Ian Thomas Malone's Blog

Academic research is often described as carving a new niche between two thoroughly explored subjects. Outside of medicine, the sciences, and a few other fields, people who arrive to grad school looking to break ground in the wild west are frequently met with disappointment, instead expected to cater to the norm. Conformity takes a lot of fun out of the whole adventure.

Hollywood functions in much the same way, especially toward its long-running franchises. Filmmakers are not supposed to reinvent the wheel so much as give their audiences a slightly fresh perspective on the wheel they already know and love. Director Dan Trachtenberg found that sweet spot with 2022’s Prey, a delightfully unique perspective on the Predator franchise, quite a feat for the seventh entry in the series (counting the two Alien vs. Predator films).

After directing the animated feature Predator: Killer of Killers, which was released this past June, Trachtenberg returns for his third go-around with Predator: Badlands, a film that flips the original concept. Once the big bad, the titular Yautja are now the protagonists.

Badlands follows Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), the runt of his clan. Weakness is not exactly tolerated among predators, but Dek’s older brother Kwei (Mike Homik) shows some rare mercy toward his sibling, angering their father Njohrr (Reuben de Jong). After Kwei refuses his father’s orders to kill Dek, Njohrr executes him instead. Desperate to prove he belongs in his clan, Dek travels to the “death planet” Genna to kill the fearsome Kalisk.

Once on the inhospitable planet, Dek meets Thia (Elle Fanning), an android from the Weyland-Yutani corporation (who make all the synthetics in the Alien franchise), who’s missing her bottom half. Thia also misses her sister Tessa (also Fanning), the leader of the synth team dispatched to Genna, also hunting the Kalisk. Despite his species’ inclination for solitude, Dek teams up with the non-person to hunt his prey, dreaming of revenge against his father.

Trachtenberg frequently demonstrates his deep comprehension of the franchise. Clocking in at 107-minutes, the narrative moves briskly through its paint-by-numbers plot. The pacing is quite strong, if not a little formulaic.

 Schuster-Koloamatangi walks a fine line with Dek quite well. Badlands is the first Predator film to earn a PG-13 rating. The lack of gore and extreme violence does come with some unnecessary cutesy antics, but Dek is a relatable protagonist. The film doesn’t go for full Terminator 2 cartoonish antics for its villain-turned-lead.

Fanning is the real core of the film, carving a niche for Thia that’s quite different from the synths who have come before in previous Alien films. Found family is predictably a major theme of the narrative. Badlands has zero human characters, though the film can’t really help but filter its musings on identity through a distinctly human lens.

It’s hard not to be won over by Fanning’s relentless sense of earnestness. The film isn’t afraid to wear its emotions on its sleeve. Much like its synths, there is a perpetual sense of artificialness to the narrative’s sense of heart. Trachtenberg is moving too quickly to give his work much of a chance to breathe.

The action work is quite strong, particularly in the first two acts. Trachtenberg blends practical effects and CGI quite well. Things come a little undone in the third act. Everything is a bit too predictable. The final action sequences lack any real sense of suspense.

The film’s big issue is that Dek and Thia are both about 80% of fully fleshed out characters. They’re easy to bond with, not necessarily because of the work of the film, but because we’ve seen these types of characters before. Both actors put forth fine work, but the whole experience is a little too cookie-cutter.

Trachtenberg delivers a solid popcorn film, entertaining work that falls well short of what we know he’s capable of. One might have hoped he’d swing a little harder for the fences after the treat that was Prey. Instead, we’re left with something perfectly content to be aggressively fine. The lazy third act is essentially a metaphor for the whole film: just good enough.

Nobody necessarily expects greatness from a franchise eight films in. Prey delivered that, when no one expected it. As a series, Predator hasn’t exactly hit the high watermarks of its companion franchise, Alien, whose first two installments were directed by Ridley Scott and James Cameron at the top of their games.

 Badlands is a fun time. It’s an extremely competent film, an accolade that shouldn’t feel like an insult for a narrative that never once tried for greatness. The bar could have been raised after Prey. One can’t help but wonder why it wasn’t.

The post ‘Predator: Badlands’ review: a very solid, safe entry in the long-running franchise appeared first on Ian Thomas Malone.

The world of Tron is not exactly Shakespearean in nature, but Disney’s handling of its enigmatic science fiction franchise over the past forty years has been nothing shy of a tragedy. The Grid is such a delectable palette for creative storytelling, something that no filmmaker who’s touched the material has ever quite figured out. The same pattern emerges through the decades. Tron hits theaters, impresses with its visuals, bores with its plot, and makes just enough money that someone considers bringing it out of hibernation every few decades.

Tron: Ares tries to set itself apart from its predecessors, at least on the surface, with its preoccupation with the real world rather than The Grid. Fifteen years have passed since the events of Tron: Legacy. ENCOM is in a technology race with Dillinger Systems, founded by former ENCOM executive and original Tron tertiary villain Ed Dillinger. Dillinger Systems is now run by Ed’s grandson Julian (Evan Peters), who courts the military with his new Master Control Program (MCP), Ares (Jared Leto).

While Dillinger Systems and ENCOM are both capable of bringing their digital constructs into reality, essentially a reverse of the technology that sends humans to The Grid, neither can do so for longer than 29 minutes. New ENCOM CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee) and her assistant Seth (Arturo Castro) travel to a remote Alaskan bunker once used by Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) in search of the “permanence code” that would remove the 29-minute limitation.

Julian sends Ares and his second-in-command, Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith), to capture hacked ENCOM and capture Eve, in search of the permanence code. Along the way, Ares starts to develop a conscience, realizing that Dillinger Systems is the bad kind of capitalism, while ENCOM is the more benevolent corporation. Ares and Eve team up, escape the Dillinger version of the Grid, and try to learn a bit about humanity as they run around trying to evade Athena.

Ares spent about fifteen years in development, much of it as a direct sequel to Legacy, before being redeveloped around Leto’s character. The Legacy screenwriters, Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, received a story credit for Ares. The finished product puts quite a bit of distance between itself and Legacy, while clinging hard to the original 1982 Tron.

Director Joachim Rønning is put in the untenable position of having to craft his own narrative that never really lets you forget it relies on Tron’s broader lore. Casual fans may not remember Dillinger much, but the constant references to the Flynn family do no favors to Ares’ bloated cast of cardboard human characters. Peters does a serviceable job as a generic evil billionaire, a bargain bin Lex Luthor.

Lee exists in this weird space where Eve is the lead human character, and basically the de facto protagonist. Ares is clearly meant to be Leto’s vehicle. Rønning provides some basic slivers of plot to try to endear his audience to Eve, but Lee is never really afforded a chance to make the character her own. It’s as if Disney realized that Legacy managed to stand upright without a particularly memorable lead performance from Garrett Hedlund as Sam Flynn, and decided that Eve similarly didn’t have to do much either.

Leto fully immerses himself in the role of a computer program desperate to be a real boy. He is a very believable soulless construct. He even has a few slivers of charm here and there, but the film suffers from an uneven point of view. This film is less Eve’s or Ares’ than a paint-by-numbers action flick capable of going through the motions, but never really making them feel alive.

Gillian Anderson is largely wasted in a supporting role as Julian’s mother Elisabeth. The rest of the supporting cast put forth an eager effort, but the film suffers from way too many characters. Turner-Smith is perhaps the one actor who seems to know this is supposed to be a Tron movie. Athena is a lot of fun.

Both Tron and Tron: Legacy suffered from uneven storytelling, requiring state-of-the-art visuals and stellar scores to carry their narratives. Rønning delivers the visuals. Ares is a beautiful sight to behold on the big screen. Nine Inch Nails put forth a superb musical effort that would almost justify Ares’ existence as an extended music video, paying homage to the ground trodden by Wendy Carlos and Daft Punk while carving out their own niche. The music is pretty much the only original thing Ares has going for it.

The film’s original sin is its preoccupation with the real world. People don’t wait decades to watch programs fight in cities. Tron’s real treasure is The Grid. Ares barely cares about The Grid.

If the screenwriters didn’t know how to tell a good story in The Grid, they’d hardly be the first. This is not a franchise known for its meaty plots. Ares had fifteen years to fix the narrative shortcomings of Legacy, a film that in spite of that gaping hole, and Hedlund’s forgettable lead performance, had plenty of things going for it. It’s frankly pathetic that this is what they came up with.

The result is indistinguishable from the AI it nominally critiques, empty slop poured into its audience’s feed trough. Rarely does a major blockbuster rely so heavily on its composers to add any semblance of creative expression to such a lifeless corpse. There are way too many scenes that drag for an action film that clocks in at just under two hours.

Even Bridges feels fairly checked out amidst the film’s finest sequence, well-executed nostalgia bait for diehards of the original Tron. There’s much more of The Dude in his performance than Flynn, which might be the right attitude to bring to this disaster. The third act is far too pleased to give its audience slivers of what would have been a far more interesting movie.

Tron has never been prestige art. Tron and Tron: Legacy are both deeply flawed narratives that succeeded due to the ample heart that went into both productions. Those films brought something new to the table. They had something to say.

Ares is often very pretty. The music is wonderful. Yet again, this franchise was let down by its screenwriters. It’s taken forty years to make three Tron movies. Maybe in another forty years, we’ll get one with a decent plot.

The post ‘Tron: Ares’ review: pathetic slop sprinkled with pretty visuals and a killer score appeared first on Ian Thomas Malone.

The work of Thomas Pynchon has always captured the zeitgeist of American culture through the most absurd lens possible, blending the eloquence of writers like Vladimir Nabokov with the gonzo realism of Hunter S. Thompson. Pynchon finds calm in the chaos, a rare talent that Paul Thomas Anderson has repeatedly demonstrated throughout his extensive career, particularly in his more sprawling epics such as Magnolia and There Will Be Blood.

Anderson has adapted Pynchon before, last in 2014’s Inherent Vice, an admirable adaptation of a late-stage effort from the reclusive author. With One Battle After Another, Anderson presents a loose take on Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, which focused on Nixon-era underground activists coping with the realities of Reagan’s America. The overreaches of the DEA have been replaced with ICE, a timely modern touch that doesn’t sacrifice the atmosphere that Pynchon delicately crafted.

Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a somewhat hapless member of a radical far-left group known as the French 75, which uses guerrilla tactics to liberate immigrants and bomb courthouses and politicians’ offices. Bob’s partner, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) is a natural leader among the French 75, outgoing and relentlessly committed to the cause, a dynamic that puts strain on her relationship with Bob after they have a child.

Perfidia becomes entangled with Col. Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), who she first captures and teases while he’s in command of an immigrant detention facility. Aroused by her handling of him, Lockjaw becomes infatuated with Perfidia, eventually sleeping with her after he catches her planting a bomb in a courthouse. Lockjaw is being courted by the Christmas Adventures Club, a secret society of powerful white supremacists who take issue with his relationship with Perfidia, who’s eventually captured by the authorities, but escapes a cozy witness protection assignment set up by Lockjaw himself.

Sixteen years later, Bob is retired from his revolutionary days. His daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) takes after her mother, whose past as a rat was kept from her. Willa trains in karate at the dojo of Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro), a softer-spoken member of the French 75.

The film’s primary action is set into motion when the Christmas Adventures Club begins its vetting of Lockjaw, who denies ever having been in an interracial relationship. Lockjaw hires a private investigator to track down Willa, whom he suspects might be his daughter, triggering the safety protocols of the French 75. Long-retired and addicted to substance abuse, Bob struggles with the number of passwords and codes required to engage with his old group, all while trying to protect his daughter and only family.

Anderson’s great triumph is the way he crafts a sweeping odyssey rooted in an intimate crime thriller. It’s a game of cat and mouse that feels like it completely captures the rot of this decrepit nation. Everything wrong with America is somehow encapsulated between an old racist and a middle-aged leftist burnout chasing each other around a tiny West Coast sanctuary city.

DiCaprio is not known for playing bums. Bob is not a hero. He’s not smart. His charm has faded, a sad burnout, left to raise his kid after the love of his life abandoned him. Bob is hardly the driving force of One Battle After Another, but Leo never lets the audience forget why he’s still one of the few legitimate stars left in the business. He’s not playing a particularly interesting or compelling man, and yet DiCaprio still manages to put forth one of the strongest performances of his career.

After the first act, which focuses on Taylor as the center of gravity, Penn and Infiniti provide most of the film’s emotional core. Lockjaw is a despicable scumbag, but Penn works his magic in a way that almost has you feeling sorry for this pathetic nothing of a racist. Lockjaw is a thoroughly Pynchonesque creation, an ugly creature who’s nevertheless quite captivating to watch.

Flanked on all sides by A-list talent, Infiniti makes the film her own. In many ways, she’s a Gen Z rebel without a cause, her DNA full of revolutionary sympathies repressed under the tutelage of a father who desperately wants his daughter to avoid that kind of life. Anyone who’s ever felt the inherent urge to belong to something bigger than themselves can find a kindred spirit in Willa.

The cinematography is simply delicious. Director of photography Michael Bauman did a fabulous job capturing the sprawling Californian landscape. Johnny Greenwood’s score often feels like a metronome guiding Anderson’s epic.

The 162-minute runtime never drags. Perhaps more impressive is the way that Anderson never exhausts his audience through many action sequences that never really let up. There’s almost no downtime in the film. Pynchon’s work is commonly exhausting. Even his shorter works, like The Crying of Lot 49, are complex puzzles bound to tire out their readers. Somehow, Anderson channels his muse perfectly without leaving viewers completely drained in the process.

Perhaps owing to its source material’s age, but Anderson manages to make a political film that feels prescient without being overly steeped in current events. Its subjects are not politically eloquent people. ICE’s overreaches have been an issue in this country since before Vineland was first published in 1990. The film is less an indictment of Trump than a scathing rebuke of everything wrong that’s happened to this nation since Reagan announced it was morning in America, ushering in the “Greed is Good” era that’s never really gone away.

One Battle After Another isn’t just Anderson’s best work since The Master. It’s a vital demonstration of Hollywood filmmaking as legitimate art. Anderson and Pynchon’s fingerprints are all over every minute of this feature, but it feels fresh and potent.

This film is something audiences have been starving for. Anderson isn’t playing safe with right-wing snowflakes, desperate to cancel anyone who dares to call out their bigoted nonsense. Neither does he throw about masturbatory red meat to a liberal audience bound to laugh as fools like Lockjaw.

It’s all Pynchon in a nutshell. It’s crazy. You never know what’s going to happen next, or how the characters will surprise you, but it’s all crafted with such obvious love and attention to detail.

Popular culture under late-stage capitalism is all about giving its audiences less for more. Everything is more expensive, and much of it is worse. Film studios are filling their feed troughs with AI slop that no one with half a brain would enjoy. Capitalism thrives when it’s able to mildly satiate its feeble consumer base, all too content with its substance-free diet.

That’s never been Pynchon’s jam or Anderson’s. Sitting in a movie theater, watching everything play out on a big screen, One Battle After Another reminds us of this medium’s innate ability to move people when studios get out of the way, get over their own egos, and let their talent cook. Anderson’s tour de force is easily one of the best films of the year.  The famously reclusive Pynchon would never do an interview to admit it, but it’s hard to believe he’s not smiling somewhere about how beautifully his work came to life.

The post ‘One Battle After Another’ review: Anderson’s masterpiece is a strong contender for the best film of 2025 appeared first on Ian Thomas Malone.

Comedy sequels are tricky for an obvious reason. Just because something was funny once doesn’t mean it’ll be funny again. In fact, if something was already once, that’s a decent sign that it won’t be funny again. In general, the laws of diminishing returns affect comedies way more than drama.

This is Spinal Tap is one of the most beloved comedies of all time. What began as a satire of the music industry eventually took on a life of its own, with numerous reunion concerts, television appearances, and a few albums since the film’s 1984 premiere. Somewhere along the way, the lines became blurred and Spinal Tap became something of a real band, a reality that defines and plagues the follow-up film.

This is Spinal Tap was an early entry in the mockumentary genre, but the film had a real plot and a real narrative. Director Rob Reiner crafted something that felt like an actual rock documentary while never losing sight of its purpose as a comedy. Band members like David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) thought they were cool, but Reiner made clear to the audience that these people were washed-up losers. The exploration of their humanity gave the film an endearing quality that greatly added to its legacy.

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is much more like a straight concert documentary. The film reunites the main trio, St. Hubbins, Tufnel, and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) in New Orleans for a reunion in New Orleans, billed as their final show. The three have drifted apart in the past few decades, each pursuing other interests. St. Hubbins scores podcast music, Tufnel runs a guitar and cheese store, and Smalls operates a Museum of Glue. None of them has much affection for each other, a puzzling dynamic that remains underexplored throughout the narrative.

Much of the film centers around Tap practicing for their reunion show, jamming in a studio, mostly sitting in chairs. It’s kind of sweet, to a certain extent, watching old friends at it again after forty years. Guest in particular retains a healthy dose of that boyish charm he brought to Tufnel.

There are a few laughs to be found in the studio, particularly when it comes time to find a new drummer, a perilous task given the fate of all their other percussionists. The stagnancy drags. It’s neither funny nor particularly interesting to watch semi-pretend musicians rehearse for a semi-pretend concert. Against all odds, Reiner managed to make an 85-minute runtime feel like three hours, a painful slog that drags its way to the finish line.

Reiner, who reprises his role as fictional director Marty Di Bergi, seems quite bored throughout the endeavor, as does Guest, who struggles to muster up enthusiasm in many scenes past the first few minutes. This is Spinal Tap was Reiner’s first directorial effort. It’s understandable why he has such obvious love for the material, but that affection doesn’t translate well onto the finished product.

Two cameos from Paul McCartney and Elton John attempt to liven things up, while also highlighting a fundamental problem of the film. At one point during the original film, David gets angry when Spinal Tap is billed lower than a puppet show at a gig at an amusement park. Spinal Tap used to be pathetic. Now, musical icons want to play with them.

Spinal Tap’s extended victory tour would be more acceptable if this film had tried to include more actual jokes. There are a couple of gags here and there, but nowhere near enough to pad out a feature-length runtime.  The improv doesn’t work at all. McCartney, in particular, looks like a deer in the headlights when it comes to humor. Elton fares a bit better in a smaller appearance.

Did the world need another Spinal Tap film? No, but the music industry has changed quite a lot since we last checked in with the band. There was ample material to make a sequel. Reiner and crew just settled for the laziest path imaginable. There is some novelty in seeing them all on the big screen again, but this was a pathetic showing from the creative crew behind some of the greatest comedies of the past forty years. Everyone deserves better.

The post ‘Spinal Tap II: The End Continues’ review: a meager attempt at a sequel appeared first on Ian Thomas Malone.

Change has always been at the core of the Downton Abbey franchise. There is a certain natural contrast between its themes of navigating the post-Edwardian era and the reality that much of the best drama occurs within the trappings of that old world audiences know and love. After fifteen years, six television seasons, and three movies, the time has finally come to say goodbye, for presumably the last time.

Set at the beginning of the 1930s, not all that long after the events of the final season, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale centers its narrative on Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) as she assumes command of the estate. Lady Mary’s ascension has been a long time coming, first discussed in season four. The death of Lady Mary’s husband Matthew (Dan Stevens) upended both the planning for Downton’s future within the show, as well as the series itself, which had to work around Stevens’ unexpected departure.

For the second half of the series, Lady Mary spent much of her narrative consumed with new suitors. After spending most of seasons four and five caught between two men, writer/series creator Julian Fellowes threw a curveball at the tail end of season five with the introduction of Henry Talbot (Matthew Goode). Lady Mary and Henry enjoyed a truncated romance throughout much of season six before marrying at the tail end of the series.

There was always a certain irony in Mary ending up with a car enthusiast after her first husband perished in a car accident during the season three Christmas special, an event that spoiled many viewers’ holiday. Three movies in, one can’t shake the feeling that déjà vu occurred once again while casting Mary’s spouse. One might have thought that the most important consideration for picking Mary’s second husband would be availability for the films that were an open secret by the show’s final season.

Instead, Fellowes settled on Goode, a highly sought-after actor with a schedule far too busy to play arm candy to Lady Mary. In some ways, this ended up working out kind of well. Henry’s minuscule part in the first Downton Abbey film and complete omission from the second two films might be disappointing for those who enjoyed the awkward pairing of Mary and Henry, but his absence gave the films some natural drama missing from the show finale’s preoccupation with tying everything in a neat little bow.

The Grand Finale largely focuses its narrative on the fallout of Mary’s divorce from Henry. Banished from London society, Mary seeks solace in her familiar Yorkshire, which is not immune to snobbery of its own. Set not long after the events of Downton Abbey: A New Era, Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) is still reeling from his mother’s death, unsure of his place in the world he’s given his life to preserving, resisting the gentle guidance of his wife Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) to relax in his old age.

Cora’s own mother passed away offscreen in between films. Expecting some of her inheritance to cover construction on the estate, Cora is shocked when her brother Harold Levinson (Paul Giamatti, reprising his role from the season four Christmas special) arrives in London with a poor financial outlook. Harold also brought his enigmatic financial advisor, Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola), to explain his poor business dealings, which has been a recurring pattern for him since season four.

The final chapter has much more modest trappings than its cinematic predecessors. There’s no marquee event like a visit from the King or a mysterious French villa gifted to a dying octogenarian anchoring the narrative. Instead, Fellowes’ modest intentions serve as more of an extended episode of the series, a well-deserved victory lap.

Fellowes takes great care to ensure that each member of the franchise’s large ensemble gets a moment to shine. There are a few storylines that harken back to the show’s early days. Major events like World War I and the Spanish flu happened during the series, alongside more modest conflicts, like stomping out favoritism in the village Flower Show or whether a lady’s maid could still prepare a restorative broth. The Grand Finale manages to recapture some of the fun of the show’s early days as it wraps up storylines for over a dozen characters.

The shadow of the franchise’s matriarch and apex predator Violet Crawley looms large over the film. Maggie Smith is sorely missed. While nobody can replace her searing wit, Fellowes includes several tributes to the Dowager throughout the narrative. Fans of her frequent sparring with Isobel Crawley, the new Lady Merton (Penelope Wilton) will find much to enjoy.

While the film finds space for the whole cast, The Grand Finale is a lot less forcibly egalitarian than the first two films. This is Lady Mary’s film. Edith (Laura Carmichael) and Tom (Allen Leech) see their roles drastically reduced, the latter functioning in little more than a cameo. There’s a few touching moments for the older servants approaching the age of retirement, though the film conveniently forgets all that time spent on bed and breakfast investments from the final two seasons.

One of Fellowes’ finest achievements in the series was his portrayal of the Crawleys as quiet allies of the gay community. Series archvillain turned sympathetic hero Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier) struggled to accept his sexuality for much of the franchise, ultimately finding acceptance with actor Guy Dexter (Dominic West) in the previous film, resigning his role as butler of Downton. At a time when LGBTQ rights are under immense attack around the world, Fellowes finds ample beauty in his portrayal of the 1930s aristocracy as far more accepting than their modern counterparts.

Acceptance is an issue at the heart of The Grand Finale. Used to being the center of attention, Lady Mary struggles with her new outcast status as a divorcee in a world governed by tradition. Lord Grantham struggles to accept that his old world is gone. 

There is a little awkwardness to be found at the heart of the drama. Mary is exiled from London society, yet expected to take the reins of an estate from her still-living father. There is a small acknowledgement that earls are no longer treated like village kings and queens, but Fellowes crafts a story that’s pretty damning to the concept of primogeniture amidst a narrative that still upholds the idealistic nature of country estate life.

Downton Abbey has always favored soapy storylines instead of serious drama, but missing from this film is an implicit defense of Downton as an estate. The series spent most of its run defending Downton as a place of employment, something even the first film managed to squeeze in late in its runtime. Free of her occasional nastiness, Fellowes firmly establishes Mary as a figure worth championing, but is Downton itself a cause worth championing? The film leaves a lot of food for thought on that front.

The pacing is a bit off throughout much of the film. Characters blow through scenes, speaking their lines without much of a chance to breathe. The 124-minute runtime is nearly identical to the first two films, only a bit longer than the Christmas specials that bookended each season after the first. An additional ten minutes would’ve given several scenes a much-needed chance to breathe.

As a franchise, Downton Abbey started wrapping itself up all the way back in season five. With that in mind, The Grand Finale didn’t have a ton of loose ends to tie up, besides the strands of plot that came loose from the last finale. Life is messy.

Downton Abbey took some turns that were out of Fellowes’ control, cast members whose absences had immutable effects on the narrative. Like its characters, the show managed to adapt. The Grand Finale is a triumph for the franchise and all its characters we’ve grown to love. Above all else, it’s a lot of fun to spend another few hours in this delightful world.

The post ‘Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale’ review: a satisfying victory lap for the Crawley family appeared first on Ian Thomas Malone.

There is a period of time in many young people’s lives where they grapple with the mechanics of the society around them, often interjecting the material they studied in school into their idealistic view of how society should work. Much of it is nonsense. The exercise often grows old around the same time you realize that the kids at the kegger don’t care about some long-dead French socialist.

Whit Stillman’s 1990 debut film Metropolitan centers its narrative around an odious, mostly harmless group of college students bored on winter break. Tom Townsend (Edward Clements) is a middle-class outsider making his way through Princeton. Tom hates high society, particularly debutante balls, but attends one anyway. A chance encounter lumps Tom in with a social group known as the Sally Fowler Rat Pack, who mostly attend balls and spend all night talking about philosophy and other idle musings.

Tom begins to shed his anti-bourgeoisie feelings as a result of the newfound attention bestowed on him by members of the SFRP, who largely adopt him into their group out of boredom, and a shortage of male escorts for the ball. Tom looks up to Nick Smith (Christopher Eigeman), one of the more outspoken and opinionated members of the group, who paints a bleak outlook for their generation. One girl in the group, Audrey (Carolyn Farina) grows attracted to Tom, who’s still hung up on his ex, Serena (Ellia Thompson), a friend of many of the women in the SFRP. Tom’s introduction into the group is met with suspicion by a few, namely Jane (Allison Parisi), who is extra defensive of Audrey.

Produced with a budget of just over $200,000, Stillman largely relies on his script and his actors to propel the narrative. Most of the scenes take place in apartments or on the peripherals of debutante balls. Eigeman and Parisi propel much of the story, both possessing large personalities capable of finding ample nuance in largely repetitive scenes. Clements, who never acted again aside from a small role in Star Trek IV: The Undiscovered County, fully embodies the awkward, aloof Tom, a young man who struggles to get enough of the very thing he claimed to hate.

The work of Jane Austen supplies a steady backdrop for Tom and the rest of the characters. Audrey is a huge Austen fan. Tom dumps on Austen’s work without having read it himself, instead relying on literary criticism to supply him with the opinions he thinks he’s supposed to have, without any sense of irony.

Stillman finds plenty of subtleties that elevate Metropolitan above a standard comedy of manners, able to engage earnestly with the concerns of youth without ever bending to the self-importance of his characters. The members of the SFRP are all experiencing their first small taste of freedom. That kind of liberation can go to one’s head rather easily. Stillman doesn’t fall for the superficialities of youth, instead opting for a more subtle approach that manages to supply some meaning for all the time spent discussing philosophy in the middle of the night.

The characters in Metropolitan often feel like a stretch of winter break is the most important part of their lives. Stillman handles them with grace without expecting his audience to buy into their nonsense. Metropolitan is not exactly life-changing cinema, but there’s a lot of heart in Stillman’s examination of the junior members of the bourgeoisie.

The post Classic Film: Metropolitan appeared first on Ian Thomas Malone.

One of film’s disquieting pleasures is the way the medium offers its viewers the chance to experience a life that they themselves would never lead. The thought of an adult woman sleeping with her stepchild is wrong on so many levels. As director Catherine Breillat demonstrates in her 2023 film Last Summer (original French title: L’Été dernier), subjects that repulse on a visceral level can still elicit feelings from unexpected places.

Anne (Léa Drucker) is an attorney who works with at-risk children. Anne lives in a quiet town outside Paris with her husband Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin) and two adopted children. A self-proclaimed “gerontophile” (attracted to older people), Anne seems to enjoy her comfortable life, even with a little obvious distance from her husband, until Paul’s troubled seventeen-year-old son Théo (Samuel Kircher) comes to live with them.

Théo is the polar opposite of Paul, anti-social, mischievous, and charming. Théo bonds with the children while getting on Anne’s nerves, especially with Paul’s frequent work-related absences. Théo’s magic eventually takes hold, leading the adult woman to make the very bad and irresponsible choice to sleep with her stepson.

Based off the 2019 Danish film Queen of Hearts, Breillat revels in the uncomfortable. Last Summer has numerous spicy scenes, played with an energy that orbits the realm of passion without ever really touching the surface. Something is clearly missing from Anne’s idyllic country life. Drucker plays Anne with such precision, a woman intoxicated by the thrill of the hunt without ever losing sight of the obvious destruction caused by her decisions.

Anyone can conjure up an image of the perfect life. Each of us might need to swap out some pieces to match the reality we can make for ourselves. Some of us don’t have much money, or the ability to have kids of our own. Sometimes the love we once shared with our spouse withers and dies. Breillat is fascinated not just with power dynamics, but with decay.

Kircher plays Théo with a perfect blend of charisma and tediousness. Théo’s boyish looks never compensate for the reality that he’s a clueless young kid. The justifications for Anne’s infatuation with him exist in her own head. Breillat never tries to defend her protagonist’s horrid behavior.

There is something weirdly alluring in watching the drama unfold. Théo’s penchant for drama precludes him from discretion. Anne’s excuses are hardly believable to anyone, except for those so caught up in the idea of the idyllic life that they’re willing to ignore the reality right there in front of them.

Drucker is agonizing. Anne is a truly tedious character, obsessed with the gaze that men, usually older, have bestowed upon her all her life. Stuck in a boring, quiet town, with nothing to amuse her beyond the children she adopted to fulfill that very purpose, she begins to fall apart, until the very second that the gaze returns. It’s ugly, but deeply human at the same time.

Life doesn’t always go the way we planned. You can’t control the actions of others, only the way that you choose to receive them. Breillat produces the film’s most compelling work when she homes in on that reality. Last Summer is an uncomfortable ride through its 104-minute, but there’s a lot of food for thought. You can piece together the model of an ideal existence fairly easily, but it takes much more effort to make it come alive.

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All the way back in the 1950s, Godzilla began as a metaphor for nuclear weapons. The horrors that the giant lizard could wreak on downtown Tokyo were nothing compared to the atrocities that mankind could inflict on itself. Many decades and dozens of films later, the franchise has managed to evolve and encompass new real-world parallels without straying too far from its original message.

The 2016 film Shin Godzilla was recently re-released to theaters, enjoying an expanded North American market fresh off the heels of 2023’s blockbuster hit Godzilla Minus One. Shin Godzilla dedicated much of its runtime to a satire of the Japanese government’s response to the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011. Nearly ten years later, it’s hard to believe that directors Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s work could have another timely parallel on their hands in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The narrative largely centers around Rando Yaguchi (Hiroki Hasegawa), a Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary in the Japanese government. The Coast Guard responds to news reports of an abandoned yacht in Tokyo Bay, and blood pouring into the Aqua-Line, though the government remained skeptical of anything nefarious. Only Yaguchi and a few others in the crowded cabinet meeting take the threat of a creature causing the chaos seriously.

Much of the first act of Shin Godzilla plays like a political satire. Godzilla wreaks havoc on Tokyo while the politicians shuttle from meeting to meeting, only to decide that the correct course of action requires more meetings. Whenever somebody manages to cut through the red tape, either the Japanese or American government demands a swift cover-up. The citizens are routinely lied to about the danger that Godzilla presents. Only when Yaguchi forms an off-site group to focus solely on defeating Godzilla does anything productive actually happen.

Anno, best known for his work with the Evangelion franchise, puts forth a delectably postmodern take on Godzilla. Anno’s kaiju is hideous. Its initial form looks like a lizard with googly eyes. There’s a lot of humor, pointed on a direct collision course with the horrors on full display. The narrative whiplash works well for the genre. Even when you can guess what’s going to come next, the results are genuinely surprising.

The incompetence of the government often competes with Godzilla for the most horrifying aspect of the film. Humanity may not face an imminent threat from an ocean-dwelling leviathan, but we’ve lived through recent crises where the strength of our civic institutions has been tested, and often found wanting.  With people who willfully deny scientific evidence and basic reality in positions of power, who can truly say which is worse?

The narrative does start to lose a bit of steam in the third act. The first half of the film is so laser-focused on political satire that it never really gives much time to developing its human characters. Yaguchi himself often functions as a stand-in for the lead character in the absence of anyone else who meets the description. Hasegawa does an admirable job endearing the audience to his character, but Anno and Higuchi don’t have a lot of interest in exploring humanity beyond the failures of the government.

The 120-minute runtime is a bit excessive, especially when the second half is light on Godzilla in parts where more of the big guy might have been welcome. Anno delivers a singular take on Godzilla that’s bound to stick with its audience long after the credits roll, a damning indictment on government incompetence that’s only improved with age. Fitting for its director, Shin Godzilla is a strange narrative, quite uneven at times. For the 31st entry into a decades-old franchise, perhaps the biggest achievement is the film’s delivery of something that feels genuinely fresh. There’s never been a Godzilla quite like this before.

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Summer vacation possesses one allure that looms large over all the rest. Whether you travel to an exotic location like Venice, or even plant your feet up in your backyard for a few days off at home, summer provides the one thing we all need from time to time. What’s life without a little escapism? The 1955 film Summertime examines the life of a woman who perhaps waited a little too long for some release from her otherwise mundane existence.

Jane Hudson (Katharine Hepburn) is a single middle-aged woman traveling alone to Venice, Italy. A dream trip that she saved up years to go on, Jane is an upbeat woman who wears her emotions on her sleeves. She bonds quickly with the fellow guests at her pensione, but grows lonely when they all head out for their own adventures, leaving Jane to take in the marvelous city by herself, occasionally joined by a young street urchin Mauro (Gaetano Autiero).

Jane stumbles into an antiques shop, where she purchases a red goblet. Renato (Rosano Brazzi), the shopkeeper, quickly takes a fancy to Jane. Jane spends much of the next day infatuated with the thought of Renato, who returns her affection later that evening with a visit to her pensione. Jane quickly falls in love with Renato, though a conversation with his nephew reveals that Renato is a married man, estranged from his wife. Rather than express remorse for the deception, Renato attempts to flip the script, claiming that Italy operates by a different set of rules, chastising Jane for resisting lowering her standards.

Based on the stage play The Time of the Cuckoo, director David Lean shows off his penchant for epic cinematography, later displayed in his classics The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, with his awe-inspiring depiction of Venice. Venice is essentially its own character in the film, an intoxicating playground for the disaffected in search of something to break the mundanity of life. Making great use of the city, Lean’s depiction of Venice looks breathtaking in Technicolor.

Hepburn carries the rather clunky screenplay, co-authored by Lean and H.E. Bates. Jane has an understated complexity to her character, a social butterfly who can’t shake the feeling that time has passed her by. While her obvious star power radiates in every scene, Hepburn elicits great sympathy for Jane through the subtle moments of profound sadness, the immutable sting of loneliness still resonating seventy years later.

The story starts to unravel by the third act. Renato is a mess. Brazzi plays him competently, but the sleaziness of the deception and his pitiful defense of his actions leave a bad taste that Lean does little to wash away. The 100-minute runtime overstays its welcome, though it’s hard to tire of the beautiful Venetian scenery. The subject matter is probably a little too complex for the remnants of the Hays Code era. 1955 was not exactly the best time to try to make the case for an adulterous summer fling.

At one point, Jane remarks that it’s better to leave a party before it ends. However true that may be, Renato is not much of a party. Summertime is a bit of a mixed bag. Lean’s filmmaking is always a sight to behold, and Hepburn is in peak form. The film is practically worth watching for those reasons alone. If only the story at the heart of the narrative received as much care as Lean gave to his gorgeous depiction of the city.

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There’s never been an easier time for disaffected people to make their voices heard. Social media and podcasts provide outlets for anyone to amass large followings spouting vagaries against the system, irrespective of the merit of any of their arguments. As we’ve seen with the right-wing echo chamber known as the “manosphere,” having a large platform does not instill a sense of responsibility to be careful with such power and influence.

The 1990 film Pump Up the Volume often plays like a stereotypical Gen X high school film, rife with angst towards the previous generations that stifle their individuality. Mark Hunter (Christian Slater) is a high school student who recently moved to a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona for his father’s job. Mark is a socially awkward loner with little social contact throughout the day. At night, he broadcasts a pirate FM radio show under the pseudonym “Hard Harry,” playing music and raging against the machine that is his local high school.

Mark’s show attracts little notice at first, rising in popularity as students at his school sell bootlegs of his show. The faculty starts to take an interest after a student commits suicide shortly after appearing on Mark’s show. Another student, Nora De Niro (Samantha Mathis), discovers Mark’s identity, urging him to use his voice to lead his fellow students in protesting the school, whose principal, Lorretta Creswood (Annie Ross), is doing her best to manipulate test scores to secure additional funding.

Slater showcases a remarkable range as Mark, who often plays like a clueless rebel without a cause. Much of Hard Harry’s musings are generic fluff without much substance, carrying the same level of intellectualism as high school freshmen getting stoned in their parents’ basement for the first time. The film doesn’t put much weight behind the school’s “problems” until late in the third act, a half-baked premise that frequently undercuts its own message.

What sets Mark apart from the shock jocks he tries to emulate is the sin for which he’d be cast out from the manosphere if the film were made today. Mark cares about the ramifications of his words. Mark’s show radicalizes his fellow students to take action against the school. While people like Nora encourage him to keep going, Mark pauses to consider the implications of his power.

Mark is also quite different from many leading bad boys of his time. Mark lacks the effortless cool factor that defined the likes of John Bender and Ferris Bueller, only coming out of his shell behind the comforts of anonymity provided by his show, where he uses a harmonizer to mask his voice. It takes Nora embodying peak manic pixie dream girl to break through his anti-social security blanket, Mathis commanding every scene she’s in, often through mere facial expressions.

Writer/director Allan Moyle’s work takes itself too seriously at times, consistently bailed out by Slater’s mesmerizing performance and an exceptional soundtrack anchored by Leonard Cohen. The chemistry between Slater and Mathis is the most interesting dynamic in the film, but Moyle rarely gives them the runway. The character work constantly plays second fiddle to the atmosphere, much to the film’s detriment.

Social media often makes a person feel like they’re screaming into the void, irrespective of follower count. Engagement-driven algorithms seek to teach us that nothing is worth saying unless somebody is listening. You’re meant to believe that if you don’t get likes, you are not liked.

Despite a lackluster screenplay, Pump Up The Volume stands out from its contemporaries through its earnest sincerity. Disaffected youth don’t want to hear that it gets better. Slater found a way to reach them anyway. The film is hardly Gen X’s greatest cinematic triumph, but one that remains particularly relevant in today’s uncertain times.

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