January 15, 2022

The Power of the Dog

This movie has been getting a lot of attention recently. It was already on my radar. It is a western. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch. It is easily available on Netflix. There weren’t any reasons for me not to watch it.

Right from the beginning it was clear this movie was going to be a thinker. I strapped in and got ready to absorb all of the meaning. I watched…. I kept watching… it was completely nonsensical. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t understand what was going on… it was just that it didn’t seem to matter. I couldn’t figure where this story was going, or even who the main character was.

It is a beautiful movie. New Zealand is standing in for Montana, and it looks great. The acting is great. I loved Cumberbatch’s surly Phil Burbank character. It has a methodical pace that forces you to keep your horse at a slow trot… we aren’t going to gallop. I like all that. I like being led through a world at a leisurely pace. But, I want to feel like I have some idea where we are going.

This movie wants you to be uncomfortable. It forces you to sit in uncomfortable situations where people don’t really want to play the piano. It constantly creates this vibe where you are not in a safe place. It is not a place where you can be yourself. It is a place you kinda want to get away from, and you might feel trapped there.

This all makes little sense until the very end of the movie. It all sets the stage, but it takes a very long time to get us to the point where something actually happens. I guess it could be up for debate how everything goes down at the end. I am going to (SPOILER ALERT) do my best to describe the ending of the movie and the sequence of the events that occurred.

I’d be very interested to know you if you agree. At first it came across more like a series of fortunate (or unfortunate) events… but I definitely ascribe malicious intent to everything that went down.

Okay… so definitely going to spoil the end of the movie with the rest of the post. I mean, I’m going to spoil the whole movie by describing the sense I made of it after it was over.

  • Phil Burbank is…
    • an asshole that likes to make everybody else miserable. He especially likes to mess with Rose and her awkward son Peter.
    • a college educated fancy boy who likes to act like a tough cowboy and exhibit toxic masculinity.
    • never going to wear gloves, even when handling bloody cow testicles.
    • gay
  • Phil’s brother George marries Rose so he doesn’t have to feel alone anymore. They all live together on a ranch.
  • Rose gets so stressed out by the whole situation that she becomes an alcoholic.
  • Peter moves back home for summer and Phil commences tormenting him.
  • Peter finds Phil’s hideout with dirty mags and maybe witnesses Phil getting handsy with a hanky? I’m not sure about that part. Anyway, Phil becomes concerned with what Peter might know about him and decides to befriend the boy. Phil is determined to make Peter a hand-woven rope as a gift to be completed before he returns to school at the end of summer.
  • Phil teaches Peter how to ride a horse and they generally start spending a lot of time together. Rose doesn’t like it one bit.
  • Peter finds a diseased cow laying dead when he is out for a solo ride. He skins it and takes the hide, though we never see that part on screen.
  • Rose gives away all of Phil’s healthy cow hides to the Native Americans even though Phil has been adamant from the beginning of the movie that they will not get his hides. Phil is super pissed because he doesn’t have the leather he needs to complete the rope for Peter.
  • Peter steps in and gives Phil strips of hide as a gift.
  • Things get really homo-erotic between Phil and Peter. Peter is leaning into this because he knows that Phil has a cut on his hand from when they were trying to scare a rabbit, and Phil is using diseased cow hide to make the rope. This is going to be fatal for Phil because he never wears gloves. Peter is getting pretty jazzed that his plan is coming together and wants to give Phil a boner before he dies.
  • It works… Phil dies.
  • George and Rose are happy to be rid of the terrible brother and will now live happily ever after.

So that is is. In my mind that is what happened. I don’t know if Peter’s plan was meticulously orchestrated, or if he just got really lucky. I don’t know if Peter had been thinking about this all summer long or if he just seized an opportunity.

Regardless, this is a movie where very little happens for the first 80%. It lulled me into a sense that this is going to be one of those artsy films that doesn’t really have a plot or a clear direction… just enjoy the acting and the beautiful cinematography. Then all this stuff happens right at the end and I was like… what the hell?

It was weird, but it was pretty good.

January 12, 2022

Spiderman: No Way Home

I waited a couple of weeks for the theaters to clear out before I ventured in to see the third MCU Spiderman film. I enjoyed the previous two, but I didn’t think there was anything particularly special about them. Tom Holland’s Spiderman was the same character, but it always felt off. It was a different creation that existed to serve the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Going into this 3rd and final Marvel Spiderman film I didn’t think about how they were going to handle that. I didn’t think about the fact that Marvel had to give this character back to Sony in roughly the same state in which they found him. That is what this movie was all about, and they did a really good job with it.

I had a great time watching this movie. It was far better than it had any right to be. The action was mediocre, as has been the case with the prior two films in this trilogy. The pivotal scene in this movie that was supposed to elicit the most emotion was laughably bad. The plot was a little nonsensical, which is what happens when your plot is driven by magical spells that brainwash millions of people.

Even with all of those complaints, Spider-Man: No Way Home pulled off one of the greatest achievements I may ever see in film. That alone was worth the price of admission many times over. I don’t see any sense in spoiling what happens so I won’t talk about it in detail, but this film feels catered directly to me, a teenager when the first Sam Rami Spider-man movie came out.

No Way Home had a lot of contortions to do, but in the end they put Spiderman back exactly where they found him, in the same broken condition as every Spider-man that has come before. That alone was an impressive feat. The stage is set for a new era of Spider-Man, cleansed of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Will any of these subsequent movies be good? I hope so. Will Tom Holland ever be Spider-man again… I doubt it.

So is this Tom Holland trilogy the best set of Spider-man movies? I’d say yes. The first two entries were solid. The last one was bonkers with plenty of highs and lows. It makes me want to revisit the older films and try to stack them up against what Marvel did with the character. It made me very interested to see what Sony does with the character going forward. It feels like the stage is set for a solid franchise. It is hard to say it wasn’t a good film when it sparked that much interest in the character, and made me excited to see what might come in the future.

January 5, 2022

Succession Season 3

I just finished the 3rd season of Succession on HBO Max. This show took me a while to get into, but it has become one of my favorites.

If you know nothing about *Succession*I will give a quick description. It is about a huge media company that also has theme parks and cruises. I imagine Disney… if they also owned Fox News. From a leadership standpoint it is like if Walt Disney was still alive and still ran the company… and he had 4 shitty kids who are waiting for him to die so one of them can inherit the CEO job.

The whole thing is a bit preposterous and can feel like the plot is spinning in circles. Still, it is an extremely entertaining ride. Over the course of the seasons we feel sympathy towards characters and then we come to hate them even more than we thought possible. They are spoiled, entitled brats that have had everything handed to them their entire lives and their dad kinda hates them for it.

It is clear that he doesn’t trust his company to any of them. It is also clear that all of his kids think they are completely capable and obvious choices for CEO.

The show is filled with scheming, backstabbing, & plenty of strategy around mergers and acquisitions. Billions of dollars hang in the balance with almost every meeting or press appearance, and they almost all go badly. If this family were real I feel like they would be a total joke. Sometimes it is difficult to believe they’ve managed as well as they have up to this point.

Season 3 had some really enjoyable moments. However, the plot feels like it is stalling out a bit. Everything wasn’t resolved to my satisfaction so I hope they have another season in the works, but I also hope Season 4 will be the last one.

Succession crept in and took a spot among my favorite TV series of all time. The characters are so memorable and extremely enjoyable to watch. It is like a car crash you can’t look away from. I think the only sane person in the show might be cousin Greg’s grandpa.