Mostly great stuff this week.

Fallout

“Based on a video game” used to be the worst thing you could ever hear about a movie. Resident Evil, Silent Hill, House of the Dead, Street Fighter, Doom, Max Payne, any Uwe Boll adaptation—all terrible. The live-action Mortal Kombat movie from 1995 is very fun to watch, but its sequel, Annihilation, is a strong contender for one of the worst films ever made. I enjoy the weirdness of 1993’s Super Mario Bros, the first movie based on a video game, but it has nothing to do with the famous Nintendo game series in either tone or content. There are not as many television adaptations of games, but I’ve heard Amazon Prime’s Halo was pretty terrible. Two years ago, we got our first truly great video game adaptation – HBO’s The Last of Us – and now we have another in Amazon Prime’s Fallout, the single best video game adaptation I’ve seen. It only took 31 years of trial and error.

Producer Jonathan Nolan of Westworld and Christopher Nolan‘s childhood and his creative partner/wife, Lisa Joy, bring us a powerful vision of a post-apocalyptic world from series creators Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet – whose previous credits include the 2018 lousy video game adaptation of Tomb Raider, and flat-out bad superhero movie, Captain Marvel. These creatives lay down a bleak world of wide scale suffering and warring factions, a world of 25-pound cockroaches and alchemists who sodomize chickens. Most post-apocalyptic movies/TV are in dire need of levity, but Fallout has it in spades. I’m told it captures the sarcastic tone of the game series – I’ve never played or seen anyone play any of the games, so this was super fresh for me. From what I understand, the creators took the detailed world of the games (all the alliances/different locations) and filled it with their own individual characters. This was probably the wisest move as it allowed them to create their own character arcs that would fit better in a serialized television format.

The premise supposes what would have happened if the nukes went off in the 1950s and what life would be like 200 years after that for the inevitable survivors. There are mainly two types of survivors in this world – vault dwellers and wastelanders. You see, right before the bomb went off, a private company built sealed vaults for people to live in and eventually repopulate the earth when the radiation levels dissipated. These communities lasted over 200 years, and the generations now alive have no idea what the real world on the surface is like. The wastelanders are the people who live on the surface – many of whom are afflicted by a zombie disease – others are just dirt-covered bandits who had to get tough to survive. There’s a Brotherhood of Steel, this world’s version of a military. Their soldiers have giant steel suits that fly, but they are run by deeply religious old people in bathrobes. Anyway, the show’s story surrounds a vault dweller leader (Kyle MacLachlan) getting kidnapped by a group of raiders (who are also wastelanders) and his daughter, Lucy (Yellowjackets‘ Ella Purnell), breaking her vault community’s rules to go to the surface to look for him. It’s a Wizard of Oz type of journey where, along the way, Lucy meets a whistleblower scientist (Lost‘s Michael Emerson), a squire posing as a Brotherhood member (Aaron Clifton Moten), and a zombified gunslinger/former television actor (Walton Goggins).

The cast is excellent except for one glaring exception, and Goggins and Purnell do a fantastic job driving the show. It has a solid pilot, but it gets better and better as the episodes progress and the viewers get a better grasp on the world and character dynamics. I was honestly surprised by how deep this show goes, into the world-building and the character relationships. It’s far less confusing than Joy and Nolan‘s previous project, Westworld, and parcels context out in a way that never condescends to the audience. It’s riveting from week to week and takes big swings without ever being too predictable. It’s also a very funny show, effectively landing jokes better than most sitcoms with a gleefully violent streak. It manages in eight episodes what no genre show since maybe Battlestar Galactica has achieved – create a unique world not only in terms of details, but also in overall tone. The way characters act in this show would make little to no sense in our world, but you completely buy it in this setting. Fallout, the series, manages to be truly original and creatively rich while also being 100% commercially viable. This is basically the next Game of Thrones. Let’s just hope the creatives in charge don’t get lazy. Grade: A- (Amazon Prime)

Challengers

God bless Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino. He’s never afraid to take big swings, and even when his movies don’t entirely work, they’re still fascinating to watch. After major success with his 2017 Americans-in-Italy queer romance, Call Me By Your Name, he detoured to make visceral horror dramas – one a particularly spot-on and wildly different reworking of Dario Argento‘s Suspiria, the other a road trip love story between teen cannibals (Bones & All). Luca might not be working with horror here, but he’s still working within the genre picture – this time, a lightning-paced erotic thriller about three extremely competitive tennis players all in love with each other. Challengers is fast, funny, riveting, and the best film Guadagnino has made in almost a decade.

In the high-speed world of tennis, which I know nothing about, Challengers explores a feud between two tennis players – a pro on the rise, Art (West Side Story‘s Mike Faist), and a pro in decline who never went pro, Patrick (The Crown‘s Josh O’Connor). Art is coached by his wife and former tennis icon, Tashi Duncan (The Zendaya), who is also Patrick’s former girlfriend. You see, thirteen years ago, Art and Patrick were tennis partners. Is that a thing? Do they do doubles games? Anyway, I don’t know anything about tennis, but in high school, Art and Patrick put on a real Laurel & Hardy routine and kicked everyone’s ass in the duo tennis matches. They claimed NOT to be head over heels in love with each other, but their victories ended with them on top of each other, pawing at each other’s chests and sides like horny squirrels looking to bury a nut.

One day, they meet and instantly fall for Tashi, who already has sponsors pre-college and is thought to be the next Venus or Serena Williams. America calls her “The Duncaninator,” which sounds like a new breakfast sandwich from Dunkin Donuts. Both Patrick and Art invite her over to their hotel room. She shows up, and after some mind games, a three-way begins. Most movies would have this happen in the first scene, but Challengers starts at the end, then at the beginning, and then works the later timeline backward and the early timeline forward until the two meet in the middle. It then double-backs on itself to reveal who wins the big tournament at the end. It’s a fascinating structure, but it’s handled in a way that never seems confusing. You may be temporarily unclear in the moment, but pretty much everything gets addressed or clarified in later/earlier time jumps. You may not understand tennis, but you know relationship power dynamics, and thus, Challengers never fails to rivet.

Challengers may not have anything super deep or new to say human behavior, but at least it’s a movie actually about it. Most new movies I see, especially mainstream cinema, fail to understand even the most basic elements of natural human behavior. This film gives us three fully developed characters that have well-defined relationships with each other. Added to that, it’s actually erotic. Every scene about tennis is about sex and power dynamics within the triangle, and every scene about sex is about people who are in a race to climax so they can put their clothes back on and play more tennis. The screenplay by Celine Song‘s husband, Justin Kuritzkes, is sharp and to the point, and the three central performances are uniformly excellent. While Mike Faist and Zendaya are outstanding, the key performance belongs to Josh O’Connor as Patrick, whose devilish smile has been discussed in almost every review I’ve read of the film. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross‘ brilliantly entertaining techno score also assist, but the real MVP of the whole project is Luca Guadanigno. He knew exactly what this movie needed to be successful and resonant with audiences, both from a stylistic and human standpoint. The whole film is a tennis match where the stakes have never been higher…or hornier. Grade: A- (In Theaters)

Shōgun

Those expecting endless amounts of big bloody samurai battles might be disappointed with Shōgun, FX and Hulu’s very expensive new limited series. It’s not a show about action in the traditional sense; it’s about action in terms of plotting and strategy, which can sometimes lead to bloody and thoroughly surprising endings for some characters. It follows a bunch of calculating lords trying to seize the throne of power in 1600 Japan. They’re also relatively ruthless and utterly unafraid of death. Shit, they’ll nonchalantly commit seppuku at breakfast. Even worse are the powers that rule the Portuguese missionaries in the show, spreading the word of God but ultimately manipulating Japanese lords for financial favor. Then there are the British merchants who also coasted into 1600 Japan or, as they say, “the Japans” to make a dollar from some “dumb, dirty savages.” Savages. That’s a word the British, Portuguese, and Japanese use constantly at the show’s beginning and less towards the end when they understand each other better. Anyone looking or acting differently is a savage. You can’t understand my language? You’re a goddamn savage! One scene features Japanese soldiers capturing some British merchants while both scream at each other in a language the other doesn’t understand, then calling each other savages for not understanding. It’s pretty funny.

Most of Shōgun isn’t this funny and by design. The audience’s entry point is a scheming but charming British merchant, Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), who is captured by a brutal but reasonable Lord, Yabushige (a fantastic Tadanobu Asano), who works for a much more respectable Lord, Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada – who you’ve seen in something). Toranaga takes a strange liking to Blackthorne, who in turn takes a liking to a highborn woman close to Toranaga acting as his translator. She’s Lady Mariko and is played by Anna Sawai, the single best part of the show. Extreme sexual tension forms between Blackthorne and Mariko, but nobody has time to bang because the Samurai Board is targeting Toranaga or something, to get him to relinquish power and commit seppuku. They’re led by a dude with no sense of humor, Lord Ishido (Takehiro Hira), and his lame Christian friends – one of whom has leprosy, and kind of looks like the maskless Jason from Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. Everyone wants power and is willing to do anything to get it. Are there any good guys? Who should you root for? You more or less figure it out as the show goes along.

Shōgun is a gorgeous production that looks flawless and is inhabited by a bunch of interesting characters exceptionally well played by a great cast of international actors. The biggest flaw is that it’s too rushed. It doesn’t spend the necessary time to develop character dynamics satisfyingly. Everything in terms of character and motivation seems oddly shallow. It’s almost as if Shōgun takes two seasons of the show and merges them into one season, with the sacrifice being depth of character. It holds an otherwise thrilling limited series back from being a truly excellent show. As it stands, it’s merely very good. Grade: B+ (Hulu)

Chucky

The Child’s Play franchise is unique because it’s the only decades-spanning horror movie franchise with only one writer – Don Mancini. That’s why, for as crazy as the franchise gets, it never course-corrects. What started as a relatively conventional horror movie about a serial killer possessing a child’s doll has become a television series about a possessed doll with an ex-wife inhabiting the body of actress Jennifer Tilly and two non-binary twin children trying to ward off his unnatural aging process inflicted upon him by his voodoo lord by becoming a secret serial killer in the White House. That’s right, Chucky is in the White House, and he aims to not only kill the president but the entire world by firing off all the nuclear warheads. It’s taken 35 years, but we finally arrived here. Last year, we got the first four episodes of Chucky‘s third season, which was the absolute pinnacle of the show. With these final four episodes of the third season, the show has finally gone off the rails. When everything is cuckoo shit bananas and any character can die and come back instantly, what the hell are the stakes? As compelling as Brad Dourif is as Chucky and as equally good as Jennifer Tilly is as Tiffany possessing herself, the main cast of this show hasn’t been interesting since the first season. Our trio of teens/Chucky fighters – Jake, Devon, and Lexy – exist only to give Chucky something to have conflict with, and when the show attempts to ditch the horror tropes and dovetail into their shallowly written personal dynamics, the show suffers greatly for it. There’s so many creative elements to love here and it’s wild this show even exists in the first place, but it’s far too inconsistent for my liking. They turned Chucky into too much of a joke. Grade: B- (Peacock)

Drive Away Dolls

Never thought I’d live to see the Coen Brothers break up but here we are. A couple years back, brother Joel made his first feature solo, The Tragedy of Macbeth, with his wife, three-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand. It was gorgeously put together but drier than a bucket of sand. Now Ethan has made his first non-documentary feature solo, Drive Away Dolls, with his wife/co-writer, Tricia Cooke. It has the rhythm of the best Coen comedies but only a quarter of the jokes hit and the film has no emotional weight whatsoever, not even enough needed to power a Hudsucker Proxy or a Burn After Reading. Even those movies, for as goofy as they were, had central characters we could get emotionally invested in but Drive Away Dolls fails at properly developing the crucial relationship between its two leads. Ultimately, we don’t understand what they want. What we do understand, interestingly enough, is what each Coen brother brings to the table. Can they get back together soon, please?

Drive Away Dolls follows two lesbian friends, one wild, one conservative – Jamie (Margaret Qualley), who is very proudly herself and loves having loud, athletic Loony Tunes-esque sex and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) who is shy, smart and socially reserved. It’s the 80s and also crime happens in their neighborhood. Pedro Pascal is murdered in the opening scene, and a mysterious package he was killed over just happens to be in the trunk of a car that Jamie and Marian rent. Why the mix up? A dumb guy named Curly (a fantastic and underutilized Bill Camp) accidentally gave it to them cause he thought they were two criminal guys who needed it. The two criminal guys are played by character actors you might recognize and are basically less interesting versions of Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare‘s kidnappers from Fargo. Every character is a less interesting B-side version of a beloved Coen Brothers character in Drive Away Dolls, from Colman Domingo‘s crime boss to Matt Damon‘s dirty Senator. Only Beanie Feldstein (Booksmart, Jonah Hill‘s sister) feels like a unique creation as Jamie’s furious ex-girlfriend/cop who goes on an obsessed mission to find her. Drive Away Dolls comes to life when it’s about Feldstein and it makes you wish it had been about a pissed off lesbian cop instead of a lame crime mystery.

I will give credit where it’s due, when the mystery is finally revealed it’s pretty funny and the film is only 84 minutes, which is mercifully short. However, Drive Away Dolls feels like such a pale comparison to the comedic thrillers a Coen is capable of, if I didn’t know who wrote/directed it, I would say, “What dumb Coen Brothers knock off.” Hopefully Joel and Ethan reconcile soon, or at least start making more interesting pictures on their own. Grade: C (Peacock)

Saw X

I’ve given this franchise so many chances it blows my friggin’ mind. I’ve tried to understand what its fans, some close friends of mine, see in this garbage and I just have no idea. To me, it’s a borderline fascist movie that justifies the use of violence against people who personally annoy you or you can make a case being the “decline” of society. The fact they try to push this idea that Jigsaw (the good but always underutilized Tobin Bell) and his former heroin addict assistant, played by Becker‘s Shawnee Smith, are helping people in a scared-straight type of way by hooking them up to these elaborate Rube Goldberg machines that burn off their testicles or hollow out their eye canals, is just tasteless to me. It seems the movie isn’t commenting on this deranged line of thinking as much as tapping into its audience’s worst impulses, primarily mainstream and dumb, about wanting to enact violence and wrath on people in society who annoy or offend them. I have a really strong stomach, but these movies make me feel both physically and spiritually ill.

SPOILERS – ONLY READ IF YOU HAVE NO INTEREST IN WATCHING THIS CRAP OR HAVE ALREADY WATCHED THIS CRAP

Saw X, the tenth? entry in the franchise, is the best looking movie of the bunch. I’m assuming. I’ve only seen 1-6 and the Chris Rock one, but this one looks like an actual film and isn’t drowned in urine-covered mood lenses. The timeline is super messed up cause they killed off Jigsaw early in the franchise and now have to set each movie in between two of the entries – don’t ask me which ones, I don’t fucking care. Jigsaw goes to an experimental cancer treatment facility that turns out to be a scam, so he captures the scammers and tortures them to death with his little interactive games. The fucked up thing here is Jigsaw’s insistence that “everyone deserves a chance to win the game.” It leads to the evilest evil doer surviving because they’re resourceful, and low level criminals like junkies and con men footing the bill of pain. That disturbs me more as a viewer than anything a Takashi Miike or Gaspar Noé can put onto the screen. I think Saw is really about some deep, awful part of us, and I absolutely hate what I see. Grade: D (Starz)