I have myself a New Year’s Resolution which kickstarted this month (though won’t be into full effect until April) and that’s: no more library books. Only my own books, of which there are probably hundreds that I have not yet read. As of now, I have only one more library book to read and return, and then it’s full steam ahead on my very own TBR pile.
More than that, I’m going to make a valiant effort to try and stick to a single subject for each month. February was all about the dark fairy tale, and though a few other things slipped through, this was largely the theme of the last four weeks, with books by Catherynne Valente and Neil Gaiman, two completely unasked-for sequels to fantasy films that weren’t that good in the first place, and (in honour of the terrible Netflix series that just dropped) the first season of the original animated Winx.
And no, I have not been watching Wandavision, though I have been reading comments/looking at GIF sets, and... people realize that this is just one long prologue to the next influx of movies, right?
5 Worlds: Books 1 – 4 by Mark Siegel, Alexis Siegel, Xanthe Bouma, Matt Rockefeller and Boya Sun
These graphic novels (with the fifth and final volume to be published later this year) caught me totally by surprise. Think Star Wars mixed with Avatar: The Last Airbender mixed with She Ra. There’s intergalactic warfare, people who can “sand dance” (think earth-bending, but with sand) and an aesthetic deeply reminiscent of Bright Moon.
Honestly, it’s great, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it made the leap to animated show sooner rather than later. In a galaxy far, far away, five worlds exist in close proximity to each other, but are succumbing gradually to intense climate change (the real-world analogies are not subtle). Many believe that the lighting of five mystical beacons on each planet would help quell the dangerous weather patterns, while just as many are dead-set against that course of action.
Oona Lee is a student at a Sand Dancer Academy, whose older sister fled her destiny as the one who would light the beacon with her sand-dancing abilities. An Tzu is a street-kid living rough in the city, who suffers from a vanishing illness that’s gradually rendering him invisible. Jax Amboy is a star athlete with fans on all five of the planets (spoiler: he’s also an android).
When Mon Domani is invaded by Toki and Oona realizes she can summon the Living Flame, the three of them band together on a quest to light all five beacons and bring balance back to the worlds – and as you may suspect, each book takes place on a different planet.
The real drawcard is the world-building. Each planet as a distinct culture and colour scheme that’s fascinatingly beautiful and intricate. The artwork is filled with detail in every panel and the palette ensures that you’re never confused as to where exactly the action is taking place. The writers and illustrators have clearly gone to a lot of work in crafting this setting.
Yes, it’s very much a pastiche of pre-existing properties, and you can spot the influences a mile away. And yet it manages to stake out its own territory as well, with a plot and characters that aren’t as trope-heavy as I was expecting. There are a few genuine surprises along the way, and like I said – this would translate effortlessly to television. Hopefully I’ll get my hands on the last instalment later this year.
Monstress: Volume 5 by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
Five volumes in and I have no idea how much more of this story Liu and Takeda intend to produce. It feels like it should be ready to start winding up, since its titular character is inching ever-closer to self-actualization and acceptance, but I really have no grasp of where it’s all heading.
Which is not surprising, because the plot of Monstress is impenetrable. I literally have no idea what’s going on in any given scene – and I love it. There’s definitely a war, with lots of slaughter, and a protagonist who shares a body with a Lovecraftian monster that occasionally takes over her consciousness, and plenty of opposing factions made up entirely of women in violent conflict with each other... honestly, I don’t care that I'm completely baffled. It’s still gorgeous to look at.
Truly, Takeda’s artwork is incredible, and there’s a reason she’s been cleaning up at the Hugo Awards for the past few years. I’ve never seen anything like the Asian/Egyptian/Art Nouveau mashup aesthetic that she’s created, and every character is unique and bursting with personality – even the anthropomorphic ones. Despite the plot being convoluted to distraction, the characters carry the storylines, with clear motivations and goals despite the chaos they dwell in.
It’s not always easy going, but it’s totally compelling and unashamedly about women: good women, evil women, old women, young women, powerful women, broken women – they don’t call it “Monstress” for nothing.
Pan’s Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun by Cornelia Funke
Well obviously I picked up a novelization of my favourite movie, though I find it deeply strange that it’s been published over a decade after the original film release. Written by the author of the Inkheart trilogy (still haven’t read them, sorry!) it’s a fairly straightforward retelling of the film’s content, with some extra background details on things that were only lightly alluded to in the movie.
They say that the book is always better, but tie-in novelization to pre-existing films are always worse. Some things don’t translate well from screen to page, some times showing is more powerful than telling, and you just cannot reverse engineer a movie – especially one as iconic as Pan’s Labyrinth.
For instance, the book can’t even begin to capture the nuance of every actor’s incredible performance. In the scene where Carmen and Ofelia arrive at the mill and Vidal insists that his wife use a wheelchair, we’re privy to Vidal’s need for control, Carmen’s uncertain vulnerability, and Ofelia quietly gauging the situation – all right there on the performers’ faces. In the book, the scene is described in hindsight, as Ofelia makes her way to the labyrinth.
Perhaps to try and justify its own existence, the novelization also provides unnecessary backstory to things that are better off ambiguous, sapping them of their inherent mystery. The stone carvings for example – the book tells us they were deliberately carved as markers to try and locate the missing princess, and that when Ofelia puts the stone eye back in its place, it signals her presence to the faun who begins his preparations in reinitiating her.
But why then does it go on to depict the faun at the bottom of the spiral maze: “ripping free from the web of moss and dry bines that melded it to the wall” as though he’s been standing in one place for centuries? It’s accurate to the scene in the movie, but it doesn’t gel with the earlier talk of him roaming the Underworld. There’s also backstory for things such as the mill, Vidal’s watch, the toad, and Moanna’s life after she left her father’s realm, all of which tries to give context to what should have remained enigmatic and ambiguous.
Other little things just niggled – in the film it’s Ofelia’s instinct that guides her to the middle door in the Pale Man’s lair; the book tries to explain it by stating it was the less ornate door, just like in her storybook. And the faun introduces himself as Pan, even though Guillermo del Toro has been very insistent that this being was NOT Pan, and that he hates the English title of the film for how misleading it is in this regard.
It’s not bad exactly, and I can only assume that Funke loved the source material considering she made the effort to write a novelization this long after the film’s release – but it explains things that don’t need explaining and by doing so, only raises more questions (kind of like the live-action Beauty and the Beast, which saps the whole story of its potency).
The Orphan Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne Valente
Man, this book. How to describe it? Think of the Arabian Nights, but instead of a continuous flow of stories set within the framework of Scheherazade’s nightly trick to save her own life, it’s more of a Russian nesting doll situation, in which each story contains a character who recounts their story, which in turn contains more characters and their stories, with the overarching plot constructed like an ever-expanding and contracting point-of-view, that at times can sink five or six layers deep.
And these myriad tales contain everything you’d expect from Catherynne Valente: shape-shifting witches, fox-headed pirates, ill-tempered mermaids, transformed polar bears, mysterious snake-gods – and of course, some classic fairy tale deconstruction: male selkies, female satyrs, kindly stepmothers, ugly princesses, and (her favourite) tragic monsters.
The framing device involves the introduction of a young girl with a strange birthmark across her eyes, who lives by herself in the expansive grounds of a Sultan’s palace. Shunned by the nobility and servants alike, one of the Sultan’s many children eventually finds and befriends her, learning the reason for her facial markings: they are tattoos that contain hidden stories, and only once they are told out loud might the girl be free of them.
The first half of a duology, I read this half years ago and have been stalling on the concluding volume. No more! It’s considerably longer than this one, so it might take me a couple of months, but I’m ready to have this tour de force completed. It’s like nothing else I’ve ever read before or since.
If you’re interested in trying it yourself, know that it can get a bit frustrating at times. If you get caught up in a particular story, it won’t be long before it’s abruptly halted in order for another narrator to take their turn (usually at a complete tangent for whatever else was going on) but the beauty of Valente’s work is that everything becomes increasingly more interconnected as the book goes on.
Certain characters pop up across various subplots, and figures that have been wandering about in disguise or under an assumed identity eventually reveal themselves and their relationships to other narratives. It’s not a totally bad idea to take some notes while you’re reading this, and while you’re at it, check out Valente’s definition of Mythpunk, a subgenre of fantasy that she coined in order to best describe her body of work.
Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Having watched the movie a few months ago, I also wanted to revisit the original novel in order to compare them. I remembered the two being very much in accord, and yet it turns out that the tone is wildly different, despite keeping the premise and central plot-points intact. In many ways the film is better, with more personable leads, a stronger second act, and a happy ending; altogether a very American adventure/romance/fantasy.
In contrast, Gaiman is trying to channel the works of Hope Mirrlees and Lord Dunsany (up to and including the phrase “beyond the fields we know”) and their distinctive takes on fairy tales: beautiful, enigmatic and deeply Victorian. If you haven’t read them yet, Lud-in-the-Mist and The King of Elfland’s Daughter each sit somewhere between Grimm and Disney. This lends the story a far more dreamy and ambiguously bittersweet tone than what the film captures.
The gist is the same: in his youth Dunstan Thorn crosses the Wall between England and Faerie and shares one passionate night with a young woman that’s enslaved to an old sorceress. Six months later, and a baby boy is passed from one world to the other, and when the story begins properly, we’re introduced to Tristian Thorn, who promises Victoria Forester a falling star in exchange for her hand in marriage.
What the film did (at least in the first act) was a lot of pruning: Tristian’s stepmother and half-sister are extracted, Dunstan’s meeting with the enslaved Una is puppet-mastered by a nameless man in a top hat whose motivations in doing so remain largely opaque, and rather than use the Babylon candle (which isn’t even called that in the book) to go straight to Yvaine’s location, Tristian goes on foot across the Wall and has a run-in with a dwarf and a deadly forest before finally reaching the star’s destination. The unicorn is introduced in relation to its part to play in the Lion and the Unicorn nursery rhyme and comes to a much grislier end, and it’s a helpful tree that points Tristian in the right direction once he’s separated from Yvaine.
There’s also a running theme of various characters being part of a mysterious sect called the Fellowship of the Castle, all of whom deliberately provide assistance to Tristian for reasons unknown, which seems to be an obscure reference to a Sir Lancelot legend, and is easy to miss if you’re not reading closely.
The film greatly expands the role of the lightning pirates (de Niro’s Captain Shakespeare doesn’t even exist in the book) as well as the role of Septimus as a secondary antagonist. It’s smart in the way it handles the Greek chorus of ghostly princes (in the book they just disappear after Septimus dies, and have no realization of who Una truly is) and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Lamia is given a climactic final battle against our heroes (can you believe that in the book she simply concedes defeat and leaves Yvaine alone?)
But the book is much kinder to Victoria Forester, who certainly isn’t the spoiled little snit of the film (even apologizing to Tristian for sending him on his impossible errand) but the film goes for a more straightforwardly happy ending overall, with Tristian and Yvaine taking the thrones of Stormhold, Una and Dunstan reunited, and even poor Bernard transformed back from a goat and invited to the coronation.
In short, it’s fascinating to read/watch two versions of the same story that are each objectively good, yet so profoundly different in the way they’re told. This contrast makes them perfect bedfellows, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and each contributing to the underserved “fairy tales for adults” genre.
The Last Kashmiri Rose by Barbara Cleverly
Yes, the odd one out in my reading list for February, but it’s my one exception to my New Year’s Resolution: I’m allowed one library book on my phone at all times so I can read during my lunchbreaks. This is actually a story I’ve read many times across the years, and weirdly, it’s become one of my comfort reads (weird because it’s all about a serial killer targeting women).
In the summer of 1922 Inspector Joe Sandilands is called to a village in the Bengal province to investigate a series of strange deaths. Every year in March, one of the wives of an upstanding British officer is found dead in mysterious circumstances, the latest with her wrists slit in a bathtub. Her husband is convinced it's not suicide, and her best friend Nancy Drummond has an even darker hypothesis: that the women are being deliberately targeted as part of some inexplicable vendetta.
It's up to Sandilands to figure out the connection between the five deaths, and though the solution to the mystery is revealed fairly early on, Cleverly manages to elegantly shift her whodunit into an equally compelling "whydunit".
Joe Sandilands was introduced to me by my late aunt, and I’m looking forward to revisiting the detective series for the second time: after a few more books set in India, he heads back England, but every mystery is rendered in Cleverly’s distinct prose, which captures the sights, smells and ambiance of the time and place. The dialogue can get a little stilted, but there’s something compelling about her books that have lingered with me for over a decade now.
The Beastmaster (1982)
Of all things, it was a Tumblr gif of a magical ring that features in this movie that made me track it down. It just looked cool! It’s a pretty standard Swords-and-Sorcery flick of the eighties, with all the cheese and trash you’d expect from that subgenre: varying sizes of loincloths, badly choreographed fight scenes, sexual harassment masquerading as a meet-cute, and a few needless boob shots.
Creepy sorcerer Maax learns from his witches that the firstborn son of King Zed will be his downfall, and so arranges for one of said witches to perform a spell that transfers the unborn infant from his mother’s womb to that of a cow, all the better to take him elsewhere and perform the ritual sacrifice. But thanks to a more-proactive-than-usual hunter (usually they just find a child left to die of exposure, not actually defeat the person actively trying to murder them) the baby is saved, called Dar, and raised as the adoptive son of the guy’s village.
It becomes apparent early on in his life that he has the ability to communicate with animals, but it’s not until his home is destroyed by the inevitable bandits that he goes out in search of his destiny, eventually culminating in his defeat of Maax (though interestingly, not taking on the mantle of kingship, as you’d otherwise expect).
He’s joined by the Black sidekick, the smartass kid, and the scantily-clad love interest, who each have varying degrees of usefulness. I’m always interested in how female characters are portrayed in these sorts of movies, especially at this time. Usually: not well, and Kiri is no exception. Played by Tanya Roberts (who looked familiar, though it took a IMDB search to realize she was Midge from That Seventies Show, who sadly passed away in January of this year), Kiri is full-blown fanservice, who is first seen bathing under a waterfall, and who is seemingly charmed by the fact that Dar orders his animals to steal her clothing and threaten her life so that he can taken credit for “saving” her and forcibly kiss her as repayment. Oof.
And yet Kiri is allowed to do exactly three (3) things: push a bunch of evil priests off a raft, lead the team to an escape route in the castle, and throw a knife at an attacking soldier. That’s actually not bad for the eighties.
But it’s the animals that really steal the show. Apparently the black tiger was just a normal tiger that was dyed black, but it still has a great screen presence, and there’s some Oscar-winning performances from the ferrets, who are genuinely adorable and emote far better than any of the human characters. I was on the edge of my seat every time they were in danger. Watch it for the ferrets, who I hope went on to have long and happy lives.
Cinderella III: A Twist in Time (2007)
Okay, don’t laugh. I have never in my life watched a direct-to-video Disney animated sequel, because it’s obvious just by looking at them that they’re complete shite, but within the space of four or so weeks, at least three totally unconnected Youtube videos, podcasts and off-handed comments on the internet all mentioned how the third Cinderella sequel (presumably there’s a second one out there, but hell if I know where) is... not actually bad.
I was curious, so I watched, and... it’s fine. You remember that gag in A Very Potter Musical sequel, in which Lucius Malfoy reveals that he's got a Time-Turner and states: “[Harry] marries Ginny and they live happily ever after – there is literally no way to move forward from this point.”
The writers of this movie came to a similar conclusion, as the plot of this kicks off when the Stepmother gets her hands on the Fairy Godmother’s wand and turns back the clock so that Cinderella was never able to try on the slipper, and the Prince is convinced that Anastasia is the one he was really dancing with at the ball. I’m pretty sure this was an Aladdin episode as well.
You’ve probably seen the film’s best scene on Tumblr, in which the King forbids the Prince from going any further down the stairs, so he promptly chucks himself out the window, and the fact that they give the Prince a personality (though weirdly, not a name) works in its favour. The animation isn’t great, as for whatever reason the original designs of the characters don’t translate well to a more modern style, but there’s a great dark variation on the transformed pumpkin, and Anastasia gets something of a redemption arc.
Weirdly though, by the end of the story, time isn’t reset. They go on living in the alternate world that the Stepmother created, having lost an entire year of their life to her spell. Mmkay.
Batman: Bad Blood (2016)
The next in the DC Animated Movie Universe continuity, which properly introduces Kate Kane and Luke Fox (and contains a brief cameo from Barbara Gordon, just when I had given up on her appearance). I’d actually seen this one years ago – in fact, it was the one that first introduced me to the fact that Bruce Wayne has a son, but had forgotten pretty much everything else about it.
Storywise, it’s a bit of a mess, with way too many ideas jammed into its limited run-time. Bruce is taken out pretty quickly, leaving Dick and Damian to try and cover for his absence. There’s Kate as Batwoman and Luke taking on the mantle of Batwing after his father is seriously injured. A new criminal is in town with a strange connection to Damian, although seconds after his motivation and backstory is revealed, he’s killed off. Talia is back as well, with a complete personality transplant that’s completely at odds with her character in Son of Batman.
It’s not bad, just very cluttered, and my ignorance of these characters means there’s all sorts of dynamics I didn’t quite grasp. I mean, I’ve seen Pennyworth and Martha’s maiden name there is definitely Kane. And in the CW’s Batwoman, Kate was clearly established as Bruce’s cousin. But in this story, there’s no indication that they’re related – if anything, it was she and Dick that had the shared history. Ah, comic books.
The animation is really good, and it’s great that there’s zero ambiguity over the fact that Kate is gay. Oh, and there are ninja nuns too, which is worth the price of admission.
The Huntsman: Winter’s War (2016)
I watched this and the sequel to Maleficent in tandem, being fascinated by the fact that no one asked for any continuation for a pair of movies that barely drew anyone’s attention the first time around. This manages to be both a prequel and a sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman, which in many ways could have just been a standalone movie starring Chris Hemsworth, so tenuous are the links to its preceding film.
Yes, much of the cast returns for this film, and yet their roles are all but superfluous. Nick Frost is back as the only dwarf of the original seven who decided to turn up, though it’s just as the mouthy comic relief. Charlize Theron (despite her prevalence in the trailer) only appears at the very beginning and very end of the film, and honestly, her presence isn’t strictly necessary. Sam Claflin comes back for one expository scene, and I’ve no idea why he bothered.
Even Hemsworth isn’t really playing the same character he was the first time around: this version of the Huntsman (who now at least has the dignity of a name) is less grim and dour, and more like... well, Thor.
Hilariously, the main character of the first movie is completely absent, save for a faceless glimpse of her from behind and a few mentions of what she’s doing off-screen.
I don’t blame Kristen Stewart for not returning, but her absence is incredibly awkward, especially since all the action ostensibly revolves around her: the attempts to destroy the mirror are because it’s having an adverse effect on her mental health, and by the third act it’s her kingdom everyone is desperately trying to protect. And after all that effort she put into killing her stepmother the first time around, turns out it was all for nothing and she actually needs the Huntsman to finish off the not-really-dead Ravenna on her behalf.
Perhaps realizing the unfortunate implications of this, but being unable to say no to the opportunity to let Charlize Theron feast on more scenery, the film throws in far more female characters than we got the first time: Jessica Chastain as Erik’s also-not-dead wife, Emily Blunt as Disney’s original take on Elsa as a heartless Ice Queen, and not one but two female dwarfs, which is actually pretty cool. How rare is that? Even The Hobbit movies only had room for a few brief, voiceless appearances.
But of course, all this causes quite a few Continuity Snarls in regards to the first movie. The last movie made no mention of the fact that Ravenna had a sister, and this movie makes no reference to the fact that she and Freya had a brother. In the previous movie, Finn (that’s the brother) reveals to the Huntsman that he raped and killed his wife, something that Erik clearly believes – though the circumstances of Sara’s “death” in this movie are profoundly different, and have nothing whatsoever to do with Finn.
And if you’ll remember, the Huntsman in the first movie threw his lot in with Snow White after she inspired him to move past his grief for his dead wife – and the kiss he gives her is implied to be the one that wakes her from her poisoned sleep. Well, never mind, in this movie she’s married to the Prince, his dead wife is revealed to be still alive, and there’s zero indication that he was initially set up as Snow White’s “true love.”
Once you get past all this muck, the actual story is... fine. It was nice of them to unfridge Erik’s wife, and I actually really liked the setup that they gave these two characters. Commissioned into Freya’s army as children, the two of them break her law that none of her soldiers are ever allowed to fall in love. As adults they marry in secret (which is honestly just Sara giving Erik her necklace and saying “we’re married”) only to be found out by Freya and forced to fight their way to freedom.
Just as they’re about to triumph, Freya puts up a wall of ice between them and (this is the clever bit) Erik sees an illusion of Sara being killed, while Sara sees one of Erik fleeing. It’s a deviously cruel way of messing with them. All this takes place in the prequel part of the story, which then jumps over the events of Snow White and the Huntsman to the sequel: Snow White is queen, but her stepmother’s magic mirror is still “active” and on relocating it to a safer location, it goes missing – clearly stolen by enemies unknown.
Erik is tasked with getting it back, joined by two dwarfs whose names I truly don’t remember, and soon enough they run into the alive-and-well Sara. Here’s where the movie falls apart a bit, as the reunion between the spouses is... pretty casual.
And yeah, it’s hard to inject real emotion into a script as weak as this one, but surely there should have been something more to their reunion than a mildly stunned expression and a hearty shrug. (Looking at you, Hemsworth). It’s frustrating because there was some genuinely good material here. It’s pretty obvious, pretty quickly that Sara was duped by Freya into thinking Erik abandoned her, and yet it’s also clear that she’s been through hell in the years they were apart. A story about a woman suffering from PTSD and massive trust issues could have been fascinating, even in this bizarre context, and Chastain was obviously up to the task – but the writing just wasn’t interested.
What if Erik was forced to choose between retrieving the mirror or trying to help the woman he thought was dead? What if Sara was too traumatized to see the truth of how she was manipulated? What if the two of them and their long-delayed desire to be together was what finally melted the heart of the Ice Queen? Damn it, there was potential here!
And yet, despite all this... it’s not unwatchable. Of the two sequels, I definitely preferred this to Maleficent, even with it having visibly less of a budget. Emily Blunt looked like she was having fun, the cinematography is beautiful, there were female dwarfs, and we’re treated to the hilarious coincidence that Merlin is once again caught up in a tragic romance with a woman called Freya (what are the odds??)
Maleficent 2: Mistress of Evil (2019)
Do you think Walt Disney could have ever envisioned, back in 1959, that one day his most iconic and terrifying villain would be the victim of a symbolic rape, the reluctant leader of an entire species of similar magical beings, and a Chosen One that could turn into a phoenix in order to avenge genocide? I mean... how the hell did we get from there to here?
This movie is pretty terrible, but in such a way that makes it kinda compelling. Like, just how bad can this thing get? Just how heavy-handed and trite can its metaphor become? The answer is very.
Aurora is getting married to Prince Philip, a guy so bland and boring that they literally switched actors and hoped no one would notice (and no one did). Maleficent isn’t happy about this, and things go south at the dreaded “met the parents” dinner in which Philip’s mother Queen Ingrith baits Maleficent and secretly poisons her husband in order to blame it on the guest of honour.
Chaos ensues, and Maleficent ends up among her own people whilst Ingrith plots mass genocide. It’s crazy, you guys. I’ve no idea how Disney roped Chiwetel Ejiofor into this, but he’s forced to be the voice of reason among the fey and duly sacrifices himself to save Maleficent’s life (thanks Black guy, you served your purpose!) Ingrith is the sad consequence of turning your villains into heroes – someone else has to pick up the slack and be cartoonishly evil (in a few years’ time will we get a movie devoted to Ingrith’s tragic backstory?)
The two races declare war on one another, mass murder is committed in a church, thousands of people on both sides are killed, and then – incredibly – that same afternoon peace is announced, Aurora and Philip get married, and the survivors mingle happily together at the ceremony. It’s... how does one even describe this?
Guys, it’s complete trash. There’s no linkage whatsoever with the last movie save for the spinning wheel and its poisoned spindle, and a cringy nod to the famous pink/blue changing of Aurora’s dress (the context is whackadoodle: the film’s Merryweather equivalent is actually killed off during the battle and while the remaining fairies are squabbling over the dress as Aurora walks down the aisle, it suddenly turns blue and they turn to see that their friend has been transformed into a flower. Yeah, a flower. That’s still... sentient? Somehow? And this makes them.... happy?)
It has its moments. Michelle Pfeiffer looked like she had fun, it’s always nice to see Warwick Davies, and there was a psychotic little henchwoman of Ingrith’s who deserved WAY more attention than she got. But the only scene really worth watching is when Maleficent is introduced to her fellow horned/winged dark fey and aerially shown around their hiding place in a montage that’s genuinely awe-inspiring. Watch it, and you’ve seen the only scene worth your time:
Death to 2020 (2020)
I watched this last month but forgot to put it on the list! Admittedly it’s hard to know why anyone would want a recap of the worst year since 2016, but a range of actors and comedians pitch in to illustrate why it was such a dumpster fire: Samuel L. Jackson, Hugh Grant, Lisa Kudrow, Kumail Nanjiani, Leslie Jones, Tracey Ullman, Cristin Milioti... I’m sure there are a few more I’m forgetting.
Together they deal with everything from the Australian bush fires to the murder of George Floyd to the Covid pandemic, as a nebbish historian that compares everything to nerd culture, a grotesquely wealthy billionaire who has built himself a private luxury bunker, a deranged soccer mum that’s been brainwashed by the alt-right, a Republican spokesperson complaining about how she’s being censored whilst refusing to shut the fuck up, and the Queen of England.
There are a few laughs throughout, though nothing that’ll bring the house down, and it’s oddly cathartic in a way. Here’s the worst of 2020 in one convenient location (it’s hard to believe all this happened before the attack on the Capitol Hill), packaged in a way that will make you appreciate the fact you survived it.
Soul (2020)
This was Pixar’s first great casualty of the pandemic, not counting Onward that at least got a theatre release before everything was shut down. The most frustrating thing is that many of the films being released on streaming services have women or people of colour as their protagonists: this should have been their time to shine, and instead they're missing out entirely on a big screen release. Soul is no exception. Not only is the main character Black, but so are nearly all the supporting characters, who live in a world very much seeped in Black culture and community. Even as it’s a literal journey of the soul, the film is also a love letter to New York City, which is rendered here in all its beauty and shadow, music and danger, bustle and diversity. To be honest, I found it more imaginative and interesting than anything that took place in the metaphysical “Great Before/Beyond” realms.
Pixar often touches upon the subject of death, most explicitly in Coco, Onward and Up, yet also more subtly in the likes of Toy Story, Finding Nemo and... well, The Good Dinosaur I suppose, though never quite as explicitly as it does here.
Joe Gardner is a middle-aged music teacher who is still holding out hope that he’ll get his big break in the music industry as a jazz pianist. As with most on-screen parents, his mother isn’t impressed, and she only wants him to find a full-time job and settle down. But when opportunity finally knocks and gets him a gig playing alongside his idol, he’s so excited that he... falls into a pothole and dies.
He regains consciousness in the Great Beyond, where he and thousands of others are being drawn towards a white light... only for him to panic, go against the flow, and end up in the “Great Before” where new souls are granted personalities and passions before they’re sent down to Earth in order to begin their lives. A series of misunderstandings puts him the role of mentor to a young soul who refuses to prepare herself for life (she’s called 22, get it?)
To say more would be to give away the twists and turns of the story, of which there are plenty. I’ll only say that a character voiced by Graham Norton damn near steals the show, and that there’s just something missing. The problem is that there is no “Pixar Moment” – you know, that point in nearly all the studio's films in which they reveal a profound and beautiful truth to the viewer, whether it was Carl learning that he’d already given Ellie the adventure of a good life, or Ian realizing his long-lost father had always been there in the form of his brother, or heck, even Sully discovering that laughter is more powerful than fear.
Here, they edge close to the message that life isn’t worth living for the big moments, but all the little ones. But heck – hasn’t every self-help book and TV guru been telling us that for the last decade? And I’m not sure I quite buy the idea that Joe gets to live his dream and finds it wanting, only to find true happiness in the taste of pizza and the sight of a leaf instead. I’m not saying joy can’t be found in the small things, but I don’t think you should forego ambition and goals in order to appreciate it.
And (as with The Good Place) I’m surprised that a story so deeply interested in the nature of humanity and the meaning of life has nothing whatsoever to say about the existence (or heck, non-existence) of a deity. It continues to be an odd omission.
To All the Boys: Always and Forever (2021)
The third and final instalment in the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy (whew, that’s a mouthful) takes things out on a high note, though it doesn’t come close to capturing the lightning in a bottle quality of the first one.
Peter and Lara Jean are in their final year of high school and looking forward to attending college together – that is, as soon as Lara Jean gets her acceptance into Stanford University. It wouldn’t be much of a movie if she gets exactly what she wants, and after a school trip to New York City, she begins to wonder if perhaps NCU is her destiny – but that would put her on opposite sides of the continent to her boyfriend, and she knows what long-distance does to relationships.
That’s the main conflict of the piece, though there are little subplots involving her father’s marriage to their neighbour, Peter’s long-absent father trying to reconnect with his son, and Lara finally patching things up with her ex-bestie turned frenemy Gen. It’s a little more than Gen deserves given that stunt she pulled in the hot-tub, but I like that the story has just as much interest in the complexity of female relationships as it does in the boyfriend/girlfriend one.
And I truly appreciate that Lara Jean choses her own future over her proximity to Peter; I appreciate it so much that I can forgive the film not taking the truly brave option and having the couple amicably part ways, each giving the other permission to see other people while they’re in college, and agreeing to meet up again after graduation to see if the spark is still there. Cos honestly, my cynical little heart says they’re probably not gonna make it on the terms they set for themselves.
This has been a cute little trilogy, made particularly special due to its biracial lead and the attention it gave to the Korean side of her heritage. I liked spending time with Lara Jean and her family – she’s not much like me, but she gets the rare treat of being a female romantic lead that’s allowed to be a distinctly three-dimensional character in her own right, and not just a blank slate for viewers to project upon.
Winx: Season 1 (2004)
I’ve had this on my hard-drive for a while, and I suppose it was the live-action version released on Netflix that finally got me to watch (though apparently that adaptation was terrible) just to get the gist of what Winx was actually about. I knew fairies were involved, and magical transformations, and that distinctive brand of girl power that was so big in the early noughts, but had little understanding of things beyond that – plus a tendency to get it mixed up with W.I.T.C.H., which I’ve also downloaded, and also never seen.
I’ve always been aware of this show on some level, but by the time it aired I was past being the target audience, and I’m not even sure when when aired in New Zealand, if it ever did. Wikipedia tells me it originated in Italy and was originally designed to last three to four seasons, before its popularity caught the attention of Nickelodeon, who redubbed and distributed existing episodes on their channel, and funded three more seasons (plus an eighth that’s apparently targeted at preschoolers).
There are some movies and spin-offs in the mix as well, so it’s safe to say the franchise was a winner, and left its impact on popular culture. Watching this video on the live-action adaptation filled me in on some of show’s context: though the magical school was clearly inspired by Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, and the distinctive elemental-based personality types of Sailor Moon, it also had a unique fantasy/sci-fi mashup aesthetic that set it apart from the crowd, and a surprisingly complex storyline that evolved and developed over the course of the seven seasons.
But... I think its time has passed. I may have just gotten a bad download, but man the animation was hideous. Movement is awkward and jerky, characters talk over each other, and the boys look like deformed insects. The body types and fashion choices of the girls are pretty questionable at this point: they very much look like Bratz dolls, what with their giant eyes and tiny waists and hot pants and halter top combos that allows for perpetual Baring of Your Midriff. It’s of its time, but let’s just say there’s no way they’d be drawn like this now (or at least, I hope not). In case the undercurrent of vacuousness wasn’t apparent, the lyrics to the opening theme include the lines: “we’ve got the style, and we’ve got the flair; look all you want, just don’t touch the hair.”
Our main character is Bloom, who hits every beat of the Chosen One arc: realizes she has magical powers unlike anyone else in the magical realm she’s initiated into, discovers that she’s actually the lost princess of an entire kingdom, and single-handedly saves the day at the end of the season. The other girls largely orbit around her at this stage (though I assume they’ll get spotlight episodes in later seasons) spouting the usual “you can do it” and “believe in yourself” platitudes.
I guess... I’ll keep going. I mean, there has to be a reason this was so popular, and even if the answer is that nobody knew any better back in 2004, I’m still intrigued by the footprint it’s left behind.
The Bletchley Circle: Season 1 (2012)
I had to race through these three episodes quickly in order to get a Woman of the Month post up for February, but truthfully it was nice to revisit this miniseries and meet up with Susan, Millie, Lucy and Jean again. Although the sequel series is subpar and the spin-off (Millie and Jean in San Francisco) apparently even worse, this makes for a great self-contained, three-episode mystery-thriller.
Susan Gray is a housewife in post-WWII England, suffering from intense mental lethargy given that she used to make a different every day during the war effort, as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park. That right there is a great setup: a woman who was actually happier during wartime, as the work gave her purpose and self-esteem. Several years on, she’s been listening carefully to reports of dead girls being found across London, and believes that the killer is unknowingly making a pattern in where he leaves the bodies.
Motivated partly by altruism (she casually knew the first victim) and a yearning to be important once more, she seeks out her former colleagues at Bletchley – three women with profoundly different backgrounds, skill-sets and outlooks – to help her process the data and predict where the killer will strike next.
It’s a deeply feminine story, with the amateur detectives discussing the case over cups of tea, outlining train routes with lipstick, and going through the slow and methodical grind of research with the books and records available to them. They have other female contacts to call upon for assistance, though a couple of them find it difficult to conceal their activities from suspicious husbands. Best of all is that they’re primarily motivated by the fact that the victims are all young women, and they feel a duty of care to them.
At the start of the adventure, Susan’s husband tells her: “they’re not like us,” but on finding the body of one of the girls, Lucy weeps: “they were just like us,” a deliberate echo in the dialogue. To see Susan torn between her duty to her family and her desperate longing to once more make a difference, as well as the other women stepping up in order to protect their own, is genuinely stirring stuff. I’m glad I revisited.
The Undoing (2020)
Between the three of them, Amy Adams, Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman very much hold the monopoly on this ever-increasing subgenre of Difficult Women with Troubled Families. That they’re all white is no coincidence, and it’s going to be a few more years before any Black woman who isn’t Viola Davis will be allowed to depict the complexity, messiness or even downright nastiness that the likes of Gillian Flynn and Liane Moriarty provide for A-list actresses – even now, if the comments on Previously TV are anything to go by, audiences have trouble with even generically beautiful white women being anything less than perfect.
Grace Fraser is a highly-paid psychologist in New York City (whose clients have problems that inevitably foreshadow her ordeal to come) with an accomplished pre-teen son and a charming, loving husband who works with young cancer patients. Perfect life, and all that.
But on the same day she learns that one of the lower-income mothers whose child attends the same school as her son has been brutally bludgeoned to death, she realizes that she cannot get hold of her husband, who is supposedly on a business trip to Cleveland. He’s disappeared entirely, and the police are naturally interested in him as a suspect.
SPOILERS – I’M NOT KIDDING
I enjoyed The Undoing well enough, though it’s ultimately a lot of style and no substance. There was a great opportunity here to explore the way the upper echelons of society are treated in comparison with those on the less fortunate end of the socio-economic scale, but it never really delves into any of this, even after establishing that the school where a lot of the action takes place accepts children from low decile families.
Or, it could have explored the way wealthy white men with plenty of charisma can skate through life with nary a consequence for their behaviour, or the insidiousness of how narcissists and manipulators work on the people around them – and admittedly, this does get a bit more attention, particularly in how the whole plot eventually hinges on The Untwist.
All the evidence points to Jonathan, because he did it. But because we’re so entuned to murder mysteries, nobody ever thinks that the most obvious suspect is the actual killer, and it’s really the audience that’s put on trial regarding how they react to Jonathan’s charm (and perhaps even the good will Hugh Grant carries from his most famous roles in Notting Hill and Sense and Sensibility).
In that sense, it’s really the viewer who has to do most of the work; wading through meaningless red herrings and trying to remain focused on the facts throughout the investigation and the trial, though everything is left so ambiguous that I’m really not sure how the show expected us to feel when the truth was finally revealed. Even Grace remains something of a cipher, perhaps because the writers want to tease out the possibility that she might be the killer all the way to the end, something that denies us the ability to really connect with her, and thereby see the underlying hypothesis of the story (that you never really know anyone; that superficial charm hides murderous intent).
And unfortunately, I was disappointed in the depiction of the murder victim, as unlike the women in The Bletchley Circle, she gets no dignity in either life or death. All we learn about her is that she’s an artist, she’s sleeping with another woman’s husband, and she likes to walk around naked a lot. That’s it.
Finally, I once again made the mistake of reading through the comments on Previously TV for each episode, and – oof. Has Nicole Kidman had work done? Yeah, probably. Is this the most heinous crime a woman could ever commit, especially one who works in an industry that values youth and beauty above all else? Not even close. Yet I’d have to say at least 40% of all the comments had something bitchy to say about her face for the entire series run. Look, Nicole Kidman doesn’t know or care about any of this, but it’s always so disheartening to see women talk about other women this way. And you just know that if she'd let herself grow old more gracefully, they'd be dozens more comments sneering about how she'd "let herself go."
Who needs dudes to police our appearances when we do such a great job of it ourselves?
No comments:
Post a Comment