Sticking Woody Allen’s neurotic nebbish in a Kafka style situation should be comic gold but SHADOWS AND FOG (1992) is only fitfully funny. As a killer stalks a fog-shrouded city, Allen discovers he’s been dragooned into the plan to capture the madman, but nobody tells him what he’s supposed to do, only that he’s not doing it. It’s funny, but the rest of the plot, a romantic triangle involving sword-swallower Mia Farrow, clown John Malkovitch and student John Cusack, doesn’t work at all. And the film ends so abruptly, it’s like Allen just ran out of time and wanted to stop.
Impressively cast though, with David Allen Stiers and Kurtwood Smith as schemers, Madonna as an acrobat and Kathy Bates, Lily Tomlin and Jodie Foster as hookers. “I’m not incompetent! I don’t know enough to be incompetent!”
OMAR (2014) is a Palestinian wannabe terrorist in love with his fellow revolutionary’s sister who discovers that a traitor in the ranks has sold him out to the Israelis. And the Israeli, in turn, are quite determined to use him as an informer on his own people. The film works much better than, say, the American Extraordinary Rendition because the focus is on the character dynamics, so the arrest is only part of the obstacles encumbering the love affair. Very good—I’d suggest Spy Who Came in From the Cold as a double feature, as both involve men caught in a vice between two equally ruthless powers. “That’s what they want—paranoia.”
The second season of IRON MAN: The Armored Adventures has Tony, Rhodey and Pepper (here teenagers) still reeling from the discovery their friend Jin is the ruthless Mandarin. As Jin gathers the alien rings that will give him absolute power, Tony contends with ruthless tycoons Obadiah Stane and Justin Hammer, rival geniuses Doctor Doom and the Black Panther and Hammer’s cadre of super-villain employees. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE wraps up its fifth and final season with some outstanding episodes, most notably an arc where Bullwinkle’s skills as a footballer may save Wossamatta U from going under (the jokes about colleges prioritizing sports over academics would be just as relevant now, I’m sorry to say). If not quite as good as previous seasons, it’s still vastly livelier and more watchable than a great many shows in their last days.
