The Hardy Boys, Season 1 (2020)

 

After a fishing boat is raided and a lockbox containing a radioactive Egyptian idol is stolen, a mysterious man kills the captain and almost the entire crew of the boat - only one man escapes alive.

Some time later, while on the way to her eldest son's baseball game, Laura Hardy notices she is being followed.  After the game, the two Hardy boys and their father are informed that Laura has been killed in a car accident.

Papa Hardy apparently decides to add insult to injury when he informs his sons that they will be moving to the small town of Bridgeport for the summer.  Elder son Frank is upset to be pulled away from his team, his friends and his girlfriend.  Younger son Joe lacks the same social connections, but clearly expects the kids there to be even more dull and hostile than those at his current school.

But as will soon become clear, Bridgeport is a far more important and complicated place than it appears.  And if their father thought moving there would keep his sons out of whatever danger claimed their mother ... well, it's safe to say he's taken them out of the frying pan and into the fire.

This is the sixth TV adaptation of the Hardy Boys book series, which originally launched in 1927.  It updates the timeframe to the 1980s, perhaps to cash in on the same nostalgia factor that Stranger Things used to such success; or perhaps as a canny writing tactic.  In that era, kids were allowed much greater freedom to roam around unsupervised, and narrative complications such as cell phones and internet searches are off the table.  The setting is nicely realised.  Certainly, as someone who lived through the 1980s, I definitely recognised many of the fashions and technological devices on show!

Rather more unusually, this version of The Hardy Boys also introduces a strong supernatural element.  Objects can and do have mystical powers.  And it's here that things go wrong. While I'm not opposed to the idea in principle, the execution of this element falls flat, not least because it directly contributes to several elements of the main mystery becoming frankly rather nonsensical.  Which has you might imagine, is a real problem for a mystery show.  

 

It's by no means the only flaw in this area, but I have to call out in particular that the instigating event for the whole series - Laura Hardy's planned exposé of the secret conspiracy that controls these magical artefacts, and the lethal steps taken to silence her - make no sense at all.  The show provides no indication that Mrs Hardy had any actual evidence of genuine supernatural powers being at work, and without such evidence, her whole article would either amount to "in this small town, it is the richest people who run things" (which as news stories go ... isn't one), or would be laughed out of any serious news room as pure fairy tales.

 

It's a shame that the main plot doesn't really deliver, because the show does have some good elements. For instance, I did like the subtle hints at something more than friendship between the boys' aunt another character's mother.  The 'under the radar', very tentative nature of this relationship is I think a good reflection of the times in which the show is set, and how careful non-straight people had to be.  I'm glad that public attitudes toward same-sex couples are better now, and they no longer have to hide themselves as much as they once did, but if you set your show in the 1980s and have characters interested in a same-sex relationship, there is value in being truthful about the social issues they faced.  So thumbs up for the work done in that space.

 

I also feel I should call out the strong work done by the young cast.  They all deliver good performances, and I think deserved better material to work with.  Alas though, even they can't paper over the weaknesses in the main plot.

Haymaker (2021)

 

Moody, retired Muay Thai fighter Nick is working as a bouncer to make ends meet when he sees the club's singer for the night, Nomi, being hassled by a thug.  Nick steps in, using rather more violence than was perhaps required.

Fortunately for Nick's finances, the experience leaves Nomi feeling that she needs a bodyguard.  Nick, obviously, is her first choice for the job.

Adjusting to Nomi's jet-set lifestyle and hedonistic circle of friends doesn't come easy to the taciturn Nick, but over time he and the singer begin to grow close.  Friendship blooms, and perhaps something more, but the relationship is complicated by their conflicting approaches to life, as well as Nick's moodiness, and the siren call for him of stepping back into the Muay Thai ring.

Haymaker seems to be an earnest effort to put together a romantic drama where one of the pairing is transgender, while avoiding becoming "a transgender romance".  The film's best quality, I think, is that while Nomi being transgender is acknowledged, it is treated as another fact about her, no more different than the fact that she is of Puerto Rican heritage or that she is a brunette. It's refreshing to see a transgender character who is not defined by that aspect of themselves, and also not fetishised or othered.

Unfortunately, despite that earnestness, the movie doesn't really work.  There are a couple of reasons for that, I think.  Key is probably Nick himself.  As played by writer and director Nick Sasso, he's monosyllabic and uncommunicative, which leads to some of his actions never really being contextualised.

That lack of communication is a key challenge for the couple throughout the film.  This is tale of two people who take a long time to acknowledge the feelings between them, in large part because Nick never says what he is thinking or feeling.  Nomi's strategies to try and provoke him into expressing himself also seem a bit counter-productive: when you know the man has a temper, it's much more likely that flirting with other guys will make him storm off, rather than open up.

I also didn't like that the ending seems to require a lot more of Nomi than it does of Nick.  She's very much the one adapting her career to fit his needs, despite the fact that she earns a lot more, and that she'll probably have to cancel significant existing commitments to do so.  That's going to impact her career as well as potentially many fans and venues. Why can't Nick get on a plane with Nomi? It's not like he seems to have all that much tying him to his home: we just saw him spend several weeks in Thailand.

The film's brighter moments come courtesy of its female cast.  Real life pop star Nomi Ruiz is good in the on-screen role of her namesake, showing much more charisma than her co-star.  Stunt performer and actor Zoe Bell is also good in a minor role within the film, though sadly rather under-used.

I wanted to enjoy this more than I actually did.

Heavy Metal 2000 (2000)

 

In ages past, the evil Arakacians discovered a fluid granted immortality to anyone who consumed it. The Arakacians built an empire and enslaved the known universe for centuries. They were finally vanquished after the source of the fluid was sealed off by freedom fighters. The key to the source, a glowing crystal that can lead the bearer back to the fountain and drives anyone who possessed it insane, was cast into space and lost among the stars.

In a present-day asteroid excavation, space crewman Tyler and his colleague find the key by accident. Tyler touches the key and instantly goes becomes malevolently insane.  He murders several colleagues, drums up an army of thugs, and begins a search for the source.

His first port of call is the city of Eden, a planet where the inhabitants carry traces of the immortality fluid in their systems.  This certainly doesn't save them, though: Tyler's has his forces slaughter almost everyone then leaves the planet to continue his quest.

Almost is the important word there.  A survivor named Julie pursues Tyler across space, determined to execute him for his crimes.  Of course, she'd better do that before Tyler finds the Source, or he'll become immortal ...

This film is a follow-up, but not a true sequel, to the 1981 animated feature Heavy Metal, from the publishers of the magazine of the same name.

For a few years in the late 80s or early 90s, I was a regular reader of Heavy Metal magazine.  I saw the original film back then as well, and quite enjoyed it.  When I first saw this film in early 2000s, I thought it was a very disappointing offering in comparison to the earlier film. Which just goes to show that me 20 years ago had some really thick rose-tinted glasses about the older movie!

I'm not saying this film is good, mind you: it's not.  It's frankly a bit crass and juvenile.  But as I discovered in my recent re-watch, so was the original.  And this movie does have a couple of improvements.

First, it features significantly improved art and animation. Perspective is executed much more consistently and convincingly.  CGI makes an appearance and is used effectively for backgrounds and spaceships, and has been blended well with more traditional character animation.  There's also greater depth of colour and shadow. 

Now of course, this film was made 20 years later than its predecessor, so it should be better.  And it's not of a quality that's going to have Disney's animators quaking in their boots: but still, it's noticeably better than the original!

The film's plot also gets moving faster, maintains a more consistent tempo, and relies a lot less on exposition (at least once we're past the big info dump at the beginning). It's doubtless helped by the fact that rather than an anthology of short sequences connected by a loose framing story, it follows a single through-line narrative based (very loosely) on Kevin Eastman's "The Melting Pot" graphic novel.

Setting aside one particular black mark, said narrative is an adequate if fairly unexceptional sex-and-violence space opera.  The sex and violence is very much front and centre, for the record: there's plenty of blood spurting around the place and lots of gratuitous animated nudity, much as in the first film.  It all feels a bit self-consciously "look how edgy we are!", frankly - an adolescent attempt to be "adult".  

The particular black mark is that the plot features quite a bit of sexualised violence.  That's one thing that I could definitely do without, and comes across as every bit as crass as you might expect.

In the final analysis, Heavy Metal 2000 is not really much better than my initial impression of it; but at least that meant it wasn't a significant disappointment like  my re-watch of the 1981 film!

Heavy Metal (1981)

 

Heavy Metal is a comics magazine that commenced publishing in 1977.  It began primarily as a licensed translation of the French science-fantasy magazine Metal Hurlant, but soon expanded its remit to a wide variety of creators both European and American.  Within a few years, it had become known for its exceptional art, and also for its graphic sexual and violent content.  This combination proved commercially successful in the mostly highly-sanitised US comics market of the time, and by 1981, the magazine's publisher had managed to persuade Ivan Reitman to co-produce this $9 million animated film.

Heavy Metal the movie is comprised of an anthology of stories adapted from the magazine, all linked by an original framing story about an intelligent, evil artefact known as the Loc-Nar, which is brought to Earth by an astronaut and after killing the man, begins terrorising his young daughter.

Meanwhile the adapted stories are a combination of one-shots and individual episodes from recurring features from the magazine, specifically the Den and Captain Sternn (with 2 n's).  The former was a highly sexualised planetary fantasy in the John Carter mould, while the latter was a rather mean-spirited serial about a dishonest, amoral space adventurer.

I think including this mixture of one-off and recurring features from the magazine may have been chosen with the perspective of potentially developing future sequels.  After all, new episodes of those same long-running serials could be included to provide a sense of continuity with future projects, while there would still be plenty of scope to experiment with new stories.

Overall, given the movie is based on a magazine that was specifically known for its often exceptional art, I was surprised and disappointed by the art and animation of this production.  It is often quite poor.  For instance, the framing story segments have crude art with an inconsistent portrayal of perspective is unconvincing.

I get the feeling they spent more on the film's music than its visuals: the soundtrack features a lot of notable 70s performers, often from the progressive rock and heavy metal genres.  Songs on the film include offerings from Sammy Hagar, Devo, Blue Oyster Cult, Cheap Trick, Nazareth, Black Sabbath and Stevie Nicks.

The resulting soundtrack is pretty good, but the cool tunes don't make up for the disappointing visuals and they certainly don't disguise the mediocre quality of the script: most of the stories come across as a bit juvenile, to be frank, often to a large extent because of their efforts to be 'grown up' and 'edgy' by including lots of sex and violence.

This story-telling shortfall is perhaps best exemplified by the segment involving a bomber crew in World War 2.  This sequence starts quite promisingly, with a real sense of menace, but then it just seems to give up on that and segues into another, rather comic skit that also doesn't go anywhere and exists just to offer up a few smutty jokes and stoner gags.

Despite typically mediocre art and lots of gratuitous nudity the Den segment is probably the most enjoyable part of the film. At least Den is a proactive and relatively decent person, making him something of an exception to the leading characters in most segments of the movie.

High School, Season 1 (2022)

 

Canada, the mid-1990s.  Teenagers Tegan and Sara are identical twins who live in suburbia with their mom and her boyfriend.  Formerly very close, the sisters are going through a rocky period in their relationship.  They've just moved to a new school where they don't know anyone, and Tegan feels like Sara is deliberately pushing her away.  This has been going on all summer, in fact, with Sara monopolising all the available time with their mutual friend, Phoebe.

Sara, for her part, is struggling with the complex feelings arising from the fact that she and Phoebe are secretly in the throes of a typically intense first love.  Sara is happy to have found love, of course, but this is lower middle class suburbia in the 1990s: far from a welcoming environment for same sex romance.  She's terrified about the reaction of her own family, or of Phoebe's family, if their relationship were to become known.

Of course, if Sara ever shared her secret with Tegan, she might find her sister understands her sexuality much better than she realises!

As both of the sisters struggle to find and express their identities, they forge new friendships, act out in unproductive ways, make plenty of mistakes ... and inadvertently stumble into a new passion when they discover a guitar that belongs to their mother's boyfriend.

High School is a coming of age story of identical twin queer teens in 1990s Canada.  It follows a fictionalised narrative, but takes as its starting point the real life memoir of pop duo Tegan & Sara, who are perhaps best known for "Everything is Awesome" from the Lego Movie.

The show got off to a slowish start, with the first episode leaving me on the fence as to how much I was enjoying it, but by the end of the second episode I was fully on board.  I've now got my fingers crossed that they get another season.

High School makes an audacious choice with its lead actors.  Real life identical twins Railey and Seazynn Gilliland had no formal training as either actors or singers, winning consideration for the role on the strength of their personalities and camaraderie on Railey's TikTok channel.  Both young women give very credible performances. They're better actors than singers, right now, but I think that's entirely reasonable for this season given that the episodes cover their first explorations of music.

The show's supporting cast is also very good.  Cobie Smulders is by far the most recognisable face on the show, but there is plenty of talent among the younger, lesser known performers.  I'm sure we will see some of them become much more high profile as their careers develop.

All these good performances would of course mean little if the show failed to develop an engaging narrative.  Fortunately, there's nothing to worry about on that front.  The writing carefully balances the need to make the leads both flawed but likeable, handling that difficult task with skill and humour.  Both Tegan and Sara come across as basically decent young people who on the whole have good intentions, even if they sometimes express themselves in selfish or counter-productive ways.  Their teenage angst and spikiness is understandable and empathetic, explaining but not excusing the poor decisions they sometimes make.

Well-written, well performed, well worth your time.

Hanna, Season 1 (2019)

 

Erik Heller helps a young mother escape a covert facility with her baby daughter, Hanna.  The extraction is not a smooth one: the mother dies.

For fifteen years, deep in the forests of Poland, Erik raises Hanna as his own daughter.  It is not, however, a typical childhood: Erik rigorously trains Hanna in weapons use, martial arts, hunting technique and covert operations, and drives her to hone her body with punishing strength and endurance exercises.

For all her life, Hanna has followed the instructions of her 'father', learning the skills he has to impart and obeying his rule to never travel too far from their home.  But she is a teenager now, and the limits of her world have begun to chafe.  Secretly, she ventures beyond them ... a decision that will totally overturn her life.

Because Hanna is no ordinary child, and the organisation that killed her mother cannot afford to let her roam free ...

This series was inspired by the 2011 film of the same name, but soon diverges from the plot of the movie in order to pursue its own path.  There's considerably more complexity to the situation in which Hanna finds herself, and it is much more challenging for her to be sure who her friends and enemies are.  I think that adding extra complexity is certainly necessary; this first season alone already has quadruple the film's runtime.  I do however have mixed feelings about the specific choices made in terms of plot progression.  Some elements work well, in my opinion, but some do not.

For instance, I like the show's recognition that, having been raised in complete isolation by her 'father', Hanna has become a skilled tracker, fighter and survivor, but she's also socially a bit awkward.  She does not fully understand social cues and interactions, because she has no experience of them.  This isn't always that consistently applied, though.  Or at least, Hanna seems to abruptly become much more comfortable with physical and emotional intimacy the moment she meets a boy she likes.

Related to this, I also in principle like the show's attempt to balance the espionage and action with slice-of-life, coming-of-age learning to be a 'real person' growth that Hanna has to go through.  Again however, I think the pacing of this is a bit wonky.  The show's momentum definitely sags a lot in episode 5, for instance, and after recovering in episode 6, it accelerates to warp speed for the final two: the show is trying to get such a lot done in those episodes that the pace is almost breakneck and I don't feel like everything gets a full chance to breathe.

The show does have a couple of unalloyed positives.  The action choreography is generally solid, for instance, and the cast is uniformly good.  In particular, Esme Creed-Miles does a great job in the title role.  Hanna is on screen a lot, so there's considerably pressure put on her then 18-year-old shoulders, and she definitely rises to the challenge.

Overall, I am interested to see where they go from here with Hanna, but I am not convinced I will like what they do.  Possibly at least in part because some of the evolving premise just reminds me a bit too much of the ultimately disappointing Nikita TV series.

Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard (2021)

 

Although disgraced executive bodyguard Michael Bryce succeeded in his brief to protect the life of hitman Darius Kincaid in 2017's The Hitman's Bodyguard, that achievement didn't resurrect his career in the way he had hoped.

He's trying to clear his mind with a beachside vacation when his life is turned upside down by Darius's wife, Sonia Kincaid.  As they battle there way past a horde of gunmen, Sonia lays out the situation.  Darius has been kidnapped by vengeful mobsters, but before he was captured, he told Sonia to come to Bryce for help.

Or as it actually turns out, he told Sonia "anyone but Bryce", and she misheard him.

From here, Darius, Sonia and Bryce stumble into a slapstick, farcical caper involving international terrorists, sudden inventions of plot-relevant backstories, and "hilarity" on a par with the "not Bryce" joke up above.

The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard was a critical and commercial failure, and I certainly don't have any problems seeing why.  It is one of the most painfully unfunny action comedies I've sat through in quite some time.  It ultimately seems to have only two actual jokes in its arsenal.

The first 'joke' is that something awful happens to Michael Bryce, like he's hit by a car, but he's somehow not seriously injured by it.  The film's never identified Bryce's biological father, but based on the on-screen evidence, my money's on Gumby.

The second 'joke' is 'Sonia Kincaid really wants a baby', the leaden and unfunny execution of which makes it no surprise to me that the film's writers are all men.

Even if the gags were more varied and better executed, however, The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard would still suffer from a critical flaw: every single character - with the possible exception of Bryce - is a repulsive human being with whom I would prefer to spend as little time as possible.

Hitmen, Season 2 (2021)

 

Frumpy but fatal middle-aged assassins Fran and Jamie are back for a second season of socially awkward contract killings.  The daffy but deadly duo have somehow resolved the bad blood between them and their former employer, Mr K (how is never discussed) and now work for a mysterious new employer.  They've never met "Mr V", but Fran is hugely excited by the opportunity he presents, as he is providing them with higher-profile, more notable jobs that could help them make the step up to the big leagues of international assassination.

Jamie is more ambivalent about this.  So when she bumps into old friend Kat at their high school reunion, and Kat mentioned a job opportunity to her, she begins to wonder if maybe she would be better suited to another line of work.

Which to be frank, she probably would.  But in the meantime, Fran needs her help to kill people, and nothing could ever come before their friendship, right?

Season two of Hitmen, sometimes billed as "Hitmen: Reloaded", is that rare animal: a much improved sophomore offering.  Whereas season one was mildly amusing but more or less a 'one joke' offering, this second batch of episodes provides more variety, more depth, and most importantly of all, more laughs.

The addition of a stronger season arc really helps in this regard.  Fran's ongoing resentment of (and suspicions about) Kat's renewed presence in Jamie's life provides a central core around which the individual episodes can be weaved, giving the show an extra layer.  This is definitely something that it lacked before.
 

The episode by episode scenarios are also more varied and imaginative.  This is true both in terms of the initial setup - the reliance on 'Fran and Jamie have the target, but must now wait before killing them' is gone - and in terms of the location of the kill and how the hit plays out.  The writers seem to have been allowed to get a little bit more over the top, and that works well.  The episode where the target is a movie producer is a particularly fun bit of absurdity.

I'm not sure if the series' concept has much more juice in it, at this point,.  Certainly, as far as I know, no third season has been announced.  If this is the show's send-off, though, it's a good one.

Hitmen, Season 1 (2021)

 

Fran and Jamie have been best friends since high school.  They've stuck together through thick and thin, and even today, three decades since they first met, they always have each other's backs.  Which is a very good thing, for two reasons.

The first is that Fran and Jamie are not exactly the most socially adept of people, and they each pretty much have no-one else in their lives with whom they can openly and honestly discuss the various problems and shortcomings of their lives.  They are each other's safe space to say and feel anything.

The second is that they kill people for a living, which is rather a dangerous gig at times, so they are also each other's safe space to keep breathing.

It's Bake Off Breaking Bad as Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, former hosts of the Great British Bake Off, play Jamie and Fran respectively, and bring their usual daffy, dorky brand of humour to the scenario.  They just happen to be daffy and dorky while also being deadly(-ish).

The sometimes bumbling Jamie and Fran are very Mel and Sue roles; slightly neurotic, often impractical types, with a near-pathological avoidance of any kind of conflict.  Well, any kind of conflict that isn't "I'm sorry, but we have to kill you now, it's our job".  

And it's worth being clear that despite their general nebbish-ness, Fran and Jamie are not in any way reluctant assassins.  They kill without any sign of qualms or compunctions, including bystanders on a couple of occasions.

The episodes of this first season of Hitmen are a bit overly reliant on the same basic structure; most are essentially three-person stories involving Fran, Jamie and their target.  This person is generally already in their custody at the start of the episode, but in each case there is some reason they don't immediately carry out the hit.  To be fair, there is at least some variety in the specifics of why the delay, and how the various potential victims respond to their situation, and the individual scenarios are quite amusing.  Watching them back to back does highlight their similar structures, though. 

The final episode of the season is the one that varies most from this basic pattern, which is definitely a factor in why it is also one of the strongest offerings of the set.  It also sets up a bit of change in the status quo and gives the show new options for season two, which has already aired (and will be the subject of a future review).

Home Economics,. Season 1 (2021)

 

Tom Hayworth is a critically acclaimed novelist.  Critical acclaim doesn't always mean rampant financial success, however, and together with his wife and three young kids, Tom is just barely clinging to middle class status.  A struggle that is complicated by the fact that having three young kids makes it hard to find time to write.

Now as it happens, Tom could always swallow his pride and go to his younger brother Connor, for a loan.  The genial oaf of the family, Connor has made a huge amount of money and now runs a successful private equity firm.  He can certainly spare the money.

But pride is a difficult thing to overcome, and there's also his sister Sarah to think about.  Tom knows that Sarah and her wife live in a tiny apartment with their two adopted kids, and battle to get by from pay check to pay check.

Perhaps key to Tom's reluctance though, is that he needs the loan to tide him over while he writes an autobiographical book, in which his sometimes tempestuous relationship with his siblings is a central feature.

Home Economics is a lightweight situation comedy series about three basically decent siblings who all want to do the right thing while achieving success, but who have drastically different ideas about what 'the right thing' and 'success' actually are.

Like a lot of sitcoms, the show relies on characters with exaggerated, archetypical traits; Sarah is the strident activist, Tom the overly cautious over-thinker, Conner the buffoonish but well-meaning man-child.  In the wrong hands, this could quickly get annoying, but a likeable and well-chosen cast makes all three characters work well.  Plus of course, they have their siblings and each other to point out their more egregious foibles.

Overall the show's comedy works well, as it maintains a light and breezy overall ambience and gives each sibling an opportunity to be on different sides of a situation.  It is not always the same sibling as the voice of reason, or the instigator, and so on.  The humour can veer a little bit into 'cringe comedy' at times, but it does not generally last too long, and the scripts tend to focus more on slapstick and banter.

This first season runs a slender seven episodes, and in addition to the usual episode by episode sitcom shenanigans it delivers a reasonably complete story about the three siblings and them re-establishing their familial relationships.  You could sit down and watch this season in an afternoon, then walk away feeling like you've seen a somewhat oddly structured comedy film with a satisfying conclusion.

I enjoyed this season of Home Economics, and I appreciated that it included a longer story arc rather than just "the wacky situation of the week".  I have to say though that I am not sure how well the formula stretch as an ongoing series, especially as there are 22 episodes in season two.  The premise might get a bit thin.

Hotel Artemis (2018)

 

On June 21, 2028, a riot breaks out in Los Angeles over the privatization of the city's water supply. In the midst of the chaos, professional criminal Sherman attempts a bank robbery.  This goes badly wrong, leaving half his team dead and his brother Lev critically wounded.  They don't even get away with much in the way of spoils, though Lev does steal a fancy pen from a well-dressed bank customer, despite the man saying that doing so is a terrible mistake. 

Sherman and Lev escape to the nearby Hotel Artemis, a secretive hospital that treats only criminals.  This is run by "The Nurse", who has not been outside the Hotel for 22 years, due to her severe agoraphobia and her grief over the death of her son.  The Nurse has a strict set of rules for the hospital: "No weapons", "No non-members", and "No killing of other guests".

Of course, the fact that we're watching a movie ought to clue you into the fact that pretty much all of these rules are going to be tested during the next couple of hours ...

Hotel Artemis has a truly top notch cast, several good action scenes, and some snappy dialogue, but it unfortunately felt rather less than the sum of its parts, to me.  I place most of the blame for this on the execution of the sub-plots.  One example is the Nurse's breaching of her very own rules.  This whole sub-plot feels a bit orphaned.  While it does tie into the Nurse's trauma about her son, it doesn't really connect up to the broader action within the hospital on this particular night, and the exposition it delivered could easily have come from somewhere else that potentially could have been used to strengthen our understanding of other, more central themes of the film.

Similarly, one major character's fate is left essentially unresolved. I don't actually hate this as an idea.  The character's personal journey has arguably already been 'finished' through the choices they make and the reasons behind them.  But I don't feel that the execution quite works: it doesn't feel finished, even if it technically is.  I suspect this is because the characters choices feel more like they are made to facilitate someone else's story, rather than to complete their own.

This lack of a sense of conclusion is actually a recurring theme within the film; for most of the characters, I was left saying "wait, that's the ending you're giving them?".  The whole movie feels like a case of an intriguing premise that doesn't deliver on its promise.

I will say that I did appreciate the film's trenchant criticism of the privatisation of essential utilities like water and law enforcement. Thumbs up for that at least.

Happy Death Day (2017)

 

After a night of drunken partying, university student Theresa "Tree" Gelbman wakes up on her birthday in the dorm room of classmate Carter Davis. She ignores a phone call from her father and dismisses Carter, returning to her sorority.  Her behaviour there is no more friendly: she ignores her sorority sisters as much as she can and when Tree's roommate gives her a birthday cupcake, she throws it on the floor for having "to many carbs".

So, Tree is not winning many friends here.  And when you add in the fact that she is having an affair with her married professor, there's a pretty long list of people who might want to stick a knife in her.  Which is, in fact, exactly what someone does, that very night.

Which would make for a short film, if it were not for the fact that Tree wakes up again in Carter's bed, the memory of her own murder still fresh in her mind.

Yep, what we have here is "Groundhog Day, but a slasher movie", as Tree tries to work out who's killing her (and killing her, and killing her) and why.  And if the whole ordeal happens to teach Tree a few things about being a better person along the way, well, let's hope she'll eventually find a way to live through it and put those lessons in practice!

I thought Happy Death Day was great fun.  Jessica Rothe shows great versatility in portraying Tree's obnoxiousness at the start, and then of first her rising hysteria as she realises what is happening, before moving on to her subsequent later manic experimentation - and more - as she tries to resolve her situation.  Despite how awful her character is at the beginning of the film, she's pretty easy to root for after a couple of times through the loop.

I also that Tree isn't necessarily an easy kill.  Even the first time, she doesn't go down without a fight, and in subsequent loops she learns from previous experiences and tries to find new ways to avoid her fate.  This is a smart choice as making her scrappy makes her more relatable and easy to cheer on, even while she remains quite snotty.  Plus, it's fun to see how her efforts go awry, as they inevitably must, for quite some time!

The script does a couple of other smart things, too.  It avoids any real engagements with the question of how or why Tree got stuck in the loop to begin with, and isn't just dead.  Given her situation, I can definitely understand why this is not something that Tree - and therefore the film - spends much time worrying about.  Seizing the opportunity to survive, rather than worrying about how the opportunity came to be, is very much the name of the game.

I also liked that the film found a way to still make Tree's situation a precarious one.  Without spoiling the details, it quite smartly presents evidence that sooner or later, these loops will stop, and Tree needs to find a way to survive before they do, or she will be really for real dead dead, and not just temporarily non-breathing.

Good stuff.  I see it has a sequel: I certainly plan to check that out!

Heels, Season 1 (2021)

 

Jack Spade runs the Duffy Wrestling League ('the DWL'), a small professional wrestling promotion in small town Georgia. Jack's the promotion's current champion and top heel (bad guy), while his younger brother Ace is their top face (good guy) who is trying to take the title from him.

Just when it seems that the time has finally come to give Ace his title match and let him be 'top of the pile' for a while, 'Wild Bill' Hancock turns up in town. Hancock used to wrestle in the DWL when Jack's dad was running the promotion, before getting the call up to the 'big leagues' (not named in the show, but obviously meant to be the WWE). He's come to Duffy to scout Ace as a potential recruit.

This is easily the biggest opportunity of Ace's career, but it makes Jack extremely worried.  It's definitely possible that the callow, self-centred Ace would flame out spectacularly if exposed to the glitzy lifestyle of the big leagues.  And on a far more selfish note - one that everyone else is quick to notice - Ace's departure would be a huge blow to the DWL.

How Jack chooses to deal with this, and how it effects his family, his colleagues and his business, is the subject of the entire first season of Heels.  It's makes a pretty solid framework for the show, though an occasionally frustrating one as both Jack and Ace are frequently their own worst enemies.

Heels is helped immensely by a solid cast, headed by former Arrow star Stephen Amell (who has himself wrestled on WWE).  Even when characters on this show are making bad decisions, it is easy to root for them and to want to see them succeed.

Also, as someone who enjoys the pageantry of professional wrestling, I also enjoyed seeing a relatively serious show that presents a generally positive view of the 'sport' and the people who perform it.  That view is somewhat idealised and romanticised, it has to be said, but that may well be because people who aren't into pro-wrestling would not believe what the reality is actually like.  This is after all an industry where people regularly drive hundreds of miles to perform for fees that won't even cover their gas money.

Happiest Season (2020)

 

Abby Holland has good reasons to not like Christmas. But when her partner Harper invites her to spend the holidays with Harper's family, she sucks it up and agrees to go. After all, this the perfect opportunity to not only to introduce herself to Harper's parents, but also to propose to Harper on Christmas morning.

There's one major flaw in Abby's plan, though she doesn't learn that until they're halfway to the Caldwell home.  Harper, you see, hasn't actually told her family that she's gay.  Harper asks Abby to pretend to be her straight roommate for the holiday, a request to which Abby very reluctantly agrees.

It rapidly emerges that the Caldwell family aren't exactly fully functional on the best of days, and with the pressures of not just the holiday season hut also Papa Caldwell's political campaign in full effect, this are definitely not the best of days.  Add Harper and Abby's little secret to the mix and shenanigans, as you might imagine, ensue.

Happiest Season is a fun little holiday rom-com.  It's not really breaking any especially new ground with its themes or its story, but it executes well.  A familiar story, well told, can still be very enjoyable and this is one of those cases.  The solid cast definitely help in that regard; the oft-maligned Kristen Stewart, in particular, is very good as the beleaguered and uncomfortable Abby.

A heart-warming little Xmas Pudding.

The Human Race (2012)

 

If you don't run, you die.

If you get lapped twice, you die.

If you leave the path, you die.

If you step on the grass, you die.

Only one of you can win.

Eighty people wake to hear those words in their heads, spoken in their own voices.  They don't know how they came to this strange place, or who brought them, but within seconds the truth of the warnings has been gruesomely proved, and so they all begin to run.

Of course, fast as they pound around the course, they can't outrun their own questions: why is this happening?  How do they get out?  How, at the end of it, can they survive?

All good questions, but not necessarily ones that are going to be given particularly good answers, alas.  Certainly no positive ones.  There's a pretty thoroughly negative view of humanity underpinning events here, to say the least.  On the plus side, while I don't think the movie goes anywhere all that interesting in the end - which you could argue is apropos since it is about a bunch of people going in circles - it does manage to tell a couple of reasonably engaging stories about the people caught in this situation.  Maybe, if I really worked hard, I could see recommending this as something that is more about the journey than the destination ... but it's kind of an unpleasant journey.

Content warning: scenes of attempted sexual assault

Human Tornado (1976)

 

On the run from a vengeful and racist sheriff whose wife he has been sleeping with, the reformed gangster Dolemite heads for California and his old ally Queen Bee.  Little does he know that he's walking into yet more danger, as the Queen and her Kung Fu Ladies are now under the thumb of a mobbed up nightclub owner and his entourage of mafioso thugs.

On the other hand, little does the mob know that Dolemite is a Human Tornado.  He's soon bringing his two-fisted martial arts and smack-talking skills to bear on these new enemies, while staying one step ahead of the sheriff.

This is the second of Rudy Ray Moore's Dolemite films, based on the crass gangster character he created for his stand-up routine.  The movie actually begins with several excerpts from his live performances, which I found painfully unfunny.  Apparently "You're fat, fatso" was considered hilarious stuff in 1976.

Fortunately, after that's done we're mostly just subjected to comical displays of Dolemite's alleged combat skills, which principally involves Moore waving his arms in the air and making weird noises, before they speed up the footage for the 'fighting' itself.  This seems a good use of screen time when you have actual kickboxing and karate champion Howard Jackson on set, right?  Well, it's better than the time spent on cringe-inducing homosexual stereotypes, I guess.

Human Tornado does occasionally bust out some funny moments - there's a stunt that gets a literal 'action replay' for instance, and some of Moore's mock martial arts antics will likely draw a chuckle since they're so clearly meant to be absurd - but you definitely have to be willing to put up with the tiresome, lowest common denominator 'jokes' to find them.

His Girl Friday (1940)

 

Hildy Johnson, former star reporter of The Morning Post, drops into the paper to see Walter Burns, the paper's editor, and also her ex-husband.  It's no idle visit: Hildy is there to let Walter know that she's recently become engaged, and intends to quit the newspaper business to become a stay-at-home wife and mother.

Walter expresses pleasure at the news, insisting on meeting Hildy's fiance (a rather bland insurance salesman) and taking them both out to lunch.  This, of course, is nothing more than step on in a barrage of schemes to torpedo the impending nuptials.  Walter, you see, wants Hildy for himself - though rather more for her journalistic skills than for romantic reasons, I feel - and is pretty confident that if he can delay their departure long enough, he can find a story his ex-wife's reporterly instincts won't let her leave alone.  He may be right, at that: it just so happens there's a man on death row for fairly flimsy reasons.

The rest of the film depicts the battle of wills between Walter and Hildy and the pair's equally fierce struggle to write a story that the city's corrupt mayor and sheriff have no intent of letting see the light of day.

His Girl Friday is a seminal 'screwball comedy', with the razor-sharp banter and rather cynical view of love that generally characterised such works.  It's mostly good fun to watch, though at the end of the day it's hard to say that it's got a "happy ending". On the one hand, both Hildy and Walter seem to have got what they think they want ... on the other, I'm not sure what they want is all that sensible!

If you want to watch some skilled 1940s thespians deliver snappy dialog at a thousand words a minute, this film definitely has you covered.  Just don't expect anyone to be a better person at the end of the film than they are at the beginning!

The House on Sorority Row (1983)

Seven members of a sorority plan a graduation party, despite the objections of their domineering house mother, Mrs Slater.  When the older woman demands they cancel the party and take down all the decorations, they plan to prank her in revenge.  Alas, things get out of control, and the repercussions could well be deadly ...

The House on Sorority Row (AKA House of Evil or Seven Sisters) is a fairly formulaic slasher coming from toward the end of the genre's roughly five year 'golden age' between Halloween and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.  Despite the provocative title and cover image, the film's pretty tame in terms of both sex and violence.  Particularly violence, really.  There's a fair bit of "here are the shadows of someone being murdered" rather than "here is someone being murdered".  This was possibly partly due to the then current furore about "video nasties", but I suspect a bigger driver was probably just that it's a lot cheaper to film shadows than a convincing on-camera 'kill scene'.

The problem with this (presumed) cost-cutting measure is that it needs a quality director to keep up the tension and creepiness in the face of the lack of "payoff" (because let's face it, the kill scenes are a key draw for slasher movies).  This movie would need someone like John Carpenter at the helm to really make it work, and well ... it doesn't.  The script doesn't do itself many favours in the tension stakes by making the 'final girl' so transparently obvious from the start (and also by failing to actually establish discernible characters for five of the seven young women at all).

This is only for slasher fanatics, and even they are unlikely to find a whole lot to really enthuse about, here.

Heathers (1989)

Veronica has spent a considerable amount of time and effort ingratiating herself with the "in crowd" at her high school, only to find herself missing her less "cool" but considerably nicer old friends.  The arrival of rebellious bad boy JD seems like a welcome distraction from her growing unhappiness and the resultant friction with her new crowd.

JD seems to offer Veronica a way to re-establish her own independence and identity, and a way to strike back at the "friends" that are making her miserable.  But perhaps JD's ideas of an appropriate response are a bit more extreme than Veronica's expecting ...

I loved Heathers when I first saw it as a teen, shortly after its original release, but man oh man it is very clearly a product of its time.  I'm not just talking here about the hideously 80s fashion and the frequency of character's smoking - though both are endemic throughout the film.  I'm not even talking about the problematic attitudes toward sexuality, which in the film's defense are often meant to be problematic.  I'm talking about how in one of his early scenes, JD uses a gun at school.  Yes, it's only loaded with blanks, but he does point it at two fellow students and pull the trigger.  In 1989, this was presumably meant to make him cool and edgy (since the two other students are jerks) but in 2018, I think reactions are going to be a bit different!

In fact, watching Heathers today, I was most struck by how much the changing mores of society have impacted the way I saw JD: so many of the things he does, which barely registered with me at the time, now all ping red flags.  This almost certainly harms the film for new viewers, but for someone who grew up with it, it's quite a fascinating thing to experience.

House of Cards, Season 5 (2017)

The House of Cards finally comes crashing down in its fifth season.

It would certainly be fair to say that the show has had structural wobbles before this, but up until now they've managed to shuffle the deck fast enough to more or less make up for it.  Unfortunately, even the quickest hands will fumble eventually, and they certainly do so here.

The basic plot arcs they season covers sound reasonable in and of themselves: the resolution of an increasingly acrimonious presidential election, and then the challenge Frank Underwood faces as it becomes increasingly clear that he cannot cover up his many nefarious activities forever. 

Instead, the problem is the pacing.  The election arc goes on way beyond the point that I just wanted it to be over (also true of real US elections, and I don't even live there!), while the latter plotline is abbreviated by its late start and therefore gallops along at breakneck speed, crashing through several major interpersonal relationship changes in the process.  It all ultimately makes for an unsatisfying watching experience, even while the on-screen performances continue to be good.

Netflix have announced one more season of the show to wrap it up.  Season six will be shorter, at only eight episodes; and entirely it eliminates Frank, to focus on his wife Claire (Robin Wright).  Honestly, these changes are the only reason I am at all interested in checking out the final season: the previous structure of the show seems pretty much exhausted at this point, and I doubt I would bother checking out another season of Frank's antics.