Issue #410: New Year's Evil in 2025 (Movie Marathon Soon)
This has been a weekend of activity at Paradox HQ. Erin and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary with all the pomp and circumstance we could muster. It is my mom’s 70th birthday today (12/15/25) so the newsletter might be a little light on proofreading.
In the meantime, we watched Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025). I liked it more than I remember liking any previous Knives Out movie. I did not expect it to have the same kind of explicit political engagement as Eddington (2025), One Battle After Another (2025), or even Bugonia (2025). Rian Johnson is trying his hand at art in the age of MAGA or however you want to categorize this sort of filmmaking. It didn’t totally work at the level of political commentary, but I appreciate that it is about something. I don’t recall that being true about the other films.
Despite the commentary, this is also Johnson’s most formally satisfying Knives Out. He is not the architect of mystery plots he hopes to be, far from Carr, Christie, Poe, or even Uketsu or Ayatsuji.
Wake Up Dead Man has the most memorable mystery structure. Johnson lets the simplicity get away from him, letting the structure of the mystery fray and distort out of control as he contrives to add new twists in the style of television serials rather than classic mystery writers. I don’t mean to judge the film too harshly. It is good and Josh O’Connor is particularly great in it. With this, Rebuilding, and The Mastermind, he’s having a huge year.
We have one of our most listenable and timely playlists yet with this new Music League round: holiday music.
I can’t believe we got an assemblage of King Diamond, Sledge Hammer, Mighty Sparrow, and Jesu along with some genuine Christmas classics. The league is ahead of the newsletter, so all the credit and blame has been distributed among us.
Finally, as indicated above, Paradox is hosting another movie marathon programmed by Erin. We’ll be watching Sunset Boulevard (1950), New Year’s Evil (1980), and Repeat Performance (1947) on Discord. We’ll get underway at 8pm Eastern on New Year’s Evil. Any Discord members can take part. If you’d like to join the Paradox Newsletter Discord, you can become a paid subscriber and the server link should go directly to your email inbox.
Shame and Shamelessness in Gambling Cinema
When I wrote briefly about Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) a month ago, I neglected to mention something that struck me deeply about the film.
Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte) is a gambler, and a compulsive one. In his early conversation with Dave Burke (Ed Begley), he nonchalantly acknowledges his severe gambling debt.
In the early segment of the film, Ingram is put together. The bellhop admires his smart attire and quick wit. This performance of a gambler who dances between the raindrops is of apiece with Bob le Flambeur (1956) or Bay of Angels (1963) or even, to some degree, Pale Flower (1964).
The contemporary gambler of western cinema is always in crisis, totally subject to their compulsion, disheveled, desperate, ping-ponging from creditor to creditor. It’s a very different representation of gambling that contrasts sharply with these examples of the 50s and 60s. Ballad of a Small Player (2025) takes this sort of performance to a new extreme.
Colin Farrell as Lord Doyle delivers a serviceable performance for Edward Berger. But Ballad is far from Berger’s best and a steep decline from last year’s Conclave. Even as he channels some of Ralph Fiennes’ deliberate and urgent walking in his direction to Farrell, Ballad of a Small Player comes across as a small player in the corpus of gambling cinema.
Doyle is coming apart at the seams, indebted across Macau and pursued for crimes committed before faking his death and assuming the identity of “Lord Doyle.” This pseudonym is meant to confer on Doyle the status and assumption of wealth that would befit a minor aristocrat. However, the film repeatedly points to Doyle’s inability to play the part. He hates champaign, hates cigars, and conducts himself with the hunger of his indigent upbringing.
There are aspects of Berger’s middling film that caught my attention. Namely, his treatment of shame. Another expatriate, Adrian Lippett (Alex Jennings), the genuinely aristocratic foil to Doyle’s posturing, antagonizes Doyle. Lippett advises Doyle to be “dead to shame.” The phrase seems self-evidently to suggest that one should do anything to enrich themselves without concern for how they might be viewed. Lippett is immune to the way shame might regulate one’s behavior. By contrast, Doyle seeks to be free of shame. He is extremely sensitive to the affect that accompanies doing something shameful. Instead of immunity, Doyle seeks to balance the scale and pay back the debts that make him ashamed.
Lippett is shameless like Bob the gambler (Roger Duchesne), Jackie (Jeanne Moreau), and Saeko (Mariko Kaga), his mantra and demeanor evoking a bygone cinematic representation of gambling. Ultimately Doyle triumphs over Lippett, asserting the necessary function of shame. In Ballad of a Small Player, shame is a human evolutionary asset that directs one away from annihilation in the same way as pain or fear. It is an asset to the ever-unraveling Doyle, even as alleviating the shame he feels can’t reassemble his fractured subjectivity.
Weekly Reading List
I’m in.
A lot happened at The Game Awards, but nothing more important than the announcement of Gang of Dragon. This is a video game that stars Ma Dong-seok. Guaranteed to be epoch defining.
https://anilist.co/manga/187612/Ryukyu-Buccaneer/ — Ryukyu Buccaneer has been serialized in Japan since last year. Illustrated and co-written by Doi Nau, Buccaneer is a fusion of bakumatsu-era period piece about samurai and swashbuckling adventure. Think Hell’s Paradise (2018) without the supernatural angle. You are going to have to use your wiles to find this one, but only two chapters are available in English. If you can read Japanese, you can read it through the currently published chapter.
Event Calendar: Wherever you are, there’s something to do
The Shining (1980) is in IMAX this week. More details about the upcoming Discord movies on the calendar as well. Let’s go.
Until next time.