Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2023.11

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.

The Greatest Showman (2017) — 6/10

Jesus Christ, I hate musicals. I can’t imagine how Hugh Jackman convinced himself to make this movie, knowing that Ryan Reynolds would mercilessly mock him for the rest of his natural-born life about it. I guarantee you that Reynolds does that little dance that Jackman did at the start of his first circus every damned time Reynolds is standing on the porch of Jackman’s house, where the Ring-Cam can see him. It must be awful.

Jackman bursts into pitchy song in the first minute, but then the children start singing even more poorly, making his voice seem strong and an on-key in comparison.

A young P.T. Barnum (later Hugh Jackman) grows up with rich girl Charity (Michelle Williams) and eventually marries her, against her father’s wishes. After the shipping company he works at loses all of its boats in the South China Sea, he snags the deed and transforms it into collateral for his first circus. After trying it relatively straight—I mean, as straight as you can get when you’ve you’ve a sunken boat as collateral for a bank loan—he puts out a call for “unique persons”—freaks—and gets a whole collection of them for his first show.

More singing. Huge freaking dance number for the opening of the first circus.

His circus grows in reputation. He takes on an apprentice Phillip Carlyle (Zac Ephron) to get him into the highbrow crowd. He gets an audience with the Queen of England, where he meets Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson), the “Swedish Nightingale” and invites her to sing on his stage.

There’s more singing, completely unsurprising love affairs, family tension as Barnum continues trying to prove himself long after he’s achieved more than enough to be happy. He is one with the high-class people, but then, predictably, disparages his freaks. He doesn’t want to offend his new friends. YAWN.

To no-one’s surprise at all, Jenny Lind wants a piece of P.T. Barnum, but he rebuffs her. Then she threatens to ruin his show by abandoning it because hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Oh, and also women are completely unprofessional. She robs a kiss on stage at her last performance, right as they’re taking a picture. That won’t have any further influence on the film, I bet.

Thugs from the neighborhood assault the actors in the circus, then set the entire building on fire in revenge when they get their asses kicked. Philipp and P.T. run into the burning building to rescue the animals—I shit you not. P.T. carried Philipp back out. The elephants are fine.

Charity briefly leaves P.T., he’s devastated, his circus crew cheers him up, Philipp uses his remaining money to restart the circus, they partner up 50/50, they move to a tent down by the wharves, P.T. hands the scepter over to Philipp, the circus is wildly successful (again), P.T. retires to his family. Happy endings all around.

Moar inappropriate singing, of course.

The music is terrible. I don’t ever need to hear any of these songs again.

Foundation S02 (2023) — 6/10

This show looks really, really good. They paid for the good CGI. There are also some good actors, but there are also some big hams. The inherent problems of season 1 are unchanged: there are still too many characters with woke-ish motivations and it feels like they really twisted around the source material to serve modern agendas, robbing us of the wonder of a story that takes place over dozens of millennia. Or, as a friend wrote to me:

“I absolutely despise how they replaced a smart, cunning politician from the book with a black girl with a big gun, kicking asses. I still watched it, because I’m addicted to sci-fi but I think the adaptation is making Isaac spin in his grave. The original has some flaws with all the misogynist, Mad-Men-style culture. But everything that was great about the books is lost in the TV show.”

I don’t have much to add. Sometimes its infuriating to watch 90% of the show filled with palace intrigue and love affairs between unutterably stupid people, while waiting for the rarer moments of galactic grandeur and smartifying by Hari Seldon (Jared Harris). He’s a lot of fun and the Prime Radiant gets short shrift relative to bullshit like Brother Dawn’s (Cassian Bilton) torrid affair with his clone Brother Day’s (Lee Pace) bride-to-be Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion (Ella-Rae Smith), who I’m sure we’re all supposed to think is the most beautiful and desirable creature in the galaxy, but who I found irritating and poorly drawn as a character.

The story arc with Hober Mallow (Dimitri Leonidas) and Brother Constant (Isabella Laughland) was very good, as they are consummate actors and their story arc and dialogue were well-written and convincing. Poly Verisof (Kulvinder Ghir) was also a well-fleshed out character who was easy to like and relate to. I like Demerzel. She’s great. She’s haughty, but she’s earned it. Sareth looks like a bimbo in comparison, entitled and weak. I much preferred Enjoiner Rue (Sandra Yi Sencindiver), her grand vizier.

We must come to the sad fact that Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) is still around, as is Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey) who, while somewhat one-dimensional, is still much better than Gaal. She kept falling for that one mentat posing as her lover Hugo (Daniel MacPherson) again and again and again, which seemed somewhat weak and hard to explain, other than simply hand-waving “mentats can make you do whatever they want”. But then they also had Gaal and Hari and Salvor defeat a whole tribe full of mentats by controlling their own thoughts and thus what the mentats could “see”. It’s just uneven, inconsistent.

Here’s the thing. I don’t care about inconsistencies unless you make me think of them while I’m watching the show. Another instance was where people would have loud, treacherous conversations about killing the emperor right in his own palace. They’re 10,000 years in the future and there are no listening devices? No drones? No, of course there are these things. They featured heavily in other parts of the plot, but were just assumed to be completely absent when it was more convenient. Another was where people—I’m looking at you, Salvor—who’ve seen others assume other identities chirpily confide in their friends without a single thought that the person they’re talking to might not be their friend, but another mentat. And so on.

The finale was unnecessarily violent and insane—though pretty!—with Brother Day destroying Terminus in the most savage way possible, then fighting his own general Bel Riose (Ben Daniels) who was torn between trying to save his gay lover Glawen Curr (Dino Fetscher) and being faithful to Empire. He ended up letting Glawen die, then getting into a knock-down, drag-out with Empire anyway, eventually fooling him into an airlock, using a tricky device he’d gotten from Hober Mallow, with whom he drinks shitty wine as their ship implodes into a singularity.

Surprise! Glawen is still alive on the planet’s surface somehow. It doesn’t matter. Day is dead, Dawn is dead. Dusk is dead. Furious, Demerzel returns to Trantor to decant new versions of all of them. She is determined to maintain the balance. The knots in the Prime Radiant approach relentlessly, like the tide, seemingly unalterable. Gaal and Salvor want to alter them, smooth them out. We shall see.

Planet of the Apes (1968) — 6/10

We start off with a soliloquy by Astronaut George Taylor (Charlton Heston), who’s piloting his spaceship back to Earth after what for him and his crew was a six-month journey, but during which 700 years have passed on Earth. He’s smoking a cigar in the cabin, like you do. Afterwards, he puts himself into what looks like cryo-sleep.

Their ship “lands” in water, on what they all pretend not to recognize as Earth. One of their crew has died of old age—presumably her cryo-sleep bed malfunctioned. It was probably just an excuse to not have to pay an extra actress. It would have been awkward if she’d lived and then had to take care of the others at the camp the whole time. They are soon very much occupied with their ship sinking and filling with water. They don’t wonder at all why they can breathe the air. It is Earth year 3978, November 25th, to be exact.

They escape their ship and start padding their way to shore. They have no tent, no real supplies, and they’re sitting on a rocky shore in the blazing sunshine. They have 3 days of food. They seriously think they’re not on Earth, despite the water and air.

Wow, Charlton Heston is a terrible actor. That fake laugh when he sees the tiny American flag is just … unconvincing.

They wander about some more, discovering plants, and then water. They landed in water, but now they’re super-excited to have found more of it. They jump into the lake at the oasis, with waterfalls and everything. They’re all naked. They’d gone there to investigate “scarecrows”, which look like constructions of some sort. After their swim, they discovered footprints in the mud by the lake. Soon after, their clothes are stolen.

They follow a trail of their destroyed supplies and clothes, finally emerging into a heavily vegetated plain, where they find what look like people. Human people. “They look more-or-less human, but I think they’re mute.” They all sprint across the plain, like a herd of animals. The humans flee in terror before a battalion cum hunting party of monkeys riding horses, flushing them out and shooting them.

The hunt goes on for a long time, during which Dodge (Jeff Burton) is killed and Landon (Robert Gunner) is captured. Taylor, meanwhile, is shot in the neck, then captured. For whatever reason, they save him with a blood transfusion. He’s apparently been captured by scientists, not hunters.

The apes Cornelius (Roddy McDowall), Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans), and Zira (Kim Hunter) all speak English. Taylor still no inkling that he might be on planet Earth. They call Taylor “Bright Eyes”, and are amazed at how he is trying to talk. He’s mute because he’s been shot in the throat. He tries to take the notepad from one of the scientists, but is beaten back. The apes continue to experiment, putting Nova (Linda Harrison) into the cage with Taylor, leeringly expecting him to jump on her.

He keeps attempting to communicate, to no avail. Finally, he snatches Zira’s notepad and writes his name before being beaten back. She sees what he’s written—in the Latin alphabet, in English—and can read it. No-one is surprised, least of all Taylor.

Stuff happens; they communicate; Taylor breaks out of his cage and is loose in the compound. He is almost caught, but breaks free to get to a museum. Some great camera angles and shots in these chase scenes, though. Really pretty inspired stuff.

When he’s finally caught in a net, his throat is finally healed. His first words are “take your stinkin’ paws off me, you damned dirty ape.”

Taylor is put on trial. He’s not allowed to testify for himself under “ape law.” As part of the trial, he is shown a group of humans, among whom he recognizes Landon. Landon doesn’t recognize him, though. Landon doesn’t seem to be aware of anything. He’s been lobotomized. “You did it. You cut up his brain, you bloody baboon!” Taylor’s (Heston’s) teeth are on full display as he tries to attack the tribunal. He calls that “acting”. He’s netted and dragged back into the courtroom, while the other humans are herded back into the cages mounted on wagons that brought them there.

They’re all back in prison. Zira and Cornelius help Taylor and Nova escape into the “forbidden zone.” They give Taylor and Nova horses and a rifle. They discover older treasures in a cave. When Dr. Zaius shows up, they bargain with him, asking him to be a man of science and examine the evidence in the cave. Lucius (Lou Wagner), another ape who helped them on the lam, is left behind to guard the horses.

In the cave, they find an old settlement where Cornelius shows that “the more ancient artifacts were the more advanced”, which suggests a lost civilization. At the end, Taylor and Nova ride up to a large, jutting outcrop that causes Taylor to stop and stare.

“Oh my God. I’m back. I’m home. All the time, it was… We finally really did it. You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”

I’m glad that he was able to squeeze so much surprise out of it.

Big Mouth S06 (2022) — 8/10

The season started off a bit rocky—just being unnecessarily and lazily filthy, but it hit its stride just under halfway through. Père (Richard Kind) and fils Glauberman (John Mulaney) are worth the price of entry. The final episode of the season, where everyone switched places in a giant Freaky Friday was pretty good. This show seems to have held up better than Sex Education has of being under the burden of portraying every school as having every possible combination of sexual predilections. Maybe it’s easier with cartoon characters, I dunno. Nick is OK, but Jessie is quite good and snarky.

Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince (2009) — 8/10

I kind of like this one, but there are a few times when Hermione and Ron are just noticeably more terrible people than they usually are. I guess because they’re teenagers, who are just ruthless about everything but their own wishes when their gonads are in charge. They don’t even have the excuse of the locket for their bad behavior yet. (That’s the next movie.)

In this one, Harry gets the Marauder’s Map—“mischief managed!”—and becomes a wiz at potions and spells thanks to an old copy of the course book marked up by someone who called himself the Half-Blood Prince. This turns out to be Severin Snape (he’s the master of potions—it’s honestly not that surprising).

This film features the beginning of the search for the horcruxes, especially the long plot to learn about them from Slughorn, who, only when sufficiently plastered and emotionally vulnerable, is willing to reveal what Tom Riddle once spoke to him about.

Death Eaters penetrate the castle via a Vanishing Cabinet in the Room of Requirement. They confront Dumbledore. It is Draco that should kill him, but he hesitates. Snape does it instead, sending Dumbledore plummeting to his death. Dumbledore was already dying both from his having destroyed the first Horcrux—a ring—and, with Harry’s help, obtained the second Horcrux: the locket. He was doomed anyway.

The locket turns to be a fake. It was only a marker for the real locket, which had already been stolen by Regulus Black, brother of Sirius, with the intent to destroy it. Ron, Hermione, and Harry give up school to begin the hunt for the horcruxes. Other than because it’s super-convenient for the story, it’s unclear why they don’t involve other, more experienced, definitely more knowledgeable, and likely more powerful wizards.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) — 7/10

This one is quite a bit slower and more grinding. It’s a dark film, both in material and the cinematography. It does contain the brilliant cartoon of the three brothers who were the original owners of the Deathly Hallows: The Elder Wand, The Cloak of Invisibility, and The Stone of Resurrection. It also has Professor McGonagal team up with the Weasley twins: “As I recall, you have a particular proclivity for pyrotechnics.”

In this one, Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) is right out there, taking charge of things personally, meeting directly with Severus Snape (Alan Rickman). Harry Potter is moved at the beginning of the movie, with a whole bunch of people pretending to be Harry using polyjuice potion. Pursuing death-eaters kill Mad-eye Moody and Hedwig. Dumbledore’s will and testament left them all a bunch of Chekhov’s guns i.e., things that will come in conveniently and not at all surprisingly handy throughout this film and the next.

The trio of Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson), and Ron (Rupert Grint) are in pursuit of the locket they’d been looking for the in the previous film. They use polyjuice potion to infiltrate the Ministry of Magic, tangling with Dolores Umbridge, but eventually getting the locket from her and then disapparating to a far-away forest. Ron’s arm is all messed up. Hermione’s got her nearly infinitely deep bag of supplies, with everything prepared for a long camping trip.

Ron, irritated by his wound and by the presence of the evil locket, bitches and moans a lot, getting unreasonably jealous of Harry and Hermione, which is not a thing at all. He eventually bails on them. They discover clues here and there. The snitch informs them that it “opens at the end”. Harry and Hermione return to his parents’ home village to find an old, silent woman who is actually Voldemort’s giant snake Nagini in disguise. They all narrowly escape with their lives.

Creepy things happen with a doe-shaped patronus—which turns out to have been Snape, secretly helping them out—Harry jumping in a frozen lake to get the Sword of Griffindor, Ron reappearing in the knick of time to rescue him, Ron wielding the sword to destroy the horcrux in the locket.

The trio travel to Xenophilius Lovegood to find out why so many books seem to contain the same symbol, a symbol that turns out to represent the deathly hallows, leading to the aforementioned, excellent, 8-minute animation. He tells them the story, but is evasive—because he’s called the death-eaters to turn them in so that they’ll let his daughter Luna go. The snatchers capture them, but don’t know who they have, exactly, because Hermione f’ed up Harry’s face with a jinx.

At the Malfoy mansion, though, Bellatrix (Helena Bonham Carter) sees through it eventually, torturing folks and stuff. They find Luna in the prison. There’s a lot of scuffling, Dobby shows up to save the day, they all escape through his disapparation—but Bellatrix gets in an unerring knife-throw that kills Dobby on landing.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011) — 7/10

This is the sequel to the penultimate film and thus the finale. 😬 I wrote a short review in 2011, but felt like expanding a bit. Unlike the last time, I didn’t feel lost in this one because I’d just finished watching the previous film. Voldemort’s hands still trace eloquent, elegant circles as he casually flicks his wand to extinguish dreams—and lives.

The movie takes quite a long time getting to its foregone conclusion. Did you think Voldemort would win? Did you think any of the primary characters would die? They’d already killed Dobby. That was the only sacrifice necessary. Mad-eye Moody doesn’t really count, either. Tonks and Remus were warriors as well. They killed a Weasley, too, though didn’t they? I kind of lost count. That family has a lot of kids.

So they continue to break into famous wizarding places to find horcruxes, like Gringotts Bank. They find Helfa Hufflepuff’s chalice in Bellatrix’s vault, then fly on the back of a liberated dragon out of the top of the bank. Griphook the goblin has taken the sword of Gryffindor as his reward—but it was the only thing that they had that could destroy horcruxes. Now, they need to find another way. Basilisk teeth!

They find Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem, which is another horcrux—I’ve honestly lost count at this point, how many do they have? Let’s see:

1. The book destroyed in the Chamber of Secrets.
2. The ring that Dumbledore destroyed
3. The locket
4. The chalice
5. The diadem
6. Nagini
7. Harry himself, as an inadvertent horcrux
8. FInally, Voldemort retained an 1/8 of his soul

They barely escape the Room of Requirement with their lives as Goyle accidentally kills himself with a fire spell. They also manage to destroy the chalice with a basilisk fang. Four down. They do the same for the diadem, kicking it into the inferno for good measure. Five down.

Voldemort kills Snape to achieve mastery of the Elder Wand, as Snape is still its true master, having killed Dumbledore to get it. Harry receives Snape’s last memories just before he dies. He watches them in the Pensieve. Snape was a double-agent all along. Duh. A great long con. Akin to something right out of The Americans.

Anyway, Harry surrenders to Voldemort, who kills him, but wait, he really kills the horcrux of himself in Harry and, after a bit of wandering about in wizard limbo with Dumbledore, Harry is back. Hagrid carries his (fake) corpse at the head of a parade of death-eaters to Hogwarts, where the bedraggled, but unbowed remaining forces stand against them. Neville pulls the sword of Gryffindor from the sorting hat and defies Voldemort. Harry awakes and does battle with Voldemort. Mrs. Weasley kills Bellatrix. Neville slices Nagini in two. No more horcruxes.

Voldemort sends his killing curse Ava Kavadra into Harry’s Expelliarmus curse, rebounding onto himself and finally killing himself, the last part of his soul leaving his decrepit body, which spirals into the darkening sky like so much ash.

Big Mouth S07 (2023) — 7/10

The young folks are now going to high school—or will be by the end of the season. Instead, this season is about the summer between middle school and high school. Lola absolutely crushes it. There are a few more musical numbers—I wonder if Mulaney and Kroll are angling for a Book of Mormon-like thing? The ambition gremlin played by Rosie Perez was quite good—Andrew actually got good at school because he was prevented from masturbating by an injury sustained while masturbating (epididymitis). He continues to masturbate a couple of times, but the pain puts him on the straight-and-narrow long enough to make his parents temporarily proud.

Silo S01 (2023) — 10/10

This series is based on the trio of books Wool, Shift, and Dust by Hugh Howey, which I read in 2015 and 2016. It’s a very nice interpretation of the books, capturing the feeling of retro-tech that dominated in the silo. The first season introduces us to life in the silo. The silo is 150 levels of with approximately 10,000 people living underground,

We learn of the different departments, of their rituals. There is the sheriff’s department, which is largely subordinate to the justice department, which are involved in a complicated way with the IT department. Deep on the lowest levels is Mechanical, which also sees itself as essential to life in the silo. If the generator stops working, then life in the silo stops. IT sees it the same way, but thinks that if their organization and scheduling stop working, then life stops.

There’s some tension there.

The sheriff at the beginning, Holston (David Oyelowo) asks to “go outside”. This is a ritual that is not denied, nor can it be taken back. No-one wants to go outside. It’s against all the instincts ingrained in the inhabitants of the silo. They’ve been trained in a religion that makes them not want to go outside because the atmosphere is poisonous. No explanation is given for why. There are a lot of rituals to follow, precepts to acknowledge, artifacts to avoid. These rituals are supported by a fair bit of policing.

For the most part, the show does a good job with this, but there are a few obvious lapses. At one point, Allison and George are eating while working on his computer. They leave the crusts of their sandwiches and the cores of their apples. This is not a cultural tick that could possibly have survived x generations in the silo (140 years, I believe). Similarly, during a celebration, people light sky lanterns and release them to rise into the center of the silo. They light them with fire. Open flames. Again, there is no way that this tradition could have survived in a place where everyone would be deathly afraid of fire.

Holston wants to go outside because, years before, his wife had asked to go outside and he’s ready to join her. He’d met Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) from Mechanical recently, while investigating the death of her (illegal) lover George (Ferdinand Kingsley). During this investigation, he’d found out that his wife Allison (Rashida Jones) had met with George and had investigated illegal hard-drive artifacts with him. The Sheriff had learned a bit about what she’d found out. He was ready to join her, knowing what he now knows about the silo.

When you go outside, you’re given steel wool, with which you’re to clean the camera lens outside that transmits images of the outside world on the wall-screens that are on every level. Allison cleaned. She died on the hill outside. Holston cleaned. He dies on the hill right next to her.

Holston had nominated Juliette as his replacement, which throws Justice and IT into a tizzy, particularly Judge Meadows (Tanya Moodie), her enforcer Robert Sims (Common), and head of IT Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins). They wanted Paul Billings (Chinaza Uche) to have the job instead. He’s actually a good guy and ends up her deputy. They grudgingly grow to be able to work together.

Before that happens, though, long-time Mayor Jahns (Geraldine James) and deputy sheriff Marnes (Will Patton) are investigating together and trying to hold the silo together during this rocky transition. They are both eliminated by unknown forces, but not before they could enjoy a late-blooming and short but rewarding love affair that they’d been waiting to profess for decades. They walk down the silo together to ask Juliette to be sheriff, despite Marnes’s misgivings.

Juliette agrees only after she receives Holston’s badge, into which he’d edged the word “Truth” before he went out. She just has to fix the failing generator first. She knows that she’s the only one in Mechanical who can do it—and it must be done, else the generator will soon destroy itself. She and her apprentice manage it—she almost drowning while cooling elements deep in the core, while he actually finished the repairs (boosting his own confidence and everyone else’s that he could take over from her). The generator is humming like new.

Juliette works with criminals like Patrick Kennedy (Rick Gomez) and hacker Danny (Will Merrick) to figure out what the hell is going on—and, most importantly to her, to find out what happened to George. She meets Lukas Kyle (Avi Nash), who is studying patterns in the depictions of outside on the wall-screens. He doesn’t know what stars are, but he’s learning their patterns. It’s interesting how easy it is to slip up in these kinds of shows. The inhabitants of the silo don’t know what stars are, they don’t know what clouds are—they think the lights in the window are “hiding”—but they know that they’re “underground”. How do they know what that means? They know nothing about the outside world, they have no concept of an air layer above a planetary crust.

This helps outline the degree of information-restriction that exists in the silo, as a measure to keep people from wanting to go outside. They’ve been there for generations and will have to be there for generations more. Some amount of brainwashing and indoctrination is necessary to keep the curious monkeys from killing themselves by going outside. See my notes for Wool, Shift, and Dust, if you’re interested in more analysis.

With her estranged father’s help (Iain Glen), Juliette discovers more about how the silo works and who’s really pulling the levers. She discovers not only how births are carefully controlled—which everyone knew—but that who gets to have children is also very carefully controlled. Juliette discovers that there is a giant camera network hidden in all places in the silo, behind every mirror in every room, for starters. They’d always known/suspected that there were listeners, using bugs. But this is different, another scale altogether. These cameras are available to the watchful eye of IT—Sims and Holland. Judge Meadows is essentially a powerless figurehead.

Juliette gets the hard drive that George had found and, like Allison before her, manages to crack it and see all of the data on it. With Danny’s help, she broadcasts a video of beautiful green fields that one of the “cleaners’ who’d gone outside had made. Bernard and Sims catch her and pretend that they heard her say she wanted to go outside. They eventually get her to agree to not claim that she hadn’t by promising that, if she does, she’ll learn how George died—bravely, by committing suicide rather than being captured—and that Mechanical will not be punished for her deeds. Lukas Kyle, who’d helped her, is sentenced to a dozen years on deep-silo work detail.

Juliette also discovers that the reason that everyone dies immediately is because the tape sealing the suits is deliberately weak and damaged. She arranges to have Mechanical send their tape, which is better. Juliette gets outside. She does not clean. She provocatively drops the wool right in front of the camera. She sees the lush landscape—but it is a lie projected onto her suit’s visor. The wall screens actually do show the truth. There is only desolation outside. She’s alive, though. She climbs the ridge. The people of the silo watch her disappear over the horizon, the first person ever to do so. She sees a desolate plain covered in silo craters.