missmediajunkie

Michel Gondry made one truly exceptional film, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," ten years ago, and hasn't quite gotten back to that level since. HIs subsequent projects have all been interesting and watchable (with the exception of a certain superhero reboot that wasn't really his fault), but none have had quite the same clarity and resonance of that Charlie Kaufman-scripted love story. "Mood Indigo" isn't quite "Eternal Sunshine" either, but it does get fairly close. It's an ungainly, over-designed, exhausting film to watch because Gondry gives full rein to his usual whimsical stylization, but there is a solid core to it that gives it some real kick.

Based on Boris Vian's surrealist science-fiction romance novel "Foam of the Daze," "Mood Indigo" tells the story of a man named Colin (Romain Duris) who lives a carefree life with his talented man-servant Nicholas (Omar Sy), bibliophile friend Chick (Gad Elmaleh), and a mouse roommate (Sacha Bourdo). After Chick gets a girlfriend, Alise (Aïssa Maïga), Colin decides that he too should fall in love, and soon after meets the lovely Chloe (Audrey Tatou). Colin and Chloe enjoy a whirlwind romance, but alas their happiness is short-lived. Chloe becomes ill, Chick and Alise's relationship becomes strained, and Colin's charmed life is soon beset on all sides by misfortune.

It's always a tricky prospect to make a surrealist film, and Gondry's approach seems to have been to translate every element I imagine was metaphorical in the source material as literally as possible for the screen. Colin appears to live in a Parisian Pee-Wee's Playhouse, where Nicholas consults with a cooking mentor who inhabits the oven, and the doorbell is a bug-like creature who has to be swatted to be silenced. At one point the walls physically close in on Colin when he receives bad news. Some of these conceits work, like a character who literally ages years in days due to worry, but others, like a dance sequence where all the characters are obliged to don cartoonish, elongated prosthetic limbs, do not. Some are too literal or too obviously analogues, so the film lacks the truly absurdist free-wheeling nature of something like Leos Carax's "Holy Motors." And I don't think anything involving the mouse character worked at all.

When I'd first heard that the distributors wanted to edit the film down for international release, I was completely against the idea, but now having seen it for myself, I think it's a reasonable choice. "Mood Indigo" has pacing problems and could stand some trimming, especially in the meandering first half that chronicles new love in bloom. Gondry's wild visual inventiveness is always interesting, and I appreciated his efforts, but they kept getting in the way of his storytelling. I've liked Romain Duris and Audrey Tatou in other films, but here their bubbly love connection is not so much enhanced by all the graphic blandishment, but weirdly disconnected from it, such that it feels like the couple is enduring each new scenario - a flight in a cloud car, a picnic that takes place in the sun and the rain at the same time - instead of embodying them.

The story and visuals mesh together considerably better in the second half of the film when things take a darker turn. Suddenly all the whimsy and delight begins to transition to decay and despair, and the central relationship becomes truly compelling as the pair begin to face hardship and doubt. There's a greater universality to Colin and Chloe's downward spiral, and Gondry is more adept at reflecting them in their surroundings. The performances come into sharper focus, particular Roman Duris's, and the supporting characters become more important and are better defined. I especially enjoyed the arc of Chick, who obsesses over a particular writer to such a degree that he finds new ways to consume his writings by turning them into injections and eyedrops, until his whole life is consumed by them.

For fans of Michel Gondry's work, this is about as Gondry as it gets. Though the production values of "Mood Indigo" aren't as high as those of the films he made in Hollywood, his ambitions are as large as ever, he clearly wasn't working under any studio constraints, and he attracted all the right talent to the project. Though there are a lot of missteps, I found this to be a much more cohesive and successful film than anything else Gondry has produced in a long time. Though the documentaries and smaller projects like "The We and the I" have been all well and good, it's the larger fantasy projects like this that continue to be his most distinctive and rewarding. It's hard to imagine anyone else making a film like this, with such commitment and such fearlessness.

"Mood Indigo" is far from perfect, but there's enough good mixed in with the mediocre that I'm glad it got made. I do hope Michel Gondry keeps shooting for the moon. He may never make another "Eternal Sunshine," but his work is always worthwhile.
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The original "Twilight Zone" that aired from 1959 to 1964 remains one of my fondest media touchstones. I watched the marathons every year at New Years, borrowed the companion book from the local library multiple times, and freaked out classmates by recapping my favorite episodes for them while waiting in the lunch line. So here's a very overdue Top Ten list of my favorite episodes. As always, entries are unranked and listed in order of airdate.

"Time Enough at Last" - Burgess Meredith starred in four different "Twilight Zone" episodes, but Henry Bemis, the little man with the big glasses who just wants some time to read, is by far the most memorable. Like so many of these episodes, the story is simple but the execution is magnificent, delivering one of the cruelest ironies in all of science-fiction. It also made it clear to the audience that the series had teeth from very early on.

"Mirror Image" - A young woman at a bus depot waiting for her ride out of town spots a perfect doppelganger of herself. It's a wonderful, paranoid scenario that hints at sinister forces in the universe just waiting to take advantage of us in a vulnerable moment. Where the more high concept stories have lessened in effectiveness for me over time, I've noticed it's the simpler, more universal episodes like this that tend to stick with me.

"The Eye of the Beholder" - Everyone knows the famous twist ending, and even if you don't I'm sure it's pretty easy for modern audiences to guess. However, that doesn't take away from how wonderfully the reveal is handled, and the horror of this all too familiar dystopian world where conformity is so highly prized. I love the long, tense buildup to the climax too, something that few shows are brave enough to do anymore.

"It's a Good Life" - What is the point of this episode? That small children are really monsters? That innocence can be as awful as knowing evil? There is no point, except for the series to present us with a particularly potent nightmare scenario that continues to make me squirm at the thought. The version of the story in the "Twilight Zone" movie is even more sadistic and terrifying, though it famously bungled the bleak original ending.

"The Midnight Sun" - Scientifically, it's easy to dismiss the story as complete bunk, but of all the apocalypse scenarios that "The Twilight Zone" featured, this remains my favorite. We often hear about the world theoretically burning up in a fireball, but to see the effects of of such a disaster unfolding in slow motion, and to see the psychological effects on the desperate populace up close really helps the idea to hit home.

"Five Characters in Search of an Exit" - One of the simplest and most existential episodes with a charmingly sentimental ending. I don't think this one works for everybody because it requires a lot of suspension of disbelief, and the reveal may be too twee or too incongruous with the rest of the story for some. However, I liked the mystery and appreciated the completely out-of-left field explanation for the characters' state of limbo.

"Nothing in the Dark" - An old woman afraid of Death secludes herself in her home, determined to keep him out. As good as the show was at scaring and disturbing its viewers, I always appreciated that occasionally it could deliver an installment as touching and humane as this one. "Nothing in the Dark" is also notable for featuring two acting greats of different eras: Golden Age actress Gladys Cooper and a very young Robert Redford.

"To Serve Man" - When you think about it, the whole premise is based on a very silly pun that has been thoroughly lampooned over the years by everyone from "Naked Gun" to "The Simpsons." Still, the episode is a lot of fun with the big goofy Kanamit aliens (hey, it's Richard Kiel!), the recycled props and effects footage from famous period sci-fi movies, and a story that delivers a big old wallop to humanity's collective ego.

"Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" - That's a young William Shatner freaking out at the "thing on the wing," in one of the undisputed "Twilight Zone" classics. Anyone who has ever been nervous about flying understands his character's terror, which director Richard Donner ramps up to terrific heights. This was another story remade for the "Twilight Zone" movie by Geroge Miller with John Lithgow - and their take is actually better than the original.

"Number 12 Looks Just Like You" - Often shown together with "Eye of the Beholder" to underline the criticism of our looks-obsessed culture, "Number 12" seems to get more relevant every year and you can see its influence all over the media landscape. The ending of this one always got to me, not because our heroine ends up physically conforming with everybody else, but because she ends up thinking like everybody else too, which is far scarier.

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Minor spoilers ahead.

I initially pegged "Carnivàle" as a slow-moving, atmospheric supernatural show that didn't concern itself overmuch with plot. Well, in season two the plot showed up with a vengeance. While the complicated series mythology remains largely unexamined, it soon becomes inevitable that our two protagonists, Ben Hawkins and Brother Justin will have their destined confrontation by the last episode of the season, and the series becomes a much more goal-oriented, focused piece of work in order to get them there. Instead of waiting for the apocalypse to arrive, now key characters are actively in search of it.

Spurred by newfound purpose, Ben puts his doubts aside and becomes a hero the audience can really root for, while Brother Justin descends into the depths of villainy in pursuit of power. Nick Stahl and Clancy Brown's performances really kick into high gear, and are a lot of fun. However, the effect of putting so much focus on this pair is that for much of the season the rest of the cast gets sidelined. I wouldn't say they're neglected since there there are strong subplots and character arcs for most of the regulars, particularly the Dreifuss family, Jonesy, Samson, and Sophie, but we see far less of the little character portraits and backstory that was prevalent in the first season. It's also very noticeable that the cast has been reduced by several members.

A few new characters and some strong guest stars help to pick up the slack. Notably there's a new villain, Varlyn Stroud, played by John Carroll Lynch, who Brother Justin sets on Ben's trail like a bloodhound. However, the ones who make the most of an impression tend to be the ones with the least amount of screen time. I love how "Carnivàle" consistently manages to create these fully-formed characters who only appear for a few minutes, some who are totally incidental to the plot. A German hotel clerk and a nameless old man on the road who Ben gets information from are as memorable as some of the major players. There are so many I wish we could have spent more time getting to know.

This season is more fulfilling from a writing standpoint. Though the the pace remains fairly slow, there are far more frequent payoffs to the various storylines, and the status quo changes irrevocably several times. What the series loses in simmering mystery, it gains in strong plotting and a bolder narrative. I found I got much more attached to characters like Jonesy and Samson when they were put in a position to be more active and make more important choices. Meanwhile, those left treading water with dead-end developments like poor Ruthie were more frustrating to watch. Easily the character I found the most improved was Amy Madigan's Iris, whose motivations are much better defined this year. With much of Brother Justin's inner struggle resolved, the spotlight turns to his devoted sister and her myriad sins.

There were some things in this season that came off as rather contrived - someone's gambling problem materializes out of nowhere, the fallout from Lodz's absence is a distraction that doesn't really come to much, and Sophie's existential crisis gets awfully convoluted - but eventually the show finds its groove again when it counts. The back half of the season is one of the most enjoyable runs of episodes I've seen in a long time, finding ways to get all the characters involved in the final battle and building up the suspense to terrific heights. After seeing so many similar supernatural genre programs fail to stick their landings, it's incredibly gratifying to see "Carnivàle" execute a properly epic and apocalyptic showdown so well.

The world of "Carnivàle" remains a source of fascinating horrors. More than once I was reminded of Garth Ennis's "Preacher" comics, with their abundance of uniquely American grotesques. Ben Hawkins runs across several varieties of them in his travels, and of course Brother Justin is one as well. The second season had to undergo some budget cuts and it shows. The carnival scenes are scaled back and crowds are thinner. Still, the effects and makeup work remain top of the line, and the production design of the Depression Era setting is consistently gorgeous. You can see the dust and grit in every frame. And I just love the little details like Libby Dreifuss's bleached hair starting to show its roots in a later episode, and that Lila uses a single curler for her beard. After a decade the series doesn't look like it's aged a day.

I'm not particularly upset that "Carnivàle" ended after this season, because I knew it was going to be truncated from the start and the finale was strong enough and decisive enough that it left me satisfied. "Carnivàle" feels like a complete story even though I know that more was planned. This is certainly one of the best HBO productions I've seen so far, and the most unique.

Looks like it's on to "Deadwood" next.
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I think we need a little break from the prestige pics, don't you?

It's now been roughly two-and-a-half years since the end of the "Harry Potter" film series, giving us the necessary distance to look back more critically at the whole set. I saw all but two of the movies in theaters, and count myself as a casual fan. I was in college when the first installment hit the big screen, so nostalgia never really colored my view of "Harry Potter," and I'm pretty confident in my assessment of the individual movies, enough to write this post anyway. So from the best, to the least, here's how I rank the "Harry Potter" films:

The Prisoner of Azkaban - Bringing on Alphonso Cuarón to direct the third installment was a vital course correction after the two Chris Columbus films that were a little too faithful and a little too safe. "Azkaban" is darker, gloomier, and you start getting a sense of the bigger and more forbidding challenges that lay ahead. The kids begin to assert themselves more as actors, and the we see some real depth to the characters at last. Best of all, this one actually works very well as a film, drastically cutting down the book to its essentials and making some notable departures.

The Deathly Hallows Part I - It's been argued that this is the installment that is the least necessary to the series, because the last book was unnecessarily split into two movies. Not much action happens here, with most of the running time devoted to tidying up plot threads and setting up the big finale. However, this is one of the few times that things slow down enough that you actually get some solid character development among the three leads. I also think that this is one of the best looking of the "Harry Potter" movies, with all the outdoors scenes set in these beautiful winter landscapes.

The Order of the Phoenix - The first of the "Harry Potter" films to be directed by David Yates, who would go on to helm the entire second half of the series. I rank this one so high because it's such a vast improvement over the unwieldy book in showing Harry's growing pains and gradual emergence as a leader. It also features one of my favorite villains in the series, Dolores Umbridge, as played by Imelda Staunton, and introduced its best comic relief, Evanna Lynch's Luna Lovegood. The ending was a little on the rough side - the big death doesn't work in any version - but satisfying.

The Chamber of Secrets - I seem to like this one more than most people, because while it may be relentlessly pandering to children and drenched in whimsy, it is a lot of fun. You have the sequences with the flying car and the giant spiders, which were a big step up in special effects from the downright shoddy CGI work in the first film. There's also Kenneth Branagh playing the pompous Gilderoy Lockhart and all the stuff with Dobby, which help to make up for some of the shortfalls in the plotting. It's a good reminder that there were far worse choices to handle these early movies than Chris Columbus.

The Deathly Hallows Part II - This one would probably be a little lower on the list if it weren't for the excellent work of Alan Rickman as Professor Snape. As fun as it was to watch a full scale battle at Hogwarts, there was always the feeling that it wasn't nearly as big or as epic as it could have been. So many familiar faces show up for only a second or two of screen time, and Voldemort is not nearly as menacing as he was in some of the previous films. Still, credit is due for sticking a tricky landing and ending the series in a much better place than were it began.

The Half Blood Prince - I haven't revisited this one since I first saw it, but I do recall how badly the big events of the ending got bungled and how that really undermined the rest of the film. Nonetheless, I liked the more melancholy atmosphere, especially the Draco sequences. Romance was never the strong suit of "Harry Potter," and it's a shame that it takes up so much of this movie. I wouldn't say Harry and Ginny's relationship is handled badly, but it feels inconsequential in the larger scheme of things, and not enough time is spent really ramping things up as we go into the finale.

The Sorcerer's Stone/The Philosopher's Stone - It's actually something of a shock to look at this film now and realize how mediocre it is. The effects are really very poor in places, especially anything involving the fantasy creatures. And it's almost off-putting how aggressively it pushes its fluffy fantasy aesthetic, with the oversaturated bright colors and bombastic John Williams score. Still, it does manage to present some lovely images, has a great sense of humor, and critically had all the right talent and casting in place to propel the series forward into much more ambitious territory.

The Goblet of Fire - Sorry Mike Newell, but I disliked "Goblet of Fire," which took a downright campy and goofy approach to a story that I thought was supposed to be another step toward darker and more grown-up material. This is the one where all the boys had long hair, a lot of time was wasted with a school dance, and we had what was possibly the worst acting by Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter in all eight films. I was really worried about the series after this one, and it was a relief that none of the subsequent sequels got this wacky again.
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Now before I get too far into this, I should make it clear that I haven't seen the new Disney film "Saving Mr. Banks" yet, about the contentious making of the 1964 Disney classic "Mary Poppins." However, I couldn't help but notice as I read over the cast list that an important figure from the "Mary Poppins" crew appeared to be missing from the new film. There were the credits for Walt Disney and author P.L. Travers, the Sherman brothers who composed all the songs, writer Don DaGradi, and actors playing "Poppins" stars Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke. But where was that film's director Robert Stevenson? After checking early reviews and audience reports, apparently he's nowhere to be found in "Saving Mr. Banks." And that's a serious omission.

As you might have heard, iconic Hollywood Golden Age actress Joan Fontaine passed away over the weekend. My favorite of her films was the 1943 version of "Jane Eyre" that she co-starred in with Orson Welles. The film was co-written and (despite rumors that Welles was running the production) directed by Robert Stevenson. He began his career in the UK and was best known for action films and historical dramas like "King Solomon's Mines" and "Tudor Rose." He was signed briefly with David O. Selznick when he first transitioned to Hollywood productions, but his career faltered in the 40s and he kept being shuttled around among the major studios, and at one point went off to Europe to make war documentaries.

After two decades in film, he moved into television in the '50s, where he was especially prolific, overseeing dozens of productions. He returned to filmmaking when Disney hired him to direct "Johnny Tremain" in 1957. Stevenson subsequently spent twenty years with the studio, directing some of the most famous live-action Disney films including "Old Yeller," "Darby O'Gill and the Little People", "The Absent-Minded Professor," "The Love Bug," "Bedknobs and Broomsticks," and of course "Mary Poppins," which earned him a Best Director nomination from the Academy. He developed a particular facility with effects-driven films, a skill that put him in high demand, but he never left Disney. Thanks to his association with the studio, he was one of the most commercially successful directors of the '60s, and one of the highest paid. When I first looked up his filmmography, I discovered I'd seen a dozen of his films and never realized it. And I don't think there's a single one I haven't enjoyed.

Was he one of the filmmaking greats? No, but Stevenson established the template for the family-friendly comedic fantasy feature that Disney and many others still use to this day, and his work is far more influential than most people realize. Despite this, he has remained sadly under the radar. Sure, Stevenson was inducted into the Disney Legends in 2002, and he got a very nice obit in the New York Times when he passed in 1986, but he's hardly discussed at all in cinematic circles. There are the usual explanations for this: his work was considered too mainstream and commercial, his best known films were aimed at children, and the Disney branding overshadowed his personal contributions to his films. However, even in discussions of "Mary Poppins," his name barely comes up. This makes his exclusion from "Saving Mr. Banks" especially frustrating, because he was clearly a major player in the creation of the film.

"Mary Poppins" was a massively complicated production, full of special effects, animation, and multiple dance and musical sequences. It was the largest scale film Disney had ever attempted at the time. It was also by turns funny and whimsical, adventurous and exciting, reflective, thoughtful, and in the final sequences with Mr. Banks, melancholy and dramatic too. Stevenson managed to balance all these things, delivering a film that has been universally praised. It retains such a sterling reputation and has held up so well over the years that Disney is still profiting handsomely from its success after five decades.

I'm sure the "Saving Mr. Banks" filmmakers didn't exclude Stevenson on purpose - the focus of the new film is on P.L. Travers and her meetings with Walt Disney before "Mary Poppins" actually went into production - but like too many others they were remiss in overlooking Robert Stevenson's contributions.

Or to quote Billy Crystal, "Did this film direct itself?"

With the release of "Saving Mr. Banks," many are taking the opportunity to revisit "Mary Poppins," and I'm hoping this will also spark more interest in its forgotten director. Walt Disney deserves plenty of credit for his close involvement in the filmmaking process, for spearheading the project, and for convincing P.L. Travers to sign over the rights to her character in the first place, but I seriously doubt that the finished film would have come together as beautifully as it did without Robert Stevenson.
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It was a mixed year for "The Legend of Korra," with animation studios getting swapped around, too many different plots going on in the beginning, and Korra herself revealing deep flaws that felt like a major step backwards from her character progression last year. However, when all was said and done, I liked this season much better than the previous one. It has several episodes that are among the best things the "Avatar" team has ever done.

Korra faces several different antagonists this year. First there's her power-hungry uncle Unalaq, chief of the Northern Water Tribe, who comes to the South with his twin children, Esca and Desna, to start a civil war. Angry dark spirits attacking ships and causing havoc are another problem. Then there's a mysterious force in Republic City that is also causing trouble but Mako, now a cop, is the only one who realizes it exists. Meanwhile, Bolin and Asami get caught up in the schemes of an eccentric businessman named Varrick. Tenzin, having been rejected by Korra after a severe falling out, spends time reconnecting with his family, including his older siblings Bumi and Kya. And finally there's the biggest villain of the season, whose very existence and relationship to the Avatar is a major spoiler.

"Legend of Korra" struggles to juggle all of these different characters and storylines. The spirit world figures into a lot of the story this year, and the season even features the subtitle "Book Two: Spirits," but there's so much else that needs to be set up and established, that we don't get around to the spirits for a long while. It's really not until the midpoint of the year, when we get to a two-parter explaining the origins of the Avatar, that the show seems to find its groove again and regains some of the lost coherence and momentum. I think the biggest issue was that the show tried too hard to make sure all of its supporting cast got time in the spotlight. Bolin's movie career, as funny as it was, could have been largely cut, and several of Tenzin's little bonding sessions with his kids likewise could have been skipped.

Korra herself bore the brunt of the damage, sad to say. She spent so many of the early episodes being stubborn, hotheaded, shortsighted, and much too easily duped, that I got frustrated with her, as I'm sure a lot of other viewers did. It's not that the issues she faced were inappropriate or that they didn't make sense for her character, but that they all should have been addressed much earlier, or in some cases it seemed like they had already been addressed during the first season. I understand that "Korra" was originally supposed to be a stand-alone miniseries and the creators wanted to end the first season with some finality, but too much of her development this year failed to build on her existing journey. Fortunately her arc concluded in a better place, and characters like Mako, Tenzin, and Bolin were handled better. Mako actually has a personality now, thank goodness.

Messy as it all was, ultimately I liked "Korra" this year so much better than last year. We got out of Republic City and got to see how the rest of the "Avatar" universe was doing. We delved much further into the show's mythology and there was a lot of great worldbuilding, particularly everything related to the first Avatar, Wan. There were also more references to and cameos by characters from the previous series, without relying on too many flashbacks. Aang was largely absent this year, but he had arguably a larger presence thanks to all the time we spent with his squabbling offspring. Lots of longstanding questions about the nature of the Avatar, the Spirit World, and the spirits were finally addressed.

I felt that the change in environment to largely urban settings was something of a mistake when "Korra" first premiered, so the focus on the spiritual world and the more slowly evolving Water Tribes was a welcome change. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the Avatar Wan episodes, which take place thousands of years prior and utilize this wonderful woodblock art style. The Spirit World also provides lots of good opportunities for unique visuals with different design sensibilities. I should also note that it's very obvious which episodes were given to the show's primary animation house, Studio Mir, and which were farmed out to a second-stringer.

I'm a little worried about how the series is going to progress from here, because we've still got at least two more Books coming down the pipeline, and yet again the story seems to have wrapped up pretty nicely. It's hard to say where the story could go from here - maybe they'll finally do something with Zuko's grandson?
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I'm inaugurating a new category of feature on this blog, one I think I should have done a while ago: a ranking list of all the features in a particular franchise or category. Generally, these are more informative than Top Ten lists because they're more comprehensive and give a chance to talk about both the good and the bad of movies in a particular category. However, it's not easy to find film series that have enough significant entries to spend a whole post discussing, but not too many. I look forward to tacking the "Harry Potter," "Star Trek," and PIXAR films in the future, but beyond that I'd have to get creative. I could probably get away with doing James Bond in two posts, but I've only seen around half the films.

But for now, the new Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has a good, solid number of entries to work with: seven movies since 2008, with a new one on the way. For the sake of brevity and avoiding continuity issues, I'm ignoring all movies prior to 2008, including the Ang Lee "Hulk" film. So before Thor shows up for another round, let's see what the rankings look like so far.

1. Iron Man (2008) - This is still one of my favorite films of the past decade, and you couldn't have asked for a better start to the series. Thanks to the perfect casting of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, superhero films entered a new era of more ironic, self-aware scripts and snarkier personalities. Sadly that subversive edge has faded with time, and I don't think the Iron Man character has ever lived up to his full potential. However, the series' ambition for its shared universe carried through right from the very first after-credits sequence with Nick Fury to the present.

2. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) - This one certainly has its problems, with a narrative full of weird dead ends and clunky set-up for the later movies, but it gets the fundamental stuff right. Steve Rogers is established as a hero worth rooting for, from a nostalgia-tinged version of the 1940s straight out of the comic books of the era. I'm glad that there's been talk of giving Peggy Carter her own television spinoff, because she's one of the best female characters in the MCU so far, and I wish she and Cap could have had more screentime together.

3. The Avengers (2012) - The sheer audacity of creating all these different character-centric installments of the franchise in order to build up to a big team-up movie continues to impress. The fact that the film is as entertaining as it is, thanks in great part to the efforts of Joss Whedon, feels like icing on the cake. It makes so much difference to have the right guy in charge. Notably the Hulk and Black Widow, who were introduced in previous installments, come off as much fuller, more interesting characters here. Thanks goodness Whedon is sticking around for the next one.

4. The Incredible Hulk (2008) - I was initially unhappy that Edward Norton had been recast in the later movies, because I did enjoy a lot of his take on "Hulk." I liked the more cerebral and meditative approach to the character and the in media res story that doesn't just try to retell the origin story again. Sure, the super-soldier plot device has been done to death, and poor Tim Roth was pretty much wasted, but when the Hulk properly Hulked out, I was happy. Mark Ruffalo proved to be a fine replacement, but I still wonder what "Avengers" would have been like with Norton.

4. Iron Man 3 (2013) - I've decided not to choose between this and "Hulk" because I honestly like them about the same. Shane Black takes over from Jon Favreau for an installment that frequently feels like it's treading water, but does put Tony Stark in some new and different situations. I thought the Mandarin was presented in a pretty gutsy way, though I do wish that Guy Pearce's character had been handled better as a counterbalance. There would have been many worse ways to close out the "Iron Man" movies than this, though I hope this is the last sequel.

6. Thor (2011) - There's lots to like. Loki's the best villain in the MCU. Chris Hemsworth nails the part of the charismatic, if somewhat prideful thunder god. Asgard looks great. Sadly, the movie never really gets down to business and has holes the size of continents. Thor's arc is severely abridged, so it doesn't appear that he actually has a change of heart at any point. The rules of traveling between worlds is arbitrary as hell. Do I even need to get into the flimsiness of Natalie Portman's astrophysicist character? And what the hell is Kat Dennings' Darcy supposed to be exactly?

7. Iron Man 2 (2010) - Poor Jon Favreau. It feels like everything went downhill after the success of "Iron Man." I don't know how much of it was really his fault, since "Iron Man 2" seems to have been doomed fairly early on by a muddled script that spent too much time ting up for "The Avengers" and introducing new characters who weren't all that important to what was going on. Worst of all were the ineffectual villains. Between characters played by Sam Rockwell and Mickey Rourke, surely somebody should have been a credible threat to Tony Stark, right? Right?!
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We're five episodes into Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.," and now the grousers have taken center stage. Viewers are getting impatient with the show, unhappy with the characters, unhappy with the tone, and unhappy with the incremental pace of the plot and character development. The ratings reflect this, still decent, but sinking from the premiere, which was one of the highest rated debuts ABC had in years.

So what's the problem? From what I can tell, it's a mismatch between viewer expectations and what the show actually is. The viewers were hoping for a Marvel movie every week, a continuation of "The Avengers." Instead, what they're getting is a fairly generic team adventure show that has the potential to become something more interesting, but hasn't really gotten there yet. It's not a superhero show, as no one has displayed any special powers beyond being very good at fighting and hacking and science. The special effects work has been solid, but not spectacular. There are signs of a larger mythology being built up, but so far we've only gotten hints of something going on with Coulson's near-death experience and Melinda's checkered past.

And if the show wasn't so hyped up and so high profile, that would probably be fine. Genre shows like this often take a while to find there footing. The CW's "Arrow" has come out swinging in year two after a long run of awful episodes in year one. The Whedons' last series, "Dollhouse," didn't really come into its own until about halfway through its first season too, when they finally delved into the show's complicated mythology and started giving individual characters some room to grow. "S.H.I.E.L.D." reminds me a lot of the early "Dollhouse," when they were still trying to follow a procedural formula.

There are some other factors exacerbating this. For one thing, the show is designed to be family friendly and it's running on Disney-owned ABC. They want something that will stay light and happy and kid-friendly, so I don't know how much the show can really capitalize on the premise of working for this morally gray government agency. For another, "S.H.I.E.L.D." is taking place in a shared universe with the Marvel films, and it's not clear how expansive and epic its storylines will be allowed to get, for fear of stepping the toes of of the movies. Right now they've been playing it much too safe, staying firmly on the periphery when the show could be a greeat way to deal with some issues in depth that the movies don't have time for.

However, there are some areas where "S.H.I.E.L.D." can certainly make some improvements quickly. Start by giving us more information about the characters besides Skye. Make the implied explicit, and let us in on what's bothering Melinda and what's up with Coulson. Give Ward some bigger problems to deal with. Start using Fitz and Simmons for more than just comic relief. Fitz has revealed he's a nerd with an ego, but Simmons is still almost a total blank. Give the girl a crush on Melinda or a bad childhood. Anything. Moreover, it's high time we had a wacky recurring villain show up. Is Alan Tudyk doing anything?

I do think that the show could become something really entertaining and interesting, and worth following weekly. I'm sticking around for a while longer because I dig the B-movie hijinks and the actor have already improved a bit. However, like everyone else I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm waiting for a proper villain, some real crisis for the characters, or at the very least better cases of the week that show off more of this world. They have the whole Marvel Comics universe to play with, so where are all the mutants and the aliens already? Where are all the minor players who aren't big enough to get their own movies?

What's the most frustrating thing here is that "S.H.I.E.L.D." is wasting a lot of goodwill from interested fans and a substantial budget that could allow them to do so much more. I've enjoyed some things like the gravity fluctuations in the third episode, and the flying car from the pilot, but otherwise there's not enough to build the show around spectacle. The storytelling really needs to pick up the slack if it wants to keep the attention of the audience.

If this were a show airing on the CW or Syfy, I'd be much more forgiving, and I expect "S.H.I.E.L.D." would be able to eventually work out its problems over the course of a full season or two or even three. However, it's airing on a major network in valuable prime time real estate. ABC is not going to be nearly as patient, and I worry that it's going to negatively impact the show's chances in the long run.
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I'm still working up to that "Dads" rant, so let's tackle the new FOX supernatural show "Sleepy Hollow" first. A few spoilers for the pilot ahead.

Following on the unlikely success of high-concept shows like "Grimm," FOX has put together its own fantasy procedural with familiar genre names Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and Len Wiseman. They've "reimagined" "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," so now Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) is a Revolutionary spy and soldier for George Washington, and his lovely wife Katrina (Katia Winter) is a nurse. After falling in battle, Crane is awoken from the grave after 250 years, to modern-day upstate New York to continue his fight with the also resurrected Headless Horseman, who Crane previously beheaded. Joining him is a black female police lieutenant, Abbie Mills (Nicole Behari), trying to solve a series of recent murders.

Torrents of exposition are shoehorned into the pilot to explain the increasingly silly scenario that the Headless Horseman is really one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from Revelations, and the little town of Sleepy Hollow is the epicenter of a centuries-long battle for the fate of humanity between the forces of light and dark. Opposing covens of witches are quickly mentioned, who I'm sure we'll be spending more time getting to know in the weeks to come. Mills also had an encounter with a dark spirit when she was a child, giving her a personal connection to these events. However, the bulk of the pilot focuses on maneuvering Crane and Mills into their unlikely long-term partnership against the things that go bump in the night.

The first half of the hour is a lot of fun, introducing Mison's charming fish-out-of-water Crane, who everyone thinks must be crazy. However, he's so lucid and intelligent, and self-possessed, it's easy to be won over by him. So it's believable that Mills would eventually come around and start taking his ridiculous explanations seriously. Mison has all the fun stuff with Ichabod Crane, mistaking Mills for an emancipated slave and making observations about Starbucks, but Behari's performance is the vital one. She's provides a strong grounding element amidst all the fantastic silliness, a real person we can are about. Without her, the show wouldn't work. Katia Winter doesn't get to do much but look winsome in a low cut dress, and the only other regular so far is Orlando Jones as Mills' superior, Captain Frank Irving, a typical hard case.

There's a lot of action in the pilot, mostly in the second half, but it's so cartoonish and low-stakes that it's not much fun to watch. The Horseman bloodlessly chops guest stars' heads off, gravity-defying magic makes objects whiz through the air, and there are some pretty tame horrorshow jump scares. What's the point of broadswords and Biblical references if the violence isn't allowed to get properly medieval? We get a lot of the usual B-movie horror elements, but "Sleepy Hollow" is no "Hannibal," and isn't really interested in being frightening or pushing at network content limits. The show's attitude is far too slick for that, clearly more interested in coolness than creeps. In other words, it's exactly what you would expect from the man who made the "Underworld" movies.

Fortunately the writing's not bad, despite the ludicrous plotting. The main characters are established well, the banter's cute, Crane's commentary on the modern world is fun, and the humor is all-around more effective than any of the action or the thrills. The quips are just clever enough to pass muster, though Ichabod Crane handles the culture shock a little too well. I found the treatment of the existing "Sleepy Hollow" characters pretty terrible - wasn't Ichabod Crane supposed to be a coward? And they couldn't have worked in Brom Bones somehow? The series seems to be based on the 1999 Tim Burton "Sleepy Hollow" movie more than the original Washington Irving story, and many period details have clearly been fudged. Then again, I doubt Revolutionary War Era America is going to play much of a role in future episodes anyway.

I'm curious as to what a regular episode of the show is going to look like - the "Sleepy Hollow" pilot was full of expensive stunts they're surely not going to be able to pull off every week, and that Headless Horseman is going to stop being effective pretty quick if overused. The pilot was entertaining enough for what it was, but it's not sustainable. I wouldn't be surprised if this metamorphoses into a much smaller scale light mystery show, sort of a super campy "X-Files" lite. Considering all the talk about witches, we'll probably see "Sleepy Hollow" treading some of the same thematic ground as FX's upcoming "American Horror Story: Coven" this year. That could be fun week to week, but we'll have to see how it develops.

Happy watching.
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Some excellent television shows just never caught on, and failed to attract enough of an audience to justify a second season. There are legendary ones like "My So-Called Life," "Firefly," and "Freaks and Geeks," which launched the careers of familiar stars. I have my own list of beloved obscurities that I really, really wanted to see continue, but it was not to be. A quick note on eligibility here - shows had to be open-ended, and not designed to end within a single season like "Cowboy Bebop." They also have to have actually gone to air and run more than just a good pilot. Entries below are unranked, and they're mostly genre programs, because those were the ones I always got attached to very quickly. A lot of these are nostalgia picks, which I make no apologies for.

The Middleman - I will never say about a word against the existence of ABC Family, because they ran one of the great girl geek shows. "The Middleman" was a secret-agent spoof about Wendy Williams, trainee crime-fighter against the myriad forces of evil. Loaded with pop-culture references, meta-humor, snark, and high energy, this was a show I fell for immediately. I loved every single minute of the twelve brief episodes, and the Comic-Con table read of the sadly unproduced thirteenth, which provides a little bit of much-needed closure.

Eerie Indiana - After "Twin Peaks" but before "The X-files" came this supernatural sitcom, about a pair of boy detectives investigating the mysteries of Eerie, Indiana, "the center of weirdness for the entire planet." Elvis is a resident of Eerie, of course, along with a mother who keeps her kids in Tupperware, a boy whose dental gear translates dog barks, and the ghost of the worst bank robber in the West. "Eerie" was a childhood favorite that was pulverized in its time slot by "60 Minutes," and briefly resurrected in the late 90s on FOX Kids.

Nowhere Man - The would-be fifth network UPN recedes further and further back in the cultural memory every day. It had a couple of interesting shows, including the paranoid thriller "Nowhere Man," starring Bruce Greenwood as Thomas Vale, an ordinary man who one day finds his life erased and is forced to go on the run to discover who's after him. As mystery shows go, "Nowhere Man" was remarkably good about actually advancing its story week to week, and ended on a great reveal that left lots of unanswered questions. I still want answers.

Wolverine and the X-Men - This was the perfect happy medium between the plotty but chaotic 1992 "X-Men" cartoon created by Saban, and the later "X-men: Evolution" that had far superior technical quality, but was stuck with teenage characters. The "Evolution" crew finally got to tackle grown-up mutants and more substantive stories in this 2009 tie-in for the first "Wolverine" movie. Sadly, Nickelodeon seemed at a loss with what to do with it, and despite a strong set-up for a second season, we only got 26 episodes of the best animated "X-men" series.

Wonderfalls - Poor Bryan Fuller is responsible for so many offbeat cult shows that never make it past two seasons. "Wonderfalls," one of his oddest creations, only made it through four episodes on FOX before being unceremoniously yanked. The show follows the misadventures of a post-grad, Jane Tyler, in transitional hell, who works as a gift shop clerk at Niagra Falls. One day the tchotchkes start talking to her, giving oblique instructions in order to help people in crisis. Caroline Dhavernas was great in the lead, and hasn't had a part as good since.

Space: Above and Beyond - Fox's Friday night 8PM hour, leading into "The X-files" is littered with interesting genre shows that only lasted a single season, including "MANTIS," "VR5," and "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr." My favorite of the bunch was "Space: Above and Beyond," created by two "X-files" veterans, Glen Morgan and James Wong. It was a military space adventure, following a small squadron of space fighter pilots in an ongoing conflict against enemy aliens. Think of it as a smaller, less ambitious "Battlestar Galactica."

At the Movies - I'm reaching here, but I'm counting the final season of the show hosted by A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips. It was not a return to the glory days of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, but it was much better than the train wreck that was the Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz experiment, good enough that I was watching regularly again, and good enough that I was genuinely unhappy at the news of cancellation. I still read Scott regularly and catch Phillips's appearances on Filmspotting, but I think the duo could have gone on to be great.

The Tick - It was pretty much cancelled before it aired, but the live-action version of "The Tick" starring Patrick Warburton was a joy to see realized. I knew it was a severely compromised adaptation that never quite reached the same bizarre comedic heights as the 90s cartoon series, but I didn't care. I loved Warburton in the goofy latex suit. I loved Nestor Carbonell as Batmanuel, an improvement on Die Fledermaus, in my humble opinion. I loved the torrent of puns and visual insanity. Alas! Only nine episodes were ever aired.

Masters of Science Fiction - So short-lived that most people haven't heard of the show. This was a summer anthology program from the same creators of "Masters of Horror," except without any of the marquee talent involved. Its one big gimmick was that Stephen Hawking provided some canned intros. Still it gave us good adaptations of Harlan Ellison's "The Discarded," and Robert Heinlein's "Jerry Was a Man." Many similar anthology series have come and gone over the years, but the potential for better was there, which is what irks me the most.

The Storyteller - Jim Henson's 1980s fantasy anthology is often listed as a miniseries, but it sure looked like a continuing series to me. Each of the nine episodes was scripted by Anthony Minghella, based on European folk stories and fairy tales. Guest stars included many familiar faces like Sean Bean and Miranda Richardson, but the real star was the Storyteller himself, played by John Hurt, and backed by the wizardry of eye-catching special effects and Henson Creature Shop puppet creations. To this day I've never seen anything else quite like it.
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