Two pieces of personal trivia in advance of a couple items in this week's piece: I have never seen the 1997 film The Full Monty (though I know much about it, both in terms of plot and it's amazing box office arc from an opening week flop to a staggering, word-of-mouth-driven success), and I've never eaten a Flamin' Hot Cheetoh.
That noted...
Landing today on Peacock is a recent theatrical outing, a comedy horror one, for Nic Cage and Nicholas Hoult.
It hit theaters in mid-April, and was one of the films I came close to bothering to go out to see. It looks like great fun, and now looking into the box office for it (it did terribly there, not even hitting a worldwide gross of $26 million against its $65 million production budget) I almost feel a little guilty.
It's a story developed by comics writer Robert Kirkman (Walking Dead, Invincible), originally as a serious horror treatment back when people were taking the idea of a Universal Monster Dark Universe of films seriously, but entered development hell once the Tom Cruise-starring The Mummy (2017) fizzled. (Well, "fizzled" by the standards of a film starring Tom Cruise, with a supporting role by Russell Crowe. It still did box office roughly twice its estimated production budget, getting it approximately in the "break even" range of studio accounting.) So Kirkman reworked it as a comedy, and re-pitched it. I supposed it helped that he had created Skybound Entertainment, as they were the ones who acquired the production rights. It's good to be king.
Cage is Dracula, and Hoult is the title character, trying to leave his abusive, co-dependent, near century-long relationship with the vampire - it's Renfield (2023 R 93 minutes)
This Wednesday saw the return of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia on FXX, kicking off its sixteenth season (contracts are signed to bring us at least through season eighteen, btw.) with two episodes. They're all back, and hitting their marks such that while always plugged into the here-and-now it's also oddly timeless. They're sitcom characters straddling the line of being cartoon characters, so nearly any and all sense of forward development for any of them is pretty much contained in the envelope of an episode. If they ever really learn and remember anything from any of it, it's only going to be in service of milking a gag, setting up a new one, or one character's lucid, maddening moment while the others shrug and exchange glances, seemingly having no memory of what he or she is talking about.
The living train wreck continues, with people who are entertaining to watch in controlled doses, at a safe distance.
There's a bizarre contrast at play as I consider that here we're seeing the return of some of the worst people imaginable to consider spending time with, a mere week after saying goodbye, presumably forever, to some of the best scripted people ever, with the close of Tad Lasso.
The season will continue with a single episode each Wednesday on FXX, appearing on Hulu the following day.
Today, on both Hulu and Disney+, is one of those movies that, conceptually, feels like a parody item - essentially a product placement made into a movie with an ethnic angle. Billed as a biographical comedy-drama, it purports to tell the story of former Frito Lay janitor Richard Montañez, who claimed to have invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos, expanding the company's market and rejuvenating the brand. Spinning this all up as an everyman, family man tale, leaning on his being part of the immigrant experience, raised in a migrant camp.
Officially, much of what Montañez claims about creating the product has been disputed by the company in some detail since 2019, but his rise from janitor to machinist to a marketing executive, all at Frito Lay, makes it a little confusing as to which kernels are true. In the end it's going to be one of those "print the legend" items. It's Flamin' Hot (2023 PG-13 99 min) It looks fairly artificial, and appropriately not quite good for you, and all things considered I can see why this stayed on a direct-to-streaming path, as opposed to getting a theatrical release. I don't know if I'll finish the bag, but it has Tony Shaloub in it, so I'll likely get around to trying a handful or two. It's not likely to be one of the first things I go for this weekend, though.
Arriving on Amazon last week was the start of an 8-episode Australian feminist noir comedy, with a decidedly mismatched pair of detectives trying to solve a murder in a small, seaside town. It's Deadloch (2023)
It looks as if the first few episodes were there last week, with others added on successive Fridays.
Also arrived on Prime is a French action comedy, when a team is pulled together to rescue a man's brother who's been taken by drug traffickers. The special expert recruited to help guide them through is played by former heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson. It's Medellin (2023) I went with the dubbed trailer.
Arriving on Hulu (here in the states, and on Disney+ out in the rest of the world) next Wednesday, the 14th, is a series aiming to pick up on the lives of characters 26 years after the events of a 1997 film it's kept the title to: The Full Monty Featuring most of the original cast, and with scripts written by Simon Beaufoy, who wrote the 1997 screenplay, it has a decent shot at remaining faithful... albeit much of the reason for telling the story of this series is to see what's become of them, and how they're dealing with the state of Sheffield a quarter century later.
All eight episodes are set to land at the same time, so if one is so inclined they can roll straight through.
Next Thursday, the 15th, Paramount+ will see the start of ten-episode second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. While continuing to have reservations about ever more backstory being stuffed into Spock, Uhura, and Christine Chapel, among others, I did enjoy the first season at least enough to be looking forward to this one. This season will also include a live-action crossover with some characters from the animated Trek action comedy Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Darker science fiction arrives on Netflix the same day, with season six of the anthology series Black Mirror This will be a 5-episode batch. As mentioned above, thus is an anthology series, so each story is a stand-alone item. While there have been an exception or maybe two in the first five seasons, these aren't upbeat stories, and are best taken as warnings about the terrible places the intersection of new technology and the unsavory aspects of human nature can be. Often uncomfortable places, unenviable situations and conditions, but generally thought-provoking. One can also see them as modern morality tales, or at least cautionary ones.
I've avoided more info than what's in the trailer, which already seems to sketch out a little more than is ideal.
To close with a free to all item, I chanced upon a timely anniversary.
Tomorrow, June 10th, will mark the 70th anniversary of a largely forgotten independent film. How much of it's not being widely remembered is a reflection of the poorly-financed film itself, and how much the discomfort many people (and certainly too many critics) seem to have when a film doesn't fit cleanly into a single genre, I can't distinctly say. There's blame to go around.
This is nominally a comedy built on sci-fi premise, with even some touches of horror. The production values are low, though -- something that those working on it at the time were aware. The film was actually shot and completed in 1951, but sat on the shelf for two years before it was released to theaters, where it bombed. The film's lead actor predicted it would bomb, and when he mentioned that to the film's producer, Arch Oboler, the man's response was "That's all right. I need a tax write-off this year anyway."
Certainly, in the real world television was already just beginning the process of transforming lives and homes, of arguably transforming society, so one can take this in as being a prescient satire at its core.
Based on a 1942 short story of the same name, by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore (the pair writing under the joint pseudonym of Lewis Padgett), it's The Twonky (1953 72 min) While one source tells me the film as originally released by 82 minutes long, all other sources (including TCM) and copies of the film I've seen, have only been 72. I suppose one could imagine that there exists tn minutes of missing footage -- ideally that would elevate this film to something greater -- but I'm inclined to think the "82" was just a typo.
That's it for this week. Hopefully the weather patterns that have been channeling all that Canadian wildfire smoke, and pressing it, and every other noxious gas and particulate we've been generating locally, close the ground, will have busted up by today - we've been told to expect it will. If it doesn't, well, there are things to watch, and I'll have another excuse to put off that yard work another weekend. Take care! - Mike
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