The Netflix Korean drama "Crash Landing on You" is wonderful. Great leads, great romance, lots of smoldering, some humor to season the sauce. The first half is better than the second half, but the whole thing is worth watching.

OPEN RANGE
Robert Duvall modern western.
Good movie. Sad movie.

STRAW DOGS
I thought so much was so good, but then again so many characters seemed too overblown too much of the time. It's one of the few times I didn't care for the acting of James Woods.
Overall? Sorta kinda worth watching. Once.

Just finished my second viewing of the 2010-2013 Starz series: Spartacus.

While is it graphic in all ways, it holds some of the most amazing performances I have ever seen.

Lucy Lawless is great as a delusional loving wife. Manu Bennett - insane performance.

This show, especially the first season, captures the horrors of slavery better than anything I've seen. Definitely one of my favorite TV shows, ever. And totally holds up.

Hmmm... curiosity is piqued. I think I've seen the first 6 or so episodes years ago during a 'free sampler' week. I haven't been motivated to go back to it.

Lest I overhype the show, suffice it to say, Manu Bennett portrays the duality of Crixus - champion among his peers and owned object among the Romans - with such a subtle but powerful use of his voice and expression - it is remarkable. He dies inside in nearly every scene.

And it plays off so well with Lucy Lawless' Lucretia - a woman who loves and her supports her husband 100% and believes they are the heroes in their own story.

They are the true stars of the show.

This post will include Spoilers for Season 3 of Star Trek Discovery. I went in without spoilers, so I'm going to abuse the spoiler tag at some length. I give this season a hearty recommendation. I found it to be very binge-worthy. The series, especially this season, lives up to the brightest hopes of Gene Roddenberry's legacy.

My hearty recommendation comes with subtle reservations. Hyperlinks may break through the cloaking technology of the spoiler tag!

Buckle in for my next essay, now that I've watched the entirety of The Queen's Gambit mini-series, available on Netflix. I'll recommend the series but with the following simplification of my attitude:

• It's a good sports story.
• It's a middling story about female empowerment.
• It's a terrible story about everything else.

I haven't read the novel the mini-series is based upon, I only have a smattering of chess experience, and my French, Spanish and Russian is basically conversational. You don't miss too much by not speaking the foreign languages, except for an elevator scene in which the heroine overhears her Russian opposition trash-talking her in a rather clinical manner.

The sports story: It's basically the story of a disadvantaged underdog Beth Harmon discovering a talent and overcoming the odds. If there are any 'twists', it's that Beth Harmon is a woman in a man's (game) world and that the primary obstacle in her path is her own addictive personality (see the 'terrible' section below). Oddly, even though the "Russians" are presented as the 'big bad', there is an irony that it is actually their collective approach to Chess (hello, Marxism!) that is explicitly stated as the source of their dominance. In the final episode, Beth (despite having been told this) sees this in action is actually surprised. Luckily, when Americans do it... we call it Teamwork, and we do it better! ...except that it is still an individual victory requiring the unique perspective of a super-human American, because... We I Can Do It!

The female empowerment story: She essentially dominates the world of US Chess based only on her raw talent. Various women enter her orbit, but until the final two episodes pretty much every woman (or girl) is explicitly presented with no agency and most are destined for a bitter end. If a better path is in the future for the handful of women (the pre-med student, the pre-law student, the model) each of them attributes their plucky attitude (well... maybe not the model) to "simply having known you (Beth, despite you being a hot mess)". SPOILERS: The model sabotages Beth, in a painfully obvious and conscious way... because, "Boys!"

The terrible parts. Oh so many.

I'll start with what I think is the most trivial issue: The title "Queen's Gambit" is never explained, nor does it appear relevant to the story. There is some patter in play-by-play coverage about Beth's aggressive play style, but there is no overt reference to it, and there is never any (poetic?) equivalence/commensurability established between characters and any chess pieces... i.e. Beth isn't referred to as a "queen" (or a "pawn", or anything else.). She does get referred to as a "fashion plate" (my words, not the screenplay's) by multiple characters, but nobody actually equates her with royalty.

I have a major issue with the presentation of Beth's addictive personality. My primary issue is that her self-destructive behavior is presented in the most linear, simplistic way with a completely unrealistic representation of the effects of her particular choices of inebriation. Sorry, but even the most physically fit person can consume that much ripple and still look like Anya Taylor-Joy! Also, the house would be in MUCH worse shape if Librium and Alcohol were in use. More subtly: the narrative avoids questions around self-medication, and there is only a casual mention that her self-destructive behavior has effects... even after it is explicitly stated that Beth's adoptive mother's death was almost certainly due to her own issues with toxic substances (alcohol, tobacco, sedatives). The introduction of Librium into young Beth's life is essentially treated as comedy. The story wrongly emphasizes and concludes with the blatantly false chestnut: "all the addict needs to avoid temptation is support from someone who loves them unconditionally." Pure fantasy of the most dangerous kind.

The greatest failing comes from the perspective of the narrative: the story fumbles at the bitter end. As I wrote, I haven't read the source novel and I don't have access to the shooting script, but I can see where the story was heading, and how at the last minute it took a sharp turn into a ditch and flipped the car.

For the entirety of the series, this was a story about how does an individual fit within a family? Beth Harmon is immediately presented as being orphaned in a (doubly) tragic manner. From this point forward, she is never faced with any active adversity (unless you count teenage mocking about her clothes)... it's just a combination of apathetic neglect and tentative relationship-building. All along the narrative Beth has people that move into her orbit who are willing to build a relationship with her, but she either treats these opportunities as purely transactional but likely putting herself at a disadvatage (ehem, "Queen's Gambit Accepted") or she consciously avoids them (ehem, "Queen's Gambit Declined") to maintain a less disadvantaged position.

The bitter irony of the story is that for six-and-a-half episodes, Beth gathers all the clues that family relationships are the end game. She participated in a drinking-buddy, co-dependent relationship with her adoptive mother. She blatantly recognizes that a former high-school tormentor is going to perpetuate that sort of cycle with her own child. She brutally defeats a Soviet child prodigy and asks him for answers to questions she must have about her own future. She woefully observes the Russian Grandmaster and his family enjoying a trip to the zoo in Mexico City. She coldly accepts that certain people from her youth got something from a one-sided relationship with her. She finally breaks down into tears when she finds a photograph of her with the man who taught her chess, a man who similarly had trouble making human connections, yet (too late, as seen in flashbacks) tried to warn a young Beth about future trouble. She pensively studies a sculpture of a parent and children in the final episode.

And here is the kicker (for me): The "plot" (such as it is) has been building to something other than the final match with Grandmaster Burov, but Beth doesn't know this. The plot is rather obviously supposed to be that Soviet Grandmaster Burov is going to defect to the West (for the sake of his family), and that Beth Harmon is the instrument that is going to make that possible. She's supposed to be (for the first time) an active enabler of another family's 'happiness'. Prior to the conclusion, we've witnessed (from afar, or via the casual commentary from side characters) that the Soviet state (as well as its Chess program) offers very little for its people. The CIA handler accompanying Beth in Moscow explicitly states that they expect Burov to try to defect, and that she should "look for a sign." Burov physically places a king in her hands, in an OBVIOUS close up of clasped hands signalling something. The final scene has Beth ditching her CIA handler to join the old men playing chess in a Moscow plaza, with no word of the (potential) Burov defection.

So, what exactly was the point of the mini-series again? Beth has made it clear that Cold War politics are of zero interest to her (an odd attitude, given the obvious black-and-white nature of the game of Chess), but she should clearly recognize what family means... unless her exchanged glances with Burov's wife are hiding contempt for her? So did Beth defect to Russia so she could have the adoration of survivors of WWII and post-Stalinist purges? WTF was the point of this story?

The show literally could have ended with Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" over the final scene and it would have made as much sense. (Come to think of it, the series could also have opened with a record scratch followed by "I suppose you're wondering how I ended up fully clothed in a Parisian bathtub...")

EDIT: I should temper one part of the above critique... The queen's gambit is played in the final match, but it is ultimately of no consequence. I didn't catch if it was played in any of the other games.

I went on a bit of a comedy bender, and watched: The Kentucky Fried Movie, Airplane!, and Airplane II: The Sequel. I still find all three to be pretty funny; I'd forgotten just how explicit tKFM is.

RETURN OF THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN

Great movie.
Once of my few complaints is the lack of returning characters even though it took place in the same village as the first movie.

The other is that I would have liked to have seen the original actors playing the returning characters.

Robert Fuller did ok as Vin, but he's no Steve McQueen. Then again, who is?
But since you could only have McQueen or Brenner, I would never argue that the choice of Brenner to return as Chris was the right decision.

If they were to make a heroclix teambase of them (add this to my list of things I would love but aint gonna happen), the scene of them fighting from the well would make a great one.

And finally, of course:
Cue someone to start talking about The Seven Samurai

EDISON
Such a waste of my time. I wasn't even happy with Morgan Freeman, let alone the others.

COP
I watched because I like James Woods.
Seemed like a decent plot but grew more absurd.
Characters didn't seem to have much depth. Felt like a TV movie but definitley wasn't.
It didn't help that I despised the character Woods played either. Definitely not a police recruitment poster boy.
And this must have been in a parallel universe with different police procedures and policies. Because they didn't line up with what I am aware of.

MULHOLLAND FALLS

Unexpected plot twists. But it failed to reel me in. Not terrible but not reccomended.

Army of the Dead

I like shoot 'em up zombie movies. I like escapism action films, too.

Army of the Dead lives up to Zack Snyder's standards:

Good:
Some good visuals
Some interesting characters

Meh:
Ideas mined from other (better) films

Bad:
Story is jumbled, filled with deadends - at least 5 things are set up only to be dismissed or forgotten

The ham-fisted emotional connections - I know he is trying but even Michael Bay does it better - and that is a low bar.


Would I recommend it? No. It is a bad movie.

Did I have fun watching it? In some ways, yes. It starts off interesting but falls apart.

I really think Snyder must get a script, do a lot of "extra shots" just in case, and then thinks he created some gold and can't cut that crap out. The man needs to understand the value in editing and find someone who is good at it.

"DEAD ENDS" I think this a case of a film's individual parts seeming like a great idea until it's all assembled like Joss Whedon cut of the Justice League movie

WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS

A movie with a lot of great parts and ideas. But all put together, the sum was LESS than it's parts. They didn't seem to know what to do with these good ideas. They couldn't even figure out what to do with Martin Sheen.
SUMMARY: Ridiculous and went nowhere. Give it a pass.

UNTRACEABLE
At the edge of the level of gory I'm willing to watch, but a solid movie that was enjoyable.

Collateral

Maybe my favorite Mann movie. The pacing, characters, and tension are all played excellently.