Hello and welcome to another addition of Five Cool Things the bi-weekly article where I talk about all the fun, interesting, and yes, cool things I’ve enjoyed since the last time. The last few Five Cool Things I’ve written have focused on books, comics, and music so I thought it was time to do an all-movie edition.
I hope you enjoy.
The Sheep Detectives
When the trailers for The Sheep Detectives first dropped, I thought it looked cute, but I wasn’t all that interested. It was the kind of film I’d probably watch at home once it came to streaming. But there was no rush. My wife, on the other hand, thought it looked wonderful and really wanted to go.
Buy Three Bags Full (A Sheep Detective Story) paperbackThis weekend my daughter spent the night with one of her friends, and so my wife and I had the rare opportunity for a date night. When I realized this film was showing at the local arthouse theater (which I like to support any chance I get), we decided to go.
It is rather adorable. Hugh Jackman stars as George Hardy, a kindly shepherd who reads detective novels to his sheep every evening. When he is murdered, his sheep (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Chris O’Dowd, amongst many others) take it upon themselves to solve the case.
The sheep speak in English to each other (or at least that’s how we hear them in the audience), but they cannot be understood by the human characters in the film. That and the fact that they are sheep lead to some very cute, and pretty funny moments.
On the human side of things is Rebecca Hempstead (Molly Gordon), George’s daughter, whom he gave up for adoption and has only recently rekindled a relationship with. Then there is Lydia Harbottle (Emma Thompson), George’s lawyer; Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun), a rather clumsy and seemingly inept policeman; Peter Van Vuren (Nicholas Galitzine), a young newspaper reporter from another town looking for a scoop; and a host of others. They are all helping the investigation or are a suspect.
Written by Craig Mazin, the film is clever, silly, and loads of fun. It is very much in the vein of cozy British mysteries, so don’t expect the mystery to be all that surprising or thrilling. This is a film perfect for a Sunday afternoon when it’s raining outside and you want a little cinematic comfort.
Desk Set
Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn had a decades-long love affair. Though he remained married to another woman and they kept the relationship out of the public eye, it was reportedly a grand affair. They starred in nine films together, with Desk Set being their eighth, and one of the best.
Buy Desk SetHepburn plays Bunny Watson, the head of research at a television network. She loves her job and is great at it. Her department answers any and all questions sent their way. She has a great memory and knows exactly how and where to research questions she doesn’t know the answer to.
Tracy is Richard Sumner, the inventor of an “electronic brain,” a sort of supercomputer that’s actually rather reminiscent of what we call AI these days. You feed it lots of information and then ask it questions, and it will spit out the (sometimes correct) answer. He’s been brought in by the bigwigs to implement the machine into Bunny’s department. She’s naturally afraid it is going to replace her and her girls (including a delightful Joan Blondell).
For a movie made nearly 80 years ago, it feels surprisingly prescient with all the current conversations going on about AI. It doesn’t have anything particularly meaningful to say about it. This is a lighthearted romantic comedy, after all.
Hepburn and Tracy are as delightful as ever. They had such a wonderful chemistry together; I wish they’d made another nine films together. The rest of the cast is great as well and the whole thing is just wonderfully fun to watch.
Doctor Who: Enlightenment
The Doctor (Peter Davison) and his companions Tegan (Janet Fielding) and Turlough (Mark Strickson) are visited by the White and Black Guardians. These were first seen during Tom Baker’s run as the Doctor in his season-long story The Key of Time. They are manifestations of Good and Evil in the eternal struggle. You may recall that Turlough was tasked by the Black Guardian to kill the Doctor and in return, the Guardian would bring him back to his home planet.
Buy Doctor Who: Peter Davison Complete Season TwoAnyway, our heroes then materialize in what first appears to be a large Edwardian yacht, but what turns out to be a spaceship engaged in a race against numerous other ships, all of which are in the form of other ancient-Earth vessels. The ship’s officers are Eternals – creatures who live forever and have grown bored, thus the need for constant entertainment.
Several of the other ships explode right around the time they get near to a pirate ship. The Doctor fears sabotage and that they are on the hit list. They’ll join the pirate ship and try to determine how it’s blasting the other ships into oblivion. Meanwhile, the Black Guardian keeps showing up demanding that Turlough kill the Doctor. But he is torn. He’s come to admire the Doctor and doesn’t want to kill him, but he’s in the Guardian’s grasp and doesn’t know how to get out.
Tegan, who usually finds herself to be pretty useless and mostly bides her time by whining about everything, actually manages to help and be brave. I usually find Turlough to be rather annoying as well, but his plight on this one is interesting. And Peter Davison is always great, and he’s wonderful here. All in all a very good story.
Civil War
When this Alex Garland film came out, there was a lot of backlash. This was at the tail end of the Joe Biden presidency. Trump was once again a front-runner to replace him. Tensions were high. The film is about an American civil war, but its politics are vague. You can’t really tell whose side the film is on, or really what the sides are about. There is a president (Nick Offerman), but all we hear from him are lies about how the war is nearly over.
Buy Civil WarOur protagonists are three war-torn journalists (Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, and Stephen McKinley Henderson), and one youngster (Cailee Spaeney) who wants to prove her worth as a photojournalist. As journalists, they don’t take sides; they just report. This seems to have annoyed many critics when it first came out. They seem to have wanted a clear Trumpian villain or more direct parallels to the current situation. I read several reviews that indicated that the film didn’t feel realistic. That there was just no way this country would enter into another civil war. Some two years later, well into Trump’s second term, this film feels prescient.
Civil War may be light on politics, but its action scenes are harrowing. Jesse Plemmons has a cameo mid-film that is as tense as anything in the movies over the last decade. It has a lot to say about photojournalism and how one picture, no matter how beautiful, disturbing, or moving, doesn’t really tell the entire story.
The entire cast is good, especially Spaeney and Dunst, who is as good as she’s ever been. Garland’s direction is terrific as well. He really makes you feel like you are there, boots on the ground, watching this horror happen all around you. If you are like me and gave this film a pass because of the early reviews, I highly recommend giving it a shot.
They Will Kill You
This horror comedy from director Kirill Sokolov suffered the great misfortune of being released at the same time as Ready or Not 2. The studio did it no favors either with a trailer that made it look like a cheap knock-off of that film. And while They Will Kill You does have a similar premise, mainly that of a young woman being hunted by rich assholes, this film has a lot more up its sleeves than that.
Asia Reeves (Zazie Beetz) gets a job as a maid at an exclusive hotel. Little does she know the place is run by Satanists who must offer the Devil a sacrifice, and she’s on the menu. The head Satanist is deliciously played by Patricia Arquette, and the cast also includes such wonderful actors as Tom Felton, Heather Graham, and Patterson Joseph.
But Asia is no easy sacrifice; she’s tough. She’s a fighter. The film has a lot of fun letting Asia crawl through ventilation ducts and hide in narrow corridors while the villains chase her through the labyrinth that is this hotel. The action scenes are wonderfully shot, Beetz is terrific, and this is a film that isn’t afraid to get weird. The last act of the film is one WTF moment after another. I loved it.
Her Private Hell
The trailer for the new Nicolas Winding Refn movie just dropped, and it looks…well, it looks interesting. It is hard to tell anything about it from this teaser. It stars Sophie Thatcher as a woman looking for her father in a futuristic metropolis in which a mystical, deadly fog has clouded everything. With Nicolas Winding Refn, you never know if it’s going to be good until you actually watch the thing, but I’ve recently been digging into his older work, and I’m psyched to see something new.
