<n>Read the explanation of method, madness, and <b>spoilers</b>.<fn></n> <ol> <a href="#Conclave">Conclave (2024)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt20215234/">9/10</a> <a href="#Rundown">The Rundown / Bienvenue dans la jungle (2003)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327850/">5/10</a> <a href="#Jarmusch">The Dead Don't Die (2019)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt8695030/">5/10</a> <a href="#Devara">Devara Part 1 (2024)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt11821912/">8/10</a> <a href="#Disappear">Disappear Completely (2022)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt8851084/">8/10</a> <a href="#Sisu">Sisu (2022)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt14846026/">8/10</a> <a href="#Lumberjack">Lumberjack the Monster (2023)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt28090490/">8/10</a> <a href="#Dinner">Dinner in America (2020)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt9058654/">9/10</a> <a href="#Shrinking">Shrinking S02 (2024)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt15677150/">6/10</a> <a href="#Taxi">Taxi Driver (1976)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075314/">8/10</a> </ol> <dl dt_class="field"> <span id="Conclave">Conclave (2024)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt20215234/">9/10</a> <div>Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is the dean of the cardinals in the Catholic Church. The Pope (Bruno Novelli) has died. It is time to elect another. The dean is not only in charge of the festivities, but the dean also votes, and may receive votes himself. For those unaware, a Catholic conclave sequesters all the cardinals of the world inside the Vatican, cutting them off from news of the outside world. They vote until one pope receives a majority. They usually vote once per day, but sometimes vote immediately again. American liberal cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) is in the running and has Lawrence's initial support. "Initial" because, after voting for him several times, Lawrence sours on Bellini's nakedly political and morally conciliatory approach to defeating the true enemy of the church, cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto). Tedesco is a reactionary intent on rolling back the entire legacy of the recently deceased and relatively liberal pope. There are more than just shades of the wide-eyed zealotry of an anti-Trumper's TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) in Bellini's tirades, in which he not only doesn't consider but he isn't even particularly interested in hearing any arguments about how using underhanded, nefarious methods makes you worse than what you're trying to defeat. Bellini considers himself to be unassailably and unchangeably "better" than Tedesco and nothing he does could possibly change that. Also in the running is the slippery and slimy cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow), who conspires to sideline the initial front-runner, the virulent homophobe and misogynist cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati). Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini) is instrumental in bringing down Tremblay. None of the "main" candidates listed above are worth a tinker's damn. A dark horse is cardinal Lawrence himself, who experiences an upswing in votes for his fine words, despite his fervent protestations. There is the darkest of dark horses, though, cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), who is Mexican but represents the Diocese of Kabul, having served in war zones in Baghdad and the Congo before that. He's been in the shit and come out filled with love. He supports Lawrence wholeheartedly and will not be dissuaded by him. As the candidates fall, one by one, to their foibles, vices, and skeins of their own machinations, the field clears. The initial strong front-runner Adeyemi's votes are split between Tremblay and Bellini when his ancient infidelity is revealed. Tedesco starts off quite strong as well, winning a round but not a majority. Bellini's votes go to Tremblay when the former's weaknesses and nakedly political machinations leave a bad taste in too many cardinal's mouths. Tremblay is felled by Sister Agnes, spilling his votes into what would be Lawrence's lap, but for a suicide bomber that attacks the cathedral and interrupts the sixth vote, in which it is quite likely that Lawrence would have won a majority. Instead, the disheveled and still partially plaster-bedecked cardinals gather in a different auditorium to discuss the day's events and how they propose to proceed. Tedesco gives a fiery speech blaming the <i>musulmano</i> and promising to declare holy war on Islam. Benitez expresses his shock and disappointment and shames the rest of them into silence with a wonderfully worded speech which would be very much holier-than-thou if he weren't very much holier than all of them put together, save perhaps Lawrence. <bq>My brother cardinal. With respect... ...what do you know about war? I carried out my ministry in the Congo. In Baghdad, in Kabul. I've seen the lines of the dead and wounded, Christian and Muslim. When you say we have to fight, what is it you think we're fighting? You think it's those deluded men who have carried out these terrible acts today? No, my brother. La lucha está aquí... aquí dentro de cada uno de nosotros si cedemos al odio y al temor, si hablamos de “bandos” en vez de hablar por cada hombre y cada mujer. Esta es mi primera vez entre ustedes y probablemente sea mi última. Y perdónenme, pero en estos días solo hemos demostrado ser un grupo de hombres pequeños y mezquinos. Interesados solamente en nosotros mismos, en Roma, en la elección y el poder. Pero estas cosas no son la iglesia. La iglesia no es la tradición. La iglesia no es el pasado. La iglesia es lo que hagamos en adelante.</bq> It's a good speech and it clinches him the papacy. After he is elected pope, Lawrence asked him the name he will take. <bq>Innocentia.</bq> This would be enough for a good ending, but that was the anticlimax. The climax---perhaps more of a coda---is a bit of intrigue, in which information about this darkest of dark horse's past finally bubbles to the surface. We learn why Benitez had traveled to a Geneva clinic; we learn what kind of clinic it was; we are surprised that the old pope not only supported him, but paid for the flight and treatment with his own money. Benitez was born male but has a uterus. He only discovered this in his mid-to-late thirties. He decided at the last minute not to undergo the hysterectomy. This is, apparently, earth-shattering for the church, even though it's as if he had had six fingers or a third nipple. Bodies are bodies. As he says, <iq>I am as God made me.</iq> I thought this was an interesting in that Lawrence, who seemed as liberal as they get, blanched at this revelation. It was, of course, far too late to un-pope Benitez. Although it would have almost certainly been possible, it would have possibly destroyed the church's credibility forever. The church needs to move forward and stop clinging to form over function, to appearance over principle. Still, Lawrence's hesitation could have been interpreted as more than just being unsure about this odd situation and how it fits into a clearly gendered world. Perhaps his hesitation was more wondering whether they'd just elected a <i>girl pope</i>? With more openness to homosexuality, with more openness to many things, the last great great openness barrier is the church's utter disdain for 50% of humanity. Women are servants. Women are child-bearing vessels. The church's greatest weakness is its institutional hatred for women. This is the message I took from Lawrence's hesitation, where even he had to swallow his bile at what is happening and let a gentler being try to lead the church by its own precepts, precepts that it had ignored for most of its existence. I watched it in a movie theater in English, Latin, Italian, and Spanish, with French and German subtitles.</div> <span id="Rundown">The Rundown / Bienvenue dans la jungle (2003)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327850/">5/10</a> <div>Beck (Dwayne Johnson) is an aspiring chef who's also an MMA expert and apparently a debt-collector. He tears apart a club at the beginning to show how incredible he is at fighting and debt-collecting. Still, his love lies in the kitchen, so he's trying to scratch together enough scratch to open his own restaurant. Fair enough. He's sent to the jungles of Brazil to retrieve a mobster's son Travis (Seann William Scott). Local henchman Hatcher (Christopher Walken) is about to allow them to leave town when he hears that Travis knows the location of a golden-monkey statue that he wants because Hatcher likes money and thinks he should have all of it and no-one else should have any. He is not a deeply written character, is what I'm saying. There's an almost unnecessarily long scene where they contend with the jungle, with monkeys, screaming and carrying on, before the local militia shows up and takes them prisoner. Travis knows the language and convinces them that the giant (Beck) will fight them all. There's a lot of capoeira and flying around in trees after that, with Beck taking a lot of hits before getting his wheels under him. Long story short, the locals are now teamed up with Travis, Beck, and also Mariana (Rosario Dawson), who's a local rebel leader whose brother has been killed by Hatcher and his henchmen. You're not going to believe it but they manage to retrieve the golden-monkey statue. Hatcher manages to kidnap Mariana, demanding the golden monkey as ransom. Cue a giant fight scene where Beck lays waste to a town mostly by himself but also mostly after he <i>convinces himself to do so</i>, which was kind of weird. At any rate, he's impervious to the tremendous amount of gunfire, which is about as deadly as it was on the G.I. Joe or A-Team shows. Beck takes Travis back to his father, who agrees to pay Beck but then mistreats Travis, blablabla ... Beck incapacitates everyone with a psychedelic jungle fruit and leaves with a grateful Travis. No-one picked up the script for a sequel. A pity. I watched it in French without subtitles for most of it because they just weren't working and then with French subtitles for the final 1/4 of the film.</div> <span id="Jarmusch">The Dead Don't Die (2019)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt8695030/">5/10</a> <div>Jim Jarmusch "directed" this movie about zombies. I use quotes because the film is a meandering, half-hearted attempt that failed to convince me that its being half-hearted was some way for Jarmusch to be making a sardonic point about the vacuity of the types of lazy, formulaic, genre horror flicks of which this was very obviously an example. Except that it was making you watch ninety minutes of a formulaic movie that wasted its very talented cast to convince you that you should be watching better movies than this. That's the most positive spin I could put on this film. None of the characters were developed far enough to be interesting before they were killed or transformed into zombies. The only explanation given for there being zombies at all was that an unconscionable expansion of fracking into the polar regions---Arctic <i>and</i> Antarctic, apparently, even though Antarctica has no fossil-fuel reserves---that had tilted the Earth off of its axis, leading to completely unpredictable day/night cycles and ... um ... zombies. What kind of zombies? Non-viral, slow-moving, and undead. Even here, the film is not consistent: the first several victims fail to be transformed whereas, after a certain point midway through the movie, being bitten by a zombie suddenly does transform you to a zombie yourself. The zombies are so slow-moving, though, that the only way to be trapped by them is to simply stop moving or fail to get to a proper shelter that's not just a pile of wood slats leaned against each other. The main characters are Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) and his partner Officer Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver), who toy a bit with non-diagetic dialogue that pretty much goes nowhere. Like, they talk about the script and having read parts of it; they talk about "Jim", who's the director. But it's doesn't go anywhere. It would be frustrating and tantalizing if there were any way to tell the difference between this and a truly poorly written film. Because it's from <i>auteur</i> Jim Jarmusch, the assumption would be that there is method to his madness but, my brother in Christ, I have seen <i>Coffee and Cigarettes</i> and I am under no such illusions.<fn> They are joined by Officer Mindy Morrison (Chloë Sevigny), who is a shrinking violet of a mouse of a wallflower and who dies pathetically and pointlessly at some point. There's also Hermit Bob (Tom Waits), who slinks around town, basically documenting the zombie apocalypse like a nature photographer. He mysteriously is not molested by any zombies. Farmer Frank Miller (Steve Buscemi) hates Hermit Bob for no stated reason, other than Miller is apparently a cuss of a bastard of an asshole that even the police refrain from warning about the zombies. Hank Thompson (Danny Glover) is just a lovable old black guy who also turns into a zombie, his personality completely unchanged. Spoiler. Everybody but Bob dies. Maybe that's the message? That we're all just zombies anyway? Or is the message that fracking is bad? Or that Republicans who allow fracking are bad? I don't have the strongest grasp of how in-the-tank some of these normie and heavily siloed liberals are. I've seen similarly ham-fisted attempts at working modern politics into films that reveals a lot about the shallowness of the writer's or director's political thought before. I fear this may have been one of those.</div> <span id="Devara">Devara Part 1 (2024)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt11821912/">8/10</a> <div>This is the story of Devara (N.T. Rama Rao Jr.), a powerful villager living near the Red Sea (it's just a lake; the "red" refers to blood spilled on its shores). He and members from the other three villages get mixed up in a smuggling operation. This part looks pretty cool, as they drag the stolen containers along under their boats. It looks way cooler when there are people attached to the containers underwater---but it's utterly unclear whey they need to be there. Once Devara discovers that the containers hold weapons, he destroys everything and tells the villagers they will only fish in the sea and will no longer be involved in smuggling. He is somewhat opposed by Bhaira (Saif Ali Khan), who wants money more than principle. Annoyed that Devara has called off smuggling, Bhaira arranges a wedding so that he can set up Devara to be assassinated at the wedding. Devara's pretty hammered---you can tell because he's lurching around and that is <i>acting</i> my friend---and they set him up down by the beach. He is still far more powerful and takes out all 50 attackers, all by himself, in a highly stylized battle. At one point, he slashes someone's chest and it makes an arc of blood that perfectly fits into the missing piece of the crescent moon. This makes <i>300</i> look realistic. It's not supposed to be realistic, though; it's supposed to be awesome, which it honestly kind of is. Devara leaves a pile of impaled bodies and a message that he will punish anyone who smuggles. It's pretty convincing. This is all told as a flashback, as a story told my an older member of Devara's village. He tells the story to an undercover cop, who shows up to convince Devara to help him smuggle goods across the Red Sea. The old man shows the cop an army of bodies at the bottom of the sea and makes an effort to explain how that came to be. The 50 bodies of the wedding massacre...are <i>not</i> those bodies. That's the next part of the story. 12 years later, Bhaira has trained an army of youth to kill Devara. Like, he's not had anything better to do for a dozen years. Devara's son Vara grew up looking just like Devara...but he's not at all like his father. Instead of winning the battle for his village, Vara begs Bhaira for the weapons. Somewhat surprisingly, Vara ends up calling for the battle instead. There's a subplot where the girls are all scheming to get husbands. Thangam (Janhvi Kapoor) thinks she's the prettiest and gets to have her pick of the men. The women definitely have a secondary role; it's pretty telling that Devara's wife is only listed as "Devara's wife" in the credits. During the battle, Thangam's on the fence about whether Vara is worthy. Vara has a sort of drunken-master fighting style, where he stumbles and then pulls off an awesome move that looks accidental. Time for a music video with Thangam and Vara. Bhaira and his evil crew start a rumor that Devara is dead; his mother takes ill at the news. As she nears death, they grow certain that he will return to visit her. Bhaira and his crew lie in wait. He evades them but they give chase. The chase scene through the forest is pretty amazing, everyone rolling down the hill in the dry leaves, with Devara shooting around like a superhero. He escapes; Bhaira is furious. They grow bolder, threatening Devara's wife and daughter. Vara goes to them and starts to feel his inherited power, destroying about a dozen men. Time for a music video with Thangam and Vara. This one has an even better dance number. Vara is told that he'd killed a man the night before, so he goes to beg Bhaira for forgiveness. Bhaira tells him that if he goes on the next smuggling mission that night, during which they hope to kill Devara, they will be even. They manage to steal the weapons but Devara shows up, attacking from below, seemingly without the need for air, slicing people up and destroying boats with the grenades that they'd stolen. Bhaira's trained army is in the water, while Devara is standing on a burning boat, ready to kick more ass. The head of the village Singappa (Prakash Raj) finally reveals to Devara's wife that her husband has been dead for a long time; it is his son Vara who's been pretending to be an idiot while he defended the shores and the Red Sea in his father's name. His preferred method of killing in slashing his enemies in the back with his small, curved, hand-sword (a Chakram?). Vara's riding a shark. Vara brings back a boat-full of corpses. He tells Singappa that he wants to keep the legend alive, to have people believe that his father is still out there. To do this, he must also die, so it looks like Devara had left the corpses. This will prevent another generation from taking to the sea for weapons. Vara asks Singappa to slash him to death. He can't do it. Vara kills himself on a blade he mounts on the boat. He looks dead, but there's a part two coming up, so it's not likely. The movie is, as you can imagine, highly stylized, with Devara and Vara portrayed as quasi-deities, like superheros. There is a singing and dancing number near the beginning. There are two others between chapters. There is an elaborate ritual-combat scene that Devara wins, of course, but not until after a bit of kayfabe-style back-and-forth. It's hero-worship at a ludicrous level: Devara is the most moral, the most principled, the best warrior, the strongest, the best dancer. Everyone loves him, except for bad people. I gotta admit, though, that, by the end, it won me over. The language is overwrought and some of the acting, too, but it's just a matter of getting used to it. Then you appreciate the telling of a grand saga, with some nice twists and turns. It was a little long and self-indulgent but it's completely apparent why Rao is a star. Maybe If I watched more of these, I would recognize it for the trash that it I'm sure aficionados would deem it, but I'm just a humble guy who lives some fun fight and dance choreography. I can give a Marvel movie an 8, then I guess Devara gets an 8 too. I watched it in English because I couldn't figure out what the original language was. Even in what I think was the original Telugu, it felt like it had been synchronized with people reading from a script.</div> <span id="Disappear">Disappear Completely (2022)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt8851084/">8/10</a> <div>This is the story of an obsessive photographer Santiago (Harold Torres). He's quite talented, if not just unscrupulous but downright ghoulish. He sneaks into a building to get photos of a body, where he and the attending officer discover that the man is actually alive, despite having been partially eaten by rats. The next victim is a pregnant woman who seems to come alive, but it's just his mind playing tricks on him, making him have a seizure. Santiago loses his sense of smell. They show him working on his pictures a few times. He's supposed to be an artist, but they also show him dragging the <i>Contrast</i> slider around on his photos. That is the sledgehammer of tools. No-one who's serious uses that tool. Do better. Santiago loses his sense of taste. His girlfriend of 14 years Marcela (Tete Espinoza) is pregnant. She thinks that they're not doing well as a couple, but that having a child together will straighten everything out. Classic. You do you, girl, but that relationship is doomed. Santiago sneaks into a hospital to visit the man that they'd found alive, who is apparently a senator, but it's largely if not completely irrelevant to the plot. He discovers that the senator had also lost his sense of smell and taste---and that he'd also gone blind and deaf, and couldn't feel anything. Back at home, Santiago has vivid nightmares. His dog bites him. His dog is obsessed with getting something from under the kitchen cupboard. It's a mangled frog. Santiago is falling apart. Next to the dog bite, he steps on a broken beer bottle; and he still has a head wound. The doctors say that nothing is wrong with him. One of his police friends Oficial José Luis Basurto 'Cabo Catoche' (Fermín Martínez) says that it's witchcraft, especially after he sees the frog. He sends him to an "expert" (Norma Reyna). She tells him that someone has cursed him. Santiago loses his sense of touch. She proves this to him by putting out a cigar on his chest after he's closed his eyes as instructed. He feels nothing. He doesn't feel the air conditioner. He can't feel his jeans. It is a powerful curse. She tells him he has two days left: hearing and sight. She gives him a list of things to gather for a ritual---a sacrifice---to get rid of the curse. She can't do it herself, but she knows someone who can: for 100,000 pesos. One of the things he needs to bring is his dog, Zombie. The ritual might have been lifted straight from <i>Twin Peaks</i>. Zombie won't stop barking. Santiago stops his barking, not without regret. But he does it. The shaman pours the dog's blood over his head. In the morning, the curse has been lifted. His senses, however, will not return. He returns to his partner. They make love. It's quite nicely filmed. He feels nothing, of course. They sleep. In the morning, he wakes to a thrumming noise. His partner fishes a moth out of his ear. Alive. His hearing is dulled. He cuts himself to prove to Marcela what has happened. She doesn't quite believe him. He leaves, returns to the site of the ritual. The shaman has died of a heart attack in the interim. The magic of the curse was too much, even for him. Santiago returns home; Marcela is gone; she's out looking for Zombie. 🥹 Santiago returns to the scene of the first crime, where he has found a mysterious face reflected in a mirror in one of his pictures. He sneaks back in to the senator's house, with nothing to lose. He finds the senator's curse-frog. He returns to the police but they can't really help him. Oficial Lupe Sampredo (Vicky Araico) suggests he could find out who might want to have harmed the first victim, a senator. He finds a powerful woman who's profited tremendously from his removal---and who's been accused of witchcraft. He is a step further; her former driver gives him a clue, tells him that it's a very evil man in that photo. <bq>You should never have taken that picture.</bq> Santiago has almost completely lost his sense of hearing. He is in the evil man's house. This is a slow boiler, very simply and elegantly done. The lack of hearing at the end is unnerving. The evil man is by the fire; Santiago sees him, then he's gone. He can't hear him approach. Santiago is taken. Has he been drugged? Or is his vision starting to go? The shadow speaks. It wants his firstborn, his unborn child. It hands Santiago a vial. He makes Marcela a tea, emptying the vial into it. Santiago is completely deaf. His vision is going. At the last second, he swats the mug of tea from her hands. Darkness. The credits are very nicely formatted, accompanied by the song <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Disappear_Completely" author="Radiohead">How to Disappear Completely</a>. I watched it in Spanish with Spanish/English subtitles.</div> <span id="Sisu">Sisu (2022)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt14846026/">8/10</a> <div>Aatami (Jorma Tommila) is in the deep wilderness of Lapland, living near a meandering river on an undifferentiated moor, covered in heath but utterly bereft of trees. He discovers gold, a lot of it. He packs it up on his horse, packs his tepee, and, with poodle-dog in tow, heads back toward civilization. On his final bath on the morning he departs, we are treated to the older man's tough sinews and some of his barely or poorly healed scars. Aatami encounters Nazis on the road. One, a filthy, deliberately ape-like Nazi (Jack Doolan), drops from the back of a transport that holds young girls, dragging his suspenders back up over his bare shoulders. The commander (Aksel Hennie) sits on a tank, eyeing the passing horseman with a steely, wary gaze. They lock eyes. The commander stops his filthy compatriot from shooting Aatami in the back because <iq>he's riding to his death anyway.</iq> Aatami passes by men hanging by their necks from every power-line pole, arriving at the first checkpoint. The soldiers are as you would expect. They discover his gold. They try to shoot his dog. Aatami unloads a can of whoop-ass with an opening move even better than any of John Wick's. He just drives a hunting knife straight through the most belligerent of the Nazis, from temple to temple. None of the either scuffles last much longer. There is a lot of blood. Their ends are unequivocal. The tank column returns, having heard the gunfire. They give chase. There is nowhere to hide in this terrain Aatami's horse hits a mine and is in ruins, an inside-out mess. He mourns it and doubtless finds only solace in knowing that it died instantaneously. His gold is scattered. The tank approaches. He's still shaking off the cobwebs and gathering gold when the entire column, bristling with soldiers pulls up. He nearly completely ignores them. Just as they're about to shoot, he triggers a mine, then another, throwing up a giant cloud of dust. The Germans fire into it. He backpedals, making like Captain America with a small, metal shield. He unerringly throws a mine right onto the head of the first soldier they send in. Regular mines take out the next two. The next chapter "The Legend" begins with yoked female prisoners leading the tank column. We learned at the very beginning that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisu" author="" source="Wikipedia">Sisu</a> means a combination of <iq>stoic determination, tenacity of purpose, grit, bravery, resilience, and hardiness</iq> and is <iq>held by Finns to express their national character.</iq> Now we learn that Aatami is basically a Finnish Rambo, who's earned the Russian nickname <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koshchei" source="Wikipedia">Коще́й (Koshchei)</a>, which is <iq>an archetypal male antagonist in Russian folklore,</iq> and means "immortal" or "deathless." As we were all very much hoping, the Germans completely ignore the advice to leave Aatami alone---with the excuse that they need the old man's gold in order to buy their freedom after the inevitable and hastening German capitulation. Aatami patches some bullet wounds and falls asleep by a burnt-out wreck of a truck. The tank column passes him. He hitches a ride under a passing truck. He pops the gas tanks, causing the dogs to lose the scent. Aatami runs, but is clipped in the calf. He sets himself on fire to dissuade the chasing dog---😳😳😳---and jumps into a nearby lake. They give chase, again. He remains underwater and starts taking out soldiers who come down after him. I love how they all jump in with all of their woolen clothes, steel helmets, and weapons. Aatami needs, apparently, very little air. After the Germans shoot their own deserter, Aatami drags the deserter's boat to the opposite shore. Shirtless, hairy German fires on him with the large-caliber tank gun. No luck. The Germans get a hold of Aatami's dog. Aatami hikes further, seemingly unperturbed and unhindered by his many bullet wounds and by having set himself on fire, if only briefly. He comes to a burning city, hunkers down for the night. His wounds make themselves known. His nightmares are worse. His dog is back, but with a grenade attached. He saves it but the grenade stuns him unconscious. The Germans find him and hang him. A deeply scarred and Mongolian-looking soldier doffs his tank-cap; the German commander follows suit. They end up giving him some respect. The commander places a nugget of gold in Aatami's pocket: <iq>for your troubles.</iq> Aatami was shamming. It was their fault for thinking that hanging is by strangulation, when it's usually by the weight of the body dropping and breaking its own neck. They'd just dragged him up from the ground, relatively gently. But he can't do keep breathing like that forever, so, somehow, he hooks his leg wound into a protruding spike to hold his weight. Sure. OK. He's <i>Коще́й</i>. He passes out. His dog returns. German pilots land. The disturbance breaks the hanging post; his rope starts to slip and finally drops off the end of the crossbar, crashing him to the ground. The pilots are looking for fuel. Aatami incapacitates both of them. One of those pilots is going to fly him back to the tank column. But first, Aatami's got several dozen pieces of shrapnel to remove from himself and some impromptu stitching to do, with what look like fishhooks, and then some gasoline to disinfect and flaring matches to cauterize his various other holes. The plane takes off; the dog stays, drinking water out of an upturned German helmet. The tank column stops at a crashed plane blocking the road. The pilot has been hanged...with the hairy German's rope. The Nazis are rightly terrified and flee. In the prisoner transport, Aino (Mimosa Willamo) speaks, <bq><b>Aino:</b> Do you assholes really think you have succeeded where hundreds of Russians have died trying? <b>Soldier:</b> Do you really believe he's immortal? <b>Aino:</b> No. He just refuses to die.</bq> This is absolutely <i>Rambo: First Blood</i>, but Finnish. A pick-axe drops one soldier, then the next. Aatami swings into the transport, pretty as you please, bloody but unbowed, and just bristling with weapons. He gets onto the tank; now it's starting to feel a bit like <i>Fury Road</i> They pull up alongside the troop truck and just annihilate everyone in that truck. It's just the tank remaining, with Aatami standing atop it, pick-axe aloft. Wolf (hairy German) gets out and manages to dislodge Aatami. As he is about to finish Wolf, a motorcycle with sidecar pulls up. Aatami points the pickaxe at them and growls. They abandon the vehicle. Aatami drives off in pursuit of the tank. The well-armed ladies show up to finish off Wolf. Aatami drives up the runway, straight at the oncoming plane, firing away, starring the windshield and grievously wounding the pilot. He hooks the pickaxe into the fuselage and eventually digs his way through the outer hell and then the decking. He's inside. The commander goes to the back and beats the hell out of him but he can't knock him out. Even with an iron hook to the head, Aatami still struggles onward. He's really, really messed-up now. It's horrific how much punishment his head takes. I haven't seen the like since <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=3500#The">The Punisher</a> But, you know, <i>Sisu</i>. Clear-eyed, he struggles up, catching the hook at the end of the strap on the next swing and smoothly snapping it to a Soviet bomb, which he promptly drops. Bye, bye, commander. Next problem: the pilot is done for. The plane is heading down. It nose-dives straight into the ground. Aatami has strapped himself up with his bag of gold. Interlude: the ladies drive up to a Finnish roadblock in the tank, with Wolf hog-tied to the barrel of the cannon. Scene: In a giant puddle in a field, bubbles. Then, a leather bag. Then, a pickaxe. Scene: Aatami rides up to a bank, presumably in Helsinki, on a motorcycle, to make a deposit. He looks a bit worse for wear. He asks for bills, big ones. Easier to carry. I can imagine the cheers in a Finnish cinema.</div> <span id="Lumberjack">Lumberjack the Monster (2023)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt28090490/">8/10</a> <div>There are a lot of moving parts in this police-procedural/psycho-thriller/horror movie by director Takashi Miike, who is Japan's answer to Canada's David Cronenberg. He loves anime-style blood gushers, does our Takashi. We start off with a police raid of a <i>Silence of the Lambs</i>-style female serial killer's home. The police infiltrate the hom, reaching a surgical theater where a child with a head bandage sits, reading the storybook <i>Lumberjack the Monster</i>. The doctor will not go quietly. When the police find 15 other children's bodies preserved in oil drums in a nearby room, she first threatens the child then slashes her own throat. Flash forward to modern day. Akira Ninomiya (Kazuya Kamenashi) hunts down and kills someone who'd been spying on his activities. His associate Sugitani (Shota Sometani) is a fellow psychopath, with whom he has several discussions that fill in background information that you will need in order to even begin to know what's going on. The Lumberjack Monster shows up in a parking garage, nearly taking out Akira; he takes all of the money out of his wallet and eats it before the police can arrive (later, we learn that he did this to prevent the police from thinking that his attack was related to the others). As Akira is recovering from his head wound in the hospital, the doctor informs him that he has a "neuro chip". He had no idea; apparently, it had been implanted when he'd been an orphan. Sugitani explains that, in this timeline, they'd been all the rage 30 years ago but their use had been discontinued as unethical. On Sugitami's desk behind him is a book titled <i>Surgical surgery book</i>. I love it. The Lumberjack Monster has killed two people so far, both of them highly unethical people and both of them former orphans. Drop-dead gorgeous Arashiko Toshiro (Nanao) is the forensic profiler from outside of the precinct, and she's forced to work with roguish and rogue detective Inui (Kiyohiko Shibukawa). They investigate the third victim. Toshiro had said that, should there be a third victim, then the person's death would be partially the fault of the police, for having failed to catch the serial killer before they could strike again. Akira's fiancé is Emi (Riho Yoshioka). Their relationship is complicated but I can't tell if it's more complicated because he's a psychopath or more complicated because I don't know anything about the dynamics of Japanese power-couples. We find out in a flashback that he'd killed his future father-in-law. Akira is out running in what I would call utterly inappropriate clothing. He passes by a father berating and beating his young daughter. After he's intervened---I guess he's an ethical psychopath?---Lumberjack Monster shows up with his hatchet again. Akira fights back---again. He manages to unmask the creature but doesn't recognize him, escaping soon after by jumping off of the pedestrian bridge. Later, as Toshiro is questioning Akira again, Emi walks in to the room to chide Toshiro for having asked Akira a rude question. Toshiro doesn't even look at her, instead asking Akira who she is. That was absolutely wild. I can't imagine anyone doing that in culture I know---you would just have asked the lady herself---but I don't know if this is a thing in Japan, where you don't interact with people to whom you haven't been formerly introduced? Or maybe it's a police power-move? Nope: <iq>If you're not his wife, please leave us. This is a crucial investigation.</iq> That's cold, Toshiro. Meanwhile, Akira discovers that he no longer has the stomach for killing. Sugitani takes over the wet work. Afterward, they discuss what might be "wrong" with Akira; why can he no longer kill? They're discovering the history of the orphanages, abducted children, neuro-chip implants, and the possible origins of the Lumberjack Monster at the same time as the police are pursuing the same path. Another weird cultural fact rears up in an old detective's description of the initial abduction: he says that one of the couples whose child has been kidnapped had been shopping and discovered that their child was no longer waiting in the car. Wait. What? They left the kid in the car? Is that a thing in Japan? That could never be a believable and unremarked plot point in a U.S.-American movie. Anyway, we learn that the couple with the lab/operating theater who we'd seen at the very beginning had been experimenting on abducted children. Toshiro's investigations lead her to an assistant of the couple, who'd been killed three months ago. The Lumberjack Monster had stolen the list of children there. She's now the rogue cop, not Inui! She had a look at Akira's medical records without a warrant. Akira slowly learns what emotions are, now that his chip has been disabled. He visits his old elementary school with Emi. This is like a reverse <i>A Clockwork Orange</i>, where he'd been turned into a psychopath and had now turned back. The Lumberjack Monster kidnaps Emi to lure Akira to the old lab to which they'd both been kidnapped as children. The Lumberjack Monster had his neuro-chip disabled when Inui had knocked him about a few years back, when he was still Kenmochi and still a psychopath who'd killed his wife for the insurance money. Realizing the error of his artificially psychopathic ways, he's made it his mission to eliminate the rest of the neuro-chipped psychopaths. It's a bit complicated with Akira, though, who's already no longer a psychopath. Akira bests him in battle, but can't kill him. He had to admit to Emi, though, that he'd killed her father. He owes her a great debt, so he will not surgically alter himself back to a psychopath. They discuss whether it is worth it to live with the guilt and pain of all of the damage they'd done. The Lumberjack Monster reveals that he is Takeshi, a little boy who'd tried to save Akira from the surgery, when they were both children. <bq>Good luck with being human...Akira.</bq> Takeshi, though, cannot live with his pain and guilt. He flicks his cigarette into a pile of flammable chemicals after Akira has left with Emi. Toshiro visits Akira at the office, where she promises to bring him down eventually. His partner Sugitani is disappointed that Akira has refused the surgery to restore his psychopathy---he really wanted to operate on a human. A cat'll do, though. At home, Akira tries to patch things up with Emi. He is stunned to realize that she has stabbed him. He approaches her and chokes her but stops just after bruising her, giving her the excuse of self-defense. He dies on the floor, reciting from the Lumberjack Monster story. I was entertained. If you like Japanese police procedurals, it's a pretty straightforward one, in the end.</div> <span id="Dinner">Dinner in America (2020)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt9058654/">9/10</a> <div>Simon (Kyle Gallner) is a free spirit, an anarchist. He deals drugs. Moms love him. They kind of want to get with him. He has no trouble lying through his teeth. He does not follow rules. He sucks Xanax directly from his prescription bottle. He smokes. Ostentatiously. He's like Bender from <i>Breakfast Club</i>. He aggressively doesn't take any shit from society or its representatives. He is pretty punk, actually. At the bank, when the teller asks him for another form of ID, he tells her it's not a $100 bill and to <iq>just cash the fucking thing or [he'll] report her for discrimination</iq>. He gets his money; he doesn't have to show ID; he stalks up the street with an unlit cigarette in his face. In a diner, when he's making a scene, he tells another lady, <iq>Lady, you mind your own fuckin' business and you and me, we're gonna get along just fine.</iq> For every question he doesn't want to answer? <iq>Don't worry about it.</iq> He meets Patty (Emily Skeggs) when she declines to rat him out to the police, She is also a free spirit but in a less aggressively societally challenging way. People call her retard all the time, but she's not mentally handicapped. She just pretty much doesn't care what people think. She's on five different medications. She is an odd duck, with odd mannerisms, who can't believe that he would lie about missionary work in Tanzania. She is also very much into punk music. She masturbates to it, then takes a polaroid. She's not without her own edge. Simon discovers that she loves a legit punk band and starts to grudgingly respect her, thinking perhaps the book doesn't really match the cover. He doesn't like her flailing-around dance-style. She tells him how much she loves the lead singer, who always wears a ski mask on stage. She writes him love letters, to John Q. Public. Simon gets letters addressed to John Q. Public at his P.O. box. Now he realizes he's holing up in the house of a stan who's been sending him polaroids of herself masturbating to his music. He hightails it out of there. He hunts down his band members to tear them a new asshole for having signed up for a concert with a weak-ass headliner act. He wants to be punk; he doesn't want a big break. He wants to make a record without selling out. <bq quote-style="none"><b>Simon:</b> You don't wanna play to a sea of cellphones, do you? Bunch of pussies doin' the stand-and-stare. That's not what music is, is it?</bq> He's on the lam, so he heads back to Patty's house to bunk up with her younger brother Kevin (Griffin Gluck). This is not punk. But sitting out on the garage roof with Kevin, drinking a tallboy while Kevin smokes his first joint is. The next morning, Patty's looking for a job. When Simon asks for coffee, she says <iq>It's cold. I'm not supposed to have anything turned on when I'm alone in the house.</iq> We learn that there might be something wrong with her---or maybe it's just her very weird parents. <bq quote-style="none"><b>Simon:</b> What are you doin'? <b>Patty:</b> I'm looking for my purpose. <b>Simon:</b> Your purpose? <b>Patty:</b> Mom says I need to find my purpose now that I lost my job at the Pet Zone. <b>Patty:</b> Look, she circled all the good ones. <b>Simon:</b> Let me see that. Dishwasher? That's a shit job. <b>Patty:</b> Yeah, that's what I said but then Dad said maybe I could work my way up to the prep table. <b>Simon:</b> Oh my God. That's so fuckin' bleak it's making me lightheaded.</bq> New mission: get her severance check. Bus. They run into the assholes from the track team. One of them drops Simon like a bad habit. New mission: get his friend's truck and a baseball bat. License plate: 69URMOM. <iq>Get your polaroid, a trash bag, and meet me out back.</iq> New mission: get those track-star assholes back---they are truly horrific. Lure 'em with her wiles, drop 'em with a bat, strip 'em, burn their clothes, drop the dead cat on them, take a picture. Old mission: get the paycheck. They are getting shit done. At lunch, she's acting a lot less weird. Someone's treating her like a person. They share their first kiss. <bq quote-style="none"><b>Simon:</b> You're a real good kisser. I would not have guessed that. <b>Patty:</b> Thanks. I guess all my practice with Kevin paid off. <b>Simon:</b> [stares] <b>Patty:</b> Well, he's not my real brother. He's adopted. <b>Simon:</b> [stares] <b>Patty:</b> I'm just fucking with you. <b>Simon:</b> You need to take it down a notch.</bq> Montage at the arcade. Lots of skeeball tickets. Not enough for the big bear. He steals more tickets out of the machine. The bear's name is Chomby. They're at home. Kevin's high as f@&k. His girlfriend Jill is there. She's not wearing pants. Or underwear. She made brownies. Patty's parents Norm (Pat Healy) and Connie (Mary Lynn Rajskub) are high as f@&k too. <bq quote-style="none"><b>Patty:</b> Mom? Why aren't you and Dad wearing any pants? <b>Connie:</b> I'm not sure.</bq> New day, new mission. They break into a house. It's his stuff. His parents' house. He confesses that he's John Q. She doesn't believe him. He shows he the letters she'd sent to him. He loved them. He loved the "love poems" she sent to him. He loved the pictures. She jumps his bones. After, he plays for her. Now it's her turn. He wants her to sing one of her songs. She's good! It's good! <bq quote-style="none"><b>Simon:</b> [with tears in his eyes] That was tits. <b>Patty:</b> Is tits good? <b>Simon:</b> Yeah. Yeah. Tits is good.</bq> Simon's Mom shows up. They're at another meal. (Dinner in America, remember?) His family is the worst. He keeps his cool until his sister pokes fun at Patty for not knowing what a "pyro" is. Then he flips out. They're back in the truck. <bq quote-style="none"><b>Patty:</b> Simon? <b>Simon:</b> Yeah? <b>Patty:</b> Do you think I'm a retard? <b>Simon:</b> [screeches to a halt] Don't you ever talk like that. Ever. You are not a retard. You are a total punk rocker. <b>Simon:</b> Yes. You are punk as fuck. <b>Patty:</b> Can we listen to our song in here? <b>Simon:</b> Fuck yeah. Put that shit in the tape deck.</bq> They're at the secret show. The promoter of the other show is pissed. Simon will not compromise. He is punk. He is anarchy. He was no use for the music business. They can't get their hooks into him. Two of his band members give him up, showing the promoter that Simon's wanted by the police. Simon's on, shirtless, black balaclava. Small show. It reminds me of a <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_Slam" source="Wikipedia">Gothic Slam</a> show I went to a long time ago. Patty is having the time of her life. The cops show up. Instead of running away, he runs toward them, chasing his traitorous bassist. He's in the back of the squad car. <bq quote-style="none"><b>Patty:</b> Hey. I got your cigarettes. <b>Simon:</b> Aw, that's fuckin' tits. <b>Simon:</b> Sorry about this shitty fuckin' date. They don't get much worse than this. <b>Patty:</b> It's ok. I'm just happy I got to see you play.</bq> Chills.</div> <span id="Shrinking">Shrinking S02 (2024)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt15677150/">6/10</a> <div>I <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=5107#Shrinking">watched and reviewed season 1 earlier last year</a> and found it to be a reasonably solid show. The acting is good, the timing is good, and a reasonable amount of the dialogue is witty. It's a bit much at times, with nearly every conversation just filled to the brim with what I'm sure the writers would deem "sparkling wit" but real people don't talk in one-liners all the time and it's a bit tiring after a while. Still, it's a lot better than a lot of other stuff. I'm going to cite part of my review of season 1 because this summary goes double for season 2. <bq>I’m just going to break it to you: everyone in this show is pretty rich and they all spend so much time feeling kinda sorry for themselves, even though their lives are nearly infinitely better than everyone else’s. This is a common trend in the American zeitgeist: you are expected to be disappointed in your lot in life if anyone else is doing better than you or if anyone else gets anything that you don’t have. It’s a pretty nauseating moral stance but it’s becoming more and more evident to me that this is how the populace is being trained: so many TV shows are set up like this and people I’ve anecdotally talked to in the U.S. act like this too.</bq> In this season as in the last, the shittiest, most broken people are two of the supposed super-therapists. They really, really lean into the notion that people can be terrible and still be super-helpful in helping other people find their better selves. Those two people are the ostensible star of the show Jimmy (Jason Segal) and his co-worker, friend, and ex-lover Gaby (Jessica Williams). They are not relentlessly shitty, though. They're funny and fun and generally you'll not notice that they're shitty, until you actually pay attention to what they're doing---and what they're doing is, in large ways, <i>not OK</i> and their group of friends are horrible enablers. The show is also largely unaware of how biased toward the wealthy it is. The only people that it depicts as two-dimensional assholes with no history and no motivation and pure evil in their hearts are the construction workers, who are the only working-class people in the show. They're in two episodes. Everyone else in the show lives in a fantasy world enabled by their largely unexplained and unjustified wealth where everything they try works out and all of their problems are pretty much of their own making. Gaby outs herself as a person completely incapable of dealing with life when she aborts on letting her mom move in with her at the last possible second---after her ancient mother had already packed up her entire apartment. The immaturity is through the roof. Not only that, but she also proves utterly incapable of establishing a stable and loving relationship with Derrick #2 (Damon Wayans Jr.) because he wants her but doesn't <i>need</i> her. Her entire personality revolves around caring for people, so she can't be around people who don't need anything. This is red-flag, broken behavior for which she doesn't have to pay for very long because he forgives her pretty quickly. This show, in fact, is very much about forgiving very quickly, if not <i>instantaneously</i>. This is therapy? This is what you should expect from other people? You confess to them that you've done something horrible that very negatively affected their life and the expectation is that they forgive you <i>immediately</i>. If they don't? Then <i>they're the asshole.</i> The lessons taught by this show are incredibly damaging and selfish. Jimmy is such a terrible therapist and human being that he couldn't care less that his daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell) had discovered a broken human being in Louis (Brett Goldstein) and wanted not only to help him but also to let him help her get over the loss of her mother. Why can't Jimmy do that? Because Louis is the drunk driver who killed his wife and Alice's mother. So Jimmy can't get past it, because Louis now reminds him of what a terrible father he was for the year after his wife died. But he's a therapist! He has a duty to get help for people who are giving all indications that they're suicidal! He doesn't have to provide the guy with therapy, but it literally didn't occur to <i>any</i> of the star therapists in this show to help Louis. Not one of them, not even Paul (Harrison Ford). None of them have to personally care about him---hell, they can continue to hate him for having taken away Jimmy's wife---but they have a <i>duty</i> to see that he gets help. This is the equivalent of an E.R. doctor walking away from someone with a gunshot wound because they're an asshole. Honorable mentions for shittiness also go to Liz (Christa Miller), who revels in being a bitch---and all of her friends are enablers of it. Her budging in line is <i>not funny</i>. It's utter asshole-ery. She also cheated on her sweet, sweet Derrick #1 (Ted McGinley)---who's still the best character on the show---and then reasserted dominance and control soon enough (it's what Derrick wanted anyway, so that's OK). Maybe it's her awful, awful plastic surgery that I can't get past. She's mostly quite funny but, man, some of the stuff she does---like cutting the line at the food truck---is so wildly off-base and no-one cares. Alice is also a completely basic character, evincing almost no personality except "generic rich American teenager who hangs out only with adults." Her instinct to help Louis was good but the help was reciprocal---and she explained the relationship to her father as it helping <i>her</i> not it helping <i>him</i>. She also sleeps with her best friend's lover, even though she didn't want him when he was in love with her. This is shitty. No-one chastises her for it. Instead, it's her friend Summer who's treated like the slut who doesn't deserve any respect. Summer's a dumb joke whereas Alice is a brilliant angel. Throughout the show, we're treated to a parade of rich adults serving Alice's every whim, with no small amount of constant praise and presents flowing in her direction. The show completely and utterly normalizes teenagers being entitled to treating their parents like ATMs. It's like watching U.S. police procedurals that brainwash you into thinking that the Bill of Rights doesn't exist (see the <a href="#Sisters">review for Bad Sisters S02 below</a>). That's one form of propaganda. In this case, the show trains people to believe that their offspring can never have enough privilege, that they are in fact <i>entitled</i> to it. Louis starts off---and then ends---the season as the most obviously damaged person in need of actual, real help in order to keep himself from killing himself and they <i>all</i> ignore the signs throughout the show because they are so inordinately <i>selfish</i> and turned inward on themselves and the holy members of their clique. Within the clique? Oh, that's a warm womb of loving; outside of the womb? Those people don't exist. Literally a hangnail on a member of the clique is more important than people starving in the street. This is the lesson we learn from this show. At the end of the show, after Louis almost throws himself in front of a train after having been abandoned not only by the clique but also by the friends he'd made at the café where he works, Apple had the <i>absolute gall</i> to show a message about reaching out and helping people who look like they need help. Are you kidding me!?! You just showed your entire inordinately wealthy cast completely ignore a million warning signs that it is their <i>literal job</i> to notice and respond to. WTF. Paul is quite good; Julie (Wendy Malick) is pretty good, even though her personality at this point is to be equivocal about everything and never, ever find anything that the irascible Paul does to be ... well ... irascible. Sean's very funny and seems to be completely healed to the point where Jimmy looks like an utter hopeless idiot next to the poised, rational being that is Sean. Brian (Michael Urie) is still great. He's consistently hilarious. He and his husband Charlie (Devin Kawaoka) are looking to adopt, which is one of the plot threads. Getting to know Louis is another plot thread. Jimmy's nearly unbelievable inability to get his legs under him after two years is another plot thread. Alice's being put on a pedestal by everyone she knows is another plot thread. Sean (Luke Tennie) reconciling with his father and running a food truck with him is another. Liz cheating on Derrick and them coming through it stronger is another. Gaby starting teaching but being utterly incapable of having an adult relationship is another. I think that's all that happened. As in the first season, it's a sometimes-blinding flurry of activity and one-liners and <i>stuff</i>. I laughed out loud a few times, though. It's fine. It's just tiresome sometimes watching shows that are so lazily inconsistent, so obviously pushing an agenda of which the writers aren't even aware. It's about a bunch of rich people who don't even know that they're rich. You should see their homes! Incredible! Just accepted as normal that this is how people live. And I have to reiterate that this is a show about the best therapists ever but Jimmy is still <i>just as broken</i> two years later despite his being surrounded only by loving people and many of those being incredible therapists. Is that the point they're making about therapy? That it takes <i>years</i> to make <i>zero progress</i> no matter how much money you pay or how many good people you have in your life? That's pretty bleak.</div> <span id="Taxi">Taxi Driver (1976)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075314/">8/10</a> <div>Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) signs up to drive a cab because he can't sleep anyway. He takes the 6PM to 6AM shift. He's obsessed with Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who works with Tom (Albert Brooks) at the campaign office of presidential candidate Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris). He crashes the place and his forthright oddness charms her into meeting him for lunch. She continues to be intrigued by his off-putting but unique manner. Something is off but she doesn't seem to mind so much. Can we spend a few seconds just thinking about how gorgeous Cybill Shepherd is? My God, what a natural beauty. It's no wonder he couldn't stop stalking her. Not that it was OK. They move on from lunch to a movie date. He takes her to a porno theater. That's the only kind of movie he knows and he thought it was perfectly appropriate to take her there on a first date. He convinces her to go inside, saying that there are a lot of couples who go. It looks like a Swedish sex-education qua porn film. This was probably true in the mid-70s, at least to some degree. There <i>were</i> actually other couples in there, though. Anyway, Betsy bails. Bickle meets up at night with other cab drivers, like motormouth Wizard (Peter Boyle), Charlie T. (Norman Matlock), and Doughboy (Harry Northup), but they're not really great friends with him. He's either in his cab, in his small apartment, or watching porn. He's a Vietnam War veteran---no details given other than that he was in the Marines---and he's deeply lonely and bored. He obviously has PTSD. He's only 26 years old and he doesn't have any of the skills he needs to navigate a society outside of where he currently is. He's too unsettling, and not smart enough to be that unsettling. It backfires on him with Betsy when he falls back on a more direct approach. Travis Bickle's loneliness reminded me a bit of Arthur Fleck, although Fleck spent more of his own film being pathetic and pitiable. Travis is about on the maturity level of Holden Caulfield from <i>Catcher in the Rye</i>. At one point, on his route, an obviously underaged prostitute tries to escape in his cab. Her pimp drags her back out of the car and throws Travis a filthy $20-dollar bill. Her name is Iris (Jodie Foster) and his name is Sport (Harvey Keitel). Travis is obviously conflicted, feeling like he should have helped her. The thought simmers. He finds Sport and pays for time with Iris. She's enthusiastic but he tells her he only wants to help her. She's kind of mystified but agrees to see him for breakfast. At breakfast, she's got a great pair of green sunglasses on, while they talk about going to a commune in Vermont. She switches out to pink sunglasses. Jodie Foster is a natural, and she was only 14 at the time. After Betsy stops seeing him---which she'd only been doing for a couple of dates---Travis gives in to the dark thoughts that he'd confessed to Wizard. He meets with Andy (Steven Prince) to buy a gun. Andy gives us a wonderful introduction to the various weapons. Travis buys four of them, plus a giant holster for the .44 Magnum. Travis is a tiny person; even Betsy towered over him. He's very thin, rangy---wiry. (In this way, he's also very much like Arthur Fleck.) He starts working out again: clap push-ups, chin-ups, etc. He hits the gun range with all of his guns. He practices pulling his guns from the various holsters secreted about his body, including a knife he tapes to his cowboy boot. He's ready to go. He hits a campaign event, probably to see what it feels like to be out in public with his arsenal strapped to his body, under his oversized military coat. His entire interaction with the Secret Service officer at Palantine's campaign stop is so disturbing and unsettling that it's not wonder that all of the alarm bells were going off. He cannot even tell that he is utterly incapable of holding a conversation with anyone who's not like his crazy cabbie colleagues. He descends deeper into darkness. He's shaved his head into a mohawk. He's sent a bunch of money to Iris to escape from Sport. He writes to her that he will almost certainly be dead by the time she gets it. He's ready. He heads to another campaign event, looking for his chance. He hurries through the crowd, hand seeking a pistol inside his jacket. The Secret Service sees him and gives chase. He is outtathere, getting away easily. Not wanting to waste a good arsenal and all of his training and preparation, Later that night, Travis heads off to save Iris. This is absolutely not like a modern-day fight scene. There's a lot of blood and a lot of grittiness. He shoots Sport, then Sport's sleazy partner. He takes damage. He goes upstairs, with both of the other guys coming back to hit him again. There is no doubt that people are feeling bullet wounds. Travis stumbles upstairs and encounters Iris's current john, who shoots him point-blank in the shoulder. Travis shoots him in the face, dropping him through Iris's door. He follows him in, getting tackled by Sport's partner again, then shooting him point-blank in the face, while Iris screams her head off. On his knees, Travis places his own gun under his chin and clicks his way through two empty pistols before lying back on the sofa, either exhausted or dead. The police arrive and see him. His eyes open to slits; his head tips briefly up; he lets it fall back to the sofa again, clearly uninterested in what comes next, almost hoping that they'll shoot him. They do not. He's not dead. He's a hero. We see adulatory newspaper clippings. The media neither knows nor cares that he'd almost shot a presidential candidate. Neither does it know nor care that he tried to kill himself. None of that fits the story. Iris's father reads a letter to him in voiceover, thanking him for having sent his girl home. He's a hero. Travis has found a new high---he has society's appreciation for having rescued a child prostitute. Little does anyone know that he's no less crazy for it. He could just as easily have shot up the campaign stop, killing a presidential candidate and possibly a whole bunch of innocent bystanders. Instead, he managed to shoot two pimps and a what looks like a cop who'd been visiting an underage prostitute. After he's healed and back at his job, Betsy gets in his cab. He just takes her home but doesn't take her money, instead just favoring her with his unsettling grin. Why was she there? Because he's famous? The film leaves that open. I don't think he lost interest because she was kind of a star-fucker, though, but because he'd found a different way to scratch his particular mental itches. He was probably fine...for now. It would probably be a while before he would have to go back to the well, to get another bump of adulation from an adoring public. There is, of course, no guarantee that this is how it will work out the next time. I've read that some would describe him as having had an existential crisis but that's almost too high-falutin' a description. He has no place in society. There is nearly no way for him to bridge the immense gap between what he is and the bare minimum that society expects from a person. He's a time bomb, driving the streets, probably only one of many. The film showed us so many dark and depressed characters, so much suffering, so much depravity. He is not alone. There are Bickles around every corner., living <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden">lives of quiet desperation.</a></div> </dl> <hr> <ft>These are notes for me to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. The amount of text is not proportional to my enjoyment. I might write less because I didn't get around to it when it was fresh in my mind. I rate the film based on how well it suited me personally for the <i>genre</i>, my mood and. let's be honest, level of intoxication. I make no attempt to avoid <b>spoilers</b>. Links are to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/user/ur1323291/ratings">my IMDb ratings</a></ft> <ft>I hadn't seen a Jarmusch movie since <a href="https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=2462#Broken">Broken Broken</a> but in <i>that</i> review from 13 years ago, I was already complaining about how bad <i>Coffee and Cigarettes</i> was. I mentioned that Alfred Molina was very good, though, so maybe a re-watching is in order.</ft>