radursm

Although it often delves into extreme vulgarity, with many explicit scenes (both sexual and gory), and displays a frenzy of violence that even Tarantino might envy, "The Boys" is a series that also touches on intriguing topics and even answered some questions I had. It's based on the comic book series "The Boys" created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson and was developed by Eric Kripke. The story is a satire, focusing on a group of individuals trying to expose the truth about superheroes who are essentially products of large corporations and who, despite their positive public image, engage in corrupt and harmful behaviors behind the scenes.

If you're familiar with "The Rock and Roll Machine" (Little Heroes) by Norman Spinrad, "The Boys" takes the story to another level. In Spinrad's work, media products are carefully directed and written based on audience and market studies. Song lyrics are the result of focus groups, music is composed following such marketing studies, and the appearance of the singers is meticulously crafted.

In "The Boys", supermen and wonder-women are active on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, with dedicated Facebook pages, and their heroic deeds are, in fact, calculated by analysis and marketing departments. They combat crime in neighborhoods where the company's analysts estimate the highest media impact, where there's a likelihood of being extensively and favorably filmed by witnesses, or where the demographic profile of the beneficiaries is most profitable. Their appearance and public behavior are tailored to cover various audience segments, based on criteria like age, gender, residence area, race, income, and so on.

However...

Behind these heroes are jaded psychopaths with extraordinary superpowers, but controlled by the company that sponsors them. They have questionable sexual tendencies (like fetishes involving milk or mollusks, which are the "tamer" examples, making you wonder just how twisted the series' creators are), they are indifferent criminals (with the company also playing a role in covering up their misdeeds), and can even be sadistic when the mood strikes, often involved in promiscuous relationships.

If you've ever wondered how someone seemingly blessed by fate, having everything - money, power, fame, beauty, health - can fall into a dubious and inexplicable affair, or indulge in drug use and thrill-seeking, know that this series might provide an answer. It's simple, logical, and easy to deduce, but we often rejected it because it was always wrapped in clichés. Now, it's presented to me in a raw manner, thrust in my face, albeit in a rather sophisticated context with an acceptable dark humor.

I recommend it if you can set aside prudishness and lower your tolerance threshold for vulgarity, because the series doesn't rely on that to sell itself. On the contrary, it advocates for finesse and humanity, for beauty and goodness, even if it does so while resembling a chubby BDSM enthusiast dressed in latex wielding a chainsaw.

I can't wait for Season 4!

Oh, and Garth Ennis is also a co-author for the series "Preacher" and "Punisher".

"All the Old Knives" is different from the usual spy movies. There are no fancy cars or damsels in distress, it's not James Bond-esque. It's not like Jason Bourne fighting against a big bad guy. There aren't too many conspiracies. You don't really see guns, let alone sniper rifles and red LED bombs. It's not necessarily reflective, like the "ethical" and "essayistic" attempts produced (lately) by Clint Eastwood, Robert De Niro, or Robert Redford, but it matches them on depth. It doesn't have the phlegmatic air of the 80s, with Gene Hackman eating caviar in Paris and drinking champagne in Moscow. It doesn't take you on a world tour either, just a little bit in Vienna and London, then in a small Californian town.

It's a movie that surprised me. First of all, the story isn't exaggerated, it's human, it's dramatic. The actors (Chris Pine, Thandiwe Newton, Lawrence Fishburne, Johnatan Price) perform well, at least comparing to the Hollywood productions in recent years (which is not hard), and the Pine-Newton chemistry is there. It's sexy, it has sparks, it's like pheromones are coming out of the screen, but the film doesn't lean towards vulgarity and doesn't emphasize it either.

It's the story of long-term consequences, where today's cynicism can lead to tragedies in years, even decades. It's a hidden gem, worth watching and appreciating.

OK, "Matrix Resurrections" is not with many innovations and does not excel in any of the points where the first (and, until now, the other two in the original trilogy) stood out.

But it has something new, a subtle humor and a self-irony (towards the whole franchise), and the film's discourse is a kind of a social critique (Wachowski always flirted with the idea of being intellectuals, they even reached some milestones of existentialism and, courageously, post-structuralism) put in a light, nice theme.

Curious for me to see a slightly anti-Woke, boomer-like, plea, nostalgic for the pre-Zuckerberg and Tik-Tok era in a Lana Wachowski film. It was a nice surprise, but strengthened by the extraordinary Lambert Wilson (the Merovingian). The few minutes he speaks make the film extremely valuable.

Keanu Reeves is not John Wicker, and Carrie-Ann Moss is really cool.

And the Jefferson Airplane moment - "White Rabbit" (I'm conditioned here, it's my soul song for a long time) is very well done.

All in all, for me it was unique to see a continuation of a series that is not dilluated, but can be watched with relaxation and without forcing yourselves to like it, just for the sake of the franchise. It's not a typical Matrix, it doesn't have as many symbols and it's not as spectacular as the others (I don't think it had the budget of its predecessors either), but it's a decent sequel.

Rara avis these days.