Author Archives: Bob Evans

Luigi Mangione & Vance Boelter: Brothers in Arms

On December 4th, 2024, the CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson, while walking out of a hotel in Manhattan was shot and killed. The alleged assassin Luigi Mangione has lain in wait for the corporate executive to depart the hotel and killed him on the sidewalk leaving behind shell casings with the words ‘delay, deny, and depose’ inscribed upon them. Five days later Mangione was arrested and faces charges for the apparently politically motivated murder.

Following the assassination Mangione and his alleged actions became the focus of online activity with ironic supportive memes going viral and people debating the ‘justification’ of the murder due to the nature of the victim’s business. For some, Mangione became a sort of modern folk hero for murdering the ‘right’ sort of people.

I shall not get into a healthcare debate here, UHC is a company I have detested for more than a decade, and I am well-aware of the failings and evils of for-profit healthcare.

In the early morning hours of June 14th, 2025, Democratic state politician John Hoffman and his spouse were shot in their home, the spouse suffering gunshot wounds while shielding their daughter from the assailant. A short time later, the leader of the state’s Democratic Caucus Melissa Hortman and her spouse were assassinated in their home by an assassin posing as a police officer. The next day, Vance Boelter was arrested and charged with the murder. Once again memes began being shared online, dark, ironic and dismissive of the victims, with some coming from Republican Senators.

These two alleged assassins, though from very different ends of the political spectrum, are, in effect, the same. In both cases these people felt that the ‘injustice’ they perceived justified their murderous actions. That they held a moral authority to deal in death and judgment against whom those that they ascertained to be their enemies. If you celebrated one and condemned the other, even in mocking ironic memes, you are part of the problem. You are part of the culture that nurtures, encourages, and provides the justifications for such horrid actions.

Political violence is a terrible beast, never dead and always seeking to escape the chains of civilization do not saw at those links for your side’s benefit; it never pays off well in the end.

Overtures: Vanishing Cultural Knowledge

One of my brain-resting pastimes is watching ‘reactors’ on YouTube. These are generally millennials viewing classic films, which depressingly are often from the 80s & 70s, for the first time. As a boomer born in the early 60s these are movies I have seen many that are close to my heart and among my favorites. It is surprising just how successful some of these channels have become. One Canadian lady now in the US, who until she started this project described herself as a rom-com and comedy gal, had her channel, Popcorn in Bed, become so large that Tom Cruise’s production company invited her to the premiere of a Mission Impossible film.

One of the fascinating aspects of watching these channels is seeing how some things that were once common knowledge slip away into obscurity. It makes me feel like Galadriel’s narration at the start of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: “…some things were lost because none now live who remember it.”

I have written before about how these younger people have no context for the little white nitroglycerin tablets Father Merrin takes for his heart disease in The Exorcist but another larger thing on my mind this morning: overtures.

Taken from ballet and opera, an overture in film is a piece of music played before the start of a movie used to set a mood. They were never common, but overtures were once employed much more often, usually of grand elaborate productions such as Gone with the Wind (1939) or Ben-Hur (1959). I can’t recall when I learned about overtures in feature films, but it was long ago, so much so that it is just part of what I know about movies. I think the first overture I experienced before a film was for the original release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

So many of these millennials, coming to adulthood in a world so unlike mine own, have never encountered an overture nor have they learned what they were from some text or book. When these people, who are not dumb or stupid, encounter an overture it is a period of confusion as they sit through several minutes of sometimes a black screen, neither Star Trek: The Motion Picture nor 2001: A Space Odyssey employed a title card with their overtures, with only a score playing. Aside from people who manage to see live Broadway-style productions, and the rare film that still employs them, the overture seems to be slipping out of all knowledge.

M3GAN 2.0

I cannot recall ever being this uninterested in the sequel to a film I enjoyed as I am with M3GAN 2.0.

2022’s M3GAN was not in any way a classic of cinema. The premise was quite simple, Gemma ( Allison Williams) a designer of advanced robotic toys following a tragic accident, becomes the guardian of her niece. Unsuited to the sudden role of substitute mother Gemma effectively turns the task over to her newly created and quite untested android M3GAN, which, taking its instructions far too literally, ends up becoming a murderous machine.

M3GAN leaned heavily into camp with occasional forays into violence that for the theatrical cut were toned down and not explicitly graphic. The resulting movie was one that was fun, did not take itself too seriously, and provided a brief, in not predictable, period of escape from the dreary world of 2022. The fact that the movie grossed more than 10 times its modest budget, and that the script deliberately left this door open, doomed the cinema landscape to a sequel.

Now, three years later, that sequel has arrived and the lackluster, paint by the numbers approach devoid of camp nature makes it one of the least interesting trailers I have seen in quite a while.

As has happened with previous horror franchises, M3GAN the character has developed a fanbase not unlike Michael from Halloween, Jason from Friday the 13th, and Freddy, from A Nightmare on Elm Street. The monsters have become the heroes and M3GAN now follows that dull and trite path as a new evil artificial intelligence arrives and, in one of the least surprising concepts, only M3GAN can counter it. Of course, if she is to be more of a protagonist then M3GAN required an upgrade that transformed her from a little girl to something with a disturbing amount of sexuality.

This is a horror movie that not only will I miss its theatrical run, I shall also miss its video on demand release, and its streaming debut.

Not The Weekend I Wanted

I had plans for this weekend. Saturday evening I was to run my Tabletop Role Playing game of Space Opera I even toyed with the idea of going to a ‘No Kings’ march. Sunday was supposed to be a trip to the Zoo, a Mexican Horror flick, and in the evening my online writers group.

None of that came to be.

I awoke Saturday morning to migraines and while medication abated them for a few hours here and there they pretty much persisted throughout the weekend.

The attacks were not so intense that I needed to retreat to my bed and hide entirely from light, but they were more than strong enough to keep me indoor and away from even indirect sunlight.

The headaches are not yet entirely history, but the one I am suffering this Monday morning is insufficient to keep me home and away from my day job.

I hope to have better things to write about tomorrow.

I Hate Cliffhangers

Now, I am not talking about chapters that end in cliffhangers or individual episodes that leaving you on tenterhooks until the next week. I am talking about the end of novels and the end of season crap where the story is not completed and the reader or audience has to wait for the next book or season, which sometimes never arrives, to see resolution of the character’s current crisis.

I am of the firm belief that a novel or a movie or even a season of a television show should present a complete story. The Discworld or Hornblower novels are great examples of a series that executes this flawlessly. Each book is its own tale, complete with establishment, conflict, and resolution but leaves enough in the air, enough unwoven threads that new stories can arise from them.

A Season for Slaughter the fourth book in an SF series by David Gerrold left the main character stranded in the jungle in dire danger and the fifth book, some 32 years later, still has not been released.

Severance, the Apple TV+ series, appears to be telling a complete story over multiple seasons but ended the first on a cliffhanger and I suspect that they are going to do so with the second. (I know the second has concluded but I haven’t reached it yet.) I do not expect all the answers to be presented by the end of the second season, but I want more than one or two. If the series is going to present mystery upon mystery without resolution, then I am going to drop it.

Series Review: Mobland

On April 1st I reviewed the first episode of the Paramount+ television series Mobland. Last night my sweetie-wife and I completed the first season, and I can now talk about it as a whole.

Paramount+

In the show two crime organizations, the Harrigans, an Irish family and the Stevensons, an East-London family are on the brink of war over control of the fentanyl trade in London. Conrad and Maeve Harrigan (Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren) are the elder parents that rule their family

with ruthlessness and manipulation. We see less of Richie Stevenson (Geoff Bell) as the Harrigans are the focus of the series, mainly through the eyes of their primary fixer and enforcer Harry de Souza (Tom Hardy). The Stevensons and the Harrigans inevitably go to war, the principal focus of the season, with only one family slated for survival.

The series presents a bewildering collection of characters associated with Harry, his family, and the Harrigans, often with their own subplots and schemes that interact with the war that breaks out between the criminal gangs. In my opinion there are too many of these side characters and stories, some of which I still cannot accurately describe in plot or in importance.

That said, I enjoyed Mobland and was quite pleased that the conflict between the Harrigans and the Stevensons concluded at the end of season one. Enough plot threads lay unresolved that the series can continue while still presenting a complete tale in its first season. The acting was generally brilliant, and I am sure Brosnan thoroughly enjoyed playing a right bastard of a character.

All ten episodes of the first season are now streaming on Paramount+.

Grotesque and Un-American

This Saturday, June 14, 2025, Washington, D.C. the capital of the United States, will witness an insulting parade of military machinery not unlike the displays seen from the Union of Soviet

Pathe

Socialist Republics to flatter and fluff the ego of a malignant narcissist. Oh, officially, this is a celebration of the United States Army, established on this date in 1775. (Well, actually that was the Continental Army, which was disbanded, and the U.S. Army was established June 2, 1784.) This unseemly projection of power which actually signals a deep and crippling weakness is all about the most unfit man to ever serve in any post of the United States, Trump, as that date is also his birthday.

How do I know this, beyond the simple fact that this man’s desperate neediness makes it manifestly clear to any objective observer?

We had no parade on March 27th in celebration of the founding of the U.S. Navy, nor is one planned or even discussed for October 13th the anniversary of the founding of the Continental navy. The same is true for July 11th or November 10th, the founding dates for the Marine Corps. No party for those services which do not share a date with the weak man’s birthday.

The office of president is currently occupied by a greed, vain, immoral man who has surrounded himself with grifter, kooks, and bootlickers, and our nation and the entire world will suffer for years to come because of it.

Movie Review: The Phoenician Scheme

Full disclosure, I cannot count myself among those who adore writer/director Wes Anderson, but neither am I repelled by his unique content. Including this film, I have seen four of his thirteen feature films with 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel my favorite.

The Phoenician Scheme, like Asteroid City, is set in a fictional version of the mid-twentieth century.

Focus Features

The story centers on Zsa Zsa Korda (Benicio de Toro) a ruthless capitalist engaged in the final phases of funding a massive infrastructure project while dodging assassination attempts and sabotage operations from a shadowy collective. With his funding now facing a shortfall due to the collective, Korda crisscrosses the globe with his estranged daughter and nun Sister Liesel (Mia Threapleton) and his administrative assistant and entomology tutor Bjorn Lund (Michael Cera) in hopes of convincing his backers to cover the financial deficit. Along the way, Korda deals with continuing assassination attempts, communist rebels, life after death mysteries, and the source of his daughter’s estrangement.

The plot, thin as it is, serves as a framework allowing Anderson to essentially present half a dozen or so vignettes centered on each financial backer with each segment preceded by a title card indicating the remaining outstanding percentages that Korda must cover if the project is to be saved. This film is not concerned with the mechanics of plot but is wholly a vehicle to Anderson’s unique style and voice. If you are familiar with Anderson’s films, the center-heavy composition, the horizontally sliding camera movements, the artificial dialog, then you are already familiar with this film. For better or for worse, depending upon your tastes, The Phoenician Scheme lives in the same artistic environment as Asteroid City.

The Phoenician Scheme is primarily a comedy and as such it succeeds at that objective. While I laughed out loud a few times, snickered much more often, and smiled quite a bit, it is not a riot of a comedy. Comedy, like horror, is a genre heavily dependent on the idiosyncratic response of the viewer. If you have enjoyed Anderson’s previous work then you are likely to enjoy this film, if his previous movies did not work for you then it is perhaps best if you find another film to watch.

Why Cal in Titanic is a Terrible Character

James Cameron, the filmmaker behind some of the most commercially successful movies of all time is a fantastically capable director and technician but as a writer I feel he is at best mediocre. An example of this is the character Caledon, Cal, Hockley (Billy Zane) from Cameron’s box office monster Titanic.

20th Century Fox

In the film, in case the plot, beyond the sinking of the vessel, escaped you, Rose (Kate Winslet) is engaged to wed Cal as a desperate maneuver to save her family following the death of her father who left them with crushing debts. This plan is crushed by Rose meeting Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) with a love that turns out to be as doomed as the ship itself. Cal becomes the villain of the story, desperate to possess Rose, framing Jack for theft and chasing him around the sinking liner in the film’s final act.

At no point in the script does Cal display any trait or act that can even be close to being considered as noble or even fair minded. He is cruel and abusive to Rose, treats her as property, appears wholly uninterested in events that nearly took her life, and when she does leave him for Jack his only real concern and emotional involvement is about the loss of money due to the McGuffin jewel she has unwittingly taken with her.

With Cal depicted this despicably there is absolutely no tension in Rose’s relationship. She faces no serious choice, and it is doubtful that any audience member thought for a moment that she needed to honor her commitment to him. There is nothing, not even the prospect of financial ruin, that could generate any sense that she should do anything but flee from this monster of character, written with such little depth that he is better suited to some poorly animated cartoon where he can have a mustache to twirl. At no point in the entire film is Cal ever right. He proclaims, in blasphemous terms, the ship unsinkable and is of course too dull and stupid to see the emotional power of art. Even with Rose’s financial disaster, one that is purely hypothetical in terms of screentime, it is inconceivable that she would bind herself to this man. There are many rich bachelors in the world, and one does not need to choose an abuser, one who is abusive prior to the wedding, for salvation. Cal’s poorly constructed nature as a character seriously erodes all credibility in the story itself, making it into melodrama instead of drama.

Christmas in June: The Ice House

During the 1970s the BBC ran a series A Ghost Story for Christmas where short horror films, often but not always focused on ghost and spirits were aired during the holidays. The series was revived decades later. Last night my sweetie-wife and I watched the final episode of the original 70s run, The Ice House.

BBC

Paul, (John Stride) emotionally vulnerable following his divorce, has checked into a health spa and retreat in the English countryside. The facility, owned and operated by Clovis (Geoffrey Burridge) and Jessica (Elizabeth Romily), brother and sister who radiate not only an unnatural relationship with each other but a deeply uncanny intimidating presence. The pair show Paul the establishment’s ice house, a structure that predates modern conveniences, and the strange flowering vine that grows on it. The vine releases a strangely intoxicating scent and blooms with red and white flowers, colors mirrored by the siblings. Repeatedly Paul is drawn to the building until he discovers the unnatural nature of Clovis and Jessica.

Given the budgetary and public broadcast standards of the time A Ghost Story for Christmascould never delve into explicit and transgressive horror but instead relied upon mood and suggestion of things unseen to convey its payload. In some cases, this produced dull and lifeless pieces that are best used to cure insomnia and at other times disturbing stories that echoed in one’s mind well after the credits had run.

While it is not generally well reviewed, I found The Ice House to be effective in delivering a short story vibe with atmosphere and dread. Burridge and Romilly perform admirably, always oozing with threat and malice while delivering dialog that is quite the opposite. The characters are as cold to the suffering and deaths of other people as the materials stored in the titular building. It is sad that Romilly’s career never found the stardom that I think this performance promised, she possesses a mere 12 IMDB credits and it is tragic that AIDS robbed us of Burridge. The Ice House is a credit to both of them and their talents.

Robert Mitchell Evans

Literary Saboteur