Streaming Round-Up 5/9/22

Look, I know, finding what to watch can be a bear of an issue.  I’ve spent many an hour sitting in front of streaming service after streaming service looking for something to while away the time. There’s a lot of content out there and my hope is that I can help, even if just a little, point you in the right direction for some quality entertainment. 

Severance (Apple TV+)

This series took me by absolute surprise.  I don’t know why; I’ve always been a big fan of Adam Scott and a huge admirer of Britt Lower, ever since the first episode that centered on her character in Man Seeking Woman.  Talk about an underrated talent, she’s such a powerhouse in this show.  Before I get ahead of myself, here’s the basic premise.  In a sort of half-Eternal Sunshine process, workers at one company, Lumon, founded by the Eagan family, have a special brain surgery that cuts off your working hours from your memory.  You show up to work, blink, and then you’re immediately leaving work, the dullness and soul-crushing corporate day behind you like it never happened.  Of course, it did happen, and you were there, but it was a different version of you.  One that goes to leave the office at the end of the day, blinks, and is right back there, walking to his or her desk.  From one side of the story, it’s a magical paradise of never having to deal with corporate bullshit again.  From the other, it’s a nightmarish hellscape where work is your life, love, religion, birth, and death.  

Severance plays with this very well, using effective cinematography, playing with light and dark, and extremely strong performances from the aforementioned (Adam Scott, especially, plays a dual role; he’s the only character whom we see both in and out of work, two separate people inhabiting the same mind and body, each unaware of each other), as well as the always quality John Turturro and relative unknown Zach Cherry, whom you might have seen in Shang-Chi, but I mostly remember from his small role in Search Party, a show I’ve praised many times before.  More than just ask the moral questions, Severance plunges you deep into a mystery, filled with lore and cultish behavior that leaves you begging for more.  I had to stop myself from binging the entire first season all at once, rather leaving myself a day in between episodes to let them really sink in.  This is a really special show that reminds me of the old days of the water cooler talk of Lost, but without the sinking feeling that most of your questions will go unanswered because JJ Abrams isn’t very good at ending things.  At first, I wanted to compare Severance to Lodge 49, because of its strong mix of humor and depth, but there’s an aloofness that Lodge 49 had that Severance lacks.  Their approach to the lore is very different as well; where Lodge 49 invites you to buy in or not, but Severance draws you into the mystery and you can’t help but invest.  Both shows are excellent, and if you know just how highly I regard Lodge 49, you’d know just mentioning it in the same breath as Severance is high praise.  

Slow Horses (Apple TV+)

Another entrant into Apple TV’s growing portfolio, Slow Horses follows the exploits of the MI5 rejects of Slough House, the home for agents who have screwed up so badly they have to live in a sort of intelligence purgatory where they do things like go through trash looking for clues about people the MI5 deems too low priority to put someone competent on, but know too much to be cut loose and left twisting in the wind.  Gary Oldman leads the squad of misfits and fuck-ups, playing the charmingly flatulent, washed up old man very well.  The show mainly focuses on the character of River Cartwright, played by the instantly likable Jack Lowden, whom you may recognize as the downed fighter pilot rescued by Mark Rylance in Dunkirk, Tom Hardy’s wingman.  I’d also be remiss to neglect to mention Kristin Scott Thomas’s excellent performance as Regent’s Park’s pack leader Diana Taverner (her henchmen, for lack of a better word, are even called “the dogs”).  As the slow horses stumble through a kidnapping plot, Slow Horses weaves together a tale of intrigue, betrayal, and conspiracy that has just the right number of hoops to jump through.  So often in spy thrillers, the fine balance is hard to master—make it too realistic and it’s boring, make it too sensationalistic and it’s 24.  Slow Horses toes the line; it feels real, even though I’m sure it likely isn’t.  Most of the espionage media I can remember that’s praised as being realistic, films like Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy and The Good Shepherd, are ruinously boring, forcing you into a world of people sitting around speaking half sentences.  Of course, you wouldn’t want it to be a Jason Bourne movie either, because that would be so unrealistic, it would take you out of the moment.  

Slow Horses keeps you right there, keeping you twisted and turned, while making sure that every twist and turn is earned; that’s another hard deal.  Often, media that tries to surprise does so by the “unearned twist”, a surprise for the sake of surprise, for which little or no evidence existed in the story prior to the twist.  I see it a lot and it always feels cheap, especially when it comes to a mystery or thriller where I want to tacitly play along with the characters and see if I can figure it out myself.  Think about the first season of Veronica Mars compared to the first season of Luther.  At the end of Veronica Mars, you smack yourself in the forehead for not seeing it all along, since the clues were always there, whereas Luther leaves you scratching your heard and thinking “Well, I guess they mentioned something once, I think”.  From start to finish, Slow Horses earns its twists and doesn’t try to bamboozle you, and I really respect that.  It’s another page-turner of a show, another one that I wanted to go from episode to episode, but I forced myself to only watch one per day to let the anticipation grow.  While not the cerebral show that asks big moral questions that, say, Severance is, it does help to slow down sometimes and let the show last longer just from a personal level.  Gone are the days of 22 episode seasons; the best shows now are doing 13 episodes or fewer, with Slow Horses clocking in at six for the first season.  A second six episode season seems to be in the can already and I’m very excited about that. 

The Shield (Hulu)

This one is a rewatch for me—20 years old now, I thought it was time to revisit the show that redefined the cop show for me.  I was never a big fan of The Wire, which inevitably would be brought up every time I mentioned The Shield, so let’s just dispense with that now.  Whether you liked The Wire or not, The Shield takes a very cold and unforgiving look at policing and there’s plenty of room for both shows to exist and be enjoyed.  It’s amazing to revisit this show literally decades later, as an adult rather than a teenager, seeing it through the eyes I have now.  So much has changed in the world since The Shield first aired, my takes on the characters and their actions has made it like a new show to me.  

The Shield follows the Strike Team, a gang task force in the fictional Los Angeles district Farmington, loosely based on the horribly corrupt LAPD anti-gang unit CRASH.  Vic Mackey and his team use less than legal means to attempt to control gang violence and the drug trade in their streets, sometimes being more gang members than cops themselves.  It’s amazing how perspectives change—20 years ago, they were the good guys.  Now they’re the same bad guys, albeit more complicated in some ways, as the ones they’re attempting to put in prison, at least in my eyes.  Part of the same problem that perpetuates conditions that create the crime they’re attempting to control.  When I was younger, I loved the characters on the Strike Team (except Shane, who is played by one of my now-favorite actors, the extremely talented Walton Goggins; to his credit, I so wholly hate his depiction of the dirty and racist cop, it’s a testament to his strength as an actor), but now my favorite character is Claudette Wyms, played by the indomitable CCH Pounder.  You may know and love her from her stoic run on Warehouse 13, but this is where I saw her first—a totally badass Black woman in a largely white and male precinct who has more backbone and moral fiber than the rest of them combined, without getting annoying or preachy about it.  The show also tackled a lot of issues, like homophobia, racism, and toxic masculinity, but avoids getting all after school special-y about it.  If anything, The Shield loves to live in its gray areas; every character, even the victims of prejudice, often have blood on their hands, sometimes literal, sometimes figurative.  The character depictions are incredibly nuanced, and while some moments make you cringe, they’re supposed to.  The Shield doesn’t both sides you, but it doesn’t paint characters as outright good or outright bad.  Even Shane has his moments where you sympathize and even care about him.  If you haven’t seen The Shield before, I highly recommend it.  If you can make it to the end of the first episode without wanting to immediately watch the second, I’d be genuinely surprised.  

The Office (Peacock)

There are some comedies I watch over and over again, like Brooklyn Nine Nine, which I love so much that even if I can recite all the jokes as they come, I still want to be with the show and let myself be covered in it like a warm blanket of comforting punchlines.  Then, there are some I love so much that I set them aside for years so I can return to them with at least a little freshness.  It’s not a matter of degree, but type, before you get the wrong idea.  Shows that I love to watch repeatedly and ones I like to save aren’t different because I love one over the other, but rather it’s a different type of love.  Anyway, one such show is The Office.  You’ve probably never heard of it—it’s a small show of relatively unknown actors set in a paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania.  Kidding, of course.  It was a huge hit when it was adapted for the US and a big hit all over again when streaming services became prevalent and picked it up.  I personally know at least a dozen people who cancelled their Netflix accounts when Netflix lost the rights to The Office.  While I wasn’t one of them, I was very happy to see the show pop up on Peacock with four seasons of extra length “Superfan” episodes.  Though sometimes scenes that should have ended up on the cutting room floor made it to the extra long episodes (including a bizarre scene in which Ryan and Kelly bone down in a dumpster), it was nice to see scenes that I’d never seen before interspersed with ones that I still remember word for word, despite not watching them since college.  

Having just completed the fourth season and started on the fifth, I’m reminded of how difficult it can be to witness Michael Scott’s cringe-worthy behavior over and over again.  And the cringe doesn’t end there; the endless sexual harassment of Pam and casual racism, as well as the not-so-casual kind, can be hard to watch at times.  But still, I think The Office might have ushered in the new era of comedy series where everyone likes each other and even the “villains” of the show are likable (eventually) and become friends with the protagonists.  There were seemingly endless numbers of shows about groups of friends who expressed their friendship by being horrible to one another, but The Office wasn’t like that.  Despite Jim’s endless pranks, he and Dwight end up more like occasionally bickering brothers rather than enemies.  Watching their friendship grow over the years felt so organic, even though it started with office supplies in a gelatin dessert.  It opened up the door for other such feel good comedies like Parks and Recreation, Superstore, and the previously mentioned Brooklyn Nine Nine.  Three comedies I absolutely adore, by the way.  Also, as a side note, I know there’s some chatter these days about Jim and Pam, but they’ve got to go down as one of my favorite on-screen couples.  I’m not interested in hot takes for the sake of hot takes, though.  No one is perfect and they’re not perfect either, which adds some realism to their fairy tale romance, but I don’t see that as a negative.  It’s a mockumentary, after all, not a fantasy show.  Happily ever after never meant there weren’t going to be bumps in the road.  Still, love PB&J or don’t, you’re entitled to feel how you do.  Personally, I love them.  

The Office rightfully deserves its place as sitcom royalty, so if you haven’t seen it yet, or just haven’t seen it in a while, now might be the time to fire it back up and bask in the warm glow of The Electric City.

I’ve also just finished Moon Knight (Disney+) and and in the middle of Tokyo Vice (HBO Max), but I think Moon Knight bears a second viewing and its own in-depth article and I’m not yet ready to make a call on Tokyo Vice.  I’m enjoying it quite a bit so far, but for those of you who know me and listen to me incessantly rave about Tokyo, it’s my home away from home and it might just be nostalgia clouding my judgment.  I’m going to reserve judgment on that until I finish the series.  Similarly, if you’re following me on Twitter, you’ve been seeing my one tweet reviews of the Halo (Paramount+) series, which has been less than stellar, but I won’t make the final call on that until the season has concluded.  Same with Peacock’s new comedy series Killing It, starring Office alum Craig Robinson.  Very promising start with a meandering middle, but I’m hoping it pulls it together by the end of the first season.  Also, off into the sunset with the promising Space Force (Netflix); it wasn’t great, but it had its moments and was stuffed to the gills with likable characters of questionable competence.  Sometimes it was just relatively pleasant background noise and sometimes that’s enough.

I hope these streaming recommendations help you sort through the endless sea of content across so many different streaming platforms.  Have you seen them already?  What did you think?  Is there anything you’re watching that I might have missed?  Let me know in the comments here or on Twitter.  

The Nostalgia Cage

Nic Cage is a controversial figure in Hollywood.  Not for any terrible reason, at least not that I can think of, and I’m not willing to Google it at the moment.  But, as far as I know, other than his library of terrible movies, he’s not done anything quite wrong.  It’s not like he has the desire to eat people or a history of hate crimes that could turn him into either an outcast or a Hollywood darling, but still, “Starring Nicolas Cage” became three words that told me to stay away from a movie, no matter how enticing the trailer cut may have been to my teenage self (I remember once, briefly, wanting to watch Bangkok Dangerous, before the title and Cage’s presence snapped me back to reality).  When I heard that a film version of Uncharted was going to be made, I immediately thought “Oh no, what if they turn my beloved video game series into another National Treasure?”  I haven’t seen it yet, but it seems like they may have actually done worse; I’m sure I’ll be reporting on that the second I’m able to see it, but I refuse to spend money on a movie that stars Mark Wahlberg.  Anyway…

Dinner was delicious, but the wine had a bloody aftertaste

So Nic Cage’s name is a warning, yes.  Until it’s not.  If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably seen me praise both the film Pig and Cage’s work in it; what I thought was going to be another hollow John Wick clone, like the woefully underperforming Nobody, turned out to be a solemn examination of grief and loss that affected me in a way I was never expecting and not prepared for.  Nic Cage made me feel feelings.  I didn’t know that was possible.  But I’m not here to dissect Nic Cage’s career or critique his ability as an actor; I saw what happened to Abed when he tried in Community, and I have no interest in going through the same breakdown.  No doubt Cage is an enigmatic figure with an insanely varied career.  He’s an Oscar winner who’s made a movie about a guy who can see slightly into the future; he’s played characters so ridiculously named they’re actually called Benjamin Franklin Gates and Stanley Goodspeed; he was in multiple movies where the best thing about them was that his face would be set on fire multiple times.  The guy’s not easy to figure out.  

Pig was great.  If you haven’t seen it yet, carve some time out to watch it.  Not really a popcorn flick, but if you must, at least sprinkle some truffle oil or truffle salt on it, that’ll be thematic.  Cage’s new film, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is getting stellar reviews, with an 89% Rotten Tomatoes score and 86% Flixster audience score at the time of writing.  I haven’t seen it yet, but I can’t wait to.  That’s right.  I just praised a Nic Cage movie and expressed desire to watch another.  I’m not sure I believe what I’m writing myself.  But do not adjust your radio, dear reader.  It’s still me.  No interference, no enraged Nic Cage standing over my shoulder threatening to give me one of his patented volume-swinging rants if I don’t comply.  I’ve not been tied to a chair and forced to watch Left Behind over and over again.  There’s a reason Nic Cage broke Abed.  Because he’s occasionally good.  Occasionally really good. 

Perhaps my favorite moment in National Treasure, where Nic Cage explains what a watch is

And much more often than that, he’s actually quite likable.  I know I just as recently as the opening paragraph took a swing at National Treasure, but truth be told, it’s a movie I can pop on at any time and just watch it if I need to turn my brain off from the 24 hour news cycle or whatever else is going on in my head.  It’s not quite so bad it’s good, but it’s also not quite so bad it’s unwatchable.  Nonsensical, yes.  Silly, of course.  Preposterous, unavoidably.  But it’s kind of fun enough to keep on in the background as I work on a project or cook or fold laundry.  And that’s not even the peak of Cage’s power, at least not over me.  I’ve always said there’s a difference between a good movie and a bad movie and a difference between a movie I like and I don’t like.  I like some bad movies.  I hate some good movies.  That’s fine, I can see the difference and admit it.  Take Jake Gyllenhaal’s Nightcrawler, for example.  Undoubtedly a good movie, well written and confidently made, but I didn’t like it.  Perhaps it was a bit too uncomfortably real for me to enjoy it as entertainment.  But that doesn’t mean it was bad.  It just means I didn’t like it.  And just because a movie is bad doesn’t mean I can’t like it.  Right, Prequel Trilogy fans?  

Perhaps the real star of Gone in 60 Seconds

I’m irreparably a car guy.  I have been my entire life.  In home movies of me as a toddler, I often had a Matchbox car in each little hand as I ambled about.  This blog, in its first iteration from almost a decade ago, started life as a blog about cars and driving.  The zeitgeist changed over time, the industry changed, and cars began to appeal less to me.  It also became pretty apparent that this thing I loved was not so wonderful for the planet.  It was hard to reconcile.  I still love getting behind the wheel, popping the clutch, and really driving, but I do it less and less.  Partly because of practicality—I live in a city where it’s much easier to get around without a personal car than with one—and partly because I’ve tried to minimize at least my impact on the damage the car’s done to the environment.  But I still love cars.  And I love a car chase.  Especially a good car chase, but there’s value in a bad one too.  

“I’m retired,” said car thief Memphis Raines. “The benefits are excellent.”

So now that you know that about me, it’s time I finally confess to you all that I love Gone in 60 Seconds.  Yes, that forgotten remake of that 1974 stunt man’s fever dream, starring Nicolas Cage.  It’s just so much damn fun to watch.  From Cage’s preposterously named Memphis Raines (though this is a marked improvement over the original’s Maindrian Pace) to his even more preposterously named brother Kip Raines, to the silly “Lowrider” scene from the trailer, to the Cage Rage, to the partially CGI’d Eleanor chase, I just love this movie.  If you haven’t seen it, the premise is this.  Retired car thief, a term I didn’t know existed, who has never been caught, finds out his little brother has taken a job to steal 50 cars and is dangerously out of his depth.  The options become either to come out of retirement, Jordan-style, and boost the cars, or be murdered by a Dr. Who along with his brother.  Now, both of those options sound pretty unappetizing, especially when you factor in Delroy Lindo, the detective who has spent his career chasing Memphis is clued in to the fact that he’s back in town and now is all over him like sour cream and chives on a baked potato.  Memphis reassembles his crew, including a mute Bullet Tooth Tony and blond-haired Angelina Jolie and they plan a one night boost of all 50 cars.  

Nope, this scene is not okay. Not now, not in the year 2000.

Now you’re up to speed, so to speak.  And I know, it sounds ridiculous, and it is.  But there’s just so much charm about this movie.  One, it’s about two brothers.  That usually gets me, as I have a brother myself, and if you told me I had to steal 50 cars to save him, I’d mask up and Google “How to steal cars” so fast it would make your head spin.  Two, it actually has kind of an all star cast that does way more than you’d think with the script that they’ve got.  We’ve already gone over Nic Cage and Angelina Jolie, as well as the underrated Delroy Lindo, but there’s also Giovanni Ribisi, Will Patton, Timothy Olyphant, Chi McBride, Robert Duvall, Christopher Eccleston, and Vinnie Jones.  There’s even a fairly fun cameo by Bodhi Elfman, who was great in Enemy of the State.  That’s a lot of acting talent packed into this little B-movie.  I mean, Giovanni Ribisi made me weep like a small child in Saving Private Ryan and Timothy Olyphant went on to play Raylan Givens in Justified and Cobb Vanth [Vanth Refrigeration] in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.  How could there not be so much charm in this movie that you just can’t stand it?  Okay, sure, there’s a handful of casual racism in the script, but it was the year 2000.  Humanity had just survived Y2K, personal jet packs zoomed through the air, and we all got flying cars.  Racism just wasn’t on our minds back then.  Still, pretty diverse cast for 2000, if you don’t count the lack of any Asian characters other than a young girl who can’t pass her driver’s test and the fact that there’s really only one woman in the cast other than a pair of ancillary mothers and wives and the aforementioned failed driver.  I know, you can practically see me bending over backwards to make excuses, but it was a different time.  No one complained about Friends until way later, either.  

But, despite a few problematic moments, Gone in 60 Seconds represents that special kind of bad movie I just can’t help but like.  All the vroom vroom noises and the pretty cars, I go into a sort of trance.  The same thing happens when I watch a Fast and Furious movie, although to a lesser extent now that they’re so out of touch with reality that they’re essentially superhero movies where everyone’s superpower is a denial of basic physics (2 Fast 2 Furious was the peak of that franchise, come at me).  Part of it was that I saw this movie at the right time.  It was a PG-13 film that came out when I was 14.  A precious few excruciatingly long years before I got my driver’s license, at the height of my love affair with these gas guzzling machines.  Gone in 60 Seconds is probably why I wanted to learn how to drive stick shift, it’s probably why I fell in love with Mustangs (the notorious Eleanor, the one car Memphis has never been able to successfully steal, is a 1967 Shelby GT500, a performance version of the Ford Mustang tuned by legendary Carroll Shelby), it’s why I have such a respect for movies that did it better.  If it weren’t for Gone in 60 Seconds, I don’t think I’d have gone back and watched a classic like Bullitt, which started my lifelong appreciation with Steve McQueen and truly cemented my love of Mustangs.  I really don’t want to credit that to Nic Cage or Gone, but now that I think about it, if not the causal link, it’s certainly in the chain of events that led me there.  

For all its faults, this impossible CGI trip over a traffic jam is its biggest sin

So is Gone in 60 Seconds a good bad movie?  Is it a bad good movie?  Is it just a bad movie that I like?  I’m not sure it matters.  Will it ever be Ford vs. Ferrari?  No, definitely not.  But it doesn’t have to be.  It just has to be fun.  And, for me, it really is.  Gone in 60 Seconds represents that kind of media that just lets you escape for a couple of hours, and as much as the world needs media that scrutinizes and critiques, as much as it needs movies that matter and are full of meaning, as much as it needs films that make you feel, it also needs movies that make it so you don’t.  You can just munch on your popcorn and enjoy.  It’s just a fun movie.  It doesn’t take itself too serious, it’s well aware of how silly it is, and despite all that, there are some good performances, some snappy one-liners, and decent action scenes.  The final car chase lets itself down when it indulges in a CGI feat of physical impossibility, but if you ignore that, it’s quite a good car chase.  Does it hold a candle to car chase classics like Bullitt or Ronin?  No, not at all.  It can’t touch the tension of Bullitt’s chase, more the visceral, low camera angles of Ronin, which didn’t put you in the drivers’s seat as mush as it park you right on the front bumper.  But a movie doesn’t have to be the best of its kind to be enjoyed.  Part of watching and appreciating better films is important too, but it’s movies like Gone in that lay the foundation.   So, if you haven’t seen it yet, at the time of writing, it’s available for streaming on multiple platforms, including Amazon Prime Video and Peacock.  Maybe it’ll provide for you the necessary escape it’s been providing me for the last 22 years.  If only for about two hours, at least.  

Let’s Talk About Bruno

[Spoiler Alert! While I don’t go into deep detail for the movie Encanto, major plot points will be spoiled in this article.  There’s also a high risk that “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” will get stuck in your head again, and for that I don’t apologize.  It’s a bop.]

We’ve all heard the song by now.  Like the plague that was “Happy” by Pharrell Williams, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is the latest ear worm from an animated movie to permeate basically every facet of life.  But there’s so much more to Encanto than this (admittedly) very catchy tune.  

I’m always skeptical when it comes to movies that get such unabashed praise.  Most of the time, I’m justified in this skepticism.  So much of my brain just responds with “Really?  It can’t be that good” and most of the time, I’m right.  Phantom Thread is all I need to say to that.  If I can ever force myself to sit through that movie again, I can tell you in detail why it was such a horrible love letter to domestic abuse, but let’s not go into that now.  When I was finally convinced to give Encanto a chance, I got about through the opening number before shutting it off. 

Nothing to see here, just normal uncle stuff

I should preface this by saying I’m not much of a musical fan.  I love Hamilton, yes, and even Moana too, to a lesser extent, but I think all that means is that I’m a fan of Lin-Manuel Miranda (who is also all over the writing and songwriting credits of Encanto and his enchanting, hip-hop-influenced songwriting style bleeds through just about every track).  I don’t know what it is about an opening number, but I shut off La La Land midway through its first song and I barely made it to the end of Encanto’s before I turned it off and started watching Better Call Saul from the beginning again.  I’m not anti-music, by any means; I love music and listen to just about every genre to some extent, but musicals just don’t work for me.  Maybe I live a less magical life than most, but even in a fantastic setting, watching people spontaneously break out into perfectly choreographed song and dance takes me out of the moment in a way that’s generally irreparable.  Once I’m pulled out of a film, once I’m watching it rather than being able to experience it and lose myself in it, the magic of film starts to slowly fade away.  I can put myself in a lot of shoes and relate to a lot of things.  But my imagination has a big empty space in it where others are singing their feelings at me.  

Most of the time, I find musicals a complete bore too.  Grinding the storytelling to a halt so a character can reiterate their innermost thoughts to me as expressed by melody and dance rather than action is the definition of telling over showing to me.  It sucks the momentum out of the film, it pulls me out of the movie, and I just generally don’t care for it.  Lin-Manuel’s songwriting is different, however—he often uses the songs as diegetic pieces that drive the story forward rather than just rehashing what I’ve just seen.  Even when the songs are personal revelations, they’re ones that we’re seeing for the first time, not simply punctuating what I should have learned through character interactions to begin with.  So I gave Encanto another chance at the recommendation of a surprising number of friends from all walks of life.  Recently I’ve been diving into kids’ movies; some I missed the first time around, some I just haven’t seen in a long time.  I don’t have children myself, but now that so many of my friends do, I find myself in the conversation a lot and thinking about what children’s entertainment can do, is supposed to do, and should do.  On any given day, you can find me ebulliently praising Hilda for its messaging and creative delivery of its message through story, and that’s definitely a kids’ show, despite the fact that it’s relevant to people of all ages and told in away that anyone can enjoy (I’ll stop here—this isn’t another post about how great Hilda is, but if you haven’t seen it, I beg you to go on Netflix and watch it).  I mean, I started this blog with the idea that entertainment is important because it helps shape our view of the world, and what could be more important than how the world is shaped in the eyes of the most naive and malleable, the eyes of the people who would be the next caretakers of the world we leave behind?  So I gave Encanto another chance.  And I’m so damn glad I did.  

While there’s adventure on the cards for Mirabel, it’s the stakes of the situation that really makes Encanto stand out

The last time I watched a Disney animated musical, it was Moana.  And like I mentioned, I really liked that one.  There are some similarities, besides just super-composer Lin-Manuel, but the movies struck me so differently.  My goal here isn’t to compare and contrast the two, but since I also watched Moana recently, they’re both on my mind.  Moana’s journey was enormous—not just in scale, but the survival of so much was at stake.  Moana was the chosen one who basically saves the world.  What’s at stake in Encanto is very different.  It’s not about saving the world from destruction, it’s not even about saving lives.  It’s so much smaller in scale than a movie like Moana that it could seem insignificant through the wrong lens.  Mirabel’s a young woman who has nothing but her family at stake.  It’s as insignificant as it is relatable.  Call it magic if you will, but it’s truly pedestrian.  Normal.  Shoulder-shruggingly common.  

And yet, that’s why it’s so important.  That’s what makes Encanto such a special film.  That’s where the true magic lies.  This isn’t one young adventurer against the world—her sisters and cousins aren’t evil, they aren’t opposition, they don’t want to stop her.  Mostly, they’re all dealing with their own shit, as their songs tell us.  And the empathy with which these characters are handled is astonishing for a Disney movie, which so very often relies on flat characterizations of good and evil.  Luisa’s song, while not the catchiest or most pleasing to the ear, shows shocking maturity for a kids’ movie.  Luisa isn’t just the strong one afraid of becoming weak, she questions her own value as a person if she’s not useful—despite her physical strength, she’s crushed by the weight of expectation, of a world where productivity defines your worth.  Usefulness to others is the only metric by which Luisa feels measured and it’s utterly heartbreaking.  Isabela’s pressures are a little different.  There’s still that element of usefulness and expectation, but more than that, Isabela lives the life of the old school princess.  Normally Disney’s bread and butter, its meat and potatoes, its grilled octopus and olive oil, Isabela sings of her lack of agency and pressure to be perfect.  She has to be what others want her to be.  Another external locus.  Who can’t relate to that?  Another surprise.  Usually in a story like this, the pretty sister is an antagonist and her complaints frivolous, but Isabela is also approached with empathy and a level of maturity I didn’t expect.  There’s no evil stepsister here.  And let’s talk about Bruno.  Other than the grandfather’s ultimate sacrifice, no one makes a bigger one than Bruno.  He gives up his life and family because of how they treated his gift.  They took his visions as causal and turned him into a living ghost, haunting the literal spaces between walls in their magical home.  His whole story is just damn sad.  It makes for a catchy tune, though.

Luisa’s strength covers hidden depths in a quickly cracking facade

Enter the true villain.  No, not Abuela Madrigal.  A lack of generational compassion.  All too often, parents forget that their children are people too, with their own hopes and dreams for their own lives, with their own journeys to travel.  And this is the particular sin that Encanto tackles; as Abuela Alma berates Mirabel for ruining everything and harming the family, Mirabel replies with words that felt as if they’d come out of my own mouth before.  Even as an adult, they sound like words that come out of my mouth still.  Families are complicated, families can be harsh.  And here is where Encanto began to truly exceed my expectations.  As I’ve stated about Hilda many times, it’s an act of storytelling genius to impart a message to children that is also well taken by adults; but here, Encanto doesn’t bother to tell this to children.  Rather, this lesson is strictly for the adults watching.  Your kids aren’t extensions of you and they don’t exist to meet your expectations, nor fulfill your unfulfilled desires; they are people in their own right, with agency that shouldn’t be denied, with value that transcends any utility they can offer to other people, and that their wants don’t have to align with yours to be what’s right for them.  As the flashback rolls and we see how Abuelo Pedro paid for their gifts with his own sacrifice, it becomes clear—it’s not Isabela who needs to embrace Mirabel, it’s Alma.  The older generation has to embrace the younger, come as they as are.  And it’s up to the younger generation to forgive the older as they realize their mistake.  Not the hollow, guilt-driven forgiveness given to avoid self pity (see Lucille Bluth and her children’s weak protestations at the realization she’s been a bad mother), but real forgiveness that’s earned by coming to a mutual understanding and a change in behavior.  I’m not going to lie, this lesson hit hard.  I never thought I’d see a Disney musical where a character can flit about magically on conjured roses that depicts familial relations so brutally honestly.  I didn’t think such a realistic depiction of family was on the cards when I hit play.  I just assumed it’d be another cog in the Disney machine—a movie built to sell a soundtrack, a singalong disc, tickets to the ice show, tickets to the musical, lunchboxes (do kids still use lunchboxes? I didn’t even when I was a kid, I always bought the school lunch), and toys—and while it may actually be that, this isn’t just some fairy tale bogged down by endless songs like Frozen and Frozen 2 (which are fine, I like the first Frozen, it’s got some bops and a good story about being yourself).  Where other movies of this kind are simple and boil down to a fairly digestible statement, Encanto leans into the complicated nature of family.

Isabela’s lack of agency comes to a head as she starts to take control of her life

That’s not to say that Encanto is a perfect film—there are so many characters that even now having seen it twice and going over my notes, I don’t see characters referred to by name, rather by description.  There’s Flower Girl (Isabela), Atlas Lass (Luisa), Dr. Doolittle (the kid who talks to animals), Silenzio Bruno, Wilmer Valderrama (Augustín), Sonic the Headscarf (Dolores), Storm (Pepa), and others.  It’s easy to get lost in just who is who because the names come at you so fast and often in song.  I also definitely got the feeling that Bruno was meant to be played by Lin-Manuel Miranda himself.  It’s not that Johnny Legs doesn’t do a fine job as Bruno, but I hear so much of Lin-Manuel’s Alexander Hamilton in his singing and dialogue that I can’t help but wonder.  He even kind of looks like Miranda during the Hamilton days.  And I know this is fairly nitpicky stuff, I know.  But I love that the Spanish language songs play without subtitles—I speak only a little Spanish, but the universality of music made it so I was able to understand what was conveyed without fully understanding what was being said.  I love the visuals and the animation style.  I love Lin-Manuel’s songwriting and just about every performance was able to keep up with his hip-hop-influenced music.  Sure, Luisa’s song may have had a whiff of the one time they let The Rock sing in Moana, but it’s delivered with such honesty that it doesn’t matter that Luisa’s not the most talented singer (she’s still far better a singer than I am, so who am I to judge?).  

What’s that sound in the walls? It’s not a ghost, it’s your long lost uncle watching everything you do.

Encanto is such a lovely film and such a wonderful film that when it ended, I wanted more of it.  And that’s just about the highest praise I can give a movie.  It’s one of those that when you turn it off, the world seems a little quieter than it was before you turned it on; as if it’s now devoid of a sound that should have been there the whole time.  I know it’s early to say and recency bias is a real thing, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, when the dust settles, Encanto starts to top the lists of the best Disney musicals of all time.  I’m racking my brain for one I think was better and I can’t come up with a name.  

And, as the family Madrigal (hopefully unrelated to the conglomerate from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul) rebuilds their literal foundation, I don’t need to tell you that it’s their metaphorical one that receives the true renovation.  Of course, in reality, families don’t always stick together and don’t always make it through the hardships and the differences.  Sometimes families break; sometimes differences can’t be overcome, sometimes blood is a curse and not a source of strength.  It’s not like Disney hasn’t gone with a darker ending before (queue up The Fox and the Hound if you doubt me), but in our current world, where we’re surrounded by so much darkness as is, I’m glad that they wrapped it up so neatly and positively, cloaking the audience in hope and warmth rather than slapping them with cruel reality.  Reality will be there when the credits finish rolling.  

It doesn’t always end like this in real life, but it’s damn sure heartwarming when it works out in a film

The Study Room Christmas Special

It's that time of the year again.  Depending on who you are, this season can last anywhere from six months if you’re in charge of the Hallmark Channel's programming schedule, to as little as one day if you’re completely uninterested.  For me, it's about a month, starting after Thanksgiving and really ramping up as I approach the Prime 2-day shipping threshold.  I almost hate to admit it, though, this time of year is kind of magical.  The leaves have just turned, so we had all that color (if you happen to live near trees, which I do not, but I read about fall in a book once), that first nip in the air, the first time pulling out a nice, warm scarf and sipping on a hot chocolate (or, if you’re me, just a coffee or tea, hot chocolate is too sweet), that first snow, when you can get back in your childhood shoes and see snow as a pretty white blanket for the world and not a massive frustrating form of persistent precipitation that makes getting around a pain in the ass.  

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with Christmas.  I’m not Christian; in fact, I wasn’t really raised with any particular religious teaching, though my parents tried, my brother and I formed an unbeatable alliance of tantrums and made it really not worth their while to try anymore.  But we always celebrated a form of secular Christmas.  My mom didn’t want us to feel bad or left out when all our friends were talking about their Christmas and Hanukkah presents, so she granted us a yearly Christmas, on December 25th, believe it or not.  We even used to put up a tree when we were really young.  What a coincidence!  

Anyway, over the years, I developed this love/hate thing with Christmas.  I couldn’t stand the phony good cheer and forced meaning on the day; it has all the major pitfalls of a major holiday and all the fake smiles of an unctuous and conniving underling.  I love to poke fun at the pressure we put on ourselves over Christmas—honestly, being a bit of an ass myself, I do enjoy poking fun at anything I find to be held arbitrarily sacred, which, well, includes a lot of holidays.  But I also like Christmas.  Sometimes the good cheer doesn’t feel phony.  Sometimes I like the sense of togetherness and despite the inevitable tension of a 21st century family get-together, it’s nice to be able to connect with the extended family as well.  And frankly, I love giving gifts.  I love it.  I’m an incredible gift giver, if I do say so myself.  I used to keep a notebook with gift ideas for my closest loved ones (now it’s a note on my iPhone), listening to the things they talk wistfully about, as I jot down my thoughts like a private investigator, trying to sift through and find the perfect gift.  You know, that thing a person wants, but would never actually buy for themselves?  Like that one story my mom told me about her favorite pen that she had growing up in the village or when my brother couldn’t shut up about how cool nightvision goggles are.   

People have all sorts of opinions about Christmas—that it's too commercialized, that it’s the most wonderful time of year, that it’s embattled in a never-ending war (it’s not; it’s cool to say “Happy Holidays” to people if you don’t know if they celebrate Christmas, and there are other holidays than Christmas at the end of the year, shout out to Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and any others I don’t know about in my own personal ignorance), but, if you’re like me and you weren’t raised Christian, but still celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday, Christmas brings one word to mind.  

Cookies.

I mean movies.  TV shows occasionally have interesting Christmas specials, but I grew up in the 90s.  Christmas episodes tended to fall into a small number of categories.  Christmas is lost somehow (parents trying to teach a lesson, intending to restore Christmas once said lesson was learned, some sort of Christmas thievery, et al), the accidentally got a seasonal employee fired and need to make it right, or the ever popular festive hostage situation (usually a down and out Santa Claus, but not always).  Christmas movies also fall into repetitive categories, but some really stand out.  So here are my top five Christmas movies of all time.  Perhaps, as you can imagine, growing up with a non-traditional Christmas, my tastes in Christmas movies may run a bit into the non-traditional as well.

5. Elf

I’m a late-comer to Will Ferrell fandom.  I never really cared for his SNL run and had seen him in little else at the time.  So I was properly skeptical when Elf came out, even though I liked him in Old School, I wasn’t sure he could carry a movie for me (though films like Stranger Than Fiction, Everything Must Go, Talladega Nights, and The Other Guys got me firmly on his side as time went on), but I am always a sucker for Zooey Deschanel’s manic pixie dream girl (it’s my trope weakness) so I was willing to give it a try.  But I was pleasantly surprised by what was a funny, charming, and surprisingly heartfelt movie.  I generally don’t like fathers and James Caan’s surly dad is no different, but I love the way that his family immediately takes to Buddy the Elf and all but turns on Caan.  Ferrell brings some earnest naïveté to the role which really endears him to you.  Maybe it’s no It’s a Wonderful Life, but I could easily see it becoming a future Christmas movie classic.  Also, it does showcase some of Zooey Deschanel’s lovely singing voice, which is always a plus. 

4. Home Alone

Every kid had a hand drawn layout of their home and possible traps once this movie came out.  Home Alone is the original Christmas movie to me, the first one I can ever remember watching, other than those old Frosty the Snowman film strips they had you watch in school.  Essentially Die Hard for kids, Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister was the gold standard for fully independent children in the 90s.  He could go grocery shopping on his own (a feat I still struggle with in my 30s), he was a crack shot with a BB gun, his cardboard standee game was second to none, and the kid knew his way around firecrackers like none other.  I was never clear as to why the McCallisters had so many cardboard standees, but he made lemonade out of those lemons all day.  Plus, he used Micro Machines as a self-defense weapon!  Need I say more?

3. Love Actually

So maybe this one hasn’t aged that well, and maybe there are some problematic depictions of love, but I’ve still got a soft spot for Love Actually.  As I’ve gotten older and fallen in love a few times myself, with the included subsequent heartbreaks, I appreciate certain aspects of this film more and more.  While I loved the hopelessly romantic cue card scene from the Walking Dead’s Rick Grimes and the little drummer boy/All I Want For Christmas/frightening airport security storyline, now it’s the stories without the happy endings that speak to me most.  Emma Thompson’s heartbreaking performance, Bill Nighy’s lonely realization, Liam Neeson’s grief, and Laura Linney’s devotion to her brother all thoroughly draw me into the film as I still wonder how the main characters somehow know Martin Freeman’s character when their paths seemingly never cross with anyone but Colin’s possibly porno director friend (that storyline was never really clear to me, I can’t tell if it’s softcore or they’re body doubles, or what).  So while people may be tuning to see Hugh Grant and Colin Firth charmingly befuddle themselves into finding their new lady loves in the end, it’s the quiet dignity of Emma Thompson and Laura Linney especially that make this one of my holiday favorites.  Seems like it’s always women who suffer and have to exhibit that quiet dignity in their suffering, but I didn’t write it, I just think it’s a cute movie. Although I’m not sure if Rick’s cards to Keira Knightley were romantic or creepy anymore.

2. Bad Santa

If It’s a Wonderful Life is the most Christmas-y Christmas movie I’ve ever seen, Bad Santa is the most anti-Christmas-y Christmas movie around.  And that is exactly what I love about it.  So much of this film is just plain wrong, but there’s something sympathetic about Bill Bob Thornton’s two-bit, piece of shit criminal Santa that makes me overlook the aspects of the movie that should bother me.  Maybe this is a movie I should be embarrassed about, like The Hangover or Gone in Sixty Seconds, but damn it, I just like it.  The foulmouth Santa juxtaposed against a traditionally wholesome time of year, when we’re supposed to come together and wish good will upon each other, just tickles me in that way a less mean-spirited movie just doesn’t seem to be able to.  I mean, we’ve all had a case of the holiday blues at one time or another, and sometimes it’s good to indulge in that negativity for just a little while.  I like the holidays just fine, but that doesn’t mean they’re not without their stressors.  I mean, who hasn’t wanted to drink their December evenings away in bar after bar at least once in their lives, right?  It can’t just be me…right?  Anyway, this movie also had the fringe benefit of getting me to try watching Gilmore Girls because Lauren Graham was positively delightful and then that became my guilty pleasure show for years.  But don’t tell anyone about that, it’ll be our secret.  

1. Die Hard

Let’s settle the debate right now.  I know some people are under the mistaken impression that Die Hard is not a Christmas movie.  Let’s examine the evidence to the contrary.  

1. It takes place over Christmas.

2. It takes place at a Christmas party.

3. Almost all, if not all, the music is Christmas music.

4. Including Hans Gruber humming “Ode to Joy” in the elevator on the way to his various terroristic activities.

5. Sgt. Al Powell aka Carl Winslow aka Reginald VelJohnson was singing “Let It Snow” before being called to Nakatomi Plaza.

6. I have a machine gun, ho ho ho. It’s not like he said “I have a machine gun, Happy Arbor Day”. Need I say more?

7. The themes and motifs include the importance of family (John trying to mend fences with Holly, Karl getting revenge for his brother), sharing a nice meal together (John tells Karl that he’s going to kill him, then cook him, and then eat him), and the spirit of giving (John leaves Tony’s dead body as a gift to Hans and his team, he also gifts Sgt. Powell Marco by somewhat unconventional means, I admit).

8. Holly’s name is literally Holly; that’s as Christmas a name as you can get this side of nuclear physicist Dr. Christmas Jones.

9. “It’s Christmas, Theo. It’s the time of miracles.”

10. Screenwriter Steven E. de Souza even said it was, using White Christmas as a benchmark.

11. It’s basically It’s a Wonderful Life.

Okay, so it’s not exactly It’s a Wonderful Life and some of those points were a bit facetious, but overall, it stands that Die Hard is a Christmas movie.  I mean, how is John McClane really that different from Kevin McCallister and how are Hans Gruber and his merry band of international terrorists all that different from the Wet Bandits?  Not only that, it is the archetypal modern action film.  Every movie that came after it that was even remotely like it was held up to Die Hard as the gold standard.  The closest we’ve come to such a great standalone action film since was John Wick.  Everything about this movie is perfect—the lines, the delivery of the lines (if not the accents), the pacing, the stakes, the climax, the denouement, the false ending—it couldn’t have been a better constructed movie.  There are very few perfect movies—Jurassic Park, The Princess Bride, The Empire Strikes Back, and 2 Fast 2 Furious* come to mind—and Die Hard is one of them.  And the concept of a perfect movie is an interesting one that I will discuss, at length, another time.  And as such, Die Hard rightfully takes its place as my number one Christmas movie of all time.  

So, there you have it.  Those are my top 5 Christmas movies of all time.  Agree?  Disagree?  What are yours?  Any way you slice it, though, if you’re celebrating anything this time of year, I wish you all safe and happy holidays.  

*Look, I know it’s not good, okay?  I just like it.