Franklin
SimilarA Fortunate Life, A Little Princess, A Respectable Trade,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Babel, Chicken Nugget, Cleopatra, Dead by Sunset, Dexter, Fallen, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Heidi, Intruders, Jack the Ripper, Jewels, M*A*S*H, Monarch of the Glen, Murder in the Heartland, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Peter and Paul,
Planet of the Apes Pope John Paul II,
Pride and Prejudice Scully Sherlock Holmes Son of the Morning Star, Tales from the Neverending Story, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The 100, The Far Pavilions, The Fire Next Time, The Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These, The Lost World, The Murder of Mary Phagan, The Phantom of the Opera, The Serial Killer's Wife, The Shining, The Strain, The Sun Also Rises, Tiger Lily, 4 femmes dans la vie, Unterleuten: The Torn Village, Wedding Impossible, Wycliffe,
StudioApple Studios,
Michael Douglas's career so deeply connects him to as specific kind of late 20th/early 21st Century man. As a result, throwing him back to the 18th Century and into the body of Benjamin Franklin feels deeply counterintuitive. It is not surprising that Franklin—an adaptation of the book A Great Improvisation by Stacy Schiff—is one of the few period projects Douglas has done, joining the likes of The Ghost and the Darkness and those flashback scenes in the Ant-Man films. What is surprising, and to the series’ credit, is how quickly that strangeness recedes. It isn’t that Douglas manages to fade into the role of Franklin until he disappears entirely, but he does manage to recede enough that he doesn’t disrupt the show’s reality.
In some ways, Douglas proves a surprisingly apt selection. No stranger to playing womanizers on screen, Douglas easily finds the correct valence to portray Franklin’s specific flavor of late 18th-century skirt chaser. The metacommentary works in his favor as well, an aging icon who retains much of his skill but perhaps can no longer command the same buzz or box office returns embodying an aging icon whose mind remains sharp but whose body—and possibly will—has been beaten up by life and time. While almost a decade older than the Franklin he’s portraying, Douglas also excels at the moments where the audience witnesses the statesman energized like old times.
Thibault de Montalembert has neither the time nor the interest in your lame attempts at Call My Agent/Dix pour cent joke attempts. (AppleTV+)
Still, the script too frequently hamstrings the actor. Not bad by any means, the writing still suffers for trying to match Franklin’s reputation. It’s the old conundrum of trying to build a series, film, or play around a singular piece of art. How does a creator convince the audience that someone is singing the most fantastic song ever without truly writing the most fantastic song ever? Similarly, how do writers provide dialogue to what is, by historical reputation, one of the greatest wits in American History without simply quoting his greatest hits? Continue Reading →
Hazbin Hotel
SimilarAmerican Horror Story, Angel, Brimstone, Family Guy, Fawlty Towers, The Shining, Troubles,
StudioA24,
Messy writing keeps this solid cast from shepherding Hotel to strong Yelp scores.
Hazbin Hotel is not for me. That is not a bad thing. If every piece of media appealed to everyone, the homogeneity would be stifling. I can see the appeal of a big, bombastic, gleefully violent, heart-on-its-sleeve musical cartoon for grown-ups (heck, I've enjoyed my fair share of them)—I just don't click with the show's ice-pop made-of-blood aesthetic, and I'm not a huge show-tune guy. Acknowledging the disconnect between the show's vibe and my personal tastes, as a critic, I have two primary takeaways from Hazbin Hotel's first four episodes:
In terms of animation and voicework, Hazbin Hotel is solid—and Keith David's turn as the burnt-out bartending demon Husk is a standout among a game cast.
In terms of writing, Hazbin Hotel is a mess, awkwardly careening between silly and dramatic without precision—most noticeably when it delves into the horrific life of one of its lead players.
Hazbin Hotel's aesthetic is built on contrasts—primarily between series heroine Charlie Morningstar (Erika Henningsen)'s deliberate good cheer, bright smiles, and crayon drawings and the continual viciousness of Hell and most of its denizens. Visually, the cast (both the show's core ensemble and the wider community of Hell) is expressive and distinct. Hell's assorted players and agents are united across factions by the frequent use of red and black either alone or in concert in costume design. Each faction, in turn, has its own visual signifiers—the staff and residents of the Hotel tend towards a hybrid of casual and professional wear, while a powerful gangster clique goes all in on decadence. Heaven's murderous, brotastic angels, meanwhile, opt for a more uniform style. Continue Reading →
Boys With Toys
A project that director/co-writer Barry Levinson had been working on for over a decade before it emerged in theaters in 1992—at one point, it had been planned as his directorial debut before he turned to Diner (1982) instead—Toys offered viewers a mélange of holiday sentiment, strident anti-war satire and the sometimes-unholy combination of schmaltz and schtick that marked the typical Robin Williams performance of the time, all produced on a budget high enough to outstrip the GNP of actual countries. There's no reason on Earth to think that such a bizarre combination would have worked, and Toys' eventual critical and commercial failure would seemingly confirm that it didn't. And yet, while I concede that the film as a whole is a mess—it is an undeniably intriguing mess with just enough moments of genuine brilliance to help get through the rougher and clumsier passages, of which there are more than a few. Continue Reading →
空戦魔導士候補生の教官
Although his name and efforts are often diminished or ignored by many histories of 1970s American cinema, Ralph Bakshi was one of the most audacious filmmakers of the era. Not only did his films tackle issues regarding race, sex, and class in graphic and sometimes profane ways, he did so within the framework of feature animation—a format that many, particularly in the U.S., equated almost entirely with family entertainment. Continue Reading →