rainydayjapan Reviews

Toy Story (1995)

One of the greatest movies ever made

[10/10 · 12 September 2023]

I was a teenager when Toy Story was released in 1995. This means that I was both too old (and too young) to have much interest in it, and I gave it a miss.

I thereafter ended up spending a couple decades of my life living in a world surrounded by Toy Story stuff, but never having seen it or any of its sequels.

It was only after growing up and having kids of my own that I finally got around to watching it, with them. And only then did I realize what an absolutely wonderful movie this was.

The existing reviews already cover all the things that make it so good and I'm not sure I can add much too what has already been said. I will just say that I've watched it (and its sequels) several times now (at my kid's requests) and somehow it doesn't get old or tiresome with repeated viewing, for them or me. The story and the character's emotional pull is just incredibly resilient. It makes me laugh, it makes me cry. I don't know of any other movie series that has done that to me.

Ahsoka: Part Four: Fallen Jedi (2023) Season 1, Episode 4

Getting a bit better, which isn't saying much

[4/10 · 6 September 2023]

The first three episodes of this series were hampered by ridiculously slow pacing, boring dialogue and stilted acting.

This episode is a bit of an improvement. That is sort of like damning it with faint praise, but it is what it is.

The story actually seems to move forward in this one. The three rebel leads don't get as much chance to stand around talking slowly and pointlessly at each other, which helps a lot in that regard (though there is still a bit of this). Also there are some fight scenes between Ahsoka, Wren and the two baddies which actually had some tension in them, which was a refreshing change.

But the overall problems with the series kind of persist. The story doesn't make much sense, the writing and direction is mostly sub-par and the acting is pretty bland. The bad guys remain the only characters where you feel any effort is put into actually acting the part, as was the case in earlier episodes. Hera is a particular weak link, her character is still poorly played and doesn't make much sense (she brings her 8 year old kid into a battle for no apparent reason).

This episode might (emphasis on "might") turn the series around from the absolute snoozefest we watched in episodes 1 to 3. I'm not very confident though.

Ahsoka (2023– )

Surprisingly boring

[1/10 · 4 September 2023]

This feels very much like a show done in the tradition of the Mandalorian Season 3 rather than that of the Mandalorian Season 1 or 2.

I've watched the first three episodes. Its been pretty boring. Its one of those shows where most of the story unfolds by people talking about what is happening rather than showing us what is happening. The dialogue is wooden and dull. Lots of throwback lines to the original trilogy that are supposed to still make us excited after 40 years of watching endless Star Wars stuff full of throwback lines to the original trilogy.

The acting is pretty bad for the most part, despite the talented cast. Many of the parts seem miscast. Winstead as a veteran alien rebel general named Hera is a good example. Her take on it seems to be to play the role entirely as her normal self, except with green makeup on. Actually, with the exception of the bad guys who are mostly played by actors trying to be their characters it seems like everyone playing a good guy in this one, no matter how exotic their alien species, is basically just delivering lines casually as themselves like they were doing a run through of the script rather than the actual show.

All around, you can give this one a miss.

Black Rain (1989)

Great movie for us Japan residents, despite the Beverly Hills Cop script

[8/10 · 8 August 2023]

As a long term (20 + year) resident of Japan who first moved to the Kansai area just a few years after this film's release I've always had a soft spot for it.

There are three Hollywood movies that were filmed on location in Japan and offer wonderful visuals of the country's urban landscape at the time they were made - Black Rain, Mr. Baseball and Lost in Translation.

Of those three, this one is the best, at least in terms of the visuals. Ridley Scott does an amazing job of capturing Osaka at a key point in Japan's history. In 1989 Japan was saying goodbye to the Showa era and hello to the Heisei era that would last until 2018. Though nobody knew it at the time it was also a Japan reaching the high water mark of its global economic infuence. When the asset bubble of the late 80s burst shortly thereafter the fortunes of glamorous hostess clubs like those depicted would burst with them.

Scott and the crew deserve a lot of credit for going to the trouble of capturing the look and feel of 1989 Japan by actually going to 1989 Japan and filming it, rather than just dressing up a vineyard in the Napa valley to look like Japan (well OK they actually did do that for the end action sequence, but otherwise its all authentic). I could just watch this movie again and again for that.

The acting is also fantastic. Douglas, Garcia and Takakura all turn in wonderful performances. Yusaku Matsuda put in an iconic performance as the main villain, sadly the last of his career as he passed away from cancer shortly after its release.

The only thing that really holds the movie back is the story. The script was originally intended to be used for Beverley Hills Cop 2 and this creates an awkwardness that hangs over the entire film.

If you watch the movie knowing it was supposed to be a Beverly Hills Cop movie it becomes very obvious that Douglas' character is supposed to be Axel Foley - the street smart cop who flaunts authority and the rulebook but gets results,, while Andy Garcia's character was clearly meant for Judge Reinhold (which, horrifyingly, means they were originally planning to have poor Billy brutally murdered!).

The problem is that this is not a Beverly Hills Cop type movie. Beverly HIlls Cop is not a straight up action movie, but rather an action-comedy movie. We can thus suspend our sense of disbelief when Eddie Murphy performs antics that seem to be counter productive and the sort of thing that no real cop in his right mind would ever do or expect to get away with. We do so because they are funny.

Black Rain in contrast is not a funny movie, and Michael Douglas (to his credit) does not try to infuse any humor into his performance. This makes it a lot harder to ignore or forgive the fact that almost nothing his character does ever makes sense.

To take one example, if he thinks the 100 dollar bills that the police take as evidence from the Yakuza hideout are forgeries, why doesn't he just share this information with the police instead of stealing them in order to test his theory? This would have achieved the same end but without the risk and all the ensuing trouble that predictably flows from his bizarre action.

In an 80s Eddie Murphy movie we could forgive that character error/ plot inconsistency since it would pay off in some sort of charming or hilarious scene in which Eddie did his thing and made everyone laugh. But in a purportedly serious movie with everything being played straight you don't get that payoff and are just left scratching your head. It feels about half of Michael Douglas's scenes fit into this category - stuff that would have worked with Eddie Murphy doing them in a Beverly Hills Cop film but which should have been re-written when it became a serious, brooding Ridley Scott project.

Despite this shortcoming though I do really like this film and don't have any hesitation in recommending it.

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)

One of the Greatest Comedies Ever

[10/10 · 20 June 2023]

For those in my generation, a good test of someone's character is to mention the name Enrico Palazzo to them and gauge their reaction.

I first watched this movie when I was a kid in the late 1980s. It had me rolling on the floor with laughter.

I watched it again as a teenager in the 90s. Anyone who liked to watch the Naked Gun was probably somebody who would be on the same page as you as far as humor was concerned.

I watched it again as a 20 something in the 2000s. Watching my girlfriend laugh her ass off to it convinced me that she was the one. Fortunately she did not die in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on that new years day.

I watched it again as a 30 something, recently turned a father, in the 2010s. Watching it with a baby somehow made the scene with Weird Al ring true in ways that it hadn't before.

And now in my 40s I have watched it again in the 2020s. It never gets old, and I love every thing about this movie. Most of the gags still hit hard, Leslie Nielson's performance is absolutely timeless and one of the greatest in comedic history.

Not many comedies from the 80s have truly stood the test of time, but this one has, better than any other.

It is perfect.

Extraction II (2023)

Punching is well done, everything else sucks

[3/10 · 19 June 2023]

This movie has a lot of punching in it. Some of which occurs when the arm of the puncher is on fire, which is neat.

In between the punching there is a lot of shooting at various things - people, helicopters, cars and so forth. A train is derailed while people are punching and shooting each other on it (or shortly thereafter).

A very generous number of scenes also depict people and other objects being thrown through plate glass windows to good effect.

Chris Hemsworth is the agent of much of this. But its not the cheeky and likable Chris Hemsworth we see in the Thor movies. Its a very boring Chris Hemsworth who looks stoic while shooting lots of bad guys and getting shot and beaten several times himself without it having much effect. He doesn't do a bad job of that I suppose, but really you could put pretty much anyone in there to get the same performance. Its a waste of his talent.

There isn't really much of a story here. Its about an action hero who has to go save a family that is in a prison, children included, and he breaks them out of the prison basically by killing almost everyone inside, and then escaping on an armored train that he had handily prepared to have waiting next to the prison for him, and then he gets them on the armored train which is immediately attacked by armed helicopters which action man shoots down with some medium machine guns that were on the armored train that had been left parked next to the prison that he had just escaped from. Then the train runs out of tracks and the brakes don't work so they crash and have to continue their escape by other means and eventually end up at a very modern high rise office building where much of the people-getting-thrown-through-windows scenes I alluded to earlier take place. Action man is left dangling from the top of the building with only one hand, is shot in that one hand, it doesn't affect him. Bad guy gets killed. Lots of emotional dialogue takes place between him and the family he had saved, one of whom is slightly mad because he killed his dad at the prison but whatever he gets over that. The end.

I mean, I like movies with punching, with train crashes, with bad guys getting killed. But I have to actually care about the protagonist for any of it to work and the constant and confused chorus of punching and shooting was not structured in a way that allowed me to do so.

Sanctuary (2023– )

Good Show despite some flaws

[8/10 · 9 June 2023]

I watched and for the most part enjoyed this series as a casual sumo fan who has lived in Japan for about twenty years.

As a sumo fan the show offers a somewhat realistic look at some elements of the sumo world - the rigorous training, hazing, shady wealthy patrons, match rigging and so on. These elements are all based on real events, much of which the public only knows about through various scandals that have laid them bare over the years.

At the same time, its hard to ignore some of the flagrantly unrealistic elements. The main character Oze's antics in the early episodes would never have been tolerated in real sumo - numerous individual things he did on their own would have warranted his expulsion. Some of his antics might have been allowed in the training ring, but in an actual tournament would have ended his career many times over.

That nitpicky point aside, the series makes for quite engaging viewing. The motivations and emotions of the main characters are quite compellingly and dramatically laid out for us. The viewer isn't necessarily made to particularly root for any of them, as they are all flawed, but we do feel sympathy for them and want to know where their various stories are leading. Many of the individual storylines are unfortunately left unresolved at the end of the series, presumably to be continued in a second season. Presuming that a second season is produced, this will give us something to look forward to. If Netflix decides to cancel it before doing that, this first series will suffer from the fact that it presents a story that is only half-told.

Visually I should say that the series is quite good too. Japanese TV shows produced by major networks tend to be shot almost entirely in studios (even outdoor scenes) with everything bathed in flourescent lighting. Nothing looks realistic, and the acting tends to be somewhat exaggerated. Being a Netflix production they shot generous portions of this on location, giving it a very realistic feeling. The main exception to this is unfortunately the scenes depicting the actual tournaments, which show exterior shots of the Ryogoku Kokugikan, but the actual sumo bouts are shot in a studio of some sort that despite best efforts doesn't quite capture the look and feel of what the actual tournaments (which are held both at the Ryogoku Kokugikan and in Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka as well) look like. This is forgivable as presumably reserving the actual location would have been either prohibitively expensive or impossible, but it would have been cool if they had been able to do so (I think of the film Mr. Baseball where the visuals of the game play are absolutely brilliant because they were able to film them in the actual stadium used by the Dragons).

All in all though, this is worth a watch.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 24: The Return (2023) Season 3, Episode 8

That was a bad season

[3/10 · 20 April 2023]

I really enjoyed the first two seasons of the Mandalorian but this final episode of season 3 puts a finish on a season that has thoroughly failed to hold my interest the way the first two did.

One of the biggest problems that really shines through in this episode is the stilted and boring dialogue. It seems like 80 percent of what is being said consists of characters very literally describing what they are doing ("I am punching this guy. Then, after that, I will punch that guy next" kind of stuff). Its just cringe worthy watching it all.

Part of the problem is that Din himself is only an interesting character when he stands in contrast to characters with more....character. He acts as an interesting foil and the fact that he always speaks in a monotonous voice devoid of sarcasm, irony or humor makes his character amusing to watch in that context.

This season though he's been thrown in with a load of other Mandalorians who all speak the same way and its just been a non stop snooze fest. It turns out the Mandalorians are just an incredibly boring people who you would probably hate to be cornered by at a dinner party where they would plaster you with lengthy explanations about why they can't take their helmets off, oblivious to your subtle clues indicating a lack of interest. I used to know a guy who was really into karate who would do that. Watching this show reminded me of trying to escape his lengthy, unprompted explanations about what not to do when kicking someone if you don't want to injure yourself. I didn't need that, really.

Peppered between the boring dialogue was a lot of fighting and explosions which were well rendered but completely useless in service of a story that didn't resonate at all with me.

The mantle of "good Star Wars show" has now officially passed on to Andor, the last of its kind.

The Last Kingdom: The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die (2023) Season 5, Episode 11

Pretty good, but with caveats

[8/10 · 17 April 2023]

This movie surprised me.

Not in its content, but in its very existence. I'm a huge fan of the Last Kingdom series and was very satisfied with the way Series 5's finale had wrapped the whole show up. So satisfied that I put the Last Kingdom aside and stopped paying attention to news about it because I thought I didn't have any more Last Kingdom to look forward to (and look for announcements about release dates about).

So when I saw it unexpectedly appear on Netflix it was kind of like finding 20 dollars in the pocket of an old coat. Not expected, but very glad to see it there.

This was basically a competent follow up. As a stand alone film it probably leaves something to be desired from the perspective of people who haven't seen the show. If you are a fan of the show though its pretty much got all the elements that made the show enjoyable on full display.

That said, there are three issues that the existence of this movie raises which I think are worth addressing one by one.

1. Movie instead of season

I haven't read the background of the production yet but I'm guessing there is a reason (schedules, finances, etc) they made this a movie instead of a full season. Its fine as a movie, but the pacing feels a bit forced (which was also an issue in season 5) to account for the shorter run time and it might have worked better as a season in which storylines had more time to play out.

2. Timeline

Season1 begins Uhtred's saga in the year 866. This movie extends the timeline out to the Battle of Brunanburh in 937, more than 70 years later. It doesn't really make sense for Uhtred to still be alive, let alone looking barely 40 and still the swashbuckling hero here, he should be well into his 80s at least. Pretty much everyone else from the first series is long dead, some of them for more than half a century, yet Uhtred for some reason doesn't age like normal people do. This was already really obvious in Season 5 and is even more so in this movie.

3. Death of Uhtred

I was basically satisfied with Season 5 giving Uhtred the "happy ending" of getting his ancestral home back and being allowed to live out his years up there, rather than dying. It kind of feels unnecessary to his character's story arc to carry it forward to his death several years later as they do here, even though they do a reasonably good job of doing it.

The Big Year (2011)

A Nice Film that Deserves More Love

[9/10 · 1 November 2022]

This is a really good film.

I just watched it for the second time. I had first watched it shortly after its release and my main memory of it was that it didn't make me laugh much despite a cast dominated by top level comedic actors. A decade later I was curious if I might have missed something so I gave it another go.

Sure enough, it still doesn't make me laugh. Not out loud anyway. There are no major funny moments that'll have you breaking up anywhere in the film.

But it did make me smile. Pretty much from start to finish, this movie doesn't elicit laughs, but it does elicit lots of smiles.

Its hard for me to pin it down, but there is something very amicable about this movie. Its full of feel good friendship moments, mostly though not exclusively between Steve Martin and Jack Black's characters who develop a nice friendship as they race across America looking at birds. Rooting not so much for them to see more birds but rather to just have fun becoming best buds. It was fun to watch.

Its an impressive feat if one thinks about it. Its a comedy without major laughs. A story that lacks an antagonist (Owen Wilson's character sort of plays this role but only mildly) or anything important at stake other than the ability of the characters to see some birds. Yet I found myself really engrossed in the story and, as I said above, similing throughout.

The film has received a mediocre reception which I suspect is due to people evaluating it as a comedy due to its cast. But its really best approached as a light hearted drama about confused male friendships. If you go in with that mindset I think you are sure to enjoy it.

Man vs. Bee (2022)

Good, if a bit flawed

[7/10 · 27 June 2022]

I watched this last night with my two young kids who are big fans of Mr. Bean. They absolutely loved it, laughing their heads off at his usual antics. I found myself liking it too, though mostly vicariously through their enjoyment.

Its basically Rowan Atkinson in one of his "Not Mr. Bean, but like Mr. Bean" characters. Which is fine. He manages to find some visual gags that would have fit in well in an episode of Mr. Bean, but at the same time makes them distinct enough that I wasn't rolling my eyes at something I had already seen him do in Mr. Bean before. It was worth watching it for that alone. There is a particularly amusing and well constructed scene in which he gets his face dirty that had me laughing out loud.

One major criticism I have is that for some reason they decided to spoil the entire 9 episode series in the very first episode by playing a montage of most of the major incidents that take place later in the show. By showing all of this to the viewer right at the start they rob the rest of the episodes of a lot of interest they otherwise would have had. If we know right from the start that it will end up with him torching the house, we aren't left wondering "Oh my god, how far will his antics go?" with each incremental thing he does to make his situation worse. What does it matter that he left a stain on a counter if we already know that by the time those homeowners return that counter will be burned to a crisp anyway? It tends to degrade the comedic punch that every one of his mis-steps would otherwise have had. Which is unfortunate because most of the individual gags are well done.

Other than that though it was an enjoyable series which I would recommend mainly to people with young kids who like slapstick style comedy.

Mr. Baseball (1992)

Long Term Japan Residents Appreciate This Movie

[9/10 · 28 April 2022]

Being both a baseball fan and a long term resident of Japan, I'm a bit biased in favor of this movie solely based on its subject matter.

That said, I was surprised to learn that this movie only has a 12% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Putting my biases aside, this movie is nowhere near that bad. Its a formulaic early 90s fish out of water comedy drama and in that genre is no worse than others which score around say.....60%?

Granted, that is faint praise.

But when I add my biases into it, this movie really stands out as one of the best Hollywood movies set in contemporary Japan out there. Mainly this is thanks to the fact that they actually took the time to film it on location in Japan.

It forms the third panel of a tryptic of Hollywood films that stand out in that regard. Together they provide a realistic view of Japan's three biggest metropolitan regions. Black Rain shows us Osaka. Lost in Translation shows us Tokyo. And Mr. Baseball shows us Nagoya.

Want to know what Japan actually looks like? Watch those three movies.

In contrast most other Hollywood movies that purport to be set in contemporary Japan are mainly or entirely shot on sets outside the country with just a few token location shots and this results in movies that look nothing like modern Japan. Wolverine has a few shots filmed on location but its really easy to spot when it switches to Australian locations made up to look like what people who have never been to Japan think Japan looks like. Kate, which purports to be set entirely in Japan, is even worse (the film-makers make urban Japan look more like Urban Thailand which makes sense since that is where it was filmed). Karate Kid 2 was shot in Hawaii and looks nothing like Okinawa. And don't get me started on the recent Godzilla movie. Further examples abound.

Mr. Baseball is one of the best looking Hollywood films about Japan for that reason. It shows you both the exciting and mundane without dwelling too much on the former. While riding in a taxi at night, we see the neon signs and bustling nightlife of Nagoya passing in the background. Exciting. At the end of the taxi ride though, Tom Selleck gets introduced to his new apartment, which is a very typical, mundane Japanese mansion adorned with shoddy decor and furnishings that are also pretty typical. The mundane.

They even shoot the main love scene in a very cramped, mass produced shlocky looking early 90s bathroom. Which is just perfect because that is probably where most international relationships in the country are consummated. They could have gone with a stereotypical onsen scene with a bunch of Japanese-ey looking decor but they eschewed that in favor of realism. Love it.

Brilliant details like this that thrill us long termers are to be found everywhere in the background of every scene (except the small parts set in the US). The little red triangles that adorn windows in large buildings? Check. Rooms full of clutter because Japanese rooms and the furnishings therein are too small to handle the accumulation of objects that go along with modern industrialized life? Check. Panoramic shots that accurately reflect how unattractive Nagoya's urban sprawl is? Check.

Of course, the highlight is the footage from the games themselves, which were shot in the actual stadium where the real Chunichi Dragons play (sadly mostly dismantled just a few years after this movie came out, they now play in a much less picturesque Dome). Those are just brilliant.

The movie's poor ratings largely stem from its predictable, formulaic approach to the genre and flaws in Tom Selleck's character - he is a bit too lacking in self-awareness to be either likable or fully believable. But don't let those shortcomings keep you from it. This is a good movie that is worth watching.

Skyggen i mit øje (2021)

Life Imitating Art

[8/10 · 18 March 2022]

I'm not sure if the timing of this movie helps it or hurts it, but it certainly enhances its emotional impact. It is a movie about a building full of innocent children being bombed in the midst of a war. On the day I watched it, the news out of Mariupol carried word of a building full of innocent children being bombed in the midst of a war. The images of the burned out building in the movie was shockingly similar to the images of the burned out building in the news. This could not have been foreseen by the film-makers at the time it was made, but it has made this a movie fully of its time.

The movie itself brings home what the normal people of Mariupol, and other cities ravaged by war around the world, are subjected to. It tells the interwoven stories of three children, their families, a nun at their school and a collaborator working in the employ of the Nazi occupiers in 1945 Copenhagen. Most of the movie plays out at a slow pace as these disparate characters deal with the various stresses of living in occupied Europe as the war neared its end.

Then in the final act it abruptly switches gears by throwing in a botched RAF bombing raid that accidentally destroys the children's school with most of them still in it. We see the terrorizing impact of this on the characters with brutal reality. Children and teachers dying, others running for their lives, parents desperately digging the bodies of their kids out of the rubble. It is not a pleasant thing to watch and is played to great emotional effect. This is not a happy movie with a happy ending, but it is a gut wrenchingly accurate portrayal of the misery that war can inflict.

Its not a pleasant commentary on humanity that almost 80 years after the events depicted in the film - which are based on an actual event which left dozens of real children dead - we are seeing the same thing so painfully playing out once again.

The Last Kingdom: Episode #5.10 (2022) Season 5, Episode 10

Great End to a Great Show

[9/10 · 16 March 2022]

Having been burned by the sting of Game of Thrones awful last season, I have been waiting with some apprehension to watch the final season of The Last Kingdom, a show that I have come to enjoy over its first four seasons.

It is with a huge sigh of relief that I can say it was overall a really nice season that provided a satisfying and enjoyable finish to what was an excellent series.

The ending just made me happy to see it. I had been expecting them to go with the tragic ending for our hero Uhtred, but instead they gave him a happy send off, the lifelong quest to regain his ancestral homeland that started in the first season satisfyingly brought to a successful conclusion. It didn't really leave me feeling there were any major unresolved loose ends, nor did it feel rushed or forced. It was just....nice. I like happy endings.

One critique I feel obliged to mention, and I'm not really sure it is a critique, is that the "lack of aging" of some of the main characters is really noticeable in this final season. The first season is set mainly in the 870s (Alfred the Great ascended the throne in 871). In this season Lady Aethelfaed's death is a major plot point, and that happened in 918. So the series as a whole (excluding the part of the first episode when Uhtred was a child) spans almost 50 years.

So at the end of the series Uhtred should be an old man in his 70s. This isn't just based on the historical timeline but also the timeline depicted in the series itself (we see other characters born, grow up and get older as the seasons progress). But he basically looks and acts like a man in his 30s who hasn't really aged much since the first season.

This is even more noticeable with Aelhswith, who also plays a big role in this season and was even older than Uhtred (meaning she should have been in her 80s or 90s) yet basically looks about 30 years old and at one point attacks and kills a knight. Other members of Uhtred's circle of friends also seem to have had access to the fountain of youth.

I'm not really sure what to make of this. The only way to get around it would have been to apply a lot of make up to make the actors look older, and maybe added a few plot points like Uhtred developing chronic knee pain or a tendency to get more irritable when dealing with the staff at shops, which likely wouldn't have benefitted the story much. So I guess they made the right call, though it does create anomalies like when Edward and Uhtred meet at the end of the last episode and Edward says they will feast "like brothers" - and they both look about the same age. But its hard to forget the fact that Edward wasn't even born yet in the first season when Uhtred was already a grown man. The main reason I focus on this though is that the lack of aging does rob a bit of the emotional punch from the ending, where Uhtred is finally home. We should be looking at a man who is near the end of his days, having seen many decades of important events in the history of Saxon and Danish history in England. But what we are looking at is an actual person who has only aged about 7 years since the story started, and looks it, which creates a bit of dissonance.

Anyway, that aside, it was a great season.

The Book of Boba Fett: Chapter 7: In the Name of Honor (2022) Season 1, Episode 7

Honestly, this sucked.

[1/10 · 14 February 2022]

That was a mess.

The people who made it should go back and watch the Plinkett Prequel reviews if they haven't already (seems they haven't). Those are over a decade old now and it kind of feels like Star Wars stuff has circled back to making the same mistakes which Plinkett critiqued them for. So I thought it would be worth re-iterating some of them in my own critique of this episode.

Problem #1: There doesn't seem to be a protagonist in this series. With the Mandalorian it was very clear who we were following. In this one its....well, you'd assume it was Boba Fett, and certainly for the first few episodes of him with the Tusken Raiders it was. But then they abruptly cut away and got a couple of episodes of a completely different TV show with completely different characters thrown in there leading up to the finale. So when the finale came it was like "Oh yeah, I forgot Boba Fett was in this show" and we'd all stopped caring about what was happening with him.

Problem #2: Action scenes need to have some sort of potential consequences at stake that the audience understands in order for them to register. Most of this episode is a big battle scene that really doesn't seem to have anything going on in it which creates any tension for the audience. It is established very early that the good guys can kill the bad guys easily, and that the bad guys cannot do anything that will in any way affect the good guys. This is taken to ridiculous extremes. The bad guys have massive robots with very scary looking guns on them. At one point the bad guy robots corner a good sized gaggle of the good guys behind what looks like a flimsy wall made of mud. The massive robot fires its massive guns at point blank range and.....all the shots deflect off the flimsy mud wall which is enough to protect the good guys for some reason.

And the whole battle kind of progresses like that. Its like watching an old episode of the A-Team in terms of its portrayal of fighting with lethal firearms that defies the laws of physics in order to prevent anything of consequence from happening to the good guys.

Also, because the series had made us watch a couple of episodes of a completely different TV show leading up to this one, I think most of us had forgotten who the bad guys were (Pikes or something?) and why they wanted to shoot at the good guys in the first place.

Problem #3: Too much expository dialogue. Much of the story is being told to us not by showing us what happened but by having characters tell us what happened. The showdown with Cad Bane is a good example. Cad Bane is one of the few things I liked about the show, he is an impressive and ominous villain. But I guess because "reasons" they had to have him in a final duel with Boba Fett at the end. But when writing that they must have realized that the show has never actually shown Cad Bane and Boba Fett having any sort of real personal conflict with each other which would have made the audience care that Boba Fett and Cad Bane are fighting each other. Bane tells Boba that the Pykes killed his Tusken Raider friends, but that was the Pykes, not Bane. We earlier saw Bane kill Cobb Vanth, but Vanth was more Djarin's friend rather than Boba's. So - while they are already fighting each other on screen - they need to have the characters explain to the audience that they in fact have a personal background with each other from a long time ago. Boring!

Problem #4: Too many forgettable characters. Another problem with the end battle is that they've brought together too many characters so the screen time gets split up amongst too many, a lot of whom you don't really care about. It might have worked a lot better if they had just focused on one or two characters - like Boba Fett for example. He just sort of appears out of nowhere riding a Rankor at a point when the audience (like me) probably just assumed he was somewhere down there fighting with everyone else. Instead of following the antics of those teenage characters, or the crazy lady with the robot cart, maybe it would have been more interesting to see Boba come up with the plan to go get the Rankor, then face and overcome some difficulty in getting there, etc instead of just having him suddenly show up with it.

Problem #5: Lazy Ending. In the end, all the leaders of the bad guys are in one room and....suddenly and inexplicably they are all shot to death out of nowhere. Then Fennec jumps down from the rafters and reveals herself as the architect of their demise. This was lazy and not at all interesting. They really couldn't have found a more interesting way of having her kill the bad guys than that?

Overall I just really hated this finale. Its not as bad as the finale to "lost" or anything, but it was just.....meh.

Cobra Kai: Let's Begin (2021) Season 4, Episode 1

The Show is Going the Route of the Movies

[4/10 · 14 January 2022]

After watching the first espisode of Season 4 (and the second episode actually), I had this feeling of de ja vu. It reminded me of my youth watching the original movies come out every few years.

Remember how when the first Karate Kid came out in 1984 and it was a smash hit and everybody liked it? Me too, it was such a fun movie. Made me laugh, made me root for the good guy and fell happy at the ending.

Then remember how a couple years later the second movie came out and it was basically passable but didn't quite get to the same level as the first? I mean, it was OK and it had the characters you had come to like in the first one, and some new ones, so you liked it but just not quite as much as you had liked the first?

Then the third movie came out and by that point your interest was severely waning, the magic was mostly gone and you kind of just watched it and then completely forgot about it?

Then for some reason they made a fourth one and you were just like "I ain't even gonna bother with this one"?

I feel like my attitude to each season of Cobra Kai has basically mirrored this progress in my feelings towards the movies 30 plus years ago.

The first season was fantastic, I absolutely loved it. It was very fun to watch and just drew me into it. It worked really well as both a character focused drama and a comedy at the same time.

The second season didn't quite replicate that, but I still enjoyed it and wanted to see how the characters I had enjoyed in the first season would see their story unfold.

Then the third season came out and I noticed my interest waning. The series seemed to be slowly morphing from the interesting and complex comedy drama it had been in the first season to basically just a show about teenagers getting into choreographed fights with each other that didn't make much sense from their character's perspectives.

Now the fourth series is here and after watching the first couple episodes I have that same feeling I had when the fourth Karate Kid movie came out - this just isn't worth my time anymore. The character drama just isn't there. The teenagers have slightly re-organized the lines on which they define their gangs but otherwise its basically just them being angry at each other and planning on kicking each other and I just don't care anymore. Daniel and Johnny are still not getting along with each other and I have long since stopped caring about that too. Its just been sapped of the character driven energy (particularly from Johnny) that made the first season work so well. Bringing in a second tier bad guy from Karate Kid 3 who I had completely forgotten about isn't going to be enough to draw me in this time the way bringing Krees in gave the past couple of seasons a slight bump in drama. I think this one is over for me. It was a great show at its peak, but no more.

Dirty Work (1998)

For Norm

[10/10 · 16 September 2021]

Now that he's gone and we can look back on all his life's work, it feels weird that this was Norm's one and only "big" movie.

When it came out I remember laughing so hard at it. I rented the video a few times just to watch Norm's "Ridiculous" monologue, and every other line he delivered in it. I had high hopes that it would be the first of many Norm movies to come because despite its flaws, this was an extremely funny movie.

But it wasn't to be.

It was easily one of the best comedy films of the mid to late 90s, yet for some reason it wasn't the box office success that There's Something About Mary and others were. It deserved to be, solely based on Norm's performance in it, but it just didn't turn in the big bucks.

Which is sad. This was one of the best films by a SNL alumnus ever made. Just compare this movie and the laughs it generates to what his contemporaries were doing. Adam Sandler, who makes a cameo in this movie, never came close to making a movie this funny. Yet for some reason Hollywood kept churning out god awful Sandler garbage year after year. Chris Farley, who also makes a cameo in this movie and unlike Sandler was talented and funny, also never made a movie this good (though unlike Sandler he turned in some decent ones). Rob Schneider, David Spade - the list goes on. None of them made a movie anywhere near this funny.

Maybe it is a hidden blessing that this was Norm's one big movie. Norm MacDonald in 1998 was a comedian at the top of his game. This was the same Norm who just the year before went on Conan O'Brien and hijacked Courtney Thourne-Smith's appearance to single handedly create the most hilarious seven minutes in late night talk show history. Late 1990s Norm was one of the funniest comedians in history.

But having achieved such brilliant heights he had nowhere to go but down. He never crashed and was always funny (his moth joke on Conan in 2009 is deadly funny), but in later years his stand up and also his appearances on the late night circuit weren't quite able to capture that same lightening in the bottle he had in the 90s. His only other major movie appearance after this was in Screwed a couple of years later. Which was not good and we should all forget about its existence. After that he basically just did a few voice performances and cameos in movies.

Dirty Work though is what he has left us, and it is a movie that is still worth watching after all these years. Because of Norm's timeless talent for getting laughs, which he uses to full effect throughout the film.

So if you've ever seen a clip of Norm being funny and want to see more, preferable in movie form, you can't go wrong with this one.

Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)

Garbage. An unwatchable, defaced classic.

[1/10 · 19 July 2021]

I begin this review by noting that I write it having just watched the only currently available version of the film on Disney + (July 2021) which is NOT the original.

I also begin by noting that had I been able to watch the original, rather than the mucked up mess that is the current version, I would be writing a much different review right now which wasn't so focused on how the movie ends.

Anyway, let me get right to my point: the ending sucks.

To put this in context, I watched the whole original trilogy over a three day stretch. What I was really left with at the end was the feeling that I really hated the current versions of all three, but with Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back I at least had the consolation that they ended well mainly because they left the endings as they originally were. At the end of Star Wars, Luke and Han get their medals like they always did and the music and everything is the same. Its literally music to your ears, you feel good watching it. Likewise with Empire, Luke and Leia are still on the medical frigate watching the Falcon fly off as the Rebel fleet slowly limps along, the wonderful closing melody ending the film on a soft note of hope. I just love that ending scene in Empire, its one of my favorite movie closes of all time.

The original ending of ROTJ was a pretty solid one. Luke burns Vader's body, then joins all his friends with the Ewoks for a celebration that also had the feeling of a cast and crew wrapping up party after 6 years of hard work making the most amazing set of movies ever produced. The Ewok music was nice and blended perfectly into the end theme, striking exactly the right emotional note that left you feeling good.

Now that has all been screwed up beyond belief. They've added a whole new 90s song and dance number in there which features cutaways to CG shots of locations that appear nowhere in the trilogy. Its stupid and distracting and just sucks all the emotion out of the end sequence.

Then to top it off they go and add Hayden Christiansen's force ghost to the final shot just to make you mad. That is the last thing you see as the movie ends. Hayden Christiansen. The guy who goes on about sand in Attack of the Clones. He wraps up the original trilogy now.

So unlike the first two, where you can almost tune out the stupid add-ons and forget about them by the end, ROTJ doesn't allow you to do that. It leaves you with them front and centre in your mind. It just makes the movie absolutely unwatchable.

Oh and also they added a lengthy 1990s song and dance number to the Jabba's palace scene, which is another thing that separates this movie from the others. Star Wars is the only other one with a notable musical number in the canteena and to their credit they decided to leave that one mostly alone.

I really hope Disney will consider releasing the original versions at some point, Return of the Jedi in particular deserves better than what the currently available version of itself is presenting to the public. Its an embarrassment.

The Tomorrow War (2021)

Mediocre Review for a Mediocre Movie

[4/10 · 6 July 2021]

The movie got off to a bad start, then moved on to a mediocre middle, and then almost but didn't quite redeem itself towards the end.

Some other reviewers have raised the Edge of Tomorrow as a comparison and I think that is a really useful way of illustrating why the first half of this movie is so bad. Both the Edge of Tomorrow and The Tomorrow War are stories based in a ludicrous alien invasion scenario with a time travel element that, if one has time to think about it, makes no sense at all.

The Edge of Tomorrow gets around that problem by never giving you time to think about it. It just throws Tom Cruise right into the deep end from the beginning and he is pretty much constantly in action from that point on. Its a great way of letting the audience's brains suspend their sense of disbelief and just enjoy the ridiculous story as it unfolds. You are just too worried about what is going to happen to poor Tom next to think about all the plot holes. I quite liked that one.

The Tomorrow War makes the mistake of not doing that and instead starting off as a story about a suburban dad (well, you get a very brief preview of him in the future before that but not much). This is a very boring way to start a movie and, more importantly, it gives the audiences' brains time to relax and think about what they are seeing. Suddenly the main character's suburban existence is punctured when a bunch of heavily armed people from the future materialize on the field of a soccer game they are watching on TV and everything goes downhill from there.

The future people tell us there is an alien invasion they are having trouble fighting and they need people from the present to time travel to the future to serve as cannon fodder in their war against the aliens. So they set up this massive recruitment and time travel infrastructure to send everyone from now to die in the future. Much screen time is spent walking the main character through this process. This gives the audience time to activate their sense of disbelief. If they can travel through time, instead of setting up this massive and horrific system for getting people killed why don't they just, you know, devote those resources to helping people in the present prepare to defeat the alien invasion? Or something like that? This is clumsily addressed with some expository dialogue much later in the movie, but by then you've lost interest anyway.

The movie gets a bit better when it moves into the future and they are actually fighting the aliens. Here too though you find yourself wondering why, if they can invent time travel, they can't invent firearms powerful enough to be useful against the aliens. But I digress.

For me the only part of the movie that really worked was towards the end, when Chris Pratt and friends have returned to the present with a mission to destroy the aliens there (or should I say then). It basically plays out as a straight up buddies on a mission to kill some monsters narrative from then on and is competently executed. It helps that J. K. Simmons gets most of his screen time during that part, he is always fantastic and did a good job of making me actually care about what was happening on screen because I didn't want his character to die.

So I finished the movie in a more positive mood than I had spent most of its running time in, but it wasn't enough to save it for me.

The Expanse: Nemesis Games (2021) Season 5, Episode 10

Anticlimactic End to an Otherwise OK Season

[5/10 · 5 February 2021]

I've basically enjoyed Season 5 for the most part, albeit the first half much more than the second, but felt this episode didn't do it justice.

I mean, its the Expanse so I don't want to be too hard on it, its still good TV. BUT I felt this episode misfired for three reasons.

First: Alex's death was clumsily handled. I get that this was obviously not originally planned, but still, it was clumsy. Literally they just flashed him up there suddenly dead for three seconds without even the slightest foreshadowing that he had been in any danger whatsoever. Since the viewer is left with no idea how he died we have to have it explained to us through Holden's expository dialogue in a later scene which also mentions a funeral is in the offing. That is it? Weak.

I get that they had to let Anvar go, but still they would have been better off taking their time with it, thinking it over, and giving his character a decent death in the first episode of Season 6. Or maybe let him live and slide some other actor into the role, its been done before. Basically anything but the way they did it would have been preferable. As an audience we were emotionally invested in this character, despite the flaws of the man who played him, and they could have used that to squeeze some drama out of his death but they didn't. Basically it was a wasted opportunity in that sense.

Second: I hated the Avasarala dinner party scene. Hated it with a passion. It was cringe inducing. Its the kind of scene that a TV show which is lazily resting on its laurels will throw in just to show viewers it can do that now. All the main characters come together with smug looks on their face and blather on with dialogue that is clearly directed at the audience rather than the other characters. Avasarala has been one of my favorite characters throughout the series and it was painful to see her giving that little speech to the rest of the cast about how great it is they all get along despite coming from different planets and how this was the future of humanity. It looked like a Picard speech from a Star Trek TNG episode from the late 80s. Not that there is anything wrong with Picard speeches, but they DO NOT belong in the Expanse, which is a completely different kind of sci fi show.

Third: None of the main plot points were really resolved. Years from now when you can just go straight on to watch Season 6 on autoplay after watching this one it won't matter. But now in February 2021 when we've probably got a year or two of waiting ahead of us, this is frustrating. Basically Amos and Peaches escaped from Earth and Naomi was rescued, but I'm still mad about Inaros dropping asteroids on my home planet and he still hasn't received his comeuppance. Nor have we figured out what Philip is going to do. Or Drummer. Nor do we have any idea what vaporized that Martian ship going through the ring.

I mean, all of this suggests that Season 6 might be good because they have to resolve these things then, but at the end of this one I was kind of left furling my brow in frustration.

Cobra Kai: The Right Path (2021) Season 3, Episode 4

Wasted Opportunity

[3/10 · 3 February 2021]

I'm going to buck popular opinion and say that I really disliked the whole Okinawa side trip that ran through a couple of episodes in season 3, beginning with this one.

The fact is, the whole Okinawan side trip was excruciatingly boring, but it didn't need to be.

They had a lot of emotionally charged material to work with here. I mean, you are reuniting two long lost lovers from opposite sides of the world who haven't seen each other in over 30 years. More importantly a large portion of the audience hadn't seen them together in over 30 years either. That whole romantic subplot from Karate Kid 2, cheesy though it seems in retrospect, still had some pull on our heart strings that the writers could have worked with. What will Daniel's long awaited reunion with Kumiko bring?

Nothing, it seems. There was a genuinely emotionally charged moment when the two first lay eyes on each other and a flicker of recognition appears on their faces.

Then they basically just engage in painfully emotionless, stilted dialogue with each other for the rest of Kumiko's appearances. In the end the only plot point she serves is to introduce him to Chozen and Yuna in the next episode and to give him some letters from Mr. Miyagi which don't really advance the story.

If they had been bolder, why not try to re-create some chemistry between the two of them? Tempt Daniel with a long lost flame and see where his character goes from there. Given the madly complex web of constantly fractured relationships which played out to some effect in Season 2 this would have given Kumiko's appearance some meaning to the overall story rather than just trying to shoehorn her in there somewhere so they could say they did it.

Part of the problem with this episode also goes towards a problem with the overall series. I hate to be unkind, but the fact is Ralph Macchio is not a very good actor. He just can't convey any emotion whatsoever.

This creates a strong contrast with William Zabka who can. When Zabka's character is angry, you feel angry for him. When Zabka's character is frustrated, you feel frustrated for him. When he is sad, you feel sad for him. And so on. He is good at conveying emotions in a way the audience connects with and, for me at least, this means the episodes focusing on Johnny are by far the best.

In contrast, episodes in which Daniel features prominently are almost always a drag because Macchio just can't convey any of that. When his character is supposed to be angry I just don't feel it from him. Or sad. Or happy. Or anything.

Basically his only acting setting seems to be "fatherly figure in a 1980s family sitcom". Which would be fine if this was a 1980s family sitcom. But it isn't. Its a comedy drama with an insane amount of drama in it. Most of the other actors can deliver, but Macchio just can't. The scenes with Kumiko in this episode really strike that home. He walks into this huge romantic reunion yet from the way he plays it you'd think he was just interacting with someone at the DMV.

Anyway I felt this was pretty disappointing. They really should have had Johnny go to Okinawa instead, his character would have had a much more interesting trip.