Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2022.3

These are my notes to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. I’ve recently transferred my reviews to IMDb and made the list of around 1600 ratings publicly available. I’ve included the individual ratings with my notes for each movie. These ratings are not absolutely comparable to each other—I rate the film on how well it suited me for the genre and my mood and. let’s be honest, level of intoxication. YMMV. Also, I make no attempt to avoid spoilers.

Gormenghast (2000) — 8/10

Steerpike (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is a lowly kitchen worker. Flay (Christopher Lee) works for the royal family in the upper levels of the giant multi-storied castle of Gormenghast. After Flay dresses down Steerpike’s odious boss Swelter (Richard Griffiths), Steerpike follows him to the upper levels to ingratiate himself and to perhaps gain a toehold out of the kitchen.

Flay is having none of it, though he does give Steerpike a glimpse of the princess Lady Fuchsia (Neve McIntosh), who’s a bit mad or daft or both. Flay locks Steerpike away after that, but Steerpike escapes out a window on to the facade of the castle, seemingly hundreds of meters above the ground. He scales his way up to the rooftops and finally gains access by byways to Lady Fuchsia’s room, where he falls into an exhausted slumber on her couch.

She finds and awakens Steerpike but is so entertained by his antics that she forgets to turn him in. When her nanny Nannie Slagg (June Brown) arrives and discovers Steerpike, they all head to Barquentine’s (Warren Mitchell) chambers, where Lady Fuchsia asks him to employ Steerpike. He, in turn, manages to flatter and charm Barquentine with a loquacity and erudition completely at odds with the foolishness with which he swayed Fuchsia.

Steerpike eventually bamboozles the foolish Lady Clarice Groan (Zoë Wanamaker) and her sister Lady Cora Groan (Lynsey Baxter) into helping him endanger the royal family by setting the royal library on fire. Steerpike shows up to save the day and rescues them from the fire he’d had the sisters set.

The burning of the library drives Sepulchrave, Earl of Groan (Ian Richardson) absolutely around the bend. He begins to think that he is an owl. He is eventually consumed by owls, disappearing for a long time until he is presumed dead. This was also orchestrated by Steerpike. At the same time, Flay is banished from Gormenghast. Titus Groan is now older and is made Earl. His mother Gertrude, Countess of Groan (Celia Imrie) still rules with an iron fist, having more sympathy for her hunting birds than her own children Fuchsia and Titus.

Eleven years later, Titus is twelve years old. We meet the various bumbling professors at his academy, including the more prominent Professor Bellgrove (Stephen Fry), who would eventually be promoted to the thankless position of headmaster after the unfortunate death of his predecessor (they accidentally threw him out of a window). Irma Prunesquallor (Fiona Shaw) attempts to woo the new headmaster at a party thrown by her brother, Doctor Prunsquallor (John Sessions) (who’d briefly employed Steerpike before he’d toadied his way further up the hierarchy).

Steerpike finally exacts his twisted revenge on Nannie Slagg, killing her with poison, and he incarcerates Clarice and Cora before they can blab about his other machinations. Steerpike also murders Barquentine, burning himself hideously in the process. He takes over his job, running the ceremonies for Gormenghast, just one step away from the throne now. The others begin to suspect what he is up to, but are powerless to stop him.

Fuchsia is still enamored of Steerpike and begs him to remove the half-mask covering the burned half of his face. She is a simpleton and cannot hide her revulsion. This drives Steerpike completely around the bend—he has nothing left to live for but his evil deeds. His last hope was to seduce Fuchsia, kill Titus, and assume the throne.

Flay returns to the castle with Titus, ready to expose Steerpike. They discover Clarice and Cora’s corpses and catch Steerpike in the act of desecrating them. Steerpike quite easily kills Flay and escapes into the castle.

The rains come—truly prodigious rains that quickly flood the first few levels of the castle of Gormenghast. The whole castle is activated to search for Steerpike. He defends himself with a slingshot, killing many guards. Just as he seems likely to get away with it, Titus drops from above and stabs him where he was treading water, sending him to a watery grave.

The Leftovers S01 (2014) — 8/10

This is a show about what happens in an American community of people who were all probably assholes before 2% of the population disappeared three years ago, but are now definitely even worse because they feel like they’re entitled to their feelings and angst because they all lost someone that day.

The first episode is pretty rocky. They try too hard to establish everything in the first show. There are too many teenagers in this. There is an annoying mayor who seems to be nearly over-the-top cunning and driven. There are at least three cults that I could see in the first season. While this is probably a good prediction of what would happen in America, I didn’t find it that entertaining to watch. There were only a couple of nice people in it and they didn’t get that much screen time.

I watched the second episode as well. We learn about bit more about the cults: the police chief hasn’t actually lost any of his family to the mysterious event three years prior. His wife has joined one of the cults—the one that dresses all in white, smokes all the time, and never speaks—and his son has joined another—the one with the more-classic-cult-leader who gives out special hugs that take away all of your pain and also recharges himself with very young Asian teenagers.

Then the damned thing started growing on me, filling in a bit of the very mysterious mythology—but not too much detail. They don’t go overboard. I like Police Chief Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) and I really like Preacher Matt Jemison (Christopher Eccleston). Nora Durst (Carrie Coon) is also very good. Garvey’s wife Laurie has joined the Guilty Remnant (GR), a cult that smokes all the time and never (or rarely) speaks. Their leader Patti Levin (Ann Dowd) is very, very good, as well. If I’m honest, Jill Garvey (Margaret Qualley) and her friend Aimee (Emily Meade) kind of grew on me, as well.

There are a couple of storylines that entwine in this first season. Garvey’s father Kevin Sr. (Scott Glenn) used to run the police station but is now confined to a mental institution. He’s a danger to others. He hears voices and follows their commands. He seems to know more about what happened on the 14th of October, when so many disappeared.

Kevin has weird dreams and seems to enter a fugue state sometimes, where a different personality takes over for a while. He takes nocturnal jaunts with Dean (Michael Gaston), where they hunt and kill dogs, though one night Kevin rescues one. It’s kind of complicated. Another night, they’ve kidnapped Patty, but Kevin can’t remember any of it. Dean is ready to kill her, but Kevin stops him. Then Patty kills herself, to bring down Kevin.

Garvey’s son Tom (Chris Zylka) left home after the 14th and has washed up in the cult of Wayne. Wayne hugs people to take away their pain. It seems to work. He also impregnated several girls at once, just before his compound was raided. Tom went into hiding with Christine (Annie Q.) and stayed in occasional contact with Wayne, who’s all mysterious and somewhat tragic, in the end. Wayne meets his end in a rest-stop bathroom, where Kevin Jr. finds him. Wayne grants him a wish.

Laurie and Patty and the rest of the GR have a season-long plan to remind people of what they’d lost. A local townswoman Meg Abbott (Liv Tyler) takes an excruciating time to join the GR, but finally does. They make life-like dummies of all of the taken family members, infuriating everyone in town. The rest of the town exacts its revenge on them, burning down their house. Laurie gets Kevin to rescue Jill, who’d just joined the GR and had been trapped in their burning headquarters.

Kevin gets her out, returning home with Laurie and Jill. They find Nora on the front steps, cradling Christine and Wayne’s baby, which Tom has delivered to their doorstep. Tom is gone. Christine had abandoned the baby to Tom in a bathroom. So Christine is in the wind, as well.

Space Force S02 (2022) — 7/10

This is a solid outing from a good cast playing good characters in a second season that has a very noticeably reduced budget from the first season.

General Naird (Steve Carell) is in danger of losing his job as head of Space Force, while Dr. Adrian Mallory (John Malkovich) and Dr. Chan Kaifang (Jimmy O. Yang) are being recruited by SpaceX. Captain Angela Ali (Tawny Newsome) is hooking up with Chan, but can’t get serious because she’s damaged by her experience on the moon. She’s thinking of moving back to Hawaii to fly tourists around in helicopters. F. Tony Scarapiducci (Ben Schwartz) is the glue, but is also thinking of leaving for a bigger role elsewhere. Erin Naird (Diana Silvers), the general’s daughter, is thinking of taking a gap year to travel the world. Her mother Maggie (Lisa Kudrow) is still in prison.

The defense council is still great: Army General Rongley (Diedrich Bader), General Kick Grabaston (Noah Emmerich), John Blandsmith (Dan Bakkedahl), Secretary of Defense (Tim Meadows), Navy Admiral Mayweather (Jane Lynch), General Dabney Shramm (Patrick Warburton). Their bullshitting and messing around is great fun. I can’t imagine any of them were paid very much for their roles.

It doesn’t matter, though, because the characters and actors are good. The story is pretty funny. Instead of $1M-per-episode sets, we get something much more like the original Star Trek, where story carries it all. This is perhaps a return to theater, where the sets don’t really matter. A play with a very spartan set can work just fine. Perhaps the standouts were John Malkovich, who can honestly do no wrong, and Ben Schwartz, whose background in improv really, really lets him shine.

Aziz Ansari: Nightclub Comedian (2022) — 9/10

My rating applies to the actual comedy show that he gave and does not, as so many other reviews do, take into consideration externalities about the comedian. These are irrelevant.

Was. He. Funny? Yes.

He talked about COVID. He talked about Trump. He talked about the disease infecting many people called The Internet. He talked about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris being invisible. He talked about how stupid crypto is, about how senseless and superficial so many of our conversations about the world are. He talked about our mercuriality, our need to consume new outrage while completely ignoring issues that matter.

The show was a tight half-hour set.

Hell, I liked it because he was saying what I wish more people would say—and he was very funny doing it. People who didn’t like it were most likely butt-hurt because it hit too close to home. They focused on identity instead, as Ansari very likely knew they would. That is exactly the problem his humor pointed out: too many of those who claim to carry the banner of culture for us have traded in their sense of humor and irony for a sense of outrage and sanctimoniousness instead.

Taylor Tomlinson: Look at You (2022) — 9/10

Taylor leads off with medication, therapy, and disorders. Apparently, she’s bipolar. Her drugs tell her to “Shut up and choose a different adventure.”

“Being bipolar is like not knowing how to swim. It’s a little bit harder to take you to certain places.”

“When I told my friends I was bipolar, they weren’t even surprised. They said, no, that makes sense. That actually checks a lot of boxes. One friend said, Your mental illness is like your middle name. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that you had one.”

“I told my therapist that my boyfriend always answers his phone with “hello beautiful”. She says, so what’s the problem? I said, I don’t know…yet.”

“Prophecy fulfilled.”

“Oh, is this your move?”

““Food is just fuel”. If you’re one of those, then you can fuck right off. I’ll refund your ticket. I don’t need the money that badly.”

Then she moves on to a lot of dead-mom jokes.

“If you’ve never had childhood trauma and you’re thinking that this show isn’t very funny. Good. I hope this is the worst night of your life. It sounds like you might need some perspective.”

“My parents don’t watch my standup anymore. No Christian parent wants to watch their daughter talk about depression and dick for an hour.”

“The doorbell is the only thing that matters.”

She finishes up with a great, long segment on masturbation and porn.

Jim Gaffigan: Comedy Monster (2022) — 7/10

“Like, how old? Like old-old? Or didn’t have a cell phone in high school-old?”

On vacation in Hawaii,

“Native: You stole our land.

“Jim: I don’t know how to break it to you, but we stole all the land. It probably stings more for you ‘cause it’s so pretty here.”

“I went zip-lining for the last time.”

“A marching band can take a song—any song—and ruin it. Wow, I didn’t know I could hate Uptown Funk that much.”

“I love my wife, but I don’t want another one. I don’t need to disappoint another person.”

“We live in an age where billionaires are building rocket ships and flying them into outer space…and no-one’s asking, ‘Are we sure they’re paying their taxes? Because we’ve got a lot of teachers who need supplies.‘”

“Bikers [motorcyclists] are amazing. They are just such a uniquely American subculture.”

Good Lord, Jim. Do some research. Motorcycling in groups is absolutely huge in Europe as well. It’s only uniquely American if you’ve never paid attention to anything outside of America.

“I guess the point I’m trying to make is: golf makes people gay.”

He had more than a couple of jokes that weren’t that funny and leaned super-hard on the supposed fact that being gay is intrinsically funny. His special was 1:10:00, so he could have cut a few of his old-school jokes like women being interested in a man’s wallet and giving him a pass on his awful appearance. He also does a bunch of material about wives and husbands that’s a bit hit-or-miss and generic.

“I was kind of frightened of my dad. My children treat me like a bank teller that they reluctantly have to deal with. Once a week they just appear in front of me,

“‘Mom said I could get a shark. So I guess I need your credit card.’

“‘What the hell are you talking about?’

“‘He’s yelling again!’”

Ali Wong: Don Wong (2022) — 4/10

She starts off with a loooong bit about blow jobs where she will not stop saying “come on her face”. It’s a good seven minutes in and she hasn’t done anything but talking about “sucking dick”. These are not jokes, really. She’s just describing things and getting laughs because diminutive asian women aren’t supposed to talk like that. Eleven minutes and change.

She really, really, really waits for the laugh. It’s a pity, because her first show was fantastic and the second was almost as good. This one, so far, is not good. She’s almost robotic. She talks about women with power, money, and respect (like herself) CLAP and how uncomfortable men are with that. “Chill don’t pay the bills”. CLAP.

Callback to the “come on my face” joke at 17 minutes.

Segue to a colonoscopy. Hooray.

She really lingers on her jokes, waiting for the laugh. She even pauses a lot before the final word or two, to make sure everyone’s ready.

Now, she’s telling everyone about her amazing career and how she didn’t “take a shit” for six weeks. Now, compare and contrast to … men.

Her body and facial language is so odd. She stomps around the stage like Frankenstein.

Callback to “come on my face” at 39 minutes. Truly a work of art.

Now she’s talking about her pussy juice and how filthy she’d made her underwear when she’d almost cheated. Equality, ladies and gentlemen!

Her friends say, “None of these men want a strong woman. Strong woman. Strong woman. Strong woman” (not a typo). To which she responds, irony-free, “you’re not strong, you’re annoying.”

The Dark Tower (2017) — 8/10

Roland of Gilead (Idris Elba) is the gunslinger at the end of the world, locked in combat with Walter (Matthew McConaughey), the Man in Black, a dark wizard allied with the Crimson King. Jake (Ben Gavin) is a young man with the Shining, the target of Walter’s searching eye. He sends minions to get Jake, but Jake discovers a portal to Midworld, where he meets Roland.

The few remaining people on Midworld are left with older technology that they barely understand and can only just keep functioning. Walter’s demons attack the village and Roland, despite a grievous injury that robs him of his dominant right hand, defends them as best he can. using his incredibly good left hand. That much is just like the book.

There’s one part where he aims without looking, using his other senses to find his target. It’s well-made. Roland retrieves Jake and they escape through the portal into New York City. Roland goes to a hospital, where he impresses with his sturdiness, but leaves before they can keep him overnight. He hands the head doctor gold coins “Für eure Dienste” and then tells her “Mögen eure Tagen lang sein” before leaving.

They do a great job of showing how unerring and loud and strong Roland’s guns are, from Arthur of Eld. He prepares himself for battle, with unearthly powers of perception and accuracy, supposedly born of decades—if not centuries—of training and practice, mixed with a bit of magic. The final standoff between Walter and Roland is quite well-done, suspenseful.

This movie holds up on a second viewing. See my review from 2017 for more details.

“Ich ziele nicht mit meiner Hand. Der der mit seiner Hand zielt hat das Gesicht seines Vaters vergessen.

“Ich ziele mit meinem Auge.

“Ich schiesse nicht mit meiner Hand. Der der mit seiner Hand schiesst hat das Gesicht seines Vaters vergessen.

“Ich schiesse mit meinem Verstand.

“Ich töte nicht mit meiner Waffe. Der der mit seiner Waffe schiesst hat das Gesicht seines Vaters vergessen.

“Ich töte mit meinem Herzen.”

Watched it in German this time.

Star Wars: Rise of the Skywalker (2019) — 5/10

Please refer to my review from 2020, where I go into more detail about how utterly awful this movie is. I took away an extra star this time because I’d failed to mention in the original review just how irritating and tension-free it is watching a movie where one character (Rey) is better than everyone else at everything. She speaks all languages, she out-duels bounty hunters with ease, she can pull a whole ship out of the sky with her power, she can jump over spaceships, she can fly spaceships, she can repair spaceships, she can repair robots, she can see across galaxies. It’s awful. I was only listening with one ear and watching out of the corner of one eye, but there is nothing redeeming about this movie. That people love it and revere Rey is a sign of mental illness, if not the end of civilization.

Despite how awful I think it is, I rate it a 5/10 because the effects are really quite good, if that’s your thing. I need more, but the movie is well-made graphically.

The Great Wall (2016) — 5/10

I don’t know who this movie was made for, but it was not adults. It is so ludicrously effects-heavy that it doesn’t feel real at all. Matt Damon is technically in it, but he does no acting. Pedro Pascal is technically in it, but he does no acting. Willem Dafoe is technically in it, but he does no acting. It’s just a big pile of CGI with no feeling, no oomph, no energy. I just don’t care about amazing things happening on screen when it’s dozens of amazing things happening all at once. There’s no art to it. The plot feels like it was written by a 14-year-old boy. “How about if Matt Damon shoots a bunch of arrows and they all do amazing things, leaving a bowl hanging against a pillar, between two arrows?” Ugggggghhhhh.

I found myself siding with the monsters. They were much more sympathetic.

Despite how awful I think it is, I rate it a 5/10 because the effects are really quite good, if that’s your thing. I need more, but the movie is well-made graphically.