Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome Review

Thunderdome is a whole different vibe. A Tina Turner song plays over the opening credits and something about it feels off after all we’ve been through. We are now in the 80’s.

Critical Mush in conjunction with The Society for the Preservation of Weird Cinema presents:

A Mad Max Retrospective Part 3

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome – 1985

Thunderdome starts like Road Warrior, Max needs something, the people from whom he needs it want him to do a job in return. From there it starts to get messy. The job is a hit, the mark is Master Blaster, Master Blaster runs underworld, underworld powers barter town, Auntie wants Master Blaster dead, but they don’t want anyone to know they did it. It’s a far cry from we’ll give you gas if you bring us a truck. I mean look at the top of the poster. “A lone warrior searching for his destiny…A tribe of lost children waiting for a hero… In a world battling to survive, they face a woman determined to rule.” …what?

Conspicuously missing from Thunderdome is car chases. It’s all walking and talking. You get some hand to hand combat but it’s either not shot particularly well or has bungie cords attached to it. That shit is so dumb. Nothing could make you easier to hit than swinging from a rope like a human pinata.

George continues to experiment with different concepts he will later refine and reincorporate. As Max walks into Bartertown, he’s offered water in-trade foreshadowing the use of water as commodity in Fury Road. Miller AGAIN shows us a scene with a someone playing a saxophone. I would have guffawed harder if I hadn’t seen Max’s wife playing the sax in Mad Max. George likes what he likes and one of the things he likes is random people playing the saxophone in his movies. If I don’t get a sax in Furiosa I’m going to be very disappointed.

Everything you know about Thunderdome – all the iconic shit – happens in the first 42 minutes. Bartertown, the funny gun check-in scene, Master Blaster, Tina Turner, two men enter, one man leave, it’s all frontloaded. Once we go beyond Thunderdome, it gets a little iffy.

And by iffy I mean there are a ton of feral kids. I know that I’ve been complementary of George’s penchant for reusing motifs and even props he likes and improving upon them but here he takes it a step too far. The feral kid in The Road Warrior was a nice detail. In Beyond Thunderdome there’s literally a tribe of feral children that no one needed. It’s like the fuckin’ lost boys. They even call their promised land tomorrow-morrow land. Who gave birth to all these children? Where are your parents!? You do start to see the early stages of the war boy esthetic.

This is the first Mad Max movie that feels like a movie. The first two feel like, I don’t know, gritty portraits of a world gone sideways. This one feels like a production, like Hollywood got its clammy hands on it. Even the score sounds like like The Goonies or Toy Story.

I wanted to blame someone other than George Miller for how this turned out so I went looking for an interview or a line somewhere in which he complains about producers ruining his vision. However, in this making of documentary, writer Terry Hayes says the first idea they had was to use a tribe of wild kids so it appears that this movie was fucked from the start. Also Terry Hayes doesn’t know how to type. Beyond Thunderdome is CO-directed by George Ogilvie, a man who does not appear in the credits for any of the other Max films so I’m going to put the responsibility for this aberration squarely in his lap.

Sime highlights from the doc:
12:49 – Feral children trying Ogilvie’s patience
16:11 – Two young actors doing a proper job of sending up the entire production
21:20 – Chief Mechanic Blackfinger Thomas
24:19 – Rodney the Camel
35:48 – Tina explaining George’s directing style
41:42 – Tina Turner saying that shooting Beyond Thunderdome was the greatest thing she’d done in her entire life? It’s hard to understand but I’m pretty sure that’s what she says.

Of all the things wrong with this movie, Tina is not one of them. She’s excellent, she looks great, and she does it all in a 70 pound chainmail dress. She’s also in the part of the movie that works so that helps. I have no idea what Bruce Spence is doing here. Don’t get me wrong I’m happy to see him, but I think he’s playing a different character? He has a different character name – I guess you can’t be the gyrocopter pilot without a gyrocopter – then when he and Max finally meet, they don’t seem to know each other. Made me kind of sad. And his teeth are fixed! Which means if he is the same character, he somehow managed to find an effective whitening treatment in the wastes, a nearly impossible thing to do even in these pre-apocalyptic times.

The final 15 minutes of Beyond Thunderdome are a return to form. We get back into some dune buggies, and chase down what can only be called a Mad Max train. It’s fun and becomes the thing you didn’t know you were waiting for. This is where Miller’s team excels and I think they know it. It’s why they make the same movie over and over. It’s why Fury Road rocks so hard, it’s all this. It’s all vehicles and mad stunts set in a beautifully decorated world. The first hour and change of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome proves the point of the last 15 minutes; stay on the road, Max.

tl;dw Tibbets loved it.

The Road Warrior Review

Just go with me on this one, The Road Warrior is the most subdued Mad Max movie. Yes it has a man named Humungus in a Jason-style hockey mask and very little else. Yes it has Bruce Spence flying around in a one-seat helicopter dropping snakes on fools. Yes there’s a feral child with a razor blade boomerang, but if you take it with the other movies, The Road Warrior is kind of low key and, dare I say, realistic?

Critical Mush in conjunction with The Society for the Preservation of Weird Cinema presents:

A Mad Max Retrospective Part 2

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior – 1981

It begins with a voice over telling the story of how we got from the end of Mad Max to where we are now and I don’t think this movie is given enough credit for how prophetic it is and may turn out to be. The obsession over fossil fuels and our dependence on it is the only thing that movies should be about at this point. This one, rather than scaling with time, now feels like it could take place in like, December.

The Road Warrior is very good. Mad Max is wild, but it’s not seamless. The Road Warrior is pretty seamless. The plot is structured well and it’s all believable in the world where it lives. There’s some great camera work you don’t get to see very often. There’s a whole scene in the beginning where Max is casing an oil refinery that’s either been built or commandeered by the people for whom we will shortly be rooting. He’s up on a hill with his dog and he’s just watching. We see this whole drama play out between the good guys and Humumgus’s gang from WAY far away. We’re zoomed out so we see all this great action but from a unique perspective. The cars look like toys which is fun, and you get a great sense of the scope of the wastes and all the work that went into building that refinery both as a fictional place and as a movie set.

There’s lots to love about this movie. There’s not a ton of dialogue because ya don’t really need it. There’s very little to talk about in the wastes other than the heat. Although try telling Humungus that, Guy likes to grandstand. So much so he has an emcee played by Max Phipps making the most of his one scene. Everyone is solid, Mick Jagger look-a-like Michael Preston is a decent and honorable leader. The unexpectedly hot Virginia Hey keeps it cool. I mostly bring her up because her IMDb bio tells the incredibly detailed story of her harrowing battle with cancer all the way up to about a month ago. She’s doing ok for now, but let’s all wish her well. Bruce Spence as The Gyro Captain is bringing all the charisma – he probably wins best actor in the movie. Vernon Wells as Wez is psychotic in his feathered shoulder pads. You may know Vernon Wells in Commando as “Guy Who Gets Killed With a Big Pipe.”

I forgot to mention Brian May composed the score for Mad Max. He does so again in The Road Warrior. It’s excellent, but I’m never sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing when I find myself thinking about the music in a movie. Yes this music rocks but shouldn’t I be thinking about what’s happening?

Halfway through The Road Warrior, you start to see why Fury Road is so good. Miller took all the elements that worked from his previous 3 films and put them all together.

In Mad Max you get the general outline of the world and, in the beginning, a line about blasphemers. It’s almost a throw away but it’s clearly something Miller liked so in Fury Road he cranked it up and made his War Boys religious zealots.

In The Road Warrior you get a ton of the genetic material that would later form Fury Road. More outrageous costumes, the idea of the tanker truck as the mother ship in the chase, little dune buggies and motorcycles hissing and zipping around it, people staked to the front of vehicles, Humungus and Immortan Joe, two masked warlords, hell you even have the concept of going out and then turning around and heading straight back into the teeth of danger. It’s almost as if George Miller just kept making the same movie over and over again until he got it perfect.

In The Road Warrior he got close but there was more work to be done. I remember Beyond Thunderdome being bad, but I’m excited to give it a fair shake. You can’t go wrong with either of these first two though. The Road Warrior delivers in every scene, and let’s face it, may become required educational viewing as we continue to tempt the apocalypse with our every waking action.

The Fall Guy Review

I saw The Fall Guy in theater 2 at The Grove AMC. Theater 2 is their Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision theater. It’s even got a special Dolby entry way. It’s Dolby-licious. I’d like to start keeping track of the individual theaters in my regular multiplexes because it makes a big difference sometimes and I always forget which one is which. One theater is a lot like the next so it’s easy to think they’re all the same, but they are not the same. Anyway, theater 2 at the grove is nice. New big chairs and all that Dolby shit I just mentioned. Only price you pay is sitting through a 30 second Dolby commercial as part of the epic AMC pre show package which can be used as a buffer if you plan on getting a drink at MacGuffins. More on that later. Nicole Kidman is still generating scattered applause.

My screening opened with the director David Leitch and Ryan Gosling addressing the audience, telling us not to talk or text, but then at the end Gosling jokes that if we have to text, tuck our phones into our jackets. HAHA Ryan except you just told everyone in here it’s ok to text during the movie.

Leitch describes The Fall Guy as a love letter to stunt men. He used to be a stuntman himself, he tells us. Not a good sign. Actually wait, let me back up because there were two bad omens going into this movie. The second was the director of the movie I’m about to see telling me he used to be a stunt man. For the first we have to go back out to the lobby.

If you’ve ever been to the AMC’s at either The Grove or The Americana, two outdoor malls in the greater Los Angeles metro area, you may have noticed a person or two walking into a theater with a glass of wine or a cocktail. “Fun!” you probably thought to yourself. “I wonder where they got that.” Well where they got that is a bar in the lobby called MacGuffins.

MacGuffins Review

MacGuffins is the worst bar in Los Angeles because it is the only bar in Los Angeles where the people serving drinks didn’t sign up to be bartenders. In theory it should be great, a place to meet up before the movie and grab a quick drink, but the people working there, when there are actually people behind the bar, are just regular AMC employees. They’re movie theater kids who I assume have to be 21 and who I also assume have received the bare minimum of bartender training. They are slow and they do not want to be there. Not helping the problem is the fact that you have to present a movie ticket in order to be able to buy a drink. Easy as can be if your friend printed paper tickets and gave one to each person in the group, not as easy if all the tickets are on his phone, in his pocket, slowly making its way through the parking garage. If you are planning on getting a drink at MacGuffins to take into the theater, give yourself an extra 20 minutes.

Back to the first omen. We’re finally at the bar at MacGuffins and the kid working there asks us what we’re going to see. “Fall Guy,” we tell him. “Oh cool!” he beams. “I saw it yesterday it’s really good, it’s by the same guy who directed Bullet Train!” My eyebrows went up and my mouth said “Oh cool!” while my brain said “Fuck” and then “Big fan of Bullet Train are you, son?” Yeah I’m surprised they didn’t splash that all over the advertising. “From the visionary mind that brought you Bullet Train, Deadpool 2, and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw!”

To recap it’s Friday night, theater 2, Dolby, full house and we’re all in the hands of a guy who used to get hit in the head for a living and has a track record of making profoundly average movies.

Let’s get it on.

The Fall Guy is not bad. It’s not good. But it’s not bad. Let’s talk about what’s good.

What’s Good

It stars two pretty people who are pretty funny and most of it is a reasonably good time. Some of my favorite parts were Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt just looking at each other. They’re likable, those two.

It IS a love letter to stunt people. They do a stunt in the beginning that I’m told set some kind of stunt record so that’s cool. They trot out two weathered, older people at the end in what is clearly supposed to be a meaningful cameo that went right over my head. Turns out it’s Lee Majors and Heather Thomas and hey guess what, The Fall Guy is based on an old show that they were in. Part of the problem might be that this movie is just not for me, it’s for stunt people. An odd target demographic maybe, but definitely an underserved one.

Wait this is supposed to be the what’s good section. Ok what else is good. That Dolby, baby. It did sound great in the theater. The car sound effects were intense but not overly so and I found myself actively thinking, “goddamn that sounds badass” while Ryan Gosling, or more probably Ryan Gosling’s stuntman, gunned the engines of whatever vehicle he happened to be in.

I laughed a lot, and in a couple of rare moments The Fall Guy succeeds in achieving the Point Break Effect where you’re laughing with it, and at it at the same time. Where it works as both the thing, and the parody of the thing, in the same moment. Where the ridiculous and the serous swirl into a sublime yin yang and you find total peace, if only for a moment. The boat conversation did that for me.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson is great as Tom Ryder, the douchebag movie star for whom Gosling’s character stunt doubles. He delivers what must be a Matthew McConaughey inspired speech that is so good it might be the highlight of the whole film. Hannah Waddingham is excellent as Gail Meyer the producer and Winston Duke and Stephanie Hsu are both solid but underused.

If you want someone’s opinion other than mine, I can tell you that the gen Z row I was seated in was having an absolute ball. Literally thrashing about in an uncontrollable physiological reaction to what was happening on screen. There was cheering, laughing, and oh so much gasping. And a couple of audible “God damn!”s at Ryan Gosling’s sculpted physique. Same, row. Same.

What’s Bad

For a movie that acknowledges the importance of raising the stakes within its own script, the stakes in The Fall Guy are being stored in a sub-basement somewhere. I thought from the previews that Gosling’s character Colt Seavers was going to get caught up in some international spy ring or deep underground criminal conspiracy like in Spy or The Man Who Knew Too Little only in this version Seavers is a stunt man so he’s good at kicking ass and he’d excel at being a fake spy. Then maybe Blunt gets a camera on him somehow and now all of a sudden we’re making a movie about the spy shit that Gosling is doing and we take down the conspiracy, save the world, and get an exciting, very real seeming, action movie out of it. That is NOT what happens. The Fall Guy never really escapes the orbit of these two petty, small-time assholes. I became increasingly annoyed that the “bad guys” Seavers is running from are just goons hired by an actor.

There’s a scene in the beginning, you’ve seen it before, where Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling are talking about the movie they’re making but they’re actually talking about their relationship, and it’s kind of cute and Gosling is getting lit on fire and thrown into a wall and it’s all fine. But then they keep going back to it, most notably with this LONG split screen scene where they go so deep into the metaphor it borders on complete nonsense. Once was enough; it’s not cute enough to center your entire script around.

Speaking of nonsense, the end is a complete clusterfuck. Really none of the things that happen in the last 15 minutes are logically sound. There are a lot of big stunts so my advice is to just focus on those and try not to listen to anything anyone is saying or figure out who’s flying the helicopter.

Overall

A slightly, slightly above average film which I think makes it David Leitch’s finest work to date. You don’t have to see it, but if you are going to see it, I would see it in the theater, because the flash and the growl do a lot to pave over the script weaknesses. If I had watched it at home I probably would have liked it less. And if you want to test that theory, Bullet Train is on Netflix but it’s leaving soon.

Mad Max Review

I recently attended a talk with David Mamet at the LA Times Festival of Books and at one point he asked rhetorically of the audience: “When was the last time you saw a movie that knocked your socks off?” I almost shouted, “Fury Road!” because that was my answer. I’m glad I didn’t because no one else shouted anything and I don’t know if I want to be the kind of person who shouts at book talks, but George Miller’s 2015, unexpected masterpiece totally knocked my socks off. Then yesterday, in a company meeting no less, someone said, “Two men enter, one man leave” and I thought, this franchise has done nothing but give, and give, and give over the last half century and you know what? Maybe it’s time we gave a little back. So here goes.

Critical Mush in conjunction with The Society for the Preservation of Weird Cinema presents:

A Mad Max Retrospective Part 1

Mad Max – 1979

A quick word from the reviewer: I forced myself to watch this extremely Australian movie with no subtitles so full scenes passed where I did not understand a word of dialogue. There may have been some character development or important exposition that I missed, but I assure you, total comprehension is not critical to one’s enjoyment of the film. 

Because Mad Max is a blast from the first frame. It opens on a guy watching a couple having sex through a rifle scope and moves straight into a car chase replete with the impressive stunts and screaming, speed obsessed lunatics us modern Max fans have come to know and love. From the chase we cut straight to Max at home enjoying a beer while his son Sprog plays nearby and his woman Jesse lays down a smooth tenor sax groove. You think I’m kidding? This is George Miller. He does whatever the hell he wants and sets it in a world so fantastic you go for the ride because nothing seems less cool than being left in the dust. 

Mad Max takes place “a few years from now” in a society that’s still more or less functioning as a society. It’s pre-apocalyptic but it’s fraying around the edges a bit. The guardrails keeping the world on the road have come off and the first thing we’ve all decided to do with our newfound freedom is ignore the speed limit. 

In steps the MFP or Main Force Patrol, a band of leather-clad peacekeepers in modified Ford Falcons who attempt to curtail, whilst participating in, vehicular mayhem. Keep in mind I had to look all that up. It’s not super clear, from the film itself, who the hell these people are or who exactly imbued them with any authority. They’re all maniacs. Except Max, who despite the name, may be the sanest of the bunch.

In the opening scene, the MFP is attempting to slow down Nightrider, a self-described fuel-injected suicide machine, who’s maybe running from something and maybe just out for a Sunday drive with his girlfriend and doing a little too much cackling. Whichever it is, Max puts a stop to it by running Nightrider into a pile of road garbage killing him and his girl instantly.

Unbeknownst to Max, Nightrider was friendly with a guy named Toecutter, the leader of a flambouant biker gang known for aggressive face-touching and dancing the tango when they roll into town. When Toecutter and the gang learn about the death of Nightrider they vow revenge, but while they’re waiting on their revenge, they attack a couple and trash their car and maybe rape a guy and when Max and his partner, Jim Goose, show up to assess the scene, they find I think a rookie biker who got left behind at the crime scene? Or maybe he was too fucked up to leave? I don’t know he’s just sitting there and Max and Goose take him to jail and I think that pisses the gang off too? So they’re out for double revenge? I was never very clear on Toecutter’s motivation and I’m still not sure what pissed off the gang. I don’t think they like people looking at them.

That basically covers the first 45 minutes of the film. It’s energetic and funny and nuts. But then, since shit is too thick, Max quits the MFP, packs up his family and they go on vacation. He just fucks off to the country, and quite frankly the movie suffers. It starts to drag, and there are a couple slice of life scenes that feel extremely out of place, especially sitting here in 2024 having seen all 4 of these movies. 

There’s a half hour that’s just kind of ok, still profoundly odd, but ok. But they bring it all back in the last 15 minutes with another great series of stunts that still seem wild even today. All I could think about was these 20 something knuckleheads out in the bush testing the boundaries of what can be legally accomplished in a stunt sequence. Grant Page was the stunt coordinator for Mad Max and Miller would work with him again on Beyond Thunderdome, but Guy Norris would coordinate The Road Warrior and Fury Road so I guess I have to give George credit for the consistent audacity of these effects. The man knows how to crash cars.

Mel Gibson is pretty bad. He’s young and reasonably attractive but his performance is, let’s call it unrefined. His wife Jesse is played by Joanne Samuel and she’s cute and real. Steve Bisley does a great job as Jim Goose, but the award for best actor in the movie goes to Hugh Keayes-Byrne as Toecutter. He’s fantastic and might as well be Chris Hemsworth’s father. You can draw a straight line from Toecutter to Dr. Dementus. 

Ok. Y’all. I wrote that last paragraph before realizing that Hugh Keayes-Byrne IS IMMORTAN JOE! I can’t. I’m so happy. He may actually be Chris Hemsworth’s father!

There’s so much great, weird shit in this movie. It’s the kind of film you have to pause because the frame is packed with interesting detail, and you need extra time to look at it all. The action is great, that 70’s film stock makes everything look incredibly cool, I mean what can you say about George Miller. He has a vision, and he executes. Full SFPWC seal of approval.

If you haven’t seen it, you definitely need to, and if it’s been a while, watch it again. It’s the OG, the foundation for everything to come, and fun as all apocalyptic hell. 

Civil War Review

What’s so Civil About War Anyway?

Let’s get this out of the way, Civil War will not trigger your outrage reflex. If you are looking for a sweet, hour and 49 minute hit of that crystal rage, stick to Tik Tok. Unless the very words “Texas” and “California” get your dander up, Civil War steers so clear of anything resembling commentary, one wonders why Alex Garland bothered to set it here at all. Because it really could have taken place in any war-torn country of the last 30 years and it would have been exactly the same, fairly enjoyable film that it is . And maybe I’m stumbling on the central theme as I write this, that the US is just one suspended election away from becoming another dusty, endless conflict zone, the news from which we inevitably tune out, but I don’t really know. I’ll tell you the same thing everyone I went with told me as we were walking out of the theater, “I’m gonna have to think about that one.”

Civil War follows Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and Joel (Wagner Moura) as they make their way from New York City to Washington DC ostensibly so Joel can interview the president (Nick Offerman) although we don’t dwell on that much. Along for the ride is aspiring photojournalist Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) and New York Times reporter (I think?) Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson). Neither of the writers in this group ever appear to do any work so it’s mostly about photography and the importance of capturing horror so that, as Lee puts it, other people can ask questions. Which is really placing yourself several degrees away from difference making. Not only do we not do anything, we don’t even ask the questions, we just document so that someone else can ask questions and then, maybe, WAAAYYY on down the road, somebody might actually do something about all…. this. I guess that is the job of the photojounalist, but none of the photos they take in the movie ever go anywhere or change anything. Rather than highlighting the necessity of the fourth estate, Civil War almost seems to debase it. Yes, the main characters take a lot of beautiful and important pictures, but at the end of the day it’s the people holding the guns who make the calls. Maybe that’s what it’s about? 

Don’t get me wrong, Civil War is, in the words of another of my fellow theater-goers, “frickin’ tight!” It’s well made, well acted, and most of it takes place in the gorgeous Georgia sunshine. There are moments of real tension, and the 3rd act is exciting. I do think, without giving too much away, that the denouement completely undermines the entire plot, but that’s ok! That’s fine, that’s like, not what the movie is about, man! What is it about? I DON’T KNOW. But I think you should see it because Alex Garland is a writer/director worth funding so vote with your wallet and go buy a ticket to this decent movie. Just don’t expect it to pick a side, play both sides, or even acknowledge the existence of sides. 

The Sinner Review | The Sinner is the Bill Pullman We Need Right Now

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

I have now watched all three seasons of USA’s The Sinnner, streaming on Netflix, and I have have to ask because I am genuinely curious, who is Bill Pullman’s target audience? Is there a specific demographic this man appeals to? Boomers? Gen Xers? Mass appeal? He’s a weirdo’s weirdo who doesn’t come up in conversation very often. I’m a Pullman fan myself, but I’ve ever stood around at a party quoting lines and debating his best work. Bill Paxton, yes, many times, god rest him, but not Pullman. Why is that?

I googled “Bill Pullman fan club” to see if there was a corner of the internet my fellow Pullmaniacs liked to congregate, but all I could find was a fanpop page with this picture of young Bill squatting on top of a stool or something,

and a Bullpullman.org that’s laid out like a ransom demand.

Shouldn’t we be better organized? Doesn’t this man, who’s been killing the game for four decades deserve a digital shrine somewhere? Isn’t there some merch’ I can buy?

I think the first time I became Pullman Aware was after the movie Lost Highway. I was, of course, a huge Spaceballs fan, but too young at the time to think of the people in movies as actors. He was just Lonestar, the hero in a straightforward Mel Brooks parody. But Lost Highway is a strange film. It forces the audience to ask some tough questions like, Where did that guy go? Who was that guy? Who is this new guy? Is this the same guy as the other guy? The answer, in many ways to all of them, is Bill Pullman.

Someone at USA network knew which way was up; the enigmatic, taciturn Harry Ambrose is the only reason to watch The Sinner. He’s half Columbo, half Mickey Rourke in Barfly. His halting speech, misshapen yet still handsome face, and large head cocked back and to the side all seem to say, come closer. Come closer, dear viewer or you won’t be able to hear what I have to say, if and when I say anything at all – I swear, in three seasons it feels like Pullman has maybe a dozen lines.

I like this show because it’s about the search for what happened and why rather than the search for who did it. Anything could have happened so the mystery is vast and hard to predict. The search for who did it invariably leads to the same conclusion: someone did it. Oh it was that guy? I thought it was the other guy.

The first season of The Sinner is very good. Jessica Biel stars as Cora Tennetti and her relationship with Ambrose is tempestuous and engaging. We learn Ambrose has his own set of extracurricular interests which constrict his social and professional life. They get away from this a bit in the later seasons to the show’s detriment.

Season 2 takes place in Ambrose’s hometown. We get a local detective, a kid, and a cult. Everyone loves cults. Not as into kids, but this one is alright. The story unearths Harry’s past and secretive local politics.

By season 3, the writers seem to have forgotten the whole more-to-the-story thing and the show turns into one long episode of Criminal Minds. We get Matt Bomer as professional handsome person Jamie Burns, and Chris Messina as edgelord Nick Haas. The best part about season 3 is Jessica Hecht as Sonya Barzel who is the perfect complimentary weirdo to Harry Ambrose.

Watch the first two seasons of The Sinner if you are a Bill Pullman fan, or if you’re just a mystery fan. The third season can be skipped unless you’re a diehard, and if you are a diehard, then maybe you should be the one to start a Bill Pullman fan club. I’ll be first in line to sign up. In the meantime, I need to watch Ruthless People.

Alice in Borderland Review | Escape Room Meets Lord of the Flies

Rating: 3 out of 5 skull-piercing lasers.

Alice in Borderland has very little to do with Alice in Wonderland, playing cards, a character named Hatter… that’s really it. Hatter isn’t all that mad and Alice is a dude named Arizu. Arizu is a shiftless gamer, a disappointment to his father, and a cautionary tale of wasted potential even to his two best friends.

It begins with Arizu, Chöta, and Karube goofing off in Tokyo, making videos, and interfering with traffic, both vehicle and pedestrian. This attracts the attention of the local constabulary and the lads rabbit to a subway station bathroom where they squeeze into a stall and lock the door. The lights go out. They come back up. The boys exit the station and Oh Betsy everyone is gone.

We don’t know why, where they went, who drove, or how long they’re going to be gone. It’s best if you don’t ask too many questions. Alice in Borderland doesn’t like to explain itself, but it’s only the first season. Lost ran for 6 seasons and not one time did it ever think to tell its viewers what was going on.

Arizu and crew muck about in deserted Tokyo for a bit, enjoying the elbow room and free snacks before a digital billboard instructs them to head towards a mysterious game arena. Our heroes meet a few other people in the same predicament, and that’s where the action truly begins.

The first episodes revolve around these games. A group of people is instructed to solve a puzzle, lose they die, win they live and get a few days vacation. Arizu, with his extensive background in leisure, is a natural. I can almost hear the argument that must have inspired Haro Aso, creator of the manga on which the show is based. “You don’t know, DAD! Someday being good at video games may save my life!” SLAM.

I like the first half of the season. The show is violent and twisted throughout, but when the killing is centered around puzzle solving it’s more focused. Towards the end, Alice in Borderland takes a turn into post-apocalypse nation building and becomes a bit of a free-for-all.

Arizu (Kento Yamazaki) and Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya), an orphaned mountain climber he meets along the way, carry the show. Their loyalty to each other is what keeps this alternate universe from spinning out of control. In constant danger, Tsuchiya is the more stoic of the two, leaving Yamazaki to sob and rage for the rest of us.

I’d give Alice in Borderland a shot. Its quality production, acting, and world building were enough to keep me engaged. It gets going fast so try the first one and see what you think, just don’t expect any disappearing cats or stoned caterpillars. And if you need incentive to keep going, the last few episodes, everyone is in a bathing suit. Because why the hell not. What did I tell you about asking questions.

I Don’t Buy It, David Sedaris

Years ago I asked my friend Marcus what percentage of individual days of his life he thought he could remember. He looked up at the ceiling for a moment and came back with “75%.” 75? Not a chance in hell. Listen I understand the instinct. We want to believe our lives were lived in service of something, and that we savored each day of our all too brief time here. We’d all like to be able to look our maker square in the face and swear we only spent the whole day smoking weed and watching The Simpsons one time. A couple of times. But 75%? It’s like 10, maybe less.

I remember exactly two days from all of junior high school: the day I got sent to the principal’s office for pretending to scratch my eye but actually giving the middle finger to a line of passing 6th graders, and the day I fed crickets to Mr. Dowell’s tarantula. That’s it. Go even further back and it gets worse. My only memory from childhood is the arms of the glasses my brother wore that wrapped around the backs of his ears and made it look like he was wearing little silver earrings. The rest is just the opening credits from The Wonder Years.

So call me skeptical when I opened 2005’s Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim and found yet another collection of brilliant, hilarious stories from David Sedaris’s life. I just find it hard to believe anyone has this much gold lying around in the attic. Much like the ability to recall birthdays seems superhuman to the abuser of the belated, I raise an eyebrow at the volume of consistently excellent tales Sedaris delivers in his books.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is, as you might expect, mostly about his family. The best chapters are intimate and unflinching portraits of his siblings. Sedaris posses an unequaled mastery of the anecdote, revealing personal, and often unflattering details about his loved ones, but doing so with kindness, sincerity, and obvious affection. The task becomes trickier after you have a couple of best-sellers under your belt. He writes,

“She’s afraid to tell me anything important, knowing I’ll only turn around and write about it. In my mind, I’m like a friendly junkman, building things from the little pieces of scrap I find here and there, but my family’s started to see things differently. Their personal lives are the so-called pieces of scrap I so casually pick up, and they’re sick of it. More and more often their stories begin with the line. ‘You have to swear you will never repeat this.’ I always promise, but it’s generally understood that my word means nothing.”

Nevertheless, he continues to sift nuggets from the river of everyday life and deliver them polished into our waiting hands. Naked is still his funniest book. Barrel Fever is second on the strength of the Santaland Diaries alone, to this day one of the funniest things I’ve ever read, but I would put Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim at a strong third. I laughed a lot. The one about the boy and the hot chocolates is my favorite.

Section 2.2 of David Sedaris’s Wikipedia page is entitled “Truth of nonfiction work” so someone else has asked this question before. I can’t bring myself to read it. Despite all my doubting, I don’t want them to be made up. I want to believe it’s all real. I want to think that somehow the perfect person was born into this crazy, fascinating family and wrote it all down for us. And more than anything, I want him to keep doing it.

Wrong Way on Runyon

I got bored in the morning. Bored. I read my articles and then stared at the blank screen of the TV, trying to get up the will to turn it on but I couldn’t. There’s nothing there. All my games are dull, I’ve got no broadcast TV, no news. Nothing. Just an empty, quiet apartment. I hike now so I put on my boots, grabbed two masks and headed out the door. Let’s see what’s going on out here in the new covid hotspot. Are people still in Runyon on Thursday afternoon? Yes they are.

I wanted to go mask-less on the way up, since I’d already be sucking wind, then put the masks on for the much easier stroll down. That went out the window. I ran into people right away and we did the last-minute, scramble to put the mask on move. I hate the last minute mask move so I just kept it on and stopped a lot to catch my breath. It was a nice excuse. Oh I’d totally be sprinting up this mountain if it weren’t for these masks. Yeah it’s the mask’s fault. Passed a few dogs on the way. All good boys and girls.

It was a hazy day in Los Angeles, downtown a mirage to the southeast. I studied it for a long time as I waited for a couple to pass on their way down. The man was encouraging but thought she was wearing the wrong shoes. They looked like running shoes. You’re fine, everyone slides on the gravel.

When I finally reached the top a man with two young sons asked me what was down the way I came.
“Curson,” I wheezed. “Wattles.”
“Can you get out?” He wanted to know.
I composed myself. “Yeah it lets out into a dog park. Take the driveway to Curson. No problem.” This piqued the interest of his youngest.
“I want to go to the dog parrrrrk,” he pleaded as he sat on the ground and traced his finger through the dust.
“To be clear,” I told him. “There were no dogs in the dog park when I came through. You’ll probably see a lot more going that way.” I tilted my head towards the long, gentle path down. The way I normally take. The way I would skip today. “And it’s easier.”
The boy seemed to understand and the three of them came to a consensus; they would take the long path. I bid them good day, congratulating myself for not stumbling over the goodbye or saying something weird like “Thank You!”

I took the middle path down, one I had always wondered about. Why not today. Also I’d neglected to bring water and it felt shorter. It was chill. Everyone I passed was chill. Some people said hello, some didn’t. I passed a couple of middle aged white dudes discussing DJ documentaries.
“I saw MF Doom in Minneapolis in 1986.”
It wasn’t this exactly but it was close. I know MF Doom was in there somewhere but if that person? group? didn’t exist in ‘86, it’s my error, not his.
“You want to talk about a documentary? You should see…”
I lost them, or forgot, I’m sorry.

A woman let me pass so she could rest, hands on knees, out of breath. A teenage couple stopped nearby and the girl pointed to the woman. “That’s me inside,” she told her boyfriend.

I kept on down. Not a bad trail, less steep than the one I came up, steeper than the road. When I got to the bottom I saw a sign that said “One Way” pointing up. HA! I thought it was a prank. There were two more. Oh, I thought. I went the wrong way. What a terrible place to put a one way sign. Useless, in fact. The place for a one way sign is at the BEGINNING of the wrong way, not the end. If you put it at the end you might as well include the words, “For Next Time.” I started to wonder if the people who didn’t say hello to me were angry that I was disobeying the rules of the road and not just exhibiting standard big city frostiness. Tough shit, y’all. Move the signs.

I got dumped out onto the road almost at street level. I took the right turn out past a woman in a uniform under one of those portable square tents that read LA City Department of Recreation and Parks. Mask enforcement for sure. If she only knew what was going on out there. She probably did. The exit put me onto my cross street. How did I not realize this was here? It’s so close. I walked back to Gardner to cross Hollywood. Need those extra steps anyway. Do I go again today? Is that excessive? I don’t like climbing with a mask on so would I take the easy way up and the hard way down? Is that the move? There’s nothing going on in here, that’s for sure. My TV is glaring at me again, but until it has something new to offer it can go fuck itself. At least outside has dogs.

Sweet Home Review | A Monster of a Good Time

Rating: 5 out of 5 Nose Bleeds

The one with half a head will hear you. The eyeball will squeeze you like a python. The one with the tongue will drain you dry. And you don’t want to mess with the big guy. Your best chance? The “special infectee.” But can you trust him?

Sweet Home starts like a basic zombie-apocalypse show; the world ends and a group of people barricade themselves inside a crumbling apartment building with a ground-floor shopping center while trying to survive and figure out what’s going on. But instead of zombies, it’s monsters.

And monsters are inherently more interesting. Zombies are all the same raggedy, growling drunks, but each creature in Sweet Home is unique, and oh so cool. They’re funny, gross, scary, impressive, and just downright effective. The stop motion look to some of them hooked me right away. I’ve always found stop motion unsettling. Wallace and Gromit? Terrifying.

All of the makeup and special effects are excellent, and it’s gory throughout. The first symptom of monsterization is a nose bleed, and this is no mere trickle. Such a simple thing, and yet so disturbing. If you suffer from epistaxiphobia, do not watch this show.

The human beings in Sweet Home are even better than the monsters. It’s a big, beautiful ensemble cast, a really fantastic collection of weirdos. The kids are great, the young adults are great, but I have a real soft spot for these older actors. They are PROS. Shoutout to Kim Hyun who is the heart and soul of the whole thing. Entire episodes pass with no monsters at all and they are some of the best, that’s how compelling these people are. The show creators gave them a crazy world to work in and they make it livable. They make it home.

All the credit to directors Young-woo Jang and Eung-bok Lee for pulling this thing together, lots of threads to hold on to and they do it nimbly. In ten episodes I can only think of one or two times the logic broke down. The explanation for why people are turning into monsters is weird and doesn’t play a big part – people are turning into monsters just deal with it – and there’s a concept called the “golden hour” which doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the great thing about watching a show from a different country is you can just chalk it up to culture. Huh, I guess that’s how they would do it there, interesting.

I love Sweet Home. Watch it right away. It is 10 episodes of fun, available on Netflix. If you’re already a fan of Korean horror classics like The Host and Train to Busan, you will love this. If you are new to Korean horror, this is a great place to start. It’s a graveyard smash.