House of the Dragon (S2:E1 – A Son for a Son)

Set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones, season 2 of House of the Dragon picks up days after the conclusion of Season 1. Westeros is on the verge of war as the already cloven royal family reals in the aftermath of Prince Luke’s death at the hand of his cousin Aemond. Unwilling to forego vengeance, will Queen Rhaenyra’s next actions set the whole of the country in dragon flames?

House of the Dragon (S2:E1 – A Son for a Son) Review

Season one of the series was already at a disadvantage when compared to the electrifying early seasons of GOT. However, it quickly found its own voice, distinguishing itself as a more deliberately paced affair far more interested in political intrigue than in being an epic adventure with global repercussions.

Episode 1 of this season continues the trend even though it also sets the groundwork for what look to be set pieces to rival the scope, if not the emotional connection of Game of Thrones. And that’s really where this episode suffers the most: a lack of emotional connection.

Unhelped by the two-year gap between seasons 1 & 2, A Son for a Son doesn’t possess the same connective tissue as even some of the weakest episodes of its older brother. Its characters seem to blend together with names that are even more similar and indistinguishable from one another than they are.

All in all, the somewhat slowly-paced episode 1 of season 2 of House of the Dragon is held together by good performances and promise.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Oh, Varys

• Game of Thrones had no shortage of strong women in leadership roles. However,  unlike Daenerys and Sansa, who went through hell only to gain power organically, or Cersei, who schemed and connived her way to power and ultimately ruin, the leading ladies of House of Dragon wield power much more like their male counterparts. Furthermore, the competence scale has significantly tipped in their direction.
  • With all of his flaws, even after losing his hand, Jaime Lannister’s character arc was both that of finding redemption and, once again, becoming competent. Season 2 of HOTD seems to be setting the stage to make the men more or less irrelevant.
  • It’s fairly subtle at this point, and I might be wrong about the show’s trajectory, but I doubt it.

House of the Dragon (S2:E2 – Rhaenrya the Cruel)

The drama continues as the consequences of Daemon’s impetuousness begin to bear poisoned fruit. The Red Keep is in turmoil, the king is furious, and war is inevitable.

House of the Dragon (S2:E2 – Rhaenrya the Cruel) Review

Rhaenrya the Cruel is another perfectly satisfactory entry into the series. The performances are consistently fantastic, and the dialogue is better than almost anything else out there right now. However, the show still hasn’t reached GOT’s intrigue or on-the-edge-of-your-seat thrillingness. Instead, it continues to give off a very soap opera-like vibe, though with infinitely better script, performances, and production value.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Floppy Wieners

• I’m all for the franchise’s complete omission of gratuitous nudity. It added nothing to the original series and served as little more than cheap titillation. However, while this series shows a marked reduction, they make a concerted effort to hide female nudity without the same consideration for the men. Don’t get me wrong, junk isn’t spinning in the wind in scene after scene, but they will show completely naked men (junk hidden) while giving half-ass-crack shots to women playing dancing whores. It’s not an accident.

Geography Schmeography

• One of the things that gave the original such a wonderful sense of scope was its clearly defined geography, as shown by clear racial and cultural divides. You know, like the totality of human existence was before cheap and easy mass transit was a thing. Heck, have you been to modern-day Japan or Norway? They’re filled with Japanese and Norwegians.

House of the Dragon (S2:E3-E8)

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Hacks (season 3)

In the third season of “Hacks,” Deborah Vance, the legendary Las Vegas comic, tries to land her dream job. With some help from Ava, she hosts the Late Show, aiming to secure the host spot left open by Danny Collins. Meanwhile, Ava, now a writer for a popular show called “On The Contrary,” confronts Deborah after being cut out of her life. Their dynamic evolves, leading to hilarious misadventures.

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Blue Beetle

Xolo Maridueña, who is best known for his role as Miguel Diaz in the Netflix series Cobra Kai, plays Jaime Reyes (pronounced HI-may – get it right, racist!), a recent college graduate who, upon returning home, discovers that his family (consisting of his mother, father, sister, grandmother, and an uncle with a head so big that he shall now be known as MODOKito) is in crisis. They are on the verge of being evicted from their home and have lost the family business.

When a stroke of good luck that lands Jaime an opportunity to work at Kord Industries quickly goes badly, Jaime finds himself inextricably merged with a piece of advanced alien tech that grants him powers far beyond those of mortal men. He will have to learn what it takes to be a hero to have any chance at defeating the evil head of Kord, who wants nothing more than to extract the tech from Jaime’s corpse and use it to create an army of super soldiers for sale to the highest bidder.

Deeply flawed, Blue Beetle has so much working against it that it has no right to be as entertaining as it is. It’s packed full of just north of mediocre actors, almost no character growth, clunky dialogue, an unimaginative and formulaic plot recycled from the 80s, more identity politics than an Al Sharpton news conference, and a dumb script written by someone whose only other full-length feature film writing credit is for the critical and box office disaster, Miss Bala.

Neither distractingly bad nor worthy of much praise, Xolo Maridueña’s Jaime has no identity or personality other than that of being a nice and well-mannered young man, and Maridueña’s performance is just as bland. He’s the cinematic equivalent of a fast-food burger; he has the form of a delicious burger, but he’s packed with soy and filler. Yet, even though his focus and commitment to the character occasionally falter, he manages to come across as a kind-hearted and sweet kid. It earns him a lot of goodwill, and that’s sort of the film’s special sauce.

Even when presented with a snarky and unpleasant sister, overplayed and underperformed by Belissa Escobedo, Jaime seems nice. When he’s confronted with rudeness and injustice, he seems nice. It’s hard not to root for him, and he’s helped by a family dynamic that should irritate you because it’s so overemphasized that even The Godfather thinks it’s a bit much. However, either through film magic or a genuine fondness felt by the cast for one another, there’s a compelling authenticity to their interactions, which carries the movie.

Many claim that a film is only as good as its villain, and if that axiom holds, Blue Beetle has no hope of pulling out of its opening weekend earnings nosedive. Carapax is so generic and uninteresting that, between his scenes, it’s easy to forget that he’s in the movie. Along those same lines, the talented Susan Sarandon turns in such a forgettable performance as the big bad CEO of Kord that one wonders if she owes back taxes. Not helped by screenwriter Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer’s inexperience, Sarandon, a powerhouse actress usually capable of making cereal ingredients sound compelling, phones it in via tin can and string.

Further complicating things is George Lopez. While a few years ago, he found himself in the middle of a feud in which he accused fellow comedian Carlos Mencia of stealing his jokes, in Blue Beetle, Lopez does his best to steal every scene. Unfortunately, 90% of the time, his paranoid Uncle Rudy schtick is more obnoxious than endearing. Not known for his acting chops, Lopez often seems to be doing a mediocre impersonation of a lovable goofball rather than internalizing his performance.

Again, with all of this going against it, Blue Beetle should deserve to be buried under the Warner Bros. back lot. Instead, by virtue of excellent pacing (for the second and third acts), effects that are at least better than The Flash microwave baby, and the aforementioned sincerity, Blue Beetle manages to eke out enough chuckles and smiles from the audience while delivering sufficient action to distract you for two hours. It might not be worth seeing in the theaters, but you could rent a lot worse.

ROLE MODELS IN BLUE BEETLE

It’s been so long since I’ve had a movie worthy of this section that I almost forgot that it’s something that we do.

• Blue Beetle is nearly overstuffed with strong, loving, and  supportive family members, both men and women, who would and do put their lives on the line for one another. They are (for the most part) kind and caring, patient and understanding, as well as fierce and loyal. In a world where the word “representation” is bandied about to the point of meaninglesness, this (a healthy nuclear family) is the type of representation that we need in movies today.

WOKE ELEMENTS

For all that the movie preaches at the altar of identity politics, it promotes the importance of a loving and traditional family above all else. Further, the Catholic faith isn’t treated as a joke, and the existence of a meaningful afterlife is now DCU canon.

• So much identity politics, like all of the identity politics.
  • The parents, grandmother, and uncle are illegal Mexican immigrants, and the movie ensures that you know it and that it’s America’s fault that they are here illegally.
    • Yet, despite their illegal status, they raised two children and sent one to college (the other didn’t want to go) while owning and operating a business of their own.
  • A crack about the government being well-practiced at caging Mexicans makes its way into the film.
  • There’s something so infuriating about listening to a middling comedian who came from nothing but has been able to amass a fortune of nearly $50 million with a tired “Chicanos be like” routine, spend two hours checking off every Left-wing talking point and bashing the country that fostered his success. George Lopez should be ashamed of himself.
• Class politics are bludgeoned over the audience’s head almost as much as identity politics.
  • In one scene, in an effort to say “hello,” Jaime awkwardly interrupts a perfect stranger who is 60 feet away from him and in the middle of what is clearly an important business call. Instead of the film’s perspective being that there was no way that she could have even heard him, let alone how rude he was to interrupt, the stranger is portrayed as a self-absorbed rich white person (which she is, but that’s not the point). Jaime’s sister then dares to say, “We’re invisible to people like that.” Professional victim much?
• The film is being marketed to kids, yet there is a lot of cussing in it, and not a single curse word feels organic. Who needs to protect the innocence of children when there’s money to be made?
  • • “Crazy b!t@h.”
    • Countless “what the hells” and variations thereof.
• The costumers dressed the Jenny Kord character in unattractive and mannish clothing throughout. However, it’s unclear if it was due to the film’s pervasive Miami Vice / 80s shoulder pad and blazer vibe or a woke attempt to eschew traditional femininity. Honestly, it could go either way.
• There are so many cartoon instances of white people being racist.
• First and foremost, every white person in the film is either evil or racist or a rich douché bag. Conversely, every Latino is either a superhero, a loving and charitable family member, a compassionate business leader, or a villain who experiences a redemptive change of heart.
• There are numerous instances of white people mispronouncing Spanish names out of spite or ignorance.
  • No receptionist of a huge and posh company, regardless of how blonde her hair or blue her eyes, would continue to insult a registered guest of one of the board members intentionally by purposely and snarkily mispronouncing their name after she’d been politely corrected, especially if the board member’s last name was on the building.
  • I lived near central Mexico for a short time, and while I found the Mexican people to be mostly warm and well-meaning folk, they never got my name right once. Do you want to know what I did or said about it? Nothing, because I understood that we possessed very different accents and were raised with two wildly different languages.
• There’s an instance in which Jaime stands up for a woman, and she says, “I appreciate the chivalry, but I can take care of myself.” Ok toots. If you can’t be gracious, next time, takes your lickins.
• ***SPOILER ALERT*** Finally, because they’ve already established that a man saving a woman is problematic, the movie, in one of its more ridiculous yet heartwarming moments, sends four women with no combat skills and limited tech (with which they have minutes to familiarize themselves) to rescue a completely neutralized Jaime. Furthermore, the ladies in question consist of a 120lbs waif and three dumpy broads, one of which appears to be well into her 80s.***END SPOILERS***

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Barbie

The basic premise of Barbie is that two worlds exist, the real world and the Barbie world. We quickly discover that the play of those in the real world affects the reality of the Barbie world. When Barbie finds herself having an existential crisis (a term for which you should wear a helmet when watching the movie for you will be repeatedly bludgeoned with it), she has to go to the real world to find out why the person playing with her is so sad that it’s fundamentally changing Barbie’s very existence, or forever be wretched and miserable herself. Fun, right?

In what is the film’s only redeeming quality, the attention to detail by the costume and set designers for everything in Barbie Land cannot be overstated. Unlike writer/director Greta Gerwig’s obvious hate/hate relationship with the property, the designers clearly adore it, and Barbie Land is a pink plastic love letter in which audiences can blessedly get lost between the film’s many embittered and depressing soapbox soliloquies and Chevrolet commercials.

It’s not fair to say that Barbie has no plot. Instead, it has four or five incomplete ideas masquerading as subplots that jarringly compete for dominance at any given time, never giving the audience a chance or reason to connect with any of them. This also manages to make what should have been a crisply-paced two-hour film feel like it’s still playing.

Of course, the film isn’t helped by its complete lack of anything resembling a likable character. Barbie starts out chipper and friendly but is also self-obsessed as well as entirely oblivious to and dismissive of the emotional needs of her boyfriend. Although, this doesn’t matter much as the writer/director wastes little time before sucking the happy-go-lucky character down into her own personal vortex of misery. Meanwhile, Ken’s character arc goes from dimwitted co-dependent stalker to cotton-headed dictator to weepy basket case.

Similarly, there are no supporting characters for whom to root. In the one role in which going full Kate McKinnon might have actually worked, you can practically hear Gerwig telling her to dial it back off-camera, leaving us with a “Weird Barbie” that’s not that weird. Seriously, it’s no small coincidence that her introductory scene begins with a toy dog taking a toy $h!t on her character’s toy floor.

Continuing the charisma freefall, the vocation specific (i.e., President, Physicist, etc.) Barbies run the gambit from snarky and sassy to being as empty as the plastic dolls for whom they are named. At the same time, the real-world secondary protagonists consist of a nihilistic tween girl whose mom should have beat the b!t@h out of on more than one occasion, to a mother who lets her horrible child be repeatedly horrible without so much as a reprimand.

Ultimately, Barbie is a meanspirited and meandering film that could give meandering plots lessons on meandering. With unlikable characters and an agenda (see below) costumed in sheer and poorly made Chinese knock-off Barbie clothes, Barbie is a study in how to take a dump on fun, light it on fire, and trick fans into stepping on it.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Take every bull$h!t professional victim vagina-hat-wearing talking point ever screeched out of the face of a dumpy blue-haired lesbian at a women’s march, and it’s in this movie. I couldn’t write fast enough to catch even a tenth of them and quickly realized that I was more or less writing the script down in my notes word for word. Here are a few:

• The word “patriarchy” is unironically and awkwardly shoehorned in no fewer than 11 times (I counted).
• Playing mommy with baby dolls is “ok,” but if we’re being honest, it’s actually oppressive, “just ask your mom.”
• Even though the film’s prologue touts Barbie as a breaker of baby doll chains, the film writ large is a two-hour deconstruction of Barbie, tearing it to pieces throughout while also spending no fewer than two minutes on a monologue detailing how Barbie is emblematic of everything wrong with the world, especially the patriarchy.
  • Unrealistic self-image
  • Consumerism
  • Capitalism
  • Blah
  • Blah
  • Blah
• Men have all the power, and women have none (mind you, the movie was written and directed by a well-known multi millionairess and stars a well-known multi millionairess). This sentiment is repeated nearly as often as the word “patriarchy.”
• Men are pigs who objectify women
• “Women hate women, and men hate women.”
• There’s a ton of whining, including a 3-minute speech that might as well break the fourth wall, about how “impossibly hard” it is to be a woman because they are “forced” to be all things to all people while not being too much of those things for others. I can’t over-emphasize the filmmakers’ narcissism.

MORE WOKE ELEMENTS

• The Barbies are utterly dismissive of the Kens and their feelings, to the point of emotional abuse, until the Kens begin to realize that they have agency. Once the men realize their strength and desires, the Barbies are immediately robbed of their will and become Stepford wives. However, in the most oblivious and unintentionally comedic instances of lacking any self-awareness, the filmmakers have the Barbies reassert themselves by embracing the most insultingly stereotypical female behavior. They resort to being passive-aggressively manipulative and using their sexuality to trick the men into giving them their power back.
• All of the men are borderline mentally handicapped, narcissistic, “toxic,” aggressive, and/or cartoonishly pig-like (seriously, you can tell that the person who wrote the construction worker cat-call scene has never once been cat-called. She must have taken notes from She-Hulk).
• In one of the many scenes in which the “patriarchy” is choked down your throat, Ken is talking to an executive who says that the patriarchy isn’t really working so well anymore, but really it is; they are just better at hiding it.
• At one point, the real human protagonist says something along the lines that patriarchy is to women like smallpox was to indigenous people, “they had no defense against it.”
• Every real-world scene that isn’t the all-white quasi-evil Mattel executives looks like a Kashi commercial with perfectly strategically placed diversity.

THE WOKE BARBIES THEMSELVES

• ***SPOILER*** Traditional (a.k.a. Stereotypical Barbie) ultimately has no place in Barbie Land by the film’s end and is only fully realized when she puts on a pair of Birkenstocks and an unflattering Hillary Clinton pantsuit to go to the gynecologist. ***END SPOILER***
• You’ve got your morbidly-obese-and-wouldn’t-be-pretty-even-if-she-lost-the-weight-Barbie
• There’s Horse Face Barbie
• And, of course, there’s Distractingly Obviously a Tranny Dude Barbie

Seriously ladies, if your sense of self is so fragile that a child’s plaything can ruin your self-esteem, you’re the problem.

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