"Superman"

Clearly one of the blockbusters of the summer, it's good.  It deserves summer blockbuster status.  But it's not great.  It's not going to go down as a pillar of the canon.  It's not "the next new chapter" (although many in Hollywood may disagree ...)

SPOILERS AHEAD

It gets Superman right.  He's wholesome.  Legitimately.  And that alone makes this better than most of the Superman films which came after Christopher Reeve (that being said, I do have a soft spot for Brandon Routh).  It's dark, but not as dark as the last few films.  The politics, which were reported as "subtle" is anything but, and since it's my politics, I appreciated the digs.  Nathan Fillion makes a delightful turn as a corporate shill superhero.  Rachel Brosnahan, who I love, is rightly perky and determined as unstoppable Lois Lane.  The dog is adorable.

But.  

There is a lot of action.  Like, a lot.  Like every superhero film these days, it is battle after battle after battle.  Even my stepfather, who loves Superman and was the reason we entered a movie theatre for the first time in a very long time, said it was too much.  Perhaps at the expense of story.  

There are all the elements.  The characters we have come to love (including Cat Grant??? and a somewhat more world-wise Jimmy), the fortress (inexplicably set in Antarctica, not the Arctic, which creates a moment of disbelief which is hard to swallow ... do these people not realize that the Arctic is solid ice and Antarctica is a land mass???  I digress ...)  But few of the characters outside of the leads get more than a line or two of dialog.  There is no fleshing out of, well, anyone.  Including Lex Luthor.

And that's a problem.  I'm a fan of Nicholas Hoult, and first picked up on him in the brilliant and underrated series, "The Great".  But he's not ... "it".  The character is just a self-obsessed bully.  And not only is that hard to play, it doesn't make for a good foil.  Lex is best when actors bring humor to the role, add in levels.  Gene Hackman let Lex really enjoy it all.  John Shea played it with such a level of class that you ~~almost~~ could see the attraction.  This Lex is either not written, or the actor directed, to do much more than snarl and yell and direct his minions and his robot.  It's like a sad version of a dark Ironman.  And so, without a great enemy ... well, you get it.  

There are also minor irritations.  Ma and Pa Kent are played like country bumpkins, and this is the second time in a week I've seen rural people portrayed that way.  Also, does Supergirl really have to be a drunk social media influencer?  Of course, the female superhero is dismissed as a joke.  Not cool, Hollywood.

There will be a sequel.  There are a million unaddressed threads.  And, a possible enemy worth fighting.  Maria Gabriela de Fabria makes for a creepy-as-hell adversary and there are some real questions about a message left by Jor-El and Superman's Kryptonian mom.  We'll see.  Probably takes a couple of years for another film to be put together.  I'm mildly interested in where they go from here, but would love more story, more development of the characters.  It's okay to have big fights.  But maybe less???

"Where We Belong" by Hoda Kotb

Much like the other book I read of success stories, this one rang hollow.  Success stories are nice.  They can be inspiring.  The essential flaw I see when I read these, however, are they are books of 20/20 hindsight.  These are successful people.  They had a moment of clarity, changed their lives and did something different, and big, from what they did before.  Again, these are (mostly) white people, people of faith, people with means.  The story of Laila Ali was one such story.  She apparently pulled herself up by her own bootstraps because her famous father was a distant figure for most of her life.  But no one explains how she owned her own beauty salon by the time she was 20.  And that's the problem.  What about the people who also have dreams, who work hard, who fight to suceed ... who fail?  Where are their stories?  Are they unlucky?  Did they not hold the faith of those who made it?  Could they have worked 10% harder?  It's a mystery.  Making your dreams come true is great.  It's just not a reality for most.  And I have yet to read that book, the one about two people -- one who succeeds and one who doesn't, and what the difference was.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi"

"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope ..."

And the problem is this.  Disney keeps grabbing fairly minor phrases or characters out of the original films and building whole mini-series out of them.  But we know what is going to happen.  It is not a spoiler to say that Vader survives, Obi-Wan survives, Leia, Luke, etc all survive.  Because this is a prequel.  It takes a lot of the edge, the "what's going to happen next" out of the equation.  Yes, we now understand why Leia loves Kenobi like a father.  But there isn't a lot of room for creativity.  The bad guys are the same bad guys, the good guys include some lovable droids.  There are a host of planets, various blaster and light saber battles.  Some of the dialog is actually lifted from Episode IV.  There is a kind of Star Wars playbook and this series sticks heavily to the canon.  It doesn't help much to see a 44 year old Hayden Christensen playing the young man he played 22 years ago.  Vivian Lyra Blair is engaging as the young Leia, and Moses Ingram knocks it out of the park not only by playing an impressive villain but by having levels upon levels of emotional depth.  Other than these little sparks, it is pretty much same old, same old.  I prefer "Mandalorian" and "Skeleton Crew", as they are new stories with new characters, and are far less predictable.

"The Batman" (2022)

Oh dear.  So this is where DC has gone.  No humor, no light, no joy.  Just violence and depression and depravity and overly thin women in teeny tiny, inappropriate clothing.  Watched it on a plane and quickly forgot I had seen it.  

"Personality Isn't Permanent" by Benjamin Hardy

I bought this on spec.  It was just mentioned somewhere and when I came across it, I was intrigued.  The first third is very interesting.  Mr. Hardy talks about how we limit ourselves with socially-accepted parameters.  He ditches the idea that there are set types of personalities and makes a compelling case that most of the personality tests we use to pigeon-hole people are completely bogus.  One of the most memorable arguments was a long-term study.  A group of people took a personality test in their 20s.  In their 60s, they took the same test and their scores were completely different.  Even something as simple as "extrovert" and "introvert" can be much more subtle than we might presume.  Introverts can learn to speak in front of crowds, extroverts sometimes like the quiet of down-time.  There are homework questions, of a sort.  Designed to take the learning of each section and make it personal.  I initially dove in, and enjoyed writing out responses to questions about how other's perceptions of me created a structure within which I operated.  After the first third or so of the book, however, it takes a turn.  Mr. Hardy goes all Tony Robbins.  He insists that people don't succeed because they are essentially lazy.  We should pick a single goal (not multiple goals) and go for it like running a race in the Olympics.  We need to get up early, eschew the foods which make us fat, and go-go-go.  The message got old, fast.  He gave a good number of examples of people who followed his advice and rose to great heights.  I couldn't pretend that this was all a result of effort.  Most were white, affluent, young, and well-educated.  Not to mention Christian.  I didn't like the tone that failing was your fault, not a factor of being poor, or a person of color, or up against overwhelming odds.  Yes, some of those people succeed.  But for every one who makes it out, there are a thousand who didn't.  Mr. Hardy also has his priorities, in my humble opinion, all messed up.  The goal, according to him, is money.  He asks -- how far up the ladder do you want to go?  How much money do you want to make?  When do you want to retire and how much money do you want to have then?  He becomes a modern-day Scrooge, counting his gold in the dark of night.  The paradigm he offers isn't a good fit for me.  If I were about money I wouldn't have gone into education, where I had a lot of personal satisfaction but not a lot of income.  If I really wanted to be an actor or a writer or whatever maybe I would have been more successful in those careers if I had been laser-focused, but I don't write to sell books and I act because I enjoy it and I think I'm good at it.  I've never believed I would be, or even wanted to be "Hollywood".  Mr. Hardy wrote this book when he was 27.  He became a parent after writing this book, and is now in his 30s.  I would love to hear his take on life some 30 years later.  I wonder if he will see the world in the same way.

"Nine Perfect Strangers"

Masha, Masha, Masha.  This anthology series, which is an odd mix of "White Lotus" + "Twin Peaks", is like many shows these days, "okay".  It's good, even engaging at moments, but not brilliant.  Based on the book by the amazing author Liane Moriarty, the first season (which encompasses the novel), is slightly stronger than the second round, which just came out.  The strengths:  Unlike "White Lotus" there are characters I give a damn about.  Characters I'm rooting for, characters I want to see succeed.  The premise is that broken people go to a retreat where psychedelic mushrooms are used to get them to face their demons.  The idea is to push these tortured souls to the edge, and then pull them back at the last minute.  It's supposed to be transformative.  And, in this world, these experiences can create unexpected transformations.  

This is where the series worked for me, even though I question the use of drugs to acheive anything.  Where things go off the rail, a little:  Nicole Kidman.  Her skeletal frame, her distracting accent, her creepy persona (~this~ is someone you want counseling you?  Doesn't really engender trust ...)

The first season focuses on one character after another while the second season focuses primarily on Kidman's character, "Masha".  To the detriment of character building of the other characters.  Which is a shame.  There are some great backstories, great actors.  I am happy to watch Christine Baranski and Lena Olin in anything (and have added Dolly de Leon to the list) but none of them (or some of the other gifted actors) had enough screen time to fill out their roles in the way they should have.  

In any case.  It's a way to spend some slow days of summer, if you don't want to think too hard.