Lord of the Flies (1954) v Lord of the Flies (1963) v Alkitrang Dugo (Clotted Blood, 1975) v Lord of the Flies (1990) v Lord of the Flies (Netflix, 2026)

Pig hunt

(Warning: plot and surprise twists in book and TV series discussed in explicit detail)

I remember reading William Golding's 1954 debut novel as a teen and having nightmares about running through the jungle with other boys in pursuit, waving sticks sharpened at both ends-- did not help the development of my socialization skills, lemme tell you. 

The book comes off as a fable, the characters barely sketched-in symbols, the theme clear enough and neat enough for literature majors to milk for their theses: humans have this ingrown tendency to violence, and we flirt with or ignore it at our peril. Really that simple, the novel's chief virtue and key weakness, and folks who seek to adapt it flirt with this fact or ignore it at their peril. 

Twin Peaks Season 3, Episode 8: "Got a light?"

Ignition

(WARNING story discussed in explicit detail--though how comprehensible details may be is a matter of debate, with both discussion and debate an exercise in futility)

The episode's putative title-- "Got a light?" sounds odd on first reading (online you see it under the episode's thumbnail pic) gains significance later on. 

Starts off plottily enough: Evil Mr. C (Kyle MacLachlan) and less evil Ray (George Griffith) have blackmailed their way out of prison, shaken away any electronic tracers*, turned off into a small side road (how can Lynch fill interminable shots of cars nosing down dirt roads with such dread?). They confront each other, demanding money demanding information, with C pointing the 'friend' he pulled from the glove compartment (a special request planted there by the prison warden) at Ray.

Only C's gun somehow fails to fire. Only Ray in a clever twist produces his own gun shooting C twice in the gut. Only when C drops the lights start flickering and shadowy figures emerge from the woods, dancing around C's body, pulling apart his belly, smearing his own gore on his face, squeezing out an egg sac larva with BOB visibly floating inside (Ray: "I saw something in Cooper. It might be the key to what this is all about.").

Trese (animated TV series)

Super natural

Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo's supernatural horror comic Trese (Thirteen) has finally been realized on the small screen and by Netflix no less--which is a bit of a mixed blessing.

Mission Impossible (1996)

Movie Impossible 

(FADE IN THEME MUSIC: Two For The Road. NOEL VERA and JOEL VERA are seated, facing each other. CAMERA TRACKS CLOSE TO NOEL).

NOEL: Welcome to the pilot episode of our show Two Thumbs Sucked, the only show on TV with identical twins for film critics. Our movie tonight is Mission Impossible, a Tom Cruise action flick produced by the star himself, the first time ever The Cruise Missile tried his hand at film production.

The anxiety shows. Cruise has packed the film to the eyeballs with special effects, narrative twists, neat technological toys, and enough digitally-enhanced explosions to satisfy the Unibomber. He’s gotten Brian De Palma to direct, Emanuelle Beart to pose pretty--but not nude--and Danny Elfman to do variations on the original Lalo Schifrin theme music. (CUT TO:)

JOEL: The Lalo Schifrin music! (ENTER MISSION IMPOSSIBLE THEME) Worth the price of admission. The movie delivers on thrills, accelerating and decelerating your heartbeat like a maestro (MUSIC FADES). When it’s over though, feels like you just saw the trailer. I was left wondering if there was an actual movie.

Watchmen (Damon Lindelof, 2019)

Who's watching this Watchmen?

(Warning: plot twists discussed in detail) 

Getting the big question out of the way: Damon Lindelof's new HBO miniseries is fun. Fastpaced, engaging, funny and at times even witty, it ingeniously picks up the various threads of Alan Moore's intricate weave and extends them, introducing patterns and themes of its own to create a new narrative.

Widows (Steve McQueen, 2018)

Breaking bad

Steve McQueen's Widows is a sketch of urban corruption, a low-key indictment of racism and (a touch louder) misogyny, a rich character study. It's also a hell of a crime pic.

Amo (Brillante Mendoza, 2018)

Who's the boss?

When Netflix announced that it was airing pro-Duterte filmmaker Brillante Mendoza mini-series (produced by TV5 Network), the intention was made clear from the get-go: to present "the other side of the coin" (as Mendoza states in an interview) of the drug war: "Yes, it (the drug war) is necessary for the Philippines--not only for the Philippines but also other countries afflicted with the drug problem." 

When interviewed by The Telegraph Mendoza's response (after the outraged response to his statement) was more measured: "This series will show the two sides of the coin," he says (italics mine). "The message is that we should all understand that there is a (drugs) situation in the Philippines…and now the government has really got very tough about it." He adds "I’m not saying that it should be addressed in the way that this government is dealing with it. But people tend to criticise and to give their opinions without even going deeper into the issue."

At least one human rights group has already voiced its opinion: The International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD) on hearing Netflix's declaration that the series is a "bold and suspenseful show that has the potential of capturing thrill-seeking audiences worldwide" has replied in an open letter: "This is a humanitarian crisis, not entertainment fodder."

The series itself? Well let me tell you.

Dr. Who Christmas Special: Twice Upon a Time

Double jeopardy

(WARNING: plot twists throughout new Who's timeline discussed in close detail!)

It's the thirteenth Doctor Who Christmas Special; it's the Twelfth Doctor meeting the First (or as he prefers to put it the 'original') Doctor; it's Peter Capaldi's final bow; it's Steve Moffat's last word on the subject.

Out 1 (Jacques Rivette)

Let us play

What to call Jacques Rivette's 1971 work? He named it 'Out' because the word 'in' was so fashionable (the 'in thing' to do) added a '1' because "(t)he action of the film is rather like a serial which could continue through several episodes."

But Rivette is also all about accident and chance (throughout his career but particularly in this production), and (so the story goes) scribbled on the cans of an early work print were the words 'touch me not' in Latin. What could be more eloquently descriptive of this monstrous long mix of fantasy and realism filled with characters so sensitive (so perceptive so susceptible to suffering) they both resist and seek out contact? What more appropriate plea than that the film is a special case that must not be shortened or simplified?

What's in it? A series of scenes where Rivette gathers his actors (or actor) tells them who they are and what must basically be said and/or done to further the plot (such as it is) then cuts them loose. And they fly or stumble (as the director put it) "without text or rehearsal" bringing something new to the scene the film the world.

On and on and on for some twelve-and-a-half hours.

Twin Peaks Season 3 Finale (David Lynch, 2017)

Cherchez la femme

(Warning: plot outline and narrative twists discussed in close detail)

In the first part of The Return finale co-writers Lynch and Frost assembles most of the series' characters (those left alive I mean) at the Peaks sheriff's station, lashes every (well most) storylines together in a single great gift-wrapped all-encompassing Christmas package of a resolution. In the second half Lynch takes that package stuffs it under the belly of the Trinity bomb and fires the device, sending everything up in a mushroom cloud spinning slowly against the dark New Mexico sky.

Twin Peaks (David Lynch, 2017)

A stranger's dream

A little over a quarter century later.

The gum you thought would never come back.

It is happening again.

There's no berry pies served, no coffee until the fourth episode where a cup--maybe--plays a crucial role. There's donuts--boxed and labeled (apparently from a wellknown franchise) not spread out in sumptuous display--and at one point a beautifully pointless pun involving the little crullers. Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) does appear but she's older now ("I'm dead yet I live") having somehow aged in the confines of the Black Lodge. Most of the characters have visibly aged, reflecting the physical condition of much of the audience ardently watching.

Ladies and gentlemen welcome--back--to Twin Peaks.

Amok Time (Joseph Pevney)

For the 50th anniversary of Star Trek

Mad men

Fifty years! Fifty years watching and re-watching and poring over the minutiae of this '60s show by TV veteran Gene Roddenberry that lasted at most three seasons (that third almost universally reviled) featuring low-budget effects, cardboard sets, green-dyed women. Broke some ground with a racially diverse cast, was mostly forgiven for the somewhat misogynistic treatment of women (Short-skirted uniforms anyone?), was generally considered the most intelligent science-fiction TV series of its time (if we forget Dr. Who and The Prisoner). 

Daredevil Season 2 (Doug Petrie, Marco Ramirez)

Punishing

(Warning: story and plot twists of the Netflix series discussed in detail)

Was Daredevil Season 2 an improvement over the first? Well yes and no.

Game of Thrones Season 6

Game set match

(Warning: surprise twists and plot details, of both series and novels, to be discussed)

Season 6 of Game of Thrones has just ended and--yeah. 

A pair of Burnetts: 'Nightjohn' and 'Selma, Lord Selma'

A pair of Burnetts

I suppose Selma, Lord Selma (1999) might be called Burnett's take on the Civil Rights Movement. Easy to wish it had been produced by anyone besides Disney, but thewish is a double-edged sword: if Disney had not coughed up the money, would there be a film at all?

Twin Peaks (David Lynch and Mark Frost, creators)

That gum you like 

David Lynch and Mark Frost's murder mystery/spiritual horrorshow/police procedural/goofball soap opera Twin Peaks debuted on ABC Network April 8, 1990 and television hasn't been quite the same.  

The Man in the High Castle (Amazon Prime pilot, directed by David Semel, Daniel Percival, written by Frank Spotnitz)

Bless my homeland forever

Frank Spotnitz's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's classic alternate-history dystopia The Man in the High Castle is alternately ballsy and flawed, but does get this much right: it opens with Jeanette Olsson's tender rendition of "Edelweiss," the song's thick longing turned sour by off-kilter music, the recording apparently defective as it skips forward a few times. This is nostalgia curdling gradually into nightmare: we see images of American monuments, maps of the country, flags, war footage. Eventually (like a creeping pestilence) we see swastikas here, there--hints of the state of the world as it exists in the series.

"Edelweiss" of course was written by Oscar Hammerstein with music by Richard Rogers for the 1959 musical The Sound of Music. It's about as Austrian as french fries are French.  

World on a Wire (Welt am Draht, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973)

Pure imagination

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's World on a Wire (Welt am Draht, 1973, from Daniel F. Galouye's novel Simulacron-3), done before he succeeded internationally with Ali: Fear Eats the Soul was--after a TV premiere and a few theatrical screenings--unavailable for the longest time. It was resurrected thirty-seven years later by the 60th Berlin Film Festival  before being released on Region 2 DVD, then on the Criterion label two years after that. 

Along with its many dislocations the film--as if stored in a vault, or catapulted by time machine some forty years into the future--gives us a glimpse of how the '70s viewed virtual reality, artificial intelligences, the digital age, all hazily distant concepts at the time. In some ways their ideas were wrongheaded, laughably caught up in their own fixations (nothing exposes a decade better than its notions of the future); in others they were remarkably on target, even disturbingly prescient about trends still developing today. 

Marvel's Daredevil (Drew Goddard, Steven S. DeKnight, 2015)

The man without

Interesting how the comic book Daredevil's tagline (man without fear!) is worn as a point of pride and not embarrassment. Arguably one of the more emotionally potent points Joss Whedon makes in his multimilliondollar superproductions is that his heroes lack some quality that renders them less than normal, rather than enjoy an extraordinary ability that upgrades their status to supernormal (Tony Stark has no humility, Steve Rogers social context, Thor a sense of mortality, Clint Barton and Natasha Romanova clean consciences, Bruce Banner consistent and effective impulse control). The deficiency humanizes them in our eyes, renders them less godlike and more accessible.  

Last Christmas (Paul Wilmshurst, Doctor Who Christmas Special)

Badass Santa

(WARNING: story and plot twists discussed in explicit detail, so--watch the episode first!)

And finally after ten years of Whovian Christmas Specials (the only thing I actually look forward to when the season rolls by) the Big Man himself shows up. And when he makes his entrance (I mean a proper entrance, unlike the earlier rooftop scene where he attempted to remain incognito) it has to be in style. An explosion takes out a wall; tangerines roll (like bowled grenades?) across the floor; Slinkies march forth, followed by regiments of toy robots. The Big Man himself strides in in the guise of Nick Frost wearing a luxurious white beard and red suit, levels at the camera (at us in effect) his most 'I'm not taking any crap from you' Robert Baratheon glare and growls: "what seems to be the problem?"