Change Your Image
guy_in_oxford
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Star Trek: Picard (2020)
No Tuvix and Cogenitor but almost nothing of value either
The two worst Trek episodes of all-time are Tuvix from Voyager and Cogenitor from Enterprise. They are about condoning cold-blooded first-degree murder (done in collaboration with the ship's top-ranked staff) and condoning slavery (with a strong dose of sexism and heterosexism thrown in), respectively. So far, this series hasn't managed to unset those and I don't expect it to. What it does instead is torture the audience with cartoonish banality.
This series vies with Discovery and Enterprise for worst Trek series. The final season of Enterprise, with its brain-dead war game plot (featuring Insectoids! And a bunch of other oids) not only had so many bad episodes, it had the Cogenitor episode. So, it's strong competition. Discovery lacks one of the two worst episodes of all-time but is suffocatingly obsessed with its Mary Sue lead, her boyfriend, quick fixes, spelling everything out in capital letters (even more than Enterprise, possibly), predictability, and advertising for the psychotherapy business.
Picard is the least Trek-like series I've seen from the franchise, especially season 2. Discovery is so heavy-handed and predictable, especially in its latest season (I think it's season 3 but it's not important as all of the seasons are weak). Enterprise was mostly dull and disappointing throughout. Phaser fight? Check. Brawl? Check. Ship battle? Check. Boring speech? Okay. It also suffered from the cardinal sin of playing games with the personalities of the characters - not being true to character. The way Tripp's attitude was reset after the Cogenitor episode is a classic case of poor production.
Picard, as a series, is a pile of clichés, as is Discovery and as was Enterprise before them (for the most part, at least). It tries its hardest to rip off (regurgitate) all of the moments that were memorable in ye olde Trek and fails badly every time. Season 2 has the show especially floundering, not knowing what kind of show it even is in episodes like Monsters. I can't imagine things getting better and had to force myself through that episode.
One of the most irritating aspects of this series is its use of sword fighting. It's as if the production staff are intent on trying to siphon every unique aspect from popular franchises, dump them into a pot, stir, and see what floats up. Well, what is floating to the top isn't a great Trek series.
Star Trek: Picard: Monsters (2022)
One of the worst "Trek" episodes ever
Firstly, this wasn't Star Trek; it was a hodgepodge of bad ideas thrown into a heap.
If goofy magic tricks, shattering windows, shattering glasses, shattering toys, shattering bottles, breaking boards, more of Discovery's OBSESSION with superficial psychobabble, corny fantasy-style exaggeration of Guinan's characer - complete with cheesy parlor tricks, more regurgitation of memorable old Trek bits handled in the most classless juvenile manner possible, completely idiotic handling of hospital drama and the time shock theme, more totally tedious "ABC Family" posturing about kids (Yes! Yes! We Know They're So Great And Precious! We Know You Will Protect Him! Yes! Okay! Yes!), more Agnes doing her best to be ridiculous, more inability of Patrick Stewart to deliver his lines with adequate smoothness, more "gotcha" twist endings that aren't interesting,
That paragraph is a lot like the episode. It's stuffed to the gills with stuff, none of which amounts to much in the end. All saccharine + aspartame + sucralose and no flavor.
I was very annoyed watching this and only finished it simply to be able to say I watched the entire thing. What a triumph.
Star Trek: Voyager: Tuvix (1996)
An encapsulation of how Trek died without Roddenberry's influence
Gene Roddenberry, never in a million years, would have allowed the resolution in this episode. His Trek was uplifting and moral, not ends-justify-the-means cold brutality.
Even Spock, who Bones always accused of having ice water for blood, would have shown more intelligence, morality, and compassion than the Voyager crew does in this one.
As someone else said, this is a very sick episode. Not only is it not Trek, it's not good sci-fi, considering the lengths to which the series goes to portray those involved as protagonists.
Black Mirror: Nosedive (2016)
A mixed bag but engrossing (and not particularly futuristic)
Human culture is already like this and was already like this long before technology. Gossip, reputation, family reputation/status, and things like that have always been massively important. This episode shows some very minimal/mild augmented reality, which uses China's Sesame Score in combination with Facebook and Tinder. You swipe people (obsessively) like Tinder, have a homepage for your exposed and curated life like Facebook, and have a public composite governmental/social rating like the Sesame. Do note that in the USA we have credit scores, net worth, certificates like degrees, and various other means to accomplish a similar thing. Everyone is on file, profiled. The Utah facility is the latest method of accumulating dossiers on each of us. However, the sheer publicity, the public nature of the composite score here, goes beyond even Sesame. This is helped by the AR (augmented reality) factor. The technology gives those who aren't incarcerated the ability to rate one another. One problem with the system is that asocial people are, at least the program warns, more likely to give you a poor rating simply because they have a lack of reciprocity and job responsibility, as when the fueling station attendant only gave the protagonist two stars. (By contrast, those of higher status will typically react negatively if you disturb them with requests for help.) This makes it seem unlikely that people who have quite a bit lower rating levels would be given the power to rate those higher. The universality of it, though, is clearly intended, in the context of the episode, to create more drama by there being so many instances of down rating. One oddity, in terms of the narrative's ideology, is that customer service is typically faker - but - those dealing with customers are actually less accommodating/servile. If you are frustrated at an airport attendant, she will call security on you quickly. If you are a bit late for your cab you'll get a poor rating as punishment. So, there are mixed messages about niceness. On the one hand, people are generally meaner in that they are more quick to lash out. But, on the other, those in customer service jobs don't take nearly as much guff. In our contemporary world, bad customer reviews online can sting the business or have repercussions for certain employees. Those businesses and employees rarely can retaliate against the customers. There is a lot to talk about when analyzing this episode. I'll try to be briefer going forward. Strengths are the acting and direction, which are faultless. The script, though, is a bit rough. The relationship between brother and sister is so toxic that it seems unlikely that it would exist at all in those circumstances. The brother is the one whose antagonism precipitated the protagonist's rapid decline. He badgered her multiple times and then gave her a poor rating out of spite. He, therefore, doesn't do a great job of standing for the integrity of the real person in the real world (in contrast with the female trucker). That a toxic relationship between siblings is the real crux of the episode is lost to the writers, which is unfortunate. The episode also tries to cover a film's worth of ground in a short amount of time and it doesn't work. The latter part is reduced to cartoonishness, where everything falls apart when she "borrows" the dirt bike. That part of pure fantasy. Just because people are low in the rating systems doesn't mean they're going to just give you all their expensive stuff. The trucker was very improbable but the episode really doesn't work for me after that. The scene in the jail is, by far, the worst of all. What was a fairly strong concept falls apart, into cartoonish silliness -- and that includes the wedding party. The episode would have been better had things been kept simpler. And, what is up with the recurring black male motif? Why wasn't there one at the party? Are the writers trying to suggest that black men are more authentic? If the idea is that she longs romantically for a black man then why isn't she faced with a romantic possibility to show that, other than in that absurd jail scene? The episode also tries to sell the discredited notion of catharsis therapy. While it is helpful to express/vent, it is not necessarily helpful, and can be bad for you, to wallow in negativity. The solution to the viral tech infestation is not profanity. Magic words won't save you.
Murder, She Wrote: Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall: Part 1 (1989)
Good acting, stilted script
This is a rather forced plot, where ageism is used as the tool to root out "fake talent" and favor the pure of heart. It reminds me of Sunset Boulevard in the form of an All About Eve cat fight. As a sort of merging of Margot Channing, Eve Harrington, and Norma Desmond -- Eudora is full of "aged/cracking feminine wiles", while Jessica is, of course, the 1980s apple pie opposite -- totally comfortable with living with her memory of Frank forever and occupying her time with murders. It is not clear, or particularly credible, why Eudora can't write well anymore. If the writers wanted us to take this seriously they would have given us a decent reason, not just "look! she's old now". It also was not not enough for her to be desperate to maintain her feelings of self-worth by plagiarizing, she has to resort to drugging people and acting like a deranged grande dame. Maybe Bette Davis would have worked in the role but it's so over-the-top for a show like this one. Yes, the actress who played Eudora did a fine job, though, with the material on offer. The character, as written, though, is too one-dimensional and heavy-handed. The ideas had to be spelled for the audience in big capital letters, as when she had to take credit during the media scene. There is the lack of credibility in her tactics. For someone allegedly bright, and particularly for someone whose job was writing successful novels, she has a very ham-handed methodology. Yes, this can be a symptom of the decline of her writing faculties but that seems rather pat. The good witch, bad witch dichotomy here is stale, as is the idea, as Margot Channing put it, that a woman's place is in the kitchen.
Fellini - Satyricon (1969)
Duller than it should have been, doesn't get gay right
This film is, in large part, homosexuality seen through a heterosexual male's lens. As a result, it fails at basic things. For instance, the blonde "protagonist" has a decent-looking male lover his age (who is regrettably unattractive in personality) but Fellini insists on having him desire a very homely-looking boy, one who also has an unappealing dully coquettish personality. Why? Obviously, this is to make a negative point about ancient Rome and homosexuality. "Ewww... how decadent, uncomfortable, and wrong it is!" That's apparently supposed to be the reaction. Fellini seems to conveniently exploit ignorance about homosexuality in his often drab little theatrical universe. The irony is probably that, given all of its varying settings and its "art is free!" mantra, the world itself is almost suffocatingly puny. There is a tremendous lack of vision in this film. I wonder if a man even needs to be gay to see how thin it is, just looking at the homosexuality angle.
Even the superficially affirming scene with the minotaur may primarily be the sad "dominance" hypothesis reconstituted (where male homosexuality is not common at all in any animal species but is rather merely displays of dominance and submission - sexual aggression). Male lions, for instance, aren't allowed to enjoy sex according to humans. They simply must be aggressive rapists, or whatever.
Fellini seems to enjoy the "freak show" - a carnival of second-rate wonders and horrors. A similar tack was taken with the Caligula film. "Oh, gee, those ancient Romans sure were gross, weren't they? Eww.. isn't homosexuality awful?" In that film it was even more pointed. The only homosexual sex act that occurred was between two very unattractive men in an extremely brief corridor scene, framed by Malcolm McDowell's ugly mug trying to look uglier than usual. Fisting is substituted for gay sex in that film in a totally brazen anti-gay schtick - where violence, pain, humiliation, and terribly subjugation are supposed to be the point of homosexual acts between men. Again, it's homosexuality through the prism of an ignorant heterosexual male point of view.
While this film isn't as bad as that in some ways, as it's less simplistic in that regard, the casting of the pubescent boy is an obvious example of Fellini's refusal to present sex in a positive light. This can be seen in his film Cassanova very clearly, more so than in this film - which, at least, has two good-looking actors in it (despite their dishpan personalities). Cassanova has a scene where a stereotypically young gay man (hardly the apotheosis of gay male desire) appears, scantily clad, for a bit of dinner theater with a really ugly man. The grotesque and the camp seem to be the extent of Fellini's engagement with concepts of male homosexuality.
I have read various opinions about what Fellini's point was... what themes he was trying to convey. Regardless, I can only say that nothing in this film was particularly thematically scintillating. The closest thing to interest was in the disconcerting nature of the radical setting/tone shifts, which, at least, distracted from the annoying "personalities" of the characters. If the idea was that the blonde couldn't find satisfaction then there is some coherence between the on-screen happenings to the character and the audience's frustration.
The film felt like a demo rather than a finished production.
The Children's Hour (1961)
The poster child for Hollywood's pandering to homophobes
Due to the various censorship codes that Hollywood adopted to please religious activists, it went from showing films with two men dancing to violin (one of the earliest American films), Tarzan swimming briefly with a naked man, and even the cheesy camp The Search for Beauty which showed men's bare backsides in a locker room briefly and the muscular protagonist (who undresses inside of a towel like one of today's New Prudery locker room wimps) being glanced at while showering (in a low stall) by a young man who smiles a lot after that. None of that is particularly offensive or egregious, in terms of sexual content. But, even hints at homoeroticism were far too much for the morally superior crusaders.
That Search of Beauty picture can, of course, hide behind the curtain of Eugenics (more popular in the US than in Europe, arguably, at the time). It has the big floor show that was a fad at the time, as seen in Stalin's favorite film, so it wasn't as cheesy to period audiences. However, the small amount of homoeroticism in this American film was enough to raise the ire of crusaders and Hollywood responded by preempting their attempt at pushing a censorship code by adopting their own. (Ironically, that Stalin favorite propagandizes in favor of the Soviets by opposing American racism. There was absolutely no trace of homoeroticism or appreciation of the male body anywhere in it. But, it has the elaborate '30s floor show.)
The point was that the common notion in the viewing public that Hollywood always had "a vendetta against them" as JL Mankiewicz put it, is not true in the big picture. Unfortunately, though, the early years where that vendetta was largely lacking (including in Russia where people like Eisenstein were tremendously influential, despite obvious homoerotic overtones in their films) turned into a very long history of heterosexism and homophobia.
That vendetta basically was throwing gays under the bus to grease the profit wheels of the industry.
In Russia, it was part of the Stalinist chilling effect on freedom, liberty, and all that — under the familiar guise of family friendliness. That chill has never left.
This film's loathsome over-the-top homophobia and heterosexism should be seen by film school students as a case study in how not to turn your film into a soap opera pretending to be depth. Sociology and Social Psychology students might be interested in the artificiality of the script, particularly the extremely over-the-top crying confessional scene between the two women. It's the film equivalent of putting a bar of soap into the viewer's mouth or dragging a puppy through its excrement. But, I suppose a heterosexual viewer might feel better about it. After all, they're not the ones being preached about — how it's necessary for society that they kill themselves over some brat and a bunch of bored and boring busybodies.
Pass on this one. You'll find out all you need to know about it if you watch The Celluloid Closet, which documents the corrosive effects of the Hayes Code and other semi-voluntary policies adopted by Hollywood. That film is much more worth one's time (as is the book).
Gays, as is so often true, are the canaries in the coal mine of politics. We're easy, soft, targets.
Will & Grace (1998)
Homophobia, ironically
It's difficult to write about this series but here's my go.
#1. Stuttering does not make a man more gay. But, that's what the main character does, anyway. I am gay and my best friend, when I was in elementary, was hetero and he stuttered. I didn't. He completed speech therapy over the years and the stutter went away.
#2. Stuttering doesn't make a character funnier. (Someone should tell the writer of Big Bang Theory this, too. Leonard's stuttering makes me want to change the channel every time.)
Making fun of stuttering people isn't funny. Acting like there's something wrong with the brains of gay men isn't funny. At all.
#3. People talk so much about blackface and yellowface. This show is gayface epitomized. And, that includes, especially, the Jack character. I knew a hetero boy, growing up, who was more like Jack than any gay guy I've known, only less stylized (more real) in his movements. Again, the stereotyping here is very annoying. Jack wouldn't be so bad if he weren't so fake. Flamboyance is fine if you keep it real instead of going way over the line. This isn't MadTV. Even MadTV did a better job with gay characters.
#4. A sexless, obviously fake, portrayal of a gay man is homophobic and heterosexist. Will is NOT a gay character. He is a hetero actor playing a hetero guy pretending, poorly, to be gay. It's more cringe-worthy than the Ellen episode where she is at a gym pining for men. In the first episode of the show he should have been Frenching a hot guy, not living out his plastic fantasy world, tailor-made in its antiseptic condescension, for a predominately hetero audience. If he wants to play the part he needs to be the part — not insult us.
#5. When your fake lead, who is sterilized of actual gayness so he can act out his Ozzie and Harriet fake romance fantasy with Grace, is very obnoxious in manner and shallow in character, it makes me not want to watch the show. The protagonist is generally supposed to be the character people like to see. Karen is the only one on the show I have even the slightest interest in paying attention to, and she really only had one funny moment that I can remember. The writing for this series is average for an American comedy which is not saying much.
The show tried to dispel some of the anti-gay ideas that people have. There is a bit where a bunch of stereotypical "regular Joes" ask Will about gay men having sex all the time. He says, in his stilted "I'm a professor reading from my notes" manner, that they don't. The response was "Why be gay, then?" The humor was, of course, based on inverting the expectation that gay men are sex-crazed. Sure, that moment was slightly memorable. It was almost funny. The acting didn't really get there and, in typical American comedy fashion, it was spelled out a bit too much in capital letters. Will needs to stop being everyone's sanitized canned teacher and stop dealing with Grace altogether for a while. Get her into a separate location while he is busy being gay for once — with no stuttering, no lectures, no long-winded observations, no "I'm sexless and I know it" awkwardness, and no cheesy hands-on-hips types of body motions. Be the character, don't play the character. His acting is all on the surface, except with his heterosexual chemistry with Grace. That's the pits.
Everyone knows that in real life a man who looks like Will would be getting it, easily. He wouldn't be pretending to be Ozzie with little Harriet. The fact that the audience knows this makes the stilted gayface portrayal all the more irksome. Perhaps they've decided that, now that it's 2017, he can actually be a bit gay, in terms of romance. Who knows? I gave the show far too much of my life to find out.
The other option to make Will real is to have him come out as bisexual. Now, that might make him interesting and explain all of his gayface more. A man who represses the hetero side of his bisexuality. A rather novel idea. Then, he can finally get busy with Grace like he's wanted to from the beginning.
3 stars because of the "dirty little pig boy" bit, Karen's one shining moment, a moment when Grace was actually funny as well. It makes me laugh thinking about it because I was too naive to know what she was really talking about. Now, that's clever writing. Too bad it's so rare.
Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016)
Absolutely dreadful
When a minor character has the one funny bit out of the entire film, you know it wasn't written well. One line, out of the entire film, was funny.
Bo and Marshall are especially terrible, thanks to the script. They shined in a prior bit, with the televangelism. Too bad they're given nothing of value to work with this time.
Lumley is wonderful but she's given nothing funny to say or do. Even the bits she does have are often completely recycled. The entire thing seems like a long commercial for a film that is going to be made sometime in the future, when Saunders decides to care enough to work at it like she once did, long ago.
I have written funnier (prototype) AbFab scripts myself in practically no time. How much time did Saunders put into this? 15 minutes?
The format has nothing to do with the TV series. As I said, it's like a long commercial — a trailer masquerading as a movie. The filming is all very pretty and glamorous but nothing interesting happens. All the characters are looking back at themselves, obliquely, instead of charging forward into new development.
Lumley clearly is begging for a vehicle for her enthusiasm and talent. I can write one; Saunders cannot. It's bizarre, too — because at her peak she was the better writer. The original series, except for the last episode or two, was so brilliant.
Aside from the aforementioned singular funny line, which aged badly upon seeing the film a second time — there was one scene-stealing bit of body language humor from an even more minor character. Too bad that the scene collapsed into bad writing in short order.
Heathers (1988)
Ironically is part of the suicide problem
In the 80s when I was growing up, I saw films like this — films where the only person who appeared to even come close to defending the humanity of gay people was a serial killer.
Yes, folks. We gay kids got either the dumb abusive jocks who will beat us up or the serial killer who will appear to defend us just so he can get lucky with a girl. Fun! As usual, the only possibly gay people are laughable and weak. But, more importantly — in this film gayness is just a punchline, without actual gay people anywhere to really be found.
It's supposed to be sophisticated satire but it's not. Walking on geraniums and hitting a person in the head with a croquet ball is not sophisticated satire.
It's not always sophisticated satire with the suicide theme, either. It does better in that regard, though — such as by lampooning the self-promoting social justice warrior Pauline and the unconcerned conventional blowhards around her.
The feel-good conventional morality of Veronica at the end is cute but very Hollywood-fake.
Ryder is an incredible actress and this film is definitely a vehicle for her, bad as it is. Fans of her beauty and incredible acting will like this film.
Slater's father is not at all believable, nor is he all that funny. And, unsurprisingly, the Hollywood view of high school life is not much at all like what high school is actually like. If the writer had wanted something realistic to make the jocks look bad it would have had a scene where they sodomize a weaker guy in the locker room with on object. That sort of thing happens all the time in the US. By contrast, arranged threesomes (with or without cow-tipping) are the sort of things that happen in scripts. Instead of just being sappy and stupid bullies, the film could have showed the level of barbarism actual high school bullies will stoop to. But, this is light humor, where making fun of invisible gay people is easier.
And no, outside of a Hollywood film, no woman with a functional IQ would have drunk that concoction.
The best scene in the film is when Veronica drops the photo of her with Betty Finn, as Heather drags her away. That sort of thing is what the film could have done more of. Instead, it drowns itself, and us, in cheesy camp.
There are some good camp lines here, though, like when she suggests to Slater that he stay home and shoot a few toasters. Bulimia is so '87 is a favorite, as well as a true friend's work is never done. So, it has its moments here and there.
All About Eve (1950)
Tremendously witty trap for post-war women, with Lavender Scare underpinnings
Friedan spoke of the "problem that has no name" — the demand of society that women give up the agency they had been demanded to accumulate to lubricate the wheels of the war machine with their factory work. No longer required as servants of warfare, they were supposed to be content with reclassification as unpaid and dependent family worker, because enough of "their men" had returned from abroad. As Smedley Butler so cuttingly detailed, war is a racket. When a racket moves an entire society then the sexes are going to get caught up. Hollywood, the propaganda vehicle in those days, needed to dress up the shabby role of "happy little housewife". And so, one sees slickly corrupted presentations of Friedan's problem.
You see, feminists like Friedan also were part of the trap. Instead of being able to fully comprehend that egalitarian gay relationships are not a threat to the foundation of society (e.g. its war profiteering and other machinations), even those who recognized the problems inherent in withdrawing the newly-found agency of women had to decry them in order to put a nice sheen on the "institution" of heterosexual marriage. Why? Because they didn't understand that only a small percentage of people are gay enough to want serious gay relationships in the first place. Think I'm joking? The former PM of Australia stated with a straight face that same-sex marriages, if legal, threatened the extinction of humanity! The "logic" was that same-sex relationships, presumably because they're more egalitarian, were so attractive to most people that they would abandon heterosexual relationships that are about reproduction (for taxes and other resources). There are several failures of logic and examples of ignorance in the Howard claim but the bottom line is that All About Eve uses that very viewpoint as its foundation for dramatic conflict.
The fight against the dreaded gayness causes all things to take place in this film. Eve's relentless hollow pursuance of stardom is due to her vapid lesbianism. She has no heart and seeks to put an award there. She and the gay man (critic) who she conspires with are "killers". In fact, she's not even fully human. She has a "feverish little brain" like a rat. She studies people, mechanically, like a serial killer — rather than a natural and warm woman who is interested in true love, what Margot transforms into. Lesbianism is just trickery, as when she and her lover conspired.
Margot, the quintessential harpy of Greek myth, is tamed by a younger man. This flip in the gender roles is part of the cleverness of the trickery happening. The common assumption, that younger women belong with older men, is reversed, a seeming improvement for female agency that comes at greater cost — her career. That loss of career, not accidentally, comes with her affirming that older women should leave the business because they're not beautiful enough anymore. Gone is the Margot who doesn't care how young the woman in the part is because of her talent and ferocity. Replacing her is Grandma Channing, who will somehow remain enchanting to the younger man once she has given up all the feminine wiles that made her enchanting – like her fantastic acting and her grande dame exaggeration. Bill sees into her true heart, though — the soft warm fuzzy one that stays in the kitchen to bake muffins.
Heterosexism has the word sexism in it for a reason. Almost no one uses the word for reasons, too. In this film, it is the tool for the promotion of sexism. The film's poster said it is about "women and their men". It's about the role of women now that their men are back from the abroad. That role is definitely not to be "strong women" who will be corrupted by lesbianism and the resulting feminist demands. It won't be to leave men floundering, bereft of female companionship, forced into the arms of other men — seeking art rather than child rearing. Make no mistake. The gay male character is purposefully put right next to Marilyn Monroe to make a point. His sophistication is shallow and self-defeating. Leads to a blind alley. By contrast, a virile red-blooded heterosexual man knows just how to treat a lady. The film is so slick that even Ebert was oblivious vis-à-vis that entire narrative is based on repudiating homosexuality (female agency being one of its symptoms) in favor of patriarchal heterosexual marriage. He gabbed about Channing as being a "universal type" and merely focused on mechanical aspects of filmmaking. People have been conditioned in the modes of seeing the world according to heterosexual patriarchal imperative. Also willful blindness? How any thinking viewer can miss obvious bits like Eve and another woman conspiring together and holding each other's bodies while doing it... Of course she was a lesbian! And, of course it's amusing to her for a gay man to claim that she's his property. It's amusing for a gay man to try to possess a woman in a patriarchal way. The perversion of the scene is obvious and intentional. Film cleverly lays out the Friedan problem in pretending that it's only a problem if one is gay. Reaffirms inferiority of feminine brain, when it comes to the Machivellian requirements of running the world; also shows gay man trying, and failing, to live up to duty as a man (woman under his control).
Davis is wonderful, despite these themes. She was in love with "Bill" then. The writing is cute with cutting sophistication. I can't escape from all the clichés, stereotyping, and backward beliefs it promotes. Example: Plain folks have common sense to see through nonsense artsy types are tricked by. Although he wrote that Hollywood "needed to drop its vendetta against them", the best Mankiewicz manages to do in this film is not have gays kill themselves (i.e. the Children's Hour). It just shows that all that their "hearts"' desire is folly.
A Christmas Story (1983)
Magical
I would have given this 10 stars but deducted one for the combination of stealth homophobia and gender rigidity (pink nightmare and electric sex heterosexuality assumption). Yes, in 1983 everyone making mainstream films made these assumptions (that everyone is hetero) but the complete absence of gay people is something that doesn't impress me as a gay person. Imagine if your people were consistently erased from film and television and you grew up, watching "family" entertainment that erased you from existence? The closest thing to a gay character is the bit part with the boy in line who likes the Tin Man and the Wizard of Oz. We're used as extremely tiny bit parts, as weirdos, and that's it.
(Let's not pretend that Hollywood didn't know gay people exist. The entire underlying plot of All About Eve is about how gayness is evil and heterosexuality (heterosexual marriages in which women abandon their careers) is pure. The Children's Hour was about how sad, but necessary, it is for gay people to kill themselves. One of the very earliest American films, prior to homophobic censorship codes, showed two men dancing with a violinist playing. So, no, just because it was 1983 isn't enough of an excuse. We exist whenever someone wants someone to kick in the eye.)* That said, this film is just breathtakingly great from start to finish. The casting is perfect. The acting is flawless. The writing is fantastic.
If you haven't seen the film you need to. It's nostalgic, funny, and heartwarming.
*The opposite of this is seen in current television, where banal stereotyped gay characters are pretty common as more than bit parts. In this film, would it have ruined it for the Ralphie to have a second brother, one who is gay? No. It wouldn't have ruined the film. It would have made gay kids like me feel a lot happier when watching it with the family every year, growing up. I would have felt like I was valued and didn't have to lie about myself in shame, which I did at the time because everything told me that was the expectation.
Better Off Dead... (1985)
A true classic
I would give the film 10/10 if the singing hamburger scene would be cut, or at least cut down in length. The lead into it and the lead out of it are great, because they have Cusack. But, the singing hamburger scene itself isn't up to the level of the rest (although the fries are a little cute).
Kim Darby is magnificent. Cusack is perfect. Ogden Stiers is flawless. Franklin is stupendous.
You get the picture. The acting in this film is really good, and the casting is brilliant (e.g. Ricky and his mother). One can almost believe that the guitar-playing suitor is a high school student and not someone who looks 25.
There are so many completely improbable moments and characters. The director and writer don't obsess over every gag, either. Some of them are presented with just enough time and emphasis to punctuate the humor, as when Beth is seen in the car with the math professor.
The surreal aspect of the film is an excellent additional layer that gives it interest.
Really, the only thing that isn't pitch-perfect in the entire film is the Claymation scene. Even the adorably clichéd "girl waiting for the guy who loses out" — a staple of 80s teen comedies, appears. This time it's much more well-done than it is in films like One Crazy Summer, where one has a much harder time believing that Cookie is going to go for Mr. Average.
I skate. You skate. We skate.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)
Dull garbage
I've seen a lot of terrible movies in my life and this one ranks in the top 10 for least worth watching. It's not entertaining in the slightest.
At least something like Plan 9 from Outer Space is entertaining. This film is just a cheap cash-in on lowbrow gross-out "entertainment".
Growing up, we had HBO and the channel spamming this film over and over again. To me, it is synonymous with the lowest common denominator.
There are no redeeming qualities to this film. Direction? No. Music? No. Set design? No. Costuming? No. Dialog? No. Sexy nude actors? No. Talented acting that overcomes everything else being bad? No. It's just boredom from start to finish. More than any other film, this one (even more than Weekend At Bernie's), represents disappointing HBO filler.
Srpski film (2010)
Boring pretentious exploitation snuff porn with political veneer
You know it's not about politics, really, when you notice that the males in the film are very ugly and the women are beautiful — given that that does not in any way further the alleged political discourse.
You know, then, that the film is really about sex. In this case it is specifically about sexual violence and thrill-seeking. The political veneer is simply the wrapping paper, the rationalization, for making such a tedious and unpleasant picture.
One might really stretch the powers of rationalization and claim that the males are hideous and violent because of patriarchy — that patriarchy is what makes the entire system of sexual violence possible. However, there are ways to make such a point much more effectively.
As for the rape of the son, which is such a major focus of attention for reviewers... it's very obvious that it's staged from the moment it begins. There is no suspension of disbelief. This, coupled with the extremity of its snuff aspects gives the film a parodic and camp quality. It could be argued that this artificiality is somewhat redeeming, making it more clearly not about getting one's jollies from others' suffering.
However, if that is really the point then why not have women who are just as ugly as the men are, or even just ordinary? And, why, most of all, spend so much time graphically depicting these things? Swift, who other reviews mentioned, got his point across without it. While not everyone needs to imitate him, there is something to be said for deciding whether you're making pornography or making art. This film is very heavily on the side of the former rather than the latter.
I also don't have much appreciation for tying sex and violence together as this film does. In my opinion, sex is a beautiful thing. The heterosexual male perversion of it into something violent (a perversion that is becoming mainstream and quasi-feminist with things like 50 Shades) is something that I feel is quite regrettable. If only humanity could take a page from the bonobo book of conduct and treat sexuality a a healing process, a method of reducing conflict and stress — rather than the opposite.
Even while humans pride themselves on their growing (ostensibly) sexual liberalism, with films showing actual sex between actors and films like this one filled with extreme violence, the venerable Puritanism still permeates most things. Rather than daring to see transgressive sex acts (such as incest between father an son) as being potentially positive, this film pounds the viewer with conservative ideals. It must be violent in the extreme for it to occur. For bonobo primates, sex acts occur publicly and involve all ages and all relationships. We humans, though, cling to our chimpanzee-like sexual violence. If you really want to shock and offend, then treat sex of any variety in a positive non-violent way! That will surely get your film banned in more places than this one is banned in.
In other words, abusing sex to make political points, or to simply wallow in violence as entertainment, is something that doesn't impress me much. The film subculture of violence as entertainment is one I find boorish at best. It also does seem to be more appealing to heterosexual males than to homosexual males such as myself. I suppose the appeal of boxing is similar. It is a "sport" I detest. While people are offended by this film for its violence, how many are offended by boxing, kickboxing, and the like? How many play games like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. There is so much violence everywhere. This film does not rise above that, as its political message is ostensibly meant to. Instead, it just sells more of it.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Distant Voices (1995)
Dull and obnoxious
Of all of the DS9 episodes I've watched so far, and I've revisited the series from the beginning, this is the only one I've found unwatchable.
It starts with the highly improbable request for bio-mimetic gel. Then there's an attack and a generic "people inhabiting my head" plot. The characters are annoying and I found myself fast-forwarding.
The appearance of the Lethean, with his typical macho posturing is what is especially annoying. The cheesy "uber male" voice.... the tedious dialogue.... and where are the female Letheans? That's right, there aren't any — because this is just another example of the Star Trek speed bump race: All male. All ugly. All irritatingly macho.
There really are no memorable moments to speak of, unless you want to see the makeup artist's progressive aging of Bashir.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Storyteller (1993)
Very hokey, just for kids
This is more of a kids' episode than one for adults. However, I'm not sure even most kids would be patient enough to get through the especially awful Dalrock subplot.
There isn't much to say about this one other than it presaged Star Wars Episode One's little girl leader by quite a few years, although they didn't bother to give her any alien flair.
Although one can always assume that, no matter what happens, the primary characters will emerge unscathed — this episode more than others feels particularly "light" and superfluous. The closest thing there is to drama is when Odo's bucket is used to turn oatmeal into a projectile.
Enterprise: Cogenitor (2003)
The contest for worst Trek episode of all-time has a new front-runner
Captain Archer decides to be someone else for this episode, where joyriding with a high technology pal comes before protecting someone from enslavement, someone who requested asylum.
Archer completely lost whatever moral credibility the series tried to build up in this episode, one that utterly refused to even mention slavery which is exactly what it was about. The implied misogyny (women don't need equal rights) and heterosexism (gay people are just a small percentage of the population so they don't need equal rights either) are just added bonuses.
I never thought I'd see the day when Star Trek demanded that viewers think slavery is OK, using "different culture in deep space" as an excuse!
I am forcing myself to watch this series, but I am not enjoying seeing what little is left of Trek. The one very good episode so far was the one with the Vulcan diplomat who was rescued after being falsely implicated. It's a shame the series couldn't manage to make more decent episodes like that one. (It was rather contrived in some aspects, such as the inclusion of the mandatory battling, but the character of the Vulcan ambassador and the obvious talent of the actress made it a welcome change from the usual highly mundane and sometimes egregious Enterprise fare.)
This also isn't the first time the series has completely botched its take on morality (e.g. Fortunate Son).
Watching T'Pau and Archer in this episode, their callous self-serving attitudes made me wonder if the writing staff was replaced by people who knew nothing about them. I can't imagine why the actors agreed to say those lines.
The only highlight of this one, in terms of series continuity, is just how human and moral Tucker showed himself to be, even though he completely failed to defend himself, and more importantly — humanity, justice, and liberty, at the end — acting as if he actually was the one who was limited in terms of mental capacity. Also, the episode had promise. There was ample opportunity for making the cogenitor quandary fertile fare. Instead, the writers botched it, and greatly disrespected the foundational morality of Trek. I guess Archer didn't want to come to the aid of someone without there being the promise of yet another firefight or various tepidly predictable beatings, and certainly not a "transgendered" person!
Next Generation's The Outcast did a far better job at dealing with gender issues and freedom. It was clear enough at the end that the "psychotectic treatments" changed Soren into a totally different person (brainwashing) — not the outcome that an enlightened audience would approve of as murdering someone is not typically considered a credible solution for dealing with diversity.* Voyager failed tremendously in exactly that manner, though, with Tuvix, one of the darkest, most embarrassing moments in all of Trek.
This episode is possibly even worse than Tuvix, though. With Tuvix, the argument could be made that two lives outweigh one life, corrupt as that argument is as it requires murdering someone which is NOT acceptable. (Soren's murder was also accompanied by the creation of a new person in her body, which is still more positive than a greater loss.) Tuvix was also a one-off, the result of an infinitesimally rare occurrence. In contrast, the cogenitor was part of 3% of a large population and, unlike Archer's ridiculous attempt at logic (the baby that has been yet to be conceived and the misplacing of blame for the suicide), no one's life was at risk. Enslaving the cogenitor and all of its type, even denying them names and the most basic liberties such as the ability to read and make decisions, was shone to be an utterly arbitrary (and therefore unnecessary) thing — a fetish like foot binding. The "you don't understand the culture" excuse had nothing at all substantive attached to it; it was the mewling of privileged people trying to mindlessly protect their privilege, nothing more. Unlike the situation with Tuvix, no one's life was going to be restored by maintaining the enslavement. Inconveniencing a couple that wants to breed is not a justification for enslavement just as, more generally, inconveniencing privileged people is no justification for slavery.
*That was the same issue that Angel One dealt with. Both The Outcast and Angel One have definite drawbacks as episodes, but neither of them sided with the inhumane appalling notion that alien cultures are exempt from our moral judgment — that it's OK to massacre minorities to maintain "social harmony". Humans don't cease to be human simply because they've come into contact with other species. Killing and/or enslaving people to quash diversity is not acceptable in an enlightened culture. Archer himself chided Vulcans for bigotry in a prior episode (although too ineffectually, which is typical for Enterprise writing), when they irrationally withheld medical knowledge due to their distaste for a minority. Again, it seems the writers completely forgot about who T'Pau and Archer are with this episode, or new writers were brought in who didn't bother watching the prior episodes from the very same season. What were the people making this series thinking when they made this episode? Were they thinking at all?
Enterprise: Fortunate Son (2001)
A failed attempt at moralizing makes episode farcical... with poor acting
The Nausicaans are a typical Star Trek speed bump race. All male, all ugly, all violent.
But, we humans are supposed to think they're good reasonable honorable people who deserve to be treated with respect after they murder and attack and steal whenever they feel they have the upper hand. We're supposed to cower and pretend being raided and pillaged is totally normal until we're at the point where we have so much superior weaponry that we don't really need to press the fire button.
I was really waiting for someone to start talking about 17th century battlefield honor codes, or something equally preposterous. (For instance, guerrilla fighting is without honor, but standing in a line to be mowed down like automatons to the sound of insipid drum and flute music is courageous and smart.) That's really what Archer's position is about. It's about pretending a situation is something else entirely in order to prove a point to someone who won't be alive once the pillaging (or zombie-like advancing of the lines) is over.
The muddled moralizing of this episode fails also because the threadbare attempt to resurrect the Wrath of Khan (the strong leader with big pecs who puts revenge ahead of his ship and comrades) doesn't convince. It's changing the subject, since the bulk of the build-up is about protecting the crew from a real threat. The pecs of Khan-lite are also pretty much the only highlight of this episode.
Archer is his typical Sesame Street self, spelling out everything in big capital letters in order to bore everyone. Even when the Enterprise is in the middle of a firing battle involving five ships it's hard for the cast to not yawn during the insipid speechifying done by whoever the guy is who was once a freighter child. Even Archer acted bored when he gave the firing orders, the results of which we didn't even see (as we know the outcome will be Archer's success at demonstrating yet again the beautiful cornfed morality of the American midwest).
But, the episode has plenty of predictable phaser battling amid obstacles that's supposed to be action (complete with goofy background "music") — just like the previous one and probably the one before that. It's also amusing that the humans can't seem to hit a huge Nausicaan standing in the middle of a corridor.
There are so many things wrong with the way the prisoner is handled, with the way the Enterprise bridge crew are captured... it would take pages to go into. I suppose the writing could be said to not be totally predictable, just predictably wacky. The bad moralization, though, is eternally predictable, as is the poor acting — complete with manic hand gestures during the worst scene in the episode (the one mentioned earlier where a speech trumps a dull firefight).
I do have to say, though, that the way the Nausicaans completely transformed from killer pillagers to humans with nasty-looking masks, in order to make the moralizing work at the end of the episode, was quite a sight. It makes deux ex machina seem credible.
It's amusing that Berman thought having gay people in Trek would be a bad thing for the series and then released shlock like this. This is one gay person who would have done a heck of a lot better. As someone who was a target of bullying, I could have told him that, indeed, the best defense is a good offense. You do punch back, as hard as possible and right at the face. That's the language bullies understand. If you're going to make Nausicaans, cloaking them in all of the garb of the Star Trek speed bump... then be serious, eh?