Month: December 2019

Screamers (1995)

Screamers (1995)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, December 2019) If you’re not French-Canadian, you probably don’t know how Screamers was a minor sensation in French-Canada when it came out in 1995. After all, it had been produced in Québec at a time when few Hollywood productions made their way to La Belle Province, was financed by a Québec-based company, directed by a French-Canadian (Christian Duguay), largely crewed by Montréal-area people, and featured then-big-name star Roy Dupuis in a supporting role. For SF fans, it was noteworthy for featuring a script co-written by Dan O’Bannon from a Philip K. Dick story, which was still a bit of a novelty before the big wave of PKD-inspired Hollywood movies of the 2002–2012 decade. Alas, the disappointment was real when Screamers was released and wasn’t anything special. Twenty-five years later, the film has not improved. In fact, it’s now more obnoxious than ever considering that nearly everything in it bears the stamp of cheap mid-1990s filmmaking and has been remade much better by other movies. The dullness sets in early as the film features post-apocalyptic visuals on a planet ravaged by war and an enemy that passes itself as something else. Considering its Philip K. Dick pedigree, it’s no big surprise that the human characters may not be. Considering that it’s a cheap Science Fiction B-movie featuring monsters, it’s also not a surprise that the number of characters constantly dwindles on the way to the ending. Dour, downbeat, and relentlessly ugly, Screamers bears the hallmark of the worst of its filmmaking era. Late-analog effects stick out in a bad way, and a boring script doesn’t help. There are occasional flashes of competence, but those only recall better examples of the form. Roy Dupuis apparently dubs his own character on the French-language version, but that’s not a good thing considering how his French-Canadian accent keeps sticking out among more neutral mid-Atlantic voices. The result is just tedious, ugly, and exasperating. I saw Screamers on VHS in the mid-1990s, but had forgotten about it until now … and am now ready to forget about it once more.

Miracle on 34th Street (1994)

Miracle on 34th Street (1994)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, December 2019) If there’s a time for being sappy, nostalgic, and sentimental, then Christmas is it. Consequently, there’s no use getting mad at a Miracle on 34th Street remake being sappy, nostalgic, and sentimental: That’s the point of it. Polishing the 1940s original by giving it an antagonist, a slightly different ending and not obsessing so much about a character being a divorcee, this remake (penned by John Hughes) does a creditable job bringing the story forward nearly fifty years while keeping its core sentimentality. Briefly summarized, it’s about the judicial system trying to prove whether an old man is indeed Santa Claus—the answer is unsurprising, but it’s getting there that’s important. The Manhattan setting of duelling department stores is oddly comforting, although adding an explicit antagonist does nothing good to the story. I’m divided on the decision to replace the original’s, “bags of letters” resolution in favour of a more abstract “in God we trust” climax, but that may just be the separation-of-church-and-state rationalist in myself speaking—and rationalists need not apply to this movie. At least the acting credentials are fine—Richard Attenborough gets the role of a lifetime playing Santa (was that a spoiler?), while Elizabeth Perkins and Dylan McDermott make for a cute romantic lead. There’s something noteworthy in the film’s cinematography, in that it really does go for the full “soft Technicolor” mood of earlier eras, with characters being shot in diffuse light and strongly backlit to stand out. More accessible but less magical than the original film, this Miracle on 34th Street is fine—we can quibble on the details and its more markedly mercenary intention, but it still works relatively well, and completely understands what it’s trying to be.

Den of Thieves (2018)

Den of Thieves (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Netflix Streaming, December 2019) As someone who has spent the last few weeks playing through (and really enjoying) Grand Theft Auto V, I was perhaps better predisposed than most to enjoy this somewhat generic take on heist movies. Set in Los Angeles and featuring a crew of ex-military personnel planning very sophisticated robberies (sometime under cover of hostage taking), Den of Thieves inevitably brings back to mind such classics as Heat and Dog Day Afternoon, only to feel far more generic. It doesn’t help its case by making the law-and-order side of the characters feel as repellent as the criminals—Gerald Butler stars as a cowboy cop who open boasts that his gang wear badges, and isn’t above intimidating his soon-to-be ex-wife’s friends with a gratuitous psycho-cop routine. Whom to root for in this movie isn’t obvious, until the last few minutes make it clear that the film has a twist ending in mind. (Well, roughly the same twist ending than most heist movies have with a dash of a hidden mastermind thrown in.)  While slickly made with the latest in digital drone technology allowing for some impressive shots, Den of Thieves feels both too long and too short: Writer-director Christian Gudegast wastes time on things that won’t be really important (such as the protagonist’s rotten personal life), and yet feels too short by not developing what could be used to make stronger characters. The protagonist’s divorce arc takes all of three or four scenes and ends at the psycho-cop routine sometime in the second act. Why bother? If you settle on the film being too long, then it could have been recut to focus on the decent action sequences. For action junkies and GTAV enthusiasts, there’s always a thrill in seeing good live-action set-pieces, and if Den of Thieves doesn’t always know when to stop and condense, there is at least one sequence (the traffic-jam shootout) that I fully expect to be reused in the next Grand Theft Auto. Not every movie has to be a classic—some can simply go through the motions and still be satisfying if that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for, and that’s how I choose to assess Den of Thieves—Methadone to Heat’s pure heroin, but still good for most heist movie cravings.

The Innocents (1961)

The Innocents (1961)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(YouTube Streaming, December 2019) Eerie, subtle, and ambiguous, The Innocents is almost a horror movie and almost not a horror movie at once. The opening sequences certainly feel comforting in their familiarity, as a woman (Deborah Kerr) is hired as a governess in a foreboding gothic mansion. The kids, as we find out, aren’t all right as they exhibit signs of maturity beyond their years, and a fascination with morbid or violent things. As the story slowly unfolds (this is meant to be an atmospheric film) and details about the mansion’s tragic back-story emerge, our viewpoint protagonist becomes convinced that a pair of ghosts are possessing the children to relive their doomed romance. But from the viewer’s perspective, things aren’t so clear—is she imagining all of this? This foundation for an inconclusive psychological horror movie being established, The Innocents doesn’t disappoint in its lack of resolution. While relatively daring back in 1961, this kind of thing is now commonplace, and perhaps the aspect of The Innocents that has best survived is the setting—the vast decaying mansion, the isolated surroundings, the macabre imagery all combine to give us a familiar but still-effective backdrop. The film is perhaps most noteworthy as a counterpoint to the kind of cheaper horror movies that was starting to emerge by the early 1960s—while it’s not as fresh as it was back then, it has aged better than many others.

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Netflix Streaming, December 2019) A novelty experience more than a proper movie, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is an “interactive experience” where you, the viewer, make choices about what you’re seeing on-screen. The gimmick is less disruptive than you may think given a countdown timer and some judicious storytelling/technical choices, including decision paths that often double back on themselves, presenting new opportunities only if you’d gone through them before. Fortunately, form follows function in that Bandersnatch tells us about the psychotic breakdown (maybe) of an early-1980s computer programmer working on a piece of interactive fiction. Obvious yet weighty themes of free will, parallel universes and the illusion of control pepper the narrative, mirroring the work of the filmmakers and the experience of the viewers (in a very funny tangent, the viewer eventually gets the choice of telling the character that he’s in a Netflix offering, leading to the following clip breaking the fourth wall a few times over). It does work, although not as much as a movie than a rough thought-piece, perhaps not as fully realized as videogames have become. Still, Bandersnatch very much fits in the Black Mirror universe as it gets quite dark at times and there’s a delicious shudder of metafictional angst going through the piece. The 1980s setting is lovely—at some point, we even enter a lavishly detailed recreation of a record/bookstore. Acting-wise, Fionn Whitehead does a good job anchoring the piece, while Alice Lowe gets a warm part playing a psychiatrist, and Will Poulter is perhaps at his most sympathetic as a genius videogame developer. It’s far too early to say whether Bandersnatch will lead to follow-ups or whether those follow-ups will be better or worse: Bandersnatch does offer a decent 90–120 minutes of entertainment, but even the rather clever and seamless nature of the branching became repetitive toward the end, leading to exhaustion rather than satisfaction at closing the film. (For the record; I used a flowchart guide to get to the main endings, so I’m reasonably confident that I’ve seen much of the content.)  I do have substantial qualms about the future of Bandersnatch—it’s a form of entertainment closely linked to a specific proprietary platform with no way to make a compelling independent distribution mechanism, and it’s easy to imagine Bandersnatch disappearing in the future once Netflix goes bankrupt or gets tired of it. But such is the digital era: A movie can be re-recorded or transcoded, videogames can be run inside an emulator, but this kind of entertainment remains fixed for the moment.

Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Five Easy Pieces (1970)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion Streaming, December 2019) The most distinctive aspect of Five Easy Pieces is that it’s a pure undiluted example of New Hollywood filmmaking: Unlikable protagonist, aimless dialogue, not much plot, filthy sets and gritty cinematography all feature heavily here at the expense of just about any classical Hollywood virtue. Yeah, so I don’t really like New Hollywood, which I see as a necessary but transitory period between the restrictions of the Production Code era and the more entertainment-driven era of filmmaking that followed Star Wars. The best I can say about Five Easy Pieces is that it’s relatively short and, as such, doesn’t completely overstay its welcome despite trying really hard. Jack Nicholson deservedly stars as a manual labourer trying to escape the burden of his upper-class childhood as a musical prodigy. He rebels against … well, he rebels, anyway. He meets women, sleeps with them, or at least tries to get a breakfast according to his exacting preferences. Nothing works. He leaves. The end.  Relief.

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(YouTube Streaming, December 2019) There is a place and a time for everything, including slow-paced dramas dealing with heady questions of shared responsibilities and war crimes. What I’m getting at is that you should give yourself plenty of time to get into Judgment at Nuremberg—at a staggering three hours and eight minutes of mostly courtroom dialogue, it’s a long sit. But you do get a lot for your time—starting with an all-star cast that starts with Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster and Marlene Dietrich, all the way to one of William Shatner’s earliest prominent roles. This film is a debate of ideas, as the American occupation struggles with the prosecution of war crimes at a time when Germany is becoming a crucial Cold War playground, and the US can be accused of having inspired some of the Nazi rhetoric. The battle between lawyers gets to some crucial issues, not the least of which is assigning blame for atrocities. Perhaps the most affecting moment of the film comes from well-known material—starkly-presented footage of concentration camps shortly after liberation, with piles of corpses and bulldozers doing mass burials out of health concerns. (Those images aside, be careful about seeing the film as fact—while it’s adapted from real-life events, nearly all the characters are deliberately fictional and condensed from the proceedings.)  Judgment at Nuremberg doesn’t pull any punches in its topic or depiction—it’s cinema as consciously codifying right and wrong, dismissing feeble objections to the contrary. Despite good-faith efforts to make the film cinematic, there is a lot here that could play as a theatrical piece, including a lengthy summation-as-judgment from Tracy that can be seen as a template for director Stanley Kramer’s climactic sequence in the later Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner. The leisurely pace, repetitive material and fixed location doesn’t work against the film as much as you’d think, though: there’s a moral argument here, and it’s not as much about finding right or wrong as it’s about how to establish right in such overwhelming fashion that there can be no lingering doubt about it. Judgment at Nuremberg does amount to an admirable piece of cinema, as compelling today as it was in 1961. But give yourself plenty of time to immerse yourself in it.

A Simple Favor (2018)

A Simple Favor (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Video On-Demand, December 2019) Given Hollywood’s latest addiction to superhero fantasy, sequels, remake, prequels, reboots and rip-offs, please excuse me for a moment if I’m far too excited about an honest-to-goodness thriller with a black comedy attitude. Those aren’t rare, of course, but they’re far better than, say, a middling gender-swapped remake of a familiar franchise. So, in other news, here we have director Paul Feig trying his hand at a strongly plotted thriller after finding fame with R-rated comedies and the Ghostbusters reboot. It’s not a complete shift, as A Simple Favor has strong (perhaps too strong) comedy moments … but it’s a shift in tone closer to The Girl on the Train than to The Heat. Here, we have a perfectly-cast Anna Kendrick as a mommy vlogger, befriending a fellow but temperamentally opposed take-no-prisoners Mom with a corporate career played by Blake Lively. But that’s just the spark, as the plot gets going when the other moms disappear and our heroine goes sleuthing to reconcile a few details that don’t make sense. It gets far, far more complicated after that, but it’s good to keep some secrets. Suffice to say that there are twists and turns (at some point, a character screams, “Are you trying to Diabolique me?”, which was particularly funny given that I had watched that film only a few days earlier) and even if you can guess the crux of the third act’s twist, there’s enough plot left after that to keep things interesting. There’s an intriguingly modern edge to the vlogging angle, but otherwise this is a classic thriller, well handled although not immune to a few indulgent leaps into dark comedy. Feig may be falling back on too-familiar comfort material when he lets comedy leap to the forefront, especially late during the movie when we should be getting down to the action rather than the jokes. A Simple Favor is a fun and absorbing thriller—Kendrick and Lively have a good rapport, and both seem well suited to their character. The French songs that pepper the soundtrack are well-chosen (it helps if you understand the lyrics), the editing is taut and Feig seems to be having fun along the way. It all amounts to a very respectable domestic thriller, the kind of which we should see more often.

Jungfrukällan [The Virgin Spring] (1960)

Jungfrukällan [The Virgin Spring] (1960)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion Streaming, December 2019) There’s something almost hilariously weird in that Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, a European art-house classic, has a plot similar to grindhouse nasty The Last House of the Left. In both cases, we have a daughter getting raped and killed by hooligans who happen to seek refuge at the house of the daughter’s parents—and the father exerting bloody revenge. One of these films is considered high art; the other one basic exploitation and the differences are illuminating. In Bergman’s version, the vengeance doesn’t right things, and some atonement will be required—as opposed to the revenge of later American version of the story. Still, for the unaware viewer, the slide from a typical Bergman medieval drama into genre-adjacent revenge territory can be surprising—I somehow didn’t remember the film’s narrative, and was as surprised as anyone else when the film got far more violent than its dull first few minutes suggest. The climactic sequence, with its drawn-out revenge against guilty and innocents alike, is not played like a vengeance fantasy and that may be our biggest clue as to what distinguishes the high and low versions of the same plot. Of course, the Bergman version does conclude on an elegiac note as the father promises to repent for the violence by building a church over the spring that emerged from under his daughter’s corpse—a far, far cry from the grandguignolesque 2009 remake of The Last House on the Left that concluded with a bad guy’s head exploding in a microwave. Somehow, I don’t think Bergman would have approved of that variation.

Cavalcade (1933)

Cavalcade (1933)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(YouTube Streaming, December 2019) Not all Oscar winners age gracefully, and Cavalcade often does feel more dated than many of its contemporaries. This may have been inevitable given the subject matter: the life of a few English characters from 1900 to 1933, through the tumultuous first decades of the twentieth century. It’s not exactly a cheery topic—thanks to wars, bar-fights and shipwrecks, several characters die along the way. Adapted from a Noel Coward play, the film came with impeccable Hollywood pedigree which probably explained its critical and box-office success. But from a contemporary perspective, Cavalcade has a few issues. Putting aside our knowledge of how the first thirty-three years of the twentieth century were merely an appetizer for far worse eras, Cavalcade is saddled with a tepid rhythm, episodic structure, flurries of short subplots, and early-cinema clichés. While some sequences work well (the montage that accompanies much of WW1, for instance), other moments land with a thud—the April 14, 1912 Ocean Liner sequence is utterly predictable and almost plays as comedy as the doomed characters maintain an extended bout of happy patter before the camera reveals that they are on (dum-dum-DUM!) the TITANIC. Oh well; clichés must come from somewhere, right? There’s an annoying stop-and-go quality to the plotting that’s also bothersome: Almost half of the period’s duration from 1918 to 1933 is skipped over through a very moralistic montage, illustrating the perils of tying plot to world events rather than take a more organic approach. There’s also something to be said for the character’s stoic approach to tragedies—as part of the whole British Stiff Upper Lip tradition even if it may mute some of the emotions. Sets and costumes are quite good in a theatrical fashion. I still liked parts of Cavalcade—it’s certainly fascinating in a time-capsule kind of way—but even limiting myself to 1933, I can think of more interesting and far more influential films who should have walked away with the biggest Academy Award. But if we’re going to start playing the “Who should have won the Oscar instead?” game, we’re going to be here all night.

Vice (2018)

Vice (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, December 2019) As a non-American US political junkie, Vice is my kind of movie: An exuberant, engaged, clever and uncompromising look at a contemporary political figure that makes no apologies for its critical viewpoint. Taking on the unusual life of Richard “Dick” Cheney from early struggles to the vice-presidency of the United States, Vice is a lot more than a standard biopic: Through various impressionist devices, it gets to discuss the decades-long machinations of the Republican Party in consolidating power for power’s sake, the perils of Unitary Executive Theory, the way Cheney masterminded his way through opportunities to get what he wanted, and his unrepentant assessment of his own life. Far from being a dry recitation of fact, it’s narrated by Cheney’s replacement heart and features several filmmaking stunts such as a hilarious end-credit fakeout, quasi-subliminal visual fishing metaphors, a satirical restaurant sequence offering political options “on the menu” during post-9/11 madness, a visible narrator, faux-Shakespearian dialogue, and focus-group commentary on the film itself. It’s been fascinating to see writer-director Adam McKay transform himself from a silly comedy director to an engaged, even ferocious filmmaker, and after the exceptional The Big Short, Vice feels as if he’s applying everything he’s ever learned to take on the biggest topic of all: political power. It certainly helps that the film is an actor’s showcase at nearly every turn: Christian Bale turns in a mesmerizing impression of Cheney, while Amy Adams is almost unrecognizable as his wife. Steve Carell makes for a surprisingly likable Donald Rumsfeld (wow, I just wrote that!), with several other actor/figure pairs along the line of Tyler Perry as Colin Powell. The impact is interesting: for one thing, the film is a treasure box of delights as Bush-era political junkies will be able to recognize real-world figures before they’re introduced by name. For another, it can be surprisingly humanizing: Despite their heartless agendas, both Cheney and Rumsfeld occasionally come across as sympathetic (I either didn’t know or forgot that Cheney had humble origins, while Rumsfeld comes across as self-aware and funny). I’m not so happy with the easy portrait of Bush as an amiable dunce with daddy issues—even in a film that prizes caricatures, it feels like a cheap shot and an underestimation of his abilities. (I suspect it’ll take a while before we get an accurate Bush portrayal.)  There are several nuggets for those who have followed political history closely—including an expected poke at the whole bizarre incident when Cheney shot a guy and got the guy to apologize for it. As a non-American viewer, the reaction to Vice was amusing to see—while the film got a much-deserved Best Picture nomination, it also got scathing reviews from the right-wing press and even some centrist outlets as well—almost as if people should be scared of a movie that dares make a political point, almost as if everyone had to tiptoe around Cheney’s political clout. I’ll be blunter: Bring out more movies like Vice. Americans need them.

The Kid Who Would Be King (2019)

The Kid Who Would Be King (2019)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, December 2019) I had been waiting far too long for writer-director Joe Cornish’s follow-up to Attack the Block, and the result isn’t a disappointment: The Kid Who Would Be King brings the Arthurian Legend into modern schools by featuring a kid picking up Excalibur and defeating the evil that threatens the land. If this feels familiar, it may very well be that it’s in step with a spate of recent British movies (many of them also starting with the Arthurian Legend) consciously indulging in national myth-making. The movie doesn’t waste any time in portraying the current world as one that needs saving, preferably using homegrown magic and prophecies. Clearly, there’s a link with Brexit here that I’m not fit to explore—but as with so many things British these days, it’s almost enough to send a message overseas: Dear United Kingdom, is everything OK? Do you need any help in figuring this out? Signed: Your former colonies. At least Cornish is an able ringmaster in coordinating the various elements of his movie: Tons of special effects support an adventure that ventures across Britain, conjures up fantastic creatures and deals with teenage protagonists. Cornish does write a movie clearly set in modern times, reuses some plot structures from Attack the Block (notably in initially portraying two characters as deeply unlikable before zigzagging their way to a heroic finale) and know how to use a spectacle. It’s decently effective—the tone effectively zig-zags between despair and triumph, some clichés are overturned along the way, and the film remains effective both with teenage audiences and older ones. The kid actors are fine, but Angus Imrie gets a showcase role as the eccentric Merlin (also played by Patrick Stewart). Skillfully made, The Kid Who Would Be King revisits familiar places in new ways and provides quite a thrill to the audience. Sadly, the film earned good reviews but bad box office results—meaning that it may be a while before we get another Joe Cornish movie.

Office Christmas Party (2016)

Office Christmas Party (2016)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, December 2019) There’s a Christmas movie ghetto that may limit some movies from getting the attention they deserve the other eleven months of the year. In most respects, Office Christmas Party is as good as R-rated comedies got in the mid-2010s: An efficient script, an escalation of madness that justifies the adult rating, a great soundtrack, tight editing, and especially a solid ensemble cast doing what they do best in their usual screen persona. The plot is right there in the title, as a corporate Christmas Party gets wilder as its stakes go up. There’s some perfunctory narrative to wrap up the madness and bring comic personalities together (something to do with a brother and sister fighting to keep a technology company open despite a dearth of big clients and low morale) but let’s not fool ourselves: the high point of the film is in its third-quarter, when everyone goes wild in the corporate party of the century-so-far. (In a decent example of the directors Will Speck and Josh Gordon’s cinematographic craft, there’s a great pullback shot of the company’s two floors engulfed in wild partying as the rest of the office building is shut down for the night.)  If you’ve seen any of the contemporary R-rated comedies, you know what to expect from Office Christmas Party. Still, when it works it works: Jason Bateman is once again the level-headed straight man of the bunch, holding the core of the film alongside the always cute (and sensible!) Olivia Munn. Jennifer Anniston adds another unsympathetic comedy character to her repertoire in the footsteps of the Horrible Bosses movies. Other known comic quantities such as T. J. Miller, chameleonic Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Rob Corddry, and others all contribute their part to the anarchic mess. Given that it ends on Christmas, there’s some techno-magic to save the day. Office Christmas Party is great good fun, fully lives up to its name and should provide raucous entertainment for anyone driven to distraction by their own dull office Christmas celebrations. But it’s sufficiently upbeat that it remains decent viewing for the rest of the year— this Office Christmas Party is worth attending even in January.

K-9 (1989)

K-9 (1989)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, December 2019) Let’s appreciate honesty in filmmaking: K-9 is not a good movie, but it doesn’t waste any time in pretending otherwise: Within the first few minutes, we’re quickly familiarized with the film’s casual disregard for anything like subtlety or realism, what with the cowboy cop protagonist racking up what should result in disciplinary actions and lawsuits. The premise consists in pairing up a bad (oops; “lovably rogue”) policeman with a dog in order to … something to do with international drug trafficking. (The script isn’t strong in detail or plausibility.) But the dog is a dog, and the human is even more of a dog than the canine character and you can pretty much script the rest of the script yourself. Once you combine the cowboy cop theatrics with some serious sexism and the low-brow humour of John Belushi (nearly every film featuring Belushi is miscast), the result is almost repellent. K-9 is the kind of film to use when you want to show how the male gaze (and approving representation of toxic masculinity) can damage what could have been a far better film. Not only do we have a typically guy’s-guy character (openly abusing his authority, ignoring the law, roughing up suspects, threatening and sexually assaulting civilians), but the script smiles and aw-shucks whenever he enables canine fornication (with the bitch as the prize, if you’ll excuse the technical language) and reduces his girlfriend to nothing more than a kidnapping target. As the problematic issues pile up, K-9’s amiable potential dissipates and so does our patience with the result. This is no mere “fictional problem”: The Hollywood cowboy cops of the 1980s enabled the bloodthirsty ones of the 1990s, then the real trigger-happy one of the 2000s and 2010s, and K-9 is part of the problem. Even silly comedies can be awful in retrospect.