Halfway through the late December holidays, readers, and still eagerly awaiting new media are we.
This week we’ll discuss a ramshackle reboot of a once mind-bending drama, a quaint and friendly documentary on a ‘90s toy craze, and the latest satire from perhaps the American cinema’s leading commentator on our recent socio-political history.
Being the Ricardos
Amazon Prime - Drama - No Business like Show Business
Synopsis
Famed mid-century comedians contend with a compound of challenges to their authority, their skills, their intelligence, their marriage, and even their patriotism, all during one week of production of their hit TV show, I Love Lucy.
My take
It’s not surprising to me that good screenplays gleam whenever their writers actively participate in their realizations. Seating Aaron Sorkin in the director’s chair is one way to make a good start toward that outcome.
I’m choosing to leave all talk of Mr. Sorkin to the side here, however. His choices on both fronts were fine, and I don’t really want to say more about them. I’d much rather talk about Nicole.
Ms. Kidman may not be the natural top of mind for playing Lucille Ball. A bottle redhead (from auburn) like Ball she may be, true; however, Kidman otherwise possesses none of the absurd physicality that made Ball as a television personality so utterly fucking famous. Feste in a housewife’s costume, Ball’s Lucy cried and tumbled, flopped and rolled, stuffed and warbled til every member of her audience clutched sides for laughter. Kidman last had a lighthearted role I can’t even begin to tell you when.1 A dramatic darling, she has thrived recently by choosing roles that tap into her distinct physicality, much more like that of an anxious doe than that of an overeager beaver. I think, collectively, we’d have to reach back to Ephron’s (2005) Bewitched to find Kidman in even the same parking lot as the space Sorkin has asked her to occupy, playing this comic genius on the big screen.
So, why then — or, better yet, how then — is she so perfectly cast here? For, it’s true, Kidman turns in perhaps the best leading performance from an actress I have seen all year — and, trust me, I am as stunned to say it as you may be to read it. The secret, it turns out, is that the Ball Kidman plays is by and large not the character those many millions of midcentury Americans fell in love with on television. Strategically keeping to the strengths she knows she has as an actress and student of characters, Kidman walks the fine line of Sorkin’s Ball with a dancer’s acuteness; strutting her long legs past Javier Bardem as Arnaz, she owns the camera and captivates on her own terms, to prove earnestly that she has the magnetism Ball did before she ever became “Lucy” on television years later — and it works, both on Arnaz who not only marries but also promotes her for her talent and on the viewing audience whose members thereafter hang on her every turn, as David Attenborough hangs on a jaguar’s footsteps.
Now, are all her choices flawless? No. Try as the production may to hide them, she cannot escape the physical differences that set her apart from the part she plays, just as — to turn a phrase — you cannot escape from knowing that it’s Kidman wearing a heel, not Ball wearing flats, if you know what I mean.
Still, for me, I can throw all those peccadillos of portrayal away, because the mind of the character is there: fiery and sharp, like newly minted glass. Always working, thinking, pushing, Kidman as Ball gives us the woman behind the camera, the woman whose perceptual talents and insights made whatever her body later did on camera not just possible but moreover noteworthy. Capturing that much on film for anyone is highly impressive.
Bardem and Arianda suffice, in comparison, as Arnaz and “Lucy” co-star Vivian Vance, the only two other characterizations that even beg mention in this generally well done film.
Temperature check
Hot
Don’t Look Up!
Netflix - Comedy - Apocalypse Now
Synopsis
The accidental discovery of a comet on a course to destroy Earth sets off a series of political events that entangle, confuse, and distract two astronomers from their lives.
My take
Cultural descendant of films like Reitman’s (2005) Thank You for Smoking; Burton and Gems’ (1996) Mars Attacks!; and Leder, Rubin, and Tolkin’s (1998) Deep Impact, Don’t Look Up! is a frighteningly recognizable portrait of our times, for anyone with an ounce of intelligence — which, frankly, is far more than most of the characters on screen have. Continuing his habit of housing satire in the uncanny valley, writer-director Adam McKay seems to ask the audience to consider — over and over and over — in this film, “How really would we all react to such a circumstance, should we all face it?,” but actually tells the audience to consider instead — at the same volume — “Here’s how we did react nearly two years ago.” That dark kernel of criticism baked into the comedy is the sinking feeling I couldn’t escape from having repeatedly, as I watched the 2.5 hours of this new film play out. Meryl and Cate aside, I personally found it difficult to embrace the comedy that this movie patently means to be, while simultaneously tasting the heavy salt rimming the glass of this absurdist’s mock-tail. That’s not to say, of course, that I wasn’t entertained; only, instead, that I don’t typically reörder drinks that crunch between my molars and see no reason to expect any different from myself this time.
Temperature check
Tepid (and salty)
The Matrix: Resurrections
HBOMax - Sci-Fi - The Chosen One
Synopsis
Some time after the events of the original The Matrix trilogy, a new cast of old characters feels the tug of war between reality and program once again threatening to doom humanity and struggles to respond.
My take
Lana Wachowski was right to lean the reïntroduction of The Matrix to our culture heavily on the nostalgia-inducing parts of the original trilogy. Nudge the audience to remember the wonder AND let them in on the nudge devices as you’re using them, yes, because we are so much older and wiser now than we were then, when the red pill first unmasked our very world.
Sadly, however, it felt as if that that initial moment of insight begetting momentum wasn’t sparking enough to keep the rest of the film interesting. After about the first 20 minutes, tired plots like zombies return resurrected and worse for the wear of time since we last saw them; internal world-building flops over, lazy and boring, especially in comparison with the dynamics openly debated and promised in those first twenty minutes; and — perhaps worst of all for an entry into this sci-fi/action series — fight scenes look slow, unspontaneous, and hyper-produced. I honestly saw exponentially better fight chemistry in this year’s Bond film than I ever did here — which, for a franchise that relatively old and predictable, is really saying something.
My advice: Stay sedated, readers. The red pill will only get your hopes up higher than unmasking reality this time can deliver. Better to dream quietly on one’s own…
Temperature check
Cold
Fantasy Island (Christmas Special)
Hulu - Drama - Fantasy
Synopsis
A Hallmark-channel addict pines for a winter-perfect Christmas, while a woman who lost her husband to the island arrives to seek him out.
My take
I hadn’t yet started writing Hot Tea when I started watching Fox’s reboot of Levitt’s classic (1977-1984) series Fantasy Island, a show premised on the existence of a tropical island that magically fulfills the fantasies of its visitors. Released amid what seemed to be a small litter of shows filmed and set in tropical areas with limited casts — an otherwise peculiar conscription, ripe for production during COVID — this new Fantasy Island surprised me with writing that was so much better than one star-studded tropical sibling’s (no, not The White Lotus’ — honestly, reader, who do you think I am?).
So, I’m mainly including mention of its Christmas special here, to encourage those of you who haven’t yet checked it out to do so. It’s light and frothy, yes, but in a way that feels satisfying rather than cloying; and the reason behind that outcome feeling, as best as I can tell, is that the writers wisely use the central device of the show with clear purpose, to advance the narrative systematically, rather than with abandon, to falsely intrigue and ultimately confuse (à la Lieber, Abrams, and Lindelof’s Lost, 2004-2010).
This Christmas special is just the quaint button on the end of the gingerbread island-dweller’s icing overcoat.
Temperature check
Tepid
Beanie Mania
HBOMax - Documentary - Pop Culture
Synopsis
A curmudgeonly market specialist and a diaspora of ‘90s Midwestern moms remember the mid-to-late-’90s craze over the Ty Corporation’s signature toys.
My take
What fellow millennial didn’t acquire, or at least didn’t receive as a gift, a Beanie Baby or two during their late ‘90s heyday? What fellow millennial simultaneously had any clue about the reason those Beanie Babies reached their economically touted popularity or, better, the reason that popularity later plummeted at the close of the decade?
If like mine your answers to those two questions are, “Of course I did,” and, “Of course I didn’t,” then perhaps this straightforward little documentary will also be of interest to you. Exposing a true story of the attractive dangers of market speculation via the case study of a charming and well-remembered (if not still widely owned) plush toy, the documentary makes respectable choices, inviting a colorful cast of real people to explain their shared past and detail their divergent personal relationships to it. Mix in a potentially creepy magnate recluse behind the toy, and you have a fairly interesting story, even it you botch telling it — which they definitely don’t.
Though I purposefully keep a lot of the simultaneous grading I do for my Rich Picks separate from Hot Tea, I think it’s additive here, to comment that I’m giving this doc. a B.
Temperature check
Tepid
Retrospective
Moonstruck
HBOMax - Drama/Comedy - Romance
Synopsis
A widow unexpectedly falls for the estranged brother of her fiancé, beneath the stirring moonlight of 1980s’ New York City.
My take
Spending the Christmas week in Manhattan, I was hard-pressed not to reflect on Norman Jewison and John Patrick Shanley’s now classic romance, 1987 Best Original Screenplay Oscar winner and recent ‘The Criterion Collection’ entry Moonstruck. Starring a commanding Cher (herself in an Oscar-winning turn) opposite a young and catalytic Nicholas Cage, the film invents and reïnvents now commonplace romantic tropes on coupling, decoupling, and marrying fantasy with reality, tropes that it openly recognizes and negotiates for anyone paying attention. From the debatable luck behind using a man’s pinky ring as a woman’s engagement ring to the dynamic pressures between mortal love and immortal death, the film finds comedy in its simple but profound dramatic realizations and thereby charm in its disarming, yet serious, yet off-beat comedy of manners. Cher’s Loretta sees the wolf in Cage’s Ronny, so that we can see the bride in her, however unlucky she and her parents both suspect she might be at that role. Vincent Gardenia as Loretta’s father, Cosmo, a man ruled by a fear of death rather than a zest for life, nearly steals the show, wryly criticizing his daughter in the same breath as he congratulates her. Meanwhile, his wife, played by Olympia Dukakis in her Oscar-winning film début, asks fundamental questions about heterosexual courtship. In the background, a snapshot redolent of a certain time and place, a Brooklyn befit with tight storefronts beaming with bright neon signs and somehow pastorally amorous couples, next to a Manhattan stretched into wide cityscapes and plazas slick with possibilities, conveys the dream and the confusion of the central characters, without ever losing their ‘earthy’ sensibilities. A complete picture as we hardly ever see these days, Moonstruck is a modern American magnum opus, sweet with the daily goods of our core culture. Pairs well with a sumptuous Italian dinner.
Temperature check
Steaming
After consulting the IMDB, I see that I’ve rightly and safely blocked all memory of last year’s The Prom. Otherwise, Paddington (2014)?