Hello and welcome to yet another edition of Five Cool Things where I talk about all the fun, interesting, and cool things I’ve discovered since the last time. I was actually afraid I wasn’t going to find five things to talk about this time because I watched and reviewed two boxed sets of movies, and it seemed pointless to try to talk about each of those movies (at least the ones that I found to be cool) since I was already reviewing them. But fear not, my friends, I pulled through and found several other cool things to talk about. Besides the two boxed sets, I also enjoyed the new Wes Anderson film, an Alan Moore graphic novel, and an FX series set inside the Alien universe. Let’s get started.
Alien: Earth
I’m a huge fan of the Alien franchise, and I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen of Noah Hawley’s television work (Fargo, Legion), so I was super excited to learn he was making an FX series set inside the Alien universe.
Buy Fargo: Season 1 [Blu-raySet two years before the events of Alien, the series begins with a crash. A Weyland-Yutani ship malfunctions and crashes into the city of New Siam, which is owned by the Prodigy Corporation. It is one of the five corporations that control all of Earth and its colonies and is run by Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), a Mark Zuckerbergian super genius and the world’s youngest trillionaire (Weyland-Yutani is one of the other five corporations, which we know from the films).
That crashed ship contains alien species from across the galaxy, including, of course, a xenomorph. Kavalier takes the specimens to his private island, where he has also recently created five hybrids – artificial bodies implanted with human consciousness, in this case the minds of five terminally ill children.
Much of the series focuses on these children learning how to live in these new, powerful bodies, and the way in which Kavalier treats them as property. It has a lot to say about identity and ownership and fills out a lot of details about what was happening on Earth in this cinematic universe.
Also, there are aliens. Honestly, the stuff with the Xenomorphs was the least interesting part of this series. Something felt a little off about them. In the films, they are usually hiding in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to strike. Here, they often run around in the wild, hunting in the open and taking down entire teams of armed soldiers in a matter of seconds.
It is the other aliens that excel in this series. There is a killer plant, a giant fly-like creature, a tick with wings that sucks blood, and a freaking eye with tentacles. It is the eye that gets your attention. It can attach itself to and control other creatures by popping out their eye and inserting itself into its eye socket, creating a deeply disturbing look. I can’t wait to see what happens next season.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4K UHD 7-Film Collection
A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of the greatest horror movies of the 1980s. With Freddy Krueger, writer/director Wes Craven and actor Robert Englund created one of the most original horror villains of all time. Making him kill inside of dreams where anything can happen was a stroke of genius.
The sequels are of varying quality, ranging from pretty great to pretty close to terrible, but I’d say that, taken as a whole, they stand up next to the greatest horror franchises of all time. They just put out a boxed set of the first seven films (missing is the Freddy vs. Jason crossover and the 2010 remake) remastered in 4K UHD. It is an excellent set, and you can read my full review.
The Phoenician Scheme
For the first 20 minutes or so of Wes Anderson’s latest film, I felt disappointed. Like a lot of his movies, there were a lot of quirky characters and interesting incidents, but it felt lacking somehow. It felt like it was one of those (really well-made) parody accounts you find on YouTube or TikTok or whatever. It had the style, but it seemed to lack the heart of Anderson’s best films. And then something changed. I’m not exactly sure what that was or when it occurred, but I found myself enthralled with it.
Buy The Phoenician SchemeBenicio del Toro stars as Zsa Zsa Korda, a ruthless industrialist and arms dealer who has been plagued by assassination attempts. He decides to appoint his only daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), as his heir and wants to teach her his ways. She is about to take her vows to become a nun. She despises him as he has essentially had nothing to do with her. It is rumored he killed her mother, and his ruthless capitalist ways injure her faith, but she believes she can do a lot of good with his money, and so she agrees.
The scheme of the title involves a complicated agreement between numerous leaders of Phoenicia in order to update their infrastructure. This involves completing an underground train line from two sides of a mountain that has stopped just short of intersecting. Or something. I’m honestly not sure what the actual scheme was about. But it is basically an excuse for Korda and Liesl to meet with a wide variety of very Wes Anderson characters (and an incredible list of mostly familiar Wes Anderson players, including Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, Riz Ahmed, and Mathieu Amalric.)
There’s also Michael Cera playing Korda’s assistant/tutor and Richard Ayoade as a revolutionary guerilla (and the moment Ayoade appears on screen, I wondered why he had not appeared in many other Anderson films, as he seems custom made for them).
Scene after hilarious, wild scene culminates into something more, something meaningful. I was honestly moved by its end. Like all Wes Anderson films, I’ll need to watch it a few more times before I know where to rate it amongst his filmography, but for right now I loved it.
Errol Flynn Collection
Errol Flynn is one of those actors whose name I knew long before I ever watched one of his films. I knew him as Robin Hood when I was a kid. I don’t remember watching the entirety of The Adventures of Robin Hood until I was much older, but I’m sure I’d seen clips of it. I knew the phrase “In Like Flynn” as a child as well. He was just one of those celebrities that remained in the cultural ether long after his death.
Even as an adult, I’d only seen a couple of films, so I was excited to receive a copy of this boxed set of six of his films. It is a nice overview of his career, containing some of his most famous films and some lesser-known ones. It contains a couple of classic adventure films (The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk), a fairly racist western (Santa Fe Trail), two very different World War II films (Edge of Darkness, Objective Burma), and one where Flynn gets to play a lothario (Adventures of Don Juan). You can read my full review.
From Hell
Alan Moore is generally considered one of the greatest comic book writers to ever exist. Watchmen is usually cited as his very best book (and the very best comic from anyone), but this one comes in at a close second. From Hell is a meticulously researched, somewhat fictionalized retelling of the Whitechapel murders, which were executed by an unknown assailant known as Jack the Ripper. But because this is an Alan Moore book, it isn’t just a murder mystery where he solves who Jack the Ripper really was (though he does do that); it is also a philosophical/metaphysical treatise, an encapsulation of Victorian London, a historical insight into how the murders pushed England into modernity, and so much more.
Buy From HellIt is a massive, dense tome. Moore apparently read every available resource on the killing and even created a long annotated appendix where he discusses what happened on each page, where he obtained his facts, how he extrapolated ideas that cannot be confirmed, and what he just made up to tell his story. Honestly, I’m not sure how people lived without it in those early editions because just reading the story on its own would have been confusing. Only Alan Moore would include an appendix to his comic book. Only Alan Moore would make it so compelling.
Task
On paper, Task, the HBO miniseries created by Brad Inglesby (who also did the excellent Mare of Easttown), sounds like your basic run-of-the-mill crime drama. Mark Ruffalo stars as Tom Brandis, a former priest turned FBI agent who has spent the last few months out of the field, running the FBI table at job fairs due to a family tragedy. As the show begins, he’s called in to run a task force formed to stop some guys from robbing a drug dealing motorcycle gang called the Dark Hearts. Robbie Prendergast (Tom Pelphrey) is the leader of the robbers. He’s a good guy. A family man trying to raise two kids on a sanitation worker’s salary. He’s only robbing the Dark Hearts for personal reasons.
So, yeah, on paper all of that sounds like typical crime drama stuff. But the sharp writing, excellent direction, and incredible performances elevate it to something special. I’ve not really noticed Pelphrey in anything before, but he nails the balance between good guy and dude who has made some really bad choices and now finds himself in an impossible situation. Ruffalo is good in everything he does, but it is hard to remember what an absolutely incredible actor he is while he’s been doing all that Hulk stuff. The rest of the cast is terrific as well. A special shoutout goes to Martha Plympton as Brandis’ boss, who takes no crap from anyone. It is always good to see her face.
I’m a sucker for really well-made crime dramas, and Task is exceptionally made.
