Change Your Image
ericscholtensorganizational
Reviews
The X Files: Darkness Falls (1994)
Mulder Let Him Go???
A great "short story" premise from the kings of the uncanny. In a show that's so serialized and married to its alien conspiracy mythology, I love the thought of writers sitting around a room kicking off completely original ideas. "What if there were deadly pre-historic insects lying dormant in the rings of an old-growth tree, that were released by illegally cutting the tree down?" I guess when I say it like that it sounds dumb, but I promise it feels really original in the episode. The sense of turmoil is portrayed perfectly, with traps and sabotage by unseen "eco-terrorists" welcoming Mulder and Scully to the forest. The insects glow in the dark like green fireflies and cocoon their prey like spiders. They have an aversion to light that's never fully explained and leaves them in the realm of "things that go bump in the night." A sentence simply calling them "nocturnal" would have firmly planted them in the real world. Besides the "monster afraid of the light" trope, the episode has one fatal flaw that moves it into cringe-worthy B-film territory: Mulder, an FBI expert in criminal pathology, catches the eco-terrorist trying to abscond with the last gas can, their only hope of surviving the night with the generator, and simply lowers the gun and lets him leave because he pinkie swears he'll come back with his jeep. Mulder is obviously not convinced, until the road-spiking, tire-slashing, radiator-trashing activist says, "You gotta trust me, man," with a sly smile. That does the trick, and the FBI agent is convinced. The fact that the character really does come back later almost makes it even more unbelievable. Similarly cringe-worthy, they got stranded and had to hike in the first place because the ranger driving them got a flat tire. But at the end of the episode, it's revealed the ranger had a patch kit the whole time. Ugh. Horror-flick logic. But the story is redeemed back into the unexpected when Mulder and Scully actually fail to get away and ended up getting cocooned by the mysterious insects, rescued a few hours later by a search team that heard their earlier distress call. Fantastic makeup in the recovery room shows painful rashes like rugburn on their faces from their bodies literally being broken down by enzymes, and Scully failing to regain consciousness even in the closing frames. Alright, episode, you stuck the landing. Just don't let anyone convince you you're the best episode of the season.
The X Files: Beyond the Sea (1994)
I Wasn't Ready For Brad Dourif
I knew Brad Dourif was going to be good, but I was not ready for how good. I couldn't help but picture the cast and crew standing in shock watching him play this character. The fact that Mulder, the easy-believer, is now insisting that Boggs can't be believed, while Scully, the resident skeptic, is getting drawn in against her better judgment through grief about losing her father, gives the episode a genius level of tension. Major moments aside, the writers have such a (famous) knack for the uncanny and unnerving. From Boggs' perfectly worded warnings and predictions to making the audience watch the lethal mechanism at work in the gas chamber, to the unexpectedly arresting line, "Do not underestimate my fear of death!" it's all perfect. Even Skully's unexpected (unethical?) choices, like lying to Boggs about having secured a deal for him in order to get the information they need, and then refusing to grant his last request to attend his execution are perfect. The only thing that keeps the episode from being a solid 10 is Mulder's diametrical switch off-screen in the last scene to apparently being a believer in Boggs' visions and wanting to know why Skully is being skeptical again. The episode would have added so much more depth to the show if those character incongruences had been left unresolved. Real people contradict themselves. That's why everyone's out-of-character behavior in this episode was so compelling. But in the end, this is still one of the greatest hours of television---certainly for a stand-alone story---ever made.
The Avengers (2012)
Star Wars For Millennials
This is a movie that changed what a generation expected to get out of movies. I actually thought the premise of combining a bunch of heroes into one film was the dumbest thing I had ever heard. I had really enjoyed Iron Man (2008) and Captain America (2011), but I hadn't enjoyed Thor (2011), I hadn't even seen Incredible Hulk (2008) because of how bad I heard it was, and I didn't really like Iron Man 2 (2010). But someone talked me into seeing this movie and paid for my ticket, and I politely agreed. I'll never forget being overwhelmed by the sense of how epic this movie was. The lines are unforgettable (especially by Nick Fury/Samuel L. Jackson), and the two distinct climactic battles are both completely satisfying. I now want movies to make me feel the way this movie made me feel. It is (largely) for my entire generation the definitive cinematic experience. The other thing that stands is my college professors complaining---in the most cliche way possible---that it "didn't say anything about the human experience." Man, those guys were overpaid. All they had to do was pay attention to how the audience reacted, and they would have learned a lot about the human experience.
On point taken off for the Tony not-really-dead scene, because holy Hollywood cliche, Batman.
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
This Is A Well Made Movie, But Truth Matters And This Narrative Is False
I struggled with a rating for this, because I appreciated the film's dedication to realism. The raid on the compound at the end, in particular, was at least in terms of its in-the-moment feel extremely well-executed. There were odd choices made for dramatic purposes (no women were killed in the real life raid, for instance). But for me the most important thing about this movie is the most infamous thing---the inconvenient fact that torture did not, as depicted, produce intelligence that led to the mission that killed Bin Laden. Ironically, the original premise of the movie was a tragedy detailing the failed attempt to find Bin Laden, despite the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" (i.e. Torture). Unfortunately (fortunately?) Bin Laden was killed while the movie was in preproduction, and it was rewritten with the false narrative that torture of Black Site detainees yielded reliable intel about a courier named Abu Ahmed who was eventually tracked down to the compound where Bin Laden was hiding. The directors and writers repeatedly tried to brush this off as creative license, saying again and again that this movie is a "dramatization" and "not a documentary." But that's code for, "We tried to make a movie about the uselessness of torture, and then when the ultimate object of the torture was unexpectedly achieved we tried to salvage our production by making torture look ugly but ultimately helpful." It's not true, and the fact that it's not true matters. America really lost its right to lecture the rest of the world about human rights because we tortured people after 9/11. It wasn't okay, and it's an ethical choice, not a creative choice to make it look "practical" or "complex" or however else people talk about it. It's such a well-made movie with a very bad accidental retelling of history.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
The Way Sequels SHOULD Be
Movies are about aesthetics---pacing, writing/logic, atmosphere, acting---as well as production value. This movie actually captured all the aesthetics of the 1982 original so that you can watch both of them and not feel like you're seeing two completely different kinds of movies. And that aside, it's actually a good movie. If it has a weakness, it's that it requires an attention span. Blade Runner (1982) is probably the gold standard for an emersive environment in a movie, and it achieves that largely by refusing to rush a single thing. Blade Runner 2049 captures this perfectly, while also making good guesses about how that environment would have changed in 30 years. It lingers noiselessly on big visuals, which is exactly what you would experience if you were there. Unfortunately no one came to theaters to see it, so it's probably the last this will ever happen ðŸ˜. Thank you, Ridley Scott, for showing us how sequels can still be great!
1883 (2021)
Terrifically Made, But Anti-Historical
It's brilliantly cast and acted, and it's a great drama. But it's a terrible source for understanding a time in history. A drama like this appeals precisely because of its claim to "gritty realism." The whole point is that you're supposed to watch and feel like this is what it must have really been like. But everything about it is a lie told for the sake of drama, from throwing smallpox patients out of town (we were treating smallpox successfully by 1883), to imaginary European countries where swimming is illegal (never happened anywhere, because it's obviously absurd), to Fort Worth being some kind of murder town where people might get hung from a lamp post or gunned down in the street any minute (real wild west gun fights were less common than modern ones), to a real gunslinger (Jim Courtright/Billy Bob Thornton) killing more people in one bar than the historical person killed in their entire career. It's one inaccurate wild west trope after another. If you love drama, and don't care about history, then this is the show for you. I had to stop watching it.
Mortdecai (2015)
PG Wodehouse Meets James Bond
Not a good movie, by any stretch of the imagination. But Johnny Depp is impossible not to laugh at. The script could easily have been a PG Wodehouse fan-fiction in which Bertie Wooster is an unscrupulous art dealer and Jeeves is an ex-military bodyguard. The writing is sloppy and sometimes makes the mistake of thinking that old-fashioned British expressions like "done herself a mischief" are funny in themselves. Bad editing leaves lines logically out of order:
"I gave her the once over."
"How do you find the time?"
"Sorry, twice over."
(Conversation ends)
Characters do what they do to contribute to wacky hijinks and not because it makes sense for them as characters (Lady Mordecai secretly investigates the case so she can show up at an inopportune moment later).
Still, if you understand the Wodehousian trope of a dandified popinjay (Johnny Depp) getting in trouble and having to be saved by his intrepid man-servant (Paul Bettany), then this will make you laugh several times.
The Book of Boba Fett (2021)
7 For Being Better Than Any Star Wars Movie Of The Last 2 Decades
Boba Fett escapes the sarlac, lives with Tusken raiders, takes over Jabba's throne, hires a biker gang of cyborgs to fight for him, literally rides on a rancor, and I'm still STILL bored. It's not the ingredients, guys, it's the recipe.
Luke Skywalker agrees with me. He said so off screen after looking through the person in front of him.
Star Trek: Picard (2020)
Not Bad, But Also Not Not-Bad
Whether it's a badass warrior with no fight scenes, or Seven of Nine becoming a Borg Queen only to have all her drones sucked out into space, this show really is an exercise in being anti-climactic. But at least it reminds you that all your media heroes are old now. Best part: Riker yelling, "Stop yelling!"
The Boys (2019)
Writers Have Baggage About Religion
Love the premise that superheroes would really be supervillains. This would be one of my favorite shows, except that it keeps trotting out a completely irrelevant anti-religious message that does nothing whatsoever to advance the story. There were only 8 episodes in season 1, and they wasted one of them on a "preachy" subplot about how Starlight used to be a Christian but now she knows that no one can really know what God is like. That was annoying from a creative perspective, because it made no sense. But then they doubled-down on it in the first episode of season 2 by apparently turning her into an atheist so that she can slip into another completely irrelevant monologue about "Bible camp" and how there is no God and her parents lied to her for her whole childhood. It's a really contrived loss-of-faith moment that I'm sure resolves with some kind of existential redemption later, but I had to stop watching cuz I was sick of cringing. It's almost like the writers are using this show as therapy to exorcise their baggage about Christianity. Hard to believe that in 2020 it's okay to suggest that all Christians are ultra-right hippie-cultists, assuming that none of them would be completely normal people who would watch this show. Ironically, they try to make it ambiguous whether or not the middle-eastern terrorist McGuffins are Islamic, but devote so much time an energy to a ridiculous caricature of Christians. I guess there's a little PC-hypocrisy in all of us.
Go watch Daredevil or Boss if you want to see a show where the fact that Christians exist actually makes the story more interesting instead of unwatchable.