Yes We (Vati)Can

This weekend, I went to see the newest movie starring Ralph Fiennes, Conclave. The movie centers on the election of a new pope, as one cardinal must oversee the proceedings while balancing ritual, propriety, and his own wishes.

The studio marketing team knew what they were doing when they made sure this film was in theaters ahead of the United States presidential election. This is a political thriller, through and through. It mines all the tension you'd expect from backroom conversations, shrewd manipulations, and words wielded as weapons. And while it's not like there are tons of political thrillers out there, there are still enough for me to really appreciate how this movie refreshes the genre with its different setting. Putting these familiar machinations inside the Catholic church simultaneously makes them feel novel and different -- and subtly makes the point that it is ever thus.

There's a great cast here, headlined by Ralph Fiennes as I said, but also including Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini. These are all performers who don't have to raise their voice to convey an intensity of emotion, and all of them heighten the tension of the story by how constrained they all behave. Rossellini in particular is a valuable addition here; in a movie that inherently will come nowhere close to passing the Bechdel test, you need to be certain you've cast a powerhouse performer in the one significant female role. The film gets that with her.

Of course, thrillers (political or otherwise) often rely on twists, and so you go in expecting Conclave to have its share. One of them, the question of who ultimately will win the election and become pope, is pretty loudly telegraphed from far out. (At least, it felt that way to me. I think any audience familiar with how these sorts of plots tend to work will sniff it out.) Despite knowing that element of the ending, I didn't feel less enjoyment from the events along the way.

But Conclave has one more twist up its sleeve, and I'm much more conflicted about it. The movie does "earn" the twist; it is very much in keeping with the values espoused throughout the story, most centrally by Fiennes' main character. But it also feels so far-fetched, in terms of what could plausibly happen in a setting that has otherwise been hyper-realistic. I suppose the story is embracing an element of fantasy here, even wish fulfillment. This isn't a documentary, and never pretended to be... so if it gets a bit fanciful at the end? Maybe that's ok if it's in service of a good message as it is here.

I would give Conclave a B. I'd heard some small buzz that it might be in the mix for the next Academy Awards. I feel like it won't be terribly competitive if it is... and yet it's a far more active and approachable film than a lot of Oscar fare. I enjoyed it overall; perhaps you might too.

Lower Decks: Shades of Green

The final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks kicked off with two episodes, the second of which is called "Shades of Green."

When the Cerritos visits a planet with a society converting to post-scarcity, away teams are sent to help the inhabitants tear down the vestiges of capitalism. Boimler is behaving differently, believing it might be the key to jump start his career. On the ship, Rutherford is less chipper than normal without Tendi around. Meanwhile, on the Orion homeworld, Tendi's family is drawn into a struggle for its continued existence... as Tendi learns that her sister is pregnant.

With the season five premiere so masterfully balancing comedy and introspection, a half-dozen character story lines, and a bucket of obscure Star Trek jokes... it was kind of inevitable that the next episode might not reach the same heights. "Shades of Green" is still a good episode with all the same elements that make for the best Lower Decks installments; it just isn't as deft in balancing it all in a perfect "meal."

A lot of the best comedy here is pretty subtle. Star Trek has always been set in a "post-scarcity" society, where everyone's needs are satisfied by a replicator or socialist ideals. How a society gets there has always understandably been waved away. By focusing on this moment of changing over for some random alien planet, Lower Decks gets to present a lot of jokes (mostly sight gags) about the end of capitalism.

It's against this background that we get a subtle story about Boimler learning he has to be true to himself (and not to the thing he perceives as a "how to succeed" manual that he stole from his doppelganger in the previous episode). Still less subtle is a nice subplot about Rutherford, wallowing in his feelings about losing his best friend. To be clear, his "wallowing" looks like many other people's best day, in terms of keeping a positive attitude. Which makes it all the more remarkable (fascinating?) that T'Lyn is able to pick up on this and react appropriately. Vulcans don't tend to be emotionally intelligent (and I've been watching a lot of Enterprise lately, where they're portrayed as especially dim in this regard), so it's refreshing to see a Vulcan character who gets it.

Meanwhile, Tendi spends the episode inside a 1980s sitcom. That's what the "D'Erika doesn't know that D'Vana knows that she's pregnant" plot feels like. You know that sitcom way in which one question would puncture the whole premise, but no one asks it? That way that someone behaves so outrageously that everyone around them ought to notice, but no one says anything? It's not only the stuff of 80s sitcoms, but cartoons, of course. So it doesn't feel too out of place here, even though it isn't my favorite element of the episode.

Still, this subplot does contribute other things I like. Star Trek has done "solar sailing ships" before and "stellar racing" before; the way both are incorporated here sort of feels like a chocolate and peanut butter thing that "just tastes great together." And I love that the writers aren't going to stretch the taffy any longer about Tendi being separated from the Cerritos. We got a few episodes out of it, and now we're going to put the crew all back together for the too-few episodes of the series we have left.

I give "Shades of Green" a B. It wasn't a favorite of mine, but it did at least set the stage for the rest of the season.

Time Slipping Away

I am sure you have too many shows in your television diet to make room for a recent single-season show that was canceled on a cliffhanger. And yet, I feel compelled to say a few words in praise of Time Bandits.

Streaming on Apple TV+, Time Bandits is a series re-imagination of early 80s film written by Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin. It's about a young British kid who falls in with a band of utterly inept thieves who bounce around time looking to steal valuable loot. They brush up against historical figures while trying to avoid the agents of the Supreme Being and Pure Evil, both of whom want the magical map they use to move through time portals.

It's been a long while since I've seen the original movie. I imagine it will be heretical to many for me to say this, but I don't remember it being particularly good. And more heretical still to say that my comic sensibilities don't really overlap much with Monty Python. But they do tend to overlap with the sensibilities of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, creators of What We Do in the Shadows and Wellington Paranormal. Here, they've teamed with Iain Morris to put their own spin on the Time Bandits premise. And if you like either of those other two shows, I feel confident you will enjoy Time Bandits.

But perhaps the real secret sauce of this TV series is its main star, Lisa Kudrow. She plays Penelope, the leader ("but really, we have no leaders") of the bandits -- and her comic skills and timing make everything about this show measurably funnier. Friends fans: imagine a character as flighty and scattered as Phoebe, but give her a massive ego and exaggerated self-confidence. That's Penelope. And she's hilarious. (Really, the whole cast is solid. But Lisa Kudrow is next level.)

Over the course of 10 episodes, you quickly come to understand how Time Bandits was canceled. It looks like a preposterously expensive show to make. There's constant jumping into new time frames, requiring new sets, guest actors, and costumes. And this isn't Doctor Who style time travel, where most things can look like someplace within a short drive of London. The Time Bandits visit the Prohibition-era United States, the African desert, the Mayan Empire, and the Ice Age, among other stops. Time Bandits surely would have needed an off-the-charts viewership to justify these costs. And given that Apple TV+ has already announced the cancellation of the show after one season, it's clear they didn't get that.

I'll be direct: the show ends on a cliffhanger (that will now never be resolved). But personally, I find it light enough to not be too upset by that. After 10 episodes of watching these characters bumble their way out of any crisis they bumble into, I really don't need to know the particulars of how they get out of this last one. I think I can just appreciate that I got 10 half-hour episodes that made me laugh. Maybe they want to make me try the original movie again some time, even. (But What We Do in the Shadows made for a far better TV series than a movie; why can't it be the same for Time Bandits?)

I give Time Bandits a B+. It may not stand the test of time, I suppose (ha!), but I think many people reading this would find it fun.

Prodigy: Ascension, Part II

I last left Star Trek: Prodigy right in the middle of a two-part episode. So even though Lower Decks premiered with two episodes this week, I feel compelled to circle back and pick up "Ascension, Part II."

The showdown against Acensia's massive warship continues. Voyager is critically damaged -- but the Protostar is still in action, as is a fighter squadron with Dal and Ma'jel. To save everyone, one of our heroes must make a major sacrifice.

I had been hoping for some answers in the second part of this episode: where did Acensia get all these wonderful toys, and how did she capture Wesley Crusher? Nope. This episode is really just the second half of a more traditional one-hour episode of Star Trek. Though it is an especially cinematic one, with loads of big space combat action.

But the action is more tailored to the characters in this second part, which I found to be an improvement over part one. The fighter squadron subplot allows room for two big character moments. Dal gets to show his doubtful fellow pilots that his more instinctual brand of wild flying has its merits. And Ma'jel actually adopts those methods, in a moment where she finds the limits of pure Vulcan-style logic and is able to think outside the box.

Everything builds to a big hero moment for Zero. On the one hand, Zero has made sacrifices a few times already this season, arguably undermining the impact of this moment now. But on the other, everything leading up to this has demanded less of Zero than now. This is the moment where they actually must choose to sacrifice their corporeal body to save everyone. Intellectually, it feels like an easy choice -- and Zero being such an intellectual character, of course that's the choice they're going to make. Still, Zero is giving up a lot, and I think the show makes the emotional weight of this clear.

The battle may be over, but there are still a few episodes left -- and Acensia is not yet defeated. So I'll give "Ascension, Part II" a B-, and continue the march to the end of the season.

Night of 1,000 Laughs?

Saturday Night Live has been running 49 years. It's been the subject of countless retrospectives and documentaries, and has spun off dozens of feature films. But now there's a feature film about it --  specifically, the 90 minutes leading up to the very first episode in 1975. Recorded, on my blog, it's Saturday Night!

I don't know exactly what I was hoping for out of this movie, but in retrospect, I was certainly kidding myself if I expected it to be anything other than the frenetic sprint it was. That isn't inherently a bad thing. If you recall Aaron Sorkin's single-season television show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, this feels like the vibe he was trying to capture: all of the pressure cooker action of the West Wing, in an environment of entirely different stakes. Loads of rapid-fire dialogue, punctuated by purposefully lowbrow moments of physical comedy. If you like this style of entertainment, Saturday Night is very faithfully working within the style.

But don't hope to scratch beneath the surface of anything here. Outside of the central figure of Lorne Michaels (and to a lesser extent, writer Rosie Shuster -- also Michaels' wife), each person gets perhaps 5 minutes of total screen time sprinkled throughout the movie. That's because between all the actors, producers, writers, executives, and guest stars, there are simply too many characters in this story to service with any meaningful personal arc. The story can only be "the chaos." 

To heighten that story, the movie condenses everything. Much of what is presented is based on real events (though some of it is only loosely inspired by them). Yet events that actually unfolded over months or even years are all crushed into the 90 minutes before the original Saturday Night Live premiere. I don't say this to claim that this movie should have been more realistic, but rather to say that you will know it isn't. No, it's not meant to be a documentary -- but it sometimes feels like it's going so far over the top that it's gilding the lily.

Still, the sprawling cast made me enjoy it most of the way. There are lots of fun renditions of celebrities we know well -- not quite impersonations, but performances that do feel like they capture the essence of the person: Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Dylan O'Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Matthew Rhys as George Carlin, and J. K. Simmons as Milton Berle. Other performers are making the most of their precious moments on screen, like Rachel Sennott as Rosie Shuster, Willem Dafoe as David Tebet, Jon Batiste as Billy Preston, and Nicholas Braun as both Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson. And Gabriel LaBelle is a good "ringmaster" of it all as Lorne Michaels.

But ultimately, Saturday Night feels like it's going to be much like a typical episode of Saturday Night Live, not one of the landmark episodes like the premiere it dramatized. You might enjoy it while you're watching, and have a few laughs. But it isn't likely to have any staying power, or to be thought of much in the future. I give it a B-.

Lower Decks: Dos Cerritos

Star Trek: Lower Decks is back for its (inexplicably) final season. And even though many fans are still enjoying the 20 episodes of Star Trek: Prodigy that were dropped by Netflix all at once, we get a double dose of Lower Decks to kick things off. First up is "Dos Cerritos."

The Cerritos passes through a spatial anomaly into an alternate universe, where crewmembers interact with versions of themselves whose different choices make them question their own. Mariner faces a version of herself who captains the ship. Boimler sees a version of himself whose achievements seem to be keeping up with his ambitions. Rutherford meets a version of himself who has more deeply embraced mechnical implants. And T'Lyn meets an alternate who says "remarkable" instead of "fascinating!" Meanwhile, Tendi tries to honor her pledge to Orion piracy without compromising her core Starfleet ideals.

It is remarkable/fascinating to me how well Lower Decks continues to concoct its episodes. They almost always manage to tell a "Star Trek" story (complete with moral) and keep jokes flowing at a fire hose pace. This time, the characters have to reckon with "the road not taken," using the tried-and-true Star Trek gimmick of an alternate universe. (And thank goodness, not the Mirror Universe again.)

While everything is presented in a light and humorous framework, there are legitimate crises of identity being expressed here. Rutherford is going through emotional pain and gets to learn whether taking it away really would be better. Boimler deals with a near-universal question about wondering whether he has achieved enough with his time in this universe. Mariner is at a crossroads where she fears slipping back into bad habits, wanting to make different choices this time. And Captain "Becky Freeman" has decided the grass is greener on the other side of the rift. (Even in the "B plot," Tendi is trying to stay true to herself in unusual circumstances.) That all of this fits comfortably in 24 minutes is impressive. That it's funny at the same time is miraculous.

While some alternate (prime?) universe doppelgangers have big, clear differences from our heroes, I enjoy the fun in the more subtle changes -- Ransom's mullet, Boimler's beard (but not a goatee; that would mean he's evil), the slightly darker uniforms, and so on. And speaking of differences, that battle sequence in the opening credits keeps getting freighted with more and and more action; this season, perhaps knowing it was to be the last, they dumped out the toy box and added V'Ger, Tholians, and Apollo.

The Tendi subplot was an equally skillful balance of character and comedy. I appreciate that her sister D'Erika is not simply an unreasonable baddie poised to hold Tendi hostage (and separated from the other main characters) for half the season. D'Erika and D'Vana are sisters, and Lower Decks really is committed to showing that this can be a complicated relationship. Also, it's committed to the deepest of deep cut jokes, bringing back the blue-skinned "Or-ee-ONS" of the original Star Trek: Animated Series to exist alongside the more familiar (to everyone except, apparently, the makers of the original Animated Series) green-skinned Orions.

Lower Decks shows absolutely no signs of running out of steam. And as an animated show, it could run for years and years, longer than any other Star Trek series. It is frustrating to know that behind-the-scenes issues about streaming services, corporate buyouts, and tax loopholes are likely the real reason why the show is ending this season. Still, I'll enjoy what's left while I have it. I give "Dos Cerritos" an A-.

Enterprise Flashback: Silent Enemy

By halfway through the first season of Enterprise, each of the seven main characters had had at least one episode centered on them... except one: Malcolm Reed. Then, with "Silent Enemy," the writers made the unusual decision to create an episode all about how nobody actually knows anything about Malcolm Reed.

When Enterprise encounters a mysteries species that turns out to be hostile, Archer faces a return back home for a weapons upgrade before continuing the mission of exploration. But in quieter moments between alien encounters, Hoshi Sato is at work on a special assignment from the captain. Malcolm Reed's birthday is approaching, and Archer wants to acknowledge him by having chef prepare his favorite food... if only they knew what that was.

There's no getting around it: this episode is pretty terrible for all the characters. The writers are hanging a lantern on the fact that they haven't bothered to flesh out one of their characters, and it feels like an elaborate punking of actor Dominic Keating. This is finally "his episode," you'd think, but he's actually not in it much. This is the moment we'll learn about Reed, but by the end we only know that he's secretive and reclusive, has allergies, and likes pineapple.

All the other information we pick up in the episode is about other people in Reed's past. He comes from a family of Navy men. (What would the Navy even be like in the future of a unified Earth? What would be the point?) He has a sister and two living parents, and a former Starfleet Academy roommate, all of whom profess not to know anything about him.

We get quite a bit of other characters in this episode, but none of them come off looking especially good either. Phlox basically violates doctor/patient confidentiality to help Hoshi. Trip had a girlfriend, we learn, but the long distance relationship didn't work out. T'Pol once again gives great advice that no one wants to listen to -- if you want to know about Malcolm Reed, ask him. Hoshi is so awkward in her sleuthing that she's mistaken by Reed for having a romantic interest.

Not that that last one is really Hoshi's fault, because Archer set her on this "mission." His behavior in this episode is most chaotic of all. At a time when Hoshi is trying to configure communications relays so that everyone can talk to loved ones back home, Archer has her drop everything to plan a surprise birthday party for Reed. (Even if this is a priority, literally anyone else would be less crucial right now to task with that.) When Enterprise comes up against a superior enemy, Archer refuses the  suggestion to ask the Vulcans for help, for no discernible reason other than straight-up racism.

And yet, as bad as this episode feels for all the characters, it feels equally and oppositely good in its "A plot" centered on the mysterious aliens. These unnamed adversaries are one of the creepier things Enterprise has done to this point, and their behavior feels genuinely alien and unknowable. What makes them escalate from observation to aggression? What was their shrill, static-filled transmission -- a threat or an unanswered greeting? (Or something else?)

When the aliens ultimately board Enterprise, we get a long, suspenseful sequence with dark lighting, well composed music, and very little dialogue. The aliens are CG, allowing a look that's a step or two distant from "human actor in makeup." Their attack leaves people comatose, arguably even scarier than if the victims had been killed outright. When they return yet again near the end of the episode, it's with a taunt stitched together of Archer's own words, like a ransom note cut from magazines. In short, I'm really into everything about these aliens. (Even if their ship, being green, kind of reads like "Romulan" early on.)

Other observation:

• Archer at one point refers to "Mount McKinley." In the time since the episode was made, the mountain's name has reverted to what it was always known as by the indigenous population: Denali.

I really feel like they did Reed (and everyone else) dirty in this episode. But they also managed to present a truly alien race, and build genuine tension and suspense. (And if I recall correctly, these aliens never recur, so this menace is never later undermined.) In all, I'll give "Silent Enemy" a B-.