Reading/Watching Log #86

So that was January, which always feels like the shortest month. It involved a lot of drama this side of the hemisphere, what with the arrival of torrential flooding in Auckland and the resignation of Jacinda Ardern as Prime Minister. Regarding the former – well, it’s climate change. Get used to it. As for the second, I’m extremely happy for her. I actually felt a great wash of relief when I heard. The past few months have seen an increase is misogynist rhetoric and she’s been the subject of death threats, harassment campaigns and everything else under the sun.

The feeble-minded conspiracy theorists and right-wing nutjobs are “celebrating” (at least, the ones that aren’t busy dying of Covid) but you can tell there’s an existential crisis to their behaviour: now that the villain of their deranged narrative is leaving the stage, they’re starting to look around and realize there’s no one left to blame all their problems on. Whether they’ll transfer it to another person or whether the poisonous online misinformation machine will simply peter out without its main target remains to be seen.

She leaves with her dignity intact, knowing that she never sunk to the level of her detractors (though that would be quite a feat considering one of these clowns is spending the next three years in prison for trying and failing to sabotage the Auckland power grid, and another has well and truly dived off the deep-end by trying to prevent a baby from getting a life-saving blood transfusion, complaining about it on Alex Jones’s show, and claiming Ardern is personally trying to kill her. We’re talking the very bottom of the intellectual/moral barrel here).

But Ardern knows the best way to win is to simply leave the playing field, and that’s what she’s done: she’s secured her legacy, will be remembered fondly by history, made friends in the international community, and best of all, denied anyone the chance to vote her out. She can get married and raise her daughter and hopefully go on a long, relaxing holiday.

But you’re not here for that, you’re here to see what I’ve been reading/watching this past month. It involves checking off another of the shows from my Ten Pilots, One Day project, making a dent in my never-ending pile of library books, watching several of the films I was meaning to watch in the final months of 2022, and a surprising amount of Hannah Waddington cameos (well, two – but you know that saying about getting two nickels and how it’s strange it happened twice).

Speaking of my Ten Pilots, One Day post, I’ve moved onto Interview with the Vampire, after which I have only Vampire Academy and Wednesday left. The former has already been cancelled so there’s no real incentive to continue with it, and I’ll probably hold off on the latter until October, seeing as it’s perfect Halloween viewing. Right now I want to dive back into Legend of the Seeker and the third season of His Dark Materials, and the long weekend seems a perfect opportunity for catching up.

Oh, and hopefully I’ll get my Top Twelve Television/Film Moments of 2022 posted soon as well.  

Leo and the Gorgon’s Curse by Joe Todd-Stanton

Back in September 2020, I read the first three books of the ongoing Brownstone’s Mythical Collection, a graphic novel series which involves members of the sprawling Brownstone family making their mark on various myths and legends from around the world. According to the narrator Professor Brownstone, his family has “tasked themselves with protecting and collecting mythological artefacts and creatures.” So far we’ve had stories from Norse, Egyptian and Chinese mythology, and Leo and the Gorgon’s Curse (obviously) deals with Greek.

Leo Brownstone is sent by his parents to study in Athens, under the patronage of the goddess Athena. By her hand are various heroes chosen to go out and battle monsters in the quest to keep the city safe from harm. Leo desperately wants to become one of these heroes, but his parents have forbidden him from taking any fighting classes – instead he secretly follows the family creed of protecting mythological creatures.

One day he follows the hero Perseus on his latest quest to defeat a deadly sea serpent, but ends up witnessing a girl gently removing an arrow from the creature’s tail instead of slaying it. Realizing he’d rather help creatures than kill them, Leo presents himself as a serpent-slayer to the people of Athens, but secretly helps relocate all the fantastical creatures that Athena sends him to kill (which many will recognize as those found in the Twelve Labours of Hercules).

Finally he’s sent after the gorgon, only to get close enough to recognize the golden pin that he once gave to the girl who assisted the sea serpent. She’s been cursed by Athena after being caught helping a wounded creature, but when the goddess arrives to seek her own brand of justice (the whole thing being a test of Leo’s loyalty) all the saved creatures arrive to defend them.

It’s a very charming story, especially to any young animal lover that hates the fact Greek heroes so often go hunting mythical creatures who just want to be left alone. It doesn’t paint Athena in a particularly good light, but she comes around eventually and I love the moral: “sometimes not fighting is the bravest thing you can do.”

As ever, the illustrations are the major factor in my enjoyment of these stories. There are two spreads in particular that I loved: at the beginning, in the framing device, the elderly Professor Brownstone stands in a room of massive statues of Greek heroes, all of them broken or crumbling in some way. Later on, we see Leo in that same room, only it’s full of people and light, and the statues are at the height of their glory. No attention is drawn to the fact it’s the same room, the depiction of the passage of time is simply allowed to stand on its own. It’s beautifully done.

Also, I loved the design for the sea serpent, which is basically a cross between a long-nosed hound dog and a giant eel, and the Ceryneian Hind, a giant deer with even larger silver antlers. Thankfully there’s going to be at least one more in the series, involving Aztec treasure. Can’t wait!

A Mouse Called Julian by Joe Todd-Stanton

Having enjoyed the latest in the Brownstone’s Mythical Collection, I found another of Todd-Stanton’s books through the library catalogue. This is a pretty sweet little story, but not as dense or rich as the one above.

Julian the mouse lives alone in his underground room and that’s just how he likes it. Once day a fox creeps up to his house “and using all of his skill and cunning smashed right through Julian’s front window” – though the illustrations paint a very different picture: the fox just crashes through and promptly gets stuck.

Despite this inauspicious first meeting, the mouse and the fox end up talking, and once the latter is free, they part on good terms. In true Androcles' Lion style, the fox eventually saves Julian from an owl by gobbling him up and then setting him free – again, the illustrations are hilarious, depicting a severely unimpressed Julian covered in saliva on the fox’s tongue. Julian continues his solitary lifestyle, though now he occasionally meets up with the fox for dinner.

That’s it, that’s the story. Not terribly sophisticated but I like that Julian genuinely enjoys his own company and it’s not revealed that he’s secretly lonely. Now, he just has dinner with a friend everyone once in a while.

Again, the illustrations are the best part, with a two-spread depicting a cross-section of the interconnected underground rooms and passages that make up Julian’s “neighbourhood.” I used to love looking at cross-sections as a kid; there was very much a voyeuristic thrill involved in peering at all the different rooms to see what everyone was doing, and this book has both day and night scenes for a variety of different animals.

Star Friends: Books 1 – 8 by Linda Chapman

Look, I just couldn’t resist the cover art. There were foxes!

Collectively, these are fairly standard Magical Girl stories, with basic prose and formulaic plots, but that doesn’t change the fact I would have been all over this series as a little girl. In fact, it very much reminded me of stuff I read as a child, though I now have to smile at the fact we’ve well and truly reached the stage in which child protagonists are armed with cellphones and internet access.

(I also read Mary Anne’s Bad Luck Mystery this month, in which the girls had to visit the library and check out books in order to get some answers. I have to admit, it makes things a little less charming when you can just Google things on your phone).

The gist is that magical animals from the Star Realm cross over into our world and bond with a human child in order for the pair to oppose any dark spirits in the community. In this case the likes of Mia, Lexie, Sita and Violet are bonded with a talking fox, squirrel, deer and wildcat, and because their hometown is close to a magical nexus, there’s a tendency for dark magic to arise.

The girls have to hone their newfound magical abilities to find and defeat their enemies, and along the way grapple with the usual preadolescent problems: family dramas, schoolwork, friendship rivalries and general growing pains.

It turns out the covers are a bit misleading: each one features a different girl and their particular Star Friend, suggesting each one is told from a different girl’s point-of-view. In actuality Mia is firmly the protagonist of each and every book. Furthermore, I think I may have ended up with publications from both the US and the UK, as in about half of them the main characters were named as Mia, Lottie, Sita and Ionie (with plenty of other variations amongst the other characters: Mia’s older sister is either Cleo or Clio, depending on the publisher).

Basically, fine for its target audience. I found myself wondering if perhaps the series was originally meant to be called Spirit Animals before that term became culturally insensitive (not to mention already taken) but at the end of the day, I just couldn’t resist those covers. The colours!

Mary Anne’s Bad-Luck Mystery by Anne M. Martin

I was really looking forward to this one, as the mystery stories were always my favourites, and I ended up reading it in a single afternoon. In fact, this title might well be the most re-read book in my Babysitters Club collection. It’s actually a surprisingly solid story, with a fun plot, rising suspense, and incredibly fun climax.

Mary Anne receives a chain letter in the post, but decides not to send it on to the required twenty recipients despite the threat of bad luck on herself, her friends and her family if she doesn’t. But after throwing it out, she and the other girls in the club (not to mention various babysitting charges) start to experience a string of unlucky incidences. Is it just coincidence, or is it because Mary Anne didn’t send on the chain letter?

Then she receives another letter in the post, this time containing a necklace identified as a “bad-luck charm” and a letter comprised of cut-out letters from a magazine insisting that she wear it “or else.” By this point Mary Anne is superstitious enough to go along with it, and the bad luck just increases. Then, just before Halloween, she gets another note that insists all the girls go to Old Man Hickory’s headstone in the cemetery at midnight “to await your fate.”

I have to admit, the pay-off to this is pretty cool, especially once the girls finally figure out what’s been going on. Other highlights include some funny time-capsule moments (like the fact that letters are still a thing, and that the girls have to use the card catalogue to find books when they visit the library) and another hilarious use of Charlie as a plot device. How do the girls get to the cemetery in the middle of the night on Halloween? Well, they just get Charlie to drive them. He doesn’t ask any questions and apparently doesn’t care that four thirteen-year-olds and two eleven-year-olds are going to wander around a graveyard at night. What does he say as they leave the car? “You girls are crazy.”

There’s some funny stuff, such as Andrew being afraid of masks and so refusing to wear one with his Halloween costume. According to Kristy: “without his mask, he just looked like a kid in a brown animal suit. He didn’t even have antlers.” At another point, while the girls are researching potential counter-spells for bad luck, a thunderstorm starts: “Inside, the lights flickered. I could tell we were all getting spooked. But we were more afraid of Kristy, so we kept on reading.”

It was also the book that spoiled Little Women for me. I vividly remember that I was actually in the middle of that book as a kid when I got to this passage: “I settled myself on my bed with my own copy of Little Women... I opened the book to the scene where Beth dies. Maybe I would feel cheered up if I read about someone who was having a worse time than I was.” Gee, THANKS Mary Anne.

Also, I believe this is the first appearance of the Babysitters Club’s nemesis Cokie, whose name I remembered, but couldn’t fathom. Was it an American name? This adds a secondary mystery to the proceedings when we get this in parenthesis: “(Just in case you care, Cokie’s real name is Marguerite. Who knows where “Cokie” came from).” Well, I do care and I’m powerfully curious. Nothing comes up on Google aside from an obituary for a journalist nicknamed Cokie Roberts, whose real name was Corienne. I’d say Anne M. Martin was a fan, but then Cokie is a massive beyatch, so who knows?

Two more notable features. Firstly, this takes place over Halloween. On starting this re-read, I decided that Halloween would be an annual holiday I’d take note of once the series entered the time-flux in which nobody ever aged despite however many books passed – though in this case, it still checks out. The girls mention that the previous Halloween they were dealing with the Phantom Phone Caller, and given that they were twelve when that happened, and are now thirteen, we’re still in a progressing timeline. But I’ll be interested to see how many more Halloweens occur in this series.

Secondly, it continues the tradition of leaving one aspect of the mystery unsolved. In this case, who sent the original chain letter that kickstarted the whole mess in the first place. The girls attribute all the bad luck that follows (including Cokie’s bad-luck charm scheme) to Mary Anne breaking the chain letter, and no one every finds out who sends it. Ooh.

Anyways, I loved this one, even if Mary Anne is steadily becoming my least favourite babysitter. Martin is at pains to tell us that she’s shy and caring, but there’s precious little of that on the actual page.

Stacey’s Mistake by Anne M. Martin

After the joy of revisiting Mary Anne’s Bad Luck Mystery, I was a little let-down by Stacey’s Mistake. This book starts the fourth cycle of the series, and Martin must have been feeling the pressure from Stacey-fans, as for the first time she’s the character who kick-starts the next rotation (up until now, it’s been Kristy).

Stacey is excited about the older members of the club coming to visit her in New York for another of their fieldtrip/babysitting adventures (it’s a little cute that Martin has not yet reached the point in which she realizes that babysitting doesn’t have to be a feature of every book). In typical fashion, she raises an important social issue not to discuss it, but to provide a reason why the girls have to save the day with some emergency babysitting.

In this case, the assorted parents of Stacey’s apartment block are attending a meeting to deal with a local homeless woman, and all of them need a babysitter for the day. So Stacey calls up her friends and invites them for a long weekend in New York, partly to enjoy the sights and partly to help out with the children. They arrive, and Stacey is instantly mortified over the fact her friends are behaving like tourists. Which is what they are.

Honestly, no one comes out looking good in this book, and it’s another rather tedious example of Martin throwing a Conflict Ball into the mix when the story probably would have worked just as well if everyone just got along – not least because a lot of the conflict is out of character. Would you have pegged Dawn as someone terrified of the streets of a big city? Or Mary Anne as constantly rattling off New York trivia? Claudia picks a needless fight with Laine, Kristy commits the heinous crime of mispronouncing “filet mignon”, and Stacey spends most of her time feeling embarrassed.

Everyone gets over themselves quickly enough to finally have a good time, but it’s annoying having to sit through it all, especially when you can tell Martin just wants to write a story about one of her favourite subjects: New York. She’ll get a chance to revisit the place in one of the Super Specials (unsurprisingly called New York, New York) and one of the Mysteries (Jessi and the Jewel Thieves). That is, assuming the ghost writers hadn’t taken over by then.

It's not bad, it’s probably just a weak follow-up to the genuinely good Bad-Luck Mystery.

A Gathering Midnight by Holly Race

I was slightly on the fence about this trilogy, but this second instalment has won me over. Although there are some issues in the plotting and in the complexity of its concepts, there’s a lot of great material here too.

Fern and her twin brother Ollie are knights who spend their nights in a dreamscape called Annwn, a place based on the city of London where ordinary people live out their subconscious fantasies. It’s recently come under attack by a man called Sebastian Medraut, the individual responsible for their mother’s death, who is manipulating this realm for his own political advancement.

As was set up at the end of the previous book, their mother left Fern a quest to fulfil: to find the sword Excalibur and wield it in defense of Annwn. How this mission unfolds is genuinely clever – I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s not so much a journey that leads you to a particular place, but rather rather a journey that comes to you when you prove you’re worthy of its objective.

There are several passages which genuinely made me put the book down in order to ponder for a few minutes. For instance, Fern is initially heartened by the emergence of a counter-organization to Sebastian Medraut’s political party, which call themselves Shout Louder. But on attending one of their rallies, she finds them belligerent and self-important and unhelpful. They are technically on the right side, but as Fern puts it: “they’re not the salve I’m looking for.”

These past few years, I’ve been equally awash in feelings of bitterness and frustration, and vented about it a fair bit on this blog. I know that right-wingers are awful and anti-vaxxers are nutjobs and fascists should be punched repeatedly in the face, but I also don’t want to lose myself to rage and hostility – something Fern is equally concerned with. At which point do we become inseparable from the enemy we’re fighting?

Later on, Fern realizes that Lord Allenby, her mentor in Annwn, a man who commands respect and power, is living homeless in the real world. It’s a complete shock to her (and the reader) but on getting an explanation she learns that he too got caught up in countermeasures against fascist regimes and ended up losing his family, home and career as a result. It reminded me of Luthen Rael in Andor and his incredible monologue about what exactly he has to sacrifice for the greater good.

Then Fern draws a comparison between this man and her own father, who is a “go along to get along” type of person, constantly trying not to get involved in politics and to keep the peace between his steadily more brainwashed girlfriend and his children (who are waging a secret war against a potential despot). Which man picked the wiser course? Fern herself can’t decide, and to be honest, neither can I.

A Midnight Dark and Golden by Holly Race

The third and final book in the trilogy doesn’t pull any punches. Sebastian Medraut is on the political ascent, violence against any non-conformists is erupting in the streets, and Annwn itself is steadily being overrun by a range of terrifying monsters. The stakes are sky-high, long-standing characters are killed off, and there is definitely a hefty price to pay for victory. Clearly inspired by the chaos surrounding the 2020 lockdowns and Trump’s attempted coup, there is a real sense of contemporary political commentary here – though it remains to be seen whether this immediacy will date the story in a few years’ time.

There’s not much I can say about this one on the heels of talking about A Gathering Midnight, as most of what I discussed regarding the middle book also applies to this one, but I’ve enjoyed reading Fern’s character development and some of the clever twists Race comes up with her in Arthurian-inspired quest narrative. Some of the central concepts and terminology were a bit difficult to get my head around (I’m still not entirely sure what “inspyre” is or how it works) but some of her insights into human nature and how we grapple with trauma were extremely well done.

Seemingly in competition with Game of Thrones to see how many main and supporting characters could be killed off, a little bit of emotional fatigue sets in when you realize that pretty much everyone is going to die before the final chapters, but Race is at least clear enough on what’s actually at stake to ensure the reader knows none of those deaths were in vain. It leavens the onslaught a little.

I can’t quite wholeheartedly recommend this trilogy, there are a few long stretches of nothing much happening, and prose that makes it rather difficult to figure out what’s going on at times, but there’s also the complex inner world of Fern and how she grapples through the responsibilities placed upon her. I especially liked the friendship she forms with Charlie, the daughter of Sebastian Medraut who is initially a bully, but inevitably revealed to be just as much a victim of his cruelty as everyone else.  

The final chapter will possibly cause some controversy – no spoilers but it involves a reinterpretation of the Holy Grail – yet at the same time I can’t say it wasn’t foreshadowed (heck, there were probably more clues pointing towards Fern’s final destination than I managed to pick up on) and it ends things on a suitably poignant note.

The Golden Swift by Lev Grossman

The direct sequel to The Silver Arrow continues the adventures of Kate and Tom and the magical train that transports endangered animals from high-risk territories to safer habitats. As is to be expected from any self-respecting sequel, the story grapples with more complicated issues this time around, with the siblings teaming up with a boy called Jag, who drives the beautiful, technologically advanced Golden Swift.

He reveals to them a secret mission that he’s kept from the Board of Directors: rather than just save animals, he’s reintroducing them to their original natural habitats so that the balance of things can be restored. But of course, since many of these animals have been extinct from their place of origin for decades – sometimes even centuries – it causes a ripple effect that sometimes causes more harm than good.

Grossman has a strong grasp of human behaviour, whether it’s Kate being blind to her own faults, Jag having trouble with social norms, or Tom’s reasons for being less interested in the train than in the last book. It also captures the complexity of the fight against climate change, and how (as one character puts it): “consequences have consequences” when a single element is removed from – or returned to – a natural habitat. It’s also packed full of fascinating wildlife facts: I certainly know more about the American burying beetles than I did before reading this.

There’s also some genuinely funny stuff here. At the beginning of the book, we learn that Fern hasn’t gotten the lead role in her school play, which has put her in something of a funk. Chapter Two ends with her snapping: “it’s not about the play.” Chapter Three is called: “It Was A Little Bit About The Play.” This wry sense of humour was also strewn throughout The Magicians trilogy, and though these books lack their predecessors’ devastatingly clever plot-twists, they’re still compelling and fascinating in that very specific Grossman-way. I’m going to assume there’s a third book on its way...

The Ghost of Midnight Lake by Lucy Strange

Another title for this book is The Ghost of Gosswater, and either way – yes please. Set in the Lake District in 1899, newly orphaned Agatha is cast out of her home by greedy Cousin Clarence, who covets the land and house for himself. He reveals the terrible truth to her: that she wasn’t the Earl of Gosswater’s daughter at all, but a child from the village who was adopted after the couple lost their real child.

Now living in a tumbledown cottage with the man who claims to be her real father, Agatha attempts to understand the lie she’s lived under her whole life, as well as discover the identity of her mother and the location of the missing Queen Stone that was bequeathed to her – or at least it would have been had it not been missing for years.

This is essentially Gothic-lite for young readers, but filled with a twisty identity-based plot and a heady atmosphere of mist-strewn lakes, snow-covered moors, and dark and gloomy mansions (which inevitably gets burned down to the ground by the end).  And of course, a potential ghost. Told in first-person narrative by Agatha, there’s an immediacy to it which brings to life the world at the turn of the century, and some especially vivid passages, such as when Agatha is caught out in the countryside during a snowstorm, or when she’s left stranded on a lake island cemetery.

My one complaint would be that Clarence is a caricature of a villain: he gloats, he monologues, he sets his dog (called Brutus) on people, he’s not particularly intelligent… perhaps Strange didn’t want to make things too dark, but any Gothic novel deserves a decent villain, and Clarence’s foppishness robs him of that, even if he does pose a threat to Agatha’s wellbeing.

In contrast, Agatha makes for a strong heroine: determined despite her fears, clever within the limits of her education, brave without being superpowered. She solves the mystery of her own past and finds a new way forward in life, leading to an ending that’s considerably more upbeat than usual for a Gothic Romance. But then, this is still technically a children’s book.

Mystery of the Night Watchers by A.M. Howell

This vibes extremely well with the above title, despite being written by two totally different authors. And yet the similarities are striking: both are period mysteries starring a preadolescent girl trying to uncover the secrets of her own family. There’s a moustache-twirling villain on hand to make ugly threats, a friendship with a lower-class boy who clearly has a crush on our heroine, and some historical facts strewn throughout.

It’s actually quite extraordinary how similar the two stories are! Perhaps it’s down to the tropes of this particular subgenre of children’s fiction: historical mysteries as solved by plucky twelve-year-olds.

But whereas The Ghost of Midnight Lake was set in 1899 in the fictional town of Gosswater (based on the real Ullswater, near Penrith), Mystery of the Night Watchers takes place in 1910, Suffolk, to coincide with the return of Halley’s Comet and the very-real (and still existing) Cupola House.

Nancy and her little sister Violet are abruptly taken from their home by their mother to board the nearest train. Her only explanation is that they’re travelling into the countryside to visit their grandfather – a man Nancy didn’t even know existed till that day. Further mysteries pile up once they reach the house: they’re not allowed to be seen by anyone, her mother and grandfather speak in whispered conversations and leave the house in the dead of night, and the local mayor is a cruel and vindictive man who seems to have everyone under his thumb.

As with Agatha, Nancy makes for a good little detective, driven by her love for her family and a desire to uncover the truth. The mystery isn’t quite as polished, but there’s a lot of atmosphere and historical detail: turns out that at the time science was advanced enough for the general public to know that various gases were emitted from Halley’s Comet, leading to a panic among some people that that they were going to be poisoned (cue the gasmasks and anti-comet pills).

I’ve still got three more books to complete by A.M. Howell, so we’ll get to them in the coming month.

Wind River (2017)

Everything Thursday night my mum comes over to watch an episode of something with me, and now we’re about to embark on creator/writer/director Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone franchise. As such, I tracked down this movie (which had been on my radar anyway) to get an idea of what to expect.

It turned out to be a real balancing act between a genuine desire to shine a light on the plight of First Nation people – especially women – and the complete inability not to cast white leads, who inevitably come across as Mighty Whiteys as a result. Ultimately, it errs more on the side of nuance and respect, but... well, there’s a but involved.

To say life is harsh on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming is an understatement, and so the general reaction to the discovery of the body of a young native woman is grief – but not shock. She was found in the middle of nowhere, with bare feet and signs of rape. There’s blunt trauma to the head, but that’s not what killed her: the coroner states that she died of a pulmonary haemorrhage caused by inhaling the freezing night air. Essentially her lungs froze.

This throws a spanner into the investigation, which now cannot technically be classified as murder. Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) is brought in by the FBI, with absolutely no understanding of either the environment or the culture, though thankfully she’s self-aware enough to realize this, and enlists the help of US Fish and Wildlife Service agent Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) – the man who found the body in the first place.

There’s no beating around the bush; this is a grim story without a happy ending. For fans of mysteries or procedurals, there’s not even much of a case to solve; the few clues the investigators have lead them to the guilty party with minimal fuss, after a tour of the hardships that the native community must endure.  

SPOILERS

For what it’s worth, it contains a blissfully cathartic dispensary of justice, in which the villain is denied the chance to defend himself in court and is straight-up executed by the protagonist (no, I do not condone this in real life, but damn I enjoy it in fiction) and those searching for said villain never lose sight of the humanity or strength of the victim. They’re committed to pursuing justice, even without outside help.

Of course, there’s no real reason why Jeremy Renner’s character couldn’t have been played by an indigenous actor, and once again you get the sense that someone behind-the-scenes assumed no one would care unless a white guy was the protagonist (all the more so when the credits inform us Harvey Weinstein was a producer). Renner isn’t bad in this, but it’s a missed opportunity to let a First Nation actor avenge one of their own – and they still could have kept Elizabeth Olsen as the requisite Fish Out of Water. It’s a tough watch, but as ever, your mileage may vary.

Random notes: I was rather chuffed at the Hawkeye/Scarlet Witch team-up in this film, but it only reopened questions about the weird lack of support Clint offered Wanda in the post-Endgame MCU. Where the heck was he when Wanda had her breakdown? She couldn’t have gone to his farm to recuperate? What was that about? Also, believe it or not, I was trying to sell this movie to my mum the day before Jeremy Renner’s snow plough accident.  And hey, it’s surprise Jon Bernthal!

Hocus Pocus 2 (2022)

Well, that was definitely a sequel to Hocus Pocus. In this recent onslaught of legacyquels, of which this was only the first of three I watched this month, there’s not a lot here to justify its existence.

Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy are back as the Sanderson Sisters, as is Doug Jones as Billy Bones, but in the twenty-nine years since the original film’s release, there’s been a major upheaval in the way witches are portrayed in media (at least, for the most part).

Here’s the thing: the original Hocus Pocus was very much a horror-comedy for kids, emphasis on the horror. There’s some genuinely scary shit in that movie. A little girl is murdered within the first five minutes. A teenage boy is turned into a cat and cursed with immortality. We see the legs of the witches dangle as they’re hanged by the neck. Their resurrection halfway through the film involves plenty of ominous banging and flashing lights.

And lest we forget, the goal of these witches is to kill children and drink their life-force. They are explicitly in league with Satan, and its from him that Winnie received her book of magic spells. The sisters might have been occasionally played for laughs, but they were also villains who had more in common with the old-school witches from Eggers’ The VVitch than Samantha or Sabrina or the Halliwells.

This sequel places more emphasis on the comedy, and given that legacyquels largely exist so that the original audiences can point at things they remember from their childhood and bask in the warm glow of nostalgia, that’s an odd choice to make. Perhaps the key difference between the two films (aside from the tone) is that the main characters of the first were the four kids: Max, Alison, Dani and Thackery, who work together to protect the children of Salem.

For my money, they were fairly well-drawn characters, with Max in particular going through a solid arc. He starts out bitter and resentful about being uprooted from New York, only for his adventure to force him into a. becoming a better brother, b. losing his cynicism regarding the supernatural, and c. realizing that the best way to win a girl’s heart is to drop the macho act and just be genuine.

In contrast, the protagonists of the sequel are the Sandersons, who dominate the screentime. The kids this time around are three teenage girls whose friendship is on the outs and who eventually reconcile – but I couldn’t tell you any of their names beyond Becca (and I only remembered that one because it’s short for MY name).

There’s no way to say this that won’t make me sound like one of those weird adults who moan about their childhoods being ruined, but because the witches are now the protagonists, their evil has been severely toned down. And that’s super bizarre since they still acknowledge the fact they’ve murdered children in the past, despite kicking things off with a woobifying flashback that depict them as the pariahs of their New England settlement, forced out into the forest after they refuse to conform to the rigidity of the patriarchal society that surrounds them. Cue eyeroll.

It's perhaps to the screenwriters’ credit that they realize another round of “we must kill as many children as possible” would have been a blatant re-tread of the first movie, but what they come up with instead has no urgency whatsoever. The secret weapon of the original film is that the kids’ desperation in attempting to save their peers IS pretty fraught, but this time around the Sandersons just want to kill the descendant of the priest that bullied them as children, before performing a spell that will allow them to grow exponentially in power (why they didn’t just do this the FIRST time around since it sidesteps the need to feast on kids is a mystery).

And yet once they’re at the mayor’s house, literally in his garage, left to their own devices since the kids that have just trapped them with the old circle of salt trick don’t bother to guard them until the sun comes up, making it only a matter of time before they get free thanks to a couple of roombas, they don’t bother to finish the job, even though their target is RIGHT THERE IN THE HOUSE WITH THEM.

Instead, they turn their attention to completing the spell to grant them more power, which has one of those clauses that requires them to give up what they hold most dear, which in Winnie’s case ends up being her sisters, even though up until that moment she’s held them in absolute contempt. But because she’s so upset about losing them, she willingly submits to a euthanasia spell so she can join them. I guess even remorseless child-killers love their sisters. Aw.

Oh, and did I mention the book is no longer evil? Even though the first film clearly establishes that it was gifted to Winnie by the devil himself and bound with ACTUAL HUMAN SKIN?? That it betrays the location of the children to the witches the first chance it gets, and of which Thackery says: “no good can come of this book”? Now it’s just a poor, lonely book that wants to stop Winnie from casting evil spells and willingly ends up in the hands of Becca, who will… treat it nicely? Not cast evil spells with it? Whatever, movie. If you’re going to retcon something like that, why’d you bother reminding the audience that these witches chow down on kids? If anything should have been swept under the rug to garner sympathy for the Sandersons, it really should have been that little factoid.

Look, despite all my moaning, it’s not a hideously unwatchable film – just a fascinating example of a legacyquel that doesn’t quite know what it should be about. Nostalgia? A brand-new story for a new generation? A retcon that papers over the “problematic darkness” of the original? A chance for Bette Midler to return to what she’s often described as her favourite role? I came away wondering who on earth this was for.

There were some fun moments: Hannah Waddington’s cameo. Another song/dance sequence in which the townsfolk are hypnotized by the witch’s song. Doug Jones collecting his pay check. But the original Hocus Pocus is a quintessential cult classic: a flop on release that gradually became a staple of the holidays as it gained traction by word of mouth and repeated airings on the Disney Channel. And you can’t replicate a cult classic. By nature, they’re lightning in a bottle. This year, The Curse of Bridge Hollow had more in common with Hocus Pocus than its sequel did, and I suspect it will have more staying power in the long run.

Disenchanted (2022)

Between this and Hocus Pocus 2, Disenchanted is the legacyquel that best justifies its own existence. Naturally there is room to explore what happens after “happily ever after”, while Hocus Pocus couldn’t really go anywhere but “witches versus children, round two.” This film also boasts the return of the entire cast of 2009’s Enchanted, which already gives it the edge over Hocus Pocus 2.

But I have to start with a confession: I’m not a great fan of Enchanted, or of Amy Adams’s performance in it. Please, put down the pitchforks. It was very much the film that kickstarted Disney’s tendency to go meta on itself and its favourite tropes, something that has only intensified in the decade since, and which has well and truly worn out its welcome.

Disney has always been corporate and commercialized, but there was a time when it was at least sincere about the stories it told. Good fought evil, virtue was rewarded, princesses were kind and innocent – granted, there’s only so much of this you can stomach, but at least it was earnest. Disney films these days are slathered in a coating of snide commentary and self-deprecating humour, and it’s just exhausting (even the otherwise excellent Moana can’t help but include The Rock saying: “if you start singing right now, I’m gonna be sick” and “if you wear a dress, and have an animal sidekick, you're a princess.”)

So that’s one reason why I don’t look back fondly on Enchanted. The other is that as much as I like Amy Adams generally, the oft-repeated praise that “she’s just like a real-life Disney Princess” was a bit lost on me. She plays the innate comedy of Giselle completely straight, so I give her that, but who on earth is she meant to be emulating? NONE of the Disney Princesses behave like she does in that film. Perhaps, at a stretch, she’s like Snow White, what with the big arm gestures and twittery voice.

I’m not saying it’s a bad performance – she commits to the bit with all the panache she can muster, but it’s just not something that resonated with me.

Having dropped those bombshells, what can I say about Disenchanted? The premise for a sequel makes sense: now that Morgan is a teenager and Robert/Giselle have had a baby, they decide to move out of New York to the suburbs. (Wait, didn’t Giselle own a dress-making shop by the end of the last movie? That’s never mentioned, and she’s apparently just a stay-at-home mum now). No one handles the change very well – the house is a mess, Robert doesn’t like commuting, Giselle doesn’t fit in with the local Queen Bee, and Morgan is a surly teenager.

As a result, Giselle makes a wish on the wand that Prince Edward and Nancy have gifted to the new baby: that they can all live in a fairy tale. Suddenly the Queen Bee is dressing like an Evil Queen, Robert is heading off with a sword to fight dragons, and (in what is perhaps the movie’s best idea) Giselle starts turning into an evil stepmother, because naturally that’s what stepmothers in fairy tales are like.

Focusing on the relationship between Giselle and Morgan is a good idea (and yes, the damn thing squeezed a tear out of me when the conclusion has the two affirm they’re each other’s true mother/daughter) but the rest of the film feels like a bunch of skits strung together. They’re relatively fun and entertaining skits, but still skits.

None of the songs or dance numbers are particularly memorable, which sucks because the first movie had some real bangers, and although Idina Menzel finally gets to sing in this one (a point of contention was that the famous Broadway star never got to sing a note in Enchanted) it’s her trademark yell-singing that sounds awful when it’s not on the stage. You’re not trying to reach the back row, you can dial it down a little.

There are subplots about the inevitable bitch squad/cute boy drama Morgan has to deal with at school, Giselle’s chipmuck getting turned into a cat, various townsfolk having magical stuff done to them... please guys, just chose a plot and stick with it.

But it’s kinda hilarious how pointless Robert is in this: he tries to fight a dragon and fails, he tries to fight a giant and fails, and in the climactic scene he tries to halt the stroke of midnight by destroying the cogs in the clock tower. Dude… that’s not how time works.

At the end of the day, you can tell this was never going to be a theatrical release. The budget is clearly smaller because the sets and scope are more limited, and the animated sequence looks awful. If it were in my hands, I would have stuck with Morgan and Giselle being on the outs, and the latter’s ill-conceived wish turning her evil, but have most of the runtime take place in Andalasia, with a decently-animated Morgan travelling through that land in a quest to break the spell and save her stepmother. Why not make it a complete inversion of the original in that respect?

Look, I didn’t hate it. It’s not unwatchable. It certainly has more reason to exist than Hocus Pocus 2. But at the same time, the cast feels a little past their prime, and it’s coasting on this deluge of nostalgia for millennials that I personally can’t wait to see the end of. The kids these days deserve some decent stuff of their own.

The School for Good and Evil (2022)

This was a weird one, largely because it was adapted from – at least according to my quick flick through a copy at the library – an extremely convoluted and lore-heavy story, which at this point encompasses several volumes. This movie felt like it had a run-time of at least three hours, and it still felt overstuffed.

Here’s the gist: Agatha and Sophie are complete opposites, but enjoy a firm friendship based on the fact that both are social misfits in their small-minded community. Both have dreams to leave one day, though Sophie’s specifically involve her attending the School for Good and Evil, where young people with magical abilities are trained to be either villains or heroes. In due course, both girls are snatched up by the giant bird-like creature that transports students to the school, only for Agatha to find herself in the fairy-filled manicured gardens of the School for Good, while Sophie is unceremoniously dumped in the moat surrounding the dark and gloomy School for Evil. What a tweest!

What follows is an extremely busy storyline, involving at least a dozen more characters and subplots, the details of which I’m finding difficult to recall. At first the girls want to find each other and get the hell out of dodge ASAP. Then they start to integrate themselves into their respective environments, shaking things up among the other students as they go.

There’s something about the evil founder of the school coming back as a ghost to try and take over, and Sophie attempting to obtain a True Love’s Kiss from one of the hero trainees, and Agatha seeing terrible blood-filled portents. One moment gets fascinatingly meta, in which the girls sneak into the headmaster’s quarters and a self-writing quill starts narrating what they’re doing as they do it, but this is dropped in the same scene it’s introduced. Eventually there’s a massive brawl between the two schools set to Britney Spears’s “Toxic” after Sophie embraces her evil side and declares war. Yeah, there’s a lot going on here.

I spent the entire run-time thinking there was going to be a twist at some point, like the School for Good actually being the Evil one due to their strict rules and harsh punishments for any transgressions. But no, this follows in the footsteps of Disney’s Descendants and X-Men Evolution, in which all the bad kids are in desperate need of therapy, and all the good kids are classist, hypocritical jerks.

Agatha is the only character in the whole movie that’s worth a damn, and she spends most of it getting bullied, criticized, ridiculed and beaten up. It’s exhausting, and if her story had ended with her deciding none of this crap was worth it and flying that giant bird to the nearest resort, I wouldn’t have blamed her.

There are some nice bits and pieces here and there: the Art Deco aesthetic, the poofy costumes, the underlying concept of a school for Gryffindors and Slytherins (trimming the Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff fat) but I fear a lot has been lost in translation from book to screen. Though honestly, there’s not much here that compels me to take a longer look at the source material.

Enola Holmes 2 (2022)

Enola Holmes was a highlight of the 2020 lockdown: not trying to be anything too ambitious, but simply a YA-targeted romp starring Sherlock Holmes’s little sister. This sequel exists much in the same vein, though it does lose a little of its predecessor’s charm.

For starters, the first movie was based on the first of Nancy Springer’s book series, and though it deviated wildly from the text, it still had the basics: Enola’s mother disappearing on her birthday, a jaunt around 19th century London, and a plot based around a missing marquess. This completely tosses out everything to do with The Case of the Left-Handed Lady, which is a damn shame since said lady was a fascinating character who could have been inserted into this storyline with minimal fuss (she gets a shout-out though, as another character uses the name “Cecily” as an alias).

The film also cannot resist biting off a little more than it can chew regarding the wider Sherlock mythos, which means we get a bigger role for Henry Cavill’s Sherlock, a return appearance from Lord Tewkesbury, the introduction of Moriarty, and a last-minute cameo for Watson. To be honest, my favourite part of the books was that the likes of Holmes, Watson and Lestrade were kept to a minimum, and there was NO Moriarty at all. Despite the interesting twist on that last character as portrayed here, I emitted a little sigh when the name first popped up.

In an attempt to integrate Helen Bonham Carter into the proceedings, there’s a completely pointless jailbreak/chase scene, and the fourth-wall breaking feels a little more forced this time around – what was an essential part of the storytelling in the first film now feels like something they’re obliged to include.

Basically, I liked that the scale of the first Enola Holmes was small and intimate; the story of a young girl finding her place in the world who happens to brush up against a serious social issue as she does so.  In comparison, this sequel could very easily have been pared down to a brisk one-hour-and-twenty-minutes; instead it’s well over two hours long.

But enough complaining, because I still really enjoyed this, and I’m hoping Netflix will greenlight a third instalment very soon. Enola has set up her own private detective agency, only to find that people don't take her seriously and are more interested in contacting her brother. Just as she’s on the verge of quitting, she’s approached by a little girl who is searching for her sister Sarah, who has gone missing from their place of work. Enola goes undercover to the matchstick factory in search of clues, and soon reaches the conclusion that Sarah is in possession of something that may well have put her in harm's way.

She follows leads, questions suspects, calls in help, and ends up embroiled in the very-real historical strike of Bryant & May Matches, as led by Sarah Chapman in 1888. As the placard says at the start of the film: “this is a true story – the important bits”.  

I like that it expanded on the theme of the suffragette movement that was only briefly touched upon in the first movie, as though it was clear Enola’s mother was getting up to some political hijinks, Enola’s ultimate purpose was to get Tewkesbury into a position so that HE could vote in a reform bill. This time around, her search for the missing girl leads her headfirst into affirmative action, though along the way the plot does pull off a rather interesting twist that relies on the preconceptions of a modern audience.

SPOILERS

Across the course of the investigation, Enola crosses paths with a Black secretary called Mira Troy and William Lyon, the son of a wealthy white factory owner. At first glance, our assumptions concerning these types of stories would have us believe one is the villain and the other the unsung hero – but a switch occurs when it turns out that Sharon Duncan-Brewster is Moriarty in disguise, and William turns out to be a reformist and faithful lover to Sarah – not the cad we expected from how his character was set up.

I probably should have seen it coming given there was a similar idea behind the nature of the villain in the first film (and that Mira Troy is an anagram of Moriarty) but it was a nice reminder that you can never be too complacent with your preconceptions.

As much as a part of me wishes we could have had one Sherlock franchise without the inevitability of Moriarty (are people even aware that this character was BARELY in the original Arthur Conan Doyle novels?) Duncan-Brewster plays the part with a creepy edge which bodes well for any future portrayal. The performances are strong across the board: I suspect Millie Bobby Brown enjoys doing something lighter in the off-seasons between Stranger Things, and Henry Cavill is probably thankful for a solid franchise after the drama of losing The Witcher and Superman in a single year.

Nothing has been greenlit yet, but there’s obviously plenty of setup for more films in this series. If so, I dearly hope that screenwriter Jack Thorne starts taking more inspiration from the books: not only in how Enola runs her business, but in including some of the supporting characters that Springer has created: Cecily Alaistair, Lady Venice and even Florence Nightingale.

This franchise would work just fine if each film was a singular mystery, avoiding the tedium of a “shared universe” with ever-increasing Easter eggs and fanservice for the Sherlock fans. I think we’re game, set, match for some Moriarty mind-games, but Thorne shouldn't be afraid of scaling it back a bit – that was the entire charm of the first film.

My Father’s Dragon (2022)

In a nutshell, this is not Cartoon Saloon’s best offering, but it’s still a beautiful film to behold.

In the lead-up to the release of this on Netflix, I ended up reading the original book by Ruth Stiles Gannett for the first time, and became immediately aware that the movie would have to take a LOT of dramatic liberties. Easily read in under twenty minutes, the book is a dreamy little thing that runs on fairy tale logic, in which the protagonist Elmer Elevator learns from a talking cat about a baby dragon that’s being held captive on Wild Island by the animals that live there.

Elmer stows away on a boat, sneaks away once they reach Wild Island, outwits various species of animals with the eclectic collection of things in his backpack, and saves the baby dragon (who was being exploited for his ability to transport animals over the river). The end.

The film obviously expands on this premise, though in a number of ways that never get explored to any satisfaction. Here, Elmer and his storekeeper mother move to the city during the Great Depression, their warm relationship coming under strain thanks to the new hardships. Now when Elmer finds the cat (and gets in trouble for sneaking it into the apartment) he has an ulterior motive in rescuing the dragon that it tells him about: a pet dragon will earn him money enough to buy another store.

He sets off – not as a stowaway, but on the back of a cheerful white whale – and reaches the island, only to discover that the animals have a reason that goes beyond mere laziness for imprisoning the dragon: it is the only creature that has the strength to prevent the island from sinking into the ocean, which requires him to regularly heave it out of the water via the chains that bind him to the surface.

So we’re looking at a variation of the “would you torture a child for the greater good?” scenario. Elmer goes ahead and frees Boris (as we know, for selfish rather than altruistic reasons) and the two attempt to find their way off the island (an injured wing means Boris can no longer fly).

In a panic over the imminent loss of their homes, the rest of the animals – led by Saiwa the gorilla – set off on their trail, hoping to reimprison Boris and save the island from destruction. It’s a complicated conundrum... one that the story itself has no interest in exploring or resolving in any satisfying manner.

Would you believe me if I said Elmer is never forced to face the fact he came to the island to exploit the dragon just as surely as the animals are doing? Or that the ongoing conflict between Saiwa and his second-in-command Kwan (one wants to protect the animals before seizing the dragon, the other wants to repossess Boris as quickly as possible) ends with the latter just leaving the island and never returning?

There’s an ongoing theme in which Boris calls Elmer an “ideas guy”, but it turns out to be Boris himself who instinctively figures out what to do to resolve the situation in a blatant Deus ex Machina. Throughout the story there’s an added bit of lore in which Boris will supposedly transform into an “After Dragon”, but it’s not particularly well thought-out and doesn’t really add anything. Then there’s the lack of resolution between Elmer and his mother, and the pointless inclusion of the three busking children on the street who steal Elmer’s money.

I mean, clearly there’s meant to be a point in which Elmer realizes he’s Not So Different from the animals, and confess his true motivations to Boris. The fact that there isn’t is a failure of Writing 101. Likewise, there’s never a scene in which the animals realize their safety and comfort relies on the suffering of an innocent creature, leading to their resolve to find another place to live in exchange for Boris’s freedom. Or a point in which Saiwa and Kwan get past their differences and resolve to provide better leadership to their people.

Or just SOMETHING to tie together this grab-bag of half-formed ideas.

And yet, it’s Cartoon Saloon, which means it’s still exceptionally beautiful to look at. All the different parts of the island are rendered in different shades of colours, and Elmer moves through them as though through a kaleidoscope. The variety of animals are vividly rendered while still keeping that distinctive Cartoon Saloon style, and Boris’s design is surprisingly faithful to the book’s original illustrations. Every frame is a feast for the eyes, and there’s some impressive voice talent here as well: Ian McShane, Gaten Matarazzo, Dianne Wiest, Alan Cumming, Jacob Tremblay and more.

Like Kubo and the Two Strings (which trips at the finish line) and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (which completely misses the point of its source material), My Father’s Dragon is recommended with the caveat that it’s a bit of a mess – but a beautiful mess. It’s like a glimpse into a dream, complete with dream-like logic (which is to say, none at all).

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)

At the heart of this story is a paradox, which is that the story of Pinocchio is about how a wooden puppet earns the right to be a real boy by becoming good: obeying his father, not telling lies, following the rules. Del Toro is made of much different stuff than that, which puts him directly at odds with the underlying moral of Carlo Collodi’s original book.

Del Toro's idea of goodness is profoundly different, which is that it isn’t something to be taught and adhered to, but rather an innate part of a person’s nature, and largely found in one's ability to resist oppressive systems (heck, this is the central thesis of Pan’s Labyrinth). All that is fine if such an underlying message occurs under the right circumstances and in the right story, but that’s certainly not what Pinocchio is about.

That said, Pinocchio isn’t a sacred cow. The older a story is, the more scope it contains for interrogation and reinvention, and there have been so many versions of this particular tale that it’s practically essential for any new adaptation to do something drastically different. Del Toro’s take on the material is to set the story during the reign of Mussolini, in which Geppetto’s motivation for carving Pinocchio is his son’s death in a bombing raid, and the big climax involves Pinocchio and Lampwick overthrowing a boot camp for young recruits.

Sure, there’s a giant whale (or catfish) and a blue fairy (or eldritch wood sprite) and a sequence in which Pinocchio’s nose grows when he lies (which is weaponized at the end to triumphant cheers) but this is very much a brand new story for the iconic character.

It’s also a deeply personal story – perhaps to the point of not really resonating with anyone besides Del Toro himself. For example, there’s an intriguing scene in which Pinocchio looks at a wooden sculpture of the crucified Christ and expresses envy that the people love him instead of Pinocchio. Del Toro has been frank about how this matches one of his own childhood experiences, in which he felt similar envy for the adoration directed as Christ. And yet having seen the scene, you’re left wondering: “so what?” The fact that Pinocchio has this fascinating reaction isn’t explored in any greater detail, which is immensely surprising considering the underlying question of the story is (or should be): “what is goodness?”

But of course, that spirals back to the fact that Del Toro isn’t that interested in the underlying morals of the original story. This isn’t about becoming a better person and attaining the most important aspects of humanity, it’s about... um... to be honest, it’s a little unclear. The movie in its entirety plays out like a series of immensely beautiful vignettes that have very little connective tissue between them, but which don’t point to any overarching theme or idea (rather like My Father’s Dragon, in fact).

I didn’t (and will never) watch Disney’s live-action version of Pinocchio, though I understand there’s a strange coincidental similarity in both films: that Pinocchio does not transform into a real boy at the conclusion of either one. I wonder if perhaps there’s a fear of ableist subtext in that particular creative decision – the idea that a body can be “cured” if you just try hard enough – but in Del Toro’s case, it feels like another indication that he didn’t want to adapt Pinocchio so much as he wanted to graft all his favourite tropes onto a pre-existing story.

Which hey, if it’s a chance to wander around in Del Toro’s imagination, I’m all for it. Again like My Father’s Dragon, the beauty of the craftsmanship is reason enough to watch it, even if it’s something of a beautiful mess. Carlo Collodi’s story ends on a life-affirming (and very Christian) note: that if you work to be a good person, you will be granted a transformative miracle. Del Toro’s film ends with Pinocchio losing all his friends and family to death and going out into the world by himself, with the narrator informing us that: “what happens, happens, and then, we are gone.”

I mean, this is simply not the same story as the one Collodi wrote on any level. Take from it what you will.

Rosaline (2022)

This was pretty much what I expected – an extremely light and diverting comedy that highlights an entirely off-stage character in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, but one that shies away from being the ice-cold dark comedy it could have been.

Instead, some fairly trite elements (Rosaline wants to marry for love and have adventures; her scheme to break up Romeo and Juliet inevitably blows up in her face) exist side-by-side with scenes that belong to the film I wish it had been the whole way through. Things such as Paris being obviously, flamboyantly, hilariously gay, or the early seeding of the completely useless messenger who inevitably fails at his job to deliver the all-important note to Romeo telling of Juliet’s plan, or Minnie Driver as the droll nurse who is exasperated over the fact she’s literally a registered nurse and yet has to work as a servant (but whose skills pay off in the end).

Best of all, the a final coda has the famous lovers (who successfully fake their deaths) sailing off into a new life together... and realizing they have nothing to talk about and absolutely nothing in common. That was almost enough to make up for the immensely uninteresting romance between Rosaline and Sean Teague (honestly even can’t remember the character’s name); a scene which pours ice water over the entire romance and the concept of love at first sight. I honestly wish this had been the tone carried throughout the entire film.

Though she never appears in the play itself, Rosaline is established as the woman Romeo loved before he was swept away by the sight of Juliet at the masquerade ball. This film establishes her as a clever but rather hapless Capulet cousin in a secret relationship with Romeo. She digs him, but stumbles when the time comes to say “I love you.”

See, now that’s cheating. The film I wanted to see would have had Rosaline genuinely in love with Romeo and truly broken-hearted when she loses him. Here it’s obvious that her subsequent plotting has more to do with her pride than any hurt feelings, and luckily there’s a superhot guy on hand to help her with her increasingly wacky schemes to break up the star-crossed couple before she realizes she wasn’t missing much with Romeo anyway.

The comparisons to Bridgerton are inevitable, what with the deliberate anachronisms and use of pop-music remixes (including “Dancing on my Own” which was heavily used in an important moment of Bridgerton’s second season) but Ophelia also comes to mind in terms of its decision to highlight a supporting Shakespearean heroine, give her a happy ending, and imbue her story with a deeply colourful aesthetic. And of course, the gone-too-soon Still Star-Crossed, another take on Rosaline’s tale, whose early cancellation I’m still angry about.

It's funny and light and Kaitlyn Dever shines as Rosaline, but there was a much darker, sneaker, cleverer script in here somewhere.

Death in Paradise: Season 1 (2011)

I always struggle when it comes to writing about either comedies or police procedurals. They’re either so subjective or so formulaic that any meaningful commentary is virtually impossible. But I’ve been meaning to watch Death in Paradise for a while now, as there are few things more relaxing than a mystery series set in a unique locale. This is more unique than usual, foregoing the usual bucolic English countryside for the (fictional) island of Saint Marie in the Caribbean.  

Into this sweltering paradise comes requisite Fish Out of Water Richard Poole, sent to investigate the death of a British police officer, who refuses to wear anything but a suit, hates all the available food, alienates his colleagues with his grouchiness and complains incessantly about the heat. But of course, he’s brilliant at his job.

Now before you walk away in disgust, there are some mitigating factors to the tedium of “mighty whitey is better than the natives at their own job and treats them like crap because he’s such a genius” trope, the first being that although he’s a bit abrasive, he never crosses the line into genuine jerkass-ery. Most of the time his co-workers take his behaviour in their stride, and they’re competent and respected officers in their own right. If anything, they spend most of their time poking fun at him, and always contribute to the case in meaningful ways (even if he inevitably gets to lead the denouement).

Every episode is standalone and can be watched out of order (give or take a few little recurring subplots, such as the pregnancy of one of the officers’ wives) and adhere to a very strict formula: a murder occurs, the suspects are questioned, clues are tracked down, false leads are followed, and then something seemingly random triggers a Eureka Moment to solve the case. They are play-fair mysteries, so you have a fair chance of figuring out the killer before the detectives get there, but the writing is intelligent and the plots are solid.

This is also one of those shows that allows me to enjoy one of my favourite viewing past-times: “hey it’s that guy!” I’m not even slightly exaggerating when I say that AT LEAST TWO guest actors in every single episode was a familiar British C-lister: Lenora Crichlow, Rupert Graves, Sophie Winkleman, Miranda Raison, Robert Pugh, Shirley Henderson, Ray Fearon... you may not recognize any of those names, but I guarantee you’ve seen their faces many times before.

Ultimately, I think this article from The Guardian sums it up nicely: The appeal of Death in Paradise is so maddeningly straightforward that would-be crime drama writers must be elaborately murdering themselves with frustration. It’s an undemanding detective show, with nice Caribbean scenery. That really is it. Check the forums, and commenter after commenter simply says it’s pleasant to watch a programme set in an exotic location when it’s dark and cold outside.

The Sandman: Season 1 (2022)

Years ago, before I had this blog (or even my LiveJournal) I read the first few editions of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, and still retained some memories of it. I recalled the part where he got entrapped in the basement, the horrific incident in the diner, the “oldest game” with Lucifer, and Batman turning up for a single panel. I was a little bewildered by the whole thing, but that I have such clear recollections of certain plot elements and illustrations speaks to the power of Gaiman’s work.

As I understand it, this was the project that made him famous, and to read it is to absorb who he is as a writer, distilled. That an adaptation has been in the works for as long as it has doesn’t surprise me, and we can be grateful it gestated for as many years as it did, for the work’s structure, content and even central concept may have caused many potential studios to blanche even as little as five years ago. Whatever an adaptation of The Sandman was going to be, it was always going to have to be unafraid to get a bit experiment.

It's an extremely winding and meandering season of television, starting when a mysterious cult casts a spell to entrap Death itself in their leader’s basement. They end up with Morpheus, the lord of dreams, with the first episode spanning his decades-long imprisonment before he manages to escape. From there, he embarks on a quest to reunite with his stolen emblems: helm, sand and ruby, after which he discovers his realm is once more put in jeopardy by the emergence of a Dream Vortex; a mortal who can dissolve the barriers between dreams and the waking world.

There are little subplots strewn through, such as the machinations of the Corinthian (a nightmare who enjoys his newfound freedom) and Dream’s siblings Desire and Despair, not to mention detours into other side-stories, such as an afternoon stroll with Death, an ongoing experiment with the prolonged life of the Wandering Jew, and two bonus episodes that examine the secret lives of cats and the imprisonment of another deity, the muse Calliope.

Everything we see gestures at a sprawling mythology that the show can only delicately brush against: Johanna Constantine, Lucifer, missing nightmares, a child conceived in the Dreaming... The various stories bleed into each other in strange ways – for example, a victim of the “sleepy sickness” that falls while Dream is trapped returns later on in the season as the great-grandmother of another important character, while a photograph of one of the diner victims is glimpsed on the shelf of another person’s house. It might mean something, it might mean nothing.

There’s so much talent here, even in exceptionally minor roles (to be honest, I’m not sure why Charles Dance or Joely Richardson turned up, if not for a quick pay check) but special mention to Tom Sturridge as Morpheus, who really does come across as an otherworldly creature. You look at him, and you know instantly that he’s not human. (Even though he is. He’s an actor). Kirby Howell-Baptiste is also excellent as Death, likewise Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer and Stephen Fry as Fiddler’s Green. I get the feeling the word went out that The Sandman was finally being adapted and all of Britain’s acting pool immediately got in touch with their agents.

The show’s unusual structure is what makes it so interesting: it certainly doesn’t end in the same place it became, and the fact it’s not afraid to move away from its original premise and explore other avenues and characters that are only tangentially connected to Dream is one of its strengths. I think Calliope ended up being my favourite episode, despite the dark subject matter.

Fans were very nervous that this show would fall to Netflix’s increasingly trigger-happy cancellations, but at the same time there’s so much material to adapt that even with confirmation of a second season, I’m not confident we’ll get this body of work in its entirety.

(On that note, I think Netflix should add disclaimers to their material, pointing out the stuff that ends up a cliff hanger or is otherwise incomplete, which they’ll never do as it’ll only underscore how sloppy their business model is these days).

Willow: Season 1 (2022 – 2023)

As fond as I am of Lucasfilm’s 1988 Willow, I have to concede that it’s not a great movie. And as enjoyable as this legacyquel was, I must admit it wasn’t a great show either. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun to watch.

The hook for any sequel series was obvious: what happened to Elora Danan when she grew up? The Living MacGuffin of the film, she was a gifted baby prophesied to be a future empress and the key to the downfall of evil Queen Bavmorda. As it turned out, there was something of a Prophecy Twist at work, as though she was the instigator of the chain of events that led to Bavmorda’s destruction, it really could have been any baby that the heroes were desperately trying to protect – that it was this particular one was just incidental.

And yet between the Birthmark of Destiny on her arm and the baby’s developed cognitive responses to things (which really, were the highlight of the film) it was equally clear that she was special on some level. Having been left in the care of Madmartigan and Sorsha at the end of the film, the question remained: what happened when she grew up?

To be frank, I didn’t really like the answer this show provides. First of all, the show cheats a little, as though it’s been thirty-four years since the movie originally aired, Elora is still only in her early twenties. Second of all, she wasn’t raised as Madmartigan and Sorsha’s daughter, but was rather put to work as a kitchen maid at an early age in order to hide her identity. Um, really? Thirdly, she somehow managed to grow up without knowing who she truly was, and the reveal of her real identity falls so flat that I honestly thought it was a red herring.

My main complaint is simple: the film had three core relationships, that between Willow and Elora, Madmartigan and Willow, and Madmartigan and Sorsha. That was where the emotional centre of the story was to be found, with some backup from the likes of the sorceress Finn Raziel, Willow’s wife and children, and the fraught relationship between Sorsha and Bavmorda. Unfortunately, thirty-four years later, only Warwick Davis and Joanne Whalley are still around. Val Kilmer is obviously grappling with serious health issues, and – as depressing as it is to mention – Patricia Hayes and most of the little people who played the various Nelwyns are no longer with us.

This means that the only key relationship from the film that can be carried over into the series is the one between Willow and Elora... and it turns out they don’t really like each other that much. Heck, Willow doesn’t even feel like the main character, and Warwick Davis seems to be channelling his performance from Life’s Too Short. He’s curmudgeonly and sardonic, and sure – he’s not going to be the same guy he was three decades ago, but was it really a good idea to apply that characterization onto our idealistic hero so soon after a similar path was taken with Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi?

I was ready to weep with emotion at the reunion between Willow and Elora, but (as I mentioned) it’s so anticlimactic that I honestly thought it was a fake-out.

Okay, onto the good stuff. In lieu of Willow/Elora as our core relationship, we get Elora/Kit, the latter being the daughter of Madmartigan and Sorsha, a decision I was cool with. Kit is a fun character, and definitely the product of both her parents: scrappy, spoiled, impatient and tomboyish, but with a heart of gold deep down. She grapples with feelings of jealousy and abandonment in the face of Elora’s magical specialness, and in contrast with Elora’s arc to embrace her inner power and destiny, Kit must learn to get the hell over herself.

Kit isn’t the only child of Madmartigan and Sorsha; we’ve also got her twin brother Airk (named after Madmartigan’s friend who died in the film, aww). He’s kidnapped by dark forces in the premiere, and the rescue mission to bring him home makes up the crux of the plot, with Willow, Kit and Elora joined by Jade (Kit’s bodyguard/trainer/love interest), Boorman (a convicted criminal but master swordsman), Graydon (an inexperienced prince with some magical capabilities) and a few other Red Shirts who don’t last long. The core cast are all likeable, understandable characters, and a decent rapport is formed between them over the course of the season.

Someone somewhere on the internet said the best way to enjoy the show was to pretend it was a D&D campaign, and once you embrace that logic, it’s easier to just roll with the litany of customary fantasy locations (evil castle, forest village, underground catacombs, deserted city), bizarre tonal shifts (tragic deaths are followed by well-mannered trolls) and deliberate anachronisms (pop songs play over the end credits, and some of the characters wear actual denim).

Also, the cameos are on another level. Everyone from Hannah Waddingham to Christian Slater turns up, and it doesn’t make any more sense in context than it does in this review.

To be honest, I really don’t know what to think of this. I definitely enjoyed it, despite some of my reservations at a few creative decisions (Sorsha is horribly underused, and there’s a tongue-in-cheek quality that doesn’t jive with the sincerity of the film) and am hoping Disney will greenlight it for a season two. The very final shot of the season, which reveals someone returning the first book of three to a bookshelf, suggests a three-year plan, but these days, who knows? Great shows are getting cancelled left, right and centre, and like I said – this isn’t great, but good. Fingers crossed.