Loop Dreams

Weddings can be hard to deal with sometimes.  Whether you’re in a relationship or not, big life events tend to bring up feelings in people.  They make you take stock.  Milestones make people reflect and reflecting can be difficult.  So when family screw-up Sarah arrives at her perfect sister’s wedding, she is kind of overwhelmed by the situation.  Until she meets Nyles, that is, the only person at the wedding in a Hawaiian shirt and swim trunks.  He spends his day drinking and lounging in the pool, nihilistic as ever, declaring that everyday is the same and life is meaningless (I mean, I’ve been to weddings, I get it).  Nyles bails her out of a sticky situation by giving a truly moving, romantic, and hopeful speech in her stead, and then dances through the crowds of guests undulating to the music, floating across the floor with a surprising level of grace for a man that drunk.  It felt like his toast was written just for Sarah and then he caught her eye when gliding through the reception like a carefree ghost that only she can see, in a scene of great visual humor.  His deft movements and nonchalant attitude lead to a frankness that Sarah finds intriguing.  He even admits to not believing a word of his crowd-pleasing toast.

Nyles, played by Andy Samberg (Brooklyn 99, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping) isn’t a close friend of the family, but his girlfriend Misty, played by Meredith Hagner (Search Party, Bad Monkey), is one of the bridesmaids.  They’re a bit on the rocks, the two of them, but he’s at the wedding anyway.  Sarah, played by Cristin Milioti (The Penguin, Fargo), follows him to the window outside where Misty is cheating on him with another member of the wedding party.  The two of them then sneak off into the desert of Palm Springs to get drunk together and probably make some bad decisions.  However, this is interrupted when Nyles, full on in the middle of the wooing process, gets an arrow to the shoulder and yells out into the night air to a man called Roy.  They say most people know their attackers, but to know it even when taking a silently fired arrow in the back?  That’s on another level.  Nyles retreats to a cave, a spot he knows well, and hides as the desert sand bathes in an otherworldly glow emanating from the cave.  Roy, unable to find Nyles this time, makes his way into the cave and disappears.  Nyles, now feeling the effects of his archery-related injuries, drags himself towards the glow as Sarah appears trying to be of help.  Nyles implores her to just go away and to not follow him into the cave, but she’s dragged in anyway.  And when she wakes up the next morning, it’s this morning.  Nyles has been in it for a while, but, oh no, this is Sarah’s first loop.  And she’s not too happy about it.  Weddings, right?  The cake is always disappointing and then you get stuck in a time loop.

And thus begins Palm Springs, a brilliant take on the done-to-death time loop film.  The Hulu original hit the streamer in 2020 in a strange coincidence; while Hollywood was figuring out how to keep going when we weren’t supposed to get within six feet of each other, writer/director Max Barbakow delivered the perfect quarantine film almost by accident.  While much of the world was shut tight in their homes trying to survive a global pandemic and repeating the day over and over again, what could be easier to relate to than a man stuck at a wedding with his cheating girlfriend and a bunch of people who don’t know him, repeating the day like a video game level that you just can’t beat?  By the time we meet Nyles, he’s been in the loop so long that yesterday, today, and tomorrow are not just literally indistinguishable from each other because time stopped moving forward, his memory of everything that’s happened has blurred together.  Just like we were, he was stuck in place with what felt like no way out.  And despite it being an awful realization for her, like Daffy Duck realizing he’s standing in quicksand, Sarah getting stuck in there with him is probably the best thing that’s happened to Nyles for a long, long while.  After all, the only other person stuck in there with him was Roy (played by the legendary JK Simmons), who is trying to kill him.  And often succeeding, because all it takes for the loop to start over is to fall asleep or die and Roy seems to get really creative with how he goes after Nyles.

Palm Springs pulls off a neat trick here, something that you rarely see in time loop movies.  The gold standard is Groundhog Day, of course, and most movies follow that model of having one person stuck in the loop.  But here, not only are there more than one person in the loop, they’ve all been there for different lengths of time.  It allows the film to skip over the specifics of the loop that it doesn’t feel like taking the time to go through and focus on the differing stages of being stuck.  Nyles knows the rules well enough, or rather, simply doesn’t care much about anything anymore, accepting his fate.  Anything the film isn’t interested in explaining is brought up and waved away, so you can zip through the extraneous trappings of science fiction.  What follows then is an interesting exploration of a life free of consequences.  Everything that happens with that day just resets.  We get an incredible montage of Nyles and Sarah’s exploits together.  This section of the movie really packs in the laughs per minute, as their antics ramp up over the course of many loops.  The first act is very funny as well, but the second act gives you just so much pure comedy that if you look away you’ll miss something.  But the movie does stop and take a breather now and then, as you get to see these two people try to figure out what their new life is.  In addition to shooting a cake with a crossbow, they also take time to ask some philosophical questions about their predicament; if there is no forward progression in life and none of your actions have consequences, then is life meaningless?  Nyles answers with an emphatic yes; the kind of answer that comes with the resignation of having spent too much time suffering a Sisyphean punishment for reasons unknown.  Being doomed to live the same day over and over again can’t be great for the psyche.  But as that montage showed, even being stuck in hell can have its upsides if you’re stuck in it with the right person.

While the first two acts are mostly fun and games, the third act takes a more serious and dramatic turn; I’ve said many times before that I feel like comedy, when done at the highest level, is visual literature and I think Palm Springs reaches that level.  Nyles and Sarah start asking very relatable questions about the human condition and that’s what elevates this over other more run-of-the-mill comedies.  A good laugh is great, but if you can get a good laugh and feel something, that’s even better and that’s exactly what Palm Springs delivers.  Loneliness plagues us in our modern life and then urges us to put up even more walls, cementing ourselves into our loneliness in the name of protection.  But indiscriminate openness isn’t a viable option either; people need to protect themselves.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s not the best world out there and being that open leaves yourself exposed, vulnerable to dangers physical, emotional, and mental.  Opening up is hard and sometimes it does take being stuck in a situation with someone to let the walls down a little and try to make a genuine connection with a person.  Life is meant to be shared, but finding the right people to share it with is hard.  I don’t have an answer for you, though I wish I did.  I’m a member of this so-called modern society as well (though with how we behave towards one another, I question this idea that we deserve to be called modern and sometimes I feel like society is a stretch) and I’m going through it just the same as anyone else, including Nyles and Sarah. 

Andy Samberg really shows off his range here—I always love it when comedians and comic actors get serious because they’re just so damn good at it.  Like Will Ferrell in Stranger Than Fiction and Everything Must Go or Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, Samberg kills it as the nihilistic Nyles, handling both the comedy and drama with equal aplomb.  And it should come as no surprise that I will be full of praise for Cristin Milioti, just as I was for her performance in The Penguin and just about everything else I’ve ever seen her in.  The Emmy nominated actress can’t stop showing off how good she is at this acting thing; she is so expressive in every frame and feels incredibly real in every moment of the film.  Part of that is the writing, of course; Sarah is a fully realized and complicated character, with flaws and nuance, not just the romantic interest for Nyles.  But Milioti’s acting ability sells Sarah every second she’s on screen and I can’t praise her enough. She’s probably the most underrated actress out there today and I won’t stop talking about it until she’s recognized as the best in the biz.  And the chemistry between the two is at the heart of this film.  It’s so strong that the actors disappear into the characters and the world is immediately believable and real to you; and it’s no small feat to make Jake Peralta disappear into another character, that’s for sure.  Milioti was predictably excellent because she always is, but it’s Samberg who is truly a surprise and I really hope to see more roles like this from him in the future.

There is something truly beautiful about Palm Springs.  The movie manages to pack in a lot of comedy and reality into its 90 minute runtime without ever feeling rushed or overstuffed.  It’s a celebration of all of life’s foibles and troubles and the things that make them worth it.  It’s a joyful, optimistic film about meaning in life being found through our connections with others.  What felt like the perfect movie for the moment it was released turned out to be a great movie for any time.  This is only the second time I’ve seen it and I admit to a small amount of hesitation to watch it again.  I was worried that outside of that moment it wouldn’t hold up, but I am so glad that I have been proven wrong.  While pure coincidence means that Palm Springs captures the feeling of being quarantined during the COVID pandemic flawlessly, its quality in writing, acting, and direction mean that it remains a great film regardless.  Streaming on Hulu with an RT score of 94% and an audience score of 89%, I highly recommend taking the hour and a half to check it out.  I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

Since you made it this far, it’s time for a little housekeeping.  Palm Springs marks the end of summer and now we’re getting into spooky season.  So starting with the next post, we’re getting into spooky media.  I’ve got an ambitious plan for October, so let’s see if I can pull it off together.  As always, thanks for reading!

News Cruise

It’s time to get into The Paper (not the incredible, overlooked 1994 film of the same name), Peacock’s new The Office spin-off series.  No, we don’t need more reboots and we definitely didn’t need a recycled version of The Office, but while borrowing the style and feel—and documentary crew, at least in the fiction of the show—and changing the focus, the same format feels surprisingly fresh.

As we learn in the opening moments of the series, while Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration is still in the same office park, Dunder Mifflin has been sold off to a company called Enervate, which makes paper products, including their big revenue generator Softees, the toilet paper brand.  Also in the “use in the bathroom” division of their company is the Toledo Truth Teller, their newspaper.  As you can imagine, this means we’re not in Scranton anymore, but rather Toledo, Ohio.  And as you can also imagine, the Truth Teller is not in the best state.  Like most news, the print edition is all but dead and what is working for them is the online world of advertorials and clickbait articles, each one a swing of the hammer on to the head of a nail in the coffin of journalism.  If you’re a regular reader or you read my post on The Paper film, you know how important journalism is to me and how important I feel it is to the world.  So when Ned Sampson, played by Domhnall Gleason (Ex Machina, Brooklyn), an idealistic nepo baby with a knack for toilet paper sales, shows up with big dreams of turning the Truth Teller into a bastion of honest journalism like it once used to be, I was immediately rooting for him in his new position as Editor-in-Chief.

He’s a very different kind of boss from Michael Scott.  Unlike the sort of oblivious, cringey, but trying guy that Michael was, Ned is optimistic to a fault, wanting desperately to be the crown jewel of journalistic integrity and it allows him to sometimes get in his own way with his decision making.  But he’s a competent journalist, despite his relative lack of experience in the business.  He’s flanked by the replaced Esmeralda Grand, who was the acting EIC, played by Sabrina Impacciatore (White Lotus), who works to undercut him at every opportunity, and Mare Pritti, played by Chelsea Frei (Animal Control, The Moodys), his top and only competent reporter.  When I say Ned is relatively inexperienced in the field, we have to take a look at the rest of his staff to put that into perspective.  News used be the loss leader of a network or a company; a talismanic revenue sink that gave them credibility. But profit is king and running a real staff that investigates and reports the news costs a lot more money than Enervate is willing to spend, so he’s stymied immediately until he asks for volunteers to spend some of their time being reporters.

The bullpen has its characters who feel like they need more time to grow; so far you’ve got one guy who cannot read social cues and is hopelessly smitten with a coworker, a religious guy who is deathly afraid of having more kids (he currently has four), a Black woman who serves side-eye like it’s her job, and others.  The standouts here are Duane R. Shepherd Sr., who plays Barry, a veteran reporter who is past it now, but still in the game; he’s kind of got the one move, but it’s not overused and he can elicit some serious laughs.  There’s also Nicole, played by Ramona Young from Legends of Tomorrow, a bright young staffer with aspirations and an admirer who cannot read social cues, and especially Eric Rahill, who plays Softees employee-turned-staffer Travis, who is just full of surprises.  At first, I thought he was going to be one note, but every time I turn around he’s giving me Zeke from Bob’s Burgers vibes and that’s a big compliment. 

Oscar Nuñez returns as accountant Oscar Martinez, who transferred from Dunder Mifflin Scranton to Enervate when they were bought out.  He’s a very welcome and familiar sight in a show that is clearly not The Office, but is okay with the inevitable comparisons it will draw.  This time the Jim is Ned in the Michael role, the Pam is Mare in the Jim role, the Michael is Esmeralda in the Dwight role, and so on and so forth.  But of course, it’s not as cut and dried as that.  No character is a 1:1 carbon copy of someone from The Office, but the DNA is there.  And it doesn’t feel like some hollow game of character trait musical chairs either, each character feels genuine and consistent, at least through the episodes I’ve seen so far.  And I hope to see even more growth and depth to them as the show progresses past the first 10 episode season.  Also prominently featured is Tim Key (Taskmaster, See How They Run), playing Ken Davies, corporate suck-up in love with Esmeralda and threatened by Ned.  I’m always down for some Tim Key whenever he pops up; he plays the sycophantic yes man antagonist so well.

Of course, this is a comedy, so I wouldn’t expect too much along the lines of hard hitting journalism (which I’ve also not come to expect from the news anymore, sadly), but they manage to impart that Abbott Elementary vibe of just wholesome, comforting macaroni and cheese in television form.  The struggle between news and profits is clearly evident in the show; the Truth Teller’s parent company’s name even means “cause someone to feel drained of energy or vitality”, in one of the more clever jokes of the first season (sounds like someone put “energy” and “innovate” together in typical corporate speak and came up with Enervate—I love a layered semantic joke).  As much as Ned wants to be a principled journalist and a good boss, he can let his ego get in the way and, more than any other of this flaws, his immaturity.  It most certainly can get the better of him sometimes, but he always eventually comes to the right course of action, which is most definitely uplifting to see. 

Ned is the heart and soul of the show; the Truth Teller is his project and he sets the culture of the office and the series.  He brings the warmth and kindness to the role that infects the entire cast.  Even when it comes to dealing with Esmeralda, the perpetual saboteur, he never gets vindictive or mean; he’s perhaps even naive and too trusting when it comes to her.  But Ned’s innate goodness is what sets the tone for the series.  He, like me, really romanticizes journalism and wants to make the Truth Teller the honest, above board, beyond reproach trusted source of news like it used to be before it became a clickbait infotainment listicle site.  There’s even something oddly comforting about the American accent Gleeson plays Ned with, which sounds fairly convincing and easy enough to forget it’s being put on after only a few minutes.  His idealistic optimism, like Janine Teagues’s in Abbott, never feels too out of reach.  There’s something about his determination and the dedication of his volunteer staff that makes you want to believe that they’re going to succeed and become an example for journalism all across America, unlikely that may be.

The chemistry between Gleeson’s Ned and Frei’s Mare is phenomenal.  It is real, it’s tentative, it’s built out of genuine connection.  They will never be Jim and Pam, but it is a very pleasant will they/won’t they that is bound to get complicated and messy, since Ned is Mare’s boss after all.  But I could watch them will or won’t for 10 seasons, I don’t mind it at all and I’m usually not one who goes for that sort of thing.  Frei is coming off a strong showing in Animal Control and gets to show off more of her comedic talents here.  She shines in the The Paper, taking a starring role amongst her peers and running with it.  She plays the role without any cynicism, though she has her doubts and worries about the paper and her own abilities as a real journalist.  Mare has a military background, which seems to translate into a coolness under pressure, a frank approach, and the appearance of unshakeable confidence.  But she’s not just some trope; Mare’s already shown herself to be a more fully realized character than I’d expect to see this early in a comedy’s life cycle.  It usually takes a few episodes for a consistent voice of a character to emerge and up to a season or two for them to really lock into their performance.  Frei seems like she was able to instantly walk into Mare’s shoes.  Esmeralda’s even got that Dwight-like quality of being just annoying enough that you enjoy seeing her lose, but you never really hate her and you like it when things go right for her every once in a while, as long as it doesn’t come at the cost of our main protagonists.  The rest of the staff, while still underdeveloped are quite charming as well, each with their endearing qualities.  While Ned, Mare, and Esmeralda are the main focus, the tertiary characters get their moments to shine as well and you really just can’t help but start to like them more with each episode.

Just like The Office, I’m sure that The Paper will need time to grow and the actors will need to fill out the roles.  I mean, go back and watch the first season of The Office and tell me that’s anywhere near the level of the rest of the series.  Parks & Rec didn’t truly become Parks & Rec until Ben and Chris show up at the end of the second season.  Superstore had a strong start, but got better once its more sideline characters stepped up.  Even the venerable Buffy the Vampire Slayer took some time to graduate from monster of the week (great monsters of the week, sure) to deeper, stronger storytelling.  But based on that, The Paper is off to a good start and I really feel like it’s going to get better and better if given room to breathe.  This may not be exactly what you were hoping for if you wanted more of The Office; but if you are looking for a funny show, with a big heart and endearing characters who are good people trying to do good things, then The Paper is definitely for you.  I had to pace myself through the first season, but much like The Office, I’ve already started a rewatch.  I honestly can’t wait for the next season (and I hope it’s a longer one; ten episodes just isn’t enough).  And it’s already been renewed for a second season, so I’m hopeful that NBC and Peacock see the potential in this wholesome, comforting show.

Last Action Zero

After a brief cameo in Superman, Peacemaker is back.  Now, I’m on record (somewhere, probably) being fairly critical of the first season of Peacemaker.  I found it was a peculiar combination of the Agents of SHIELD problem (where its placement, both in the franchise and narratively, meant that there could never be any real stakes in the show, so it felt like a pointless exercise in meaningless world-building) and extremely juvenile humor that lacked both punch and creativity (one of Peacemaker’s recurring jokes was calling Steve Agee’s character “dyed beard” because he dyed his beard; pause for laughs).  I was in the minority, from what I could tell, and I am still fine with that (I still can’t believe Twisters is sitting at 75/90 on RT, I’m happily in the minority there), because a little hair metal and John Cena’s endless charm can’t paper over all cracks (including the hair metal; sorry if that’s your genre, but it has never been mine).

But, John Cena (Deep Cover, Vacation Friends) does have endless charm and that made for a certain amount of promise in the show, even if in the first season that promise was largely unrealized outside of a few bright spots.  Not least of all, in addition to Cena, was Freddie Stroma, whom I’d never seen before, but apparently he was in Harry Potter as a character named Cormac McLaggen, which sounds like it should be a pun, but isn’t.  Stroma plays Adrian Chase, also known as the vigilante called Vigilante, a goofy, insecure nerd who just wants to make friends, but also is on a violent crusade against criminals, killing them by the truckload.  Just don’t get him started about crows.

The rest of the cast is back as well—Jennifer Holland (The Suicide Squad, Brightburn), as the tough as nails Emilia Harcourt, Danielle Brooks (A Minecraft Movie, Orange is the New Black) as Leota Adebayo, and the aforementioned Agee (You’re the Worst, New Girl) as John Economos.  It also adds Frank Grillo (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Zero Dark Thirty) as Rick Flagg Sr., who, if you don’t know, has serious justified beef with Peacemaker, and Tim Meadows (Bob’s Burgers, Mean Girls) as ARGUS agent Langston Fleury, who is monitoring Peacemaker with the help of Economos.  He also has a condition that he call bird blindness, where he can’t tell one bird apart from another, except for vague sizes.  You see an eagle, he doesn’t know whether it’s a duck or a sparrow.  It’s completely ridiculous and felt very Brooklyn 99-coded, especially with Tim Meadows’s delivery, which is so good that he makes something that otherwise seemed like a throwaway gag feel like a defining characteristic for a character.  Also returning, of course is the abundance of metal over the soundtrack (hair or otherwise; to be completely honest, it’s so not my genre that I’m not at all familiar with the nuances).  There’s still the over-the-top violence at times, there’s still the silliness and ridiculousness of it, there’s still the awful TikTok dance opening sequence (new song, new dance, still an immediate press of the Skip Intro button), there’s still a trained eagle that is capable of taking down full squads of trained operatives.

But this time, it’s…good?  Not the music, mind you, but the show.

The first two episodes had quite a lot of setup and what I call Peacemaker moments, where it’s just so comically over the top that it fails to find the actual funny along the way.  But, after being rejected and relentlessly, unsparingly humiliated by Maxwell Lord and the Justice Gang, Peacemaker goes on a The Boys like bender/orgy and opens a dimensional portal to a parallel universe where his father and brother are still alive and they’re heroes, not white supremacist scum.  Now, if you rolled your eyes at the mention of multiverse stuff, you’re not alone; I did as well.  But it seems like James Gunn is using the multiverse for a different purpose than you usually see.  A lot of times the multiverse is used for cheap shock value, such as killing characters unceremoniously or having them act contrary to their established behavior, or showing a nearly identical world to ours where some differences are odd, but ultimately small, like people maybe eat pizza with a spoon or have hot dog fingers.  But Gunn is taking us down a different path.  Chris, as Peacemaker prefers to be called out of costume, is getting a look at a different life.  He’s getting to see how things could have been if he had made different choices and hadn’t become vilified for his actions.

Of course, there’s more to who we are than just our choices, as big a percentage as they play in our conceptual makeup.  How we’re raised and who we’re raised by play a huge part in that as well; and Chris had a bum start.  Not only was his father a white supremacist murderer, which is probably not the best example to be as a father, he also killed his brother in some sort of backyard child gladiatorial competition that his father was holding.  It was a complete accident, but he’s lived with the grief of that his whole life; it’s what made him so desperate for his father’s approval while he constantly heaped blame on Chris.  It’s not hard to imagine how different a person Chris would have grown up to be had that not happened—instead of being so under the thumb of a truly horrible and despicable man, he had what seems to be a regular father.  I mean, what little we see of his alternate dad’s character, it’s not like he’s Mr. Rogers, but basic human decency would have been exponentially better.  And he doesn’t have to live with the trauma of his brother’s death.  He was a literal child at the time, being forced to fight by his father; on a real level, he carries no blame for that.  His father is who should carry all that blame.  But it was Chris’s fist that struck the blow that led to his brother’s death.  Which isn’t the kind of thing easily rationalized.  It was still his fist, his punch that was the direct cause of brother’s death on a physics level..  And Chris has been living with that weight on top of him since the moment it happened.  The idea of a world, of a life, where the worst thing that ever happened to you never happened, now that is very appealing.  Perhaps more than any drug.  Shield yourself from your worst trauma while getting a reset button on everything that comes after that event?  It’s tempting.  Even more so than the Morpho machine.

Not only that, Peacemaker is a portrait of a work in progress.  His character has actually changed and grown over the course of the first season and the work he’s done is evident.  He no longer relentlessly belittles people due to his own insecurity.  He’s grown a real closeness and sense of camaraderie with his former team; to the point where they have a little get-together when Economos returns after being stationed away, he makes a heartfelt, but short speech about how no matter where they may go, they’ll always have each other.  That doesn’t sound like the talk of a hardened, unfeeling murderer.  In fact, the team’s relationships with each other have taken center stage early in the season.  Despite no longer working together and all facing hardship after the events of season one, they have stayed close.  They talk to each other, they lean on each other, they look out for each other.  Chris’s growth has been great to watch, turning him from a character I had trouble getting behind into a person I really want to root for.  He’s really trying to be a good person, not just some indiscriminate killer in the name of someone’s idea of justice.  Not even his own; it was the one imparted to him by his father.  Allowing Cena to play into his innate goofiness to portray a more genuine Peacemaker instead of a brash, mean, insulting ass plays so much into Cena’s strengths.  He’s got the goofy, lovable big guy thing down better than anyone else in the game and it’s really to the point that his mere presence in a movie or series pushes it up a level for me.

It’s a compelling look at redemption.  I’ve said before that not all characters can be or should be redeemed, but it often is the case that those who seek redemption are worthy of it.  They’ve realized the error of their ways, they are remorseful, and they want to do better.  Be better.  At least when we’re talking about fiction; real life, well we’ve all seen and heard enough hollow apologies over the years to know that’s not real.  At the time of writing, three episodes are out on HBO Max (again), but by the time you read this, the fourth will have aired.  But after the third episode, I can finally say that I’m on board with Peacemaker.  It really feels like Gunn is building to something meaningful and deeper than we’ve seen from the series previously and I really hope that he pulls it off.  Chris seems like he’s on a journey to earning redemption and the temptation that is pulling him away from it is strong.  Strong as I’ve ever seen, really.  That level of wish fulfillment at your fingertips can’t be easy to deal resist.  I am looking forward to his struggle and I’m rooting him to come through it a better man.  There are some new characters as well that have yet to really do much, but I’m hoping to see them fleshed out a little bit more.  Tim Meadows is obviously being played for comic relief, which is great casting, but also introduced is ARGUS agent Sasha Bordeaux, played by Sol Rodriguez (Star Trek: Picard).  So far she’s just been playing a tough boss style of character, but it would be nice to see an expansion of these characters in the revitalized DC cinematic universe.  The DCEU was in dire straits before James Gunn stepped in, with miss after miss overshadowing the few decent films they released over the years, like Blue Beetle.  With Superman, the second season of Peacemaker, and the upcoming Supergirl, as well as the incredible The Batman and its upcoming sequel (though technically outside of the DCEU bubble, Superman’s score dropped a big reference to it, giving me hope for Robert Pattinson’s inclusion in this burgeoning cinematic universe), like Marvel, it seems like DC may finally be righting the ship.  And I’m thrilled about that, really.  I was always a bigger DC fan growing up (especially Batman), so seeing DC shake off the numerous poor movies their name was attached to is really heartening to see.

Peacemaker airs Thursdays directly on HBO Max at 9PM Eastern, on a weekly release schedule, thank goodness.

Tuesdays with Morbidity

Regular readers (or anyone who read last week’s post) will know that I love a good mystery.  I am one of the whodunnit’s biggest fans, I can’t get enough of them.  I love serious mysteries, I love cozy mysteries, I even dig supernatural mysteries.  I’m also a pretty big fan of Richard Osman, British game show host, Taskmaster contestant, frequent Would I Lie To You? panelist, and tall, funny man.  And he’s also an author.  So when I found out that Netflix was adapting the first book in his The Thursday Murder Club series, I was pretty excited.

The titular club is a group of retired senior citizens who get together every Thursday to theorize on cold cases.  The group, at the beginning of the film, consists of Ron, played by Pierce Brosnan (Remington Steele, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again), a former trade union leader; Ibrahim, played by Ben Kingsley (Gandhi, Iron Man 2), a psychiatrist, and Elizabeth, who is quite tight-lipped about her past, played by Helen Mirren (The Queen, F9: The Fast Saga).  It’s not a far walk to imagine that with this much talent, you’re in for top notch acting and they do not disappoint.  They are all predictably excellent at the craft and they bring their considerable experience and poise to their roles with aplomb.  Eventually initiated into the Thursday Murder Club is Joyce, played by Celia Imre (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Nanny McPhee), a former trauma nurse who they draft in for her medical expertise and keen eye for detail.  Joyce is a new resident at Coopers Chase, the retirement village where they all live and she’s looking for something fulfilling to occupy her time, so she jumps at the opportunity to join the team.

The plot of the movie is very “save the rec center”, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because this sort of thing is still relevant today.  The owner of Coopers Chase is Ian Ventham.  He’s slick, he’s sleazy, he’s in the middle of a divorce precipitated by his infidelity, and he’s ably played by the very talented David Tennant (Fright Night, Staged).  It’s really fun to see him play such a particular sleaze because all reports show that he’s actually a good guy; but he’s so good at playing someone you want to hate.  Ventham is no different, as he plans to dig up Coopers Chase’s adjoining cemetery, build luxury flats, and evict the residents of Coopers Chase so he can use the grounds as part of the apartment community.  Cue the fundraiser concert, the ski jump contest, or the Sweded movie push.   Well, maybe not this time; the residents gather and try to figure out a way to stop him, and one man stands in his way: Tony Curran, his business partner.  A rough and tumble kind of guy, he vows to do everything he can to protect the residents of Coopers Chase from Ventham’s plans.  Unfortunately, he comes home to ransacked belongings, an assailant still in his house, and his own murder.

After all, you can’t be the Thursday Murder Club if a body doesn’t drop.  Sorry, Tony, but if you don’t die, our protagonists are going to have to take up quilting.  And no one wants to watch quilting for 1 hour and 58 minutes (most competitive quilting events only last 45 minutes to an hour, I’m told; if competitive quilting is a thing, this joke is really not going to land).

Along the way, they meet PC Donna de Freitas, played by Naomi Ackie (Mickey 17), a young former London police officer who has transferred to the countryside and is sent to Coopers Chase to give a talk on home safety after Tony’s death.  They seem to hit it off quite well, with Elizabeth especially hoping that she can be a source on the force for them the way their friend Penny—the only woman on the police force in her day—who is sadly now in hospice care used to be.  They all chat about their backgrounds, getting to know one another, but Elizabeth is quite cagey when asked about what she used to do.  The woman likes to keep it a little mysterious, what can I say?  But she is intent on getting PC de Freitas on her side and assigned to the Tony Curran murder.  It’s a rather clever little ruse they hatch that’s very fun to watch.  Kind of like a Faceman scam from The A-Team, but with more tea and blood pressure medication.  So, much like Joyce, she’s drafted in to be a source, but she takes much more cajoling.

As more bodies drop and the TMC has to start examining their own neighbors for motive, the stakes ramp up.  But Elizabeth always stays cool.  She has this Jessica Fletcher bravado, putting herself into dangerous situations often, armed only with the confidence that she’ll somehow make it out unscathed.  It can be frustrating to watch sometimes, because whatever her background may be, at the end of the day, she’s an 80 year old woman who can be easily overpowered by even just younger senior citizens, let alone actual young people with murderous intent.  Although the film is about the club as a whole, Elizabeth is definitely the main character.  I’ve not read the books, so I don’t know if it’s more balanced in written form, but perhaps that’s one of the flaws of turning a book into a movie instead of a series.  It doesn’t always feel like we have as much time with the individual characters.  But, luckily, Helen Mirren is one of the greatest actresses of all time and despite her seeming lack of self preservation, Elizabeth is a good character to follow.  Though I definitely want to see more from Ben Kingsley’s Ibrahim; I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff to be uncovered inside that head of his.

The cast of characters is rounded out by Jonathan Pryce (Slow Horses, The Two Popes) as Elizabeth’s ailing husband, Henry Lloyd-Hughes (Killing Eve) as Bogdan, Ventham’s new contractor from Poland, and Tom Ellis (Lucifer), playing Ron’s former boxer son, whose career was cut short by injury.  As the accusations swirl and the evidence mounts up, fingers get pointed in all sorts of directions.  And while I can’t say it comes to the most satisfying conclusion, I also can’t say it was unearned; but the film doesn’t really encourage you to play along, rather it wants you to just enjoy the cleverness and ingenuity of their schemes and investigations.  It is definitely fun to watch, but it doesn’t have the smart writing and direction to push it into the realm of all-timers like Knives Out and Glass Onion, nor does it have the charm and pith of See How They Run.  But despite all this, it’s still a good time and if you like cozy murder mysteries like Father Brown or Death in Paradise, you’ll definitely like The Thursday Murder Club.  And as a first film based on a debut novel in a series, it more than shows enough promise to be turned into a successful series of films.  There’s potential here and talent to spare, so I am really hoping that Netflix sticks with it.

It’s drawn a lot of comparisons to Hulu’s brilliant Only Murders in the Building, but I don’t see it.  Yes, on the surface level, there are similarities; a group of people living in the same place get together and solve crimes.  But the impetus is completely different.  Only Murders is about true crime enthusiasts, those many with that morbid fascination (the character Dove from Bodkin sums up my thoughts on the subject perfectly: “True crime podcasts aren't journalism.  They're necrophilia.”), who become investigators when crime shows up at their door.  Thursday Murder Club is about a group of like-minded investigation nuts who have always been interested in solving cold cases.  It’s a meaningful distinction—the crew in Only Murders were passive participants in necrophiliac entertainment, our protagonists here seek out the unsolved in order to solve it.  There’s more than enough room in your streaming schedule for both; it doesn’t at all feel like more of the same (not to mention that Only Murders is so deeply New York and Thursday Murder Club is so deeply English countryside that they might as well live in two different planes of existence).

Despite the relatively low stress nature of the movie and the inability to really play along with the mystery, there is a depth to it that I found quite compelling.  There’s the undercurrent that runs through the film about the cost of forgetting people’s humanity.  In western society, the elderly are discarded, forgotten about, and considered a burden.  Human beings, who have spent their whole lives doing things, the way anyone else has.  Considered an inconvenience.  Maybe they raised a family, maybe they had jobs, and then at some point, we decide their useful life has come to an end, so like a fridge that gets carted off to the garage, we set them aside and ignore them.  Migrant workers, like Bogdan, overlooked and dehumanized at best, demonized at worst, and often victimized and trafficked themselves, are treated so poorly and left to live on the fringes of society (and in fear, if they live in the US instead of the UK right now).  And yet, here we are, with a group of retirees solving murders and running circles around the proper coppers and a migrant is working for a despicable man so he can send money back home for his sick mother.  Even Ron’s son, the injured boxer, is insecure about his usefulness in the world after his career as an athlete ended.  The movie doesn’t explicitly ask the question, but it left me wondering what exactly does it take for us to forget people’s humanity and see them as things?  Why do we look at people through the lens of their utility instead of the lens of their humanity?  I’m not sure that The Thursday Murder Club intended to get me thinking about this or contemplating mortality as I watched Elizabeth caring for her husband who is fighting a losing battle against dementia.  Or thinking about legacy as the Thursday Murder Club passes the torch from Penny to both DC de Freitas, who continues her legacy as a young woman in a male-dominated police force and to Joyce, who becomes a full-fledged member of the club?  But if that were the intent, well done.  Because it worked.  And if it weren’t, well, bravo anyway, because here I am.

Even though The Thursday Murder Club is a flawed film, it is a foundation for them to build on and give us deeper, more realized mysteries in the future.  It’s worth a try.