Emma (1996, PG)

Adaptation-wise, Emma and Mansfield Park are my odd Austen books out.  With the others, while most have more than one fine adaptation, each book has one that rises to the top as the quintessential version.  On the other hand, I think a definitive version of Mansfield Park has yet to be made, and as for Emma, I think a lot of them are equally great in different ways.  This Hollywood film was the first adaptation I saw, so that does make it stand out.

Emma Woodhouse is wealthy, well-to-do, and well-meaning.  Though she herself is rather blithely single, she doesn’t think it’s something that looks particularly good on other people and sets out to do good by making matches.  When she takes Harriet, her new friend of obscure origins, under her wing, Emma thinks she’s found the perfect man for Harriet, but her good friend Mr. Knightley warns her that she may be meddling in what she doesn’t fully understand.

This is a peppy, frothy adaptation that approaches everything with an arched eyebrow and a bit of a wink.  While it sticks pretty faithfully to the story, it also employs some nice cinematic devices to bring that story to life, like well-timed cuts to short flashbacks for more humorous effect, or the use of Emma and Knightley’s target practice as a visual representation of their argument when they’re talking about Robert Martin.

Another thing Emma has in common with Mansfield Park is that both books have heroines who are a bit tricky.  If Fanny can feel overly timid and doormat-ish, Emma is the opposite; she can be conceited, too reliant on her own rightness, and more than a little snobbish.  As such, it’s important for any adaptation to put her flaws plainly on display but still temper them with her good qualities.  Overall, I think Gwyneth Paltrow does a good job in the role (although her accent is a little flat at times.)  In her performance, we see Emma’s genuine desire to help others go hand-in-hand with her self-congratulation at doing so, and we see how many of her misfires stem from her youth and inexperience.  Paltrow walks a tightrope here, usually staying just on the right side of rootable, if not always likable – sometimes, her bad decisions can make you crazy, but you’re still hoping she gets it right.  Meanwhile, Jeremy Northam is absolutely my number-one Mr. Knightley.  He doesn’t pull punches with Emma, but he doesn’t feel like he’s constantly lecturing her, either.  It really comes across that he has her best interests at heart and only wants her to be the person he knows she can be.  Northam also expertly brings across Knightley’s humor, consideration, and good judge of character.

Plenty of familiar faces here.  Alan Cumming is a stitch as Mr. Elton, Toni Collette makes a sweet Harriet (although I think the writing makes her a little too dim,) Phyllida Law is a fine Mrs. Bates without saying a word, Juliet Stevenson kills it as the odious Mrs. Elton, Ewan McGregor feels somewhat miscast as Frank Churchill, and Polly Walker (Anne from State of Play) does well capturing Jane Fairfax.  Additionally, Greta Scacchi hits all the right notes as Mrs. Weston, and Sophie Thompson is perfection as Miss Bates.

Warnings

A little drinking.

Doctor Who: Series 10, Episode 0 – “The Return of Doctor Mysterio” (2016)

Since I’m visiting family over the holidays and thus away from my BBC America, I swapped the Sunday Who Review with Buster Monday so I could get to the Christmas special once it became available online through appropriate channels.  Of course, said family kept me busy enough that I only just had a chance to watch it now.  I’m annoyed that we still have to wait for Bill, but for the most part, I thought the special was pretty good.

When Grant was a child, a chance encounter with the Doctor (accidentally) left him with superpowers.  As an adult, he fights the forces of evil as the masked marvel the Ghost, and he and the Doctor are both surprised to cross one another’s paths again.  In between the Doctor rolling his eyes at the hectic-ness of Grant’s double life and shaking his head at Grant’s stalled relationship with intrepid reporter Lucy (because of course,) there’s also the slight matter of the impending alien invasion that needs seeing to.

I was wary of the idea of having a bona fide superhero on Doctor Who, and to be sure, it is fairly cheesy, but it’s pretty fun, too.  The Doctor throws some amusing shade at superhero conventions (the implausibility of Clark Kent’s glasses fooling anyone, what would really happen if you got bitten by a radioactive spider,) and while they’re all well-established points, I still enjoy seeing the Doctor make them.  Similarly, Grant and Lucy are very clearly modeled on classic comic-book archetypes and are drawn a little generically, but Justin Chatwin (Jason from season 3 of Orphan Black) and Charity Wakefield (former Marianne Dashwood) nicely toe the line between send-up and original character.

That said, the plot is fairly disjointed, and I think the story leans a little too heavily on the potential love story between Grant and Lucy.  The writing here can get too broad, and it sometimes feels like the whole adventure/alien-fighting part is just an afterthought.  Some of the comments the Doctor makes to Grant about it feel out of character for him and not all that enlightened, one of those instances where it feels like Moffat is putting his thoughts in the Doctor’s mouth – boo.  Plus, the Grant/Lucy part of the story flags somewhat when it’s just them and the Doctor is off doing his own thing.

By the way, we have Nardole from last year’s Christmas special standing in as companion here.  He’s… I dunno.  He’s not bad, really, but he’s just sort of there for me.  Not necessarily interesting enough – or even distinctive enough – to justify the mild-to-moderate cheat of bringing him back.  Mostly, he made me antsier to meet Bill.

The Doctor, however, is in pretty good form.  I love his interactions with young Grant, I like that he recognizes Lucy’s quickness and insight, and I get a kick out of his reactions to Grant’s double life.  He’s still a little dinged-up emotionally from the events of last year, but he’s working through it and moving on.  Oh, and I don’t know how the Doctor manages to keep pulling off variations on the old “avoid getting killed by daring the bad guys to shoot you” routine, but it always impresses me.

So You Won’t Squawk (1941)

This one isn’t as funny as I remember it being, but by Columbia standards, it’s still pretty decent.  It has a few standout bits that I really enjoy, particularly the late entry into Buster’s annals of police chases.

Buster is a handyman?  Custodian?  Something along those lines, working at a new club run by a gangster.  When the head honcho runs afoul of a rival gang, he starts passing Buster off as himself, to better steer clear of attempts on his life.  Fortunately, Buster appears as impervious to assassination here as he does to suicide in Hard Luck, and he blithely sidesteps his would-be whackers at every turn.

The short starts off pretty slowly and generically, with slapstick that feels too canned for a performer of Buster’s caliber.  However, things pick up as soon as Buster begins posing at his boss.  The string of failed assassination attempts is funny, a series of nice circular gags that all link one to another.  Buster’s ways of haplessly thwarting the gangsters aren’t always slamdunk moments themselves (slipping on a banana peel right when he’s about to be gunned down?), but I get a kick out of the running joke that he doesn’t even notice that the gangsters are trying to kill him.  In fact, not knowing about the hit out on his boss, he’s actually trying to keep up with these guys in order to collect a payment from them, and they’re increasingly freaked out by his uncanny survival.

And as I said, this short culminates in a really funny cop bit.  Buster, having finally got wise to what’s up, needs a little police assistance.  Because this is Buster and he only knows how to interact with the police when they’re chasing him, he gets their attention in classic Buster fashion:  by stealing a police car and subsequently getting on the wrong side of every patrolman and beat cop he passes.  Before long, he has a caravan of angry pursuing officers he can bring straight to the bad guys.  While the sequence doesn’t hold a candle to any of the cop chases in his independent shorts, it’s still really funny and a perfectly-Buster way to solve a problem.

It has to be said, though – the bit with the phone.  There’s a scene where Buster ends up dangling out an upper-story window clinging to a phone on this extendable arm thing mounted to the wall.  I get that the whole situation is against the law of gravity and there’s no way that flimsy-looking arm could actually support Buster’s weight in the manner that it appears to.  However, it’s so colossally fake-looking that it takes me right out of the scene.  First off, you can actually see the wires, and second, the way Buster’s positioned, it doesn’t even look like the arm is supporting his weight; it just looks like he’s hanging out in midair and happens to be clinging to this thing.  Buster was making movies with way better effects in the ‘20s – heck, Fatty Arbuckle had better effects in the ‘10s!  Not exactly a sterling moment.

Warnings

Slapstick violence (including gunplay) and some drinking.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016, PG-13)

If I came away from Rogue One slightly disappointed, it’s mainly because my expectations were so high.  I know this is kind of an unfair way to start a review of a movie I really did like, but I just want to get it out of the way so I can get on to the good stuff.  I think I wanted it to be everything wonderful in sci-fi and Star Wars, and that was a lot to put on it.  It isn’t quite everything I wanted it to be, but that should in no way take away from the fact that it’s a damn good movie that’s entertaining, emotional, well-cast, and stunningly-filmed (I’ll tread lightly, but spoilerphobes still probably want to turn away.)

Jyn Erso, convict and former Rebel soldier who’s grown disillusioned with the cause, gets a hand from the Rebellion in escaping from a labor camp.  The Rebellion is gearing up for an important mission and needs her for her vital connections.  She’s the daughter of one of the Empire’s top scientists and the estranged surrogate daughter of the renowned leader of a different Rebel faction – she could give them an in.  Jyn goes pretty reluctantly along with Rebel captain Cassian and his droid, K-2SO, but along the way, she gains new allies (Chirrut, Baze, and Bodhi) and a renewed sense of purpose when she sees the Empire’s most horrifying development yet.  Armed with intelligence gleaned from a secret message, Jyn and her new friends fight to give the Rebellion a way to combat the Empire’s latest monstrosity.

My only two real complaints are this.  First, the movie starts off a little slow and disjointed.  After a really well-done opening scene, it meanders a bit until Jyn, Cassian, and K-2 arrive on Jedha, at which point everything starts to gel a lot more – the film only gets better and better from the moment Chirrut and Baze meet the Rebel party.  Second, I wasn’t quite prepared for Jyn’s characterization here.  I wasn’t expecting someone who’s brought in mainly because of who she is, and I was worried that it would take away from her heroism in her own right.  Overall, I think she is a pretty complex character and a good protagonist, someone who’s finding her way back to something to believe in/fight for after years of growing cynical (and demonstrating that she brings more to the table than her connections,) but the specific way she’s brought in did give me pause at first.

Other than that, I have nothing but good points.  The film looks amazing, with ships rendered to such an impressive scale, well-designed alien locales, and CGI that’s almost shocking.  The story is part Star Wars, part heist, part war epic, and it delivers nicely on all three fronts with just the right amount of nostalgia (yeah, that scene with Vader toward the end is wow,) smart plotting that shows off the ingenuity of our heroes, and a soaring scope grounded with personal emotional connections.

It was the cast that really got me excited for this movie, and on that front, it hits it out of the park.  By and large, the characters are drawn lightly but well, embued with life by their talented actors.  Felicity Jones (Jane Austen alert – Catherine from Northanger Abbey) balances Jyn’s rough edges and slowly-reemerging hope quite nicely.  Diego Luna is excellent as the determined Cassian, who’s been fighting a long time and has followed the Rebellion down roads he never expected.  Alan Tudyk voices K-2 to dryly-sardonic perfection.  Riz Ahmed (who I recognized from the dark British comedy Four Lions) brings a great energy to the pilot Bodhi, an Empire defector looking to atone.  Donnie Yen tears it up as the blind Force-sensitive temple guardian Chirrut – it’s a character that could have easily been reduced to mere stereotype, but Yen always keeps the focus on Chirrut’s humanity.  And I’m not familiar with Wen Jiang, who plays Chirrut’s fellow (but faithless) guardian Baze, but he’s very good, and the relationship between Baze and Chirrut is one of my favorite parts of the film.  And even outside the main group, we have Forest Whitaker and Mads Mikkelsen – great casting all around.

Warnings

Sci-fi action violence.

Last Week Tonight: Top Five Stories (Season 3)

It’ll be a few months before Last Week Tonight comes back, so in the meantime, I thought I’d take a stab at narrowing down my favorite main stories from this past season.  Since The Daily Show is also off this week, it’ll be a good use of today’s News Satire Roundup.

Season 3, Episode 1 – “Voting”

The season started strong with this story on voter ID laws.  John deftly highlighted the motivations behind laws like this, which tend to be both partisan and racist, showing the specific obstructions put in place to keep mostly working-class Black and Latin@ citizens from voting.  He also challenged the justifications behind these laws, dismantling the myth that voter fraud is such a rampant problem that it calls for these “just-so-happen-to-be-discriminatory” measures.

Season 3, Episode 16 – “United Kingdom”

This story (and its follow-up after the vote) did a superb job laying out the misinformation, isolationism, and nativism behind the Brexit movement.  By the end of John’s rundown, I was appalled at the ugly comments from Brexit supporters and the lies sold to the public by its major players.  If it had to go down the way it did, I wish it could have at least served as a cautionary tale to the U.S. as we were gearing up for a similarly-crucial vote.

Season 3, Episode 18 – “Republican National Convention”

More so than any one particular speech or ramification of a Trump nomination, I think John hit the nail on the head in his biggest takeaway from the convention:  the fallacious notion that feelings and facts are equally valid.  He was right that it was a thread running through the entire convention, and nowhere was it more evident than in Newt Gingrich’s interview, in which he insisted that crime has gone up (even though, objectively, it hasn’t) because people believe it has.

Season 3, Episode 28 – “School Segregation”

Excellent, heartbreaking piece on the disparities between school experiences of many white children compared to children of color (especially Black and Latin@ kids.)  It can be so easy to think of segregation as both an issue of the past and an issue of the South, and John hammered home the point that neither is true.  Upsetting how, even in triumphs for civil rights like the Brown v. the Board of Education decision, the way was paved to still allow racism a foothold.

Season 3, Episode 30 – “President-Elect Trump”

Here it came, rolling inexorably towards us to round off the increasingly-depressing 2016.  John covered lots of angles with this one, but there were two points that particularly stuck out to me.  First, taking time not just to worry or despair over the future but preparing for it, arming us with a list of worthy organizations that will likely need our support in the coming years.  Second, John’s firm insistence on never normalizing what happened here, to always keep at the front of our minds the knowledge that there’s something wrong with this picture.

A Few More Thoughts on Moana

Spoiler warning up front:  I’m talking specifically about the ending of Moana today in full detail.  Consider yourself warned.

In their quest to return the heart of Te Fiti to its rightful place, Moana and Maui come up against several baddies eager to claim the heart for themselves.  Our heroes Mad Max their way out of the clutches of the kakamora and use their wits to evade the sinister-yet-shiny Tamatoa.  But by far, their most formidable foe is the volcano demon Te Ka, who’s set up camp in the border islands around Te Fiti and is determined to take the heart from them at all costs.  I’d wager more than one little kid at the theater has wept in fear seeing Te Ka’s looming figure and terrifying destructive power.  At first, the movie sets you up to expect a titantic rematch between Te Ka and Maui in which the demigod vanquishes the demon once and for all, and then things take a different turn when it looks like the key will lie in Moana’s intelligence, bravery, and sailing prowess to slip past Te Ka and out of its reach.

But that right there is where the film flips your expectations again.  Having gotten past the monster, approaching the island she’s traveled so far to get to, Moana is gobsmacked to see that Te Fiti isn’t there.  It’s straight-up vanished from the sea, leaving only an off-color lagoon taking its shape where it formerly lay.

And Moana realizes what’s up.  As Maui fierces battles Te Ka, the demon is distracted by the glow of the heart as Moana holds it high above her head.  It locks eyes with her, and Moana speaks to the ocean that has been her ally through this adventure:  “Let her come to me.”

Because Te Ka is Te Fiti.  When Maui stole her heart all those years ago, the lush island of serenity became a fiery monster of rage, yowling as it tried to burn down the sky in order to recover the lost part of itself.

The waters part to allow Te Ka passage to Moana.  She, the demon that was once Te Fiti, doesn’t understand what’s happening yet.  It only knows that there’s nothing it won’t destroy to get its heart back, and it races and roils along the dry bed of the sea toward the chief’s daughter who waits for her, unafraid.  As the monster bears down on her, Moana sings, “I have crossed the horizon to find you. / I know your name. / They have stolen the heart from inside you, / But this does not define you.”

I love this so, so much.  Since I saw the two movies in fairly quick succession, I was struck by the similarities with the Obscurial in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.  Te Ka is not a villain – she’s an unbridled force of pain and fury, unable to be who she is without the heart she so desperately needs.  This is such a sophisticated idea, that darkness can be born of loss, that anger or grief can reform us into something we can no longer recognize as ourselves.  And, too, I love that the day isn’t saved by a battle, or even by outsmarting the “bad guy.”  It’s saved by compassion, by a young woman holding her ground while fire descends and saying, something awful was done to you, but don’t let it make you into something awful.  Let me help you find your way back to yourself.  Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.  Disney has been knocking it out of the park lately, and the resolution to this story ensures that it will stick with me for a long time.

Relationship Spotlight: Jessica Jones & Trish Walker (Jessica Jones)

And just for a change of pace, how ‘bout a Marvel superhero and their non-powered best friend?  (But seriously, folks…)  Trish and Jessica’s relationship intrigued from my first glimpses of it, and over the course of the season, it became one of my favorite things in a show packed with goodness (backstory spoilers.)

I’ll be honest – when I first saw Jessica come to Trish’s apartment in the pilot, I wasn’t sure what to make of them.  I could tell they obviously meant a lot to each other, and it was clear that they’d been going through a rough/possibly-estranged patch, but I didn’t know what type of relationship was on the rocks.  Were they friends?  Sisters?  Exes?  There wasn’t one distinct vibe in terms of how the related to each other; the main thing that really came through was the strength of how they felt, not the form it took.

(I suppose it makes sense.  Technically, Jessica and Trish could be considered both friends and sisters, since Jessica was taken in by Trish’s mom after her family was killed and the two eventually became incredibly close, and I see how Jessica has something more akin to emotional intimacy with Trish than she does with Luke, her prospective love interest.)

But anyway, let’s get to the more interesting stuff.  Trish and Jessica’s defining quality seems to be a loyalty that’s unfailing but realistic.  Both have offered emotional support and help to the other when they clearly need it but insist that they don’t – when they were teenagers, Jessica confronted Trish about her controlling stage mother’s physical abuse, and throughout season 1, Trish tries to help Jessica process the overwhelming revelation that Kilgrave is still alive.  Both are tenacious in their efforts to break down the other’s walls (tough love is a definite factor with these two,) but they also know that they can’t ultimately help someone who refuses to accept it.  So, they both reach points where they fall back and give the other space, not giving up but saving their words for a time when the other will be more receptive.

Any relationship like this has to eventually address the superpowered elephant in the room, and Jessica and Trish are no exception.  In flashbacks, we see a period where Trish is filled with excitement at Jessica’s powers – more so than Jessica herself – and it’s in fact Trish who first suggests that Jessica should use them to fight crime.  In the present, Trish’s take on Jessica’s powers is more balanced, recognizing the power, the responsibility, and the danger, and while she’s still in favor of Jessica using her powers for good, she’s more measured in her encouragement.

She always doesn’t want to see Jessica taking on all the risk herself.  Since Jessica’s first encounter with Kilgrave, Trish has been learning self-defense, both to protect herself and to acitively assist Jessica.  Jessica, no surprise, isn’t thrilled at that idea.  Apart from her lone wolf, “I don’t need help from anyone!” attitude, she’s protective of Trish in a way that she thinks is totally justified but that Trish feels is a bit paternalistic.  Season 1 finds both of them having to reevaluate their stances:  Jessica seeing how her friend can stand on her own, Trish realizing just how intense the stakes are when she gets involved in something like this.