WandaVision

WandaVision is one of Marvel's greatest works, in my opinion, and it touched my soul more than almost any other series or movie. The main idea was also as completely novel as it was simple, as far as I'm aware. To adequately comment on the main idea of the miniseries, I'll have to give a bit of a spoiler. The spoiler will ruin some of the excellent development and twists that lead up to us figuring out what's truly going on in Wandaville, but on the other hand, who hasn't seen WandaVision by now that's ever going to see it? 

I can personally relate to the idea of unconsciously psychically controlling the actions of everyone around me in order to avoid their leading me to face some very uncomfortable truth. I don't even know why; it's for metaphysical reasons whose possible interpretations are as varied as they are subtle. I don't know if it's just me or if this is more of a universal nerve the writers have pressed, but just the fact that they made a miniseries based on this ostensibly strange premise seems to indicate it's the latter. 

In Wanda's case, the uncomfortable truth being avoided is the death of her lover, Vision, while I think the personal and/or universal nerve it touches has more to do with deep-seated shame as a result of the harm one has caused others. However, being torn apart by the death of a loved one is in itself one of the most powerful  and relatable psychological forces, and furthermore, I believe the other thing Wanda is avoiding confronting is the manner in which she's hurting everyone in the town a great deal by psychically controlling and entrapping them in the first place, so the need to further control them becomes a vicious circle, like so many of the most dangerous pitfalls in life.

One interesting thing of note is how confident Wanda is in her decisions, fighting with all her might against the witch who's there to bring her reckoning, even after having been brought to realize on a conscious level what she'd been doing. I think this is an example of how one can go wrong by having total trust in themselves while not realizing that they're capable of being deeply in the moral wrong. In this case, you only realize your folly after it's too late, and in Wanda's case, her only redemption involved making the ultimate sacrifice later on in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (yes, sorry, another spoiler).

Another interesting thing the line between life and death that Vision unwittingly treads. He's only given animation by Wanda's powers, but at the same time it's as if he has a life of his own. He doesn't realize he's dead at first or that he's being controlled by Wanda, and he becomes confused and angry when he eventually realizes/confronts the fact that he can't remember his past. 

I also enjoyed the fact that we got to see Elizabeth Olsen in a major acting role. For 32 years all we had ever heard about were Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. I didn't even know they had a younger sister before WandaVision, let alone that she's a good actress. And on top of that she's really cute! The Scarlet Witch (a.k.a. Wanda Maximoff) was in movies before WandaVision, but I guess I'd just never realized whom she was played by.

I don't watch a lot of movies or TV series, but I'm very glad I watched this one.

Agatha All Along

I liked Agatha All Along, even though I'm pretty sure it "objectively" wasn't as good as WandaVision, which Agatha All Along is a spinoff of. 

One thing that really struck me was that the quality of Aubrey Plaza's acting seemed better than anything else I've ever seen her in. I ❤️ Aubrey Plaza, but in general it's not particularly her acting that sells, it's her persona.

I also liked that we finally got to see what happened to Wanda's kids after the dissolution of Wandaville. I'd been wondering when we were going to find that out ever since WandaVision ended. I had no idea it was revealed in this miniseries.

The worst thing about the miniseries, in my opinion, was that the witch's road—the parts of it that weren't challenges inside buildings—looked so obviously like a set that it took me right out of the show. 

The only other particularly bad thing about it was that they made it harder and harder to really like the main character as they revealed more about her. But I guess we're supposed to be sold on the fact that, in the end, she felt too guilty to face her son due to her past, at least. 

Oh, and actually, one of the bad things that was revealed about her just seemed like a cheap plot twist, as it didn't really resonate with the show's history up to that point. She had seemed to so earnestly want to try the witch's road and to get all of the other witches onboard (beyond any reasonable consideration that it was all just a ruse), and then we find out that she never really believed in the witch's road and had just wanted to steal all their power and kill them. She had even confided in one of them earlier that she can only steal a witch's power if they unleash it on her, which is especially inconsistent with that turn of events. I don't mind giving away this particular spoiler, as I feel that the writers committed an intellectual crime against the viewer on this point.

One other thing worth noting was that the show was a bit macabre, as (spoiler:) nearly all of the protagonists died eventually.

There's a pretty amazing and unexpected twist at the end that I thought was good, that I won't reveal here.

The show ended in a way that seemed to suggest there may be a future season, but we're not really told one way or the other about whether there will be. I read somewhere that the fact that Agatha All Along was submitted for awards as Best Comedy Series rather than Best Miniseries or whatever may indicate that they're planning future seasons.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

I finally got around to watching Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. I'd been waiting for this sequel for many years; I think it was a long time ago that it was first promised. 

I'm not sure I can do this movie justice, especially while trying not to give away too many spoilers, but...

It's been a long (long) time since I've watched the original, and I don't have a great memory, but I have the impression this movie has a more complex plot. I was thinking for most of the movie that they tried hard, and Keaton's performance was on par with the original, and a lot of the special effects and style matched the original, but that somehow I liked the original better, that this movie just didn't have the same charm somehow. 

But then I got to the Macarthur Park wedding scene. That scene was a masterpiece. I love a good mind-bending piece of media (case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLGj0JMDT1Q, though maybe it only works if Super Mario Bros. 3 was an integral part of your childhood), and Beetlejuice et al. dancing to and singing Macarthur Park in the original singer's voice was truly surreal. The inherent beauty of real music, and in particular this song, which is one of my favorites, elevated the scene to a sublime level, which provided mind-melting contrast given Beetlejuice's stylishly filthy, demonic nature. This scene made the movie for me. 

There was also no shortage of unexpected twists and turns in this movie, the best ones being right at the end. One of them was assumed to be a wholesome and beautiful moment that suddenly became very defiled in an absurd and humorous way, and the other seemed to indicate that maybe Beetlejuice hadn't died in the end after all.

There were two parts of this movie that made me laugh out loud. The first was when Beetlejuice swore to keep a promise on his mother's grave, and then suddenly, unexpectedly by him, his shirt caught on fire. The second was when Astrid (Jenna Ortega's character) and Lydia end up in the desert/no man's land of the afterlife, and Astrid sees Saturn and concludes that they're on one of its moons, and blurts out, "I swear, the afterlife is so random!" (If you see this movie, or probably even if you've seen the original, you'll see how that line was a bit of meta-humor.)

And speaking of Jenna Ortega, it's always a pleasure seeing her in anything, as she has such a cute, cool-looking face as well as a cool persona, so having her in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was a real boon for the movie.

If I had any complaints, one was that the characters weren't astonished and/or reactive enough in response to discovering certain realities or turns of events, but that's typical of movies; but even more forgivably, it was probably part of the intentional aesthetic of the Beetlejuice franchise. Or at least the lack-of-astonishment part probably was; there was one part where a beloved family member died permanently, and the family hardly reacted with any emotion at all. (I guess the blow was softened by the fact that it was clear that the person would be hanging out in the afterlife from then on out, but still.)

Another complaint would be that I never understood why Willem Dafoe played an actor playing an afterlife crime unit agent, but that fake crime unit agent had a practical role with real consequences. It didn't seem to make much sense, but maybe I just missed some important plot point there. Or maybe the movie just doesn't have to make total sense, and that element did add a certain amount of flare or colorfulness after all. I had some other complaints, but they're too minor to mention here.

Overall, I think this movie was worth watching, even though it may have lacked a certain je ne sais quoi that the first one had.