Jumanji: The Next Level (3/5 Stars)

I had written in my review of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle that it was the type of movie that you had to take a step back and shake yourself into realizing it was a great film. Jumanji: The Next Movie is the same concept, with the same actors, and the same director, but it is not a great film. Again, one has to take a step back and contemplate what exactly is the different since there is so much in common.

The most obvious difference is the disappearance of the original writers: Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. I sung their praises before so I will not dwell on their greatness here. Notice instead how this movie lacks the sheer efficiency and ingenious character development of the first movie. In particular, the game itself was more fully realized (and more obviously a video game) in the first movie. Here, the video game’s plot is not so clearly constructed. It is hardly to imagine the various scenes as video game levels. Still, this movie has a few good ideas and does its best to exploit them to their most enjoyable.

The best idea of this sequel, and a further confirmation into what made the first movie work so well, is to fully lean in on the actors doing impressions of other actors. Regardless of what the plot is doing, I always find this interesting. This sequel introduces two more real-life characters: Uncle Eddie played by Danny Devito and his ex-business partner Milo Walker played by Danny Glover. When the real people are sucked into the game this time, Danny Devito inhabits of Dr. Smolder Bravestone, played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Likewise Danny Glover inhabits Moose Finbar, played by Kevin Hart. Both are fun impressions. I would give Kevin Hart the upper hand on his though. (Favorite line: “Did…I just kill Eddie…by talking…too slow…just like…he always said I would).

Dr. Shelly Oberon, played by Jack Black, who was the avatar of the mean girl in the first film, is now the avatar of Fridge, the black football player. So Jack Black's impression this time around is a complete 180. This is one of those things that might seem controversial but much like Robert Downey Jr.’s performance in Tropic Thunder has inexplicably not raised eyebrows. Also joining the cast is Awkwafina as another avatar player character in the video game. Near the end she  switches places and becomes the avatar of Danny Devito. She does a great job (dare I say better job than The Rock) in acting like an old short fat outspoken Italian man.

The acting shenanigans are the most interesting part of this movie. So much so, that the action sequences, though packed with special effects, feel like they are get in the way of the performances. In the original movie there was more of a balance (or at least the action sequences seemed to be more intertwined with the character development). What is also lacking from the original movie is any particularly interesting development in the original four teenage characters. The pathos of this movie belongs entirely to the characters of Danny Devito and Danny Glover who have had some bad blood in their previous business break-up and are seeking away to heal old bonds. In effect, this makes them the main characters as they have the more emotional territory to cover. Unlike the first movie, there is not enough for all the characters to do, less balance between the character plots and the character's skills/weaknesses do not pay off as well.

Overall, Jumanji: The Next Level is a decently good movie. It is what a sequel should be in a way: the same, but more of it. I got enough of exactly what I was looking for.

Knives Out (5/5 Stars)

The Trope (aka Movie Cliché) abounds for a practical reason. They represent to the unimaginative a kind of shortcut in the creative process. Instead of going through the rigamorale of producing from scratch a totally original plot, they reuse tried and tested plot devices gleaned from genre and tradition. Like jokes told more than once, these tropes lose some of their effect each time they are employed, but this should not cover up their inherent truth: They are used so often because they work.

Perhaps the most used plot is the murder mystery. Agatha Christie at one point would churn these stories out annually making her the most best-selling author behind The Bible and William Shakespeare. Someone gets killed: Big Deal. The killer is still out there: Present Danger! Who is it? Suspense! The most used trope within the murder mystery plot is the locked room. That is, all the characters are in the same locked room with the dead body. We don’t know who the killer is but they must be someone in the room.

This story has been told many times over. As stated before, such retelling lowers the effectiveness of the trope. That is unless the writer reemploys creativity to the trope, subverting the audience’s already held expectations. In this way, the plot’s dull edged are resharpened and, once again employ their original effectiveness. Such is “Knives Out” an ingenious locked room murder mystery written and directed by Rian Johnson (Brick, Looper)

The setting is an old mansion isolated in the New England woods. Therein Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), best-selling author of murder mysteries, is holding his 85^th birthday party. All his family is in attendance, a colorful privileged lot of bigoted conservatives and insufferable liberals. Harlan does many things that night to give a colorable argument for each of his family members to seek his death. And then Harlan commits suicide by slitting his own throat. The police are pretty sure it’s a suicide but then the great private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) shows up, hired by an unknown someone who suspects foul play.

Benoit Blanc is himself a mystery. He is played by an Englishman (James Bond no less), has a decidedly French name, and employs a southern accent. This is not explained. Without giving too much away, and I can’t because what I am about to reveal happens in the first twenty minutes, the story is not necessarily a whodunit, but more of a how did a particular character didn’t do it?

We are shown in the first twenty minutes that Harlan’s in-house nurse Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas) mixes up his medication, giving him an overdose of morphine. In order to spare her a criminal conviction, Harlan instructs her how to escape the house without attracting suspicion and then kills himself. But is that all to this story? And who hired Benoit Blanc to investigate? And why?

The family of Harlan Drysdale is a cabinet of unique caricatures and good casting. The more important ones are: Linda Drysdale, daughter of Harlan (Jamie Lee Curtis), her husband Richard Drysdale (Don Johnson), and their playboy son Ransom Drysdale (Chris Evans); Walt Thrombey, son of Harlan (Michael Shannon); Joni Thrombey (Toni Collete), daughter-in-law of Harlan. It is to the credit of Rian Johnson, that they are not all terrible people. They have their faults, and some are worse than others. Others, like Walt Thrombey, are not so bad, well, most of the time. In this way, the writer throws the audience leads and red herrings and makes us thinks very hard about how much we trust everyone.

There is one character that Rian Johnson wants us to trust completely and that is the in-house nurse Marta Cabrera. Marta has a medical disorder that causes her to vomit every time she tells a lie. But she is also the one who gave Harlan a fatal dose of morphine and last saw him before he died. How did she not do it? Well, watch the movie and see if you can figure it out before the cliché everyone-in-the same room as the great detective makes his speech scene. The reveal is highly effective.

Best Movies of the Decade

2010

The Social Network

Inception

Black Swan

Exit Through the Gift Shop

2011

Bridesmaids

Take Shelter

Midnight in Paris

2012

Silver Linings Playbook

Django Unchained

Skyfall

2013

Inside Llewyn Davis

The Act of Killing

Gravity

2014

Birdman

Guardians of the Galaxy

The Grand Budapest Hotel

American Sniper

2015

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant

Results

Inside Out

2016

The Lobster

Hacksaw Ridge

Toni Erdmann

2017

The Florida Project

Lady Bird

Thor: Ragnarok

2018

Sorry to Bother You

Avengers: Infinity War

The Death of Stalin

2019

Parasite

The Farewell

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2/5 Stars)

In my review of Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, I stated that the quality of Episode VIII would rely on how Episode IX resolved the interesting questions that were raised. I found especially intriguing the idea that Rey would not be related to any of the other main characters, this usually being a prerequisite for importance in a Star Wars movie. The idea posited was that the Force is self-balancing. In this way, a being that was either very light or very dark would naturally bring about their opposite at some other place in the universe. With this understanding, Luke Skywalker felt it prudent to leave behind the force altogether in order to not further provoke more Sith Lords.

It turns out none of this matters or even happened, which kind of renders both Episode VIII and Episode IX pointless, which in turn renders Episode VII pointless too. To watch this new trilogy is to watch the most expensive interplay between bad improvisors in the history of movies. At the very least, as things were being made up as they went along, the contributors could have abided by the first and only important rule of improvisation, “Yes And…” That is if you are to not have a plan, the very least you can do is not undercut your fellow collaborators. This basic concept is lost on the director of the Episode VII and Episode IX J.J. Abrams and the director of VIII, Rian Johnson.

For certain movies, a warning against spoilers is warranted. “Parasite” is a good example. Its plot twists are nonobvious and are brought about with Hitchcockian suspense that is quite pleasurable to experience in the moment. For other movies, warnings against spoilers behaves more like a marketing tool. By begging reviewers to not allow spoilers, the mega corporations involved keep away from the audience certain unimaginative details that would be complete let-downs if revealed.

For instance, Rey is not a total nobody as presented in Episode VIII. Actually, she is the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine from “Return of the Jedi”. What a let-down. That sound is the most interesting development in Episode VIII hitting the bottom of the dust-bin. What is more disappointing is the reason why Rey is a Palpatine. It seems entirely do with the decision to hew as closely to the structure and development of the plot of “Return of the Jedi” as possible. Looking back, I don’t see why I expected anything less. After all, Director J.J. Abrams did the same thing with Episode VII, making that movie’s plot an almost retread of Episode IV: A New Hope and Director Rian Johnson did the same thing with Episode VIII, making that movie’s plot structure a retread of Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

It should be noted that Director J.J. Abrams is once more complicit in the murder of billions of people. With an amazing lack of originality, a weapon that destroys planets has been developed by the bad guys. Mr. Abrams once more shows no hesitation at all in using this weapon, incinerating a planet as an afterthought and not particularly caring about treating the aftermath with the sort of respect that should be called for amongst such an extraordinary loss of life. The movie, like all Disney movies, is PG-13, because there is not a hint of sex involved anywhere. Even Poe, played by Oscar Isaac, the Han Solo-ish character, is not getting lucky anytime soon. A sad development given that he is instrumental in saving the galaxy by the end of the movie.

There are certain things about this movie that do not come remotely close to making sense. However, it is hard to talk about them in a critical manner because the movie moves so fast from plot point to plot point that it hardly matters what has just happened. “Look Something Shiny and New,” is the name of the game here. When the original Star Wars trilogy came out, the critics wailed about its reliance on special effects and lack of character development. What glory days those were, when characters engaged each other in half a minute-long conversations and military tactics, however limited, were considered. In Episode IV, the main characters land a ship in the Death Star and by subterfuge, loosely defined, rescued the princess. Here, the main characters land a ship in an enemy star destroyer and the first thing they do is come out guns blazing as if three people with blasters could take down a gigantic ship by brute force. The original trilogy at least gave the audience certain outs for unlikely scenarios. To experience this trilogy without rolling your eyes you must be a total idiot.

The ending bespeaks a recent trend in the ever-escalating stupidity of movie villains. Like the army of the undead in “Game of Thrones”, the evil forces here are both impossibly powerful and also can be take down with the capture of a single target. I would posit that fair fights that are resolved by strategy are more interesting that lopsided battles won by technicalities. But this idea is lost on the makers of Star Wars.

There is a bright spot in this movie and that is the basically good acting of Adam Driver as Kylo Ren and Daisy Ridley as Rey. This is helped by a storyline that gives these characters things to do and emotions to develop. The same cannot be said for the characters of Poe, played by Oscar Isaac, or Finn, played by John Boyega. They do not do anything in this movie but run around from plot point to plot point. From the promise of Episode VII, it is rather disappointing that Poe and Finn do not ultimately have interesting story arcs. However, at least these characters had the promise of an interesting story arc. There are several characters in this trilogy who were introduced and then promptly forgotten. Rosie, a seemingly important character in Episode VIII hardly shows up in Episode IX (Maybe the focus groups found that the world was not ready for a Black-Asian romance). Benicio Del Toro from Episode VIII does not appear at all in IX. Domnhall Gleeson has a fate that suggests he wasn’t willing to work for more than a week. Keri Russell literally phones it in, perhaps only showing up to work for one day to dub the lines for her bemasked minor character. Several other characters are introduced in this episode seemingly for the limited purpose of introducing new series on Disney+. But is there actually a plan to make these series or are these scenes just bait for the focus groups where the real decisions would be made? If that series starring Lando Calrissian does not come to fruition, Episode IX will harbor an utterly pointless scene in a few years’ time.

There is a way to plan out a franchise and that way was ably demonstrated by Marvel over the past decade. Not every movie in the Marvel franchise is a must-see-most-important-installment-of-the-franchise movie. Most movies focus on a single character which in coordination with other smaller movies build into the bigger spectacle movies every four or five years. Star Wars has not done this. The sad thing is that it probably could have. What really helped Marvel was its library of over fifty years of comic book storylines that the movies could pick and choose plots from. Star Wars has a library substantially similar to this: four decades of books written by professional fans and blessed as canon by George Lucas. None of this material was considered for Episodes VII, VIII, or IX. Why?

Corporate cynicism comes to mind. The new trilogy is the same thing as the old, but with better special effects and a more diverse cast. Why take a risk making something new, when you can repackage the old as a presentation to international audiences unfamiliar with the old movies. The global marketplace is where the real movie is made. My appetite for Star Wars has officially been sated. I do not plan on seeing any further of these movies in theaters. 

The Lighthouse (4/5 Stars)

“The Lighthouse” is firmly rooted in that David Lynch territory where realism and continuity are sacrificed to effect and mood. What we are seeing on the screen is not so much what the characters are experiencing but what they feel they are experiencing. And what they are feeling looks to be the sailor’s version of cabin fever. There are two men, an experienced lighthouse operator played by Willem Dafoe and his new apprentice played by Robert Pattinson. What happened to the last apprentice that worked here asks Pattinson. He ended his own life, explains Dafoe, after going mad.

“The Lighthouse” was directed by Robert Eggers, written in cooperation with his brother Max Eggers. Writer/Director teams of brothers (Coens, Wachowskis, Nolans) have led to some of the more confidently weird movies in existence. This team of brothers can be added to that shortlist. The Eggers are relatively new. They have only one other mainstream movie (The Witch) which I have just added to my Netflix queue.

There is much to the “The Lighthouse” that makes it a unique experience. To start, the movie is shot in black and white and has a narrow aspect ratio. The time of the story looks like the late 1800s or early 1900s. There is only one location, a lighthouse on a deserted rock. The original score blares ominously, and much delusions of mermaids and pigeons. Then there is the ACTING, which involves much yelling in Irish/Scottish/pirate brogue. The dialect is given special mention in the credits because it is not of this time and seemingly not of this world. Willem Dafoe, not a particularly handsome man, and Robert Pattinson, who I insist does not look normal, successfully inhabit this alien land. They spend much of the time drinking moonshine and colorfully cursing each other.

There is some character background and plot but it doesn’t much get in the way of the weirdness. To summarize, Robert Pattinson is new to the lighthouse, drawn to the job because the wages are higher for work on desolate rocks in the middle of nowhere. Willem Dafoe appears to have been there forever. He is a hard taskmaster, but when a storm grounds all work (preventing the new man from leaving at the end of his tour), and there is nothing to do all day but get piss drunk and dance, the professionalism of the lighthouse suffers quite a bit.

This is one of the those movies I would love to hear a director’s commentary for (not that these things are done much these days) because I can only imagine how crazy it was to be on the set with Willem Dafoe cursing up a piratical storm. I bet there are a lot more good stories there.

Parasite (5/5 Stars)

Once upon a time there were two families, one rich and one poor. The rich lived at the top of the hill. At the bottom lived the poor. “Parasite” is the latest effort from writer/director Bong Joon Ho (“The Host”, “Okja”). Its scope is specific, it concerns itself with two families in Seoul, South Korea, one rich and one poor and takes place almost entirely within two homes. Its effect is broad. I expect families all over the world regardless of location or language would immediately understand the themes. Like most great cinema, “Parasite” finds in the details a larger universal truth. No wonder this Korean film won the Palme D’or a Cannes and has grossed over $100 million outside South Korea. I think this movie has the better chance at a Best Picture Oscar than any other foreign language film I have ever seen.

The poor family’s name is Kim. The patriarch is played by Kang-ho Song, the only actor I recognized. The parents are unemployed and the family earns the rent for his basement apartment by taking on gig jobs like folding pizza boxes. One day, the son is presented with an opportunity to be recommended as a English language tutor for daughter of the Park family, the rich family at the top of the hill. The son asks the school friend that wants to recommend him for the job: “Why pick a loser like me?” The school friend explains that he has a crush on the rich daughter and does not want to recommend a tutor that the daughter would ever consider. The poor son takes no offense. He know he is poor.

Deceit is required to be hired. Educational degrees are forged. The rich mother (played here by Yea-Jeong Jo) is particularly gullible and says things that make the poor son believe she could be further deceived. Step by step the Kims insert themselves into employment in the Park household. The poor daughter becomes the art therapist for the rich son. The poor father becomes the chauffeur of the rich father. The poor mother becomes the full-time maid. The Parks are not exactly being taken advantage. The Kims are totally competent and do their jobs well. The people that suffer are the other employees the Kims succeed in defaming and having terminated. The Parks are more unaware than anything. The Kims are

Now we are at the midpoint of the movie. The Parks leave town for a camping trip. In the night, the old housekeeper comes back claiming she has forgotten something in the basement. At this point, the movie twists in a weird, suspenseful, and supremely satisfying way that all marketing have deftly avoided spoiling. I too would not dream of saying anymore about the plot and from here on out will only wax philosophical.

In one scene, the Kims are discussing the Parks. The poor son says, “They are rich, but nice.” The mother disagrees: “The are nice because they are rich. If I were rich, I would be soooo nice.”

And why wouldn’t the Parks be nice people? They are secure and comfortable and are treated nicely by everyone they meet. One would be tempted to conclude that it is the poor Kims that are treating the rich Parks poorly. But then an unexpected tragedy occurs, and the rich Parks, in particular the naïve rich mother, perform an act so extraordinarily insensitive that it approaches cruelty, except of course, that the Parks have no idea that they are acting cruelly because the Kims have been so thoroughly dishonest. Mayhem follows and the movie resolves itself in such an unexpected symmetry that the story elevates itself into the realm of timeless parable.

What is the responsibility of the Parks to know what is going on around them? How much fault do the Kims have for their part in sheltering the Parks. I was reminded by the chapter in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” where the protagonist, a black student at a black college in the south, accidentally chauffeurs a white trustee of the college to the wrong side of town. The white trustee is appalled by the poverty, seemingly seeing it for the first time. Back at the college, the black college president expels the student for showing the white trustee the poor conditions of the community. As the black college president explains, his power over the protagonist comes from his efforts to make the whites feel good about themselves and he does this by keeping from them societal truths. That is not so different from the story of the Kims and Parks. The rich live in bliss on the clouds. Down below the starving poor eat each other.

Ford v. Ferrari (3/5 Stars)

Ford v. Ferrari is a pretty good snapshot of all the contradictions of the sport of car racing. The fan base of this sport are red blooded Americans from those parts of the country that are all about less government and more bootstrap. They wear cowboy hats, eat steak, and drive cars, that most singular way to travel. But is there a sport out there that is less beholden to corporate interests? Look at those NASCAR cars. They are covered head to toe with advertisements. No car racer owns his own car. It is the corporation's car. This is because it takes a hell of a lot of money and engineering to build a car that can compete in these races. So much so that it may be a question as to whether the individual driver is all that important. Particularly in long races like the one at issue in this movie, the 24-hour race at Le Mans. No individual racer drives all the race. It is the car that goes the distance. But how do you tell a story about the car to the NASCAR fan base who are highly individualistic. (Were Carol Shelby and Ken Miles really ignorant of the rule that affects the end of this race? I mean, really?)

Ford v. Ferrari is a basic and competent sports story about simple and rebellious protagonists and affluent and beholden antagonists. It works on this basic level and is anchored by a cast of manly men: Matt Damon as coach/car builder Carol Shelby and Christian Bale as the driver Ken Miles get the job done on the ground. In the Ford office are Tracy Letts as Ford CEO Henry Ford II and two of his senior employees Jon Bernthal as Lee Iacocca and Josh Lucas as Leo Beebe. Ferrari is not played by a name actor and actually does not have much to do in this movie. The main conflict is between Lee Iacocca who wants to give our heroes (Damon and Bale) more discretion and Leo Beebe who is mainly interested in marketing. Why can’t our driver be more photogenic, asks Leo, we could totally sell more cars that way? This question becomes the linchpin of the movie. Will the corporation give the renegades enough leeway to succeed? Leo Beebe is portrayed as a scheming pretty boy. Josh Lucas does his smarmy best (I remember him from American Psycho).

Is Ford really an underdog here? It has all the money and talent and a willingness akin to the NFL’s Patriots to undertake courses of action that aren’t technically cheating, but probably should be. Reading between the lines, I got the feeling that Ferrari did not have much of a chance. All Ford needed to do was show up and care. The main impetus for the whole rivalry was the hurt feelings of Henry Ford II after Ferrari used the Ford Company’s interest in acquiring his company to run up the price on the other buyer, Fiat. Lee Iacocca reports this failure back to Henry Ford II and adds that Ferrari called Ford cars ugly and Henry II fat. Henry Ford II gruffly declares that the Le Mans racing team has a blank check. The rest is history. Ford won the next five years. I expect Ford stopped winning because it stopped caring. It made its point and went back to more profitable ventures, like selling cars to regular people. Meanwhile, we are told that Ferrari went bankrupt chasing perfection at Le Mans. There is a female character in this movie, the wife of Ken Miles. She feels out of place in this exorbitant high-stakes pissing contest.

This is one of those movies where I sort of wish there was a less Hollywood version. I would like to know more about the engineering and science of making a car go really fast for a very long time and less about the mystical and intangible qualities of race car drivers. Having said that, Christian Bale once again showcases his superhuman ability to gain/lose weight. Last time I saw him, he had the gut of Dick Cheney. Now, he is thin and wiry again. That talented jerk.

Jojo Rabbit (4/5 Stars)

In 2006, I visited family friends in Uberach, Germany as a prelude to my study abroad in college. During my time there, I happened be introduced to this little old lady that lived in the village. After she had left the general area, for whatever reason, my hosts informed me that she had been in the Hitler Youth and after the war spent her entire life helping refugees escape from the Soviet Union. Her? Yes, that little old lady with the kind eyes had once been a Nazi. I saw “Jojo Rabbit” the new film by Taika Waititi and thought of her.

“Jojo Rabbit” is about a ten-year-old boy in the Hitler Youth. It is a club like the Boy Scouts. The boys are taken out to the woods by camp counselors where they dress in uniforms, learn survival crafts, and sleep in tents. Not like the Boy Scouts they also burn books, are taught how to handle guns and grenades and are counseled in basic cruelty. One day, Jojo is picked out of the crowd and instructed to strangle a rabbit. Poor Jojo can’t bring himself to do it and all the other boys make fun of him. Jojo runs off into the woods where his imaginary friend comforts him. His imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler or, more accurately, what a timid would-be Nazi boy would imagine Adolf Hitler to be like. Hitler here is played by the Writer/Director himself, Taika Waititi, and well, he is zealous but in a goofy way. He's funny.

Apparently, Taika Waititi adapted this screenplay from a novel. It is hard to believe that the novel is anything like the movie in terms of tone. I expect the novel had a boy in the Hitler Youth and that was about where the similarities end. There is just too much here that seems from the same mind as "Flight of the Conchords" and "Thor: Ragnorak". For whatever reason, Waititi thought it would be appropriate for a native of New Zealand like himself to make this movie. Good for him. We need more filmmakers with balls like that in this day and age. I especially approve of his application of white-face to play Hitler.

 “Jojo Rabbit” is as much of a comedy that a movie with this subject matter could be and still be plausibly respectful. The movie has bright colors, gorgeous weather, and colorful characters. Chewing up the scenery in supporting roles are Sam Rockwell, Rebel Wilson and Stephen Merchant, three inspired casting choices for comic Nazis. Scarlett Johannsson plays Jojo’s mother, Rosie. Thomasin McKenzie plays the jew who is hiding in the walls of the house. Jojo’s discovery of the jew, the first one he has ever actually met, kicks off the movie’s second half.

A storytelling technique that Waititi deftly employs is to limit the information about the war. The audience basically know as much as Jojo and it is only gradually revealed that the Nazis are losing and have been losing from the start of the movie. (One of the reasons that the kids are being taught how to handle weapons has to do with Hitler’s late war plan of using children in the fighting.) The movie takes place between the lines. We understand Jojo is not evil because he is ten-years-old and barely knows what is happening around him. But what about his mother? What does she believe? Has she allowed Jojo to take part in the Hitler Youth to protect him, to protect herself, or what? What about the other Nazis? They seem to know at some point that the war is unwinnable. Their choices in the face of that situation are never boring. Because Jojo’s understanding is somewhat limited, our understanding is limited to, and in that way “Jojo Rabbit” may be very good movie to see twice.

I am amazed again at the acting chops of a child actor. Jojo is played by Roman Griff Davis. This is that kid's first major role in anything (although he does come from a family in the movie business). He couldn’t be any cuter. Almost by default is is heart-rending/warming to see a kid like that go through the Huck Finn transformation in which a good heart ultimately triumphs over the evil indoctrination. This development necessarily pits Jojo against his imaginary friend Adolf. The climatic scene is unfortunately too short, I felt, and my one disappointment.

 Taika Waititi has cemented himself in my mind as one of the more interesting storytellers around. I expect I expect I will try to see all of his work going forward and look up everything I missed in the past.