The Platform

The Platform on IMDB

This is a Spanish film dubbed by Netflix for world-wide play on their service. I had it recommended to me by a Swede. Some people have compared it to Waiting for Godot and other Beckett works. It's certainly heavy (and heavy-handed). If you interpret it as a parable of modern capitalism, you can find a message here, but the parable is a bit flawed.

The general set up is there is a vertical hole-in-the-ground prison. One cell per level, two people per cell, very little in the way of rules enforced. Saving food is the only thing we ever see punished. And food is a problem. Once a day a platform (the one of the title) is lowered through the prison for people to eat at for two minutes, then it is on to the next floor. When the film starts, a new prisoner has just started on level 48. The platform is a complete mess, and he is surprised his roommate can eat at it. Level 48, his roommate explains, is so much better than the deeper levels.

Not much about this prison arrangement makes much sense. It becomes clear that between the monthly floor assignment resuffles a lot of people die from hunger, murder, and suicide thus freeing up space for newer prisoners. Nothing about this experience will make anyone better negating all benefits of this over a fast execution. The food prepared is lavish at Level 0 and nothing but broken plates by Level 100 or so. It does not look like enough food for the 250 levels the main character guesses the place has. Why go to all that trouble preparing it?

That said it does leave an impression.

Four snails out of a plate of twelve.

Casino Royale (1967)

Maybe, like me, you've never seen it and been waiting for an opportunity. If so, perhaps your chance has arrived. Or maybe you don't subscribe to HBO. I watched it on HBO Now this week.

It's ... got continuity problems. But it's also a very over the top spoof. In one sequence Mata Hari's daughter Mata Bond leaves MI-6, gets in a cab and goes to Berlin (the London cabbie is rather angry at the pedestrians blocking the streets of the red light district next to the Wall). Then Mata Bond enters a dance school that is a cover for a spy organization which specializes in placing au pairs in important households. As soon as she enters the door it becomes a German Expressionist film, you know like Nosferatu. So with sequences like that, I can forgive the muddy story line. YMMV.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061452/ "Casino Royale at IMDB"

Scott Dorsey, who gave me the dud recommendation for Vanishing Point, believes this movie has Woody Allen's best role. I can't say I've watched enough of his films to agree 100%, but the small time he's on the screen is better than the Allen directed Match Point.

Love Death & Robots

Love Death & Robots at IMDB

LDR is a series of short cartoons on Netflix. There are eighteen episodes, all under twenty minutes and most at least ten minutes. I watched them all in two nine episode stretches. If you liked the 1980s cartoon anthology Heavy Metal, you'll like these. Those stories were all different, but linked by a blue sphere, here there's nothing linking them. They span different time periods, genres, seriousness, and explicitness. No two are alike in style or story. I understand a second season is in the works.

Heavy Metal at IMDB

The Mandalorian

Mandalorian at IMDB

I've been watching this, but it's continually disappointed me. There are four episodes out now of this Star Wars universe "cowboy" story and while it looks pretty, the writting is lazy. There's repeated use of mantra-like sayings such as "I have spoken" and "This is the way" that seem cultured to be as cute as the baby Yoda which Disney doubtlessly hopes to make mint off of in the toy market. But contrast against that there's you have to learn to ride this creature to get there but apparently you can just walk back afterwards. (And how do you learn to ride the creature? Try a bunch of times, give up, get a one sentence shaming speech and then next time it just works.) And that's just episode one. In episode two, there's the thing that can't be killed until one simple distraction and then a small knife'll do. In episode three there's a full deus ex machina escape. In episode four you'll find a warmed over plotline I can recall seeing more interestingly done in three movies (one of which is a G-rated animation) and I'm only saying "three" because I'm being kind and not comparing it to the other films with this exact plot which I have not actually watched.

So, yeah. Full marks for for looks cool, one messy egg yolk for story.

Why didn't baby yoda eat that second frog? probably for calculated cuteness?

P.S.: On the other hand, this trailer for the Mandalorian with new sound is something to behold: elvishpresley trailer edit on twitter.

Some 90 seconds, and the new audio is the point so sound matters.