I’ve been a bit burned out due some of the intensity of the drafts I’ve been working on so, since OPPENHEIMER was just released, I thought I’d call your attention to my 2020 post regarding MANHATTAN, the little-known series from WGN America who very briefly broadcast a number of critical acclaimed prestige shows, including UNDERGROUND as well as MANHATTAN.
MANHATTAN tells the tale of the nucleus of the creation of the atom bomb and the environment and folks it took to construct it. Essentially: OPPENHEIMER before OPPENHEIMER.
MANHATTAN featured an embarrassment of creative riches, including an astounding cast and writers, such as Rachel Brosnahan (THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL), Harry Lloyd (DOCTOR WHO, GAME OF THRONES), Olivia Williams (RUSHMORE), as well as writer Lila Byock who has since gone on to work on amazing serialized works such as THE LEFTOVERS and WATCHMEN and CASTLE ROCK.
It’s a shame that the show never garnered the attention it deserved, but WGN America gave us two seasons, which is one more than I thought we’d ever get.
While my initial write-up is several years old, it’s still available on a number of the streaming services listed, and both seasons are available on DVD.
I haven’t covered the entirety of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels — in fact, I only wrote about the third — and I kind of expected to leave it at that, as while each novel is remarkable, the first three are rather remarkable in the same way: they’re all about the push-and-pull between two friends growing up together in Naples and their power dynamics and their multi-faceted journeys through life.
Consequently, I didn’t expect the final novel in the series — THE STORY OF THE LOST CHILD — to stray much from the path, and I certainly didn’t expect to be penning this, but here we are.
THE STORY OF THE LOST CHILD escalates matters far more than the prior novels. Time passes rapidly. Lenù and Lila age significantly. The undercurrent of the mafia bubbles up to the surface. Technology becomes foregrounded. Families are ripped asunder. Stagnation sets in for some, while others find solace in wildness.
This is a true epic of lives lived, and as always Ferrante deftly handles it bluntly, but also artfully. Ferrante’s prose is so succinct and exacting; she is so dialed into the inner voice of Lenù that you feel like you’re inhabiting her as the scales fall from her eyes.
While I feel that Ferrante could have drawn all of this out further, going more in-depth about Lenù and Lila as they navigate their older years, this seems like a fittingly spry end to their tale. It’s satisfying, poignant, melancholy, and often even angry. In other words, a perfect encapsulation of the Neapolitan novels.
No spoilers here, just (hopefully) a succinct bit of word-garbage.
BARRY’s premise initially seemed a little too sweaty and off-putting to me. It was as if creator Bill Hader got high and turned to his friend Alec Berg and exclaimed: “Now, now, now! Hear me out! I have the best idea! An ex-soldier turned hitman wants to be an actor! Do you want in?!”
I was thrilled to find that it was far more considered and thoughtful than that.
BARRY was stylish without being showy — long shots whenever action became intense (technically harder to pull off!) — and comedic without undermining the drama.
It’s worth noting: Hader loves film. He loves everything about film. Just read this New Yorker interview with him and he comes across as a young(-ish) Scorsese — someone who knows how to write, direct, and shoot films, even down to the lenses he wants to use.
So, it’s a shame that BARRY’s series finale was completely over-shadowed by SUCCESSION’s (brilliant) finale, as it was a thunder-blast. Some found the last season to be treading water, but I didn’t; it was a reckoning and meditation on what it takes to come to terms with your past.
Also, goddamn, the set-pieces. BARRY is very, very good at solitary and dramatic moments, but it absolutely kills (no pun intended) when it comes to action sequences. Absolutely nothing like it on TV now and, sadly, probably won’t be for a while.
Lastly, I’d be remiss to neglect to mention the cast. Everyone here is amazing, but especially the chaotic energy of Anthony Carrigan, Stephen Root (who goes through an amazing transformation), Sarah Goldberg who is revelatory and was really put through the wringer, and oh yes, Henry Fucking Winkler. It’s an embarrassment of riches.
If you aren’t familiar with the recent-ish drama at DC Comics, the Vertigo imprint is no more. Karen Berger, who spearheaded Vertigo, left DC a while ago. Without her, you wouldn’t have SANDMAN. You wouldn’t have Y: THE LAST MAN. You wouldn’t have Alan Moore’s SWAMP THING, and you certainly wouldn’t have Morrison or Pollack’s DOOM PATROL.
Yes, all great things must end, but sometimes they’re resurrected. Gerard Way — of the band MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE and the writer of THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY — revived DOOM PATROL with his ‘Young Animals’ imprint, which is essentially a modern reboot of Vertigo; it’s all about the weird, all about the misfit ‘superheroes’ that don’t quite fit into the normal DC universe, but still have a rabid following.
According to the DC Database, ‘Young Animal’ is still active, but nothing has been published under the imprint in a number of years, so I’ll consider it defunct which is a shame, as those working under the imprint did a fantasticjob but I guess the market for weird comic books just isn’t there nowadays.
However, Gerard Way did give us two new volumes of DOOM PATROL weird. (Three, if you count DOOM PATROL: WEIGHT OF THE WORLDS, which will not be covered in this write-up as it’s technically not part of the sixth volume.)
As with every new DOOM PATROL volume, this is a different DOOM PATROL, one that resembles the one of Morrison’s run, but a bit twisted. (Apologies, I have not read each and every DOOM PATROL book — I just found out there’s an entire Keith Giffen run — so I might get some facts wrong here.) Robotman Cliff Steele is here, obviously. Danny the Street is back, but in a far smaller way. Larry Trainor is …kind of back. A sort-of-Rita pops up for a bit. Jane has returned. Nowhere Man is taunting them and then turns into a sort of Max Headroom for some reason. Niles continues to be the narrator of his own creations.
So, essentially: it’s Gerard Way getting his vision of the band back together again.
It mostly works! Way also introduces a slew of new characters, such as Casey Brinke, the other side of the Cliff Steele coin; she loves to drive fast and her interests include: women, robots, her apartment, and her cat named ‘Lotion’. Way maneuvers Casey from outsider narrative commentator to one of the Doom Patrol gang so expertly, I barely even noticed.
There’s also the exuberant Terry None, one hell of a tap-dancing chaotic influence on the team. (I’ll note that her costume? Immaculately designed. Watch it as you read!)
Volume Six also includes the Reynolds family — husband Sam, wife Valerie, and teen son Lucius — which I am far less keen on. Doom Patrol has always been about found families and to shoehorn an actual family there feels incongruent to me, especially considering the closing issue of the second collection, which boils down to: the Reynolds play D&D but with real-life consequences.
Nonetheless, Way managed to keep the Doom Patrol weird candle alight, and with such an amazing team!
I do wish that DC had allotted ‘Young Animal’ more time than they were given. Unconventional comics are what contributes to visual narrative progress. You can see it not only in comics, but in film and TV and video games as well. Vertigo, and Young Animal, helped to nurture that experimentation, and apparently now … no one is willing to make that very small investment.
(Lastly: Yes, I know I said Vol. 6 and the cover says Vol. 2. It’s comics, so it’s essentially Vol. 6.1 and 6.2. No need to overthink it!)
(macOS/PC/PS4/PS5/Xboxes) Every gamer has encountered a game that desperately wants to be a film instead. (I’m looking at you, METAL GEAR SOLID 2.) You know the type: long-winded cut-scenes, overly flamboyant camerawork that often gets in the way of interactivity, shamelessly cribbing from other films — usually Tarantino — all with the intent to make the player feel something.
LAST STOP, from VIRGINIA developers Variable State, is one such game.
LAST STOP consists of an intertwined story of three primary characters: John Smith, an aging father who has a precocious eight (excuse me, eight-and-a-half) year-old daughter named Molly; Donna, a teen girl who sneaks out at night to be a bit rebellious with her friends; and Meena, an agent with a nebulous intelligence agency that deals with the supernatural or aliens — that isn’t quite clear out of the gate — but it also leads to some body switching and other high-concept notes.
While ostensibly it’s interactive fiction by way of Telltale’s games (THE WALKING DEAD), the dialogue choices really don’t matter, and most of the interactivity consists of walking to a door or clumsy item finagling, a la David Cage (the ‘auteur’ behind HEAVY RAIN, DETROIT: BEHIND HUMAN, who also desperately wants to create ‘cinematic experiences’ and they often ring false).
When you get to the third chapter of LAST STOP, which nakedly indulges in the trope where a camera circles around a table during what is ostensibly heist planning, well, yeah, it becomes crystal clear that this should just be a film rather than a hackneyed patchwork of filmic gaming experience.
That may sound harsh, but I couldn’t scrub that feeling from my mind and it’s a shame, as their prior game VIRGINIA managed to navigate those interactive narrative waters far more smoothly, partially because it felt more thoughtful and thought-out.
So why am I grousing about it in this blog that’s all about recommending works? It’s because I’m still a sucker for these sort of games; they’re perfect fodder for tucking into on a lazy Sunday. Also, Meena? (See above.) She is one hell of an ice queen and one of the best modern video game characters of our time. However, it’s a far cry from the silent meditative and askew nature of VIRGINIA.
While it’s far from perfect, it is quite playable — for as little that you actually can play it — and while I played, I was quite invested to see where all of the high-concept facets would lead to. Additionally, the visual design and artistry is quite compelling in a LIFE IS STRANGE simple, but effective, way. When the story hits, it lands well; these are complex people living different but vastly similar lives to the way most live.
I’ll note that it is extraordinarily British. One chapter practically feels torn from a Mike Leigh film.
Again, it’s a bit of a misfire and isn’t for everyone, but it is a fun lark and we all need that sometimes.
ADDENDUM
One nice touch: one of the lead characters has a very visible caesarean scar, perhaps the only time I’ve ever seen that in a video game.
(macOS/PC/PS4/PS5) VIRGINIA was the first game from Variable State, and it made quite the mark. Not only is it 100% dialogue-less but it frequently quits scenes, leaping forward in time and to different locations, even if you aren’t done interacting with them.
I’ll note that Variable State was inspired by the experimental indie game 30 FLIGHTS OF LOVING — they even included a special note in the credits to underscore what they owed to 30 FLIGHTS — which also jumps around in time and locations a lot.
While 30 FLIGHTS OF LOVING felt thrillingly chaotic, VIRGINIA is the other side of the coin.
VIRGINIA is a slow burn of a thriller. You play as Anne Tarver, a wet-behind-the-ears FBI agent whose partner is seasoned special agent Maria Halperin. The two of you are in Kingdom, Virginia, investigating the disappearance of a young boy named Lucas. Tarver then gets drawn deeper into FBI schemes, and matters escalate in a dreamline way.
(Unsurprisingly, the game also takes a few notes from TWIN PEAKS, as one location practically recreates the Roadhouse, even down to a Julee Cruise-ish backing band.)
I’ll note: this is essentially an experimental point-and-click adventure game, albeit first-person. While it is a ramshackle indie game, Terry Kenny’s simple but evocative art styling does a lot to imbue the spirit of the game, but the silence is what I find most intriguing. Occasionally, the game even lacks room tone — it’s dead silent. Everyone speaks with gestures and motions and physicality. It’s a glorious limitation to place on a modern narrative-forward game, one that makes VIRGINIA so memorable.
And when the game isn’t silent? When the score swells? It resonates volumes.
This isn’t a game for everyone. If you’re impatient, if you expect proper answers, if you want fire off a gun, this is not the game for you. However, if you’re looking for a surreal, atmospheric, story-driven mystery that isn’t the most interactive game ever, but looks and sounds great and can hit where it hurts, it’s a great Sunday experience.
Apart from perhaps CLOUD ATLAS (which is technically a Wachowski/Tykwer film adaptation), the Wachowski sisters’ BOUND is probably their most under-seen and under-appreciated work which, sure, given it’s their first film, but still! It is a very queer neo-noir that, while stylish, doesn’t rely on the gonzo effects of their later films. In fact, one of the most effective shots simply involves buckets of white paint, squibs, and a body.
The fact that it isn’t heralded more is a shame because it’s certainly an iconic queer film, and it’s also my favorite of theirs.
I’m getting ahead of myself. BOUND is a very simple neo-noir with a small cast, smaller locales — almost all of it takes place in two Chicago apartments which, I’ll note, has appropriate trim — and some smoldering, absolutely perfect casting.
Corky (Gina Gershon) is a very butch ex-con who served five years and is now reworking apartments for the mob. She meets the apartment’s next-door neighbors, the sexpot femme Violet (Jennifer Tilly, doing what she does best) is entangled with low-level mobster Caesar (Joe Pantoliano before he was on THE SOPRANOS). Corky and Violet get lustily involved via a number of very heated scenes and, as always, watch how they handle hands. Violet decides she wants to leave Caesar and be with Corky, so Violet fills Corky in on Caesar’s task to pick-up and hand-off over $2.1 million dollars to his mob bosses.
Corky brainstorms a plan to steal the money from under Caesar’s nose. It sounds like the perfect plan.
As this is a noir work, it is not the perfect plan. Matters escalate, and quickly.
It’s worth noting that half of this film works because Gershon and Tilly have amazing chemistry and an amazing wardrobe and suits each perfectly: Corky is all leather, tight white t-shirts and dirty pants and Violet is often dressed like Marilyn in GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, all glamor dresses and finely coiffed hair. The other half is because of the Wachoswkis’ script — which is far more funny than I remember — but also because of the way they visually frame Corky and Violet’s tryst; it’s restrained, knows when to linger and when to cut away, but is still tantalizing.
I’ll grant that you can see a lot of the Coen Bros. in BOUND, from some Sonnefeld zooms and heightened close-ups to the humor, but out-of-the-gate you can tell these are more-or-less nods, and that the sisters have their own voice and approach.
Lastly: as usual, I saw this at the Music Box Theatre — it was a personal print from the Wachowskis! — as part of the Music Box’s ‘Rated Q’ series, which explicitly is — in the words of Rated Q’s programmer/director Ramona Slick — “A Celebration of Queer, Camp, & Cult Cinema”.
At the time of writing this, it’s Pride month and Chicago’s Pride parade is only a few days away.
Obviously, the screening was completely overflowing with queer folk and it was glorious.
The screening opened with a pre-film, brazenly and enthusiastically over-the-top drag show in the main theater: a lot of torn clothing, a lot of skin, and folks stuffing bills into the performers’ works or throwing money at them. (I’m not 100% sure that the Music Box is zoned for all that I saw, but I will not complain!) The audience was so, so very game for it.
When the film started? Folks went bonkers but, as is the Music Box way, no one ruined the experience for everyone; there was a lot of hooting, a lot of laughter, a lot of veiled recognition at foreshadowing and villainous characters, and a lot of clapping (and even some snaps). In other words, the perfect communal viewing experience.
If you read the interview with Rated Q’s Ramona Slick, they discuss how formative cult and queer films were for them, as they lived in a small town without much of a queer community. Now they’re helping to introduce others to these films in a way that interweaves performance with projection. It also gives a venue for those who love these films and want to see them with likeminded folks instead of alone in a scuzzy dorm room on a tiny cathode ray TV and an exhausted VHS tape.
I know I endlessly beat this drum, but the Music Box has been firing on all cylinders as of late. They’ve slowly pushed back to being a repertoire theater instead of a new-release indie theater, and it’s paid off handsomely for them as practically every older film I’ve attended there has been packed to the ceiling. While that’s not the Music Box I grew up with — they have been around since 1929, and their repertoire period pre-dates the late 90s — I embrace the change. It fills a much-needed absence in the local film scene, and every screening has been a delight.
Corky: “Know what’s the difference between you and me?”
I just want to note: 1) I haven’t read anything from anyone about the second season yet, although I do know it has been divisive and 2) this post contains no spoilers.
Crashed plane, lonely island, a bunch of scared folks just trying to survive; then a bunch of flash-forwards to the survivors that made it off the island, and how they’re living years later.
It’s not LOST, but wouldn’t blame ya if you thought I was describing that epic. It’s YELLOWJACKETS which — on the surface — looks a lot like LOST but replace the folks with the members of a tightly-knit, but very combative, girls soccer team.
Like LOST, YELLOWJACKETS occasionally suffers from issues attempting to straddle both character stories and lore and, like LOST, YELLOWJACKETS opts more for the former as opposed to the latter and I love it for that. I love these fierce misfits, even if more than a few of them are murderous or have severe issues.
These characters are ferocious, no matter the year. They are hardcore. They bite, they cut, and they aren’t afraid to bleed. These are not your normal TV female protagonists, and I love the show for leaning so hard into that. It’s not just the cannibalism; they’re all raw around the edges, and we need more depictions of that sort of thing.
Hand-wave the lore issues away. If you don’t care about the characters, there is no show; it’s just a set of puzzle pieces that you want to shoehorn together to fit you.
It is worth noting that YELLOWJACKETS lacks the velocity of LOST. It’s not pulling a rabbit out of its hat (or hatch) every week. It’s more grounded than that, but it is still propulsive.
However, like LOST, it has some fucking fantastic needle drops. As an old-school fan of riot grrl bands, this is catnip to me. If you grew up in the 90s, damn, strap yourself in because this show knows what you want, and knows when you want it. There’s an especially brilliant use of ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN’s ‘The Killing Moon’ in the second season finale. (While it’s technically not 90s, the show opening with SHARON VON ETTEN’s ’Seventeen’ is extremely inspired.)
I have to say: YELLOWJACKETS has one of the greatest modern title sequences. It absolutely perfectly lays out the conceit of the show, down to the division of time, drops a lot of visual hints, but also features a banger of an original backing track — no, not a riot grrl deep cut from the 90s! (although half of the act is comprised of 90s cult music staple THAT DOG) — that absolutely encapsulates the anger and frustration and confusion and trauma of the characters, while wrapping it in a worn VHS haze (and keenly switches from 4:3 to 16:9 at specific times). This is one of the few title sequences I blast as loud as I can when no one is around, and then I rewind and watch it again.
Lastly: S2 has a brief scene where one of the survivors is running a VHS rental store, and this is modern day. Don’t scoff: there’s one not too far from me! VHS will only die when the tape disintegrates. I’m burying the lede here though: there’s a scene that recreates a scene from THE WATERMELON WOMAN but the queer owner presses a VHS tape to the other queer woman regular customer, noting that she should watch THE WATERMELON WOMAN and my face lit the fuck up. Few mainstream shows would even think of writing that, much less take the time to shoot that scene. (The chef kiss would be if they’d brought in Cheryl Dunye to direct that episode but, sadly, no.)
“You can do fucking anything.”
I’ll note: I’m ride-or-die with this show. It just cuts too close to the quick for me; it hits every single one of my quadrants, despite the fact that 1) I was never a teenage girl; 2) never was part of a heralded sports team; 3) have never crash-landed on an isolated island 4) have not consumed human flesh. Nonetheless, I cannot be objective about it as I’m almost always able to look past its flaws and feel too hard while I’m watching it.
“Half of your wardrobe is Sleater-Kinney tour shirts!”
“It’s just that … everyone in here? Has been been dumped in one way or another. […] I joined up after I dissolved a subscription horsemeat service that started with my brother-in-law.”
(That is one hell of an amazing way to summarize a character.)
This is a show that absolutely knows what it wants to do, knows what it’s capable of, and doesn’t give any fucks about its audience and I unabashedly love it. I cannot wait for the third season.
“It’s you and me against the whole world.”
ADDENDUM
I’ll note that the high school I attended? The sports teams weren’t called Yellowjackets, but it is quite adjacent: they were named the Hornets.
(Linux/Mac/PC/PS4/PS5/Xboxes) TACOMA was the second game from GONE HOME creators Fullbright Studios. It’s worth noting that Fullbright barely exists at this time due to founder Steve Gaynor’s toxic behavior. In fact, all fifteen employees decided to quit — leaving only Gaynor — which uh, says quite a lot.
TACOMA is a narrative-forward atmospheric exploration game that takes place on an abandoned space station. It consists solely of walking around and immersing yourself in the story of just how the station fell apart. (Spoiler alert: it mostly has to do with AI.)
It’s saddening to hear of Gaynor’s behavior, especially since both TACOMA and GONE HOME are very inclusive and features complex women, but so it goes. Either way, TACOMA is a gripping ride if you have the patience for it, can willfully ignore the bad working conditions that led to the game’s creation, and especially if you have a penchant for thoughtful sci-fi narratives and striking approaches to interactive storytelling. Plus it has a very inventive rewind/fast-forward mechanic to help you scrutinize matters.
It’s also worth noting that, while I played the game without issue on my PS4, playing it on my PS5 gave me nothing but problems. It’d repeatedly lock up, would lose progress, and just in general felt pretty janky. It’s still worth the trouble and, if you’re playing on other platforms, you may not encounter the same issues, but buyer beware.
Addendum
I just saw that TACOMA will be added to the PS+ Extra lineup next month, so if you have a PS4 or PS5, wait a bit and you can play it for free!
This show contains depictions of domestic and animal abuse and familial death.
(Apple TV+) BAD SISTERS has a very simple premise: five orphaned sisters, held together by the eldest, realize that the husband of the second eldest is actively trying to undermine their sisterhood, and they take action to try to get her back into the fold.
Under the surface, it’s a fraught story of power, age, and personality dynamics. Apart from EVIL, I haven’t seen another show tackle the disparity of so many interpersonal sibling personas with such tact. There’s a well-worn cadence between all of them — a familiarity but also distancing at times — that feels so incredibly authentic while they’re basically trying to erase this avenging angel of a man — John Paul Williams (the ever tall Claes Bang) — from splintering them.
As standard with ensemble pieces like this, casting needs to be perfect, and thankfully the show is masterminded by the terrific multi-faceted Sharon Horgan (CATASTROPHE), who also leads in it, alongside her sisters who are a litany of faces you’ve seen if you’ve watched any European TV in the past ten years: Eve Hewson (THE KNICK), Sarah Greene (NORMAL PEOPLE, DUBLIN MURDERS), Anne-Marie Duff (THE MAGDALENE SISTERS) as John’s unfortunate wife, and more.
It’s also extremely Irish, all lush greens and cliffs and inflections, with brilliant sweeping camera work, and one moment that reminds me of THE DROWNING GIRLS, but I might reading a bit too much into that.
It has been renewed for a second season, but whether that materializes is questionable.
Lastly, make sure to watch the very cleverly constructed title sequence, as it deftly utilizes a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Who By Fire” in a manner that absolutely recalls ELEMENTARY‘s title sequence (although ELEMENTARY is a bit more overt about its MOUSETRAP origins, but BAD SISTERS is doing something a bit different here):
![MANHATTAN (2014-2015) [RERUN]](https://mediaclature.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/manhattan.jpg)
