TheVictoriousV

How blessed we are to have something like Andor. It is the only great thing (maybe even the only truly good thing) to come out of the post-Disney Star Wars era, it's the best that Star Wars has been since the franchise first began, and perhaps most impressively, it is the only piece of Star Wars media I could recommend even to people who don't much like Star Wars.

The reasons for this are several: It is mature in a way that the other films and shows aren't, it goes to different corners of George Lucas' galaxy that don't involve (or demand the viewer's knowledge of) the same old characters and concepts, and it aims to first and foremost tell a good, complex, resonant story of revolution instead of getting bogged down in precisely that -- call-backs to things you already know and whose mere mention you're supposed to soy out over.

The characters act and speak like fully fledged human beings, things move with heft and weight, its political messaging goes beyond modish buzzwords, and the Galactic Empire feels like a threat in a way you'll never see in other Disney-Star Wars media -- where Din Djarin or Boba Fett or whoever dispose of Stormtroopers like they're mere video game enemies. Andor understands "quality over quantity" better than the Sequel Trilogy ever could; it doesn't just throw 100 superlaser-equipped Star Destroyers (that then get easily destroyed because "they don't know which way is up") at us. Single TIE Fighters (the ship that exists in a swarm of disposable "mooks" during most of the franchise's space battles) are presented with all the terror of the WW2 dive bombers that inspired their sound design. We also get scenes that cleverly demonstrate how fascists make their ideas more palatable to those on the fence; these aren't simply mustache-twirling villains, which would be the easy way of doing it.

Certain fanboys are, of course, testy about all this: from complaints that it "doesn't feel like Star Wars" -- even though my father, a fan since the 70s, argues that the fact that it treats us to new sights makes it "feel" the way witnessing Star Wars felt at the very beginning -- to complaints that it's boringly glum and that nobody cares about Cassian Andor, which may be the same mentality for why Disney execs let Tony Gilroy cook, vs if he'd used more marketable characters and stories.

Though the second season starts slow, it crescendos in some of the best, smartest, most radical, and most gut-wrenching stuff we'll ever see from Star Wars; the full picture more than makes sense of the prior confusing plot threads. As we slowly and surely got closer to where Rogue One begins (itself a bridge to the Original Trilogy), Andor left me with a feeling comparable to that of witnessing the final episodes of Better Call Saul. (I don't think the context supplied by Andor elevates Rogue One too much, alas -- that film still has issues with writing, blatant reshoots, and CGI Peter Cushing zombies -- although it makes Cassian's fate all the more tragic.)

Art like Andor is a rarity -- in sci-fi, in television, and in Star Wars. You'll get your keys plenty jangled some other time, fans. Let the adults have something.

Sinners has been killing it these last few weeks, which may be a sign of better times and better audience taste. At first, I wasn't sure if I would wind up watching it, but the more I heard, the greater it sounded.

Of Ryan Coogler, I didn't have any strong previous opinion. He directed the Creed films (unseen by me) and Marvel's Black Panther, which, shoddy rhino VFX or not, is one of the more colorful MCU films and certainly one that managed to reach beyond the usual Marvel audience in an entirely new way -- its Afrofuturism giving black viewers representation of a sort that Hollywood had never previously achieved.

Even so, Coogler wasn't entirely "free" with Black Panther. (In my review of its sequel, Wakanda Forever, I argued that the film is an example of an artist trying to make art under a studio that won't seem to let him -- a serious euology for Chadwick Boseman forced to double as a sneak pilot for a Disney+ show about "what if Iron Man was a teen girl".) With Sinners, he is untrammeled, and there is no doubt that he is one of the Millennial greats.

Set in 1937, in Jim Crow Mississippi, the tale follows the Smokestack twins, Elijah "Smoke" and Elias "Stack" Moore, both played by Michael B. Jordan (in some very well done duplication VFX), as they return from Chicago, having worked a lucrative job for the mafia, to spend their new fortune on a juke joint for black persons only. They convince their young cousin "Preacher Boy" Sammie (Miles Caton) to join in the project as their blues guitarist, and a grouchy old pianist named Delta Slim (a phenomenal Delroy Lindo) and an aspiring singer named Pearline (Jayme Lawson) are also brought in as performers.

They're also joined by an imposingly sized field worker (Omar Miller), Smoke's spiritually in-tune ex-wife (Wunmi Mosaku), two Chinese shopkeepers (Li Jun Li and Yao), and Stack's "half-black" old flame played by Hailee Steinfeld, who provides some of the funniest line deliveries in the film. However, evil forces also move towards the juke joint; a group of bloodthirsty vampires led by Irish immigrant Remmick (Jack O'Connell, another awesome performance) move through Mississippi and make a stop when Sammie's music makes the fabric of reality dance and catches their attention.

It's an electrifying thriller -- with effective fight scenes and another thunderous score from Ludwig Göransson -- that gives us something to think about; even if you aren't a thinkpiece writer, you will likely notice something about how these particular monsters are used and what their existence may represent. The first vampires we see are white people; the very first appears to be a victim/ghost of Irish colonialism, who tries to sell the black folk -- and their Chinese immigrant friends -- at the juke bar on a sort of false "coexistence". A tweet from Jillian Chili describes it as a clash of "two marginalized groups" that "have differences in the ideology of freedom, with one continuing the vicious cycle of its oppressors disguised as empathy".

In addition to its themes of racism, culture, and spirituality, its strongest theme is of course music -- the expression of it and the powers that may come with said expression, provided the right sound is created at the right moment with the right level of frankness.

An opening narration describes various types of music from around the globe that are "so true that they pierce the veil between life and death" and have the capacity to summon spirits from both the past and the future. This is visualized in a later scene that made me feel untethered from my own time and space, just as the characters seemed to be from theirs. Even if you're not the sort of person who believes in spiritual experiences, cinema (as Sinners proves) is the medium that can give them to us -- or, if you're a believer, make them more real than they ever were. (The auditorium I watched this in has a pretty stellar sound system, but I do believe that Sinners is best experienced, most probably, in IMAX.)

I was admittedly a bit disappointed that a few plot threads, e.g. The Native American policemen (or are they vampire hunters?), didn't go anywhere, and I sort of understand people who were perplexed by the ending, even though I believe it works well thematically. (I'll try not to give too much away, for now.) All the same, this is a stirring and often hilarious film with superb musical sequences, first-rate costumes courtesy of Ruth E. Carter, and great performances all around.

And if somehow this isn't doing it for you, see the film for its horniness. To paraphrase a friend, it may the horniest film to feature basically no nudity whatsoever.

As much as I rag on those who want more of the same (be they Star Wars geeks, Marvel geeks, or Human Centipede geeks), I'd be lying if I said I don't always get giddy when there's a new piece of Astérix media coming out. If it's animated, anyway (can't say I was too riveted by the recent live-action movie starring Zlatan Ibrahimovic -- yes, you read that right).

This new show looks at least as beautiful and high-energy as the remarkably cartoony 3D we got in the 2010s animated features (which were done by Mikros Image, the studio that would later do TMNT: Mutant Mayhem and The Captain Underpants Movie). Those films always moved more energetically -- and hilariously -- than we were used to seeing in 3D-animated worlds, and as I see it, it figures that these characters would one day get a Netflix show with the same high-speed animations plus the sorts of textures and stylistic flairs we've seen in the likes of Arcane, The Wild Robot, and the Spider-Verse films (albeit not as often here as I would've liked). Would 3D animation have been quite as fun as it is today without Mikros' work on the Astérix films?

Asterix & Obelix: The Big Fight supplies much of what any good Astérix story should have, including the slapstick battles, with superpowered Gauls pummeling lowly Roman troops with more energy than ever, and the punny names and wordplay -- some of them working in more modern references, e.g. Such characters as Centurion Fastanfurius and a Gaul named Tenmillionclix who changes his name into the more Roman-sounding Tenmillionvius. There are also Marvel references, which may sound eye-rolling but, I dunno, I snickered.

It's especially nice to see Astérix and friends look like their old comic-book and cartoon selves. That may not sound special, since the prior CG films also looked right, but considering what Disney did to their Seven Dwarfs when converting them to a 3D format for their Snow White remake, you never know.

I do have some notes: The show is very clearly based on an Astérix book that didn't even have enough story to fill a feature film (hence why the 1989 movie, which was also a lot more unhinged than this, worked in plot points from both The Big Fight and Asterix and the Soothsayer), ergo we get several dragged-out sequences that also aren't staged very excitingly.

Worst of all, we never see Redbeard and his crew get sunk while minding their own unrelated business. What kind of Astérix story doesn't have that?