Prodigy: A Moral Star

Star Trek: Prodigy is soon heading into its second mid-season break with, it seems, a two-part episode that kicked off with "A Moral Star."

The Diviner issues a threat to the Protostar crew: bring him the ship, or he'll kill the other miners in the prison they escaped. Sensing a betrayal in the offing, our heroes make plans to outwit the Diviner.

A multi-part episode is always going to leave you hanging, but this latest Prodigy felt to me more like a traditional one-hour Star Trek episode we've all just been forced to pause in the middle. It didn't leave us at the moment of maximum suspense, with most of the crew out of the immediate danger they'd been in. (Not that there weren't cliffhangers, though.)

There were definite finale vibes everywhere, with this episode serving up a summary and restatement of many of the themes from earlier in the season. Our heroes demonstrate definitively that they have learned to work together as a team. (And they've all got the spiffy new uniforms to prove it.) Dal is shedding his more selfish instincts. Gwyn is willing to stick her own neck out for others. There were also very explicit callbacks too, from "the cat they didn't save" in the pilot episode to the Kobayashi Maru to Gwyn's malapropism for "cahoots."

The payoffs are always deferred until later in any two-part episode, but there was some satisfaction here all the same. Mainly, in actors getting to chew the scenery. John Noble really put arch spin on every line he delivered as The Diviner, and it was pretty fun. And Kate Mulgrew certainly leaned into the corrupted version of Janeway created when the hologram's program was altered.

But really... I don't have too many thoughts on this episode. Just waiting to see how the first half (or second quarter, I guess) of Star Trek: Prodigy wraps up next week before heading into another break. I'd give "A Moral Star" a B.

Voyager Flashback: Remember

Many of the writers who worked on Star Trek: The Next Generation moved on to Deep Space Nine and Voyager. In some cases, stories followed them, as it did with Voyager's season three episode, "Remember."

Voyager is transporting a group of telepathic aliens back to their homeworld. B'Elanna begins having vivid dreams that seem to be memories shared to her by one of these visitors -- and they reveal a dark history from their planet's past.

"Remember" was first created by writers Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky as a Counselor Troi episode for the Next Generation. It was revived by Lisa Klink, who rewrote it as a B'Elanna episode for Voyager. Menosky thought this was an improvement, that the story worked better with a less "sensitive" character like B'Elanna at the core. On the other hand, Braga thought the episode should have been done the first time around, or not at all; the movie Schindler's List had been released in the intervening years, and he thought that broader awareness of the Holocaust robbed this episode of its "edge."

For sure, this episode is not at all subtle... but there is more here than simply declaring that the Holocaust was bad. (Hot take!) The episode is really decrying efforts to cover it up. And there are perhaps more nuances in it that can be perceived today than at the time the episode first aired. Authoritarianism was not as obvious a threat in the 1990s. The way the character of Jareth (played by major "That Guy" Bruce Davison) describes the "regressives": as people who reject technology and thus lead to spreading disease. It sounds so adjacent to reasonable... right up until he's executing people by burning them alive, and making you question what (if anything) he claimed was actually true.

Roxanne Dawson gives a really solid performance here -- and she must have been thrilled to finally have a real scene partner in a B'Elanna episode that wasn't a computer, herself, or both. Her voice and demeanor are completely different in her "Korenna" memories. She's thrown a really tough scene where she has to rant and plead at a silent crowd, and manages to make it feel credible.

And yet, the episode doesn't do a very good job of making the stakes seem personal and pressing to B'Elanna. The medical threat to her is taken off the table early. She cracks the "mystery" of where her dreams come from too easily (not that there are any other suspects). Yes, exposing a genocide is the right thing for one of our heroes to do, but there isn't any sense that B'Elanna personally will be changed one way or the other if she succeeds. For too much of the episode, her interest in getting to the truth amounts to little more than a need to know how the sexy book she's "reading" ends.

The production values are rather spotty. Half the cast gets brand-new costumes to wear for the party at Neelix's... but most of them look like pajamas. Most of the scenes are set on an alien world... but the sets are sparsely decorated, and the aliens just look like humans with "salad wrap" heads. (And, for some reason, truck nuts on their chests. Seriously, what is that pendant B'Elanna-as-Korenna is wearing?) A featured alien instrument doesn't really have any operating parts, it's just some kind of cheap-looking sphere/keytar thing.

Other observations:

• Guest star Charles "Chip" Esten was best known to me at the time this episode first aired as a regular player on Whose Line Is It Anyway? (And he was still in some of the episodes made more recently in the U.S.)

• The character of Jor Brel tries to dismiss B'Elanna's experiences not as actual history, but as an imaginary synthesis of several different Enarans' memories. I feel like there's an interesting Star Trek story of its own in that idea somewhere, about some sort of shared fantasy built on snippets of truth. (They had to have done something like that at some point, right?)

There's a nice story and message here, but it could just as easily have been a Troi episode of Next Generation, or even something like a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits tale that wasn't even Star Trek at all. The Voyager characters feel a little too superfluous here for it to seem really special to me. I give "Remember" a B-.

The Invasion Will Be Televised

If you're looking for reasons to subscribe to Apple TV+ (other than the one everyone knows, Ted Lasso), I can very unhelpfully tell you that Invasion may or may not be one. The TV series depicts an alien invasion of planet of Earth, the action hopping around to countries all over the globe, following characters of many different backgrounds and their reaction to the unthinkable events.

The 10-episode first season is very oddly paced. The first episode devotes a great deal of time to a plot thread that ends abruptly and never recurs. The first half of the season stretches the narrative taffy to ridiculous extremes in keeping characters from the truth of their own story; you may well find yourself asking "wasn't this show supposed to be about an alien invasion?" The plot keeps walking up to doors, but seldom chooses to even open them, much less walk through them.

And yet, there is still enough inertia by episode 2 to give the sense that there is a plan here. And the second half of the season packs plenty of marvelous surprises and payoffs. The show is well aware that its audience has seen alien invasion tales before, and so it has set about creating a different one. It presents effectively "alien" aliens -- they look strange, they behave strangely. It's not clear what they want or what they're doing. The show is very creative at times.

That creativity is brought to life well in a very expensive-looking production. The visual effects are impressive. The vast array of locations involved makes the tale feel truly global in scope -- and, I've read, it was actually filmed in a variety of locations around the world. The production values do veer "too arty" in episode 6, when the decision to realistically depict events in a darkened home go so far that you literally cannot see what is happening without adjusting your TV settings. But the show is definitely taking big swings.

Still... I'm not sure how much I liked it. There are certainly two other sci-fi shows on Apple TV+ I'd recommend over it. (For All Mankind and Foundation, though it seems I haven't blogged about the latter yet? I guess that's on my to-do list.) I have to admit that I wasn't quite satisfied by the way season one wrapped up. But there is going to be a season two, and I also feel like I'll probably be there to watch it when it arrives.

To put a grade on it, though? I'd call it a B-. It's "passing," but there's plenty or room for improvement. Not a reason to get Apple TV+, but perhaps something you'd want to check out if you already have it.

Voyager Flashback: False Profits

"The Price" was hardly a stellar episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. But two of its ideas -- a stable wormhole, and a ship becoming stranded in a distant quadrant -- would become the core premises of the next two Star Trek series. And one of those series, Voyager, would serve up a direct sequel in "False Profits."

When Voyager finds a migrating wormhole that could take them back to the Alpha Quadrant, they also find two Ferengi who came through it in the other direction years earlier. They've set themselves up as gods on a primitive planet, and Janeway is determined to remove them (within the constraints of the Prime Directive) before returning home.

By the time this episode aired, Deep Space Nine was more than halfway through its run, and had figured out how to build a solid, comedic episode featuring the Ferengi. This episode is Voyager's attempt at the same, using one of the few stories Voyager even could pick up on from an earlier Star Trek. But it's a decidedly mixed bag.

There are some legitimately funny moments through the episode. There's an old school comedy vibe to how the Ferengis put upon their servant Kafar, and he also gets some nice digs back (including when he refers to them as "Greater Sage" and "Lesser Sage"). The bard with his moving eyepatch is a fun (if broad) bit of business.

But also, the whole episode is premised on these two Ferengi getting the best of Our Heroes, again and again -- and it's a really bad look for them. Janeway's resolve and careful arguments are stripped away by one improvised speech from Arridor. Neelix folds immediately in the face of the slightest pressure from them. They overpower a security officer (off-screen) and steal their shuttle without being stopped. And in the the end, the Ferengi escape through the wormhole, "destroying" it in the process, as Voyager's crew stands by helpless. The reason why Ferengi work on Deep Space Nine is because they're mostly siloed in their own stories where they backstab and outwit each other. But when aliens routinely portrayed as this dumb get the drop on Starfleet? It strains belief and diminishes the main characters

Add to it all one truly terrible casting decision at the heart of the episode. No, not Dan Shor actually returning as Arridor from the original Next Generation episode. And not omnipresent Leslie Jordan, who was brought in for the previously non-speaking role of Kol. (Though I will say, Jordan is suppressing his usual comic personality here, and he's not as funny as usual because of it.) No, I'm talking about the choice to put Neelix in Ferengi makeup to pose as the Grand Proxy.

In the real world, that's a perfectly logical choice. Phillips had actually played a Ferengi himself on Next Generation, was used to extreme makeup, and this would give him a chance at playing broad comedy. Within the fiction, Neelix is pretty much the last person you'd want for the job. He's from the wrong quadrant and knows nothing about the Ferengi, and has rarely proven himself to be reliable under pressure. Even Tuvok would have been a more... well, logical choice; no, he probably couldn't plausibly act like a Ferengi, but at least he does have undercover experience!

Other observations:

• Every once in a while, an alien race on Star Trek just looks 100% human, with not even a minor makeup to alter their appearance. That was probably done here to help an already burdened department, so they wouldn't have to make up a bunch of extras. Or so that the babes attending the Ferengi could be maximally near-naked.
  

• You see Dutch angles (tilted camera) a lot in film and television, but rarely do you see the angle tip in the middle of a shot, as it does here on the Ferengis' "kill the messenger" line.
  

This episode is better than the Next Generation one that spawned it. But that's a pretty low bar. I give "False Profits" a C+.

Tragic Thoughts

I've seen a lot of movies by the Coen brothers over the years -- far more than you'd expect for a person who hasn't generally liked their movies all that much. (Though True Grit was a notable exception. And now, in the aftermath of Hawkeye, I wonder how much that had to do with how talented Hailee Steinfeld is.)

Now along has come a significant departure. Joel Coen's newest movie was written and directed completely without the involvement of his brother Ethan. And it was adapted from a play by William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of Macbeth.

All presentations of Shakespeare on stage or screen come with at least three distinct challenges. First, a notable portion of the audience will not be seeing the story for the first time, having seen some past version of it that lingers in their minds. Second, Shakespeare's plays are generally rather long and are rarely presented without cuts; where the cuts are made plays a huge role in the shape of your adaptation. Three, despite the length of the full text, Shakespeare's plays are hyper-compressed in time and action; they can strain belief in how suddenly the events unfold, and negotiating the big emotional swings are a minefield for actors and a director. Joel Coen has made bold choices in this adaptation that impact all of these things.

To the first point, this version of Macbeth leans into classic film expectations of Shakespeare. It's made very much in homage to Laurence Olivier's Hamlet: filmed in stark and moody black-and-white, with an old school 4:3 aspect ratio. The sets are large and certainly aren't cheap... but they also never truly try to make you believe that they're not sets. The feeling of this movie is one of watching a stage production of the play -- one with some tricks that would be beyond the reach of live theater, but with artificiality on display nonetheless.

To the second point, this is an incredibly slimmed-down text. I've seen Macbeth on stage before -- and it ran two-and-a-half hours (not even counting an intermission). This film is a tight hour-forty-five, including the credits, suggesting that as much as a third of the original text has been excised in this adaptation. (But it's not like I was following along with a copy of the play to track.) If you have it in your head that Shakespeare is slow and plodding, know that this adaptation is brisk indeed.

To the third point, negotiating the rapidly growing ambition of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, you have Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand. Both give excellent performances. Their brilliance here is that they often feel like they're giving a fresh take on the words without feeling like they're struggling to find a new adaptation. As much as it's possible to feel natural when speaking such heightened poetry, they pull it off. Washington handles some great fight choreography with aplomb. McDormand negotiates her character's descent into insanity with great skill.

And at the same time... I daresay both of them are very miscast.

I mentioned that each Shakespearean play strains disbelief in its own way. With Macbeth, the issue is in how quickly and completely the two main characters give into their ambition and bloodlust. Lady Macbeth is cold and calculating from the start, while Macbeth is initially reluctant to start down his murderous path. But soon the bodies are piling up, and for a while both revel in psychopathic glee at their body count. The beast that's always been inside them has been unleashed to devastate all of Scotland.

Therein lies the problem in casting Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand: both feel too old for these roles. As good as they both are, they call into question how long the Macbeths could have possibly contained such murderous ambition. If the characters were both 30-somethings (as the text implies in talk of parenting children), you could imagine these psychopaths holding back their darker urges until now. In this version, with both in their 60s, it's impossible to conceive that they would not have given into their darker instincts long before this. It magnifies the "problem" at the core of this particular Shakespearean play.

Joel Coen's adaptation does try to shore up that issue by amplifying the supernatural elements of the play. The famous witches are made especially mysterious with a wild performance by Kathryn Hunter, and given a further tweak by an interesting and sinister treatment of the minor character of Ross, played by Alex Hassell. Then, creative takes on the "dagger of the mind" speech, the "ghost comes to dinner" scene, and both scenes of the witches' prophecies... all combine to make sure there's really not a dull moment in this movie version.

But overall, I think I'd give it a B. It's worthwhile, but not must-see. The cast is great, but it's not the best take on Macbeth that I personally have seen. And the arty use of black-and-white and artificial scenery feels to me like it will keep it from having much crossover potential with an audience who hasn't seen a Macbeth before. Perhaps this is for Coen brothers fans curious what the "single brother experience" might be like?

Prodigy: Time Amok

I've written before about how Star Trek: Prodigy is clearly the Star Trek series meant for kids (and how I'm fine with it carving out that space). But then along comes the latest episode, "Time Amok," an episode that with only slight changes could have felt at home on any of the previous Star Trek series.

A temporal anomaly splits the Protostar into parallel ships, each with only a single crew member aboard, each experiencing time at a different rate. Only the Janeway hologram can move from one ship to another, striving to help her "cadets" learn the lesson she's already been trying to teach them: they must work together as a team.

Prodigy sometimes gets a bit heavy-handed with its moral of the week, yet so far it has always presented an engaging story to bring that moral into focus. Here, by showing how dire things can get when the crew is separated, the importance of teamwork was presented in a clever way. Really, this episode perhaps only needed a full hour to feel like full fledged "Star Trek for adults."

I can imagine a one-hour version of this that might have tried explaining the anomaly a little more specifically. I doubt that more technobabble was really what was needed here -- the timey-wimeyness already felt pretty dense -- though the "rules" surrounding Janeway's awareness of each timestream felt a little vague.

An even better use of one-hour would have been to devote more time to Rok-Tahk's long stretch alone in the slowest timeline. That would no doubt be too bleak for a children's show, yet I was struck by just how much the episode already succeeded in making her story impactful. Even though the character is voiced by an actual child, I find it easy to forget that she is the youngest character on the show. Children that age don't often have the language or self-awareness to really put their feelings into words, but if the episode could have spent more time on her story, it could have shown us more.

Or maybe the half-hour version would have been just fine had the episode not also stuffed in big moves in the ongoing story lines. The crew came clean to Janeway, with Dal revealing that they're not Starfleet cadets. (Not a moment too soon. Janeway's obliviousness to this truth was putting her character's intelligence at risk.) The Diviner and Drednok figured out a way to reach across the galaxy and still menace the Protostar crew -- in a subplot that kept the mystery of "what happened to Chakotay's crew?" still near the foreground.

In any case, I guess it's not really a bad thing when the main criticism you can levy against a show is that you wished there had been more of it. "Time Amok" was a nicely dramatic episode. I think it earns a solid B.

Report Report

Not long ago, on a movie podcast I listen to (The Next Picture Show, if you're curious), the movie The Report was mentioned. It had been on my radar before that, but had been lost in the rush of other options. The podcast mention ended up reminding me to boost it back up the list, and soon I did get around to it.

The Report (sometimes styled something like The ■■■■■■■ Report) is based on the true story of Daniel Jones and the Senate Intelligence Committee as they tried to review the torture program employed by the CIA in the wake of the September 11th terror attacks. It's an interesting subject for dramatization. The outcome is fairly well known. (At least, I think it is; and the movie should be more widely seen if not.) The obstruction along the way was, I thought, fairly known too. But the movie makes suspenseful (and infuriating) all the frustrations of bureaucracy.

The movie was released in 2019, but it certainly has topical things to say about the years since. That's because only part of the movie is focused on the uncontroversial thesis that torture is amoral and wrong. Another part of the movie -- and perhaps the larger part -- is a cautionary tale about the price of not holding people accountable for their wrongs. It argues that a failure to pursue justice in the name of some post-partisan "deescalation" simply means you've allowed the goalposts to be moved. If a crime is committed, and there is no justice for it, then it's not a crime anymore.

That said, there's a difference between a movie espousing politics I happen to agree with and a movie that truly entertains. The Report does have its moments, but there's sort of a ceiling on how compelling it can be. The cast is solid: Adam Driver stars as the stubborn and stoic Daniel Jones, while Annette Bening is Senator Dianne Feinstein (whom the movie doesn't exactly lionize, to its credit). The supporting cast includes Jon Hamm, Jennifer Morrison, Tim Blake Nelson, Ted Levine, Michael C. Hall, Maura Tierney, and Matthew Rhys. It's really a stacked cast for mostly slight roles in a movie most people probably haven't heard of.

But now you have, at least. And maybe it's for you. It's easy to find at least; Amazon wound up producing the film, so you can watch it with a Prime subscription. If political thrillers are your thing, it might be worth a watch. I give The Report a B.

Voyager Flashback: The Swarm

After season two of Star Trek: Voyager tried out a handful of multi-episode story lines, you might have expected season three to go for that again. Instead, "The Swarm" seems to tee up two continuing plots, only to abandon both after this episode.

The Doctor's begins to break down, first losing his memory of medical procedures, then his memory of his own crewmates. His only hope is a diagnostic hologram of Lewis Zimmerman, the original creator of his program. Meanwhile, Voyager attempts to traverse the space of a mysterious, powerful alien race.

This episode was reportedly pitched as "the Doctor has Alzheimer's disease." But in the drafting of the script, it was decided the idea wasn't full enough to sustain an episode on its own. The alien swarm was invented to fill the gap, ultimately taking the episode's title even though it was just a tacked-on B plot. Perhaps, you'd think, this is because they were being positioned as new villains to replace the Kazon and Vidiians for the next phase of the series. But no, despite Neelix hyping them up as Delta Quadrant boogeyman, these aliens are never seen again. (Perhaps because the type of menace they offer is quite similar to the Borg.)

So then, what to make of the main plot? Well, there is a lot to like here. It's nice to see characters rally around the idea of the Doctor as a person worthy of care like any flesh and blood crew member. Kes is particularly strong in her advocacy here, with Jennifer Lien performing well in a number of pivotal scenes. B'Elanna also interacts with the Doctor for more or less the first time as "more than a program."

Robert Picardo has a fantastic episode. From the Doctor's opening comedic squabbles with a holographic opera diva to his eventual fear, confusion, and rage in the face of failing memories, he gives a great performance -- a recognizable representation of Alzheimer's. And then he gives another great performance as Lewis Zimmerman, whose curmudgeonly ways out-Doctor the Doctor. (And prove so fun that the writers of Deep Space Nine would call him later in the same season to reprise the role on their series.)

And yet, there's little satisfying about the Doctor's story outside of the performances themselves. His condition comes out of nowhere, neither caused nor influenced by any outside inciting incident. The solution also comes from out of nowhere... and is not even presented as a complete solution. There's no telling whether this could happen to the Doctor again some day, and no telling whether he is indeed cured at all. An ambiguous ending leaves you to believe anything from "the Doctor will be back to himself soon" to "he's forgotten everything but opera," and there's no follow-up episode to show us his recovery.

Other observations:

• This episode starts with a "Helmsman's Log" by Tom Paris. I suppose there could be such a thing, but the fact that we've never heard of it before (on any Star Trek series, I think) makes it feel quite odd.

• We do get the first hints of a real flirtation between Paris and B'Elanna, which at least is a story the writers are interested in pursuing. Still, Paris asking her out while she's trapped on a shuttle with him is not a good look. At least he takes her "no" in stride.

• The Doctor's argument with the diva about "rushing" and "lagging" makes me think of Whiplash. I should watch that again. I loved it.

• The Star Trek writers are always serving up analogies to explain their science fiction conceits. But Kim's line "like a snake through the tube" must qualify for the all-time weirdest and worst. Is that actually a saying I just don't know about?

• What is happening when the swarm aliens who board Voyager get shot? Are the phasers set to vaporize? Do the aliens self-vaporize upon death? Are they being beamed away?

On the back of great work by Robert Picardo and Jennifer Lien, I'll give "The Swarm" a B-. Still, I think the episode is a pale shadow of what it might have been had the script been better, or had the writers teased out some of these ideas across more episodes.

Being Aaron Sorkin

Aaron Sorkin is one of the few film and television writers whose name is as well-known as most actors. His style is often imitated, occasionally mocked, but has proven again and again to be high caliber. Being the Ricardos is his latest movie, an examination of the relationship between Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz during turbulent events in the run of I Love Lucy.

It's an interesting entry in Sorkin's resume. It feels to me like at times, he's trying to tamp down a bit on some of the flourishes for which he's known. In this movie, his typically breathless pace often gives way to slower, almost contemplative scenes. And his urge to make all his characters exceptionally witty feels more realistic, because the setting is a natural home: behind the scenes at a successful sitcom, you'd expect everyone to be exceptionally witty.

Helping Sorkin fight his instincts, to the degree that he wants to, is an outstanding cast. Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem anchor the movie as Lucille and Desi, and both are at the top of their game. Their performances thread the needle, being enough of an impersonation of real, widely-known people to quiet the mind, while still being realistic enough to not bump the audience out of the story. The further affectations they slip on for the characters of Lucy and Ricky are especially fun. And these two, more than anyone else in the cast, are key to the moments where Sorkin actually slows down the pace. Their scenes together still crackle with energy, even when they're not rushing to fill any possible pause in the patter.

The supporting cast is great too. J.K. Simmons and Nina Arianda play I Love Lucy co-stars William Frawley and Vivian Vance, and both get in their share of impactful moments, both dramatic and comedic. The TV series staff is populated with Alia Shawkat, Tony Hale (yes, it's a mini Arrested Development reunion), Jake Lacy, Clark Gregg, and others. (Ronny Cox, Linda Lavin, and John Rubinstein also appear as older versions of the characters in a sort of "fake documentary" framing device for the story -- but, despite their performances, is one of the less successful elements of the movie.)

But here's the thing you've gotta know about Being the Ricardos. (If you haven't seen it, that's a small inside joke.) Sorkin's gonna Sorkin. If his writing has not been "for you" before, there's no particular reason you should give this film a chance to change your mind. There are scenes where he just can't help himself, cramming three pages of dialogue into 20 seconds, staging elaborate and showy walk-and-talks, and pitting characters in a "last line"-off competition.

And there is a theatrical artificiality to the story. While the events chronicled in Being the Ricardos are essentially true, Sorkin's playwright origins have compelled him to unify the time and action as much as possible. Three separate Very Important Events which, in reality, took place three years apart are all compressed into a single week for this movie. (And the I Love Lucy episode that the movie says was being filmed at the time? It doesn't actually line up with any of those events.) It serves the narrative to amplify things to this degree, but the "when it rains, it pours" energy is amped so high that it does at times feel artificial.

Still, if you've liked anything by Aaron Sorkin, you're probably going to like this. The performances are quite strong. There are solid funny moments and solid dramatic moments. And in general, it feels like a worthy spotlight on one of the biggest Power Couples ever to work in Hollywood. I give Being the Ricardos a B.

Prodigy: First Con-tact

The most recent episode of Star Trek: Prodigy felt to me like perhaps the purest distillation yet of what the show is meant to be: a series to introduce Star Trek (and its morals) to children... and not really for an adult audience.

The Protostar encounters Nandi, the Ferengi who raised Dal before he became imprisoned in the Diviner's prison colony. She has a job for the Protostar's crew, and Dal is eager to help... but the mission runs against the Starfleet principles that the Janeway hologram implores them to honor.

Star Trek: Prodigy had already been introducing concepts as though to a first time audience -- and understandably so, since it's trying to broaden the franchise's fan base. Still, while explaining the Prime Directive seemed like clearly necessary background for new Trekkers to catch up on, the idea that the transporter would need to be "explained" (in the form of an extended comedic teaser) felt kind of wild to me.

Yet an even clearer statement that "this Star Trek is for new fans" came in the many questions it opened up that would plague only the longtime fans. Didn't the Protostar just hop over the Gamma Quadrant in the last episode? What's a Ferengi doing there? (Setting aside the improbable coincidence that a person from Dal's past just happens to be there, of all places.) How did she get to the Delta Quadrant to hand over Dal to the Diviner? Are we going to get explanations for any of this in future episodes, or am I just supposed to tell myself (in the words of William Shatner in a famous Saturday Night Live sketch): "Get a life! It's just a TV show!" ?

All that is to say that this episode asked me to ignore a lot of things that felt like they didn't make sense. But I suppose to the degree I was able to do so, I was rewarded for the effort. Certainly, I feel like the character of Dal makes a lot more sense now. Why is his first instinct always to lie and scam? Why does he have so much to learn, morally speaking? The fact that he was raised by a Ferengi feels like all the answers you need. And positioning a Ferengi as an adversary for the Protostar crew makes sense; they're a villain you can imagine children getting the best of. (We've seen it before.)

The visuals in this episode were especially impressive. The alien planet that our heroes visited (and the beings they encountered there) were especially beautiful in concept and magnificently rendered in animation. It's easy to take such detailed art for granted, but you have to remember that the movies that usually serve up these kind of visuals take far more time and money to make than an episode of Prodigy. They really pushed a lot of chips in the pot for this one.

And once again, the moral was a solid one: a generally applicable lesson on making a first impression that went beyond simply espousing the ideals of Starfleet. Add in some solid action, and it was all pretty good... if you just keep reminding yourself that "this is for kids." More for kids, I'd even say, than the typical Pixar movie.

Perhaps there will come a point where the Trekker in me doesn't feel compelled to watch a show that's clearly not meant for me. But not as long as I'm still enjoying enough to be swept along. I give "First Con-tact" a B.

Discovery: ...But to Connect

Some seasons of Star Trek: Discovery have had mid-season breaks, and some haven't. You might have expected this season to have a break for the December holidays. But nope, we got one episode after Christmas and then a break. That episode was "...But to Connect."

Zora has calculated the origin of the species behind the Dark Matter Anomaly, but refuses to share it with the Discovery crew, prompting a review of her level of intelligence overseen by Kovich. Meanwhile, the members of the Federation debate whether to seek peaceful contact with the DMA aliens, or retaliate against their anomaly with an attack. Burnham and Book argue opposite sides of the debate, fracturing their relationship.

I've noted before that I have liked the way Book's loss has been an ongoing element of this season, not something easily gotten over. With this episode, we learn that this wasn't just about depicting grief in a more realistic way -- it was setting Book up for a realistic "heel turn" here. While his stance in this episode isn't very "Star Trek," it fits with the emotional journey he's been on. (And, after all, he isn't a Starfleet officer.)

While Book joining up with Tarka makes some sense, I'm not sure I needed for Tarka to have ulterior motives. It feels to me a lot like Lorca's arc in season one, despite the fact that the writers immediately took the Mirror Universe off the table. Another character not looking so good this episode was President Rillak. She really has no preference at all in this debate, nothing she wants to lobby for? Her plan is yet again to let Burnham kinda do her job for her?

But then, Burnham is the star of the show, of course. And we did get yet another great "righteous captain's speech," which was delivered with precision as always by Sonequa Martin-Green. Speaking if good speeches -- if anything, Book's argument was even more impassioned (and David Ajala's performance was just as strong). Add in the fun of the slowly evolving relationship between Saru and T'Rina, plus a bevy of background aliens (familiar and new), and I felt it was a mostly satisfying story line, even if it was mostly marking time and setting up a more interesting conflict for the next episode.

Similarly, I found the Zora plot here mostly engaging, but slightly flawed. Well... not "flawed" perhaps so much as "competing with one of the best Star Trek episodes of all time." The debate over Zora's sentience felt a lot like the Next Generation classic "The Measure of a Man." And I suppose why not "remake" that episode (to some extent)? It is more than 30 years old. But I feel like this episode could have distinguished itself if more people than Stamets were arguing about the dangers Zora represents. He's certainly not "right" here, by Star Trek morality... but the entire Discovery crew has a history with Control, so I think it wouldn't have been a stretch for more of them to express misgivings.

It also struck me a bit odd that this ultimately was a family debate over a shipwide issue. That only Stamets, Culber, Adira, and Gray were involved in the discussion seemed rather off to me. (And, for the third straight episode since Tilly left, made me wish Tilly was still around. I feel like she could have credibly taken either side in the Zora debate, and man would I have liked to hear her thoughts.) But at least we did have Kovich there to stir the family pot a bit; the character (and bone dry performance by David Cronenberg) remains a fun element in the show.

I suppose this was perhaps another typical Discovery episode in that the logic and particulars didn't necessarily add up, while the emotional appeal and performances were top notch. I've long since signed on to that kind of show, so this episode ultimately worked for me too. I give "...But to Connect" a B. And I'll look forward to the handoff back from Star Trek: Prodigy to see the last half of the fourth season.

A Closer Look

I've seen a small uptick in online articles about the movie Don't Look Up, as the collective response to it keeps shifting. The movie is seen as an award contender. Except it's terrible. But that's only because people don't like its message. Or they love the message, but don't like the way it's delivered. Or so the evolving discussion goes. Well... I decided to see it for myself.

Don't Look Up is the latest from writer-director Adam McKay, who follows up The Big Short and Vice with another dose of anger, this time leavened with more comedy and satire. A comet is on a collision course with Earth, with just six months until humans are made extinct. But the astronomers who discovered the threat struggle -- repeatedly -- to get anyone to take the problem seriously.

If you look at this movie as a righteous cautionary tale, you might well compare it to the famous Network. If you're approaching it as satire, you might think of Idiocracy. In some ways, Don't Look Up is worthy of comparison to both. This is an unabashed metaphor for climate change denialism, and even more so for the capitalist profit motive that stands in the way of addressing the issue. The problem for me is that the satire feels set at something like a 7 out of 10.

This movie was written in 2019, and amazingly became out of date before it was even made. The original outbreak of the coronavirus delayed its planned shooting schedule; it was ultimately filmed in the period before vaccines were widely available, and was only released right before Christmas. But in 2021, our world became almost as dumb as this movie imagined. The utter idiocy surrounding any measures to mitigate the unchecked spread of COVID variant after COVID variant has made this satire of climate denial look too realistic. We're now not only in a world of anti-masking and anti-vaxers, but one of paste eaters (for horses) and urine drinkers.

In this world, Don't Look Up isn't nearly wild enough.

Yes, it's still funny at times. The cast is huge, and great from top to bottom; my favorites include Meryl Streep as a sort of female Trump, Jonah Hill as an idiot Trump Jr., Cate Blanchett as a devious-vapid talk show host, Mark Rylance as an obnoxious tech billionaire, and Timothée Chalamet as a surprisingly nuanced burnout. But yes, Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rob Morgan, Tyler Perry, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Paul Guilfoyle... they (and more) are all good too.

Don't Look Up is right there on Netflix, so easily accessible. And I think many who read my blog would like it. But before I watched it, I had sort of assumed that its middling Rotten Tomatoes score was a true average of the people who were praising it and loudly dunking on it. Now that I've seen it myself, I think that score is closer to an accurate reflection of what I thought of it. I'd give it a B-.

Discovery: Stormy Weather

Jonathan Frakes has directed at least one episode in each season of Star Trek: Discovery so far. His first of season four was "Stormy Weather."

Discovery has a chance to learn more about the Dark Matter Anomaly by venturing inside a subspace rift it has left behind. But the ship finds itself in an empty black void, threatened by a force they can't detect, and unable to find an exit. Escape depends on dealing with the newly emerging emotions of the computer Zora.

I commented about the previous episode that while Zora's sentience has been an ongoing concern for a while now, the escalation to emotions felt sudden and unearned. That was all in service of getting to this episode, it seems. The writers are interested in exploring Zora as a character (perhaps even more than they are in the secondary bridge officers), giving her an arc in this episode of learning about courage in the face of danger.

There are interesting aspects to that story here, though I'm not sure they're developed as fully as they could have been. Gray is an interesting character to interact with Zora, as both are dealing with "new experiences" right now -- though I feel like they could have been more explicit about this connection. Instead, the episode focused more on how Gray, as a non-Starfleet person aboard a Starfleet vessel, feels a bit adrift. I feel like that should put him more in common cause with Book than anyone else; perhaps that's a relationship that will get explored at some point, in what seems so far to be the "season of Book."

The Zora plot culminates in a final stand with her and Michael Burnham alone on the ship. I love giving Sonequa Martin-Green another great scene to argue for "what Star Trek is all about," and she once again delivers here under difficult conditions (her only scene partner being on off-screen voice). But if the story here is about Zora learning true courage, wouldn't the fullest exploration of that idea have involved Burnham also needing to retreat to the pattern buffer at the end, leaving Zora all alone? You could even have the scene exactly as written, but just ended it by Zora taking it upon herself to save Burnham's life. And it would have cleaned up a big question: how did Burnham survive what was declared to be unsurvivable?

(Side note: I really think they should have lost a crewmember or two in the pattern buffer, even if only people we've never met. Pulling off this scheme without risk or consequences feels to me like it puts in play a too-easy fix for many conceivable situations. The writers will just have to ignore this in the future.) 

The interactions with Zora were good (especially in that climactic Burnham scene), but felt to me like they only scratched the surface. Even given Star Trek's boundless optimism, does no one perceive any potential danger in her emerging intelligence? (Perhaps that's a topic for a future episode.) And once again, I really felt the absence of Tilly -- who better to talk with Zora about doubts and uncertainty, and dealing with major things for the first time?

Still, the episode satisfied for me on a number of other fronts. I very much like the way they continue to explore Book's trauma, this time in the form of taunting hallucinations from his father. Arguably two or three episodes now have already "resolved" Book's feelings of loss -- at least, in what would have been a more than satisfactory conclusion for almost any other Star Trek series (except perhaps Deep Space Nine). But Discovery is engaging with the truth that loss like that is ever-present and is not easily "gotten over." Even when you think you've dealt with it, you haven't. In that way, Book's arc feels compelling and real to me.

Jonathan Frakes always incorporates great visuals in his episodes, and this time he got a lot of support from the effects department. On-set fire, combined with CG additions (and epic exterior shots) served to make the danger in the final act seem very real. And while I personally found it rather jarring, only Frakes would get to employ wipes, in an early sequence that felt like "Star Wars by Brian De Palma" more than Star Trek.

The big revelation of the DMA plot in this episode was that it apparently comes from outside the galaxy. That feels to me like it probably means an all-new threat, as the franchise hasn't established much as originating from outside the Milky Way. Discovery does like its connections to past Trek, though, so perhaps we're looking at a return of the Kelvans from the original series' "By Any Other Name?" Their paralytic fields and ability to transform people into crushable, fist-sized "dice" were certainly advanced for classic Trek, as this "DMA" is for this era.

I would have liked "Stormy Weather" to more fully explore the themes it raised with Zora, but that's surely a topic that the season will continue to visit. Overall, I did like the episode. I give it a B.

Where There's a Wheel...

The final weeks of 2021 brought the long awaited adaptation of The Wheel of Time to Amazon Prime. It's a TV series I was interested despite the fact that my interest in the books waned early.

I only made it through three of the 14 books in the series. They weren't bad, but I had consistently felt that each of the three was only a B-. For books as long as they are, and with 11 more in store, I simply exhausted my will to keep going. Perhaps if I'd had an inkling that the books might soon improve, things might have gone differently. Instead, many fans of the series promised me that in the middle books, thing would get a lot worse (repetitive and drawn out) before they got better.

But the main issues I had with the books were things that a TV series could potentially shore up. I had found the characters to be thinly conceived and shallowly written; with tight scripts and good actors, the characters could be far more compelling. I had found the female characters especially dull, despite the fantasy world that ostensibly gave them more power than the men; a re-telling of the tale could improve their agency, where the subjective perspective of the books sometimes made them shrew-like, depending on the viewpoint character.

Sure enough, the TV series met my expectations. But that was unclear in the beginning. The first episode -- particularly, the first half of the first episode -- had me doubting. The dialogue seemed wooden and the most of the performances quite stilted. But the incredible production values surrounding a large battle in the second half of the hour got my attention. Great makeup, exciting staging of action, skilled cinematography, and exhilarating music all combined to make me think "this is worth giving another chance."

And things only picked up from there. At least until episode 5, each episode built upon the last with stronger storytelling (tighter scripts), improved acting (from the cast of younger "unknowns"), and better pacing (deft interpolation of multiple story lines). And even if some would argue that the plot slowed down at mid-season, it was only so that action could give way to important character-expanding subplots.

I also like the visual style the show struck right from the first episode. This is clearly high fantasy -- and yet it walks a narrow line where it doesn't feel overly beholden to (or in avoidance of) other popular adaptations like The Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. And the budget is deployed smartly. The price tag of each episode is quite high for television, but quite low (per hour of entertainment) compared to massive motion pictures that don't look much better than this. This show really could be the heir to Game of Thrones that Amazon Prime was no doubt looking for.

...though it is hamstrung a little bit by the plot. In this early stage of the 14-book epic (whose ultimate ending I don't actually know), most of the story is standard Chosen One fare. It's just different enough  for when it was first published in 1990, but feels pretty rote three decades later. But it isn't "bad," and my hope is that plot developments yet to come (that I never reached in my abbreviated reading of the series) will spice things up. Or perhaps the showrunner will see fit to tweak some plot points to modernize the tale (though such changes risk offending the pure fans, of course).

I'd say season one of The Wheel of Time lands at a B+ for me overall. I enjoyed it -- considerably more than the books -- and I'll be looking forward to season two when the series returns.

Prodigy: Kobayashi

I'm still a couple of episodes behind in posting about Star Trek: Discovery. But during that show's current hiatus, Star Trek: Prodigy is back -- and its latest episode is all the Star Trek fans will be talking about.

As Gwyn tries to access encrypted files that may explain more about the origin of the Protostar and its mission, Dal discovers a holodeck scenario of Starfleet's infamous Kobayashi Maru test and is determined to beat it to display his prowess as captain.

This felt like a key episode for Prodigy in a few ways. First, it simultaneously shed some light on and deepened the mysteries surrounding the ship. The snippets we got about the Protostar's history open up possibilities on anything from time travel to top secret science. But personal stakes were woven in with the new mysteries, both for the characters (as Gwyn learned that her very existence is because of this ship) and for the audience (as we learned that Kathryn Janeway isn't the only Voyager character associated with the Protostar).

Second, this episode benefited from the longer season (20 episodes) that Prodigy will have. In a tighter season, the writers might feel more of an obligation to involve every character in every episode -- which is essentially the model the series took in the first quarter of the episodes we got a few months ago. But knowing there will be more time later, this episode was able to push most of the characters to the side to focus on Gwyn for one story line and Dal for the other.

But, understandably, all anyone will be talking about with this episode are the many cameos of beloved Star Trek characters inside Dal's Kobayashi Maru scenario. Gates McFadden was there to lend new dialogue to Beverly Crusher (spiking my wish to see her show up on Star Trek: Picard), while archival audio was used to include Uhura (the retired Nichelle Nichols), and Spock, Odo, and Scotty (the late Leonard Nimoy, Rene Auberjonois, and James Doohan).

The nostalgia evoked in all this was wonderfully intentioned. The idea of the Kobayashi Maru is one of the most indelible creations in all of Star Trek (and Discovery also referenced it this season). Revisiting it with so many beloved characters was just a love letter to long time fans.

That said, there were a couple of things that got in the way of this being maximum good feelings mainlined straight into my soul. One was that Lower Decks just recently got top notch comedic mileage out of a character repeatedly running a holodeck scenario in pursuit of a "perfect score." The other was that the archival dialogue, though cleverly selected, simply didn't sound right. The span of decades between different voices, and the limitations of how much it could be cleaned up, made much of it sound "canned." It led me to feel like these were NPCs programmed only with limited responses. (Though... I suppose literally they were?) My husband even more astutely likened it to the improv game in which all but one of the performers is restricted to speaking lines taken from the phone text messages of an audience member.

Mind you, none of that made this episode feel bad to me. It just held me back from the full immersion I wish I could have had. It didn't stop me from appreciating the clever way this episode taught its "moral," or keep me from enjoying the references to the Ktarian game and a bunch of holodeck programs depicted on other series over the years.

So overall, I'd give "Kobayashi" a B. I only wish the execution could have been as great as the concept.

Discovery: The Examples

My holiday week off from blogging (and my 2021 recap posts) has put me several episodes behind on Star Trek: Discovery. But yes, I'm still watching the show, and I'll pick up from where I left off with my thoughts on "The Examples."

The Dark Matter Anomaly threatens a chain of asteroids, and Discovery must help with the evacuation efforts... which includes a half dozen prisoners serving life sentences that the local government wants to leave for dead. Meanwhile, it has been determined that the DMA is not a naturally occurring phenomenon, and it can move seemingly to anywhere at any time. So efforts to study it step up, and Stamets is forced to work with surly scientist Ruon Tarka, the man working on "Spore Drive 2.0," who has pointedly avoided interactions with Stamets so far.

This episode has plenty of good old-fashioned Star Trek morality on display. A society with "life in prison as the only punishment for crime" is such a classic Trek notion, even though it's never been done in exactly this way (I think). The arc of redemption for the prisoner Felix was a nice one, and also a form of Trek idealism: the "worst of the worst" can still reform. Plus, Burnham gets to cap the episode with a righteous lecture -- pointing out that Akaali will now be reliant on the kind of mercy they've previous refused to show their own people.

But the structure supporting all these ideas didn't completely work for me. Trek Ethics 101 dictates that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." And I don't think the writers did a good job making clear that for sure, the characters had everything well in hand evacuating everyone else from these asteroids before turning to the six people that would be hardest to rescue.

As for the larger rescue, having Rhys lead it (off screen) felt extremely awkward to me. Discovery as a series has made the bridge crew characters so anonymous -- and has established such a distinct formula when actually dealing with them -- that any time someone gets a back story, you immediately suspect they'll be killed by the end of the episode. I'm not a fan of that trope. While, thankfully, the writers weren't actually doing it here, the way they wedged in Rhys' past tragedy felt pretty cumbersome. (Also, how are homes being destroyed in hurricanes in a future with global weather modification technology?)

I also found it awkward how suddenly the ship's computer Zora developed emotions. The quasi-sentient "Sphere data" has been a thing for more than a season now, but visited so infrequently that you'd be forgiven for forgetting about it. With serialized storytelling as the bread and butter of Star Trek: Discovery, I would have expected a more graceful and gradual introduction of this majorly important development.

But then, "gradual" isn't the name of the game in this episode. While the urgency of understanding the anomaly is clear in general, it isn't really explained why the experiment in engineering has to happen right now, in these next four hours. If lack of available power is an issue, can't they just wait until after the rescue, then tap into the transporter power that was previously unavailable? Or, I don't know, chain a bunch of ships together somehow to run a full test of Tarka's model?

Still, the subplot does serve up some good moments. I thought Tarka's disdain for Stamets would be grounded in the fact that he's from a millennia in the past -- what would someone from the Dark Ages possibly have to teach Tarka? But as logical as that might have been, it was also fun that Tarka really just has worse interpersonal skills than first season Stamets. (How far Stamets has come.) We got more razor sharp wit from Tig Notaro as Jet Reno too, always welcome. (And especially needed when Tilly's no longer around. Yeah, I continue to feel that her absence is going to be a real blow to the series.)

I liked everything with Culber's story line. It's worth never forgetting that he died and came back to life, and Kovich sizing up Culber's "savior complex" so completely was a great way to bring that background back to the foreground. Star Trek has not always done well at examining the consequences of major events, but the format of Discovery does allow for it, and I'm glad the writers are embracing it. I also enjoyed the insight that Culber and Stamets are both workaholics, and that it might be part of their strong bond.

Plus, as always, we got plenty of cool visuals: the asteroids being devoured, the creepy bug/bomb/buzzsaw creatures, the stark landscape around the prison. Even if the narrative ideas didn't always feel clear to me this episode, the effects team on Discovery hits a grand slam almost every time at bat.

I'd give "The Examples" a B-. I think it was the weakest episode of season four so far, though it's a necessary link of the overall narrative chain.

2021 in Review -- Movies

Time for my annual recap of the year in movies. The year before, 2020, was (to no one's surprise) an unusual year for my movie viewing, well below my usual viewing pace. While 2021 may have been far from "back to normal" in other aspects, my movie viewing habits were fairly typical. I watched 74 movies during 2021 -- 30 more than in 2020, and more in fact than I've seen in one year since 2016.

To my modest surprise, I actually went to a movie theater 11 times in this Age of COVID. My "first movie back" was Godzilla vs. Kong, in a theater my friend rented out just for a handful of distanced friends. I had a similarly exclusive experience with Dune, getting to see a sparsely attended sneak preview thanks to a work connection from Dire Wolf 's Dune: Imperium board game. But I did mingle with the unwashed (but mostly vaccinated?) masses on 9 other occasions.

Of all the movies I saw last year, 30 were officially 2021 releases, meaning I'm back to being able to put together a semi-credible Top 10 list for the year (which I still haven't really managed for 2020). A couple of these have some "asterisks" on them, as you'll see. And the entire list is, at this point, provisional as I continue to catch up with movies appearing on critical "Best of" lists.

But for now, at least, here are my Top 10 Movies of 2021 (with links to my earlier reviews):

1. Spider-Man: No Way Home
2. In the Heights
3. Luca
4. West Side Story
5. Encanto
   
6. Dune
7. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
8. The Beatles: Get Back *
9. Bo Burnham: Inside **
10. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar 
    

* With its run time of around 8 hours, there's no situation in which I'd watch The Beatles: Get Back in one sitting. But I think it doesn't quite fit the "made for TV" box either, perhaps in part because its subject, director, production values, and scope all seem too big for the label.

** Bo Burnham's comedy special Inside has probably even less claim to being a "movie." But it may be that nothing else captures the feeling of 2020 and 2021 as thoroughly and accurately as Inside. So I'm counting it.

I'll link back here with any updates as I catch more 2021 movies. But for now, I'm setting my sights on the class of 2022.

 

Updated February 8, 2022:

1. Spider-Man: No Way Home
2. CODA
   
3. In the Heights
4. Luca
5. West Side Story
6. Encanto
   
7. Dune
8. Nobody
   
9. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
10. The Beatles: Get Back

Encant-ation

I knew the broad outline of the plot before I watched Disney's newest animated movie, Encanto: in a family with magical powers, one young girl without powers is the one who must save the magic for all of them. But I didn't know the casting, I didn't know whether it was a musical or not, and I didn't know the exact setting. Discovering all that (and more) along the way enhanced my enjoyment of the film.

In recent years, Pixar and Disney animation have been striving for more cultural diversity in movies like Coco, Luca, Moana, and Raya and the Last Dragon (which I still need to get around to). Now, with Encanto, Disney continues the push. The Colombian setting informs the film from top to bottom. There's a sprinkling of Spanish dialogue throughout -- and even a montage with a song entirely in Spanish. (And this is a movie for kids, so no subtitles.) But there's really no language barrier here at all for an English-speaking audience.

Indeed, the movie is maximally inviting, particularly when it comes to the visuals. Encanto is bright and cheery and colorful, even more so I think than the Wreck-It Ralph movies (which had license to use all the colors of all video games). I also think it really maximizes animation as a format, to the highest degree for Disney since perhaps the Genie character in Aladdin. Musical numbers are staged in ever-transforming, non-literal environments. The camera moves freely and with the fluidity of an auteur director trying to achieve the perfect "long, single take." Encanto is in every way a feast for the eyes.

It's a pretty strong feast for the ears too. Lin-Manuel Miranda is back to provide the songs as he did for Moana. These songs arguably aren't as catchy, but they certainly are dense. With rapid-fire lyrics, very complex rhyme structures, and powerful Latin grooves, I feel these songs would reward repeat listening in the same way Hamilton fans have pored over those tunes. The cast is exceptional throughout, both in the performance of those songs, and overall. Stephanie Beatriz is a real standout as the lead character, Mirabel. I wrote of her appearance in In the Heights that people who know her only from Brooklyn Nine-Nine would be amazed; get ready to be amazed all over again, because you would never know they didn't find an actual teenage girl to voice this role.

If there's one weaker element to Encanto, it might be the story overall. There are strong threads of Cinderella here; this is not the movie for you if you can't stomach a child being treated unjustly by her family. It's almost ridiculous the levels of denial that the family Abuela sinks to in crapping on poor Mirabel -- so much so, in fact, that I wondered if the writers might be trying to slip some subliminal message about climate change into the movie somehow. (Sort of tilt your head and squint at the story, and perhaps you'll see it?)

Overall, I very much enjoyed Encanto. I'd give it a B+. It deserved better than its pandemic-deflated box office numbers, but hopefully it will be more widely seen and appreciated now that it's streaming on Disney+.

A Star (and Barb) Is Born

Before I can bring you my annual movie recap and personal Top 10 list for 2021, I have to squeeze in a couple of review posts. That's because two movies I saw just recently (after New Year's Eve, in fact) wound up carving out on a spot on my list. Today, I want to talk about one that just barely made the list.

Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is a movie that defies easy explanation. It's a buddy comedy written by and starring Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo. The title tells you (sort of) what the movie is about: a pair of chatterbox best friends decide to take a beach vacation together. Hilarity ensures. But that simple encapsulation fails utterly to capture the "what the hell am I watching?" zaniness at the heart of this movie.

I could try another angle and try to describe what this movie is like by comparing it to other movies. I could tell you that Wiig and Mumolo were also the writers and co-stars in Bridesmaids, and tell you that if you like that movie, you'll like this one. But Bridesmaids is so much more normal than this movie.

I could tell you that some people have compared it to Palm Springs -- a sort of "squint and you'll get there" comparison based on the fact that both movies were released on Hulu, one in 2020 and one in 2021, with each movie capturing an element of "life in a pandemic." (Palm Springs captures the "every day is the same" ennui of isolation, while Barb and Star arrived when everybody was "ready for vacation, dammit!")

I could say that if I had to compare Barb and Star to just one other movie, I'd pick Dude, Where's My Car? A couple of extreme characters flit about through a series of outrageous (and escalating) circumstances.

None of that would adequately prepare you for the sheer absurdist anarchy of this movie. And while I could probably come up with some form of "put these four movies in a blender, and you'll get Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar" analogy, I'd honestly rather not. Because the less you know going in, the more I think you might enjoy its charms.

I can say that this movie is really, really dumb. But also, because there's nowhere it won't go, it's often really, really funny. Kristen Wiig kills -- particularly in the other, unhinged half of a dual role she plays. Annie Mumolo is funny to a degree that made me wonder why, despite her background in the Groundlings, I haven't seen her in more things. And in an inspired example of casting a "serious actor" for an utterly non-serious role, Jamie Dornan is given some of the broadest jokes of all, and makes an absolute fool of himself to get a laugh. Add small appearances by Damon Wayans Jr, Vanessa Bayer, Phyllis Smith, Ian Gomez, Richard Cheese, Andy Garcia, and... actually, I don't think I'll spoil the last one.

The result isn't going to be for everyone -- and almost seems to have the attitude that it doesn't care if it's for anyone else. How will you know it's for you, when I won't tell you more about it? I suggest you just give it a try. If you watch the first 5 minutes and don't want to know more, you can safely just bug out.

I give Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar a B. It will be pushed out of my Top 10 List as soon as I see just one other "worthy" movie from 2021. But while I might find something I like more, I'm very unlikely to find anything else quite like it.

2021 in Review -- Games

Each year, I dedicated a couple of January blog posts to looking back on the things that entertained me in the year before. Today: board games.

This might not be how you would expect, but I played significantly fewer board games in the year 2021 than I did the year before. And COVID is actually the reason why.

In pre-vaccine 2020, get-togethers were limited. So I did a lot of gaming on venues like Board Game Arena. And what those methods lack in tactile, face-to-face thrills, they make up in ease of access. I played over 100 games that way in 2020... and barely a dozen that way in 2021 -- a product of vaccines, online fatigue, and (yes, at times) relaxed safeguards.

My final tally was 263 games played in 2021, a number almost exactly in line with my 2019 ("Before Times") count.

The count by game (all 96 different games I played) is below, with a few observations below that.

31    The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine
13    So Clover
10    Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig (2 with Secrets and Soirees)
10    The Crew: Mission Deep Sea
10    Wingspan (1 without both expansions)
9    Pandemic Legacy: Season 0
8    Just One
8    Secret Hitler
6    Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle (with all expansions)
6    The Rise of Queensdale
5    Atheneum: Mystic Library
5    Calico
5    Escape Tales: Children of Wyrmwoods
5    Great Western Trail
5    Merlin (2 with various expansions)
4    Master Word
4    Roll for the Galaxy
4    The Initiative
3    Azul
3    Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra
3    Bonfire
3    Concordia: Venus
3    Kokopelli
3    Lost Ruins of Arnak
3    Star Wars: Unlock! (each of its 3 scenarios)
3    The Taverns of Tiefenthal
2    Agricola
2    Anachrony
2    Camel Up
2    Cascadia
2    Dune: Imperium
2    Ethnos
2    Furnace
2    Hadrian's Wall
2    Last Message
2    Majesty for the Realm
2    Medieval Academy
2    Pandemic: Iberia
2    Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition
2    Red Rising
2    Sagrada
2    Space Dragons
2    The Mind
2    The Quacks of Quedlinburg
2    The Speicherstadt
2    Time's Up Title Recall
2    Witch's Brew
1    6 nimmt!
1    7 Wonders
1    7 Wonders Duel
1    Back to the Future: Back in Time
1    Bargain Quest
1    Can't Stop
1    Caverna: The Cave Farmers
1    Clever Cubed
1    Codenames
1    Codenames Deep Undercover
1    Coloma
1    Dice Hospital
1    Doge
1    Evolution
1    For Sale
1    Fuse
1    Gaia Project
1    Game of Thrones: Hand of the King
1    Hive
1    Honey Buzz
1    Istanbul
1    Las Vegas
1    Le Havre
1    Libertalia
1    Maracaibo
1    Mariposas
1    Niagara
1    Notre Dame
1    Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile
1    Ora et Labora
1    Point Salad
1    Poker
1    Raiders of the North Sea (with Hall of Heroes)
1    San Marco
1    Silver and Gold
1    Stacked
1    Suburbia
1    Telestrations
1    Ten
1    The Adventurers: The Temple of Chac
1    The Key: Murder at the Oakdale Club
1    The Search for Planet X
1    Tobago
1    Tortuga 1667
1    Twice As Clever
1    Unicorn Fever
1    Unlock!: Exotic Adventures – Expedition: Challenger
1    When I Dream
1    Whirling Witchcraft

As usual with my end of year game tallies, I don't track games that I play in the course of playtesting and development for work.

Also as usual (since the game arrived on the scene), I count only "sessions" of The Crew -- The Quest for Planet Nine and Mission Deep Sea. Counting individual "games" (attempts of a specific mission), I'd be over approaching 200 and 100 of each game respectively. My friends and I just love The Crew that much. We don't tire of it, and virtually every game night ends with a few hands.

So Clover is also a game I track by the session, as we usually play a couple of "rounds" when we do play it. And since actually scoring that game is something of an arbitrary construct anyway, it's arguably even more nebulous for purposes of counting how much I played it.

Focusing just on games with a concrete beginning and end (and with a specific winner), Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig and Wingspan are the games I played most often.

• I think I wouldn't say that the Secrets and Soirees expansion for BTCoMKL is essential -- but it also doesn't really get in the way of what's great about the original game either. If you're a fan (like I am), you might want to pick that up.
• Meanwhile, Oceania feels to me like a pretty essential expansion for Wingspan. You could argue that the nectar mechanic is too forgiving and makes the game easier, but it also lets you build engines more effectively, which to me at least is at the core of what makes Wingspan fun.

This was my "least Legacy-filled" gaming year in some time.

• The Hogwarts Battle games I played were all post-campaign single playthroughs using all expansions.
• I finished a couple of true Legacy games in 2021 after starting them in 2020: The Rise of Queensdale (a second playthrough) and Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 (an unfortunate disappointment).

This was kind of a big year for "Did Not Finish."

• Those 5 sessions of Escape Tales: Children of Wyrmwoods were breaking up the expected 9-hour game play into roughly 1 hour increments... and it became such a chore that no one was enjoying. We abandoned it around halfway through, and I doubt we'll ever go back.
• The Initiative is a campaign game that wasn't "bad," but didn't set its hooks in us deeply enough for us to have continued past a single extended session of the first 4 games.
• Oath (Chronicles of Empire and Exile) is a huge hit with many gamers, and I think its concept of "evolution, though not quite campaign or legacy" is clever. But my group did not enjoy it enough to want to even finish our first game, much less experience multiple evolving plays.
• My husband and I abandoned Unlock!: Exotic Adventures – Expedition: Challenger before completing it. Other entries in the Unlock series have been alright (though inferior, I think, to the Exit series), but we found the puzzles in this particular one to be opaque and obtuse. It just wasn't fun, so we quit.
  

I did play Dune: Imperium completely outside the context of work twice. I played the often-compared-to-Dune game Lost Ruins of Arnak three times. Don't read anything more into that than "I've played SO much Dune: Imperium for work."

Who knows what game released in 2022 might become a new favorite? I'm looking forward to finding out. (I can bet I'll still be playing a lot of The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, though.)