Author page: mrqe

Earlier this year a movie was released and forgotten in such quick succession there’s a strong chance you didn’t know it existed. That’s fine, I almost missed it myself, except for one thing: I was looking for it. Why? It was directed by the great and lively Kim Jee-woon, the least celebrated of the big three South Korean genre directors who became popular midnight movie fixtures in America in the ’00s. His movies have been released to increasingly little fanfare, and to my knowledge, his TV series “Dr. Brain” went completely unacknowledged by Western critics (tragically, its star Lee Sun-Kyun, also of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite and Hong Sang-soo’s Oki’s Movie, passed away last year). 

His movies “The Foul King,” “A Tale of Two Sisters,” “A Bittersweet Life,” and “I Saw the Devil” put him on the map. He’s yet to produce anything since that has had the same reputation to the point where his most personal film, the film set comedy “Cobweb,” vanished without a trace. I like Kim’s movies now (especially his 2016 spy yarn “Age of Shadows”) better than ever, and here’s why, and why I still look forward to his every new movie, with a quick sojourn into the history of South Korean cinema that affected him and his peers. 

There’s never a time when I don’t feel like watching the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies, the first of which was released August 1, 2014. That’s ten years ago this week. Time flies when a film is a classic. This one is. So are the sequels, even though there are vestigial plot elements from the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe in all three that you have to decide to ignore or look beyond when re-watching, like one of the major characters (Gamora) getting replaced by a “variant” of herself in “Guardians of the Galaxy 3” because she’d died in another movie set elsewhere in the same universe. 

It’s a testament to the imagination and tonal control of writer-director James Gunn that impediments that might’ve stopped another trilogy in its tracks become mere speed bumps. Gunn’s as much of a pop music obsessive as a comics obsessive—the films are filled with music video-like montages and action set pieces built around specific tunes. So it makes sense to think of the main characters as a band with an evolving lineup and the three movies as albums with no bad songs on them. There’s enough individual flavor to stand the test of time, even though the trends and fads that originally brought them into existence have faded. 

You could add Gunn’s name to a list of distinctive directors who should’ve made a musical by now, given their creative tendencies, but he already has three times (five if you count “The Suicide Squad” and its spinoff, the Max series “Peacemaker”). The musicality of the movies extends beyond the music-driven sequences. The banter between the characters has a pleasing, teasing rhythm, with delayed punchlines going off at unexpected moments. In each movie, the momentum and goodwill generated by the performances and the filmmaking means that the entire enterprise seems to walk with a spring in its step. Or maybe I should’ve said “power-walk,” which is what Gunn loves to have the Guardians do right before a big action sequence, like band members putting their battle faces on as they move from the wings to the stage and try to forget their egos and become part of a hive-mind.

It’s almost a shame that the “Guardians of the Galaxy” trilogy was ever officially part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The characters don’t pop in the “Avengers”-branded “Endgame“—in the same way that they do in their own features. And of all the films released under that corporate banner—34 and counting—they’re the three that come closest to having their own identity apart from the Marvel-Disney brand.

They have a slight edge that belies their PG-13 rating, and it’s carried by Gunn’s strong empathy for, and personal identification with, his core characters, all of whom are to some degree the sum total of their coping mechanisms after having suffered unimaginable trauma or loss, whether it’s Peter Quill, aka “Star-Lord” (Chris Pratt), initially entering the narrative as a bumbling Han Solo-esque “I work alone” type because, as a child, he was abducted by Ravagers immediately following his mom’s death from cancer; or Rocket (Bradley Cooper plus visual FX artists) constructing a nihilistic wiseass personality to submerge his pain and rage at having been manufactured in a lab; or Gamora (Zoe Saldaña) and her “sister” Nebula (Karen Gillan) repeatedly trying to kill each other as a result of having their minds twisted by their evil patriarch; or the Ravager leader Yondu (Michael Rooker), an abductee himself, transforming his own negative experiences into life lessons by adopting Peter instead of letting him be eaten, and telling himself he did it because Peter was a small boy who could fit into spaces where an adult smuggler couldn’t. (Groot, in comparison, is a bit of a special case: a pure innocent, really—the giant child they all look out for and who intuitively understands the rest of them.) 

Quill defines them all as “losers” at one point in the story. The description is not as self-flagellating as it initially might seem. He’s reclaiming the word by redefining a loser not as somebody who cannot or will not “win” but as somebody who’s lost something precious but keeps going anyway.

No other character in the MCU franchise is as believably and fully human as the mostly non-human ensemble assembled by Gunn in the “Guardians” films. Like the rest of us, they do things for reasons they don’t understand. And they usually strain to justify their actions later, in terms that often don’t make rational sense, or try to lie or cover up their actual reasons for doing things, often as a way of saving face in front of a group that treats locker-room style verbal jousting as a bonding mechanism. Gunn also has a rare gift for writing lyrically deluded comic characters who become funnier and funnier the more they dig in their heels defensively when another character successfully defines them, as when Rocket warns that the strongman Drax (Dave Bautista) cannot understand figurative language because his people are “completely literal…metaphors go over his head,” and Drax huffs, “Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast. I would catch it.”

Gunn was the beneficiary of a lot of lucky breaks in making the “Guardians” movies, the first one especially. A big one was Marvel supervising producer Kevin Feige’s willingness to say yes to the most off-brand of MCU movie adaptations. If Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, and Captain America were the comic book equivalent of a band’s greatest hits, “Guardians” was what a pre-Internet DJ would call a “deep cut.” But this proved to be a great creative advantage because there weren’t legions of fans champing at the bit to hyper-critique every aspect, and that freed Gunn to make, well, a James Gunn superhero movie. (That’s something the general audience had no sense of at that point unless they’d seen Gunn’s R-rated “Super,” a perverse and subversive vigilante satire starring Rainn Wilson of “The Office” that owes more to “Taxi Driver” than “The Punisher.”) 

Another advantage was timing. Disney, via its recent acquisition of LucasFilm, was generating a new trilogy of “Star Wars” movies around the same time the MCU entered its cultural dominance phase and Gunn was in production on the first “Guardians.” But the first entry in Gunn’s trilogy came out almost a year-and-a-half before the first new “SW” film in ten years, J.J. Abrams’ “The Force Awakens,” which meant that the brand new and shiny, according-to-Hoyle “SW” film got compared (sometimes unfavorably) to “Guardians” rather than the other way around. The first movie was not only a huge enough hit to not seem like an underdog in relation to LucasFilm products, it was more cohesive and original. All in all, it got closer to capturing the appeal of the original, medium-redefining 1977 “Star Wars” than “Force Awakens” because of its total commitment to the “band of random losers saves the cosmos” storyline. (The “Star Wars” sequels ultimately abandoned the democratic spirit they tried to impart in “Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi” by reverting in “The Rise of Skywalker” and tying things back to the same damn royal family the storytellers had supposedly been trying to escape the shadow of.)

Taika Waititi got a lot of acclaim for being one of the few MCU directors to successfully import his own distinctive voice into the franchise with “Thor Ragnarok.” Still, the blend of intra-family squabbling, arena rock needle-drops, and goofy-grandiose action showcased in that one had been done first by Gunn and arguably with more consistency and control. 

The “Guardians” movies are the kinds of films that some viewers bond with so intensely that they feel protective of them, as if they’re friends or family members rather than mass-produced entertainments. That’s because all of the characters, no matter how preposterous in conception, come across as real people, as inconsistent and emotionally fragile as anybody walking around on the street where you live, and all the more moving because of it.

While many have already reviewed the incredibly successful “Shadow of the Erdtree,” the multi-hour DLC for the smash hit 2022 game “Elden Ring,” I’ve been wandering the Lands Between and the Land of Shadow, obsessively trying to take in everything this ambitious venture has to offer before filing. To be honest, while I had put many dozens of hours into “Elden Ring” a couple years ago, I had in no way explored everything that game had to offer. So the launch of “Erdtree” allowed me not only to complete the main game, but explore so much more of it than I had before launching into this remarkable expansion (like 100+ hours more). For years, DLC often felt like deleted scenes from a movie, something that hit the cutting room floor in the first place for a reason. But “Shadow of the Erdtree” is much more than that, a lengthy expansion of the world of “Elden Ring” that builds on the main game while presenting fully-realized new settings, enemies, and even mechanics.

Rather than just add another chapter to the story of “Elden Ring,” the developers of From Software built “Shadow of the Erdtree” out of the game’s rich lore. It’s a massive game that always feels like it’s barely scratching the surface of its storytelling, and fans have sought to unpack the back stories and trauma of its many NPCs through hundreds of websites. The main game’s ending can radically differ depending on interactions with these non-playable characters (and if you complete what essentially amounts to side quests), and that questline structure continues in the expansion. So it makes sense that “Erdtree” would branch off characters already met in the main game while also reshaping a few of the ones we already thought we knew.

Most people know by now that, to enter the DLC, a player needs to have defeated two optional bosses in Radahn and Mohg before entering the Land of Shadow, a place with new challenges to overcome and secrets to uncover. Much of the success of “Elden Ring” has been chalked up to its open-world aesthetic, one that encourages players to explore instead of following a linear path through an RPG story. The world of “Shadow of the Erdtree” doesn’t just maintain this asset but feels even more encouraging of it. There are really only three bosses in the DLC that need to be vanquished to complete its story, but there are dozens more worth fighting and entire massive regions that would go undiscovered if someone tried to speed through it. One of the many things I love about this game is that sense of player freedom. Instead of other Soulslike games wherein a challenging boss merely stood in the player’s way until it was defeated, “Elden Ring” wants people to go find another thing to do, returning when they’re strong enough to win the battle.

On that note, since most people will be playing “Shadow of the Erdtree” at a high player level that makes traditional farming for runes to upgrade difficult – one needs more and more to do so with each level – the developers came up with a new upgrade system called Scadutree Blessings and Revered Spirit Ashes. The former makes you stronger, and the latter does the same for your beloved Spirit Ashes, but both enhancements only work in the Land of Shadow. It changes your strategy: you can’t just grind for what will make you stronger. You have to find it. This mechanic feeds into the aforementioned encouragement of exploration, although I think it works better for a late-game DLC than a full game.

What’s most remarkable about “Shadow of the Erdtree” is an element that made the proper game stand out, too: the world in which it unfolds. Not merely being content to replicate regions from “Elden Ring,” the developers have built out a whole new setting, opening with a field of tombstones in the Gravesite Plain that’s instantly visually captivating. From the deep blues of the Cerulean Coast to the haunted mansion aesthetic of the Specimen Storehouse, the world of “Shadow of the Erdtree” feels unpredictably alive (and deadly). It also feels darker and more foreboding than the main game, filled with undead, aflame creatures that want you to suffer. 

It could be because it’s one of my favorite games of all time, but the nightmare-fuel enemies in this expansion also feel more like “Bloodborne” than any Soulslike since its release. From the swamps of practically unkillable specters that drive you mad to the ruins of massive fingers jutting from the earth, “Shadow of the Erdtree” sometimes feels like a cross between H.P. Lovecraft and J.R.R. Tolkien, in all the awesome ways that implies.

As of this writing, I am at the final boss of “Shadow of the Erdtree,” after struggling to climb the rise of Enir-Ilim in ways that no Soulslike has ever given me. More than the full game “Elden Ring,” sections of this DLC feel almost too unpredictably punishing, even though I know there’s no such thing for hardcore fans. (I raced through some bosses considered impossible and then struggled with the non-boss enemies that followed in confusing ways, creating some baffling between-boss difficulty spikes.) There are enemies in this game, like the lightning-wielding warriors of Enir-Ilim that almost drove me insane, that would be bosses in many other titles. It’s a game constantly asking you to reconsider your strategy, and the DLC encourages you to try out its new weapons and gear; even though I was pretty attached to the melee build that I’ve fully upgraded through the main game.

It’s easy to say that “Shadow of the Erdtree” works because it follows my grandpa’s favorite saying: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But that undersells what this game – and at 40 hours, it really is more of a game than an expansion – does well, not just content to replicate what worked but to shift it in a new and fresh way. The developers have said there won’t be any more DLC for “Elden Ring.” They said the same for “Dark Souls 3” and then released a second expansion, for the record, so don’t give up hope. If that happens here, I’ll be ready on day one. But if it doesn’t, “Shadow of the Erdtree” reminds one how much influence this game will have on the team at From Software and the competitors who seek to replicate its success. Even if many will falter, I feel like we’ll look back on “Elden Ring” and “Shadow of the Erdtree” as titles that unleashed a creative ripple through the industry. At least until “Elden Ring 2.”

The Publisher provided a review copy of this title.

Every day, people from all over the world come to Washington, DC, to look at the historic sights. As the documentary “War Game” begins, we see a man looking through his windshield at the Capitol building and then taking pictures of the Washington Monument. He’s not a tourist sharing local icons with his friends on Instagram; he calmly talks to a passenger in his car about wanting US troops to “gun down patriotic Americans” and starting a fire at the Pentagon. It is chilling. And then, when we find out who he really is and what he’s really planning, it gets downright terrifying.

On January 6, 2021, the world watched as Trump supporters broke into the Capitol building to try to stop the certification of the election of Joe Biden. While some still argue they were just “tourists,” the footage shows that they smashed through barriers and locked doors. People in the mob and some in law enforcement were injured, and some died. Members of Congress had to evacuate until order was restored. 

That was the first time there was a violent attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power that is the foundation of a democracy. It led to criminal charges against many of the organizers and participants and an unprecedented second impeachment of President Trump, who urged the mob to march to the Capitol and, depending on your perspective, either protest the legitimacy of the election results or prevent the certification by force. It has also led, for the first time, to US investments being assessed for “political risk.”

The men we saw in the car were not planning an attack. They were trying to figure out how to respond to one. On January 6, 2023, a group of veterans and current and former government officials spent the day pretending that a much better organized and more powerful group had attacked the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2024 elections. This was a tabletop exercise or “game” to better understand the seriousness of the threat, the pervasiveness of the disintegrating trust in our democratic system from those who question the legitimacy of our government, and how our elected officials and military can and should respond. 

The set-up is detailed, serious, and all too believable. It includes a movie set-like replica of the White House briefing room and pre-recorded “news reports” on the events of the day based on the limited information—and some strategically distributed disinformation—as it becomes “available.” The enemy makes very effective use of social media, fake footage, manipulation of their followers, and their understanding that any use of force against them will make them more powerful as martyrs. 

All of the participants have broad and deep experience, and it’s fascinating to see them work through their options. The role of the President, who has just been re-elected by a margin of less than one percent, is played by Steve Bullock, former Democratic governor of Montana. His advisor is played by former Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-Nevada). One of the advisors in creating the fact situation is Alexander Vindman, Former Director for European Affairs for the United States National Security Council, who blew the whistle on then-President Trump’s attempt to, depending on your point of view, persuade or bribe Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of the man Trump considered his likely opponent in the 2020 election. It is sobering to learn that the people who put the exercise together are veterans whose own experience in the military made them deeply concerned about the threat from inside. As Senator Heitkamp says, “We’ve always been able to unite the country when the threat is external.” However, we have relied on a dangerous form of exceptionalism in assuming that the US is immune to threats from rogue actors with access to military technology. One twist in the exercise made me gasp aloud because I realized how vulnerable we are: in a moment, the most senior government officials go from deciding whether to deploy the military to uncertainty about whether the person with the title Commander in Chief has the authority to do so.

Countless films have shown us the world on the brink of extinction, with serious men (and a few women) meeting in situation rooms and members of the military and the CIA staring into banks of computers, monitoring the risks and computing the options. Usually, the focus is on the action: the many actors who played James Bond and Jack Ryan, the many heroic roles played by Steven Seagal and Tom Cruise. But we eat our popcorn knowing how those movies are going to end. James, Jack, Steve, and Tom will always save the day. So, the specifics of the crises are not important. We get a couple of details about some McGuffin of a powerful thing that’s bad, just enough to give our heroes something to inspire crazy stunts, chases, and explosions and demonstrate their amazing skill, cunning, technology, and heroism.

There are few films that focus on the people in suits, ties, and uniforms who deploy the heroes, perhaps most compellingly in the savagely hilarious classic “Dr. Strangelove” (and the serious drama with a parallel storyline released the same year, “Fail Safe”) and the underseen “Eye in the Sky,” about the moral, political, and national security risks of drone warfare. 

“War Game” brings it all home, in my case literally – I live just outside of Washington DC. It’s the scariest movie of the year, especially when you consider that it was not Homeland Security, the NSA, the Pentagon, or Congress running the exercise. Instead, it’s a group of former military members called the VetVoice Foundation, stepping in because their experience showed them the gross underestimation of the possible threats from armed extremists. A note at the end tells us that they briefed the government on their findings. Let’s hope they listened. 

Apple TV’s “Women in Blue” / “Las Azules” is a flawed show. The acting is uneven, with some cast members going full telenovela while others stay in realist drama. Worse, it’s clear that this is a show about women created by men (Fernando Rovzar and Pablo Aramendi, to be precise). All of the episodes are directed by men, and the majority of the scripts are written by men, too. 

The beginning is particularly cliché, featuring a bored (and of course beautiful) housewife, who looks for (and finds!) meaning in work after she catches her husband cheating. Even the title sequence reads like a bunch of guys brainstorming markers of femininity – red heels? Check! The woman symbol? Yup! Women getting objectified in swimsuits? Absolutely. And the list goes on.

This surface-level understanding of what it is to be a woman makes some aspects of “Women in Blue” deeply frustrating – including the arc of lead character María (Bárbara Mori), the aforementioned housewife. It also means this 1970s, ostensibly feminist drama fails to have much to say about gender dynamics in the workforce, even as its whole plot centers around the women who sex-integrated Mexico’s police force. “Mad Men” this is not.

Still, it got me. “Women in Blue” has an enticing mix of elements, a certain hodgepodge that shouldn’t work but does. It’s a thriller as our titular “Women in Blue” use their police training to track down a serial killer targeting young women. There’s a “Silence of the Lambs” element when María hits up an infamous, incarcerated serial killer for advice. 

Then there’s the historical fiction aspect (“inspired by true events” as they say), complete with go-go boots, macrame beads, and white-roofed Cadillacs. “Women in Blue”’s take on the era’s sexism doesn’t go much deeper than that “it was bad,” but the critique is still there, reminding us that not so long ago (and maybe even today), the idea that women could serve effectively as protectors of the peace was entirely foreign.

Then there’s the commentary on policing itself. “Women in Blue” shines in how it dramatizes detective work, ringing suspense from how Ángeles (Ximena Sariñana) finds and organizes data (in the 1970s we’re talking paper files here). The show also presents various interrogation techniques, ranging from torture to compassion to much effect. Indeed, it’s particularly insightful when Gabina (Amorita Rasgado), the estranged daughter of the police chief, gets an insider’s perspective of what it really means to be a cop. State-side audiences may brush off this learning, believing Mexican police are inherently corrupt but the truth is more complicated, and “Women in Blue” does a good job of exploring that complication.

But this series is best at the blood-pounding thriller of it all. It builds a complex chase with the clues scaffolding nicely upon each other. When we get the killer’s back story, “Women in Blue” mines it for typical ideas of trauma and neglect but also delivers a strong rebuke of the typical violent-past-as-destiny trope.

As the cliffhangers mount, the suspension and stakes go with them. I prefer to watch my TV before bed and this show required an hour to decompress after – such was my state after exiting this intense, plot-driven environment. 

Yes, it’s feminism light (perhaps at the lightest: set in the past with no lessons other than things have gotten better). Yes, it’s a show that critiques policing but ultimately makes a hero out of those who don the badge. And yes, the direction and writing are uneven (it’s not until writer Silvia Jiménez’s seventh and eighth episodes that the characters finally start to get some human depth).

But it’s also a thrilling and satisfying ride, combining predictable genre elements with surprising turns. I was jumping in my seat, staying up too late and enjoying “Women in Blue” quite a lot, despite its many imperfections.