S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Gambles of Television

By now, my four or five regular readers (hi guys!) know that I'm a bit of a Netflix fiend. I don't have cable and I almost never watch network TV. I am surely one of thousands for whom a simple cost-benefit analysis demonstrated that subscribing to Netflix, providing as it does a wealth of readily available viewing goodness (and shittiness when the mood strikes), without commercials, is an easy choice versus a usurious cable subscription, mandating as it does tuning in at a particular time and putting up with advertising that you basically paid to see.

And I also cannot be the only person who's been a Netflix subscriber for enough years that I've developed an allergy to commercials that's so acute, I can no longer listen to the radio and do my best to tune out the trailers in front of movies on the (increasingly rare) occasion that I go to the theater.

I began to wonder just how commonplace I am in the above ways while I was watching the series premiere of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. last night. The show itself? Eh, kind of promising. Much of it felt…routine, unexpectedly, but the casting's good overall and the occasional Whedonish touches were noticeable. I do have my doubts about the degree to which fanboy enthusiasm for the Coulson character in Marvel films will translate to small-screen viability over an extended period.

Which brings us to the thing that really fired my imagination as S.H.I.E.L.D. ended and I switched off the opening moments of The Goldbergs. It wasn't wondering about Lola's background, or Mike's destiny, or whether the techie characters with the heavy accents would make it past the pilot. Instead, motivated by this rare hour of commercial exposure, I imagined what the future might bring for TV—and the adaptable little mammal to its overspecialized dinosaur, the Internet.

Review: The Wild Blue Yonder

Though 2005's The Wild Blue Yonder is a Werner Herzog film, don't go into it expecting any of his trademark narration. Though it largely consists of documentary footage, it can't really be called a documentary. And though it has a narrative—described by the opening titles as "a science fiction fantasy"—it is in no way a traditional one.

The story is self-evidently not meant to be taken at face value, as is the case with most science fiction. Let me explain. The Wild Blue Yonder has one actor—the always-adorable Brad Dourif—portraying an alien from the Andromeda galaxy. While standing in front of bleak terrestrial settings (like a seemingly abandoned town and a mobile home apparently hit by a tornado), Dourif explains—to the camera—how his people came to this planet, how the government launched a secret expedition into the far reaches of space in search of an alternative to Earth, and how this expedition discovered Dourif's homeworld. His exposition is overlaid with appropriately otherworldly footage from a space shuttle mission and from an Antarctic diving expedition, along with occasional snippets of interviews with astronomers.

Review: The Grandmaster

Here's how little I knew about Ip Man going into The Grandmaster, the latest of many biopics about him: when I saw the Netflix Instant cover art for the film Ip Man, with the title in all caps, I guessed that it was a wry mockumentary about a superhero charged with enforcing copyrights by going after internet pirates around the world.

Of course, Ip Man was in fact a legendary Chinese martial artist (and Bruce Lee's teacher). And as The Grandmaster unfolded, I began to feel that it may be precisely the worst way to start learning about Ip Man. Partly, this is because the movie really should have been called The Grandmaster's Girlfriend.

Review: Deep Cover

A would-be West Coast Goodfellas, Deep Cover is a '90s crime drama informed by the Reagan/Bush years (specifically their darker side, and you'll note I didn't just say "dark" side, because then it's like "which one?"). Its political undertones don't really emerge until about an hour-plus in, and the degree to which they are unsuccessful is debatable. Whatever the case, they don't fully succeed, and the other plot points contribute to the sense that Deep Cover, whatever strengths it has, mostly misses the mark.

As the title implies, the protagonist cop (Laurence Fishburne) goes deep undercover to try and bring down a chain of coke dealers. Along the way he partners up with a lawyer (Jeff Goldblum) working for one of his targets, and the lines between crime and justice begin to blur, as they are oft wont to do. Before long he's facing down Latin American druglords and corrupt senators, though sadly without any McBain-esque one-liners or defenestrations.

Review: Hansel and Gretel: Warriors of Witchcraft

Meet Fivel and Booboo Stewart, lead protagonists of Hansel and Gretel: Warriors of Witchcraft. Fivel wants to be a screechy pop star, and performs the closing credits song. Booboo was born with an unfortunate condition that makes him look like every sullen '90s teen ever. (Yes, Fivel's the girl and Booboo's the boy. Don't ask me.) Wikipedia suggests one or both of them are actors, though judging by their commitment on-screen, the twins themselves could take it or leave it.

And David DeCoteau has a plan for them.

Review: Riddick

The new third Riddick movie (titled Riddick, as if it's an album or something) is in my view a step backward for the franchise, despite its effectiveness at pitting scary monsters against rough space thugs. I'm a real fan of the Riddick character and both of the previous films, but this new one is problematic, and the essence of its problems is that, in trying to be more like the first film and less like the second, the character's growth is stunted, and the stakes of the story with it.

Review: The Lives of Others

There must be some cosmic significance to the fact that Netflix sent me The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) just in time for me to watch it late yesterday, around the time that the latest, and gobsmackingest, NSA revelations came to light. It's just as well that I wasn't aware of the latter until this morning, otherwise I would've been curled up and sobbing midway through the movie.

The Lives of Others is an absolutely stellar drama and a good bit of evidence for fancy-pants cinema aesthetes to employ when making the argument (as they must at least want to from time to time) that foreign films are mostly better than American films. It's about the Stasi—so we're not exactly talking about light viewing. (Oh man am I glad I didn't put off watching it. Never coulda got through it tonight.)

Review: Goon

I don't care about sports—in some respects I actively dislike the entire concept, though I've been known to enjoy live baseball and hockey. Still, the thinking behind serious sports fandom eludes me. Perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay to the fun hockey comedy Goon is that it's one of those sports movies (alongside the similarly skillful Miracle) that makes the non-sports-fan really understand, if only for a moment.

Based on a real-life career, Goon stars Seann William Scott as Doug, a soft-spoken, good-natured lunkhead with modest aspirations—sort of a less imaginative Andy Dwyer. Except he sort of has a superpower.

Doug, as it turns out, can withstand—and dish out—superhuman amounts of physical punishment. He's therefore recruited by the Halifax Highlanders, a fictitious minor-league hockey team. This basic premise is an effective foundation for Goon to construct a comic sports tale that's surprisingly sweet considering its subject matter.

Review: Dredd

In Dredd, a futuristic cop/jury/executioner/JUDGE with the improbable name of Dredd takes a psychic rookie under his wing—and into a deadly fortress controlled by vicious killers who are somewhat reluctant to allow the judges to escape alive. Surrounded on all sides by death, they're about to discover that the only thing they can count on…is each other. And bullets. Thousands and thousands of bullets.

I'm by no means a comic book nerd, or even dilettante. This means that, though I've long been aware of Judge Dredd's graphic-novel origins, my personal understanding of the character is limited to the Stallone version and a few glimpses of the scowling comic version of Dredd. Casting-wise, Karl Urban's definitely an improvement; his scowl is more consistent and believable than Stallone's…pout? grimace? Let's just say "Stallone-face."