Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review

Killing It/All the Old Knives/The Cuphead Show/Frank Capra

Director’s Note: Thanks, everyone, for your feedback re: last week’s controversy over the streaming series review criteria. We’ve taken all of your comments under advisement and come up with the following new Standard Operating Procedure:

For series that are released weekly:

First Look: This is a “first impression” review based on whatever they deem to drop right away, one, two, or three shows.

Series Review: After the weekly series is over, look for a deeper dive that covers the whole season.

For series released all at once:

Binge Notice: The first three episodes, evaluated on how likely we are to watch the whole thing. There may be a series review after a Binge Notice, but this is not guaranteed and reserved only for series that exceed expectations.

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Killing It (Peacock)

Craig just knows he’s destined for greatness. He’s trying his hardest to prove to his dead father that his life matters, that he can make it. And at the beginning of Killing It, he’s on track to get the loan he needs to start a saw palmetto farm. Instead, after a couple of weird bounces, he finds himself enrolled in a Floridian Python-Killing Bounty Hunt with a plucky but poor Australian woman named Jillian. And then it gets a little weird.

I have great affection for Craig Robinson, which is 100% predicated on his role as Darryl Philbin on The Office. As a result, I will start watching anything with him in it. I just might not finish it. This project is one I’m sticking with. I love amateur criminal stories, and the mini-capers in this show are just wacky enough to hold my interest, especially when paired with the off-the-wall cast of characters doing funny stuff.

Robinson is playing the straight man to a lot of oddballs, but Claudia O’Doherty, his partner in the snake-killing business, shines like a diamond. She’s fantastic and really funny in that self-deprecating way that sounds like someone trying to talk themselves into awesomeness. The show takes a few twists and turns, and goes down a couple of really odd rabbit holes, but you certainly can’t say it’s just like all of the other Get-Rich-Killing-Pythons sitcoms you’ve seen before. The first three or four episodes should hook you, if you’re going to be hooked.

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All the Old Knives (Amazon Prime)

Chris Pine (everyone’s other favorite Non-Marvel Chris) and Thandiwe Newton are ex-CIA operative and also ex-lovers who have to do a post-mortem on a botched assignment that led to civilian casualties and the end of their relationship.

I don’t want to tell you anything else about it, because, even if you spot the left turn before you get there, you may not spot the dog-leg that happens shortly thereafter and I really don’t want to give a hint of where it goes. Instead, I’ll just say that this is a nice, understated role for Pine, who goes pretty big when he does stuff these days. Also, the juxtaposition of their relationship overlaid on the field operation, with side interviews from other people who were in the room, is a very cool structure that I don’t think I’ve seen before. This is a Post-Cold War spy thriller that sits kinda in the same wheelhouse as Homeland, only way less tedious because it gets in and gets out in a single film. Honestly, I think most spy shows could really be one movie.

If you like the espionage genre, you’ll definitely want to try this one out. Even when I saw what I saw, I was engaged enough to still enjoy the overall movie.  

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The Cuphead Show (Netflix)

A few years ago, this indy side-scroller video game called Cuphead came out and blew everyone away because of what it managed to do: the whole game is animated like a 1930s black and white Fleischer Studios, or Ub Iwerks, cartoons. Seriously, watch the trailer for the game if you doubt me. It’s bonkers.  It was also apparently hard as hell to play. You have to see the videos for it on YouTube. It’s a labor of love that borders on creepy stalking. The drawing, the art style, the short punchy animation cycles, the music, all of it, even the questionable subject matter, was just such a triumph.

Now, there’s this animated series, that makes cartoons out of the video game that was trying to make a cartoon, thus completing the feedback loop and disappearing up its own asshole. I say this with great affection, because the show, while not quite as authentic as the video game, nevertheless delivers the goods. These fifteen-minute episodes are perfect palette cleansers, one or two at a time. I would not binge them. A little goes a long way. If you’re over fifty and remember those weird-ass Bettie Boop cartoons with dancing ghosts and saturnine villains with pitchforks that “mwuah hah hah!” at cute little cartoon characters in peril, then this is so gonna rock your world.

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NTAB Directorial Culture Exchange Update: Frank Capra

Capra is one of those legendary directors that everyone speaks of reverently and also a little dismissively: “Oh, yeah, well, Capra, sure...” His name is sometimes used to connote light, breezy comedy with lots of warmth and little tooth; Capra-esque can certainly apply to some of the movies of Stephen Spielberg, among others. Nonetheless, It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington are movies everyone should watch at least once. He’s a noteworthy director for a reason.

Jes chose Arsenic and Old Lace (1943), because of Cary Grant (a wise decision) but she didn’t know about the macabre old aunts who kill gentlemen callers and bury them in the cellar. I have to wonder how this movie would fare today; there’s almost no way to make it funny in 21st century terms, not with what we know about mental health, murder, serial killers, and so forth.

But early 20th century? That’s a horse of a different stripe, right there. Hilarity ensues! Despite a large cast of characters, it’s Cary Grant in every scene, hamming it up, being increasingly tested and put upon, trying to keep his family out of jail or put them into the looney bin, depending on the whims of the moment, and all while just barely holding his own sanity together. It’s a madcap romp that showcases his comedic chops. It’s also weirdly long; very few movies from the 1930s were two hours’ running time, but there you have it.

I chose It Happened One Night (1934), a film I’ve never seen, even though I’ve known for decades who was in it. Clark Gable is really young looking, and Claudette Colbert seems older than him, mostly by how she smokes her cigarettes. Colbert plays a spoiled brat of an heiress who runs away from her father because he won’t let her live her life; she’s married a shady prince and dear old Daddy wants it annulled. She decides, with reporters and an army of private eyes scouring Florida for her, to take a bus to New York City. During her travels she meets Clark Gable, a reporter, who figures out who she is and decides to help her get to her husband in exchange for the exclusive story of her trip.

There’s a weirdly casual and almost cheerful streak of misogyny running through this script, with Gable calling Colbert “brat” and manhandling her as if she were one of the boys, like how middle school boys still shove girls because they don’t know how to talk to them. I think it’s supposed to play more like the working class taking a well-deserved swipe at the upper crust, a theme which does run throughout the movie, now that Colbert is forced to rub shoulders with the commoners and the plebians on the bus.

Despite those tonal hiccups, the two leads play well off of each other, especially after they are supposed to have fallen in love. The climax of the film seems like old hat until you remember that this was the movie the climax was invented for.

We liked both films, but both of them felt like filmed stage productions, from blocking to acting and back again. I don’t know if Capra is anyone’s favorite director, but his influence can still be seen, and these movies have plenty of touchstone moments to prove it.