Seth Harris

Movie Review – The Grudge (2020)

The Grudge (2020)
Written & Directed by Nicolas Pesce

In the late 1990s/early 2000s, Japanese horror was a pretty hot item in movies. It started with imports to the West of movies like Ringu and Kairo. This type of fear offered a more modern take on tropes with monsters that didn’t find archetypes we were used to. Technology was a crucial piece in these stories, but not in all of them. The most common element was the city, an urban landscape full of ancient evils and a cloud of darkness hanging over it all. This is where The Grudge series comes from. The enemy doesn’t come from cell phones or computers or even a haunted video. It’s classical horror, a simple haunted house. In 2020, the second American Grudge film was released, which is where this review comes in.

TV Review – Kidding Season Two

Kidding Season Two (Showtime)
Written by Dave Holstein, Michael Vukadinovich, Roberto Benabib, Hilary Weisman Graham, Joey Mazzarino, Jas Waters, and Dylan Tanous
Directed by Jake Schrier, Kimberly Peirce, Michel Gondry, and Bert & Bertie

Kidding’s second season most definitely exceeded my expectations, but it’s a challenging thing to explain. The series has a deceptively simple hook, what if Mr. Rogers had a mental breakdown? But it’s so much more than that, and the first season was a very messy delivery of a complex and complicated story. Season two feels more focused and headed towards a definite ending. By the time you reach the tenth episode, this feeling like the end of Kidding, I honestly can’t imagine that there are more stories to tell.

Movie Review – Kramer vs. Kramer

Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
Written & Directed by Robert Benton

Much like 2019’s Marriage Story, Kramer vs. Kramer is very concerned about not giving the audience a biased story about divorce. While Dustin Hoffman is definitely the lead actor, Meryl Streep’s role as his wife who flees their home is not the villain. They are antagonistic for part of the story, but by the end, the film gives us a realistic finale. In real life, healthy people can’t stay enemies, mainly when there is a child in the middle. That’s not always the case, and maybe these characters are too aspirational, but the emotion and humanity of the situation feel very real.

TV Review – Star Trek: Picard Season One, Episode Eight

Star Trek: Picard (CBS All Access)
Season One, Episode Eight – “Broken Pieces”
Written by Michael Chabon
Directed by Maja Vrvilo

We went from an episode that really hit on the themes that make people love Star Trek to an episode that is unrecognizable as a piece of the franchise. “Broken Pieces” is attempting to be an entry so full of plot twists that it has no arc, no structure, just a serialized chapter. There are genuinely some low points for Picard in this one, particularly a plot development with Rios that comes entirely out of nowhere and doesn’t read as an organic progression for the character or the story.

Media Moment (03/13/20)

Well, coronavirus has wreaked havoc with movies and television. In these times, they are some of the least important things (or at least they should be). Because the United States is so focused on capitalist consumption, it is notable that the entire Disney theme park/cruise division is shutting down for the rest of the month. Additionally, films like No Time To Die, Fast & Furious 9, New Mutants, and others have been bumped back on the calendar or indefinitely. You have to wonder when movie theaters will starting shutting down due to a decrease in audiences.

TV Review – The Best of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Part One

Emissary (original airdate: January 3rd, 1993)
Written by Rick Berman and Michael Piller
Directed by David Carson

Where did Deep Space Nine come from? The concept started with Brandon Tartikoff, the Chairman of Paramount in the early 1990s who wanted a new addition to the franchise that was a Western. This would be about a lawman (Starfleet officer) coming with his son to a station on the edge of the frontier trying to restore order. Elements of American westerns were woven throughout with the bartender, the sheriff, the native people, the kindly doctor, etc. Showrunner Michael Piller liked the idea of a stationary Star Trek series because he saw it as an opportunity to make the effects of episodes long-lasting. Instead of a procedural, this could be a serialized program with ripples across seasons from storylines. Characters would not be part of a crew on an assignment but a community of disparate people forced to live together and learn how to survive.

Movie Review – The Deer Hunter

The Deer Hunter (1978)
Written by Deric Washburn, Michael Cimino, Louis Garfinkle, and Quinn K. Redeker
Directed by Michael Cimino

While this was intended to kick off my Meryl Streep retrospective, I wouldn’t consider it a Streep movie. Oh, she’s definitely a crucial supporting character in the story, and I will talk about her performance, but this film is more a prologue to that series. This is more a Robert DeNiro/Christopher Walken movie, and it is a damn good one. It hasn’t necessarily aged perfectly, and it’s not my favorite film about the Vietnam War, but it is a well-acted, intense, and beautifully tragic movie.

TV Review – Star Trek: Picard Season One, Episodes Six & Seven

Star Trek: Picard (CBS All Access)
Season One Episode Six – “The Impossible Box”
Written by Nick Zayas
Directed by Maja Vrvilo

Season One Episode Seven – “Nepenthe”
Written by Samantha Humphrey and Michael Chabon
Directed by Doug Aarniokoski

I’m a little lost as to what the story being told here is at this point. The pacing decisions from early on have felt unbalanced, and “The Impossible Box” is a vital example of this. The audience has known that the Artifact is where Picard eventually will arrive since episode one. The show has meandered on its way to get there with strange layovers like “Absolute Candor.” When we finally reach the reclaimed Borg cube, things suddenly happen at rapid-fire, and we’re still left with little information moving forward as to what exactly this story is.

Movie Review – Jumanji: The Next Level

Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)
Written by Jake Kasdan, Jeff Pinkner, and Scott Rosenberg
Directed by Jake Kasdan

At this point, Jumanji, as a media franchise, has little to nothing to do with Chris Van Allsburg’s 1981 children’s picture book. Jumanji was already distancing itself from its origins with the 1995 adaptation starring Robin Williams. The plot was given more complexity beyond just two children playing an enchanted and troublesome board game. A lot of people missed the semi-sequel Zathura: A Space Adventure that reframed the experience as a science-fiction style story. There was also the Jumanji animated series that ran on UPN for three years and drifted even further from the book.

February 2020 Digest

Features
My Favorite Films About Love
Book Update – Jan/Feb 2020

Movie Reviews (*** = PopCult Recommends)
Doctor Sleep
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)