Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2026.05

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

1. The Incredible Hulk (2008) — 7/10
2. The Fast and the Furious (2001) — 6/10
3. La Grande Belleza (2013) — 9/10
4. Fargo (1996) — 9/10
5. The Grey (2011) — 8/10
6. Foundation S03 (2025) — 8/10
7. The Whitest Kids U’Know S01–S05 (2007–2011) — 9/10
8. The Grifters (1990) — 7/10
9. Gone Baby Gone (2007) — 8/10
10. Sisi & Ich (2023) — 7/10

The Incredible Hulk (2008) — 7/10

Bruce Banner (Ed Norton) is living in Brazil, learning Portuguese and Jiu Jitsu. His Jiu Jitsu teacher teaches him breathing techniques to keep himself calm. He works in a bottling factory with Martina (Débora Nascimento), who is inexplicably damp all the time, as if she were perpetually modeling for a Sports Illustrated calendar. Don’t get me wrong; she looks great; it’s just a bit odd when considered objectively. Bruce expresses only passing interest, though, because his heart belongs to Betty Ross (Liv Tyler).

After Bruce loses a drop of blood from a cut into one of the bottles, Betty’s father General Ross (William Hurt) immediately tracks him down, putting Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), in charge of an extraction mission. Banner gets away by shinnying down a pole and hiding in a neighbor’s apartment—this uncredited neighbor is even more voluptuous and damp than Martina, like, I’m sensing a pattern—and then leading his would-be captors on a chase through the favelas.

They end up at the bottling factory, where Bruce finally succumbs to the aggravation and excitement, to his pulse getting too high…and he turns into Big Green. He destroys most of the factory, killing most of the forces. Blonsky is intrigued. He gets General Ross to have his surgical team inject him with super-soldier serum. It pretty much works. His next toe-to-toe with the Hulk goes much better, with him being able to dodge effectively and lure the Hulk into a sonic trap.

The Hulk resists it, blows a bunch of shit up, and protects Betty from certain death. He escapes with her, but only after succumbing to a final provocation from Blonsky, whom he kicks into a tree, shattering every bone in his body.

Betty and Bruce are on the run, and end up seeking out Dr. Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson), whom they engage to help them cure Bruce of being the Hulk. They manage to incite the Hulk in a controlled experiment, then administer an “antidote” that reverts him to Bruce again.

Meanwhile, Blonsky has recovered. All bones healed. Walking out of the hospital. He is transforming into … something else. He’s back in the field. They’ve tracked Bruce and Betty down to Sterns’s lab, where he’s regaling them with tales of the glory they will earn for the human race when they manage to build a cure for everything from Bruce’s blood. Sterns doesn’t believe him, calling him paranoid. They tranquilize Bruce from a distance and ship him off.

Blonsky sticks around and easily gets Sterns to work with him, to give Blonsky “what Banner has.” Sterns is excited to help him. It works. Blonsky turns into the Abomination. He knocks Sterns into some lab equipment, where Banner’s blood spills on his head wound. His forehead begins to pulse. Dollars to donuts, this is the origin story of The Leader..

The Abomination starts to tear apart the neighborhood. Cars are flying. People are flying.Everything’s on fire. Blonsky is looking for “a real fight.” Bruce says, “it has to be me.”

It’s a big, bad monster fight. Abomination is bigger than Hulk, at least at first (the Hulk grows larger the angrier he gets). After a protracted battle, Hulk subdues Abomination. It’s not dead, though. What happens when it wakes up? Hulk seems to be more in control of himself. I.e., Banner seems to be more in control of Hulk. He is forced to flee after having saved the city from Abomination; how is the populace supposed to be grateful for having their city half-destroyed?.

We see Bruce a month later, working on his control of Hulk.

The first 15 minutes were the best part of the film, followed by the experiment with Dr. Sterns, followed by being on the run with Betty, The Hulk parts are OK but it’s just a bunch of shooting and explosions. The parts with Abomination were the most tedious parts of the film. I’m sure they thought they were awesome but they’re just kind of boring. The intrigue about how one lives with being the Hulk is much better.

I’d seen this before but hadn’t recorded any notes of it. I watched it in English with German subtitles (that’s all Netflix offers).

The Fast and the Furious (2001) — 6/10

This is the very first installment of the by-now long-running series that encompasses, at last count, eleven movies, with a finale on the way in 2028.

The first thing we see is several tricked-out, tuned-up, street-racing cars commandeering a tractor-trailer truck in the dead of night. Everyone is masked and helmeted, they are all clearly expert drivers, and they’ve clearly done this before.

The first rule of extremely reckless driving is “seatbelts are for the weak.”

We meet Brian (Paul Walker) driving his bright-green, highly tuned street-racing car.. He knows the rule about seatbelts.

At what looks like Mia Toretto’s (Jordana Brewster) restaurant, we meet Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), caricature Latina Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), dumb, dumb Vince (Matt Schulze), ambivalently and neutrally competent Leon (Johnny Strong), and young, brilliant Jesse (Chad Lindberg). They all meet Brian and he manages to get into Dom’s good graces, enough so that they start hanging out.

At what would turn out to be one of many, many illegal street races, replete with throbbing beats, bouncing flesh—well, exposed flesh, at any rate; much of it was skinny rather than voluptuous—shiny cars, and roaring engines, we also meet Edwin (Ja Rule) and Johnny Tran (Rick Yune).

Brian loses his car to Dom in his first race with him but it cements their budding friendship. Dom has no idea that Brian is a cop. Brian meets up with his commanding officer Sgt. Tanner (Ted Levine) as well as a ton of FBI, who are all trying to catch the interstate thieves.

Brian’s information helps the FBI move on Tran and his gang but, although they’re involved in all kinds of criminality, they’re not the ones behind the daring heists of moving trucks. At the Race Wars (not making up that name) in the desert, Jesse loses his pink slip to Tran, who just blows him away on the race course, which leaves me wondering whether Jesse ever really was such a hot-shit tech, or whether he’s just good in light of his other failings. Anyway, Tran wants his pink slip and Jesse has cut and run, done a flier, am-scrayed, is in the wind.

The next and last heist is that night. Dom and his crew roll out, although they have a bad feeling about it. They wonder aloud when the truckers will start fighting back. Coincidentally, it would be on that very night. Or day. It’s a bit odd. They meet at night and drive out at night … but the heist takes place at what looks like noontime.

Vince ends up pretty seriously wounded and stuck on the side of the hurtling truck cab, whose driver is assiduously peppering the passenger-side door with his shotgun. Dom’s tires blow out. Letty flips her car. Brian and Mia show up to save Vince. He’s told her he’s a cop and that they need to go rescue the rest of the “family”. Brian reveals his identity to Dom as well when he calls in a MEDIVAC with his badge number.

Back at the house, Dom doesn’t have time to kick Brian’s ass because Jesse is still out there, and Tran and his gang are hunting for him. Jesse shows up, castigating himself for his stupidity. Tran magically shows up and he and his compatriot Lance Nguyen (Reggie Lee) do a drive-by to finish off Jesse from their motorcycles and speed off. Cue a chase by Dom and Brian where Tran and Lance are eventually killed.

Brian and Dom are each in their own cars, naturally, with Dom driving his father’s hyper-muscle car that he’d always been afraid of driving because … oh f@&k, no, I can’t even begin to care about that part … suffice it to say it’s a giant, overpowered muscle car, the perfect motorized metaphor for Vin Diesel himself.

Dom and Brian end up racing each other for a quarter mile that conveniently ends just past some train tracks, upon which a train is (in?)conveniently traveling at the exact same time, but in front of which they both manage to leap their cars, landing safely on the other side.

Dom is immediately T-boned by a truck that almost certainly had the right-of-way, an accident in which the car flips a couple of times, and which would have turned the unsecured Dom to jelly but which seems to have only cost him his breath and the use of his left arm temporarily, injuries that are not only unaccompanied by a concussion or whiplash of any kind but which themselves fade with such incredible rapidity that Dom is able to drive Brian’s car away when the latter gives it to him as the 10-second car he’d owed him anyway, all with the sirens closing in, and Brian seemingly having no excuse for anything he’s done, as a police officer who’d been charged with catching the criminal gang headed up by Dom.

But we’re supposed to be enveloped in a miasmic glow of “family” and aren’t supposed to notice how, while it was Brian who had initially scammed his way into the family, it was Dom who’d gotten the last laugh and scammed Brian right back because Brian was now pretty much a fugitive with no recourse but to turn to a life of crime himself. Also, he probably wants to bang Mia again, so he’ll be slinking back.

La Grande Belleza (2013) — 9/10

“Jep: Non sono misogino, sono misantropico”

This movie is beautifully filmed with excellent music. Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo) is always so impeccably dressed. The one speech by Jep about 50 minutes in is absolutely worth the price of admission.

“Jep: Ti prego, mi vanto di essere un gentiluomo… nun me fà crollà l’unica certezza che ho, eh?
Stefania: No, no, no adesso tu per favore mi dici quali sarebbero le mie menzogne e le mie fragilità, bello mio, eh ? Io sono una donna con le palle. Parla, su. Parla.
Jep: Su “donna con le palle” crollerebbe qualsiasi gentiluomo… Stefa’ l’hai voluto tu, eh? In ordine sparso: la tua vocazione civile ai tempi dell’università non se la ricorda nessuno; molti invece ricordano personalmente un’altra tua vocazione che si esprimeva a quei tempi, ma si consumava nei bagni dell’università… La storia ufficiale del partito l’hai scritta perché per anni sei stata l’amante del capo del partito. I tuoi undici romanzi pubblicati da una piccola casa editrice foraggiata dal partito, recensiti da piccoli giornali, vicini al partito, sono romanzi irrilevanti, lo dicono tutti, questo non toglie che anche il mio romanzetto giovanile fosse irrilevante, su questo ti do ragione. La tua storia con Eusebio: ma quale? Eusebio è innamorato di Giordano, lo sanno tutti… da anni pranzano tutti i giorni da Arnaldo, al Pantheon, sotto all’attaccapanni, come due inamoratini sotto alla quercia. Lo sanno tutti e fate finta di nulla. L’educazione dei figli che tu condurresti con sacrificio minuto per minuto: lavori tutta la settimana in televisione, esci tutte le sere, pure il lunedì, quando non si manifestano neppure gli spacciatori di popper. I tuoi figli stanno sempre senza di te: pure durante le vacanze, lunghe, che ti concedi, poi hai per la precisione un maggiordomo, un cameriere, un cuoco, un autista che accompagna i ragazzi a scuola, tre baby-sitter… Ma insomma… come e quando si manifesta il tuo sacrificio?! Queste sono le tue menzogne e le tue fragilità. Stefà, madre e donna, hai cinquantatré anni e una vita devastata, come tutti noi… Allora invece di farci la morale… di guardarci con antipatia… dovresti guardarci… con affetto… Siamo tutti sull’orlo della disperazione, non abbiamo altro rimedio che guardarci in faccia, farci compagnia, pigliarci un poco in giro… O no?”

Jep visits an old friend who owns a strip club. His 42-year-old daughter Romana (Sabrina Ferilli) works there and she is fit.. She’s not the only one who’s fit at that club but her show is pretty classy. This film is in fact filled with mostly feminine beauty, lovingly portrayed.

There are so many good scenes here. There is the doctor who injects his customers with botox, taking two minutes, and then charging them at least a year’s salary.

Jep starts a relationship with Ramona. At their first dinner, she notices that he knows her father. They visit beautiful palazzos at night with Stefano, who has the keys to all of them. He carries a candelabra to light the way. The statues are breathtaking. Ramona is ravishing in her blue cloak.

Andrea kills himself. He just closes his eyes while driving and acclerates. Jep and Ramona shop for a dress at what appears to be the most exclusive haberdashery on the planet. It’s like a giant palace. He holds forth on how one should behave at a funeral. He picks her dress for her. He is so suave.

They are lying in bed after having loved but not made love. She finally tells him that she spends all of her money on medical treatments. When he returns upstairs with her breakfast, she is still lying on top of the sheets in just panties, her tramp stamp showing, her raven hair spilled all around her. La Bellezza Grande indeed. She doesn’t move or respond to his entreaties. Just as you think she’s dead, she moves slightly and says “ancora cinque minuti.”

And then, just like that, she really is dead. Jep once again wanders the world alone, still impeccably dressed, but alone.

Jep soldiers on. Stefania approaches him outside, on a lawn, to tell him that she’s heard that he’s losing his reputation.

“Jep: Sono 40 anni che lo sto perdendo. È un declino costante.”

From the street, Jep sees his mysterious neighbor standing on his terrace for the last time. He is surrounded by police officers. He turns out to have been one of the most notorious mafiosi in Italy, Giulio Moneta. Jep had no idea he’d been living next to him.

“Giulio Moneta: [mentre viene arrestato dagli uomini della Direzione Investigativa Antimafia]: Ad esser sinceri, Catellani da qualche anno è un po’ carente sui tessuti pettinati. Per me, il miglior sarto di Roma resta Rebecchi.
Jep: Ma Lei chi è?
Giulio Moneta: Un uomo laborioso. Uno che mentre Lei trascorre il tempo a fare l’artista… e a divertirsi con gli amici, fa andare avanti il Paese. Io, faccio andare avanti questo Paese, ma molti ancora non lo hanno capito.
Jep: Ma ti rendi conto, Dadina? Il mio vicino di casa era Giulio Moneta, uno dei dieci latitanti più ricercati del mondo, ed io mai accorto di nulla.”

Jep is granted an interview with a saint. She is ancient. In the gardens, she stands like a gnomish statue. She is not lively. The shot of her standing alone between the hedges when the last group has left is priceless.

At the dinner, she is not a ball of fire. When Jep asks what she has planned, her handler answers that she will be climbing the sacred stairs on her knees. This is absolutely ludicrous on its face but no-one questions it. He also says that she still works with the sick for 22 hours per day. And she doesn’t walk, she runs to get to as many patients as possible. “Ora e stanca” She’ll be 104 in October.

Now there’s looking for her in the gardens but she’s in Jep’s study, apparently dead on the floor. Her handler had said that she slept on the floor—but she’s not sleeping. This scene is also ethereally beautiful, like a renaissance painting.

She was just sleeping. She’s up early and sitting on his immense terrace. The rest of the terrace is covered with storks that have stopped along their migration path.

“Maria: Lo so io conosco li nome di battesimo die tutti questi uccelli? Perché non ha mai più scritto un libro?
Jep: sto cercando la grande bellezza ma no la trovata.
Maria: Sai perché io mangio solo radice?
Jep: No. Perché?
Maria: Perché radice sono importante.
Maria: [smiles toothlessly and blows out, scattering the storks.]”

Jep is cruising on a small yacht, along the coast, remembering the first time he made love to a woman. She says, “Adesso voglio far’ ti vedere una cosa,”, then briefly takes off her shirt.

Maria is climbing the steps. On hands and knees.

“Jep: Finisce sempre cosi, con la mort’. Primo pero ce stata la vita. Nascosta sotto i blah, blah, blah, blah. E tutto i sedimentato sotto i chiacchierata e rumore. Il silenzio e il sentimento. L’emozione e la paura. Li sparuti incostanti sprazzi di bellezz’ e puoi lo squallore disgraziato e l’uomo miserabil’. Tutto sepulto sotto la coperta de l’imbarazzo de lo stare al mondo blah blah blah blah. Altrove ce l’altrove. Io non mi occupo nel l’altrove. Dovunque, che questo romanzo ha bel inizio.. In fondo, e solo un trucco. Si, e solo un trucco.”

The credits play over a a point-of-view camera of cruising down the river in Rome, with church bells in the distance. The boat passes under bridges as we see the old and beautiful architecture of Rome. So classy. I low-key want to go to Rome now. Off-season, of course.

I watched it in the original Italian with English subtitles. The subtitles were crucial for the lead character Jep, who spoke with a strong dialect much of the time, slurring and rounding nearly every word. I was able to get several citations from Le frasi de La grande bellezza – Citazioni e dialoghi by Luca Miglietta (non son solo film) but everything after the really long one I had to transcribe myself.

Fargo (1996) — 9/10

Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) meets with the garrulous Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and the taciturn Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare) to deliver a car (a shitbox Sierra) and to discuss the details of how they’re to kidnap his wife Jean (Kristin Rudrüd). Jerry needs money badly, so he’s planning on extorting money from his wealthy father-in-law Wade Gustafson (Harve Presnell) who hates his son-in-law. But I mean, who wouldn’t? Jerry is a sleazy car dealer who rips off his customers and seems to be in money trouble somehow. He doesn’t think of anyone but himself but he would never admit to that because he thinks that he’s basically a nice guy who’s had a run of bad luck.

Jerry had arranged a deal for Wade to invest in, and Wade and his partner are actually interested. But they’re not interested in loaning him the money—they’re willing to pay him a finder’s fee, at most. When he doesn’t name his fee, they tell him that the details that he provided are more than enough for them to proceed on their own, without him. Jerry’s a sucker and a fool but his father-in-law Wade is an unprincipled asshole. It’s a nice little touch that shows us how the Coens think that rich people get rich.

Carl and Gaear break into Jerry’s home and, after some Coen-like mayhem, manage to kidnap Jean. Late at night, on an otherwise empty highway, a police care appears in the distance, pulling them over. Carl tries to bribe the cop, the stop goes sideways, and Gaear ends it quickly with a shot to the top of the cop’s head. As Carl is laboriously dragging the cop’s body from the road, a car driven by a young couple passes by. Everyone sees everything. Gaear whips the Sierra around and gives chase. The young couple goes off the road on their own. Gaear stops and finishes them off.

Margie Gunderson (Frances McDormand) gets a call early in the morning, about the dead police officer. Her husband Norm (John Carroll Lynch) drags himself out of bed to make her some eggs. She’s very pregnant and he knows she needs fuel to get out there. He’s just sitting there in the kitchen, finishing his breakfast, with the door barely closed, letting in what looks like brutal cold, but he’s only got slippers on, with no socks. You get cold just looking at it. She comes in to ask him to jump-start her prowler (police car). They didn’t show it but he probably padded right out into the snow in his slippers, snow squishing between his toes, robe flapping in a relentless, frozen wind.

Carl and Gaear take Jean to a house in the countryside. It’s cold as hell in there. You can see their breath coalesce into clouds. It’s unclear whether they’ve even turned on the heat. Gaear is wearing thick pants. Jean is still in the light clothes she’d had on when she was abducted.

While Jerry fights with Wade about the $1M ransom, Carl calls him to tell him that they’re going to need their $80K, so we see Jerry working the angle, being a sleazebag. Wade, though, doesn’t buy it, and he’s not giving up control of the “deal” to Jerry, who he has rightly pegged as, at best, an incompetent and, at worst, a criminal.

Some of the details are just non sequiturs, like Jerry’s son Scotty (Tony Denman) playing the accordion, and having a giant poster of a famous accordion player on the back of his bedroom door. But some are important, limning characters. Like the time where Carl is in the club with an escort, drinking champagne. He tries to get the waiter to get him another…but there’s a bottle right behind him. He could have served himself. He won’t do it, though, because that’s beneath him. Or when Carl goes to a parking garage but then exits immediately, he fights with the attendant over $4. It’s not the $4; it’s that Carl sees everything in the world as making him feel small.

Carl is with the escort but he’s completely unable to get to le petit mort when Shep Proudfoot (Steve Reevis), his connection, shows up, throws the escort off of him and starts to beat the shit out of him. Margie had visited Shep and he was none too pleased about the fact that Carl and Gaear had killed three people and that he, Shep, was being threatened with violating his parole and going back to Stillwater Prison. He beats Carl even uglier with a belt.

Carl is pissed and calls Jerry to get the deal done. hHe threatens Jerry and his whole family. Instead, Wade takes the money to meet Carl. Jerry is left behind. Wade is so used to running every situation that he does not comprehend that he might be in a dangerous situation. Carl is completely out of patience and gut-shoots him. Wade manages to get a shot off, grazing Carl’s jaw in a painful and very bloody but ultimately not deadly wound. Carl takes off with the money.

Jerry gets to the parking garage to find Wade dead. The car stops, facing him. Pauses. Pops the trunk.

Carl drives out into the barren wastes, stops. He takes $80K out of the case, then runs a piece off the road to bury the rest in the snow by a fence line. When he notices that the place he’s chosen is completely undifferentiated from the miles before or after it, he plants his ice-scraper in the ground to mark the spot. This is ridiculous, as it’ll be gone with the next snowfall.

Margie is back at Jerry’s dealership.

“Sir, you have no call to get snippy with me. I’m just doing my job.”

Jerry throws himself and then storms out, ostensibly to do inventory to look for the car she’s asking about.

“He’s fleeing the interview! He’s fleeing the interview!”

Carl is back at the house. Gaear still doesn’t seem to feel the cold. Jean is lying on the ground, at best unconscious. Gaear tells Carl that he has to pay him for half the car. Carl refuses because he’s a cheap ass and he can’t let anyone get the better of him, even when it would be fair. It doesn’t work for him this time. Gaear chases him outside with an axe and does him in for good.

Margie happens by, on a standard patrol, and spots the tan Sierra. She hears a droning sound. It’s Gaear, working the wood-chipper. There is so much blood in the snow.

She yells “police!” as if he can hear her. He finally looks up, then runs out onto the lake. She clips him in the back of the thigh with her second shot.

They’re in the prowler. He’s in the back, cuffed. Jean’s dead. So’s Carl. Jerry’s been caught and arrested. Margie and Norm are in bed, snuggling in the warmth, with the TV on.

Norm: They announced it.
Marge: They announced it?
Norm: Yeah.
Marge: So?
Norm: Three-cent stamp.
Marge: Your mallard?
Norm: Yeah.
Marge: Oh, that’s terrific.
Norm: It’s just a three-cent stamp.
Marge: It’s terrific.
Norm: Hautman’s blue-winged teal got the 29-cent. People don’t much use the three-cent.
Marge: Oh, for Pete’s sake. Of course they do. Whenever they raise the postage, people need the little stamps.
Norm: Yeah?
Marge: When they’re stuck with a bunch of the old ones.
Norm: Yeah. I guess.
Marge: That’s terrific. I’m so proud of you Norm.
Marge: Heck Norm, you know, we’re doing pretty good.
Norm: I love you Margie.
Marge: I love you Norm.

Someone will find the rest of the money in the spring.

The Coen brothers are in their full bizarre mode here. It’s a crime story, as they nearly always are, and there are spectacularly bad coincidences, as there nearly always are, and there are odd characters, as there also nearly always are.

The cinematography is lovely, with a strong emphasis not only on the average, midwestern faces, the strong style of speaking, and the overarching friendliness, but also on the cold, expressed in vast expanses of unending whiteness, on breath clouds, on the crunch of tires on frozen roads.

The Grey (2011) — 8/10

I watched and reviewed this movie in 2014. I watched it again in Italian for practice. The beginning was better than I’d remembered. The first ten minutes, where Ottway (Liam Neeson) was writing his journal, dreaming of home, and protecting workers from marauding wolves was quite nicely made. I ended up liking this movie much better in Italian.

They march across frozen wastes with unceasing winds, beards filled with rime and ice, wading through thigh-deep, stiff snow. The wolves pick off the weakest, slowest one off the back. The rest are heading for the forest, where they think they’ll be safer. At deep dusk, the giant wolves speed across the white plain.

They gain the forest, light a fire. The fakest-looking wolf in the world doesn’t seem to care.

Another one appears, trying to drag off one of the group, Diaz (Frank Grillo). They manage to kill it, though not without some damage to themselves. They cook and eat the wolf.

Diaz challenges the wolves by throwing them the head of their fallen companion. He ululates in a wolf’s howl. Dozens and dozens of them respond. The men pick up torches and walk into the night.

At the next campsite, they swap stories. Ottway tells of his drunken, hair-trigger father who had a love for poetry, and who’d written the following lines,

“Ancora una volta nella mischia
Nell’ultima vera battaglia che affronteró
Vivi e muori in questo giorno
Vivi e muori in questo giorno”

“Once more into the fray.
Into the last good fight I’ll ever know.
Live and die on this day.
Live and die on this day.”

I think it sounds better in Italian.

They get to a cliff above a forest. The cliff is ahead and the wolves behind. They have already survived a storm, losing one member to the cold. They find marked tree stumps. They need to get down to the river.

One of them leaps across, trailing a rope. He clings to a tree, then secures it. Two others climb across, including Ottway, who is reluctant to leave Talget (Dermot Mulroney) behind. Talget’s hand is busted, he’s afraid of heights, and his glasses are fogged over. He tries. He loses his glasses, and then his grip. He drops through the trees, smashing into the ground. He has a moment of peace before the wolves tear him apart.

The others hurry down, with Diaz hurrying too much, dropping too far, and hurting his knee. The snow is deep and merciless.

They make it to the river. Diaz lags behind. He stops, sits on a log, facing the snowy mountains, looking out over the partially frozen, burbling river. He is done. He will not continue. They introduce themselves by first name, shaking hands. They leave him.

The wolves come. “Io non ho paura.”

Now it’s just Henrick (Dallas Roberts) and Ottway, slogging painfully along the river. The wolves come. The two find the energy to double-time it through the snow. Ottway knows he doesn’t have to be faster than the wolves.

The wolves clip Henrick, driving him into the river, where the currents bears him violently away. Ottway gives chase, jumping into the freezing water to catch Henrick but he’s too late—Henrick’s foot is pinned between two boulders, and his head is about 20cm below the surface. Ottway tries mouth-to-mouth, imploring Henrick to hold his breath. Henrick lets each breath out, because he’s done, too.

Ottway sloshes out of the river and falls onto a snowbank. Not only does he not seem cold but I don’t even see his breath. I ignore that part this time. He beseeches the sky for God to give him a sign. Nothing. He’s on his own. Well, then, he’ll do it alone.

Ottway is in a bad way, vision blurring, but he soldiers on, cresting a slope into some rare, watery sunshine. He drops to his knees and takes out the myriad wallets he’s collected, going through each one. He makes a little pile, then takes out his letter to his wife.

Throughout the film, Ottway has dreamed of his wife. She would whisper to him, “Non aver paura.” It finally becomes clear that she was consoling him as she died of some unnamed disease.

Ottway is done, too.

A wolf snarls. Another.

The alpha appears on a slight hill above him. Ottway looks around more carefully. Wolves everywhere. Bones everywhere. He’s somehow been herded to their lair.

He breathes out. Collects himself. Straps his knife to one hand and straps broken miniature liquor bottles between the fingers of his other hand.

“Ancora una volta nella mischia
Nell’ultima vera battaglia che affronteró
Vivi e muori in questo giorno
Vivi e muori in questo giorno”

I have completely changed my mind about this film on a second viewing, in Italian. I very much enjoyed it this time, the bleakness, the simple story with its foregone conclusion. This might be my favorite Liam Neeson movie now.

Foundation S03 (2025) — 8/10

This was my favorite season so far, by quite a bit. One strong reason for that is that Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) is barely in it. Even Hari Seldon’s (Jared Harris) role is much more restricted, which I also didn’t mind, though I’d liked his snark in the first two seasons.

As noted in both the previous seasons, the visuals continue to be top-notch, just absolutely lush, sumptuous, inventive, coherent, and credible. Every set is interesting, and well-supports the plot elements in them. There is symbolism everywhere—the semiotics are consistent, sometimes mystifying, but always enticing. I would watch it again just to … see it again.

There are no ugly people in this show but there wouldn’t be, would there? We’re watching a show about elites 10,000 years in the future. Of course everyone is fit, beautiful, and lithe or heavily muscled as befits what appears to be the only two genders in evidence. There are old people, though! But the young people really shine with their perfect features and perfect skin. I don’t love it, honestly, but it’s not inappropriate for the setting.

This season sees Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) leaving the nest to scheme with Gaal, unknowingly aiding the Second Foundation. Simultaneously, Brother Day (Lee Pace), channeling The Dude from Big Lebwoski, having left the palace to Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann) to live with his lover Song (Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing), who he’d taken from the Mycogen, an undercity of Trantor. I really like Brother Day as portrayed by Lee Pace.

This season focuses on the coming of the Mule (Pilou Asbæk) and not a little bit on Demerzel’s (Laura Birn) role in protecting the Empire or pushing the Foundation, despite her programming to protect the line of Dawn, Day, and Dusk. She confesses at one point to having orchestrated the attacks on the Star Bridge, which was a spectacular attack on Trantor that had that killed dozens of millions in the first season.

The Mule inhales whole parts of the Foundation’s holdings, taking what he wants with his powerful, powerful Mentalic powers, which seem capable of reaching across space, between ships, over vast distances—and instantly—when he needs them to. He is often aided in this by his staff musician Magnifico “Maggie” Giganticus (Tómas Lemarquis), whose combination of light and sound seem to vastly increase the reach and power of the Mule’s telepathic hold over people. The Mule captures the gaming planet of Kalgan without firing a shot of his own. He generally just gets his enemies to shoot each other down, though sometimes he seems to quite relish getting his own hands dirty.

Toran Mallow (Cody Fern) and his wife Bayta Mallow (Synnøve Karlsen) are two dilettante elites with a popular social-media channel who happen to be honeymooning on Kalgan during the attack. They are roped into kidnapping Maggie by Foundation soldier Han Pritcher (Brandon P Bell), who needs them to get into the Mule’s club on the planet They are soon joined by Hober Mallow (Dimitri Leonidas), Toran’s uncle, who is a Trader, a splinter faction of the Foundation.

The Foundation, led by mayor Indbur (Leo Bill) is corrupted, lost from its original purpose, serving only its own ends, little or no better than Empire. Empire, on the other hand, is getting more rebellious, as mentioned, with Brother Dawn scheming with what he doesn’t even realize is the Second Foundation, which is hidden even from Hari Seldon’s digital ghost, who still guides the First Foundation. Brother Day extends his rebellion against the life of Empire by faking his own death and then heading down to Mycogen to find Song, who Demerzel had mind-wiped and returned to her home. He wants to find out more about Mycogen’s obsession with robots.

Gaal has betrayed Dawn into attempting an enclosure of Kalgan that completely fails because the Mule repeats his mind-control trick to get most of the Imperial fleet to kill itself instead of completing the enclosure. Dawn realizes the betrayal and sends Dusk a subspace message before being killed by someone he had likewise betrayed as part of Gaal’s plan. He shoots out of an airlock into space, dying nearly instantly, much as one of his predecessors Brother Day had at the end of season two.

Demerzel has somehow tracked Gaal down and boards her ship. Instead of taking her life, she and Gaal work together to figure out more about what Gaal’s precognition is not able to detect. Demerzel basically mind-melds with her in the most unpleasant way possible but is able to discover details that Gaal had not noticed. These may help them combat the Mule together, though Demerzel reveals herself to quite a bit deadlier than you would think a robot following the three laws could be.

All three Mallows travel with Maggie to New Terminus, where they appeal to Indbur, with moderate success. Pritcher is still imprisoned by the Foundation for his betrayal. Pritcher is also way over-muscled—just like Brother Day and Toran Mallow—but I guess there has to be some eye candy, and it’s understandable because it’s 10,000 years in the future and you can probably just program the kind of body you want to have, if you’re rich enough.

This is quite a whirlwind season with a dense but coherent plot, which contains much less dilly-dallying than in the first and second seasons, which toyed much too much with the sci-fi equivalents of pronoun declarations and land acknowledgements. The incredible visuals are not abandoned by the plot this time so it’s a good deal more fun.

The Mule repeats his getting-your-enemies-to-shoot-each-other-out-of-they-sky trick to take New Terminus from the Foundation. Hober is dead, Bayta is captured, Pritcher is away in a whisper ship, and Toran is away in an escape capsule. The Mule still doesn’t know where the Second Foundation is but he has met the digital version of Hari Seldon.

Day is still alive but on trial in Mycogen, in some sort of large, underground coliseum. The wild-eyed Sunmaster-18 (Blake Ritson) presides over the process, waving his scepter around, which is a robot head on a stick. Day whistles a song that Demerzel had sung to him long, long ago, and it activates a handshake procedure in the head. It begins loudly trying to connect to other robots. The spectators in the many galleries are shocked. This has never happened.

Aboveground on Trantor, delegations from the various factions of the First Foundation—the Galactic Council, the Luminists, and the Cloud Dominion—inform Dusk that they are going to sacrifice Trantor to the Mule, and that there’s nothing he can do about it. Dawn is dead. Day is missing.

Dusk says “hold my beer” and reveals the Novacula, a black-hole-powered super-weapon that can destroy planets in the wink of an eye, even across galactic distances. It can’t quite reach New Terminus, though, or he’d have also wiped out the Mule, instead of just wiping out a planet apiece in the upstart systems of the Foundation. Demerzel was completely on board with this move, as she is duty-bound to preserve the Imperial Lineage above all else. She must be going through Hal-level conflict-of-interest at this point but she’s mostly keeping it together.

Day is on his way to her rescue, though! He has escaped his prison, reunited with Song, who has restored her memories and now knows that Day is on the level, and has stolen the robot head from Sunmaster. He thinks that presenting the robot head to Demerzel will release her from her obligations to both Empire and its lineage.

Dawn survived. Well, most of him did. His spacesuit “harvested” a lot of the meat of his legs in order to keep the suit’s power going until he could be rescued by the mule. His legs look like ground beef. It is unclear why the nanobots haven’t kicked in. He is sharing a medical bay with Bayta, who has somehow stayed in the Mule’s good graces. She seems to have some odd power over him, a power that had been hinted at in her interactions with Maggie.

Gaal and a crack team of other mentalics—every single one of whom is also black, so it’s nice to see that, while the present is a nightmare of illegal traffic stops, the future is bright—head to New Terminus to confront the Mule before he can find the Second Foundation on Ignis On the planet, they slowly learn how the Mule is able to control people, but aren’t much closer to figuring out how to counteract it. They meet with the simulacrum of Hari Seldon and make a deal—he uses the advanced technology in his prism to help them, and they’ll get him a body, like the other simulacrum on Ignis had. Gaal has no idea how to do that but she’s got no problem lying to a simulacrum.

Dusk spirals out into total Caligula territory. After having destroyed several star systems with his black-hole popgun, he also destroys every last Cleon clone. He has a little clicker that seems to do the trick. The man is absolutely not going to go down easily. He saves one little baby Cleon and marches off to the recycling center that was his own destination that day.

Day is back from Mycogen and has brought Demerzel the robot head. She is terrified of it because her programming (by Cleon I) prevents her from communicating with any other robots in a “clasp.” Day starts to poke around at the head and it sparks a bit. Demerzel gives as much guidance as she can without going against her programming.

What else happens? Lots of stuff. Gaal defeats the Mule pretty handily in her mind, but it turns out that Bayta was the Mule all along! Actually, that’s kind of cool. It was a good trick. I kind of suspected that something was up with her but I didn’t suspect that she was the Mule at all, just that she might have powers similar to his. It also explains a lot better why her parents had tried to kill her, preferring the male baby instead. That’s what Hari meant about “the Mule’s story not adding up.”

Bayta has Pritcher shoot Gaal, which has got to sting. But not as much you’d think! She’s gut-shot but has also become super-powered again, shaking off the wound like a boss—a girl-boss. When Maggie starts to play, he is no longer playing for Bayta, but for Gaal. She easily overwhelm Bayte and eject her from her mind.

Gaal runs off—wound and all—and gets back to her ship. But hoo-boy how she gets to her ship is kind of important. She takes a metal sled of some sort, the weight of which doesn’t disturb her wound at all. In fact, she seems to forget that she is wounded for this whole sequence. Just remember that she’s gut-shot and kind-of bleeding out during the upcoming shenanigans. She jumps out a window of the ship, which is parked in low orbit, I guess, because she seems to be able to breathe the air, though I’m not sure how much consideration the writers gave to biology when their grrrrl was being awesome. So she’s on a makeshift sled, halo-jumping without oxygen, eyes wide open, facing forward, no glasses, plummeting at horrendous speed, and just sailing toward a spaceship where she just casually boards through a side-entrance, getting caught in a net that the writers seem to have put there to “make it seem realistic.” After having run halfway down the hall, this obvious method actress remembers to clutch her side a bit.

She stops to chat with the digital Hari Seldon to let him know that, although he’d helped her out a lot, she wasn’t going to be returning the favor and wasn’t even going to do him the honor of actually acknowledging that she’d lied to him to get what she wanted because she’s a grrrl-boss and grrrl-bosses don’t ever have to admit that they’ve ever done anything wrong, so she tells the poor fucker trapped in a simulacrum forever that “you heard what you wanted to hear,” which I guess who gives a fuck if that poor digital replica has to chew on your duplicity forever, right Gaal? Fuck him, you’ve got grrrrl-boss things to do.

Back on Trantor, Dusk in now named brother Darkness. Demerzel catches up to him with the baby at the eradication ray, where he’s set her up perfectly. You see, the baby is the last Cleon. He places it under the pre-programmed death ray—the one that was supposed to have reclaimed his sorry ass—and waits for her to follow her unavoidable programming. Despite Day’s protests that she could save humanity, she cannot resist—she is, after all, a robot—and hunches over the baby, absorbing the full brunt of the eradication ray, which works as described. She melts soon after the baby incinerates anyway, finally dying. Dusk chuckles and picks up the Prime Radiant that had fallen out of her melted corpse, the artifact seemingly much more impervious than she was.

Although having been initially taken out by Demerzel’s violent reaction, Day gives chase to Brother Darkness. Day beats on him but to no avail; Darkness still has his nanites. But guess who doesn’t? That’s right, it’s the guy that Darkness shoots through the heart. Day is gone. Neither of them knows that Dawn survives, somewhere out there, in the galaxy.

Brother Dusk’s girlfriend Quent (Cherry Jones)—the ambassador from the Foundation—follows Demerzel’s instructions to find the Second Foundation in the library on Trantor, where they’d moved from Ignus. She meets Palver (Troy Kotsur).

Are we done? Not quite. Day and Demerzel might be dead but Day had tinkered just enough with the robot head to trigger the “clasp” signal, which Kalle (Rowena King) and an actual robot receive on the Moon, as in capital-M, as in the moon of the Earth.

OK. Now we’re done. That was a helluva last episode. Still don’t like Gaal but this is a fun, fun show. Gorgeous to the end.

The Whitest Kids U’Know S01–S05 (2007–2011) — 9/10

I’ve been watching the skits that they’ve been releasing on YouTube. I include a couple of clips in my review below but there is so much more on the channel.

I had never heard of this troupe, which ran a skit show from 2007 to 2011, until they recently started publishing their entire oeuvre online. They started publishing their old skits with titles provocatively taken from the headlines of today. They would change a word or two and the entire four-minute skit would hold up as a report on events from today. Since then, they have published a ton of their skits and entire shows in the last month. They are brilliant, equal to Monty Python, I think, for their political incisiveness, for the quality of their production, the quality of the acting, and the quality of the writing. The Chapelle Show was in the same league, now that I think about it.

I’ve been keeping these notes for months. When I watched the videos originally, they were all available in Switzerland. They have now been blocked. I imagine that you can watch them with a VPN server based in the U.S.

1. Shine on you crazy Mormons
2. I’m digging ‘em up
3. Aren’t you Lucky?
4. HIPPO IN THE CITY
5. Pledge of Allegiance
6. Mom and Dad’s Divorce
7. Happy Birthday Rick!
8. John Williams
9. Happy St. Patrick’s Day from WKUK!
10. Little Hitler
11. Slow Motion 🐿️
12. Triumph of the Ill
13. Where DO Babies Come From?
14. Good Morning Dad
15. Race War
16. Hey, Dad
17. Ocean 2.0
18. Kid Beer

---

Shine on you crazy Mormons by WKUK: Whitest Kids U’ Know (YouTube)

Motorcycle mamas is a work of art. The way Timmy sways his head back and forth, totally committed to the role. This is absolutely one of the best skits. It’s completely unique. Genius.

Oh, wait, I take it back. “Timmy Dance” is a work of unheralded genius.

“I saw that kid with the divorced parents outside. I don’t want you hanging out with him.”

“🎵 I’m gonna live on a mountain of chairs. 🎵”

Timmy is a genius.

But then, Trevor as John Williams being a dick to his family while he composes his masterpiece for the Indiana Jones/Star Wars crossover film where Short Round marries an Ewok. “I call bathroom.” And no-one mentions that the tune that he came up with was actually “I could have danced all night.”

“Oh no, ants are taking me to Fashion Bug.”

Bikini day at the zoo.

---

I'm digging 'em up by WKUK: Whitest Kids U’ Know (YouTube)

• Waking the neighbors up song has great production values and excellent execution
• Trevor pitching movie ideas is him at his absolute best. Zach is also great in this one with his unbridled enthusiasm.
• Brothers in Arms is perfect. “We have to be even.” “We’re taking your pants off.”
• Teacher tries skateboarding
• Pulled over by a fire truck
• Fight club
• Midwestern dads discuss corporal punishment
• Police raid
• Teachers’ meeting

---

OK. One more.

Aren't you Lucky? by WKUK: Whitest Kids U’ Know (YouTube)

“Aren’t you lucky to be born into the only place that always gets it right?

“Aren’t you lucky to be born into the place where everyone is smart and
nice?

“Well, aren’t you lucky to be born to the only one whose God is even really
real?

“Being born over there must really suck. Can you imagine how they feel?”

---

Ok. Fine. One more.

HIPPO IN THE CITY by Whitest Kids U' Know (YouTube)

The comments indicate that the original plan was to play twenty of silence on the dead hippo. They had to add the trumpet because the station was worried that people would think that their televisions had broken. So they then wanted to play twenty minutes of Timmy playing the trumpet, which, even at the reduced length they had to settle on, is still high comedy. Just genius. Art. I can’t tell you why I like it so much because … it’s art.

---

I can’t stop adding these.

Pledge of Allegiance by WKUK: Whitest Kids U’ Know (YouTube)

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

“Thank you very, very much for letting us little kids live here.

“It really, really was nice of you. You didn’t have to do it.

“And it’s really not creepy to have little little kids mindlessly recite this anthem every day and pledge their life to a government before they’re old enough to really think about what they’re saying.

“This is not a form of brainwashing.
This is not a form of brainwashing.
This is not a form of brainwashing.

“This is really the greatest country in the whole world. All the other countries suck.

“And if this country ever goes to war, as it’s often wont to do, I promise to help go and kill all the other countries kids.

“God bless Johnson and Johnson.
God bless GE.
God bless Citigroup.”

I can’t remember when I stopped pledging allegiance to the flag but I’m pretty sure it was in the seventh grade. My refusal to stand and participate was, at the time, received with a little resistance but no punishment.

---

Mom and Dad's Divorce by WKUK: Whitest Kids You Know (YouTube)

“Hey, you guys want to hear a song I wrote about my parents?

“No.

“🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶
Well, my mom hates my dad
and my dad hates my mom
and my mom hates my dad
and my dad hates my mom.

“But I hope they get together again someday.
But I don’t think they will
because my mom shot my dad’s car.
🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶”

---

Happy Birthday Rick! by WKUK: Whitest Kids U’ Know (YouTube)

This one has not only the segment above but also the famous tattoo-parlor segment with Trevor as a drunken customer describing an increasingly elaborate tattoo. He really was a genius.

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John Williams by WKUK (YouTube)

His son’s name is “Sherwin”.

“Did you hear that the Zimmers got new siding on their house?”

---

Happy St. Patrick's Day from WKUK! by WKUK: Whitest Kids U’ Know (YouTube)

“And now, the drunken antics of Clarence McKenah, accompanied by sad piano music.”

---

Little Hitler by WKUK: Whitest Kids U’ Know (YouTube)

This is the story of Adolf Hitler, as told by an anti-drugs PSA that tries to convince the children that drugs alone where the reason that Hitler went from being a little boy who saved little girls’ dogs to being the man who would plan and execute the Holocaust.

---

Slow Motion 🐿️ by WKUK: Whitest Kids U’ Know (YouTube)

“And now, footage of three guys smoking pot in a car when a squirrel jumps through the sunroof.”

The music is Rossini’s La gazza ladra (Wikipedia) (“The thieving magpie”).

---

Triumph of the Ill by WKUK: Whitest Kids U' Know (YouTube)

This was the very first skit of the very first show, when they hadn’t yet been picked up for TV.

“Now the SS on my jacket stands for super-smooth.”

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Where DO Babies Come From? by WKUK: Whitest Kids U' Know (YouTube)

“That’s OK. I’m really not supposed to be hanging out with little kids anyway.”

---

Good Morning Dad by WKUK: Whitest Kids U' Know (YouTube)

This is one of the darkest videos they have. Brilliant.

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Race War by WKUK: Whitest Kids U’ Know (YouTube)

This one is just 90 seconds and features Trevor trying to get his friend to come outside and play “race war”.

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Hey, Dad by WKUK: Whitest Kids U’ Know (YouTube)

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Ocean 2.0 by WKUK: Whitest Kids U’ Know (YouTube)

“[Trevor] Mother nature has seen worse than this in the past. And the old girl always manages to pull through. And the old girl always manages to pull through. Frankly, I’m excited to see how she’s going to adapt this time. Maybe all the currents will change, taking all the oil to Antarctica. Or maybe fascinating new marine life will evolve, like fish that can breathe oil, or a bird that likes being sticky. It’s how we at Unified Petroleum are helping to reimagine the world’s oceans.

“[Timmy] As a scientist, I’m an expert on things at the molecular level. I’ve been closely monitoring the changes that this new addition to our ocean has brought about. And what’s most amazing about this recent opportunity is that for the first time in millions of years, the oceans have gained an attribute. The ocean has always been wet and it has always been salty. But you couldn’t always set it on fire. Now you can. Now we can.

“Look, Mom, a rainbow on the water. That’s great, honey. Plus, Unified Petroleum donates a dollar from every million it makes towards putting more computers in classrooms across the country. As a mother, I like that.

“[Trevor] You know, they say that oil and water don’t mix, but damn it if we’re not trying.

“Unified Petroleum, we have nowhere to go but up.”

---

Kid Beer by WKUK: Whitest Kids U’ Know (YouTube)

Trevor taps an untapped market.

The Grifters (1990) — 7/10

Everyone in this movie is either a grifter or a mark or both.

Lilly Dillon (Anjelica Huston) works for a brutal bookie named Bobo Justus (Pat Hingle). She dresses well and shifts lots of money for him, manipulating the odds for him, but he is a brutal taskmaster. Her son Roy (John Cusack) is a relatively small-time grifter who gets punched so hard in the stomach by a bartender (Jimmy Noonan) whom he failed to make a mark that he ended up in the hospital with internal bleeding.

Myra Langtry (Annette Bening) is another grifter, who uses her body to run a lot of cons, though she claims to have had a history where she ran much bigger scams. Who knows what’s true though? While Roy was trained by another relatively small-time hustler Mintz (Eddie Jones), Myra claims to have trained with a much more big-time scam artist named Cole Langley (J.T. Walsh), who she claims is now in an insane asylum.

Of the three of them, Myra is the most dangerous, the most unstable, the most sociopathic. She drops her clothes at the drop of a hat. She really, really uses her sex and her gender to manipulate her marks. Roy is impervious, though.

“Roy: Do I get any say in this?
Myra: No! Because…
Roy: That’s what I say. What I say is no. We don’t do partners.
Myra: [Myra is hurt and confused] What is it? What’s goin’ on? Why don’t you wanna team up?
Roy: The BEST reason I can think of is that you scare the hell out of me. I have seen women like you before, baby. You’re double-tough and you are sharp as a razor, and you get what you want or else; but you don’t make it work forever. Sooner or later the lightning hits, and I’m not gonna be around when it hits you.”

Myra is pissed and can’t handle it. She accuses Roy of being in incestuous love with his mother, and keeps saying it until he decks her. He throws her out, disgusted with himself, but also disgusted with the depths to which Myra is willing to sink to get her way. Myra leaves but she quickly calls Bobo to tell him that Lilly has been skimming cash from him.

Someone in Bobo’s office takes pity on Lilly and warns her, so she’s in the wind before Bobo’s henchmen show up. He’s already punished her by putting out his cigar on the back of her hand, after having made her prepare a towel full of oranges with which she thought he would beat her.

Bobo: Tell me about the oranges, Lilly…
[kicks over a bag of oranges]
Bobo: While you put those in the towel.
Lilly: [kneels on the floor and starts picking them up] You hit a person with the oranges wrapped in a towel… they get big, ugly looking bruises. But they don’t really get hurt, not if you do it right. It’s for working scams against insurance companies.
Bobo: And if you do it wrong?
Lilly: [terrified] It can louse up your insides. You can get p… p… p-p-p-p-p
Bobo: What?
Lilly: P-permanent damage.
Bobo: You never shit right again.

He’s a real charmer but also good at psycho-games. When he dropped the oranges on the ground, she thought he was showing her mercy but then he turned the tables again, trapped her on the ground, and burned the back of her hand.

Roy is also looking for his mother now but she’s not at home. She’s taken a room in a motel. She prepares a silenced pistol to keep under her pillow. Myra shows up to the same motel. Later, she shows up with a whole set of keys to get into Lilly’s room. She jumps on Lilly in her bed and is choking her. The scene ends before she dies, though.

Roy arrives in Phoenix, where they found Lilly’s body. The police pick him up at the airport, letting him know that she’d had a lot of money in her car, but that she’d committed suicide. He’s there to identify the body. Her face is a mess but he identifies her by her naked body, I guess? Isn’t that weird? Anyway, he noticed that the body is missing the burn wound on the back of its hand. It’s not Lilly.

Lilly’s at Roy’s apartment, breaking in and looking for the money that she just knows that he has hidden. You’d think she’d never find it, as it’s hidden in the backs of the ugly clown paintings that she hates so much. But that’s like the first place that she looks, after spending two seconds looking in the open closet.

Roy arrives, finding Lilly desperately stacking his money into her bag. She doesn’t even hear him. He’s utterly unsurprised. He makes her tell him the story of what happened. He doesn’t seem perturbed at all that she’d been robbing him. One expects no honor among thieves..

Lilly tells the story: She’d shot Myra in the face. That’s the whole story.

Roy tells Lilly that she can’t have his money. She plays the guilt card, that he owes her his life. He says no. She reconsiders and tries a different tack: she tells him that she’s not really his mother, that they could take off together, as a couple. She moves in on him for an open-mouthed kiss. When he’s distracted, she grabs the briefcase and blasts him across the face with it. It blows open, spilling cash everywhere. He blocks it with his hand, but he holding a water glass. A shard slices open his jugular.

He doesn’t last long. Lilly seems really upset … but she’s also collecting all of his money into the briefcase. She leaves. This is not a good exit. A live Roy wouldn’t have told on her. A dead Roy is a sure sign for Bobo that Lilly is still alive.

Gone Baby Gone (2007) — 8/10

I watched this in 2011.

I’d forgotten exactly what had happened in it. There are a lot of good actors in it.

Four-year-old Amanda McCready (Madeline O’Brien) has gone missing. Her mother Helene McCready (Amy Ryan) is a neglectful cocaine fiend. Bea McCready (Amy Madigan) is her older sister, who seems to be more concerned about the girl’s disappearance than Helene. Helene and her husband Lionel (Titus Welliver) approach investigators Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) and Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) to help find Amanda. They scour South Boston, meeting up with old classmates of his, circling closer to some of his old compatriots who are also Helene’s contemporary dealers.

Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) in in charge of the department for missing children and he grudgingly allows the two skip tracers to work with Sergeant Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton) to try to figure out might be going on.

They finally get a call to trade $130K for Amanda, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a forest. They never find Amanda and it’s assumed that she drowned. Doyle takes the fall for the botched case and retires; Angie is devastated.

A few months later, Remy gets Patrick to help raid the home of coke-addict Leon Trett (Mark Margolis), where they find the body of a seven-year-old who’d been kidnapped, and one of the mentally underprivileged members of the household Corwin (Matthew Maher) who’d killed him. Patrick executes him. From behind.

Remy lets slip that he’d lied about a key piece of Amanda’s case, although he doesn’t know that Patrick had picked up on it. Patrick questions Remy’s fellow officer Devin (Michael Kenneth Williams) to find out why Remy lied to him. Devin spills that Remy seems to have known about the $130K before even the guy who it had been stolen from.

Patrick figures out that Lionel was in on the kidnapping, to teach Helene a lesson. Lionel says that Amanda died that day. He tells a few more stories about what a bad mother Helene was. As Lionel is confessing to Patrick, Remy storms into the bar, masked, and waving a shotgun. Patrick starts yelling that Remy had kidnapped Amanda, The bartender wounds him mortally.

Later, during questioning, Patrick learns that the transcript that Doyle had shown him as proof of a conversation could not have been real because the cops interrogating him let slip that those kinds of calls are neither recorded nor transcribed.

But where’s Amanda? Is she still alive? She is. Based on the evidence of the faked transcript, Patrick figures out that Doyle was involved as well and that he had arranged to get Amanda away from her coke-filled mother because he and his wife would be able to give her a better life than Helene could. So, everyone’s corrupt but not for the reasons we thought. Doyle had good intentions but he kidnapped a kid from her mother.

Patrick goes out to talk to him. Amanda runs out of the house to hug Doyle. Does Patrick give him up? Doyle begs him not to do it. Angie begs him not to do it. Patrick calls the cops.

Later, Patrick visits Helene and learns that she’s going out on a date, but that she hadn’t arranged for a babysitter. He offers to help out. Helene barely knows her daughter, doesn’t even know her daughter’s favorite doll’s name. Patrick doesn’t know whether he’s done the right thing. He suspects that there was no right thing. Helene sucks. Doyle is a kidnapper. Amanda is innocent.

This time I watched it in German with French subtitles.

Sisi & Ich (2023) — 7/10

Countess Irma Sztáray of Hungary (Sandra Hüller) is 42 years old and has never married. She finds men repulsive. Neither has she joined the convent. Her mother offers up her services as handmaiden to the notoriously mercurial and difficult Sisi (Susanne Wolff), the Empress of Austria. Irma is interrogated as to her suitability for the role, with her lying in response to several of the questions, which seem wildly inappropriate to her but which will have much relevance to her future duties: how much sports does she do? Can she ride? How much does she weigh?

Irma is hired, after which she travels to Corfu to meet up with Sisi, who has retreated there to live with only women and to be away from her husband. She arrives in a small rowboat, suffering from seasickness and heatstroke. She is welcomed not with a glass of water, for which she asks several times, but with a series of increasingly difficult athletic pursuits, such as “running really fast” and “hurdling over garden benches.” Sisi watches from the second floor.

Sisi is a temperamental madwoman whose behavior is in no way excused by the patriarchal constraint under which she finds herself. Yeah, no shit. But you’re the Empress (the Kaiserin) and you’ve got it a lot better than most women in your empire, none of whom you’re trying to help at all by hiding out in Corfu. She is bulimic and obsessive about the weight of all of her courtesans, Irma included. Irma eventually succumbs to her browbeating and starts taking cocaine to curb her appetite.

Sisi doesn’t like to be bored and she basically has ADHD so she flits from pursuit to pursuit. Irma falls desperately in love with her, with them sharing a bed with obvious implications. But that’s all it was: implications. The true nature of their relationship was deliberately left open. Only at one point did Sisi half-yell at Irma when she didn’t seem to have been in the mood, but that was also expressed quite obliquely.

Sisi’s gay actor/friend Archduke Ludwig Viktor (Georg Friedrich) visits her in Corfu, providing immense distraction and annoying Irma. Irma plays gamely along with Viktor’s peccadillos, including acting in the play that he puts on. She acts quite splendidly but everyone has eyes only for Viktor.

Soon after Franz Joseph has returned to Austria, Sisi decides that they will leave for Algiers, where Sisi wants to try some special flavor of ice cream (I’ve honestly forgotten which kind, but it was something “exotic” like cardamom). They walk the streets of Marrakesh. Sisi trods on a nail and pulls it out of her foot, seemingly unfazed by the grisliness of it.

After some more time in Marrakesh, Sisi’s husband Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria (Markus Schleinzer) lets it be known that his wife is to be returned to Bavaria, at least for a visit. Sisi is not pleased but she quickly capitulates, taking Irma with her. Franz Joseph is pleased to see her but wants more from her than she is willing to give anymore. When she refuses, he takes what he considers to be his. The next morning, Sisi pushes a consoling Irma away, recognizing that Franz Joseph’s brutality is the price she pays for the freedom she otherwise has.

Irma’s mother arrives with Sisi’s mother. They are both deeply disappointed in their daughters, disappointed in their seeming inability to understand their proper place in the world, disappointed in their diet, in the food that they present for their meal. The mothers present traditional Austrian food, which both Irma and Sisi initially refuse to eat but which they eventually begin to eat with gusto, seemingly out of spite. It is an odd scene, full of tension and unspoken recrimination.

To escape further hassles at the home court—either in the form of their mothers or from Franz Joseph—Irma travels to England with Sisi, where they meet handsome young Colonel Smythe (Tom Rhys Harries), whom Sisi quickly takes first as a rival, then as a lover. Irma is annoyed, not only for herself, but with the tawdry way in which Sisi carries on with her lower-class lover. Sisi even takes him to an audience with Queen Victoria (Annette Badland).

After England, they travel to Geneva, where an Italian anarchist stabs Sisi. Franz Joseph appears to console her but ends up slapping her for insolence. Irma defends her, attacking the Kaiser himself. Sisi eventually died of her wounds.

Both the German and English descriptions in Wikipedia ascribe much more feminist grrrl power to the film than I picked up from it. It was there superficially, of course, but the underlying class message was much louder for me. As I noted at the top of the review, she was a queen. Her life was good. She couldn’t stop sulking about how much the world chafed her personal ambitions. This is nearly shockingly tone-deaf but the articles describe this as having been “simply born a century too early.” Not really. She was an egomaniac.