Episode 181: Winter 2023 Movie Roundup

The Pulp Writer Show

In this week's episode, I take a look at the movies and TV shows I watched and enjoyed in winter 2023.

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Brief Writing Updates

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 181 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is December, the 22nd, 2023 and today we're going to talk about the movies I saw in Winter 2023. Careful listeners might notice that I am recording this on December 22nd, which is actually only a day after I recorded Episode 180, which I recorded yesterday. The reason for that is it is the last Friday before Christmas and New Year's today, and I think I'm going to take most of the days between now and New Year's off and spend time with family and hopefully do other fun things. So this episode I was just recording a couple episodes in advance and I believe this episode is going to go out on January 1st, 2024. So if you're listening to this, I hope you have a Happy New Year and however things went for you in 2023, whether good or bad, I hope they are better in 2024.

Just a quick update on my current writing projects, since I am recording this episode the day after I recorded Episode 180, not much has changed. I am 40,000 words into Shield of Storms and I hope to have that out in January, which would be later this month (if you are listening to this in January). I am 51,000 words into Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling and I'm hoping to have that in February. I am 4,000 words into Half-Elven Thief and I'm not sure when that's going to come out. One additional bit of news since yesterday, it looks very likely we will have an audiobook of Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation sometime in January, if everything goes well. So watch and listen for additional news on that. Since I don't really have any other news since I recorded last week's episode yesterday, let's get into our main topic, which is the movies and TV shows I watched in Winter 2023.

00:01:54 Main Topic: Winter 2023 Movie and TV Reviews

As always, I will discuss them in the order that I like them from least liked to most liked and as always remember my opinions about this are subjective. I am not a filmmaker. My opinions are often very, very idiosyncratic and just what I happen to think of a particular piece of work. First up is The Crown Season 6, which came out in 2023. The performances were superb, the actors were excellent, the set design and cinematography was excellent. Everyone involved in the show was at the top of their field and did an amazing job. And I still just didn't like this because it felt a bit ghoulish. For one thing, as The Crown has gone on, it's become less historical and more of a messy soap opera with an increasingly casual relationship with what really happened in the events it describes. For another thing, as I mentioned, I found the show's fixation on Princess Diana’s death to be rather ghoulish. I am old enough to remember her death in 1997, and even then when I was much younger and stupider, I thought the American media's obsession with her death was weird and disturbing, especially since the media fixation on her was the direct contributing cause to her death. If the media hadn't been willing to pay vast sums for photographs of her, the paparazzi wouldn't have chased her and history would be different. A while back I knew a history professor who said that history only starts between 20 to 30 years ago and anything that happened within the last 20 to 30 years wasn't history yet, it was still journalism. I think that is part of what bothers me about Season Six of The Crown. Most of the people involved in the story are still alive. Writing historical fiction about people who have died, who have died is one thing, especially if they've been dead for centuries or even millennia. Only God may judge of the dead, so what those of us among the living think about them is quite irrelevant. But making up fiction about people who are still alive, even if they are major public figures who have unquestionably made some bad decisions, somehow seems libelous, especially since there have been so many articles in both the UK and the US press detailing all the things that Season Six of The Crown got wrong with the historical record. So to sum up, the show is extremely well done, but I cannot help but feel that it's like excellent work done in a bad cause. Overall Grade: D.

Next up is Shazam: Fury of the Gods, which came out in 2023. The first Shazam movie was actually pretty good, definitely in B or B Plus territory. The sequel, alas, was quite a bit weaker. It reminded me of watching a really cheesy sword and sorcery movie from the 1980s: fun to watch mostly, but quite dumb. Following up from the first movie, Billy Batson and his foster siblings are now part of the Shazam superhero family and are handling their powers about as well as you would expect inexperienced teenagers to handle phenomenal cosmic powers, except it turns out that the wizard who gave Billy and his family their powers actually stole those powers from the Greek Titan Atlas and Atlas's daughters are ticked off about this and want those powers back. Since this is a superhero movie, let's just say they're not going to settle this dispute in probate court.

The product placement for the Skittles candy in this movie was just over the top. In fact, an entire major plot point hinges on a teenage girl’s love of Skittles. One hopes that Mars Incorporated, owner of the Skittles brand, really coughed up for that. Helen Mirren chews a lot of scenery as the chief daughter of Atlas, though she does have a very funny bit with a dictated letter. This isn't her first time in an over-the-top fantasy movie. She played Morgana in Excalibur back in the 80s, though her costume this time covers quite a bit more than Morgana’s various outfits did. The movie also leans way too heavily into the rest of the DC movie universe. I'd say it's enjoyable to shut off your brain and watch all the sparkly fireworks and the scenery chewing, but it’s not very good. Overall Grade: D+.

Next up is Clue, which came out in 1985. Big swing and a miss, but definitely a miss nonetheless. I tried to watch this about ten years ago, but the version I watched then didn't have any captions and all the characters talked too fast for me to understand. But I have a much better TV than I did ten years ago and the caption situation has improved, so I gave it another go. This is a dark comedy version of the popular board game Clue. All the classic Clue characters, Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, and so forth are summoned to Mr. Boddy’s mansion during a dark and stormy night. Mr. Boddy gloats says he has been blackmailing all of them, distributes the classic Clue weapons of the pipe, the knife, the wrench and so forth, and then promptly turns off the lights. When the lights come back on. Mr. Boddy has been murdered. Mr. Boddy, to be blunt about it, doesn't seem to have been all that bright a bulb. Anyway, madcap hijinks ensue as the guests try to figure out who the killer was.

Three alternate endings are included with the movie, which have a different killer in each one. There were some very funny bits in the movie, but overall it really didn't work and it had some oddly heavy-handed commentary about the Red Scare. Tim Curry was pretty great in it though. Fun fact: he did an excellent turn as Darth Sidious in what was then the final episodes of The Clone Wars animated series, and he also played Arl Howe, one of the chief villains in Dragon Age: Origins, which was one of the last video games I had time to play through all the way before I spent the next fourteen years writing like 147 novels. A remake of Clue has been in production hell for like the last ten years. You just know that Hasbro wants to include Clue in their cinematic universe where Colonel Mustard and Miss Scarlett team up with Optimus Prime and GI Joe to fight Megatron and the Monopoly guy or something. Overall grade: C Minus.

Next up is Murder Mystery, which came out in 2019. This was unquestionably a dumb movie, but it was a fun, dumb movie. Like it's a C Minus student, but it's a sort of C Minus student who everyone likes, throws great parties, and goes on to have a very successful career as a regional sales manager. Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston play Nick Spitz and Audrey Spitz, a New York City cop and a hairdresser. Nick has failed the detective exam multiple times and has gotten stuck in a rut, and Audrey really wants to go to Europe so Nick takes her to Europe and they promptly blunder into a ‘40s screwball style comedy about the murder of a wealthy European oligarch and his squabbling heirs. A lot of the comedy comes from the good-natured, but boorish Spitzes contrasted with the sophisticated, wealthy Europeans who promptly decided that Nick and Audrey would make the perfect scapegoats to take the fall for the oligarch’s murder. Wacky hijinks follow. I do have to respect how Adam Sandler uses his movie productions as an excuse to travel to exotic locations with his friends. Overall grade: C Minus.

Next up is the sequel to Murder Mystery, the aptly named Murder Mystery 2, which came out in 2023. It's the sequel to the first Murder Mystery and pretty much everything I said about the first one still applies-dumb, but fun. Overall grade: C Minus.

Next up is Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny from 2023 and ah, I was very ambivalent about this movie. To be fair, it was better than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It had some stuff that was really good and some stuff that just annoyed me. The opening sequence with the train during World War II was great- classic Indiana Jones stuff. The Nazis try to time travel to change World War II is a well-established trope of science fiction, but the twist this time is the villain thinks he understands how the time travel device works, but it turns out that he actually doesn't was pretty good. The car chases were excellent as well, both in New York and Tangiers. That said, the legacy protagonist now is an old loser getting lectured by a more competent younger woman story trope was in full force, and it's a really annoying story trope. Disney seems to just adore the story trope: the Star Wars sequels, Secret Invasion, and now Dial of Destiny, and I suspect a majority of audiences agree with me and don't like it, which is probably one of the significant reasons the Disney Corporation lost a metric gigaton of money this year. Top Gun Maverick was a much better example of bringing back a legacy protagonist.

Indy also has this oddly out of character speech where he says he doesn't believe in magic, which is rich considering he has literally seen The Ark of the Covenant melt Nazis, the power of The Holy Grail turn another Nazi to dust, and space aliens. So I would say that Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny was half a good movie and half a weak one. Overall grade: B Minus.

Next up is the Barbie movie, which came out in 2023. I saw Oppenheimer in the theater in August after I finished working on Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods and a couple months ago I did finally get around to seeing Barbie. Greta Gerwig is clearly a genius because she figured out how to take the existential anxiety of the modern American woman and convert it into $1.44 billion at the box office. If we could work out how to apply the same principles to generating electricity, we would have limitless clean energy, flying cars, and World Peace. Though I suppose the phrase modern American woman really is a facile generalization. Anyway, I really wasn't in the target demographic for this movie. That said, it is quite funny. It's a fantasy comedy that's a bit surrealistic in places. The set design is superb and done with very little computer effects. Apparently so much pink paint was used that it actually caused a nationwide shortage. As many reviews said, Ryan Gosling almost stole the movie as Ken, which was amusing on a meta level because he's played so many grim action heroes. In the third act, the movie really does beat the viewer over the head with the message. But what else can you expect from a Barbie movie in 2023? The funniest line was “How can she call me a fascist? I don't control the railways or the flow of commerce.” The joke about Proust Barbie not selling was pretty funny as well. Maybe if the Barbienheimer meme continues, in the sequel, Proust Barbie can fall in love with Oppenheimer Ken, and they have grim conversations about existentialism and science. Overall grade: B Plus.

Next up is Muppet Treasure Island, which came out in 1996. This is a loose-ish adaptation of the classic novel Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, with many Muppets filling the roles of the characters from the book and Tim Curry playing Long John Silver. Like in the book, young Jim Hawkins acquires a treasure map leading to the buried treasure of a ruthless pirate captain and sets out on an adventure to find it. However, many of the dead captain’s former associates likewise want the treasure, so Hawkins and his allies must outwit their foes. This wasn't quite as good as Muppet Christmas Carol, but still quite enjoyable and funny. Overall Grade: A Minus.

Now for the runner up of the best thing I saw in winter 2023 and that will be Loki Seasons One and Two, which came out in 2021 and 2023. I liked the first season of Loki, which came out back in 2021, but it was very obviously the first half of the story so I didn't write anything about it. However, I've seen the second season and the completed Loki show is very good. As I've written before, I don't really like multiverse or time travel stories because the stakes are either too vast or utterly meaningless. Time travel stories are a lot like homemade lasagna: if it's not excellent and not prepared by someone who knows exactly what they're doing, you're going to regret eating it. However, Loki leads hard enough into the concept, and the stakes that the show actually works. Like, I think the key question that every time travel story needs to answer at some point is why the time traveler doesn't just go back in time over and over again until she he or she fixes the problem, like remoting a saved game until you finally figure out how to beat the final boss. If you can time loop indefinitely, why not do it infinitely until you get the perfect outcome? Loki actually comes up with good answer to that question that isn't “because the plot requires it.”

Anyway, the show starts with the version of Loki who escaped with Tesseract from Avengers Endgame getting captured by the Time Variance Authority. The TVA is basically the time cops. They guard the flow of The Sacred Timeline and prevent any alternative timelines and realities branching off from the main one. The events that make it out of The Sacred Timeline are determined by the Timekeepers, three mysterious figures who rule the TVA from the shadows. Loki manages to ingratiate himself to his captors, soon realizes that the TVA isn't all what it appears or claims to be, and discovers that big trouble is coming. The show had some good character development for Loki and managed to wrestle with what is in fact some profound philosophical questions. Is there a choice between determinism and free will? Must we choose between either brutal tyrannical order or destructive chaos, or is there another way? On a more prosaic level, some reviews said that the finale of Loki bound Marvel to using Kang The Conqueror as their next major villain, which would be a potential problem due to the actor’s ongoing self-inflicted legal troubles. That said, I don't think that assessment is correct. In my opinion, the ending resolves the story while leaving things wide open for whatever Marvel wants to do (or can afford to do, given Disney's financial woes) next. Overall, Loki was the best non-Spiderman thing Marvel has done since Endgame. It also achieved one of the rarest feats of all in superhero movies: an emotionally satisfying ending to both the story and a long character arc. Overall Grade: A.

Finally, the best thing I saw in Winter 2023 was The Shop Around the Corner, which came out in 1940. It is a romantic comedy starring Jimmy Stewart as Mr. Kravlik and Margaret Sullivan as Miss Novak. Mr. Kravlik is the top salesman at Matusek’s, a store owned by the somewhat erratic Mr. Matusek, who kind of reminded me of a marginally brighter Michael Scott. One day Miss Novak comes into the shop and fast talks her way into a job as a sales clerk. Both she and Mr. Kravlik immediately take a dislike to each other, which is ironic because Mr. Kravlik and Miss Novak have been unwittingly corresponding with each other anonymously and falling in love over the last few months, which was something people used to do in the pre-Internet age before Tinder and Match.com. However, big trouble is on the horizon because one of the sales clerks is having an affair with Mr. Matusek's wife and Mr. Matuszek mistakenly blames Mr. Kravlik, who is in fact the most loyal of his employees and the only one brave enough to disagree with him.

The movie was both very funny and had a real degree of tension with dramatic stakes. It's a cross between You've Got Mail (which was partially inspired by this movie) and the UK version of The Office. It's a very tight movie, not a single line of dialogue or shot was wasted and the layout of the shots was nearly perfect. In the modern mind, we tend to think of black and white movies as being sanitized and saccharine, but that overlooks that the 1950s and the 1940s were in fact very different periods in American history. Movies from the ‘40s really do have this hard, sometimes cynical, edge to them, without indulging in pointless nudity, graphic violence, or nihilism the way that modern movies often do. Like at one point in the movie, Mr. Matusek tries to shoot himself in despair, only for a teenage boy to stop him. That's dark stuff for romantic comedy. Of course the teenage boy is hardly traumatized by the experience. He definitely leverages the event to get himself promoted from delivery boy to sales clerk. I enjoyed this movie thoroughly. I do recommend you watch it with captions if possible, since sound technology has come a long way since 1940. Overall Grade: A+.

So those were the movies that I saw and enjoyed in Winter 2023 and later this year, I will do a roundup of stuff I saw in Winter 2024. So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. And once more, have a Happy New Year! Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.