Blood Red Sky: Red-Letter-Day Outstanding

I'm not the biggest fan of vampire movies, but I really liked Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and Netflix says Blood Red Sky is currently its most watched new movie, so I gave it shot.  And I think it's outstanding, or, more precisely, a powerful, original mix of two venerable genres -- terrorist hijacking of a plane, and vampires -- with pounding action throughout and a great can't-catch-your-breath ending.

I should add that I haven't been in a plane since November 2019 due to the pandemic lockdown, and I didn't intend to with the recent surge of the Delta variant, but after seeing this movie I don't think I'll go on a plane for a while even if the vaccine I took early in the year were 100% effective and everyone was vaccinated.  

So here's the plot in a nutshell, without any big spoilers.  A plane is hijacked.  Unbeknownst to the hijackers, the young mother on board with her pre-teen son is a vampire (that is, she is and he's not).  Most of the movie is a backstory of the plane's harrowing flight -- the movie starts when the plane lands -- and there's a backstory within the backstory in which we find out how the mother became a vampire, when her son was just a little baby.  

In addition to the backstory within the backstory, Blood Red Sky has other nice touches.  When mom's in full vampire mode, she looks like a character out of the The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which makes good pictorial sense, given that Caligari and Blood Red Sky are both German films.  And I liked that one of the heroes of the narrative, Farid, is Muslim.

But, listen, this movie is not for the weak of stomach.  These vampires are savage.  But that savagery is warranted, and makes for several top-notch emotional scenes in which Nadja the mother is torn between vampire lust for blood and motherly love for her son Elias.  That close call of a primal conflict makes for a quite powerful movie.

Gemini Man: A Missed Time-Travel Op

I saw Ang Lee's 2019 Gemini Man on Hulu last night.   Mainly because of what it could have been, but wasn't.  It had lots of star power with Will Smith and Clive Owen, and lesser-known Mary Elizabeth Winstead was good, too.  The action scenes were excellent.   As to the plot ...

Well, the story features Smith's Henry Brogan fighting a younger version of himself, sent to do him in by Owen's Clay Veris.   Smith not only acted well, but looked his younger self via a de-aging process I last saw in The Irishman, which worked very well.  My initial thought and expectation is this could amount to a good time-travel narrative, in which young Brogan has the advantage over his older self, in that the younger version could kill the older version, but not vice versa, since if the younger version were killed that would instantly erase the older version from existence.  (Of course, that time travel scenario would have had to account for why the older Brogan didn't remember being attacked by a younger version of himself, but that could have been fun to work out, too.)

Instead, the explanation for the older and younger Brogan is cloning.  Now, that has the advantage of certainly being possible in reality, in contrast to time travel, which (a) hasn't happened yet (as far I know), and (b) is likely to never happen, owing to the paradoxes involved (like the grandfather paradox: if you travel back in time and prevent your grandparents from meeting, how did you exist to travel back in the first place) and the "solutions" which are even more incredible than time travel (travel to past generates alternates realities, one in which the time traveler exists and one which the time traveler does not).  But, in my view, the cloning explanation for more than one Brogan makes for a more mundane, less intellectually challenging, even boring narrative.

But, hey, if I feel so strongly about that, maybe I should write a story with that time-travel mechanism, and get it to a Hollywood producer, rather than complaining about Lee's movie (for which Game of Thrones' David Benioff wrote the screenplay, with two others, so it's not even mostly Lee's fault).  Anyway, see the movie, if you haven't already, and see what you think.

 

McCartney 3, 2, 1: Guide to Eternity

The first thing I want to tell you about McCartney 3, 2, 1 -- Rick Rubin's incandescent black-and-white three-hour six-episode interview with McCartney on Hulu -- is that in addition to being mind blowing and musically joyful, it made me very sad.

Not just because John and George should by all rights still be with us.  But because Paul says at some point that since the Beatles are finished, their work now complete, he's become a fan of the Beatles, and much better able to appreciate their music which includes his songs, his voice, his bass, his ideas for arrangements, and much more.

And I don't want the Beatles to be finished.  I want them to go on forever making that uniquely wonderful and always evolving music.  And though I know that's impossible, I don't care.  The pleasure that the Beatles brought to me and so many millions and millions of people was and is magical.  Including "Free As A Bird" and "It's Real Love," recorded after Lennon was gone, and which weren't in this documentary and I missed.  But if magic is involved, anything is possible, isn't it?

The conversation, though, was one for the ages, and my guess is it will be watched and listened to and carefully analyzed for thousands of years.  A lot of it I already knew, like how McCartney arrived at Lennon's house with an essentially complete "Here, There, and Everywhere," which may be McCartney's favorite Beatles song.  And a lot of it I didn't, like how Lennon really liked "Here, There, and Everywhere," and how pleased McCartney was when Lennon told him so.

Just hearing the tracks of the songs that Rubin played and played with, as a beckoning of McCartney's remembrances and explanations, were of deepest pleasure to the ear, the heart, and soul.  As some of you may know, ever since The Village Voice published my "A Vote for McCartney" in 1971 -- my defense of McCartney's solo albums, after he left the Beatles, in the face of the Voice's dyspeptic critic Robert Christgau's attack -- McCartney has managed to be more to me than a member of the Beatles.  That essay, after all, was my first published article.  But seeing McCartney 3, 2, 1 brings home just how much this genius contributed to the Beatles, and how he strove to do that.   I used to tell people in the 1970s that I thought the Beatles' music would live as long as Shakespeare's plays.  I'd add now that Rubin's movie will be an important accompaniment to that body of music, more magnificent than ever.

 

Summer of Soul: Immensely Enjoyable and Crucially Educational

My wife and I just saw Summer of Soul on Hulu.   We loved it.

It's a musical documentary, directed by Questlove, about a festival in Harlem in July 1969, in what is now Marcus Garvey Park.  Around the same time as Woodstock and human beings first walked on the Moon.  The concerts were superbly recorded -- both sight and sound -- at the time.  The line-up included included Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Nina Simone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Fifth Dimension, the Staples, Mahalia Jackson, the Chambers Brothers, David Ruffin (he had just left the Temptations), and more.  The mystery is why hasn't this been seen until now?

The obvious answer is racism, but there has to be more to it than that.  I'm wondering why didn't Berry Gordy pick it up, for example?  It's true that Woodstock sucked up a lot of the energy, but surely there were a sufficient number of people who would have been thrilled to see this back then, or any time since then, to get this fabulous tableau of a movie into theaters and/or onto old-fashioned television screens, so the world could have seen it long before now.

Anyway, here's some of what I thought was most rewarding in this documentary:

• It was great to see Stevie Wonder, the Staples, and the Fifth Dimension sing songs I didn't know.
• It was great to see some of these groups -- especially Sly and the Family Stone, David Ruffin, and the Fifth Dimension -- sing some of their hit records, aka songs I did know.
• About the Fifth Dimension, it was also wonderful seeing Marilyn McCue and Bill Davis, Jr. in the present day, or close to it, watching and so deeply moved by their performances back in 1969.  Clearly, this was the first time they were seeing this, too.
• John Lindsay was Mayor back then.  He remains, to this day, the only Republican I ever voted for (in 1969, the first time I voted, come to think of it) or liked.
• Jesse Jackson was inspiring as always to see on stage back then.
• The commentary, by Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Darryl Lewis, and many others, was top-notch and clarifying.

One point made in the documentary that I don't agree with is the oft-heard lament that the money spent on the Moon landing could have been better spent elsewhere here on Earth.  My take on this is that human beings are citizens of the universe, not just this planet, and getting our species out into the solar system and the galaxy and beyond will be a boon for all humanity.

But that doesn't stop in the slightest this documentary from being a masterpiece, and the rare combination of something that is immensely enjoyable (the music) and crucially educational on the subject of Black Americans being treated fairly and decently, a goal which we still in this country are clearly a long way from achieving.

Podcast: Thinking about Asimov's Foundation on Apple TV+

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 186,  in which I consider the history, implications, and possibilities of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series debuting on Apple TV+ this September.

• See the trailer.
• 2009 podcast episode: Asimov's Foundation and Herbert's Dune Trilogies as Sources of Philosophy

Check out this episode!

Professor T: Sherlock with a Different Name in the 2020s

Checking in with a quick review of Professor T, a British version of a Belgian TV series which debuted on PBS tonight.  It's quite good.  An idiosyncratic professor of criminology at Cambridge who is mildly OCD and very reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes, called in to help the police with a variety of cases.

Of course the professor is reluctant but of course the professor agrees.  He's brilliantly perceptive, able to hypnotize a reluctant victim,  and bald-facedly lie to a suspect to secure a confession.  The Professor is backed up by a suitably modern of cast of police, ranging from those are thrilled to have him work with them to those who are threatened.

The Cambridge location is anything but modern, though, and that's a big part of the series' charm.  If you subtract the current cars and other 21st century, you could indeed be watching a story taking place in the 1890s or 1920s or 40s.  That's because, in addition to Cambridge, Professor T moves and talks in an ageless way.   Good job by Ben Miller (Bridgerton) playing the professor.

The series consists of new cases in every episode -- rather than an investigation that continues across episodes -- and while I usually prefer the continuing format, the standalone episode format is part of the old fashioned charm of this series, too.  It's on a little too late for me to brew a pot of tea and sip it as I watch the show -- with mik, thank you -- but I'll think of Professor T when I have cups in the morning and during the day, will look forward to watching it on Sunday evening, and will do my best to report back to you about it later that night or straightaway on the next day.

                   another kind of police story 

Virgin River 3: Good to Be Back!

The wife and I binged Virgin River 3, just up on Netflix.  We really enjoyed it, which is to say, we got totally caught up in the romance, the heartbreak, the roller-coaster ride of soap opera life in this fictional town on a river with sunsets at least as beautiful as Cape Cod Bay, where were for all of June.

Here are some bullet points of what I most liked, and didn't (well, just one), and of course these are spoilers, so don't read on if you haven't yet seen this third season [spoilers follow]:

• It was great to see Mel and Jack together for most of this season.   Because that's where they belong.   Alexandra Breckenridge and Martin Henderson did their customarily fine jobs in these roles, and it was a relief especially to see Henderson as Jack again after he played some weirdo bad guy in The Gloaming, which actually was weird across the board.
• Accordingly, I wasn't happy with Jack breaking up with Mel for her own good. It was necessary in terms of the ensuing narrative, but didn't make sense given how much he'd longed for her in the first two seasons.
• Tim Matheson as Doc Mullins was just outstanding, speaking truth to Jack and anyone who would listen at all the crucial moments.
• Hope was absent from this season, except for a Facetime call or two, because Annette O'Toole couldn't travel due to the pandemic.   The narrative did a good job of working around her absence.  There seemed several times when Hope might return from back East, but the pandemic said otherwise, and you could almost see the narrative being rewritten at those moments.
• The supporting characters and stories were all strong.  My favorite was Brie (Zibby Allen) and Brady (Benjamin Hollingsworth), tipping at least a little into the criminal element of this narrative.
• Lilly's death was heart-rending, and was especially resonant with our world today, in which untimely death has been all too present.
• The very last words of this season were a letter-perfect soap ending, ending right in the middle of a conversation between Mel and Jack (my wife tells me such endings are hallmarks of soap operas).

There's a winning joy woven deep into Virgin River, and I'm up for season 4 as soon as it's on Netflix.

See also Virgin River: The Scenery, The Food, The Acting, and the Story

Cape Cod sunset 

 

Podcast Review of The Tomorrow War

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 185,  in which I review The Tomorrow War.    So, I saw today in The Hollywood Reporter that The Tomorrow War has been picked up for a sequel on Amazon Prime Video -- which supports my view  that, contrary to some nitpicking critics, The Tomorrow War is one excellent movie!   Listen to my review and find out why.  (No real spoilers, except at the very end of my review.)

 

Check out this episode!

24 seconds about Social Media

I offer 24 seconds about the impact of social media. Listen to the entire 23-minute interview here.  Also in this interview: Mary Ellen Slater, Elena Valentine, Benjamin O'Keefe, Sven Smith.

The Tomorrow War: Cli-Fi, Interstellar, Time Travel

I saw The Tomorrow War on Amazon Prime Video late last night.  Some myopic critics gave it mixed reviews.  I thought it was just excellent.  And not because of the time travel, which was ok, but because of the unfolding plot of the movie, which brings in interstellar species, climate change, and parent-child relationships in an original and rewarding way.

The time travel set-up is the most ordinary part of the movie.  Humans from the future come back to our time to recruit soldiers to help in a desperate, losing fight against a species from outer space that moves around here on Earth so quickly they're very difficult to kill.   Severing their heads from their body does the trick, but that's tough to do when dozens of these creatures are on screeching lightning attack for every one human soldier.  So ... former Green Beret and biology teacher Dan Forester is sent pretty much on a suicide mission to maybe briefly delay the extinction of humanity when he's recruited aka yanked from 2022 and whipped three decades into the future.

Until he meets his daughter, Muri, whom he last hugged when she was a precocious little girl, now in the future a fighting colonel and a brilliant scientist working on some last hopes for humanity.   Here's where the movie takes off.  The relationship between the embattled Muri and her father is heart-rending and beautiful.  Dan helps her develop a toxin that can kill the horrific creatures, but of course all they have is a small amount of it, so the only way it can save the day is for Dan to go back in time and kill the Whitespikes (that's their name) right after they first arrived.

But when did they arrive?  Much earlier than anyone thought.  And here I'll leave this recounting of the narrative, on the slight chance that you're reading this and haven't seen the movie.*[footnote spoiler]  But the location and time of the interstellar arrival and why the monsters took so long to emerge is a compelling slice of cli-fi.  

Meanwhile, the action scenes -- the battles with the Whitespikes -- are breathtaking and top notch.  Yvonne Strahovski -- who was excellent in Dexter and 24: Live Another Day -- was even better as Muri in The Tomorrow War.  J. K. Simmons is a pleasure to see in any role, and he was perfect as Dan's estranged father.  And Chris Pratt was fine as Dan, reminding me at times of Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible.

My advice: forget about the nitpicking critics.  Sit back and enjoy an adrenaline pumping, thought provoking, A-1 summer science fiction movie.

 

a different kind of time travel

=================================================

*I will say, for people who saw the movie, that we could call the world in which Dan goes into the future, before he destroys the Whitespikes, World 1.  In that world, the adult Muri dies.  The destruction of the Whitespikes instantly shifts World 1 into World 2, where the narrative concludes with Dan reunited with his family and young Muri.  She probably will become a brilliant scientist, but she won't be fighting the Whitespikes and won't be killed by them, because they no longer exist.  That part of the story is the best time travel part.

Bosch Season 7: Can't Let Go

It's the theme song of Bosch (written by Jesse Nolan, performed by Caught a Ghost) because it's the story of Bosch's professional life. It's animated every season in this best cop drama ever on television, and never more so than in it's seventh and final season on Amazon Prime Video.

What Bosch can't let go of is satisfying his profound sense of justice, or bringing to justice the perpetrators of the murders he's investigating and haunted by, or haunted by and investigating.  In season seven, the victim is a 10-year old girl who dies in a deliberately set fire.

The eight-episode season is powerful and memorable for other reasons, too.  Episode six contains one of the most intense short shoot-outs I've seen on any screen.  Paul Calderon is practically shaking with tension and fear as his Jimmy Robertson tries to protect Bosch's beloved daughter Maddie from a skilled hitman who has just taken out a judge who is Bosch's current lover.  The acting, by the way, is superb on the part of every character, both in this scene and the entire series.

Titus Welliver in the title role gives the performance of his career.  Jamie Hector as Bosch's partner Jerry Edgar may be even more than impressive than he was as Marlo in The Wire, which is the biggest compliment in my book, in case you didn't know what I think of The Wire.  Speaking of The Wire, Lance Reddick is always good, and he's as good as ever in Bosch.   I've seen Amy Aquino in a few prior series, but she became an essential character in Bosch.  Madison Lintz has really grown into her crucial part as Bosch's daughter, and I'm looking forward to seeing her in the Bosch spinoff.

Bosch began on Amazon at the dawn of our age of streaming, and helped establish it.  The series went out every bit as strong as it began, something you can't say about every great series.  Similarly, it kept a consistency of character and focus, something you can't say about too many things, period, in this our uncertain age.   But I'm certain I'll be watching the Bosch spinoff, and I'll see you back here with a review of that when it's up on Amazon.

See also Bosch: First Half: Highly Recommended ... Bosch: Second Half as Fine as the First ...  Bosch Season 2: Dragnet with Uber ... Bosch 3: Best Season So Far ... Bosch 4: Delivering and Transcending the Genre ... Bosch 5: Room with a Killer View ... Bosch Season 6: The Best Police on Television ... 

                   another kind of police story 

 

Podcast Review of The Rain

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 184,  in which I review The Rain.

Blog post review of The Rain

Check out this episode!