/noir comic title.