Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2025.21

Read the explanation of method, madness, and spoilers.[1]

1. Born Poor (2025) — 8/10
2. Rückkehr des Königs (Return of the King) (2003) — 8/10
3. The Whiskey Bandit (2017) — 8/10
4. Palestine Is Still the Issue (2002) — 9/10
5. House of Gucci (2021) — 6/10
6. Heat (1995) — 6/10
7. Miami Vice S01 (1984) — 7/10
8. Knight Rider S01 (1982) — 6/10
9. Antarctica S01 (2011) — 6/10
10. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (2023) — 6/10

Born Poor (2025) — 8/10

This is a tragic film about generational poverty in the United States. You can watch it on YouTube using the link below. You have to be in the U.S., though (or pretend to be with a VPN).

Frontline: Born Poor by PBS (YouTube)

The description is as follows,

“Filmed across 14 years, this documentary follows three Americans as they grow from kids to teenagers to young adults, trying to pursue their dreams while dealing with an economy where they face more obstacles than opportunities.

“In the 2012 documentary “Poor Kids,” FRONTLINE explored poverty in America as it’s rarely seen: through the eyes of children.

“FRONTLINE’s new, 90-minute documentary “Born Poor” tells the stories of the now-grown children at the heart of “Poor Kids” — chronicling their lives from childhood to the present day, and offering a powerful, personal and longitudinal look at the realities of growing up in poverty in the U.S.

“The documentary follows three kids from three families — Kaylie, Johnny and Brittany — across three chapters of their lives as they try to overcome poverty and pursue their dreams while dealing with an economy that presents more obstacles than opportunities.

“Despite difficulty, loss and setbacks, all three — now navigating parenthood themselves — refuse to give up on their pursuit of economic stability and an American dream that’s felt perpetually out of reach.”

The documentary is occasionally somewhat melodramatic—it is U.S.-American, after all—but it stays on the subject quite well, mercilessly showing how, even when hope is given, it is nearly always quickly taken away. It shows how otherwise innocuous setbacks threaten to—and then nearly inevitably do—torpedo an entire family’s carefully constructed life.

The young children grow into teenagers and then, without exception, into young parents themselves, usually very young and long before they have real prospects or ideas for how to support themselves, to say nothing of caring for their children.

They grow up pretty or handsome, but it doesn’t matter. These are just characteristics that the world will chew up and spit out, without mercy.

They remain upbeat, until the end. They all find joy in their families. They all find temporary respite in a silver lining or two, but the next life-changing setback is always just around the corner. For most, it’s an unplanned pregnancy, which they greet unequivocally with pleasure—they want kids!—but which their situation—both personal, and nestled, as they are, within an uncaring society uninterested in providing support—does not allow them to feel unreservedly.

In the end,

• Kaylie (I think) is expecting a child with her boyfriend (they don’t live together) and is unemployed, burning through her savings.
• Johnny has four children and still thinks he’s going to be a professional football player. Though part of him must be aware that this is not realistic, he literally has no other prospects. He had three kids by the time he was 20.
• Brittany (I think) has two lovely kids, loves them, and seems to be raising them right. She had a bad phase with drugs that is hopefully behind her. She had her oldest child at 17.

It’s bleak. This is what a society looks like that doesn’t try at all for anyone. Feudalism was more generous.

Rückkehr des Königs (Return of the King) (2003) — 8/10

We begin in the ruins of Orthanc, after Saruman’s (Christopher Lee) downfall in the Two Towers. Peregrin Took / Pippin (Billy Boyd) finds Saruman’s palantir (Wikipedia) and looks into it, staring eye to eye with Sauron. He’s fine. Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and Peregrin ride to Gondor to meet with Denethor (John Noble), who is deep in mourning for Boromir (Sean Bean).

Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Samwise are heading toward Mordor with Sméagol/Gollum (Andy Serkis), who leads them to the stairs of Cirith Ungol (Wikipedia), at the foot of which sits Minas Morgul (Wikipedia), and which leads to Shelob’s lair.

The Witch-King of Angmar (Wikipedia) (Lawrence Makoare), king of the Nazgûl (Wikipedia), is on the move. He sends his armies to Osgiliath (Wikipedia), where they will encounter Faramir (David Wenham), brother of Boromir.

Peregrin lights the signal fire, and Rohan responds by sending out an army led by its king Theoden (Bernard Hill), his daughter Eowyn (Miranda Otto), and his son Eomer (Karl Urban). They are accompanied by the remainder of the Fellowship, Gimli (John Rhys-Davies), Legolas (Orlando Bloom), Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), and Merry (Dominic Monaghan).

The elves are bailing on Middle Earth, except for Arwen (Liv Tyler), who returns to her father Elrond (Hugo Weaving). She chooses to stay in Middle Earth, where she will become mortal.

Elrond delivers Anduril (Wikipedia) to Aragorn and tells him of the lost army, an army of the dead that live in a deep cleft in the mountain called Dimholt (LOTR Wiki). Legolas and Gimli accompany him..

Faramir is grievously wounded and Minas Tirith/Gondor (Wikipedia) is not just under siege but under attack. The orc army is bombarding it with trebuchets, picking it apart. Gandalf holds the line; Denethor is useless.

Samwise discovers Gollum’s treachery. Frodo enters Shelob’s lair. Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) appears to him in a vision. Shelob gets him anyway. Samwise fights her off. Orcs show up to take away the paralyzed Frodo.

Grond (Wikipedia) the wolf-faced battering-ram has smashed in the gates of Gondor. Rohan finally arrives. Denethor is ready to burn himself and Faramir alive.

Rohan tears a mudhole in the orcs but the southerners show up, with their oversized pachyderms. Just as these have partly routed Rohan, the corsair ships show up—but Legolas, Aragorn, and Gimli jump out instead … quickly joined by thousands of ghost warriors, which quickly wipe out what remained of the orcs. Also, Eowyn and Merry combine to take down the Witch King.

Frodo wakes up in the orc guard post. Samwise arrives to discover that the orcs have all killed each other the booty. Only a few remain. Samwise tears a hole through them and finds Frodo at the top of the tower.

Samwise kills the last one and returns the ring to Frodo, which he’d lifted from him when he thought he was dead. Samwise is the second person in history to give up the ring.[2]

With Mordor’s forces routed on the Pelennor Fields (Wikipedia) before the gates of Minas Tirith, the few remaining warriors of Rohan and Gondor march on Mordor. They know that Frodo and Samwise live. They want to buy them time, betting their lives on the slim, slim chance that the two hobbits will accomplish their mission. They’ve made it this far.

The gates of Mordor open, pouring forth dozens of times as many orcs, ogres, and cave trolls as there are men on the plains. They are quickly encircled.

Samwise carries Frodo to the edge of the entrance to Orodruin, where Gollum reappears, ambushing them. Samwise fights him off; Frodo finds renewed energy and runs for the entrance. He can’t throw the ring into the lava. Gollum helps him; he bites off Frodo’s finger, then falls into the lava.

With the ring destroyed, Barad-dûr (Wikipedia) falls, extinguishing Sauron’s eye. Mordor itself collapses, chasms opening up to swallow the massive entrance gates as well as a large part of Sauron’s forces that can’t escape onto solid ground. The men of Gondor and Rohan are untouched.

Gandalf flies in on the back of an eagle to save Samwise and Frodo from the lava, and we’re all fine with it. I said we were all fine with it. 😐

Aragorn is crowned king of men; Arwen joins him. Faramir and Eowen are standing next to each other. Everything’s groovy.

We’re back in the Shire (Wikipedia). Life goes on. Samwise marries Rosie. Four years later, Bilbo, Gandalf, and Frodo leave with the last of the elves—Elrond, Galadrial, and Cirdan—sailing across the sea.

The Whiskey Bandit (2017) — 8/10

Ambrus Attila (Bence Szalay) is a thief. He is in prison for being a thief. He is called to an interview with a detective, who wants to know more about him, about his crimes, what led to him committing them.

Ambrus obliges him. He grew up with his grandmother somewhere in the Romanian countryside. He was already a kleptomaniac then. His grandmother loves him, though, no matter how mad the priest gets at him.

One day, he comes home from playing—he’d made his own goalie mask out of a piece of bark, and screwed on his own skates to be a hockey goalie—to find that his father has returned…because his grandmother had died.

No more house in the countryside for Ambrus. Now, it’s a shabby apartment with his father where the primary furnishing is a bottle of vodka.

He continues to steal, ending up in a reform school. The other boys are horrible to him. He trains with the other boys/inmates, running in the mud, under the watchful eye of guards armed with machine guns.

He is transferred from there to the military. He is a good shot. On watch, in a tower, he sees two migrants running across a field. He cannot bring himself to shoot them. Others can.

He runs away from the barracks, holding on to the undercarriage of a freight train to Budapest, Hungary. He is free, for now.

The interview is over. He returns to his cell. Filmed from above, it’s not as small as you’d think it would be. He is outside. The film does a good job of telling part of the story with a visual language.

We’re back with Ambrus in Budapest. He tries out for hockey goalie with a local team. He’s terrible. The coach takes pity on him; his father was also from Romania (Le Transylvanie). He gives him a job as a locker-room attendant and says he can train on off-hours. He even sets him up with an apartment because the dorm is full. It’s his first apartment. It’s his first time sleeping alone. It’s paradise.

He’s on the Zamboni. He’s working. He’s out drinking with the team. They have accepted him.

He spies Kata (Piroska Móga) outside the bar. He chases after her. She rejects him and gets on the train, saying he can have her number when they meet again. He sprints to the next subway stop, where she gets out. They head out for a drink.

He applies for a work visa and citizenship but doesn’t have half the paperwork required—“certifiée et traduit [certified and translated]”—so he has a very hard time making money or getting his feet under him. It doesn’t help a lot that he’s a foreigner so there’s a lot of resentment—as is the case in nearly every country I’ve ever heard of.

He’s at the point with Kata that it’s time to meet her parents, and they, being wealthy on top of it all, hate him even more. They just detest his dirty Romanian ass and want him to stay away from their golden daughter, who has a bright future, which they absolutely will not abide being shrouded by a dirty gypsy.

He gets more desperate, thinking log and hard as he walks the streets of Budapest. Interspersed with the long flashbacks are conversations with his case officer in the prison, as well as his sojourns in the inner courtyard at the prison, alone, on a cement block.

He plans his first robbery, buying a wig, a water pistol, and sunglasses. He downs vodka for courage, then heads to the post office (where the state bank is). He gets out of there with the cash, then chases a train through the tunnel, dumping his disguise and catching it at the next station, getting away scot-free. At home, he stores the piles of cash in his oven.

His life turns around. He treats himself to a nice meal, takes his friends out for drinks, goes out gambling, improves at work, on the team, pays back the friend who’d helped him, and pays off another friend’s uncle who’d been holding his passport hostage. He is now Hungarian. He buys a car and rolls up to Kata, whom he’d not seen in months. She is pissed. She’s not so pissed anymore after she gets her present.

His buddies ask him where he got the money, whether he’d robbed a bank? “Bearskins,” They’re worth 10x what you’d think. “How much?” “Depends on the size of the bear.” Kata, invited to a fancy restaurant, asks the same question. How is it possible? “Never mind, I don’t want to know”. “It’s fine, I’m importing bearskins from Romania, now that Ceaușescu is dead.” She doesn’t believe him, of course, but she likes a bad boy, and she likes his money.

The money is almost gone.

Interlude with the case-worker. “Je n’ai jamais blessée personne. [I never hurt anyone.]” The case worker disagrees, saying he didn’t harm them physically but ruined their lives. On his next job, he robs the bank in front of a cop, then takes off on a scooter, getting hit by a car but recovering. The cop’s on an old motorcycle, giving it everything. They’re in a subway station. Attila biffs it again but escapes by jumping into the river.

Robbery after robbery, trips abroad—so many trips abroad!—his relationship with Kata deepens, he’s on the hockey team, and he’s living the high life. 27 robberies in all. They started calling him the Whiskey Bandit because he often drank to summon up the courage to burgle, so he smelled like booze. He becomes a folk hero. The case worker says that he started off stealing for money but he kept going for the attention.

He wants to make bigger scores, so he needs a partner. The coach’s son is a good candidate. Attila takes him into his confidence.

They do a couple of robberies but the big scores are more dangerous, more risky. The first is successful and they’re having fun. On another one, Attila refuses to hurt anyone and the employees refuse to let him into the vault, so the duo leaves empty-handed but are chased by people on the street. He steals a car, escaping after a long chase in which he gets in a couple of accidents.

They’re out of money again, so it’s time to roll the dice again.

This time, the heist is planned better but the police show up early. He shoots out the door glass—obviously aiming at the ground—and they run. They get to a taxi but have to bail on that as the police shut down the exits to the city. The coach’s son is apprehended. They beat on him but he holds strong, waiting long enough for Attila to flee Hungary. The cops are onto him, though, and move the clock ahead two hours. When his accomplice gives up his name, they are in time to grab Attila at the border.

The cop is going to try to pin attempted murder on him, for having shot the door out. He says that the cops are claiming that he was shooting at them.

Attila’s in jail. Kata visits him. He says he needs a lawyer. And money. He asks her for the money he gave her—as huge duffel bag of it.

“What money? I don’t know about any money.”

This is a true story (Wikipedia).

I watched it in French, with French subtitles that were technically correct but also nearly always synonyms for what they were actually saying. So, double the learning!

Palestine Is Still the Issue (2002) — 9/10

The following video screens the documentary Palestine Is Still the Issue (IMDb) for the first hour, then interviews the director and interviewer John Pilger, as well as one of the principals, Israeli historian Ilan Pappé. John Pilger has since died and is spared the indignity of seeing that things have only gotten worse. Ilan Pappé soldiers on.[3]

CN Live! S3E8 − PALESTINE 20 YEARS LATER − John Pilger & Ilan Pappé by Consortium News (YouTube)

This 20-year follow-up is from July 28. 2021, more than two years before the next wave of horror began. If you watch the documentary, and listen to the commentary from the two interviewees, you’ll realize that the horror only intensified but has been ongoing since 1974, when Pilger released his first films about the area.

This is the official description,

“Acclaimed journalist and filmmaker John Pilger on the changes that have come over Palestine since the making of his film ‘Palestine is Still the Issue’, released in 1974 & 2002. We will start by screening the film.

“The past two decades have seen an extreme turn to the right in Israeli politics with grave consequences for Palestine and its quest for independence, including four major Israeli attacks against Gaza. Pilger and Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, who appeared in the 2002 film, will discuss the worsening situation over the decades for Palestinians and where the future of Palestine and Israeli is headed.

“Pappé is the author of many books, including ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine’, in which he documents that ethnic cleansing was a long-standing Zionist goal that was planned in detail by Ben-Gurion in the Red House headquarters outside Tel Aviv and included a much greater number of atrocities against Palestinians in the establishment of Israel in the late 1940s.

“Pappé says it was the start of a process of ethnic cleansing that continues until today.

““Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called “ethnic cleansing”. Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the current crisis in the Middle East.“ ”

House of Gucci (2021) — 6/10

Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) works in the office at her father’s shipping company, in a makeshift-looking office that looks like it’s in a shipping container sitting in a dusty lot. She likes to go out, to go dancing, and to have a good time. One evening, she meets Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), purely by chance. She leaps on the opportunity and puts herself in front of him again, then asking him to ask her on a date. He does. Their first kiss is in a rowboat. She initiates everything because he is a bit of a wallflower. He is enchanted.

They meet his father Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons) for lunch. Rodolfo is polite but not pleased at all that his son is dating a guttersnipe. He talks to his son about a certain type of woman who will snare people like Maurizio in her rete [web/net]. He accuses her father of being in the mafia. Maurizio tells his father that he’s not going to live like him, in the past. They fight. His father threatens to throw him out of the will.

Maurizio moves in with with Patrizia’s parents and starts to work for her father. He seems to like it, he gets along with all of the boys, even though he’s dating the boss’s daughter and he’s studying to be a lawyer. He seems happy, fine with the new, much less fancy life.

Patrizia calls Maurizio to the office. There ensues an enthusiastic love-making session. Cut to their marriage. There is almost no-one on the groom’s side of the church.

Aldo Gucci (Al Pacino) reads about the wedding and visits his brother Rodolfo. He invites him to his birthday party, then invites Maurizio and Patrizia. He gives them plane tickets to New York—on the Concorde. Patrizia consults with a TV psychic Pina Auriemma (Salma Hayek) to find out what her future looks like. It looks good.

They go to New York and she begins to get her hooks into Aldo as well; together, they will try to reconcile Maurizio with his father. But first, Aldo spoils them both, offering a way back into the business. This is the life that Patrizia was looking for. Aldo is grooming Maurizio to take over for him instead of his own son Paolo (Jared Leto). Rodolfo rejects Paolo’s work, making him 0 for 2.

Maurizio and Patriza’s daughter is born and Rodolfo learns of it just before he finally succumbs to illness. He seems to have come around a bit, just before he died. He did, however, fail to sign his stock certificates properly so the estate tax applies to them. 14B Lire is due. Maurizio and Patrizia move to New York, where Maurizio gets a huge office from Aldo, a huge apartment, and a fat job.

Patrizia discovers the counterfeit/knock-off business and is not amused. Maurizio thinks it’s kind of funny—he says they’re really good! He’d have bought them himself! But she doesn’t think it’s a laughing matter. Their business is losing money. Aldo corrects her: Gucci is producing the knock-offs themselves. They know that the fancy stuff is for the rich, but others should be able to pretend that they have Gucci as well. As long as everyone knows that one is real, and the other is a knock-off.

“Patrizia, sono affari nostri. Questo non è un gioco per donne. [Patrizia, these are our concerns. This isn’t a game for women.]”

Patrizia always starts smoking when she’s pissed. She smokes a lot. She goes to war. She tells Maurizio that he has to clean up his house—that Paolo and Aldo have to go, that they’re a detriment to the development of the business. Then she takes on the family lawyer—consigliere—Domenico de Sole (Jack Huston).

Paolo gives up his father, so uncle Aldo goes to jail for fraud. They then stick the knife in Paolo for showing his wares as “Gucci” (copyright infringement). But then the Italian police come to their home in Italy. Maurizio flees to St. Moritz on a motorcycle, in the winter. He meets an old friend there, Paola Franchi (Camille Cottin). When Patrizia shows up, her claws are out immediately. She has a little talk with Paola, which is fantastically catty,

“What do you think of stealing? We’re teaching our daughter right now not to touch things that don’t belong to her. [Translated from Italian.]”

Maurizio has had enough of her scheming. He sends he back to Milano, while he tries to figure out how he can finance retaining his own company. Paolo says that he’d already sold his shares but it looks like Aldo also has some shares to sell to Maurizio. He’s out of prison and he signs them over, but absolutely unwillingly. Aldo is older after a year in prison, and with only the idiot Paolo (their words) at his side, he sees no chance of having the energy to try to retain control over Gucci. It is done.

Oh, also Maurizio is now banging Paola and he’s divorcing Patrizia. Well, if she lets him. Also, his visions of remaking the Gucci brand are facing stiff headwinds.

Maurizio has pulled it off. He has a controlling percentage of the stock. He has a new designer. He just has one more thorn in his side: Patrizia. Pina is taking her for all she’s worth but has to deliver on her promises at some point. Simply making witch’s curses isn’t cutting it because they’re obviously not working on Maurizio and his “stronza cavallona.”

So they hire a couple of Sicilian contract killers for 600M Italian Lire (about $350K at the time).

Gucci has a very successful show. However, the next morning, Domenico and Maurizio’s Arabian partners tell Maurizio that his personal extravagance is driving the company into the ground. The finances look bleak and it’s hard to ignore that he keeps buying luxury apartments, watches, and cars for himself for dozens of millions—which is exactly the kind of money that is missing to gain profitability.

It’s not just that, though. The offices are still in the most expensive district of the city they’re in (I’m not sure), even though they’ve long since gone international. Domenico tells him point-blank that he’s charming, but he’s not a manager.

The partners are actually quite polite and friendly, expressing respect but being firm that they cannot continue like this. They offer to buy him out for $150M. Domenico will become CEO. Maurizio is pissed but there’s nothing he can do.

Some time later, Maurizio rides to work—not at Gucci—on his bicycle after having a coffee and a cigarette in a café. The Sicilians show up and murder him on the front steps of his building.

Patrizia, Pina, and the two hitmen are convicted two years later of murder, serving 25-30 years for premeditated murder.

This movie was way, way, way too long. At almost three hours, they could have easily edited an hour out of it. This is a crazily self-indulgent length. I thought director Ripley Scott would have known better.

I watched it in Italian with Italian subtitles.

Heat (1995) — 6/10

Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) is a hotshot detective in Los Angeles, who lives with his wife Justine (Diane Venora) and daughter Lauren (Natalie Portman). His wife has an ex-husband who is deeply unreliable, which frees up Vincent to clear a very low bar to keep her happy. She’s not happy, though; she’s just well-medicated. We see them making enthusiastic love in their introductory scene, though, which was an odd choice, but I don’t have insight into the mind of director Michael Mann.

Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) heads up a crew of bank robbers, including Michael Cheritto (Tom Sizemore), Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer), and Trejo (Danny Trejo). To show the duality of cops and robbers, Shiherlis also has a lovely and deeply unhappy wife, Charlene (Ashley Judd), who threatens to leave Chris for his incorrigible gambling. He thinks it’s because she just wants fancy things, but it’s really because he’s a meth-head, abusive gambler. Pot-a-to, pot-ah-to, I guess.

They steal a bunch of bearer bonds from finance guy Van Zant (William Fichtner), then offer to sell them back to him at 60%. He agrees. This is all upside for him because the insurance pays out 100% on top of that. He does want clean up loose ends, so he tries to have McCauley killed. Shiherlis helps eliminate all of Van Zant’s henchmen. McCauley’s phone call to Van Zant is to the point…and not friendly. But revenge will have to wait.

McCauley’s crew is at their next heist: they’re stealing metals, for whatever reason. Hanna and his cops are at the site, watching their every move. Shiherlis is almost where they want to be, when McCauley calls it off because he heard one of the cops make a noise in a surveillance van. They walk out with their hands empty. Hanna lets them go because he doesn’t want to get them on a chickenshit misdemeanor (B&E).

McCauley’s crew regroups, deciding whether they split up forever or whether they’re going to go for the big score. They’re all in.

Hanna regroups. He finds Marciano (Hank Azaria), Charlene’s side-piece—“she would never!”—and blackmails him into helping them out. The main guys on Hanna’s crew are Bobby Drucker (Mykelti Williamson), Bosko (Ted Levine), and Kelso (Tom Noonan).

McCauley fools Hanna into coming out in the open. They’ve been made. McCauley consults with Nate (Jon Voight), his fence. He learns how dangerous, how good Hanna is. “It’s worth the stretch.”

Hanna tracks down McCauley and pulls him over in his car. They have coffee. They discuss their respective lifestyles. They discuss life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They discuss, for lack of a better word, philosophy. They part ways. And then McCauley and his entire crew are in the wind. They shook all of their surveillance at once. Hanna is pissed.

Van Zant is still shitting his pants about McCauley’s revenge. Waingro (Kevin Gage), the guy who McCauley had kicked out of his gang, shows up to offer him McCauley.

McCauley’s gang starts its heist. It goes relatively smoothly, with Cherrito making it out to the getaway vehicle. McCauley and a Shiherlis are on the way to the car. Hanna’s gotten the tip from Waingro via Van Zant. McCauley’s in the car. Two bags of cash are in the car. Shiherlis is almost there with the third bag. He spots Hanna and Drucker and opens fire with his semi-automatic in the middle of the street.

He kills Bosko and gets to the car. They take off. Hanna and Drucker are firing after them. Drucker somehow manages to take out a tire from about 100 yards out with a shotgun. It’s almost comforting to realize that no-one has ever really cared about realism in movies, least of all Michael Mann. They also manage to hit the driver Don (Dennis Haysbert), which, like, you knew they would because (A) he just got picked up for the crew yesterday and (B) he’s black.

Shiherlis goes down next, getting clipped in the temple. Well, actually, Shiherlis is the next named character to go down. In the meantime, redshirt (Wikipedia) foot-patrol cops are dropping like wheat before a machine-gun scythe. McCauley picks him up, dragging him onward.

OMG. There’s still an hour left.

McCauley escapes with Shiherlis with a car stolen from a grocery-store parking lot. Cherrito is completely somewhere else. He’s taken a little girl hostage. Somehow, Hanna’s there now. Like, after a pitched machine-gun battle, he just scoots across several city blocks to take careful aim with a semi-automatic machine gun and shoot a man holding a child hostage. I am unsure what we are being asked to think about that. I think it’s incredibly reckless and that most police officers would be appalled but what do I know?

McCauley’s out. He gets Shiherlis to a doctor. he goes to check on Trejo. Waingro and Van Zant’s crew have gotten to him and his Anna (Begonya Plaza). Trejo’s still alive but he begs McCauley to put him out of his misery.

Now Hanna’s at Van Zant’s right-hand man Hugh Benny’s (Henry Rollins) apartment. The least believable part of the film is watching 5½-foot-tall Al Pacino throwing Henry Rollins around like a sack of flour. McCauley meanwhile pays Van Zant a visit. He asks him exactly once where Waingro is. “How would I know?” are kind of shitty last words.

McCauley goes to Eady’s (Amy Brenneman) apartment. Wait, did I forget to tell you about Eady? Yeah, so McCauley met her and he’s sweet on her. This movie is so long that I can’t even remember anymore how they met. It was days ago. Anyway, she’s a loose end that he can’t quite drop anymore. She is horrified to find out in such a rush what he does for a living. She wants out; he thinks they’re still together. It’s pathetic. It looks like she’s going to stay, but I wonder.

Shiherlis is back on his feet, looking for his wife Charlene. She’s in police custody, about to sing. Hanna’s wife has fucked poor, random Ralph (Xander Berkeley) in order to “get closure with [Hanna]”. Hanna throws a hissy fit—I mean, of course he does, his wife cheated on him, but he does it in the most egocentric way possible—and bounces. Chris sees Charlene on the balcony; she waves him off and tells the cops that it’s not Chris. They stop him anyway. He’s got clean ID and they let him go.

Hanna’s frustrated so he’s throwing all of his toys out of the pram. He gets home to find his daughter has tried committing suicide. it’s really hard to care, though, since we met her days ago, just once. I guess this is supposed to show Hanna what’s more important in life? Is this going to be how his wife loves him again? I have no idea how Michael Mann thinks.

Nate calls to confirm McCauley’s out. He’s home free. Eady is with him. Nate is obliged to tell him that Waingro checked in to a hotel. McCauley can’t resist revenge, which is against character. he’s home free. He’s in the hospital; he’s executed Waingro. The cops are all over him. He dispatches one. Hanna’s in the air. Hanna lands at the hospital. He’s right there. A fire truck blocks his view of McCauley. McCauley’s at the car. He takes one last look at Eady, then he’s in the wind. Somehow, Hanna has already caught up to him. He’s really lucky, I guess. And fast.

Christ, even this shootout is interminable. They’re running and running and running through the dark fields around an airport. How did this movie become so famous and well-loved? Wow, I wrote that it was interminable before they waited for three planes to go by. That was the huckleberry, though, because it threw a shadow that super-cop Hanna saw and was able to unerringly target to light up McCauley.

This is another one of those movies whose aesthetic contributed heavily to the Grand Theft Auto storytelling style. Some scenes seem to have been lifted one-to-one. It’s the same look and feel, right down to how the civvies crouch during bank robberies.

I’m quite certain that this movie didn’t need to be almost three hours long but, with so much high-powered talent in the film, I guess you kind of want to put as much of it on-screen as you possibly can. There’s a two-hour edit in there, dying to be born. I dinged it two stars until we can find it.

Miami Vice S01 (1984) — 7/10

I started watching a few episodes of this season throughout the year whenever they came on the Swiss-French channel (in English, though, I’m not a maniac). I had to give this show an extra star for its overall style and the fact that it created every single one of the plots that cop shows would have for the next 20 years. The aesthetic of the second act of Donnie Brasco wouldn’t have existed without this show. Grand Theft Auto 2: Vice City would never have existed without it. Arguably, GTA6 will continue to draw from it, if it ever comes out.

James Crockett (Don Johnson) and Ricardo Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas) are both great. Their boss Lt. Martin Castillo (Edward James Olmos) shows up within the first few episodes, unsmiling and gruff, but fair.

As with Knight Rider, each episode stands on its own, moving details of an overall story arc forward but not at all focused on it. I had remembered Crockett as the Lothario of the two but it’s really Tubbs who gets the ladies. He’s a fast-talking northerner—Philadelphia? New York? Both?—who’s a recent transplant to Miami. Crockett is born-and-bred; he even has a pet alligator.

Knight Rider S01 (1982) — 6/10

I watched this show when it first came on TV, when I was ten years old. I loved it then. I’m pretty sure I did. I watched as many of these shows as I could.

I watched the first six episodes of the first season over the summer. I can honestly not recall having ever known Michael Knight’s origin story. He was a loose-cannon detective upon whom someone unleashed their own loose cannon, nearly killing him. He is rescued by an eccentric billionaire, who pays for the incredible plastic surgery that transforms his ruined face into the chiseled features of Michael Knight.

They also give him a suped-up car that is so fancy that you couldn’t even build it today. It has everything on it. It is pretty nearly alive, voiced by KITT. In the first two episodes, he finds and arrests the woman who’d nearly killed him.

That’s the whole setup. The rest of the episodes are pretty much self-contained stories that only minimally advance any wider narrative. Michael is usually working too hard, so he needs time off. But, when he takes time off, he’s embroiled in another mystery, which puts him right back at work. There’s always a bright, young, available lady who is immediately smitten with his incredible height and rugged good looks.

Antarctica S01 (2011) — 6/10

This show is actually called Nankyoku tairiku: Kami no ryouiki ni idonda otoko to inu no monogatari on IMDb. That’s a mouthful. This is the story of a Japanese mission in the 1950s (11 years after the defeat) to Antarctica, an attempt to regain both national pride as well as international credibility. The first episode is a mini-feature—76 minutes long—and is mostly about the search for sled dogs.

Kuramochi Takeshi (Takuya Kimura) is central to getting the mission approved and funded but he’s told that he’s not going to go along as a scientist. He can help train the sled dogs but he won’t be allowed to even accompany them. He accepts whatever role he can in order to be able to help Japan regain its honor.

That’s as far as I got. The story is really stretched out and occasionally looks and feels like a soap opera. I think the story arc sounds interesting but it’s not worth 12 hours of my life. Who knows? Maybe an older version of me will think differently. Maybe an older version of me will welcome this show for its being easy to understand for the intermediate Japanese learner that I’d become, in that hypothetical future.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (2023) — 6/10

This is the story of Frieren, an ancient elven mage who’s slain the Demon King with a hero’s party of four. The party had scattered to the four winds after one of them had died. Decades and decades later, she retraces her steps, reluctantly collecting two young members into her party, pressed upon her by the two surviving members of her previous party. They’ve slain a few monsters along the way. That’s it so far.

The artwork is exquisite, of course. But that’s all that’s keeping me engaged.

This show was recommended to be by a friend as top-notch. It’s apparently really popular. I watched six or seven episodes last year while I was riding on the bike. In the interim, I hadn’t watched any more episodes. I gave it another shot this year, again entertaining myself while riding the indoor bike. It’s fine. It’s a bit slow. The season is 28 episodes long and I’ve seen 9 episodes now. I have so many other things I’d rather watch first that I’m giving up (for now, at least).