Men Be Controllin'

Movie: Don't Worry Darling

Olivia Wilde's follow up to her 2019 debut film Booksmart has been mired in controversy, mostly to due behind-the-scenes bad behavior on the part of Wilde. I haven't bothered to delve into all the details, but there seems to be two issues: one is that Shia LaBeouf, a noted shithead and abuser, was originally cast in the movie but was supposedly fired after Florence Pugh was uncomfortable with his behavior. LaBeouf claims he wasn't fired, he quit, and that Wilde wanted to keep him on. The other issue is that Wilde began a very public romance with leading man Harry Styles (who replaced LaBeouf) and acted unprofessionally on set, leading to a "screaming match" between Wilde and Pugh.

On top of all that, Wilde plays a character in the movie, Bunny, who wasn't in the original script. So, she created a character for herself to play. What's more, Wilde took some lines of dialogue that belonged to characters played by Gemma Chan and KiKi Layne (both actors of color) and gave them to her character instead. She additionally cut a lot of scenes featuring Layne. Very white lady of her.

Some of this might be forgiven if Don't Worry Darling was a good movie...but it's not. It's not *the worst* movie ever, but despite the lovely cinematography and costuming, and despite a great performance by Florence Pugh in the leading role, the movie is derivative and a bit of a mess. Scenes that should be intense come off as campy. The big reveal of "what's really going on", which I will spoil below after a warning, only leads to a ton of questions that are never answered. 

So what is Don't Worry Darling about? Florence Pugh plays Alice Chambers, a 1950s housewife who lives with her husband Jack (Styles) in a picture-perfect town that appears to be built in the middle of the California desert. The mastermind behind this town is Frank (Chris Pine), more of a legend than a man. Frank created the Victory Project, which includes the town of Victory where all the housewives live as well as the mysterious project itself which is only explained as "developing progressive materials". Every morning, the men of Victory leave their mid-century modern homes and drive out to Headquarters in the desert to work, and each night they return home to a meat-based dinner cooked by their adoring wives. Notably, none of the wives really know what their husbands do (the Victory Project is top secret) and are forbidden from going into the desert themselves.

Jack and Alice are especially amorous, often having spontaneous sex on the kitchen table or in inappropriate places, such as Frank's bedroom during a cookout. All seems well and good except for two issues: 1) Alice starts experiencing odd things, such as opening a container of eggs in which none of the eggs have yolks and 2) Margaret (Layne), Alice's next door neighbor, is suffering from a mental breakdown leading to embarrassing public outbursts where she asks Frank "why are we here?" and ends up costing her husband his job at Victory. No one is sympathetic to Margaret--this is the 50s, after all, and appearances are everything.

But after Alice breaks the one rule of Victory--never leave the town--when she goes out into the desert after seeing a plane crash out there, the strange visions and experiences she has begin to increase and she starts to wonder if Margaret was right to question Frank.

I'll pause before I reveal the truth about Victory and just say that Don't Worry Darling could have been much better if different choices were made. If more time was spent after the big reveal explaining how and what was going on and less time was spent showing men in bowling shirts and women in A-line dresses dancing around with tumblers of whiskey balanced on their heads, this movie could have said something interesting about why having a "perfect life" comes at a great cost and a marriage without honesty a mutual respect is worthless. But Wilde focused more on the pretty dresses and 1950s set-dressing and rushed the ending, throwing explanations at us minutes before the movie was over.

Between that and the ick factor of Wilde's unprofessionalism, Don't Worry Darling gets a big, fat

Grade: C 

Spoilers!! Spoilers!!

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Ok, so a lot of people guessed the twist even before the movie came out. People are comparing Don't Worry Darling to The Stepford Wives, but a more apt comparison might be M. Night Shyamalan's The Village because....it's not the 1950s, fuckers! It's the present day!

Turns out, Victory is actually a virtual simulation. In a flashback, we see Alice working as a surgeon and returning home to her unemployed boyfriend, Jack. Frank is basically Jordan Peterson--a neo-conservative piece of shit who thinks that present day unhappiness is tied to men not having a masculine role and women not being the fembot housewives "nature" intends them to be. We gather than Jack has forced Alice into the simulation: he has her cuffed to the bed with these Clockwork Orange-looking eye thingies propping her eyes open while the simulation runs constantly. The men of Victory leave the simulation for an allotted time and must return at the end of the day.

Alice manages to break out of the simulation at the end, and she also finds out that Bunny knew all along and chose to be in the simulation anyway because her kids died in real life and in Victory she still has them. But basically all the women are forced into the sim by their men.

There are SO MANY questions the twist brings up and never explains:

• How does Alice get proper nutrition? I didn't see any IVs hooked up to her while she was tied to the bed. I guess Jack has to keep her in diapers too?
• When the men leave the simulation, are they actually working for Frank in the real world, or just working any old job to pay for access to the simulation?
• Alice kills Jack at the end (yay!) and Bunny tells her "if a man dies in the simulation, he dies in real life"...ok, so first of all, how is that possible? Wouldn't you just wake up? She specifically says "if a man dies in the sim", does that mean women can die in the sim and be fine? What if a man dies in the sim--does the woman's body in real life just starve to death?
• After hearing the news about Jack being killed and Alice running off to the desert to get out of the sim, Frank's wife, Shelley (Gemma Chan), kills him immediately. She says "You stupid man. Now it's my turn." What does that mean? Was she also a prisoner? Is she mad that he failed? What does "my turn" mean?

It really annoys me when there is a sci-fi twist like this in a movie and it's never explained. The audience is just expected to swallow the implausibility of it all because the greater message is "1950s bad! Men be controlling!". Uh, yeah, I got that. Clearly this movie is supposed to be spooky-ooky about the dangers of men being lured into extremism online, but the movie barely fucking touches on that. You hear like one second of Frank's podcast. Also, apparently there are only like 75 people in the simulation, but in real life these dumbass men would 100% be blabbing to their buddies and the top secret project would be known by everyone immediately. 

So, Don't Worry Darling fails both as a science-fiction story, but also as a social satire. The only way it succeeds is by being unintentionally campy with a strong performance by Pugh and a good performance by Pine (and a wooden performance by Styles). 

Seeing it wasn't a total waste because it was fun for what it was, but it's not rewatchable and it's just not that good.

Grade: C

Also:

Dirty Movies

Movies: Pleasure

Oh, pornography. We love to hate it. We hate to love it. We love to judge it (while secretly watching it).

Maybe the weirdest thing about porn is how the hatred and fear of it brings natural enemies, like feminists and conservatives, together to become strange bedfellows.

I'm not going to get into a huge history lesson here, but back in the 1980s, there was a thing known as the feminist sex wars (which would be a great title for a porn, incidentally) where a bunch of feminists believed that pornography (and BDSM, and sometimes even consensual heterosexual sex) was inherently violent against women and degrading to women. Some of these feminists even teamed up with folks who worked for Mr. Ronald Reagan himself to fight against pornography and attempt to regulate it or even ban it. The 1980s were dumb, y'all. I should know because I was born in the 80s. 

Personally, I identify as a "pro-sex feminist", which means I believe that consenting adults should be able to have whatever kind of sex they want as long as it does not harm others. I also think adults have the right to NOT have sex--at all, or certain kinds of sex. Not everybody likes sex or wants it and that's ok too. 

So, I am pro-pornography (IF you want to watch it). I am in favor of people paying for porn. I am in favor of more women, BIPOC, and queer people making porn. I am in favor of there being more options for different tastes. This means that while there are certain types of porn I find ridiculous, gross, and even offensive, I still believe in the right for it to be ethically made and I still believe in the right for people to watch it. 

The tricky thing is, just like many industries, the porn industry has bad people and good people. The movie Pleasure, which is about a newcomer's journey through the LA porn scene, is about how there are good and bad people in porn and how there are good and bad business practices in porn. 

I will say that overall the film is a bit anti-porn, which makes sense given that the director apparently used to be an anti-porn activist and I guess now has sort of come around to the "let's push out bad porn with good porn" side of the table. But the movie shows more of the negatives aspects of the industry--everything from on-set rape (we'll get to that in a minute) to creepy old men controlling everything to in-fighting among adult starlets. 

Pleasure follows Bella Cherry (Sofia Kappel, one of the few actors in the movie who is not actually in porn), a 19 year old from Sweden who comes to LA to be the next biggest porn star. The film starts with her first-ever shoot, which involves Bella acting with an average looking guy in his 40s. If y'all want to see actual penis in a "mainstream" movie, Pleasure has you covered! Though there isn't any penetration shown in the movie, there are dicks, tits, bush, and butts aplenty! 

Bella makes friends with her housemates, who are also up-and-comers, especially Joy (Revika Anne Reustle), who helps her learn the ropes. Both Joy and Bella dream of being "Spiegler Girls"--starlets who work with real life agent Mark Spiegler (playing himself in the movie). Spiegler girls are enormously popular, but basically have to work their literal assess off and can't really have limits. 

There are two scenes in the movie that really capture the dichotomy of porn. In the first scene, Bella does a BDSM scene with a female director (Aiden Starr) and tatted up actor (Small Hands, who is by all accounts a super nice guy IRL and super cute, too) where they ask about her limits, offer her breaks and water, make sure she is comfortable, etc. The shoot is portrayed as very positive and Bella has real orgasms during it.

This is followed up by one of the worst scenes of sexual assault I've ever seen in a movie. Bella asks her agent to get her more "rough" shoots, and she ends up doing a scene with a male director and two actors who don't go over limits, don't pay attention to her bodily clues, and pressure her into continuing the shoot when she is clearly terrified and wants to stop. They even tell her "if you leave now, you won't be paid. You'll have done all this for free." This is rape! Even if she consented on paper, this is fucking assault. It's *incredibly* difficult to watch and I would only recommend this movie with massive trigger warnings. 

Bella fires her agent and decides to work independently. In her quest to become the next biggest thing in porn, she agrees to do a double-anal interracial scene for free. (I really hope my mom isn't reading this!!). She specifically requests Bear (Chris Cock), an actor she met early on, to be one of her scene partners since she trusts him. Sure enough, he helps her breathe and get through what I can only assume was a pretty painful scene. Earlier in the film, Bear tells Bella that interracial is the most taboo thing in porn. Bella says "that sounds kind of...racist" and Bear replies "that's because it is racist". I kind of wish there had been more exploration of why interracial sex is still considered such a taboo in porn because I find that to be very interesting especially since there is a high demand for it in the United States...especially the Southern United States. Pleasure doesn't really editorialize on these things (both the rape and relationship between racism and interracial porn)--it just show things, or brings things up, and then moves on. 

The gambit pays off and Mark Spiegler agrees to let Bella become one of his girls. The only problem is that being in the in-crowd sucks. Bella leaves her old friends behind and has to hang out with people she doesn't like. Worse, she begins acting aggressively during some of her shoots, mimicking the behavior she's been on the receiving end of. She has a realization at the end of the film and gets out of a limo taking her to a party, and that's where the movie ends. 

So, what to make of this film? First of all, I liked it. I thought it was shot beautifully and the acting was very natural, very slice of life. I liked that Ninja Thyberg cast real porn actors, directors, and agents in the film. I also like that the film didn't lionize the porn industry because, let's be real, at the end of the day it's an industry dedicated to making money and there are going to be more than a few shitty people in it who exploit others, especially young women, for personal and financial gain. I'm a pro-sex feminist but people who refuse to hear any criticism of porn are naive at best and willfully ignorant at worst. I'm pretty sure most people *in* the industry have complaints about it. 

I also think the film could have been a touch more even-handed and nuanced. Maybe there's no room for nuance in an industry that brought us such films as "MILF Squirters Vol. 7", or maybe by portraying the porn industry "warts and all", Thyberg felt that she *was* being even-handed. 

I'm giving this movie a high grade because it's a very good movie and I enjoyed the hell out of it (I didn't "enjoy" the rape scene, but I appreciated how raw it got...it didn't try to pretend that rape on set is no big deal). But I'm also going to leave you all with a YouTube playlist of a series called "Ask a Pornstar", where pornstars are asked a variety of questions from "do you believe in aliens" to "how to give a good blowjob" to "did you go to college" and I really recommend watching some of the videos--especially the ones that aren't about sex. I watched a ton of these during the early stages of the pandemic and I have to say--it really humanized a lot of these actors for me. They're just people, like you and me. Most of them are incredibly smart and funny and are probably people I'd like to be friends with. Let's demystify an industry that many of us, er, use on a regular basis and let's have a little more respect for the people in it. 

Grade: A-

Don't Go in the Basement

Movies: Barbarian

Hi folks! I'm going to provide a shorter, spoiler-free review of Barbarian first, and then we'll go into full spoilers below.

Spoiler-free review:

Once in a while, a horror movie just fires on all cylinders. Written and directed by Zach Clegg, Barbarian is such a horror movie. From the blood-red poster, which gives vintage giallo vibes, to the terrifying trailer, to the film itself: a masterpiece of misdirection and subverted expectations with a premise that is truly horrifying on multiple levels.

Just go see this movie. Go in knowing as little as possible, and strap in for the ride of your life.

The parts of the film I can safely go into are the same parts the trailer focuses on. A young woman, Tess (Georgina Campbell), shows up at an AirBnb in a rough neighborhood of Detroit, only to find that someone else is already using it. That someone is Keith (Bill Skarsgard). It seems that the property was double-booked through no fault of Keith's or Tess's. Keith, a bit reluctantly, invites Tess to stay. He even washes the bedsheets that he already slept on and gives her the bedroom while he takes the couch.

Tess is cautious and wary (she takes a picture of Keith's driver's license and diligently locks the bedroom and bathroom doors behind her), but when she realizes that all the hotels are booked up due to a big conference, she agrees to stay.

If you saw the trailer, you know that there's something in the basement. But Barbarian holds its cards close to its chest for a while, allowing unsettling noises and the general air of suspicion Tess has about the whole AirBnb situation slowly build tension before letting all hell break loose. The scene where Tess finally goes into the basement is almost nauseatingly tense. While certain horror movie tropes (demon possession, vampires, etc) don't scare me, fucking pitch-black, claustrophobic-ass basements sure as hell do! I was going "No...NO! NO WAY WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU??" the whole time.

And that's where I gotta end my review! Either go see the movie or read the spoiler review to find out what lurks in that basement. Just know that Barbarian is a wild fucking ride.

Grade: A

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SPOILERS BELOW! 

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So one thing both the trailer and the beginning of the film do is misdirect the audience into thinking that Keith has something to do with whatever is in the basement. Bill Skarsgard just looks creepy. However, other than hearing a few weird noises, Tess's first night in the AirBnb is relatively normal. In fact, she and Keith have a great conversation over some wine (that he waits until she is present to open, as to not freak her out...this guy knows his shit) and even begin to flirt a little.

It's not until the next day, when Keith is off doing whatever he is in town for, that Tess goes into the basement in search of extra toilet paper and discovers a hidden door that leads to a creepy, dark hallway and a room with: 1) a camera on a tripod, 2) a bed with a stained mattress, and 3) a bucket. Oh, and a bloody handprint on the wall. Now, I'm no fancy big-city lawyer, but if I saw that I'd assume something unsavory happened in that basement. Thoroughly freaked out, Tess tries to go back upstairs, but the door to the basement has shut behind her and locked her in.

Luckily, Keith arrives back to the AirBnb soon and is able to get Tess out. When she tells him what she saw and that they have to leave immediately, he insists on seeing it for himself. Tess begs him not to, but agrees to stay upstairs while he checks it out. Well, he stops responding to her voice and Tess goes after him. Even though it's clear that Tess has a little crush on Keith, I thought "ain't no dick in the world worth going into that basement for."

This time, when Tess goes into the basement, she discovers another set of stairs beyond the room with the bed that leads to a series of tunnels. Tess sobs and cries for Keith, who finally bursts into the frame, looking like a ghost and yelling about someone else being down there, someone who bit him. This "someone" shows up and beats Keith's head against the wall into a pulp. RIP Keith! We only get a glimpse of this monster before the scene ends, but it appears to be a very tall, naked woman with straggly hair, pale skin, and missing teeth. 

CUT TO...something entirely unrelated! AJ Gilbride (Justin Long) is cruising along the California highway in a red convertible when he receives a call. AJ is an actor who just started working on a new sitcom. The lead actress accuses him of raping her and refuses to work on the show unless he drops out. We know that AJ is actually a Nice Guy when he refers to the woman he assaulted as a "fucking bitch". 

So, out of work, AJ looks to sell some of his properties to pay his legal bills. That includes...the very house in Detroit with the terrifying basement! So, AJ heads back to Detroit to prepare to sell the house. He is surprised to see that there are multiple suitcases still in the house and calls his property manager to see if anyone is staying there. She says that no one has been there since the last people left a couple weeks ago.

AJ is further confused when he sees a chair propping open the basement door and when he goes down to take a look, he also discovers the hidden door (he apparently bought the house and never knew there was a secret basement down there). But he is delighted to discover the secret basement because he realizes he can tell prospective buyers about the additional space. He whips out his measuring tape and gets to calculating square footage. These scenes with AJ are hilarious and whiplash-inducing. From here on out, Barbarian is more of a horror-comedy, although, trust, there is still PLENTY of horror.

AJ ends up also being chased by something and falls into a pit, where he finds Tess, who frantically tells him to stop screaming because "if you get upset, *she* gets upset". And then a gnarly hands enters the pit holding a baby bottle, which Tess drinks from. "Don't you see?" she says "She just wants you to be her baby." When AJ refuses the bottle, the woman grabs him out of the pit and forcibly tries to get him to breast feed. I guess AJ doesn't like it when *he's* the victim of assault, huh?!

At some point, there is a flashback to the 1980s. A man leaves the house (the original owner, we assume) and drives to the store for supplies: plastic sheets, diapers, and other baby stuff. He tells the shop clerk it will be a "home birth". And then he puts on a uniform and stops by a woman's house, telling her he's there to check that the water is running since there have been some outages nearby. While alone in the woman's bathroom, he unlocks the bathroom window.

We can gather from this flashback that this man kidnapped and raped women, forcing them to give birth. We surmise that the naked woman with the baby bottle is his daughter, although clearly something is not right with her. Later, when AJ escapes, he finds this man--decrepit and wasting away in a bed with an old-fashioned TV nearby and dozens of video tapes labeled things like "red head from gas station". Thank goodness we don't see what's on these tapes, but we can infer. 

AJ and Tess escape, only to be followed by the woman. They end up at the top of a water tower and realize they can't get away. Ever the selfish asshole, AJ tells the woman, who is climbing up the tower, "come and get your baby" and pushes Tess off the tower, and the woman dives after her. Assuming they are both dead, AJ climbs back down...only to realize Tess is not dead and he begins apologizing profusely. Before he can stammer out an excuse for his cowardice, the woman awakens, grabs AJ's head, and pushes his eyeballs in before giving him the old Oberyn Martell head-crunch. However, when she tries to get Tess to go back, Tess takes a gun that AJ had on him, but dropped like a butter-fingered idiot, and shoots the woman. Cut to credits. 

So, couple things. First of all, man, Detroit sucks. This poor town could not get shit on harder, could it? Second of all, wow. This movie is a fucking roller coaster. The movie starts out making us think Keith is the creeper. Then, it turns out it's actually some monster in the basement. Then it's actually the *daughter* of the real monster. Plus, the whole AJ plot line comes out of nowhere but gets seamlessly woven back in. And the movie becomes a comedy (albeit a dark one). 

A poster in a Facebook film group I'm in pointed out that Tess starts out mistrusting Keith, but learns to trust him only for him to die. Then, she starts out by trusting AJ and trying to save him and not just herself, only to find out that he's NOT trustworthy just in time for him to try to kill her. Also, Keith LOOKS creepy, but is actually a good guy, whereas AJ looks and acts like a "nice guy", but he's really a cowardly rapist asshole (and there is a scene I didn't mention where he admits to forcing the woman when she said "no", so we can 100% not care that he dies). 

Despite the "can we trust men?" text/subtext, I don't really think Barbarian is trying to be that deep. I think it just wants to be a really scary, unpredictable movie. I don't get the sense that the director wanted to make some greater statement about gender or motherhood or poverty in Detroit. I think he just wanted to freak us all the fuck out. Mission accomplished.

Barbarian was a ton of fun and it's everything I hope for in a scary movie: good writing, good cinematography, good acting, and genuinely scary. There are some jump scares for sure, but the director knows how to build dread. Jump scares are easy. Dread is an art. 

Grade: A

Stuff I watched in...August, 2022

Crimes of the Future

I was sooooo hyped for the latest David Cronenberg movie, which looked like it would be a return to form for him. Cronenberg is well known for his films which delve into body horror and the trailer for Crimes of the Future looked exactly like the weird, sick shit I'm into. 

The story is takes place in a future in which humans no longer feel pain and some people start mysteriously growing new organs. Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) is a performance artist whose body is especially unusual, as he grows new organs at a very rapid rate. He and his partner, Caprice (Lea Seydoux), remove these organs as part of their live art. 

Sounds really cool, right? Or, at least, really fucked up? Well, sadly, Crimes of the Future is more boring than anything else. I'm still going to give it a fairly decent rating because the *ideas* behind the movie are really interesting and the special effects and body horror elements are visually interesting, but underneath the grotesque images was a whole lotta nothing. Saul captures the interest of both the government, who require all new organs to be registered, and anti-government activists who are hoping to usher in a new wave of human evolution. Saul himself is a bit of a passive pawn caught between these two groups.

Overall, I'd only recommend Crimes of the Future to fans of Cronenberg (who are likely to see it anyway). Most other viewers will find the movie gross and/or boring.

Grade: B

***

Resurrection

*Spoiler warning for this review*

Resurrection is a difficult, enthralling roller coaster ride of a thriller. Starring Rebecca Hall, who is an incredible actress, Resurrection tells the bizarre and upsetting story of a woman whose abuser shows up years later to torment her some more.

Hall plays Margaret, a business woman and single mother who just radiates strength and steely reserve. She is the woman younger women go to for advice. She looks fierce in a perfectly tailored business suit. She looks like she does not suffer fools gladly. Everything seems to be going well for Margaret, who is about to send her daughter off to college in just a few weeks, when a man from her past shows up and destroys the safe world Margaret has created for herself.

This man, David (Tim Roth, terrifying in that soft spoken way), groomed Margaret when she was 18 and he was in his 30s. He seduced her and her parents with his charm, asked Margaret to move in with him, and then slowly began to ask more and more of Margaret--"kindnesses", he would call them. They included things like going barefoot all the time and holding stress positions for hours. When Margaret got pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy, David saw that he was no longer the center of Margaret's world. 

When Margaret went to the store and left Baby Benjamin with David, she returned to find the baby gone...except for two small fingers on the kitchen table. This is where it gets really bizarre: David told Margaret that he "ate the baby up" and now Ben was in his stomach. Crazed with grief, Margaret believed him and stayed under David's power to be close to Ben. But eventually, she was able to leave David.

Now, 20 years later, David is back and telling Margaret the same bizarre thing he told her years ago: that Ben is safely in his belly and aching for his mother. David also implicitly threatens Margaret's daughter and within one meeting, Margaret is back to doing the "kindnesses" David requires of her. 

Although the whole "I ate the baby and now he's living in my stomach" thing is incredibly weird, it shows how abusers can manipulate their victims into disbelieving basic reality. It is shocking to see Margaret switch from a boss bitch to a woman holding stress positions in a park at 2 in the morning with just a few words from a man who looks harmless enough. Resurrection is a film about the power of grief and gaslighting. I'd be interested to hear what survivors of intimate partner violence have to sa about this movie because I could see it being offensive to some, but very accurate to others.

I have to give Resurrection a high rating because of Rebecca Hall's stellar performance and just how much I was on the edge of my seat the whole movie. It will grip you.

Grade: A-

***

Prey

I haven't seen any of the other Predator movies, but the premise of this film was very intriguing. It takes place in the Comanche Nation in 1719. The Predator is an extraterrestrial being that has advanced technology and weaponry and he comes to earth to hunt both the Comanche and the French fur trappers in the area. 

A young Comanche woman, Naru (Amber Midthunder), has to prove herself as a hunter to the men of her village who don't take her seriously. She can tell there is a strange threat on the periphery of her village, but no one believes her until it's too late. Over the course of the film, she learns enough about the Predator to outsmart him at his own game, proving that she really is a great hunter. 

Prey was...just ok. Other than the really unique setting (a futuristic villain, but set 300 years in the past), this is a pretty cliched action-horror movie with cheesy lines, common tropes ("You can't do X because you're a girl!"), and not a lot of character development. It was entertaining, but I think the rave reviews are less about the movie itself and more about the fact that the film cast Indigenous actors playing Indigenous characters (which is awesome!). 

Grade: B-

***

The Sandman

I haven't read The Sandman comics, so I watched the Netflix series with a totally blank slate. I really enjoyed it! There is A LOT going on, but I never felt out of my depth. The first season is sort of roughly divided into two plot lines: Morpheus, aka "Dream" (Tom Sturridge, looking pouty and gothic), being held captive and losing some stuff he needs and then being set free and finding said stuff, and Morpheus hunting down a rogue nightmare, The Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook, playing a really excellent villain). 

I'm not going to go too much into the plot since it's too complex to explain, and you should really just watch it. I'm not usually into fantasy, but The Sandman had enough horror elements to keep me intrigued. There were also stand alone plot lines, such as a man named John Dee (David Thewlis) causing mayhem in a diner and Dream meeting a man granted the gift (or curse?) of immortality in the same pub every 100 years to catch up, that I just loved. These little tangents, side-plots, and stand alone episodes are what I enjoyed most about the show. 

I'm glad I gave The Sandman a chance (my partner, who is a huge fan of the comics, encouraged me). The cinematography was lovely, the characters--even the ones who pop up for a single episode--are interesting and feel fully fleshed out, and the show was overall entertaining and enchanting. Highly recommended!

Grade: A-