Film Review: Little Women

I walked in cold; I had never read the book, nor seen any of the semi-annually made remakes. And granted I should have expected a film entitled "Little Women" to be on the girly side .. but.. this was really really girly.

Would it have killed them to throw a bone to the men in the audience by including a car chase or an Infinity Gauntlet?

As it is it's the most beautifully filmed episode of "The Waltons" ever. Not that that's a bad thing.

Director Greta Gerwig shakes things up by bouncing back and forth in time, and the highlight is her meta ending in which she makes fun of a typical Hollywood ending while still using it. She has it both ways and it's pretty clever.

Beautiful cinematography, great acting, Meryl Streep! It's going to win a ton of Oscars, but when you boil it all down, it's a movie for girls.

Review: The Mandalorian

The "Mandalorian" and Joss Whedon's "Firefely" belong to the same genre. I'm calling it the Look-we're-clever,-you-think-you're-watching-a-science-fiction-show-but-it's-really-a-western genre.
Both shows are so much like westerns I can't help but think, "why didn't they just make them westerns?"

In the case of "Mandalorian," when I say it's a western, I'm not saying movie western, I'm saying TV western, which is really a whole different animal, isn't it?

I kept thinking of those 1960s TV westerns with Clint Eastwood or Steve McQueen each playing a brave hero who's reluctant to use his gun, but will do what he has to. There were dozens of westerns like this on TV in the 1960s, they might have burnt themselves out. Movie directors have two hours to tell their story. TV shows have lots of time to fill. Plots were recycled ... a lot.

And that's what I was thinking about while watching the first three episodes of "The Mandalorian." It's not all that different from one of those old TV westerns. With the exception of a few Star Wars characters, it's not a Star Wars spinoff at all.

It's really closer to "Son of Steve McQueen's Character" in "Wanted: Dead or Alive," or "Son of Clint Eastwood's Character" in "Rawhide."

But, the TV western is dead, and the only way to get people to watch them is to  put spaceships in them.

My other problem with this show is: Is the main character really going to keep his helmet on during the whole run of the show? There's a scene with about six people, all wearing helmets conveying exposition, and it slowly became an episode of the "Power Rangers." This is going to go over great in foreign markets.

How do they expect us to get emotionally attached to a protagonist if we never see his face? I'm sure the Lucasfilm people are thinking, "This is a forever character, like C3PO or Chewbacca, we  don't need an actor!" You can get away with that for the movies, but TV is, once again, a different animal.

Update: I finally caught all 8 episodes and must say the last three episodes are very good. There's a 'turn-the-tables moment in "The Prisoner" episode where the whole show turned around for me. Things start moving much faster and plot threads that started in the first two episodes are finally wrapped up in a very exciting manner. Suddenly I started caring about Baby Yoda.

And he takes off his helmet, which he should do more often.

Film review: Knives Out

Just when I was thinking "Knives Out" was the funniest, best written episode of "Murder She Wrote" ever, doesn't Jessica Fletcher appear on the screen. This is Rian Johnson's wink to the audience, he's reminding us to not take this seriously, it's just a really big budget, better written episode of "Murder She Wrote." At one point a detective says the creepy gothic mansion where the murder takes place is like a Clue board and that's exactly the game you're playing.

A rich cranky geezer (Christopher Plummer playing a more delightful J. Paul Getty) turns up dead on the night of his 85th birthday party and as the suspects tell their stories it appears he was going to end all of their allowances. So we have a creepy old mansion (complete with secret entranceways) and a bunch of eccentric family members who'd do anything to keep the family riches. This is an homage to old-timey Hollywood mysteries which would work wonderfully on a double bill with "The Thin Man."

The detective is Daniel Craig having the time of his life as a southern-drawling Hercule Poirot, yes he's a genius detective, but the humor comes in when some obvious clues are playing out right under his nose.

Also playing against type is Chris Evans, trading in the squeaky clean Captain America for the prickish rich grandson

The breakout star is Ana de Armes  as the family maid. As the only suspect who's not a scheming family member, she has no motive, or is that what they want us to think? The character has a unique tell when she's lying and de Armes makes it hysterical or suspenseful. It's an exceptionally clever conceit: A whodunnit character incapable of lying, imagine the possibilities.


To tell anything else would spoil the tightly constructed story, but if you enjoy a good, funny whodunnit, by all means go see it.

Dagwood saves the day

I've been pointing out the disastrous results when Beetle Bailey tries to be hip to what the kids are doing nowadays (mostly technology.) The problem is the creative team doesn't know enough about a new technology to make fun of it; they think that simply mentioning it will be hilarious.

This made today's Blondie doubly hilarious. Dagwood takes his first Uber ride; this could have been a mess if the Beetle Bailey team had done this, but Dagwood saves the day by (literally) pulling the punch line out of his back pocket. I didn't see it coming, yet it's totally in his character.

And I laughed.

Lost classic review: 1st Issue Special #9 Doctor Fate

Joe Kubert cover is just the beginning of  the issue's great art.

When all the golden age DC characters were getting reboots in the late-50s, early 60s, Dr. Fate was somehow left behind. Sure he got a couple of Showcase outings (teamed up with Hour-Man!), but for the most part, he was relegated to the JLA- JSA team-ups.

The first great attempt to establish him as an A-lister would be in the mid-70s First Issue Special by Marty Pasko and Walt Simonson. Not quite a reboot, but Pasko and Simonson redefined him for the next 40 years.

First the art, yeah, Murphy Anderson was good for the Showcase issues, but holy crap, Simonson's work here is a revelation.We had never seen him this way. Simonson has always said Kirby was a big inspiration on him. I don't see it in the faces or bodies, but like Kirby he has a gift for making the characters look like they're jumping off the page. Instead of the shading lines on Fate's helmet that had been done historically, Simonson keeps the helmet clean, and it's striking. In the old books, if he cast a spell, usually lightning bolts would emanate from his fingers, here, it's magic symbols forming geometric patterns. The attention to detail even extends to the characters' word balloons, each character's word ballon has a unique shape. It's just amazing.

The story keeps up and obviously inspired the art. An old foe (like ancient-Egyptian mummy old) returns from the dead to kill Fate to impress his god. Havoc ensues. Meanwhile, Kent Nelson's wife Inza overcomes her superhero wife fatigue to help him (and the mage inhabiting his body) independently from him. For perhaps the first time, Inza is not a hostage.

It's just beautifully drawn and wonderfully written, and makes me wish it was picked up as an ongoing series with this creative team.

Beetle Bailey's futile search for relevance ... again

In the Beetle Bailey writers' room.

"Let's do a joke for the kids."
"Yeah, I know, we'll have a joke about the YouTube."
"Yeah, kids today like the YouTube."
"What's the YouTube?"
"Um, I think the kids today use it to prank one another."
"OK, I got it, Lt. Fuzz will get pranked on the YouTube, and the punchline will be, "You've been pranked on the YouTube!"
"Good one, let's hit the golf course!"

Review: Spider-Man: Far From Home (no spoilers)

After the heavy, epic Avengers: Endgame, we get the lighter Far From Home, and it's a welcome change in mood.

After a quick and clever explainer of life in the Marvel Universe after "Endgame," we learn Peter Parker just wants to go to Europe on his class trip and leave super-heroing behind. but Nick Fury, and some inter-dimensional monsters have other plans.

He gets help from Jake Gylanhaal's Mysterio, an inter dimensional super-hero whom they hint could fill Iron Man's rocket-laden boots.

As the class goes from European destination to destination, it brings to mind "If it's Tuesday, it Must be Belgium," and other silly-Americans-in-foreign-country movies. Only with superheroes.

Meanwhile, poor Peter has to battle monsters while working up the courage to tell classmate MJ what he feels about her.  There should be some kind of award for Tom Holland, his Peter Parker might be the closest depiction to the character in the comics; he's not a super-hero, he's a kid whose immense powers are tempered by a teenage mindset. The most important thing for him isn't fighting the monster, it's kissing the girl! And he carries this believably.

I was a little disappointed in the beginning at the absence of a bad guy. He's just going to beat up monsters? But a villain comes along soon enough and makes up for his earlier absence.

The film ends with mid-credit and post-credits sequences. The latter is kind of confusing, but the former is a must-watch which made the audience I saw the film with go crazy.

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