Not Feeling the Romance

October is for horror movies. December is for family and holiday movies. Summer is for action blockbusters. And February... well February has become the default month for romantic movies, for no better reason than because the biggest commercial February holiday is Valentine's Day. And I guess that this is as good a time as any to check up on the state of what has become the least loved movie genre in recent years. At this point romances and romantic comedies are viewed with about as much enthusiasm as religious epics, social justice documentaries, and the lower forms of indie coming-of-age biopic.

We know there is an audience for romantic films, because most of them do make money, no matter how terrible they are. And they have been pretty terrible The studios keep churning them out month after month, using them to fill in the holes in their schedules and as occasional counter programming to big action blockbusters, but there's rarely much enthusiasm for them. Unlike superhero films and franchise spectaculars, nobody devotes columns or websites to romances. Nobody tracks their release dates or speculates about the possible pairings of directors and stars. No, romances have quietly slipped under the radar, existing for casual consumption mostly by young women. The only time they attract much of the spotlight is when the romance is combined with a more exciting genre, like the "Twilight" movies, or if it's the product of a recognized auteur, like "Silver Linings Playbook" or "Moonrise Kingdom."

Still, 2012 was pretty good for romance. We had more gender-balanced ensemble pieces like "The Five-Year Engagement" and "Think Like a Man," and fewer one-woman trainwrecks like "One for the Money." Romantic comedies built solely around a female star like Jennifer Lopez or Katherine Heigl seem to be on their way out, not because there aren't actresses who are capable of carrying these films, but because Hollywood had pretty much conceded that they don't know how to make or sell them anymore, and the next Julia Roberts has failed to appear. The more gender balanced or male-led romances have generally been better, including smaller projects like "Friends With Kids," "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World," "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," "Celeste and Jesse Forever," and "Hope Springs." On the other hand, the year's biggest romantic moneymaker was the deeply stupid melodrama "The Vow," which made $125 million at the box office a year ago, though "Silver Linings Playbook" might get close to that over the next few weeks.

Looking ahead to 2013, the trends are pretty clear. We're getting more "Twilight"-esque supernatural romances like "Warm Bodies" and "Beautiful Creatures" aimed at the teenagers. Ensemble romances like "The To-Do List" and "The Delivery Man" are all about sex and relationships, but downplay anything that looks more typically romantic while emphasizing the comedy. The inescapable Katherine Heigl will return in April's "The Big Wedding," but as a member of a large cast of far more talented actors. The Nicolas Sparks brand of tearjerker melodrama continues to be popular, so an adaptation of his "Safe Haven" will try to replicate the success of "The Vow" when it opens next Friday. Meanwhile, the reign of Tyler Perry continues unabated for African-American romantic comedies and dramas. The only thing that looks like a typical star-driven romantic vehicle is the Tina Fey and Paul Rudd romantic comedy "Admission," which has the added benefit of being written and directed by the well-regarded Paul Weitz.

Even though I grumble about female-led films being in short supply, I can't say I'm too upset about seeing fewer promising actresses like Amy Adams and Kristin Bell and Greta Gerwig being shoehorned into formulaic dreck like "Leap Year" and "When in Rome" and "Arthur." And the truth is that all of our movie stars across the board have been losing ground to CGI-heavy franchises over the last couple of years, and ensembles are more popular all around. And most romances fit that range of middle budgeted, character-driven films for older audiences that have been shrinking for years. It's no wonder that the better ones all seems to be smaller indie pictures these days. And yet, even though there are fewer and fewer films being billed as romances or romantic comedies, there are still plenty coming out next year that fit the category, like "The Great Gatsby." As much disdain as there is these days for love stories, you can't really get away from them.

In short, the romances aren't going anywhere, even though they're in a pretty sorry state right now. It's going to take some time and some serious reinvention and rebranding to get away from the awful rom-com chick flick reputation the genre has now, but I'm optimistic that it can be done, eventually. But right now, there just aren't enough people in high places who will take romances seriously, or are willing to commit the right talent to the right projects, or who appreciate the decades and decades of wonderful films that came out of this genre. And that's why we're still getting Nicholas Sparks movies and why Katherine Heigl still gets work.

And that's why for Valentine's Day, I'll be seeing the next "Die Hard" movie.
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Onboard the Disney-Star Wars-Marvel Crazy Train

When J.J. Abrams was announced as the director of the next "Star Wars," there was a nice sense of relief. Finally the fanboys could stop speculating and we would get a break from some of the wilder "Star Wars" rumors that were circulating. But this week, Harry Knowles went and started up the rumors about a possible Yoda spin-off movie. We've known for a while that Disney was considering more stand-alone "Star Wars" films apart from the upcoming trilogy, but the newest round of conjecture got Disney CEO Bob Iger to confirm that there was active development going on, and that writers Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg were working on them. Today there were more rumors that stand-alone movies about Boba Fett and the young Han Solo were in the works, according to Entertainment Weekly.

Meanwhile, over at Marvel, their cinematic universe is expanding at a furious rate. The post-"Avengers" "Phase Two" films are all pretty much locked. Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America are getting their new sequels, and "Guardians of the Galaxy" just landed a leading man. These will lead up to "Avengers 2" in 2015. Most of the current speculation and rumor mongering has been about "Phase Three," which currently has only one confirmed project: Edgar Wright's long-awaited "Ant-Man." "Doctor Strange" is a major candidate to get his own movie after that. This week, there's been a lot of buzz about the possibility of a new "Hulk" movie, possibly an adaptation of the beloved comics storyline "Planet Hulk." There's already a furious debate going on in various corners of the internet about potential directors.

Since the success of "The Avengers" and the conclusion of "Harry Potter," planning out these massive, multi-film series years and years in advance has become the new normal. Nobody's worried about that first 2015 "Star Wars" film being a flop, or the potential failure of an "Avengers 2," which might shutter all the follow-up films, because those properties are so well insulated by their brands. Barring monumental catastrophes, we're going to have at least eleven connected Marvel films by the time we're done with Phase Two in 2015, and potentially many, many more if Marvel can manage the tricky transitions to new characters and the inevitable replacement of aging actors. And if the "Star Wars" prequels have taught us anything, it's that fans will show up to any "Star Wars" movie, hoping it will live up to the originals, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. That should get Disney through at least three new "Star Wars" films, even if they turn out to be terrible. However, J.J. Abrams is not in the habit of making terrible films, so I think it's safe to push that number up to four or five.

And now the fan speculation is free to get weirder and wilder than it ever has before. For years, "Star Wars" fans have idolized the bounty hunter Boba Fett, a minor villain in the original trilogy. Now there's a pretty distinct possibility that the powers-that-be are considering giving him his own spin-off movie. Who could be next? Mace Windu? Jabba the Hut? Admiral Ackbar? And if the fairly obscure Marvel superhero Ant-Man can have his own feature, why not Luke Cage? Or Wasp? Or the Power Pack? The ideas that would have been dismissed as wild fantasizing a few years ago have all suddenly become much more plausible. It's really tempting to want to join in the fun and think about the possibilities of more daring storylines and crazy cross-overs. Why not Avengers vs. X-men? Or if Warners really gets desperate a few years down the line, why not Avengers vs. Justice League? You could do a whole trilogy on that one alone.

However, I'm trying my best not to get carried away. Even though it looks like the sky's the limit right now for these franchises, the risks are still considerable. For Marvel, the longer the series goes on, the more difficult it is for newcomers to find an entry point, and tackling the less popular, more fringe characters means the later films may grow increasingly niche. Also, with two Marvel films being released each year for the next three years, I worry that we're going to hit a saturation point eventually. With "Star Wars," it's even harder to predict what's going to happen. The earliest we'll see the next film is 2015, and how well it does is going to determine how risky the other films are going to get. It's not easy to get these big action franchises off the ground, and Disney has stumbled multiple times trying to launch new ones - most recently with "John Carter" - and ended up buying its way into "Star Wars" and the Marvel Universe.

There's no question that Disney has the ambition, but living up to those ambitions is another matter entirely. Right now, I'm more interested with what's going on with the films already pretty far along in the pipeline. Is swapping out Kenneth Branagh and Joe Johnston for the much less experienced Alan Taylor and the Russo brothers as directors going to hurt the next Thor and Captain America films? And how on earth are they going to pull off something as mad as "Guardians of the Galaxy"? As for "Star Wars," J.J. Abrams should do a competent job, though the idea of cross-contamination with the "Star Trek" universe is a concern. Take heed from one of the rare fans who enjoys both equally - these are universes you do not want colliding. And then there's Abrams' penchant for trying to do everything. The latest is that he's apparently been talking to Valve about a possible "Half-Life" or "Portal" movie on top of everything else.

Yeah, these franchises are going to be crazy enough enough without all the speculation. Hang on tight everybody.
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"The Wire," Year Four

Minor spoilers ahead.

It takes a few episodes for a season of "The Wire" to settle in, introduce its new characters, and establish what the new status quo is going to be. So the first part of Season Four is mostly scene setting. An election pitting Carcetti against Mayor Royce upends the Major Crime Unit, sending Greggs and Freamon to Homicide, and leaving Herc to deal with a hostile new commander without much backup. McNulty and Carver are still in the Western. With the Barksdale crew out of the picture, a younger, meaner operator named Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector) has moved in, with his enforcers Chris (Gbenga Akinnagbe) and Snoop (Felicia Pearson). As for the two police who found themselves disgraced and defeated at the end of Season Three, Pryzbylewski and Colvin, they both find their way through different channels to Edward J. Tilghman Middle School. Prez is starting a new career as a math teacher, and Colvin is recruited to help spearhead an alternative program for high-risk kids.

And that brings us to the real main characters of this season, eighth graders Dukie (Jermaine Crawford), Randy (Maestro Harrell), Mike (Tristan Wilds), and Namond (Julito McCullum). The four are friends, and assigned to Prez's homeroom and math class together. They're good kids more or less, but in danger of being lost to the street, and at a crucial age of transition. Namond is the son of Avon Barksdale's associate Wee-Bey (Hassan Johnson), and is expected to follow in his footsteps. Dukie and Mike have terrible home lives that push them toward bad choices. Randy might be too smart for his own good. There are well-meaning adults in their lives who try to keep an eye out for them, including Prez, Colvin, Cutty Wise, and even Carver. However, on the flip side, the boys have to contend with an overstressed, test-obsessed school system, failing social safety nets, and the inescapable drug culture. This season of "The Wire" is devoted to how the system perpetuates itself, showing us how a group of ordinary school kids could become the next Omar, Bubbles, and Avon Barksdale.

Having heard so much about how Season Four tackles the Baltimore school system, I was expecting the show would spend more time there. However, it's only one story out of many. Most of the early part of the season is dominated by the election and politics. The police stay busy hunting Marlo Stanfield, and this year's big case is really more of a non-case. The police suspect Marlo's takeover of the Western District has been violent, but nobody can find the bodies. This season more than any of the others feels sprawling and overstuffed. Characters like McNulty and Omar hardly seem to have a reason to appear at all, but they do. Some, like Daniels and Greggs, are perhaps being set up for bigger developments down the road, but don't see much of the action this year. And yet, this season contains some real gems, and builds and builds to the most powerful climax the show has had yet. We get to see characters like Herc, Carver, Prez, and Bubbles wrestling with failure and responsibility. We get to Carcetti discover the awful price of success. The show's writing has never been better, the social criticism never sharper, nor the drama more compelling.

Many have sung the praises of this season of "The Wire," pointing to the way it layers all these different narratives together, and the way that it shifted gears to address a system as complicated as education. What gets to me is that we are four seasons in, and the writers can pull out Dukie, Mike, Randy, and Namond, and make it feel like they were the main characters all along. Or take a former jerkass like Prez and make him one of the most sympathetic good guys on the show. Or seriously question the moral compass and competence of Herc. It's one thing to show the larger failings of the system, but "The Wire" never forgets that the system is made up of individuals, and it's the smaller, personal failings of characters we've gotten to know and trust, that hit so hard. And the little moments of heroism, undertaken in spite of their apparent futility, that hit even harder.

This is the darkest season of "The Wire" by far, but also the one that offers the most hope. In stepping off the street, looking at its boundaries and how the kids cross over, "The Wire" shows us there are ways out. It doesn't just portray the problems, but potential solutions, paths not taken, and hard choices not made. It's what makes the season such a potent tragedy, and gives it so much impact.

I can't wait to see how this all wraps up in Season Five. Onwards.
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The Great Directors with Miss Media Junkie

Going back through my records, I discovered that I've done twenty posts about my favorite movies directed by some of the all-time directing greats, and yet I don't have a proper directory listing for them, and I haven't really sat down to write a mission statement or an introduction for them before now. On the one hand, I think they're pretty self-explanatory. "This is my favorite film from so-and-so director..." On the other hand, I do feel that stating my intentions about this series could be helpful.

I first started writing these posts, beginning with Luis Buñuel's "Exterminating Angel," back in June of 2010. At first I didn't intend for them to be a regular feature, but as time went by and I ran short of ideas for content, it became a nice topic to fall back on, and I started looking forward to picking out a new director every month to feature. I also found it a good way to be able to include more classic film content, which I never write about as much as I'd like to. These are not proper reviews in any sense. They're recommendation pieces that are meant to help the reader discover the works of the filmmaking greats, and I include more contextual and historical information with them than I would when I write about other films, including some brief thoughts about each director. I also tend to get more personal about my own viewing experiences, to help counteract any history lecture vibes.

Who counts as a great director? Someone who has contributed significantly to world cinema, which sounds terribly pretentious, but it's the gist of what I'm looking for. I try to stick with older and foreign directors over the contemporary, mainstream ones. I'm not trying to be comprehensive, and I'm not going in any particular order. Each month, I just write about who I want to write about. Occasionally I'll stick a Tim Burton or a David Cronenberg in the mix, if they've been around long enough and they have a substantial body of work to explore. Maybe Duncan Jones and Rian Johnson will end up being the most important filmmakers of our times, but they're still in the nascent stages of their careers and I feel it would be unwise to jump the gun. Besides, their films are more likely to come up in the regular course of my usual blogging anyway.

The criteria to be featured are pretty straightforward. I only write about directors whose work I'm very familiar with, which means I've seen at least ten of their feature films, or for those less prolific directors like Jacques Tati and Leni Riefenstahl, I've seen at least half of their filmography. Documentary work may or may not count, which I decide on a case by case basis. In a few cases this has encouraged me to seek out more films from a particular director I want to feature. There are a couple of directors who I have seen the full ten films for, but still don't feel comfortable about writing about yet, because I'm missing a few key works. For instance, I'm not keen on writing the post for Howard Hawks without seeing the original 1932 "Scarface," or the post for Fritz Lang without seeing "Die Niebelungen."

There are a few issues I'm currently wrestling with, though. I'm still working out what to do with those directors who primarily work in short forms, like Stan Brakhage and Jan Svankmajer. I'm also not sure how to handle the directors who I generally dislike, but who are clearly important enough to be featured, like Jean-Luc Godard and Robert Bresson. The more films of his I force myself to watch, the less I think I understand him. Also, I've written about a couple of films outside of this series of posts that probably should be part of the series, with a few revisions. For instance, my favorite Martin Scorsese film at the moment is "King of Comedy," which I already wrote about in 2011 after I first saw it. And I've already written a piece on "Mulholland Dr." too, my favorite David Lynch movie.

For now, I leave you with a full list of links to all the Great Director posts that I've written so far, and you can expect a new installment sometime this month. The plan is to continue to keep this post updated and I'll have a permanent link in the sidebar for it eventually.

2013

Yasujiro Ozu ("Late Spring")
Pier Paolo Pasolini ("The Gospel According to St. Matthew")
Zhang Yimou ("To Live")
Carl Theodore Dreyer ("The Passion of Joan of Arc")
Alfred Hitchcock ("Psycho")
Ingmar Bergman ("The Hour of the Wolf")

2012

John Ford ("The Grapes of Wrath")
The Coen Brothers ("Raising Arizona")
R.W. Fassbinder ("Ali: Fear Eats the Soul")
Jacques Tati ("Mon Oncle")
David Lean ("Hobson's Choice")
William Wyler ("Roman Holiday")
Tim Burton ("Edward Scissorhands")
Orson Welles ("The Trial")
Hayao Miyazaki ("Spirited Away")
Akira Kurosawa ("Ran")
Billy Wilder ("Sunset Boulevard")

2011

Steven Spielberg ("Close Encounters of the Third Kind")
Federico Fellini ("Nights of Cabiria")
David Cronenberg ("The Fly")
Stanley Kubrick ("The Shining")
Woody Allen ("Love and Death")
Wong Kar Wai ("Chungking Express")

2010

Andrei Tarkovsky ("Stalker")
Luis Buñuel ("The Exterminating Angel")
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The Top 10 2013 Superbowl Ads

The 2013 Superbowl ads featured Kelly Cuoco as a genie, Korean Rapper PSY dancing with pistachios, Stevie Wonder, The Flaming Lips, Clydesdales, cars, football players, beer, trucks, soft drinks, and sexy ladies. And yes, the GoDaddy ad was skeevey and the E*Trade babies were back. So who ended up on top of the pile? All links below lead to Youtube.

Ram Trucks: Farmer – Now if you're going to do one of these patriotic tributes to the American spirit, you've really got to commit. So while Jeep got Oprah to pay tribute to veterans in an utterly predictable cornball spot, Ram gave us two minutes of radio broadcaster Paul Harvey's "So God Made a Farmer" speech, played over a gorgeous montage of still photographs. And made impact.

Allstate: Forbidden Apple – A continuation of the Mayhem series, which goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden to show Mayhem playing the forbidden fruit in one of his first gigs. Then the ad barrels through human history at a breakneck pace, showing Mayhem responsible for everything from letting the Trojan Horse into Troy to starting the Great Chicago Fire. A great appearance by an odd, but terribly appealing pitch man.

Got Milk? The Mustache – Beloved action hero The Rock would love to help rescue kitties and fight crime, but he has to chase down a milk delivery truck first. After all, he just can't start the day right without a glass of the good stuff. The ad is high concept but still very simple and easy to grasp. And it's so well executed with the CGI effects and surreal universe, it reminds me of the innovative "Got Milk?" ads of the old days.

Volkswagen: Get Happy – Sparked a surprisingly serious kerfuffle for potentially being insensitive to Jamaicans. This VW ad presents a white guy at the office who is happy all the time, to the point where he speaks in a strong Jamaican accent. When he takes his uptight co-workers for a spin in his new ride, they follow suit. Fortunately the Jamaican Minister of Foreign Affairs gave his blessing, so this charmer could make it to the air

Iron Man 3 – My favorite of the summer movie previews, composed almost of entirely new footage. No beating around the bush here. The ad gets right down to business, showing Tony Stark in the middle of his latest crisis, trying to save more than a dozen people who have been swept out of a plane. And that's it. Just 30 seconds to stick the hero in a very bad situation, and you'll have to go see the movie to see what happens next.

Jack in the Box: Hot Mess – Plays on 80s nostalgia, having Jack appear as part of a hair metal band in his youth. The gimmick is just okay on its own, but the final punchline is what got me to smile. I'm not sure I'd ever go near one of the sandwiches that is being advertised here (jalapenos and onion rings?!) but the ad still did a good job of emphasizing the brand and the Jack CEO character, who ironically didn't even exist until 1995.

Hyundai: Stuck – Hyundai had several good ads this year, but this was my favorite. A driver in a new Sonata finds himself behind a series of increasingly unpleasant and hazardous vehicles, and passes them one by one. Because if you're going to have an ad for selling cars, it's a good idea to have a concept that's actually about cars and what they do, and not, oh, a planet populated entirely by babies.

Mercedez Benz: Soul – This one is on the list solely for the genius of casting Willem Dafoe as the Devil, who offers to put the ad's young hero behind the wheel of a new Benz if he signs away his soul. Kate Upton and Usher also make appearances in the fantasy lifestyle that comes with the car. I'm not so sure if trying to promote a luxury vehicle as affordable is ever a good idea, but it gets the point across.

Best Buy: Ask Amy – I like Amy Poehler, and her appearance here as the most inquisitive Bust Buy customer ever was charming enough to briefly make me forget everything I know about Best Buy and their notoriously dysfunctional business model. And kudos for the inclusion of the cute Asian sales guy for Poehler to flirt with.

Wheat Thins: Night Vision – Technically not a Superbowl ad because it ran before kickoff, but of all the absurdist ads this year, I think this is my favorite. It's silly, but it's wonderfully well crafted silly, where it's equally plausible that your next door neighbor and a yeti are after your Spicy Buffalo Wheat Thins. And I would totally try that flavor too.
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Done "The Impossible"

There is a difference between the movies that are commonly viewed as "Oscar bait," and the movies that tend to actually win awards. "Oscar bait" tends to be reserved for those movies that are clearly playing on the trends to get ahead, but don't offer much else substantively. If you look at this year's crop of nominees, and what they share in common is that they're all auteur driven films. Steven Spielberg made "Lincoln" because he wanted to make a film about Abraham Lincoln, not because he was appealing to the Academy's noted penchant for historical dramas, and its recognition is largely due to the talent involved on the project. "Oscar bait," by contrast, is only notable for its subject matter: "Hitchcock," "Hyde Park on Hudson," and "Promised Land," for instance.

And so we come to "The Impossible," directed by Juan Antonio Bayona. The director's most well known film prior to this was the horror tale, "The Orphanage." At first glance "The Impossible" looks like classic Oscar bait. It's about the aftermath of the 2004 South Asian tsunami, and follows the travails of a family that is separated by the disaster and trying to reunite against the odds. Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor play Maria and Henry Bennett, who are vacationing with their three young sons, Lucas (Tom Holland), Thomas (Samuel Joslin), and Simon (Oaklee Pendergast) who are vacationing at a resort in Thailand when the wave hits. The premise alone is an obvious tearjerker, and I was turned off by the heavy-handed trailers. The movie seemed calculated to deliver mainstream-friendly schmaltz, so I came into "The Impossible" with low expectations.

I underestimated Bayona. In other hands, I don't think the material would have worked at all, but here we have a more than capable director who recreates the experience of being swept away by a tidal wave, agonizing second by second. A major chunk of the film follows only Maria and her oldest son Lucas, who are washed away to a rural inland area. Maria is badly injured, and they have to navigate the ruined landscape to get to safety and find help. The filmmaking is very immediate and in the moment, heightening the emotional and physical states of the characters. Everything except their survival becomes a background concern. It's harrowing to watch and so beautifully executed, particularly the production design. I have no idea how Bayona and his crew managed to create some of the brutal visuals we see on the screen, which couldn't possibly have been all CGI. In fact, the tidal wave here makes the highly lauded tidal wave sequence in Clint Eastwood's "Hereafter" look like amateur hour.

The performances are very good, though there's really very little to the characters as they're meant to be universal figures. Naomi Watts has been getting the bulk of the attention, but Ewan MacGregor is just as strong here, and he gets a breakdown scene that is one of the highlights of the movie. Tom Holland as Lucas also shoulders a good portion of the narrative by himself, and I'd be surprised if we don't see him in more after this. Outside of this family unit, the movie boasts countless uncredited extras that fill in the corners of chaotic hospital scenes and crowd scenes that are some of the film's most striking. There's never a moment when Bayona forgets that he's dealing with a mass catastrophe that affected thousands and thousands of lives, and the story of the Bennetts is only one out of a vast multitude.

"The Impossible" becomes more and more conventional as it goes on, following the pattern of other disaster epics. There are some depicted events that are blatant emotional manipulation, and the movie ends exactly the way you think it will. However, by the time we got to those predictable turns, I was feeling pretty charitable toward the film. No, "The Impossible" didn't have a particularly strong script or characters with any dimensions, but it succeeded in faithfully capturing a human experience. I have plenty of minor reservations about the tweaking of the characters' ethnicities (the real life family was Spanish), the use of the kids to tug at our heartstrings, and the choice to focus almost solely on the experiences of foreigners. However, credit has to go where credit is due.

"The Impossible" is an exceptionally well made film that is entirely successful at doing what it set out to do. Though "The Impossible" may look like Oscar bait, it's better than that. And Hollywood should take note that the film that so many people thought was commercial Hollywood product, featuring a couple of major Western film stars, was actually a product of multiple Spanish studios. Bayona and much of the other key creative talent were also Spanish. Looks like those promising foreign talents don't actually need to go to Hollywood in order to make big Hollywood films anymore. And that should keep Hollywood on its toes.
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The Mick Travis... Trilogy?

Cinema history is full of trilogies, from the "Godfather" trilogy and the "Star Wars" trilogy, to the more erudite obscurities like Satyajit Ray's "Apu" trilogy" and Krzysztof Kieślowski's Colors trilogy. Part of the ongoing fascination with them and other series of films is that it's difficult to maintain a high level of quality through multiple pictures. I recently finished a British film trilogy that has been described as almost one of the greats, the three films that Lindsay Anderson made starting in 1968, which were all written by David Sherwin and starred Malcolm McDowell as Michael "Mick" Travis: "If...," (1968) "O Lucky Man!" (1973) and "Britannia Hospital" (1982). Two are great films, considered British counter-culture classics, and the last, unfortunately, is a dud.

In "If..." Travis is a rebellious schoolboy caught in the sadistic world of a tyrannical educational institution. After being subjected to various indignities, he and his fellow troublemakers end up leading a violent insurrection against the staff and faculty. "O Lucky Man!" is a sprawling tale where Travis, who begins the film as a traveling coffee salesman, journeys all over Britain and has encounters with people from all walks of life. However, as he moves in and out of different social circles and runs afoul of oppressive institutions and authorities, he becomes more and more disillusioned. "Britannia Hospital" is a much broader spoof than either of the others, about a British hospital preparing for a visit from the Queen. However, they have to contend with protesters out front, striking workers, and a mad scientist conducting strange experiments behind the scenes. Travis appears this time as a reporter, trying to film an expose on the hospital's inner workings.

But should the Mick Travis trilogy really be considered a trilogy? Or have they just been lumped together for categorical convenience? Mick Travis has been called an everyman character, and he changes with every appearance to suit the needs of each film's story. There's no evidence that any of the films share continuity otherwise, aside from a few other recurring characters and the involvement of many of the same actors. All three films are dark satires with fanciful elements, but they don't quite match up thematically or stylistically. "If..." is a very personal memoir of the screenwriter's school-going experiences, that takes a detour into surrealism, like a darker, more cynical version of "Zero for Conduct." "O Lucky Man" has been compared to Voltaire's "Candide," a far more ambitious and allegorical narrative, interspersed with musical numbers written and performed by rock musician Alan Price.

"Britannia Hospital" is the easiest to split off. "If..." and "O Lucky Man!" placed Travis at the center of their stories, documenting his abuse by the education system and the larger forces of society respectively. In "Britannia Hospital" he has a prominent role, but he's also part of a larger ensemble, and his thread of the plot doesn't have much of an effect on how events play out ultimately. Far more time is spent with a group of hapless hospital administrators who are trying to contain the growing chaos, so it's hard to think of it as a Mick Travis movie. Moreover, the first two films were largely concerned about portraying social ills and injustice. These elements appear in "Britannia Hospital," highlighting class divisions, bureaucracy, the media, and so forth, but they're largely subsumed in the absurdity of the farce. Or maybe the weakness of the message was just a reflection of the weakness of "Britannia Hospital" as a movie.

After watching "O Lucky Man!" and "Britannia" back to back, I find myself extremely unsatisfied with how we left Mick Travis if we are to consider the three movies as one whole work. And the more I read about the character and Linsday Anderson's unrealized plans for another follow-up film, this time a direct sequel to "If...," the less I feel like accepting "Britannia Hospital" as the last word. "Britannia" seems to have sealed Travis's fate, but it's also a movie with mad scientists and giant brains quoting Shakespeare, and I don't think a little resurrection would be too much to ask in that universe. Anderson passed away some time ago, but McDowell's still around and working steadily, so why shouldn't there be another Mick Travis film, this time about Travis confronting life in Britain as a senior citizen?

Then again, the story of Mick Travis already has an ending. "O Lucky Man!" had a perfectly satisfying conclusion to his adventures, which showed Travis coming to terms with his place in the world. Just because it didn't come as the capper to the third film Travis appeared in doesn't make it any less effective. It's fun to speculate, but I don' think there was ever a need for a third Mick Travis film at all, and there's definitely no need for another attempt at one now. The first two movies stand alone perfectly well, and I think may be better not to treat any of the Mick Travis films as related at all.
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