Loki Season 2

Loki Cokey

Loki Season 2
USA 2023
Marvel/Disney
6 episodes 

Okay, so I’ve finally caught up with Loki Series Two and the good news is... it’s markedly better than the first series. It might be because all of the episodes here are directed by the great Benson and Moorhead but, given the absolute state of Disney’s Marvel TV shows (not to mention the Star Wars franchise they’re also currently ruining), it counts for a lot, I think, that this follow up series is any good at all.

Once again, this one stars Tom Hiddleston, reprising his role as the multiversal variant of Loki who split off from the regular timeline in Avengers Endgame (reviewed here) and, also returning are most of his co-stars. These include the brilliant Sophia Di Martini as a female variant Loki, Owen Wilson as Mobius, Wunmi Musaku and Gugu Mbatha-Raw and... Jonathan Majors as ‘the big bad’. We also have a new regular, the delightful time scientist OB (aka Ourouboris) played by legendary actor Ke Huy Quan… aka a grown up Short Round from Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, who also won an Oscar last year for Everything, Everywhere, All At Once (reviewed here).

Now, if you remember my review of the first series of Loki (reviewed here), you will remember I said it had one weakness which was to introduce or re-enforce Jonathan Majors (from Ant-Man And The Wasp - Quantumania, reviewed here) as the ultimate threat to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and so all the episodes seemed ultimately to play second fiddle to that idea. And the post credits on one of the Marvel movies featuring that actor along with Loki and Mobius, I forget which one now, dovetails into an episode here.

Well, there’s a similar weak point here. Now that Majors has been found guilty of spousal abuse and effectively cancelled, it’s pretty clear that he can no longer go on to be the future lead villain of what, I assume would be, a future Avengers movie. So, although Majors is in this a lot, mostly playing a much nicer template variant named after the original comics company that became Marvel… Timely… this series is very much involved in a single story arc to eradicate him as the big bad of the future, effectively writing him out of any future Marvel movies and TV projects. So the whole of the series pretty much just serves this resolution… albeit in the most twisted way imaginable.

That being said, it’s certainly a very fun and fast paced series despite, like the first one, not having many action sequences… even less I would say. But it doesn’t matter because it’s lightning fast and though a lot of it is expository dialogue, most of which I didn’t understand a word of by the final episode, it never gets dull and the performances of the high calibre actors involved certainly carries it. Also, although I clearly should have watched this before going to see Deadpool And Wolverine (reviewed here), it didn’t really matter that it includes one of the lead characters in a position of Time Variance Agency authority, which she hasn’t yet attained here.

Ultimately, then, I really enjoyed this second series of Loki way more than the first and, though I’m sure it’s almost certain that Loki himself will return (in films for sure and maybe even a third series), this one doesn’t leave things on a cliff hanger… it has a definitive ending. Which is a bit unusual for modern Marvel I must say. And no episode here has any kind of post credits sequence attached to it… so I am grateful to latch onto those small mercies while I can.

The French Dispatch

French Letters

The French Dispatch
USA/Germany 2021
Directed by Wes Anderson

Warning: Very mild spoilers.

A new Wes Anderson movie is always a cause for celebration. He’s a director who, in my humble opinion, has been consistently stunning since fairly early on in his career and when I sat down to watch this, I was fully expecting this to be my favourite film of the year... which it was for the first third of the movie but, although this is indeed another of Anderson’s amazing, cinematic spectacles which once again remind people that you can shoot an intensely personal artistic vision and still turn it into a glorious epic in this kind of medium, I’d have to say the film came up just a little short of being movie of the year for me. But, hey, this would surely be in anybody’s top ten last year once they’ve seen this amazing, visual feast.

The film starts off with the death of the founder of the news magazine The French Dispatch, played by Bill Murray and, in typical Anderson style, the film is presented to the audience as articles in that magazine. The magazine is an American publication but based in France, in the small fictional town of Ennui (Ha! I love that Anderson can boldly get away with ridiculous jokes like this without losing credibility for his elaborately concocted fictions) and, in addition to Bill Murray, includes a whole host of A list actors in all kinds of roles, large and small, such as Benicio Del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Owen Wilson, Bob Balaban, Henry Winkler (yes, The Fonz is back in a movie and doing an unbelievably good job as a perfect, understated Anderson character), Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan and Elisabeth Moss.

So a star studded cast and all caught in little pockets of the story but, as I said, the structure is that for the main sections sandwiched between the obituary and the End Note - Declines and Deaths section, the film is actually four ‘articles’ told from the point of view of one of the main writers of the magazine. So we have The Cycling Reporter from the Travel section (the briefest of the four main ‘articles’ told by Owen Wilson’s character) followed by Tilda Swinton of the Art And Artists section telling us about The Concrete Masterpiece (my favourite section of the movie), Frances McDormand’s Revisions To A Manifesto for the Politics/Poetry section and Jeffrey Wright, who seems to be channeling the performance style of Orson Welles (unless I’m missing a more literary allusion to the basis of his line delivery) to captivate the audience with the tale of The Private Dining Room Of The Police Commissioner for the Tastes And Smells section.

So, what we actually have, rather than one consistent linear narrative, is a medley or showcase of Wes Anderson short films... which is alright by me. The only weakness of the film is the inherent one of taking this format as the break from a single arc, meaning the audience will naturally compare and rate the various sections, as they would do in any kind of portmanteau movie. The ‘hit and miss’ nature of the strength of each episode being part of the territory. That being said, with Anderson being such a master of his craft now, it’s more of a ‘hit and not quite as much of a hit’ affair in terms of quality. In other words... there are no misses.

I’m not sure when each article is set but the death of the editor comes in 1975, with the publication of the last issue of The French Dispatch, which is shut down as part of the provision of the will. Whether these articles are all put together for this final issue or are a selection from various years is not something I could quite make out but, certainly, the Revisions To A Manifesto felt more 1960s to me than some of the other articles.

And once again, Anderson is mixing it up in terms of the different formats of the picture... a lot of it is black and white, some of it is in colour, most of it is in a 4:3 ratio with other moments in widescreen and even split screen where additions to the 4:3 ratio can be added as an appendix or reference to the content of the main shot mixing both colour and monotone simultaneously in one, nice sequence. This is not a division between different sections, more that every section contains all these kinds of treatments within the boundaries of its own ‘magazine article’. He also, uses a couple of animated cartoons to illustrate parts of some of these sections and, as quirky as that is... and also considering his past works where live action and animated styles have co-existed in the same picture (such as The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou or The Grand Budapest Hotel)... I couldn’t help but think that in the second, cartoon animated car chase, the budgetary concerns of shooting such a section may also have come into play as to where best to unleash this technique.

The storytelling of each segment continues the style of the writer/director as sudden tangents to the storyline of each segment are often revealed to be Russian nesting dolls of ideas that ultimately grow from each other to add to the forward momentum of that particular arc.

There’s not much more for me to say on this one but I will reveal one delightful thing which, I suspect, would have had an audience composed of Jean Luc Godard and David Lynch howling with delight if such a situation were possible. When Tony Revolori (Zero from The Grand Budapest Hotel) is playing a young version of the imprisoned, psychotic, homicidal Moses Rosenthaler, he suddenly grows up into the later version of the artist, played by Benicio Del Toro. This is not done with a clever dissolve or other trickery but with the simple and ‘immersive defying’ moment of Revolori vacating his chair as Del Toro then sits in it, while taking his medallion off and putting it around Del Toros neck. One actor handing a character over to another, in fact. A truly nice touch and this one brought my personal house down, so to speak.

And that’s me done on this. If you like Anderson’s quirky, ‘catalogue and categorise’ style of narrative coupled by his squeaky clean shots, quirky physical space negotiations (such as when we track the progress of a character journeying up a tall building by his accelerated appearances at windows and balconies) and truly strong performances by actors investing in larger than life characters, then The French Dispatch should definitely top your list of ‘must see’ movies of 2021. And, of course, it’s all made more sweeter by the needledrop soundtrack selections punctuated by another of Alexandre Desplat’s masterpiece scores... this one very similar to his work on The Grand Budapest Hotel and yet another great triumph in this composer/director relationship. If not the best then, certainly, one of the best of last year.

Loki

Low Key Ending

Loki - Season 1
June 9th to July 14th 2021
6 episodes

Warning: Slight spoilers.

Wow, you know, this one was almost a great TV show, it has to be said. It has one huge problem which, at least temporarily, kinda puts a damper on things but, yeah, for the most part this was highly entertaining and a much more interesting, if paranoid, take on the Marvel Cinematic Universe... or, you know, the Marvel Dodgy Internet Streaming Universe as it’s now become, as Disney try and milk and dilute all their newish acquisitions to squeeze the maximum profit out of them (although I did appreciate the oblique reference to Captain Hook in one of the episodes in this show).

Loki follows the further antics of the ‘split away’ variant version of Loki, played once again by Tom Hiddleston, after he diverges from the established timeline during the addition to the epilogue scene, so to speak, of The Avengers (aka Avengers Assemble, reviewed here), as shown in the time heist sequence in Avengers Endgame (reviewed here). It reruns some of that scene and then continues after Loki escapes, thus branching off into a new variant timeline, before his future adventures leading to his ultimate demise at the hands of Thanos ever happened. But then, straight away, he is captured by agents of the seemingly all powerful TVA (the Time Variance Authority) and it gets all ‘Brazil at it’s most Kafkaesque’ for a while as he is processed and, unlike many of his allies, instead of being disposed of in ways I won’t mention due to spoilers and things we find out later in the story, he instead gets recruited to help Agent Mobius, played by Owen Wilson.

So a ‘dangerous variant’ of Loki, one of many it turns out, is taking out various TVA agents through time and stopping them from fulfilling their ultimate purpose... which is to police the one true timeline and prune any variances which might branch off into alternate timelines. After working through some trust issues, Loki and Mobius team up with the wonderful, troublesome variant they have been pursuing... Sylvie, played brilliantly by Sophia Di Martino. The chemistry between these three actors and their co-stars is absolutely amazing, I must say and the writing on this show is, mostly pretty good too... with a caveat.

Okay, so one of the things I liked about this is that it’s a heavyish look at the concept of time travel and how you would police such a thing. It’s pure science fiction and, unlike a lot of the Marvel films, which to be fair aren’t always all out explosion fests, this one doesn’t have a heck of a lot of action. Which is not a bad thing because this still has some pacing to it and there’s usually one fight or chase per episode, for those who crave such things.

There are also some very nice moments which depict other variants of characters in different guises... so there’s an alligator Loki, for example and, if you look at a small part of the screen in a particular digital tracking shot in one episode, when Thor’s hammer has just left the top of the screen it’s followed by a little ‘jumping frog’ version of Thor. Another great inclusion for, mostly just one episode apart from an epilogue and also a flashback recap, is Richard E. Grant who plays yet another variant of Loki and... this version of the character is costumed very, very closely to the version of him in the original Thor comics from the 1960s. Which was a nice thought. Also, it took her a while to get back to the franchise after her appearance in a couple of early episodes of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D but Jaimie Alexander returns to the franchise as Lady Sif (apparently she’ll also be in the upcoming Thor - Love And Thunder movie too, which is good that she’s rejoining the series of films where her character debuted). So that was a nice surprise.

And then there’s the big problem with the series... the last episode. Things build up to a revelation and climax and... well... the answer to the whole plot of the thing takes forever and involves a lot of boring expository dialogue which I could really have done without. We already knew at this point that the series was being renewed for a second season and that may or may not be where this one continues but, certainly, it might also continue in the upcoming Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness movie and, quite possible, even the new Spider-Man - No Way Home movie scheduled for the end of the year (I say scheduled because the coronavirus pandemic isn’t going away anytime soon). So, yeah, nothing is really resolved and we’re left with a cliffhanger, of sorts which, given that I suspect it could be a while for even a second series to get sorted, is a bit of a downer... especially since this last one was a really boring episode when the rest of the show had been really cool.

And that’s more or less it. The music is good but, yeah, no CD release so I’m not investing any time thinking about this stuff anymore... quite often these days I’ll pass on a film or a TV show because there’s no CD of the soundtrack coming out and, yeah, whether I’ll bother getting around to the second series myself is anybody’s guess, if Marvel are going to keep just releasing dodgy downloads of the music instead of the real thing (and the same goes for a Blu Ray release... if it’s not physical then it really isn’t there).

Loki was, for the most part, quite a cool TV show which got incredible dull in the last episode but, may or may not continue from where it left off when we eventually get to a second season. I’m getting a little tired of trying to guess what Marvel’s never ending long term plans for the characters in these kinds of things are, though, so I’m feeling less invested in the whole MCU of late. I guess we’ll see what happens at some point.

No Escape

Owen Native

No Escape
2015 USA
Directed by John Erick Dowdle
UK cinema release print.

When I got kinda interested No Escape via the trailers for it at the cinema a month or so ago, I had no idea that this was the director whose last two movies, both horror films, I’d rated so highly - Devil (reviewed here) and As Above So Below (reviewed here). The reason I wanted to see this is because I’ve never been a big fan of Owen Wilson when he’s been involved with out and out comedy but I’ve always really enjoyed his performances in films where he's toned it down into a straighter or quirkier role, such as a fair few Wes Anderson movies like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou or his great turn in Woody Allen’s excellent Midnight In Paris (reviewed here). So I wanted to see what he could do in a straighter role and, to be honest, in a somewhat harrowing looking film about people under sustained threat.

And harrowing is right.

It’s not as disturbing as a lot of movies out there but, from something which has been pumped out of the Hollywood machine, I’d have to say that the film is pretty intense and ‘full on’ a lot of the time. Wilson, it has to be said, acquits himself wonderfully, carrying on playing his nice guy personae and staying with it as he and the family he has with him - a wife and two daughters - find themselves having to vacate their hotel and fleeing for their lives one day after moving to the Middle East for a new job... after the whole region rebels against Americans and are killing all foreigners on site... men, women and children... often in most brutal ways.

Another reason I wanted to see this was because Pierce Brosnan also has a good role in this and he’s playing somewhat against type. It’s a real eye opener for those of you who still close their eyes and see Brosnan as either of his suave Remington Steele or James Bond counterparts and, although the character does kind of go through to a certain kind of reveal you are expecting later on in the film, he really brings together a completely different kind of flavouring to the character than you would expect him to bring to the table here. This is Brosnan like you’ve not quite seen him before and he does a really great job here.

Now the story is, to be honest, filled with absolutely all of the clichés you would expect from it... there really are no surprises here and each twist and turn and roll of the dice that Owen Wilson and his family take to escape almost certain death or torture goes exactly like you think it would, even in terms of the sound design doing what you expect it too for some sequences. However, in this case it really doesn’t matter because the director’s constantly roaming camera, coupled with some very skilled editing and an ability to ramp up and sustain the tension and align your sympathies with the characters, despite the chaos you are being shown, is absolutely fantastically well done. It’s like looking at a well oiled machine of a movie which, in this case, means there are some moments in here you will find almost unbearable to watch for fear of what will happen to the people you have come to empathise with.

The actresses playing the two young daughters are pretty good too but the real standout of the show for me here was an actress I’d not seen in anything else before. Her name is Lake Bell and she plays Wilson’s wife and mother of their two daughters and, I think it’s probably fair to say that it’s a role you might at first overlook as being the clichéd stereotype it mostly is... but hold on, there’s more to it than that. While Bell plays a frightened mother, she mixes and balances that with the fact that, if you take a step back and look at the way the movie plays out... she’s actually one of the strongest characters I’ve seen in a while in a Hollywood movie and, although you might overlook it because Owen Wilson has a fair few scenes on his own, she’s actually the one holding things together and she sees a lot more action than Wilson... actually helping to save him from almost certain death in two sequences, which leaves her one up on him in the action stakes, I believe. She comes off really strong in this, mixing a kind of soft femininity with a deep survival instinct which kicks in and ensures she kicks backsides when she needs to, in order to keep her family surviving. It’s actually quite a feat and much credit to the writers for approaching her this way... and big cheers for Bell who plays it so well that she really sells it and, in many ways, becomes the least cardboard of the characters on screen.

So, yeah, all that and an interesting score by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders which, while getting buried in a few places, is full of interesting orchestration and really helps unsettle the audience in certain scenes, where the visuals alone might not necessarily kick up the tension to what it is when you hear the score against it. The movie has also got a nice little epilogue which, without giving too much away, kind of strengthens the less overt message which the whole film has been telling you all along... this is about a mother protecting her children and she is the part of the family who brings and maintains life.

The one thing which did make me sit up and take note at certain points is the enormous amount of montage sequences, both before and after the inhabitants of the region start going after American blood. Sometimes they cue you in on the current mood of the population and other times they help keep the tension going but the director seems to use a lot of them. The most interesting thing about the montage sections, though, is that they’re really not there to save time. The sections are rarely shorthand for hours passing because they are sampling through such small amounts of time... it just seems to be a way that this director seems to like to work. Although they did pop me out of the experience a few times, they don’t kill the atmosphere at all and they just about work when these sections come up throughout the course of the film. Perhaps a bit heavy handed but it’s not the kind of movie I would have expected this director to take on anyway so perhaps his background in horror has given him this approach as a solution to shooting kinds of things before. So... yeah, if it works for him then why not? I’m pretty sure he, like most people I should think, will learn more about what techniques are and aren’t working for him with every film he makes. Some directors really couldn’t have pulled this movie off and made it as suspenseful as he does, I’m sure... he’s delivered a well made product for the Hollywoodland factory, and he deserves a lot of recognition for this.

And that’s about it, I think. Short review for this one, I know, but there’s not a heck of a lot to say about No Escape other than it’s action packed, unbearably intense in places and has some great performances from the three leads to help pull you in to the point where you’re anxious about the characters every time they just take a few steps out into the open. I wouldn’t exactly class it as essential viewing by any means but, for what it is, you are in for a bit of a ride if you choose to go and see this thing at a cinema, where this kind of movie works best. I’d certainly recommend it if action, suspense and upholding family values are your thing... just be aware that, although it’s not all that graphic, it is quite suggestively brutal in certain scenes. And well done to Owen Wilson for choosing to be in a film of this nature... he does a really great job in it. And talking of Owen Wilson... isn’t it about time that MGM and EON Productions realised that the straw-headed Texan character of Felix Leiter in Ian Fleming’s James Bond books bears an uncanny resemblance in type and build to this actor? What about it people?

Midnight In Paris

We’ll Always Have Paris!

Midnight In Paris 2011 Spain/USA

Directed by Woody Allen

Screening at UK cinemas.

Warning: Spoilers abound in this review.

I don’t often get to see Woody Allen films these days but, when I was a kid and then a teen, he was one of my heroes. Stardust Memories was one of my favourite of his movies, although I loved the majority of his work (including his “early funny ones”) and I also liked to listen to his stand up material.

These days I don’t get to see his work much because, frankly, it usually only appears on local cinema screens for one week over here in the UK if you’re lucky, if at all. For Midnight In Paris, I’d missed the week it did at my local cinema but travelled into the heart of London to catch it down there while it was still around.

Midnight In Paris belongs in Woody’s slightly more outrageous “fantasy” work if I had to try to place it or position it with any of his other movies. It’s like the plays he was writing in the 60s and 70s which had a certain fantasy element which the audience really needs to buy into and suspend disbelief with. These movies are now more prominent within his body of work but I guess he started this kind of fantasy cinema with his movie The Purple Rose Of Cairo and it’s very much a signature of his more wilder flights of fancy that he tends not to be at all interested in the mechanics which make his fantasies work on screen (or whatever venue they are in - stage play at the theatre, script in a book) and some younger audiences these days, who seem to be obsessed with the intricate plot devices to make their fantasy worlds more “believable”, may have trouble with this fact.

For me though, it’s always a breath of fresh air that Allen doesn’t bother to explain his worlds... you just have to accept them or not and move on. Midnight In Paris is a case in point.

The film stars Owen Wilson as Gil, a struggling writer who is about to marry his sweetheart but, as you will probably guess from the earliest stages of this film, he’s going to be left seriously questioning that relationship before long. While on holiday in Paris he finds a portal to the past, whereby if he waits at midnight in a certain spot, a car will arrive for him and whisk him away for a few hours back in time to 1920s Paris where he falls in with the likes of Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter etc. Hanging out with the literary set gives him the confidence he needs as a writer and, when he falls in love with Pablo Picasso’s latest lover, played by Marion Cotillard, he realises that he can’t continue on with his headlong rush into marriage (especially after Hemingway clues him up that his fiance is having an affair). After he and his new 1920’s sweetheart travel back in time to meet Toulouse-Lautrec, and he sees the effect this has on her, he also finally sees that he can’t live his life in the past and that the present is always somebody else’s golden age and that he needs to live in it while it’s here.

As usual with a Woody Allen film, the direction, cinematography, script, performances and general execution of this production are all top notch and I wouldn’t expect anything less from this genius of contemporary American cinema. Woody Allen is one of the true artists of film and, while it’s easy to forget his genius due to the lack of exposure his films tend to get these days, it’s still a basic truth that the brush strokes he paints his celluloid canvass with are as relevant today as they always have been. And the strength and truth of his work is not something which can be brushed off lightly, even though his films usually have an intrinsic lightness or fluffiness in their demeanour (if not their subtext).

And frankly, you’ve got to love any film where the main protagonist hangs out in a bar with young Man Ray, Bunuel and a rhinoceros obsessed Salvador Dali (in a great little cameo by Adrien Brody) and then, when he later meets up with Bunuel again, gives him the idea for The Exterminating Angel. What a great little film this latest slice of Woody Allen’s brain turned out to be. I’m so glad I made the trip into London to see it... and I’ll definitely be picking this one up on DVD and giving it another watch next year. Great movie. Nice idea. Treat yourself to an hour or two in the company of the smart set of 1920’s Paris. A definite recommendation from this reviewer on this one!