3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): G20

2025, Patricia Riggen (Girl in Progress) -- Amazon

Speaking of using Die Hard as a template, I am not sure what the whole point of this movie was. No no, I get it, cheaper than usual, straight-to action flicks attract a certain audience (me, of course) but usually these movies have a "statement", a social or political commentary of some sort, either the main character's background or the motivations behind the bad guy. Oh, I am not saying that the depictions of the Bad Guy's Motivation is a reflection on the screen writer or director's own viewpoint, as more often or not, its just a "throw a dart at something on the current zeitgeist", but usually they say ... something? In The Cleaner the movie was saying "ecological disaster is bad", but in this movie I am not sure if the movie care about anything beyond "a black woman as president". Oh wait, there was a bit about (pun intended), Bitcoin being Good.

OK, preamble. Some guys with guns steal a harddrive from someone... oh, its a cryptowallet, but something much more glaringly obvious and big, big enough that if someone had, say, accidentally lost it in a landfill, it would be much easier to find. And, President Sutton's (Viola Davis, The Woman King) technologically capable and rebellious teenage daughter gets caught sneaking out of the White House, embarrassing her mother just before a big G20 Summit in South Africa. Kids, amiright?

The crux of this summit, for the US, is so Sutton can convince the rest of the 19 to adopt some sort of crypto based policy wherein countries without strong economies would have buying power independent of their wealth. Or something to that effect. I am not big on economics and less so on crypto, beyond believing its all a shell-game scam. The movie makes it both the Big Bad and the Big Saviour, which is kind of confusing for my lil ol brain.

So, the Bad Guys, led by Australian Special Forces soldier Edward Rutledge (Antony Starr, The Boys), infiltrate the summit's security team, kill off anyone who would oppose them, lock everyone in and begin their weird, nefarious scheme. Meanwhile Sutton, her Secret Service lead Agent, Ruiz (Ramón Rodríguez, Will Trent), and a hand-full of other world leaders sneak away during the ensuing chaos. Sutton herself is an ex-soldier, so she tears her dress and changes into her sneakers to stay prepared. While they are doing their cat & mouse game, the aforementioned nefarious scheme gets underway -- get the world leaders to say some keywords which allows the Bad Guys to do some deepfake videos of them, broadcasting to the world how everyone at the summit was scheming to destabilize the rest of the world's economy for their own benefits. And its believed, so as the economies of various countries collapses, Rutledge's fancy crypto wallet.... increases in value? Like Die Hard they say they are there for one thing, but its all really only a way to make loads of cash.

There isn't much to say about the actual thriller-action part of the movie as its all pretty standard forgettable fare. And this is coming from a guy who enjoyed both of the "attack the White House" twin films, and their sequels. Basically she and her escapees run around this fortified hotel, while also trying to keep Sutton's family, who are doing their own survival-escape act, alive and somehow defeat the Bad Guys and save the rest of the summit attendees and foil the economy ruining plan. Sutton is more than capable of being the Bad Ass when the scenes needed it, and just seeing Viola Davis pull that off is a weird, fun energy unto itself. And the nefarious scheme? Once Rutledge is thrown off the top of Nakitomi Plaza, things just... heal themselves? For such a precise choice of nefarious schemes, the movie doesn't seem to care that half the big countries in the world had their economies ruined and their leaders deepfake trashed -- that kind of cat is not easily put back into a bag. But no matter, Bad Guys killed, world leaders freed, family saved. The End.

It wasn't entirely terrible and I recall, while watching, it had its moments (not a lot of these moments stuck), but it is not going to take its place on anyone's action-thriller shelf.  Still not sure what it was trying to say about crypto but it definitely thought that deepfake was very evil. Neither of those a "statement" do make.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Last Breath

2025, Alex Parkinson (a bunch of "documentary" style TV shows like River Monsters) -- download

Well that explains things, in that while watching the movie, it felt more like watching a dramatic version of a documentary, but with no commentary track. There was little to no characterization and the movie was swept along by the tides of the "action", and that action was barely a nod to traditional tense rescue thrillers. And yet I was carried along by what was going on, to the point of going, "Wow, that was 1.5 hours??"

The story is a real life one, where a "saturation diver" (they get stuck inside a compression tank which is saturated with gases, so they can deep dive for long periods of time) is lost due to a rough seas accident, and actually succumbs to lack of oxygen. But even after almost a half hour without air, he.... survived, with no ramifications. Parkinson previously did a documentary on the events, also called Last Breath, which lends some cause as to why it felt so... detailed and realistic. Anywayz, two deep divers, repairing oil pipes in the North Sea are separated during rough weather, and one, Chris Lemons (Finn Cole, Animal Kingdom) is lost when his power & air tether breaks away. The crew of the ship desperately tried to repair their issues, eventually allowing the remaining diver Dave Yuasa (Simu Liu, Kim's Convenience) to recover Chris, and was incredibly surprised when the man started breathing again.

The plot is small, the cast is small, the "action" is limited, and yet somehow, as already mentioned, I felt satisfied with the story telling. There is a great supporting cast all who seemed to be dedicated to giving a good performance without any of those big thriller moments. To me, it says something about Parkinson's directing in that we all, viewer and performers, felt present in the moments. We all have seen movies where it just felt like a camera pointed at someone reading lines. I hope to see him do some more dramatic pieces, though most audiences would not enjoy that this survivor thriller was low on the usual rollercoaster scale of thrills.

Alt-Media: Mickey7

2022, Edward Ashton -- audiobook

Lo and behold, I actually listened to a 9 hour audio book over the last few weeks, during commutes and while running errands. I have literally never listened to one before, not completely because of bias (admittedly, I do think proper "reading" and "listening" are two separate methods of absorbing the "written" word) but due an assumption of costs. Then I noticed that Spotify does more than audio-drama podcasts, and has a good number of books to listen to, I gave it a go. And, having enjoyed the movie and being curious about the original book, I thought, "Why not."

First thing up, and no it's not "the book is better" -- oh, it is, but the first thing I need to get off my chest is that the reader of an audiobook should not do the voices. For one, leave it to the reader to put his own voice on the characters speaking. And secondly, a man doing a "girl voice" just sounds terrible, unless you are going for comedic effect, and at worst it ends up telling us about your latent misogyny. If an author is not able to impart upon you an accent or vocal characterization from the actual words used, then a reader should assume everyone has the same flat accent.

Mickey 7 is not the movie, and nor should it have been -- sorry, that's an inverse statement; the movie was not the book. But, of course, it is the core from which the movie came. Mickey Barnes is an expendable, forced to join a colony ship after making the wrong bet on his best friend / greatest enemy's sports game. Berto is an athletic, capable, confident and extremely arrogant man who has Mickey always in his shadow. Berto comes out of sports retirement to play one last game before he joins the colony ship on its way to Niflheim. He wants to leave his name in legendary status on their colony of Midgard, but Mickey, who secretly despises his friend's good fortune, doesn't think Berto stands a chance at winning. He bets large. He loses, and the money he now owes means he only has one chance -- get off Midgard. Mickey knows there is no possibility of  finding a "real" job on the ship, because he doesn't really have any skills, so he signs up as Expendable, a crew member whose job it is to die on behalf of the colony. Each time he dies, he will be vat grown again, and his last memory backup downloaded into the new body. 

Its an expensive concept, and each new body requires a lot of resources. Its also a very very sociably unacceptable concept, and most people think the idea is insane. And there is a religious (not cult, accepted religion!) organization that is actually entirely against the idea. Its all because the creation of the technology started with a genius sociopath dropping himself, and his tech, on a planet where he began to kill off the local populace, to provide raw source material for duplicates of himself. When the rest of the colonial Union learned of what had happened, they responded by destroying the planet and banning the process except in the most controlled environments.

The crux of the rules is that "multiples" cannot exist -- only one iteration of a person at a time. They only create a new Mickey if the old one dies. But Berto is lazy and risk averse, so when he sees Mickey stumble into a deep crevasse on Niflheim, he assumes the man must be dead. Mickey's girlfriend Nasha knows he survives the fall, but Mickey assures her he cannot get out of the hole, so he will "pop his seals" and die. Except he doesn't. He is "rescued" by the local lifeform called "creepers", giant millipede like bugs. Well, until this one rescues Mickey, they were all assumed to be arm length and non-intelligent. Buuuut because that leaves "Mickey 7" alive when he shouldn't be, Mickey doesn't disclose this detail about the creepers until much later.

Much of the middle act of the book, if you can liken books to having acts, is Mickey7 and Mickey8 dealing with their situation. Unlike the movie, there is not a vast personality difference, but both of the men believe they deserve to exist and they know they have to hide their existence. There is a lot of focus on how hungry they both end up being, because food is rationed and the colony leader Commander Marshall, who is not the pompous ex-politician of the movie, just your usual gruff, angry military style man who is a member of the anti-Expendable religion, but also knows he requires one on the mission, has it in for Mickey and doesn't need much of an excuse to punish the man.

There is also a lot of world building / exposition, as Mickey fills in the details around colonization since "the Diaspora" had to abandon Earth. Most colonies fail. And all colonies are very very VERY far from each other; even with their close to unlimited engine reserves and extreme speed of space travel, it takes years, if not decades to reach other possibly habitable worlds. "Possibly" is a key point, as they only have the long range sensor data, and that doesn't always mean much. Many colonies arrive only to die off or be killed off by local life forms or the environment. Some die on the way or are lost. Colonization seemingly means death, but they keep on doing it. The book does not comment on the why.

The book does eventually reveal both Mickeys and the existence of the creepers being more than bugs, but it doesn't delve into them much. Mickey7 knows they are sentient, and when Marshall sends him/them out to destroy them he turns the tables. Not in any grand gesture like the movie, but simply telling him that Mickey8's bomb is in their possession and now the two sentient species on the planet have a stand-off relationship. Oh, and its the creepers who figure out the communication / translation bit, not Marshall's technologists. 

Overall, for my first audiobook, I enjoyed myself. I feel the experience is parallel to (proper) reading, and I doubt I will ever be able to pull the two closer together as the "same" experience. It took years for my brain to eliminate the bias between digital books and physical books, even though I embraced the simplicity and convenience of digital books, I just absolutely love the tangible nature of a nice hardcover. For me, the audiobook pulls me further from the author's words because it has someone else's voice attached dominantly to it. That makes it an entirely different experience, more akin to adaptations than the source. But time will tell whether my brain will also rewire for this.

Of note, I am using Spotify, and only fond out during my second audiobook that while the subscription provides the audiobooks for "free" its limited to 15 hours a billing period. Most audiobooks start at 10 hours. Yeah, fuck you spotify.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): A Working Man

2025, David Ayer (The Beekeeper) -- download

I normally enter something into the post stub as I create it, because the gawds know my brain will soon dribble out any memory of a middling movie very quickly. And it has; its going to take some effort and some reading of other reviews to remember what I saw here.

That's not a good thing, no? At least movies that annoy you are memorable in that way.

I am not going to repeat my "oh yeah, I actually like David Ayer" but I will say I am surprised that he didn't end up doing a sequel to The Beekeeper, a movie that was entirely a setup for a franchise, but did end up following it with another rote Statham actioner. It's based on a novel by comic book writer Chuck Dixon, and done as a co-writing effort between Ayer and Sylvester Stallone. I have no comment on that collaboration beyond, "...huh." The Dixon novels are those pulp paperback "adventure" type novels (though calling them that is a reach) that someone's uncle would read, folding the covers back, tucking them into the glovebox of their pickup truck. They are short, unfettered, violent books about men being (stereotypically macho) men, meting out justice as it is needed. I would liken them to modern westerns. I am not adverse to the idea of them, in principal, but they all too often come with toxic masculinity and toxic politics in tow.

Of note, Dixon also slid from manly-man comic fiction into trollish alt-right rhetoric, which while the mindset lends itself to violent men fiction, it probably means I won't ponder reading these works.

The movie starts with unspoken exposition over the credits, explaining that our lead character was in the military, first the British and then collaborative actions with the US -- a specialist involved in counter-terrorism. And he has retired to the construction business, where he works with Joe Garcia and his family as a foreman. He is Levon Cade, a Good Man, a restrained man of violence as shown by an opening sequence where he deals with loan sharks hassling one of his crew. He is also struggling to have a relationship with his daughter because her grandfather, and legal guardian, blames Cade for the suicide death of his daughter. But the Garcias love Cade and he them.

Then Jenny Garcia, the smart, sassy teen daughter who helps her father run the company, goes out with her friends, fake IDs in hand, and gets kidnapped. Cade, with his particular set of skills, is asked by Joe to get her back. At first he says No, not wanting to return to a life of violence, but his best bud, the  blind gunnery sergeant hiding in the woods, convinces him that only Cade can do what is needed for the Garcia family.

Speeding things up -- its the Russian Mafia. More precisely, one of its high ranking members has a douche bag of a son who traffics girls to... elite clientele. Jenny was just in the wrong club on the wrong night. 

I have to think about why I like to start with detailed setups and then trail into... summaries and commentary. Maybe its because I like the potential of setups but the rest often becomes kill rinse repeat.

Like any of these movies, there is a certain thrill seeing a capable violent man deal with the Bad Guys. As we are still chasing after the next John Wick, there are going to be a lot of these middling movies, and many many more of the Straight To ones, the trash on the bottom shelf of the video store. Ayer tried to do something with style, but the style was ... odd. The Russian Bad Guys were outrageous and flashy, something that worked in The Tax Collector but here, seem clownish. There is a character in the background of The Fifth Element named Baby Ray, looking like he just stepped out of French Revolution movie. Add a bit more club-vibe to that and you get the douche-bag Russian mobster's look n feel, and that of his sycophants. 

When they get as far as actually rescuing Jenny, in a bizarre abandoned country mansion that the douche-bag Russian uses for his uber-illegal parties (no level of debauchery is denied), things become almost surreal. The house is in ruins for the most part, but parts of the interior are incredibly decked out in almost goth design choices. And there are trees on its lawn that can only be described as the real life sized  versions of the ones in front of the haunted house on a model train set -- think Beetlejuice. Why? Style? Effect? Its just so distantly peripheral to what is happening on screen, it makes no sense.  But the bigger point is that Jenny is strong and willful and capable, having already freed herself (but recaptured) once, and you get the idea there was an entire act where Cade and her work together to... do something to the Russian mobsters. But no, once they are away, the last of the Russian mobsters aware of Cade is told by his bosses that its done, its over, its been too expensive already. Any repercussions can be left for the sequel which will never happen -- again, this is most definitely not the next John Wick.

KWIF: Thunderbolts* (+1)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Some weeks are more fruitful than others. Some weeks are just a full kick in the fruits.

This Week:
Thunderbolts* (2025, d. Jake Schrier - in theatre)
Superman: The Movie (1978, d. Richard Donner - DVD)

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We're all aware (every single last damn one of us) that the Marvel Studios' output post Avengers:Endgame has not felt nearly as exciting as the 10 years that led into it. It was a pretty monumental achievement up to that point, building up a shared universe and a roster of beloved characters leading into an epic two-part event that gave a pretty satisfying sense of closure to the whole thing, even as it teased that it would be carrying on.  In their hubris, the studio thought they could just do it all again, build up a new roster of favourite heroes and build towards something epic once again. But they weren't banking on a few things... the pandemic, the streaming wars, and superhero fatigue (as well as a certain someone being arrested for assaulting his girlfriend) all collided, contributing to softened (or obliterated ) box office attendance.

"Phase 4" of Marvel was overconfident in its plans and the audience's appetite for them. Seven films, eight Disney+ series, and two specials felt like a bombardment even to the avid fan, and to some, it seemed too much like homework, despite maintaining a generally high-level of quality. "Phase 5" has been Marvel's wobbliest because of late stage course corrections and casting shake-ups, but also because it's stories been so utterly reliant on what has come before.

Quantumania required you to have watched prior Ant-Man movies as well as Loki season one. Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 was the third in a trilogy but also needed you to recall the events of Infinity War. The Marvels had the Captain Marvel movie as well as the Ms. Marvel, and Wandavision streaming series all as pre-requisites. Deadpool and Wolverine  assumed you were familiar with the majority of the Marvel output from Fox. The latest Captain America sequel asked its audience to recollect the events of the much ignored 2008 Incredible Hulk film as well as the Disney+ Falcon and the Winter Soldier show. Marvel effectively leaned in to whisper in its audience ear and dare them to keep up, not realizing that they seemed to be turning people off as much as they were turning them on.

Thunderbolts* is not immune. It stars characters previously introduced in Black Widow, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and 2018's Ant-Man and the Wasp, but the difference is it doesn't fully rely upon you having seen those pictures to understand the characters... well, most of them.  

At the center of the picture is Black Widow Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh). What you need to know about her is her sister died, and she's been depressed. She feels aimless and disengaged from the world, and is looking for meaning and connection. She reaches out to her estranged father Alexei Shostakov "The Red Guardian" (David Harbour), whose pep talks leave something to be desired. She's working black ops cleanup for a horrible woman,  Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), the CIA Director who facing a senate impeachment trial (revolving around the illegal activities she has Yelena cleaning up). Yelena wants a change.

On her next assignment, Yelena is sent to take out a rogue operative, "The Ghost" Ava Starr (Hannah John Kamen), only to face off against one-time Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell) who is there to kill her, and then the Taskmaster shows up to kill John while The Ghost is there to eliminate Taskmaster. As they melee they begin to realize they've been played and find themselves in Valentina's deathtrap, and must rely upon each other to escape...along with test subject Bob (Lewis Pullman) who is awakened from his containment chamber.

Rescued from their predicament by Sergei and Senator Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) they form an unlikely alliance to take down Valentina, only to find out that the experiment done on Bob has turned him into an unbeatable "super-man", who Valentina wants to use as the ultimate weapon for ultimate control, only Bob has a darker side that comes out and it could threaten everything.

Yelena's not the only one unsatisfied with her life. The film nimbly uses Bob's psychic abilities and his darker half to provide insight into some of the other characters' dark states.  Bob's history as well is one of trauma, substance abuse and bipolar disorder. 

I was not expecting a Marvel film to center so specifically around depression like the Thunderbolts* does, addressing it from the first impactful moment. It's a story about a group of people looking for a way out of the darkness and looking for purpose and finding at least something to grab onto, which is, in part, each other.

This is Yelena's movie.  Even though it is a ensemble picture, Florence Pugh is clearly the star. Marvel chose wisely in putting her front-and-center. Pugh is one of the best actors under 30 working today. She is one of the most emotive people on screen, her expressive face can convey joy, pathos, fear, whatever better than almost any other performer. She's an absolute powerhouse in a tiny body.  I believe a Marvel movie has only ever once brought me to tears (Peter's dusting in Infinity War) but I teared up three times in Thunderbolts*, all of them triggered by Pugh's performance.

Harbour is big and brash and loud comic relief as the over-eager, self-aggrandizing Red Guardian, which can be a lot but thankfully is in mostly the right dosage in this ensemble. Louis-Dreyfus delivers both a funny and boo-hiss worthy performance, while Stan provides the stabilizing backing board to the whole piece, making it feel very integrated with the MCU just from his presence. Russell's John Walker was a pretty difficult pill to swallow in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but here navigates between light and dark much more nimbly, and showing real big screen presence without stepping outside of the character.  Hannah John Kamen's Ghost is perhaps the most underserved character in the film (next to Olga Kurylenko's Taskmaster) but her presence in the ensemble is welcome.  Louis Pullman's Bob has probably the most difficult job, being the only first appearance character of the bunch, and he navigate Bob's multiple personality disorder tremendously well...from his nearly hapless civilian to the above-it-all Sentry to the scary-as-hell Void.  Seriously, the Void is probably the scariest villain Marvel has introduced yet.

There is a climactic sequence in the third act in which Yelena, Bob and the team have to confront a manifestation of trauma, and if the film let me down at all it was in not exploring the traumas of every Thunderbolt in the film... I don't think it would have eaten up much time but it certainly would have provided more insight into the secondary and tertiary characters.

Thunderbolts* has been well received because it's a Marvel movie that puts its characters at the centre and lets the situation build around them, rather than building a team only to have them stop a tangential enemy. It's confidently scripted to be self-contained and not aggressively easter-egging the audience or distracting them with set up that's going to pay off in some other film some other time.  Yes, there is a post-credits sequence teasing something more, but it does so in a way that deftly extends the film at hand and doesn't feel like a random aside. 

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Richard Donner's 1978 production of Superman is a minor miracle in its own right. So many things could have gone wrong (and many things did go wrong) but a lot of things went very very right, starting with the casting of Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent/Superman. Reeve's very gifted physical performance distinguishing Clark from Superman is the best special effects in a film full of them. Reeve gives Clark a clumsiness that just borders on slapstick without teetering over into it. His tall, broad-shouldered, beefed-up frame, in Clark's drab suit, oversized glasses and greasy combover turn a beautiful specimen of a man into a slouching, slumping, oafish character that not only do you not want to make eye contact with, but you wish to actively forget about him.

Thus stems the conflict of Clark's love triangle with Lois and his superheroic alter-ego... he's too good at making himself invisible, whereas Superman's putting it all out there and Lois is completely ready and willing to take it all in. Superman's penthouse apartment rendezvous with Lois, leading to a heavily flirtatious interview, is the best scene in this movie, and it establishes a real connection between the two characters. Unfortunately the film does not pay off this connection, and actively separates the two characters for most of the third act.  It should also be noted that the two only meet in the second act of the film, as the first act is split in two parts, one on Krypton and one in Smallville, both dealing more with Kal-El/Clark/Superman's parents than with the character himself.

The first 40 minutes of this quite bloated movie is spent on establishing Superman's backstory, his lore, and it's all quite decently told (I like the Krypton piece quite a bit, Marlon Brando's Jor-El is a commanding screen presence, even if the actor was kind of checked out and reading his lines off screen). The second act establishing Metropolis, the Daily Planet, Superman's supporting characters and his nemesis Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) is the meat of the movie.

It all slumps pretty direly in the third act as it sets off on the journey of enacting Luthor's land-grab plot, which involves a complex scheme to trigger the collapse of the San Andreas Fault. Surely in hatching his scheme a do-gooder such as Superman would get in the way, so Lex figures out how to stop him and hatches another elaborate scheme to eliminate his problem, with Kryptonite.

The third act is all shenanigans, as Luthor executes his schemes, and the result is Clark disappears, Lois is off on her own, and everything is set outside of Metropolis. It culminates in Superman saving the day, of course, but Lois is killed in the process...so Superman flies as fast as he can reversing the rotation of the Earth which turns back time so he can save Lois. No, I'm not sure how it works either.

Despite being a Superman fan as long as I can remember, I've not only never loved this movie but I've never even really liked it. The opening segments on Krypton and in Smallville could be truncated or even eliminated altogether. The film only really feels like it starts when Clark enters the Daily Planet building, and then screeches pretty much to a dead halt once it tries to establish a plot.  

I hate the spoken word poem Lois recites when she is flying with Superman, I don't much like Luthor's bumbling henchman Otis (Ned Beatty) and the logic of this film's turning back time has always drove me crazy.

There are parts of Superman: The Movie I like, but generally I find it pretty tedious and it's never been what I've been looking for in a Superman movie. I've yet to get a Superman movie that delivers what I want out of a Superman movie, which is for it to feel like a good story from the comics. It seems like directors and the studio are always too afraid to do that.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Ash

2025, Flying Lotus (Kuso) -- Amazon

It might be time for a break. Between the click click click clicking as I hunt for my next movie, while ignoring a couple of dozen on my To Be Watched List, and my "meh" reaction to pretty much everything of late, I am bored. And bored of being bored by what I am watching. 

Contradicting that statement, Ash came along square in the Toasty Realm as "of course you will be watching it", the realm of scifi, of horror, of a movie with style. And it starred Eiza González, whom I am never adverse to watching. But not long into the movie I felt as if the whole red-alarm-bells tinted movie was devised with only the "male gaze" in mind. Sure, she is the star and therefore the camera should focus on her, have lots of close-ups on her anxiety and fear filled face, and sure, the movie didn't go down the path of a "token nude scene" (though, it did setup one via the "wash the blood off shower scene") but so very little of consequence actually happens in the movie, I felt as if the only reason we were here was to gaze upon her.

Riya (Eiza González, 3 Body Problem) wakes up on the floor of her room, the lights flickering, alarms going off, covered in blood. She has no idea what is going on, no recent memory, no understanding why people are dead throughout the station, and why she is having flashes of violence. She steps outside the facility she is in, an unfamiliar sky above, more flashes but of a psychedelic nature, the sky folding in upon itself, and then she starts having issues breathing. This is an atmosphere not meant for humans.

Back inside she investigates, but soon after the airlock cycles and while she almost attacks him, it is Brion (Aaron Paul, Westworld), from their orbiter, who was monitoring things in this station. He fills her in on a bit of who she is, why they are there and what they have to do next. They are one of a number of interstellar expeditions seeking habitable planets for Earth to escape to. The other missions have failed; it is now all on them. They have 12 hours before the orbital aligns with their launch vehicle, so there is time to better understand what is going on.

Except this is a scifi horror movie with muddy intentions.

I have no idea who Flying Lotus is, but from what Kent said, they are known in the music industry, from music videos to producing. And it is clear they had a visual intent for this movie, from the dominating colours (just Google the movie and you will see the Red vs Blue) to the chosen camera angles (let's all stare at González's face in terror and confusion) and the weird blobby CGI alien stuff. But despite having some budget to work with, none of it actually works. Its all cobbled together from better, and TBF worse, movies with competing ideas. Why does she keep on seeing imagery of faces melting? Nobody had their face melted off, so its just for effect. What was up with that sky? What was up with the brief scene of an idyllic planet and a field of flowers? Once the "real story" is explained to us, we can fill in some blanks on our own, but none are satisfying and much felt like "look at this! this is neat!" imagery best left for music videos. I think back to movies made by music video producers, and The Cell comes to mind, with its insane imagery and intent and style and I recall being moved along by their heavy choices and loving it, just being swept up in what came out Tarsem's head. This is not that.

It leaves me frustrated and just a bit angry. Is it me? Am I expecting too much? Am I allowing all the other aspects of my frustrating and anger inducing life influence how I watch movies? Would Toasty in a better mood have liked this movie more, maybe during 31 Days of Halloween ? Am I doomed to being bored by or disliking just about everything I watch? Or is it the industry right now...

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Lost City of Z

2016, James Gray (Ad Astra) -- Netflix

Kent wrote about it in his mega-super-duper-2017 post.

I have had this in The Hopper since it came available but never watched it. I made one brief attempt, but was distracted and never got back to it. More recently, I took Kent's advice as to the click-click-click and just chose something and stuck with it.

Nnnn-not sure I was rewarded for that Good Habit. And my immediate thought, after having just completed it, as well as being reminded that he directed Ad Astra is that maybe he cannot get over the hump of "boring" into the realm of contemplative. And yet, That Guy is frustratingly waving his hands over his head at me, like Kermit the Frog. There is something there, and not just the admirable production values, but a director doing a study, and if I was to compare the two movies, a study of fatherhood and your place in the world? Its like that shadow of a proper film critique can see what was going on, but, well, This Guy just didn't care. What frustrates me even more is my age-old (and entirely questionable) love and fascination for British Empire era exploration, which is the whole point of this movie. And yet, I wasn't captured.

Percy Fawcett was a British military man and explorer at the beginning of the 20th century. Fawcett was friends with Arthur Conan Doyle and it was his own reports of expeditions into the Amazon that inspired Doyle's novel The Lost World.

The movie begins with the military man (Charlie Hunnam, Pacific Rim), an officer of rank but no privilege of family, his own having barely survived a scandal. In order to regain his family name, which will provide a life of stability to his beloved wife "Cheeky" (Sienna Miller, 21 Bridges), he must do something. He is asked by the Royal Geographic Society to help them fill in the blanks on the maps in Amazonia. He will be gone a long time, some years likely, but both know he has to do it. There is an undisputed statement about having a place in the social strata of the British Empire; the movie does little to comment on that requirement, beyond banal acceptance.

Fawcett's first expedition is a success, despite the hard conditions and the political situations involving the Portuguese and the borders between Brazil and Bolivia. He is supported by fellow British military men Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson, Mickey 17) and Arthur Manley (Edward Ashley, The Terror). On this first adventure Fawcett learns of a lost city, and discovers some unexpected pottery and statuettes in the jungle. Modern civilization is deep in the throes of the superiority of western culture and dismisses that any peoples of significance could have built cities in this savage land.

Back in England Fawcett is determined to return to Amazonia to find this Lost City of Z. Mostly derided for his beliefs in South American civilizations, he does make a connection with nobleman James Murray (Angus Macfadyen, Braveheart) who agrees to back Fawcett as long as he can come along. That is a mistake. He was expecting a challenging but straight forward journey, but didn't expect hostile natives, terrible heat, questionable food and becomes more and more a hindrance to them. After he is injured, they send him with their final horse, to a nearby mining camp, but Murray's bitterness has him ruin the expedition's remaining supplies. The journey is ended without any findings.

Back in England, Murray is embarrassed over his actions and accuses the men of abandoning him. He wants reparations in the form of a public apology which Fawcett refuses. Even as he sees any chance of standing in British society escape him, WWI breaks out and the three men are sent to war. Avery dies in battle, Fawcett grievously wounded by mustard gas. He retires to obscurity in the countryside.

A decade later, fueled by tales of his expeditions (while not mentioned in movie, remember Doyle?), Americans want to fund another expedition to be led by Fawcett. While still not in good standing with the British Geographical Society, they do not want to be shown up by the Americans so they also provide support and funding. Along with his now grown son Jack (Tom Holland, Cherry), Fawcett sets out with a well provisioned expedition. They never return. They are never found.

I guess what I enjoyed about these older movies of Imperial Exploration was the actual exploration. The scenes of the journeys in the jungle are not meant to romanticized in this movie, as they are harsh and dangerous. Death is expected. But what bugged me about this movie is how they are depicted pretty much as two men tromping around in the forests with only the packs on their back. Sure, men have done such, but these British expeditions were always previously shown as giant wagon trains, and dozens of men and animals, tents in the forest, brave souls hacking their way through wild lands. That is not this movie. While Fawcett is shown as a brave and capable man, it is more about personal pride than any true desire to find anthropological meaning. And once again, if the movie was trying to explore a man challenged by his place in society, its there but I was .... bored by it.

ReWatch: Constantine

2005, Francis Lawrence (Red Sparrow) -- download / The Shelf 

Yes, I have this on The Shelf, but no, we haven't started a project yet, and I don't think we did a tag? Anywayz, the movie was made 20 years ago and this year it came out with a nice, crisp, beautiful looking 4K copy. Did I buy it? Gosh no, but I sure downloaded it, and geeze almighty, it shure is perty.

Yes, there is a Tag. Use it.

In 2005 I was not that far removed from my fondness for the Hellblazer comic. John Constantine was an anti-hero, a swearing, smoking, betraying spell-caster in a modern urban environment, who was constantly at odds with Hell. He carried the air of a supernatural noir detective with a constant halo of cigarette smoke and an iconic camel trench coat, but with a hint of punk via his spiky/messy blonde hair. John Constantine was not a nice guy, not a good guy.

Then it was announced that Keanu Reeves would play John. Despite the goodwill he generated from The Matrix, he is and will always be the "whoah" guy. Few were pleased; even fewer were pleased by moving it to America, switching out the camel coat for a short black trench, and leaving Keanu with his dark hair. I recall being hesitant but also realizing I would probably just enjoy the idea of a contemporary magic-realism thriller. I also recall being less than thrilled by a lot of it, and yet, it must have stuck with me well enough, to eventually end up on The Shelf. Twenty years later, I am more than just a nostalgic fondness for the movie, I truly, really like it, Keanu and all. 

In Mexico two men who appear to be homeless addicts are literally just scratching in the dirt in the ruins of an old church. They are not just any old wooden classic church remains, but some brutalist concrete frame that just screams ritual. One of the men puts a foot through the floor / ground and finds... something. Its the Spear of Longinus, the Hofburg Spear version of it in particular, the blade that struck Jesus in the side, killing him. We are given the impression he is possessed by it, but I see something more, for it is just a tool and it is those desiring the tool that possess the man, making him invulnerable to harm (he steps onto a road, is struck by a car, it destroying itself around him, like he was Superman or The Hulk) and setting him on a path... north.

Meanwhile in LA, John Constantine (pronounced, scandalously, -teen; Keanu Reeves, John Wick) is asked to look into something by Hennessey (Pruitt Taylor Vince, The Mentalist), a priest who looks more street beggar than holy man. With John's intro, we get all the little details: the trench (albeit altered), the white shirt with tie askew, and the cigarettes. This was twenty years ago when the cinematic world still considered smoking on screen as taboo. But that is absolutely necessary to the character portrayal. As are the consequences.

That opening exorcism just smacks of style. Sure, its a rote Christian style exorcism but the man performing it is more a noir gumshoe taking out the trash than a man performing a holy ritual. He's angry, vindictive, ruthless, and more than a little pissed off that the demon inside her is not following the rules. We even get a hint of a popular comic sidekick character -- Chaz the cab driver (Shia LaBeouf, Holes), now a bit diminished as a youthful paranormal investigative wannabe who John has no problem using up. Anyone who read the comics saw where that relationship would go.

Then we get the story setup. A suicide, and Angela (Rachel Weisz, The Mummy), a police detective, a twin, who cannot believe her sister, a Good Catholic, would commit suicide, despite her incarceration inside a mental health facility. While she goes to her parish priest for consolation, confirmation her sister is not in Hell, John is in the same church to confront the Angel Gabriel (Tilda Switon, Orlando), angry at the fact that the legions are no longer following the rules. John reminds Gabriel that he has been doing his job well, finding demons who break the rules and deporting them back to Hell. But this one was not just possessing, but actually trying to manifest itself on Earth. That's entirely against the rules. Gabriel doesn't care, and only sees John as trying to bargain his way to Heaven. He is, of course, but that's not the point.

Oh, and Gabriel is a "half-breed", while it is not fully explained, they are lesser versions of angelic and demonic beings able to actually walk around on the Earth. The half-breeds are always conspiring against each other but are not allowed direct intervention. The implication is that they have been on Earth for a while, and "mingled" with us. And yes, there are half-breed demons as well.

And that's the setup: the Holy Lance, demons breaking the rules, a death by suicide, and John trying to pull together all the details. He tasks Hennessey with finding out more, badgering the man into taking off the talisman that protects him from... the voices. John doesn't care about the cost on the man's sanity; John's an asshole. He's also an asshole to Angela, the detective, starting when she seeks him out for assistance about her sister's place in the afterlife, and we get to see a ritual John casts to temporarily visit Hell, where he does indeed find the sister's soul. Angela is not happy with that news. John also tells her he himself is Hell Bound, as he committed suicide as a teen, so he knows where he eventually will go.

To confirm to Angela that something supernatural is going on, something even more out of the "ordinary", something involving Angela and her sister, we are given the incredible street scene. On a quiet LA street, as Angela is leaving John, the street lights go out, but more so, all light fades, and sounds are heard -- wings, talons. As the darkness encroaches on the two, John lights up something. In previous viewings, I thought it might just be a cloth soaked in alcohol, but now we believe it might be something more, maybe a holy relic he had in his pocket, something that when ignited could keep manifested demons from attacking them, its holy light & fire sending them back to Hell in droves, leaving naught but ashes. And confirming to Angela that Hell has come to Earth. And it wants her.

The holy relics. Another comics sourced character, Beeman (Max Baker, The Island), presents John with a bunch of "stuff", items with supernatural significance, to help John on his ... quest. Meanwhile Hennessey has learned... something, and the demon Balthazar (Gavin Rossdale, musician in band "Bush") is not happy about it, doing some evil magic on on the man, who drinks himself to death in the briefest of moments. Direct intervention; naughty Balthazar. John finds Hennessey with a symbol on his hand, a symbol Beeman says is for Mammon, who is Lucifer's wayward son, who is part of a prophecy wherein he takes over the Earth with the help of "divine essence" and a powerful psychic. Said powerful psychic was to be Angela's sister, but she died. And the Beeman is killed as well, and John is attacked by a full-blood demon on a street, only protected by one of Beeman's relics, a matchbox full of screeching beetles, little bugs that demons cannot abide the sounds of. Angela admits she also has the same psychic powers as her sister. She is abducted right from under John's nose, and this little coup is underway.

The final act, the confrontation, the battle for Earth's sanctity. In the hospital with Angela's sister died, the hordes of demon half-breeds have gathered. John assaults the place with his holy relic weapons, including a "gearing up scene" produced shotgun that fires dragon's breath from holy shells. Its ridiculous, very Hollywood, but its fun, smacks of the vampire death club scene in Blade. After dealing with the minions, he pulls Angela from the pool and interrupts Mammon's return. But then Gabriel returns, a turncoat, jealous of humanity's favour from God, hoping to see Mammon wipe the planet clean of the human taint. When all seems lost, John cast aside and injured, he does a Hail Mary (religious pun intended) -- he cuts his own wrists knowing that there is one soul that the King of Hell, Lucifer himself (Peter Stormare, Armageddon), would come to Earth to collect. That gives John the chance to show daddy dearest what his son is up to. Lucifer deals with Gabriel and his son and then offers John his life as thanks for catching all this. Instead, in an act of unexpected selflessness, he asks Lucifer to release Angela's sister's soul from Hell, forgive her suicide. So, with John's soul being dragged behind him Lucifer begins a trod back to Hell when.... selfless act rewarded ! John's forgiven his cardinal sin and will be going to Heaven instead. Not to be foiled, Lucifer decides to heal John, of his wounds, of his terminal cancer (remember, the integral smoking?). John is properly saved.

This whole final act is incredible. I remember thinking Peter Stormare as Lucifer was far too camp, but over the years, I have not only softened to him as The Devil but love it now, fully. He's always been a bigger than big actor so his over-the-top Satan is delectable. He didn't need to be overshadowing to be intimidating. He obviously has it in for John, and while its not clear to the non-comic-reader, has been messing with Lucifer's plans for ages. And Gabriel -- cocky, self-important Gabriel who hates Earth and humans is now one of them... us, except for those stubby, burned bits of wing bone on their back. Tilda Swinton is so great as the non-binary angel.

Yah, still love the movie, and this 4K copy was just sooooo pretty. The colours, even though most of them are earth-tones, are clear and lush. The sets look incredible, from John's big industrial loft style apartment but with the odd wood detailing everywhere, to the bowling alley in which Beeman hid, with its soul bottles hanging everywhere, to that initial apartment complex where John exorcised the demon in he opening act, so large and from another era, very noir, very LA, almost cyberpunk. Keanu had already pulled away (mostly) from his "whoah" personality with The Matrix movies, but here he's embracing the bastard. He is surrounded by a bunch of character actors who play up their parts well.

Some final thoughts. I always felt, and still do feel, that the Angela character, while integral to the plot, is handled... rather extraneously. She's a cop but we barely see her investigate. Her character is a pawn for the most part. There was originally supposed to be a love interest for John, a demon half-breed played by Michelle Monaghan, but that was all cut out, leaving most viewers wondering why she has a brief scene in the final act, no lines, she is just blown away by the shotgun. I never liked the way they presented Chas, the cab driver who was always one of my favourite characters from the comic, who is played by Shia LaBeouf in the movie in "huh huh, can we Spike, can we fight demons Spike!" lapdog who, like all John's friends in the movie, dies. And finally, Papa Midnight, or just Midnite, a voodoo priest that dislikes John but are more peers than pawns is a classic Magical Negro (trope term), but with bite and is the template for a lot of characters in urban fantasy movies to come. Its almost turning the trope on its head. In the comic, he was just another rival of John's, another example of a magician/sorcerer from a different culture, that John runs into, but that's lost to the movie so only the trope remains, and Djimoun Hounsou just owns it.

Despite hints of a sequel, one which could be interesting now that Keanu has replaced Neo with Wick, I am not sure it is really needed, and would only be a disappointment.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Novocaine

2025, Dan Berk +  Robert Olsen (Stakelander) -- download

Another from the Meh Files. No, I am not starting another Tag.

Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid, Companion), called NovoCaine by his bullies, has CIPA, an apparently real genetic disorder that eliminates pain and the response to heat/cold in people. From the action-comedy perspective, apparent in the trailers, that means he can get shot, stabbed or punched in the face and keep on truckin. But the movie does deal with the very real aspects where, since you don't feel pain, you might not notice when you have hurt yourself. He has a baby-proofed apartment, is an extreme introvert, and only eats soft foods, just in case he bites his tongue while chewing. He doesn't have a lot of joy in his life, but he's a Good Man (as opposed to a Nice Guy) and cares for his customers at the bank in which he is Asst Manager. He also has a major crush on new bank teller Sherry (Amber Midthunder, Legion), who is inordinately nice to him. She takes him on a date, introduces him to cherry pie, has very careful sex with him. He is instantly head over heels. Nathan is finally living some life.

Then his bank gets robbed and Sherry is taken hostage. Nathan throws all caution to the wind and pursues the robbers to get the girl of his dreams back. Following the playbook in these kinds of movies, the police initially think he's in on it, but eventually start figuring things out. As Nathan catches up with the bank robbers, each in individual encounters, we get a bone-crunching, hot-oil cooking, punching, stabbing, shooting fight scene. We wince for each injury Nathan takes, because he doesn't. That's the gimmick, and unfortunately its not very successful. Eventually he does reach his final destination, to save Sherry and, entirely unsurprisingly, discovers she was in on it the whole time. But her foster brother is the worst and she is reconsidering her life choices, actually, truly liking Nathan. Because, of course.

If it wasn't for the easy charm in which Quaid and Midthunder carry the characters, the movie would be entirely boring, as in VHS bottom-shelf mundane. Along with Nathan's online, and only, friend Roscoe (Jacob Batalon, Reginald the Vampire) who comes out of his gaming cave to provide surprisingly nimble assistance, the movie is not without its moments. But the cops are cardboard, the villains are paper thin, the action scenes only somewhat inspired.

I wish I could say I am watching these movies because we have to, because we have to make a post about them. But no, its me, I am to blame, I do this to myself.

KWIF: Ash (+5)

 KWIF = Kent's Week in Film. 

This Week:
Ash (2025, d. Flying Lotus - AmazonPrime)
Kraven the Hunter (2024, d. J.C. Chandor - Crave)
Flow (2024, d. Gints Zilbalodis - Crave)
Dual (2023, d. Riley Stearns-  Tubi)
Where'd You Go, Bernadette? (2019, d. Richard Linklater - Hollywood Suite)
Tombstone (1993, d. Panos Cosmatos - Disney+)

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In making Ash, I suspect that Flying Lotus -- the moniker producer/writer/director/actor/composer Steven Ellis has been working under for nearly 20 years -- was attempting to channel David Lynch primarily, but also cribbing from the sci-fi horror films of Ridley Scott, John Carpenter and Paul W.S. Anderson, among others. These influences make a soup with identifiable chunks within but it has the feel of a first-time production from a director with something to prove.  

Flying Lotus has been a top notch music producer, beatmaker and composer for a long time and working within the entertainment industry for much of that, so he knows how to be in charge of a project, and he's familiar with executing a vision. It's likely how he was able to rope in the budget needed for this very not-cheap-looking film. The result with Ash a visually pretty production, grotesqueries and all, with a very even-tempered mood of simmering dread.

The plot finds Riya (Eiza González) regaining consciousness in a habitable station on an alien planet, her memory fuzzy, and members of the crew dead on the floor. The station is in a warning state, red and violet lights illuminating the space, the occasional voice of the station's systems providing updates and alerts. Riya has horrific flashes of people with melting skin, of vibrant halos, and of fleshy tunnels that she cannot make sense of. She's eventually joined on station by Brion (Aaron Paul) who had been in the orbiting satellite when things went down, and Brion's key objective seems to be getting Riya off-planet before the station completely collapsed. Riya, however, fluttering memories returning, cannot let go of needing to find out what happened, as well as search for a missing crew mate.

The progress of the story is the unfolding mystery of what happened via Riya's fractured flashbacks and some recordings of past events. It's not a convention that works well, as the violence has already happened and we've already seen the aftermath, so the tension of the conflicts in the flashbacks are effectively neutered. Though Flying Lotus' direction is strong, it's a film with misguided storytelling, believing that the mystery of what happened is more interesting in staggered hindsight rather that unfolding in a linear fashion.  It's the difference between, I think, doing a straightforward sci-fi horror and reaching for something more clever. 

Flying Lotus reaches, but doesn't fully succeed. While I mentioned the simmering dread, there's no escalating tension, and, honestly, no scares here, as if Flying Lotus did not want to make a horror movie out of this horror script. The score reflects this, with barely any punctuation in its shifting tones. 

The designs of the film are mostly pretty good. The space suits look incredible, the station itself is visually intriguing just enough to deliver the sense of sci-fi without calling too much attention to itself, and the Japanese portable robotic medical kit delivers a bit of cheeky kitsch into an otherwise sombre affair. The grotesque makeups are also pretty fun, but the "creature" designs very wildly between disturbing and incomprehensible cgi mess. The space ship, as well, is kind of uninspired.

At the end of the day, I've seen so many projects like this, so many sci-fi horror films that they all kind of blur together. Here, there was a "we got here first" angle that I wish had intoned a larger, maybe secret war between humanity and this other species, but there's not a lot of hints towards any larger context here, and the endgame of the aliens proves unclear. 

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In the realm of big studio filmmaking there are films made from good ideas, films made from bad ideas (but ones that are still expected to make money from an undiscerning public), and films of desperation, made out of some seeming necessity to keep up with other studios output, to nab their slice of some perceived pie. Kraven the Hunter is a real desperate movie, but then that's nothing new for Sony Pictures.

Sony has held a tight grip on the Spider-Man license for 25 years, and it's been fairly profitable for them, but their attempts at shared-universe building have been absolutely miserable for over 10 years now. With the ludicrous swing of "let's build a shared universe in one movie" in Amazing Spider-Man 2 back in 2014 it was a failure so epic Sony had to relinquish some control of the character back to Marvel Studios to ensure their Spider-Man license had a future. They built up on that joint venture with Marvel by trying desperately to expand beyond just Spider-Man, first with Venom (a big hit at first, with depreciating returns ever since) and then with some of Spider-Man's extended supporting cast, resulting in Morbius, Madame Web and now Kraven the Hunter.

These SPASMs (Sony Pictures' Adjacent to Spider-man Movies) were just brimming with overconfidence. The shared universes had already imploded by the time Morbius hit, and the willingness for the mass audience to tolerate a film for any comic book hero and/or villain had long since waned. Kraven was already deep in the works when Madame Web failed, and the trailer foretold that Sony had yet another bomb on their hands.

There was a whole "It's Morbin-time" attempt at an ironic re-release to appeal to the meme crowd, but Sony quickly learned that memes can't generate box office (tell that to The Minecraft Movie...), at least not by themselves. And yet the absurdity of everything in the heavily retooled and edited Madame Web turned it into a near instant cult classic (though, not enough to make a success at the box office). 

Kraven similarly went back to the editing bay after the abysmal trailer, but whatever ludicrous arch madness went into recutting Madame Web did not make it into Kraven. Stuff happens in Kraven, but we're never given a single impulse as to why we should care. The character has a prolonged flashback story that seemed to make little difference in establishing who this character was. The moment where a mauled Sergei Kravenoff lays wounded on the ground and the shot-up lion that mauled him drips his blood directly into Kravenoff's open wound (one in a billion shot) is about as close to Madame Web's lunacy as it gets. One would think a portly, thickly accented Russel Crowe would bring a heavy load of absurd flavour to the production (not unlike his portly, thickly accented Zeus in Thor: Love and Thunder) but there's not a hint of irony in the performance. He wasn't asked to play it up, so he played it straight. The result is, frankly, pretty dull.

It's a dull movie overall. Kraven with his lion-infused blood and a special magical serum given to him by a young Calypso, has super powers...super sight, super agility, super strength, which lets him crawl up walls and trees and shit, as well as leap distances well beyond mortal levels. He finds himself attuned with animals and hunts poachers but also mobsters, and people who get on his list only get scratched off when they're dead. He grows into the world's foremost hunter, and a big meaty slab in the form of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, but then he needs a grown-up Calypso's (Ariana DeBose) help to track down some other bad guys? I though he was the world's foremost hunter?

There's bad guys upon bad guys in this film including an assassin called The Foreigner who can, I guess, hypnotize people for up to ten seconds and gives the appearance he's teleported or moving at super speed. It's actually a cool effect but to no real end.  There's also the Rhino, a crime boss who, if he disconnects his backpack full of serum from his liver plug, will grow super hard skin and...really... a rhino horn on the top of his head. It's absurd, but it's not fun absurd because they kind of refuse to have fun with it.

In the end, the worst of the worst guys is Kraven's dad, and so they have it out, but the stakes feel completely absent from the climax. The stakes feel pretty absent from the entire film. What's the point? Why are we even here? What's the story we're trying to tell? Why should anyone care...especially if we're not leading into Kraven hunting Spider-Man which is basically the only think he seems to do in the comics.

Just a waste of everyone's time. Hopefully this is the last nail in the SPASM universe.

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I had not even heard of Flow until it was announced as one of the finalist for the Academy Awards' Best Animated Film this year, and it seemed only after it actually won did I start seeing write-ups on it. It was the dark horse contender against the summertime juggernaut Inside Out 2, The Wild Robot and the latest Wallace and Gromit outing (I suppose the real dark horse contender would be Memoir of a Snail, which I've still not heard about and I just wrote it down right there!!), a Latvian/Belgian/French co-production from Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis.

It is a dialogue-free production where not a single human character is seen in the film. The premise is simple, a lone black cat must survive a devastating flood with the help of a cadre of other survivors.  There is an absence of humans but there are signs of them, including statutes, habitats, and things like bottles, boats, mirrors, and the like. Is it a post-apocalyptic scenario? Are all the humans dead? Or have they just abandoned this space because they were warned of the incoming disaster.

As Cat finds herself with travelling companions (the assembly of these traveling companions is one of many of the major joys of the film) they voyage through the flooded lands to the tall spires and gilded riverside domiciles that infer that this is not Earth as we know it, but some other reality.  I truly was not expecting this.

There is a heavy weight to Flow as it puts our adorably mewing cat into so, so many perilous situations. If you're a cat lover, or even just a cat liker, it is unbearably heartwrenching to see our protagonist in such peril... not helpless completely, but at times situations seem seemingly hopeless, and you want to look away. But if you were to look away, you would miss the magic, be it some twist of fate, or moment of ingenuity from Cat, or the intervention of others. They are gloriously triumphant moments.

The setting of this world is flat-out stunning. It is an incredibly lifelike reality that could pass for an Earth-like alien world in a James Cameron movie. The camera work is incredible as it stays down at cat's eye view (or lower) for the majority of the picture, and frequently dips above and below the surface of the water, just magical animation and directing. If anything in the animation didn't work for me it was the gradient highlights on the animals' fur. Often the animation of Cat and friends looked...incomplete... or at least lacking proper detail. But it's made up for by the incredibly naturalistic movements of the creatures. If you've ever owned a cat, or even just binged cat videos on Instagram, you will recognize all the behaviours.

A slight spoiler, the ending is restorative, full of hope and promise, but with the reminder that often for the benefit of some, others may suffer. I flat out loved this movie even though I cried so many times throughout it.  Sometimes because it was so beautiful and sometimes because it just made me miss my dearly departed black cat Isis.

My second favourite movie of 2024 (behind I Saw the TV Glow), and I think what I'd hoped The Wild Robot would be.

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Dual opens with a prologue in which a man kills another man in a premeditated duel on a high school football field in front of cameras and crowd, and is interviewed afterwards like in a televised sporting competition to assess his feelings of his victory. The other man looked exactly like him. The victor was his duplicate, but now, by rights of the competition, gets to take his name and live his life.

Minutes later we're introduced to Sarah (Karen Gillan). Her long-term boyfriend Peter (Beulah Koel) has been away from work for some time, and their remote conversations seem to indicate their affection towards each other is waning. At first I thought that the film was badly written, and that Gillen's performance was not great, that she was struggling with her American accent again, but quickly realized that this reality is very much an affected one, sort of like in a Wes Anderson film but cranked up a few notches. Everyone in this reality talks in a very frank and dispassionate manner, but even among all of them, Sarah still seems autistic/spectrum-coded. She misses a lot of social cues and her sense of appeasement or cordiality almost always misses the mark.  She is not a satirical character though, even in a heavily neurdivergent world she's still struggling, an outsider.

She wakes up one morning to find blood everywhere on her sheets and pillow. Her doctors tell her she is 100% terminal with a 2% margin of error. She is give no hope but is talked into the duplication process to leave behind a double of herself so that her loved ones won't be sad.  It's a terrible idea (with a hilariously bad sales pitch video online which even Sarah scrubs through). I think if she understood emotions better, this wouldn't have even been an option for her, but since she is who she is, this was presented as "the right thing to do" and so she did it.

Time passes and her double, legally named "Sarah's Double" has become a big part of her and Peter's life, to the point that Peter like this sponge of a person who seems so amenable and upbeat and vital in a way Sarah either can't be, or just hasn't been in a long time. Eventually Sarah learns she's not dying but her double has filed a suit to duel Sarah for her life, and the second half of the film is about Sarah training with Trent, to toughen up and take back what's hers (meanwhile Sarah's Double starts falling into Sarah's bad habits and attitudes).

This is satire, but of what, I can't rightly interpret, at least not yet. It's going to need another watch or two before I'm able to land on what this is really saying about our natures. Once I looked up the director, Riley Stearns, and realized it was the same creator of The Art of Self-Defense, it all really clicked for me. I really dug that film and its very weird vibe. Dual could very well be in that same reality.  Gillan's performance very quickly went from making me flinch into admiration, much the same way Stearns managed to harness Jesse Eisenberg's very specific energy and mold it in his own image for Self-Defense. She's so keyed into this role/these roles, but it's also quite clear the director is specific about what he wants. There's a humour and a pathos to Stearns' films, in that same abstract way Yorgos Lanthamos likes to present them, though with much less discomfort. I really dig Stearns' style overall and was rather elated to be in his unusual hands again.

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I have seen a pretty good sampling of Richard Linklater's repertoire, but I have by no means been avid or fanatical about keeping up. His movies are generally pleasant, and offer something of interest worth watching, but I'd hardly call any of them exciting, at least for me (maybe School of Rock?). I'm never displeased watching a Linklater joint, but I'm also never champing at the bit to watch one, certainly not to rewatch one.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette is a Linklater film that really fell off the radar, making nary a blip in the public consciousness. It's a light drama about an upper-class family in Seattle, focused primarily on Bernadette, an antisocial, near agoraphobic wunderkind designer/architect who retreated from the field to raise her daughter. Bernadette is the fairly typical Cate Blanchett role of affluent, entitled, difficult personality, but Linklater's whole business here is helping us, the audience, see past these traits and instead see the traumas she's hiding from that have made her this way. She is, absolutely, an eccentric, something, again, Blanchett excels at, but we see "normal" whenever Bernadette is with her daughter, Bee (a terrific performance from young Emma Nelson), and we understand that there is a lovable person who doesn't mean to be the way she is.

Bernadette has a strained relationship with her husband, Elgie (Billy Crudup), a bigwig at Microsoft, and an even more strained relationship with her neighbours, led by queen bee Audrey (Kristen Wiig), and perhaps an even more strained relationship with Seattle itself. Things eventually escalate with both Audrey and Elgie, especially when ... out of the blue, the FBI gets involved. 

The third act takes a wild turn from suburban drama into green screened Antarctic adventure that definitely flexes Bernadette's off-putting entitlement (both for characters on-screen and with the audience) but also leads to an appropriate breakthrough and catharsis for the character.

It's a wild swing that is hard to hate on but also hard to really like a lot. There are good performances, but I have to wonder how long can we stand to watch affluent people live "difficult" lives of their own making. This whole "misunderstood genius" of the rich narrative isn't going to float very far in what's left of the 2020s, and I realize this was made prior, but were Link later reading the room, he might have understood this was all a bit much.

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With Val Kilmer passing recently, I was seeing a lot of "must see" lists of Kilmer's performances. Tombstone was a mainstay on all those lists.  The 1993 western has been on the backburner of my "to see" list for a very long time, with Kurt Russell's Wyatt Earpp being the primary draw. I'm just not much one for westerns. The glorification of a very treacherous, uncivilized, and radically violent "might makes right" time never sits well with me. I need my westerns to be highly stylized and either feel like practically alien worlds, or get right down into the dirt of the human condition of living in such a free-for-all age. (I also realize that the glorification of the old west, particularly by Hollywood, has perhaps crafted an untrue image of the era, but an image that still informs the culture of the country quite prominently, and, methinks, negatively).

I didn't much care for this film. It meanders quite a bit as the character of Wyatt Earpp, having retired from law enforcement, waffles around whether he has any duty or responsibility for his new homestead of Tombstone, Arizona.  There a very large gang called the Cowboys have set up as home base, and for a time, at least, Earpp and his two brothers and their wives just try to roll with the general tenor of the place. But the Cowboys get out of hand, they push the Earpp boys too far, and if for justice, and not revenge, they take up arms against them.

It's not the story itself I object to, one which seems to be utilizing the legit framework of the Earpp brothers (Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton) and family's life, but the wildly uneven tone it progresses through as it sets up so many inevitabilities and foregone conclusions that we just wait to play out.  

The story is also routinely interrupted by a wholly unnecessary subplot where Earpp meets actress Josephine Marcus, a relatively liberated woman of the era who pursues Earpp flagrantly despite him being married, and Earpp seems transfixed by and can't help himself with.  This subplot goes nowhere and seems only included because, in the end Earpp did wind up with such a woman, or so the closing captions said. Each time Delaney is on screen, the momentum of the picture screeches to a halt, and they feel like tacked-in "we need a romantic subplot" decree from the purple suits.

Kilmer played Doc Holliday, a long-time friend of Earpps who joins him in Tombstone to find some last bit of excitement while his life ebbs away from tuberculosis. Kilmer's dewy performance is absolutely fantastic, easily stealing focus every scene he's in. He masticates the shit out of every moment he has on screen, and I see why people were praising it so much.  If only the film were built more around him, or the time we spend with Russell and Delaney were instead spent with Kilmer as the second lead.

If I don't try too hard to remember specifics, Tombstone would be a stand out western, but with the exception of Kilmer and some beautiful, luscious mustachios, it's decidedly mid.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Captain America: Brave New World

2025, Julius Onah (The Cloverfield Paradox) -- download

Why is it, only a week later, that I barely remember this movie? Sure, there was a Red Hulk and pink blossoms, there was Congressman Barnes and a not-as-surprising-as-they-thought lead villain. But beyond that, I don't remember much of a movie, and literally nothing hit home enough for me to care. Why?

Like Kent, I have a lot invested in my MCU watching. I have slowly been rewatching the ones that most would consider a dud -- still really like Shang-chi and despites its various flaws, I am still rather a gleeful fan of The Marvels. Still "meh" about The Eternals and still in dislike with Thor: Love & Thunder -- still not able to get entirely through a rewatch. But really, does every current MCU post I write now have to start with the lamentations of ages past? And if any movie leans me squarely into the "an era is dead", it is this one. Even if there wasn't anything particular about it I disliked, it was not much above the crappy action-ers that I constantly watch and repeatedly state "they were OK".

From here foreward, spoilers abound, if that matters so long after the movie released.

Marmy had no interest in watching this one, and this is probably her first skipped MCU movie, and its primarily because of the "rah rah American President" aspect of it. A previously thoroughly dislikeable character, General "Thunderbolt" Ross (is that why the Thunderbolts movie has the asterisk?) has shaved off his moustache, exchanged his body for Harrison Ford and been elected the President of the United (???) States of America. Despite it not really mattering to their continuity, I would love if someone created a post that showed the state of America in the MCU just before he was elected, based on the material we have been shown. Either way, even with the foreshadowed intent (Ross becomes a Red Hulk), much of the movie is centered around POTUS Reverence. It astounds me that the Real World depicts less respect for the office than Sam Wilson gives Ross; the man should thoroughly despise President Ross, and yet he gives him hesitant respect and deference and actually attempts to believe the asshole has changed. Marmy had no interest in that.

So, OK. General Ross (Harrison Ford, Shrinking) is President. Wilson (Anthony Mackie, Altered Carbon) is still struggling with being labelled Captain America, though his international escapades with Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez, The Gifted) have gained them enough notoriety that Ross sent them to Mexico to stop a terrorist group from selling a classified item to ... other terrorists? The sellers are Serpent (comics = The Serpent Society) and the buyer is a mystery. The opening fight is at the TV level, something reminiscent of the Sam & Bucky Show which I get is probably intentional, but ... meh.

After that success they end up at a summit arranged by Ross, where the opening bit is explained. The package was "adamantium" (gong volume foreshadow sound) which had been mined from the Celestial body in the Indian Ocean (see The Eternals). Ooooo, they are going to replace the hard-to-get Vibranium with Adamantium, which means unless they do some celestial level retconning, when they introduce the X-Men to the MCU, Wolvy will not yet have been abused by the Weapon X Program. Anywayz, Ross wants the world to come together to agree on how this new resource should be handled.

Exceeeept, there are a bunch of sleeper agents in the audience, including Sam's buddy Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly, Supergirl), the forgotten Captain America (Korean War era), and after hearing the song "Mr. Blue", they all attempt to kill the President. They fail, and when they capture Bradley, he has no idea why he did it. We also get introduced to Ross's head of security, one Ruth Bat-Seraph (Shira Haas, Shtisel), who previously one of the Widow agents from the Red Room. She's tiny but she's one tough cookie. 

Investigation Time!

Sidewinder (Giancarlo Espositio, Breaking Bad), leader of Serpent, attacks Sam, but gets captured. That points Sam and Joaquin to some hidden based called Camp Echo, one of those off-the-books sites. Ross is desperately trying to secure the goal of the summit, but the Japanese are not on board -- his house is obviously not safe. At Camp Echo, Sam & Joaquin discover that someone really really smart was housed there, someone who had devised a way to create sleeper agents and was responsible for the attack. Meanwhile Ross knows exactly who has been doing all this, the elusive Mr. Blue who if you remember the Not MCU / Yes It Is The Incredible Hulk movie, was the name of the villain who got himself dosed by Hulk Blood and whose head went all mushy. He has become a super villain with a big brain which Ross has had imprisoned for years, providing Ross with a serum to keep his faulty heart in check. Why Ross trusted the guy, who knows. But obviously he has gotten himself out of that pickle.

I was honestly hoping that they would somehow mix Skrulls into this, maybe have Sidewinder actually be a Bad Skrull, but I guess that spaceship has sailed.

Meanwhile in the Indian Ocean, where ships are converging on the Celestial, Mr. Blue takes control of two American fighter jets and attacks the Japanese. Wait, do the Japanese have a navy? AFAIK they were denied any actual military force and only have coastal defense ships -- I guess the MCU post-WWII treaties were different, and maybe in the post-Blip world, things have to be. Anywayz, Cap (for he is flying as Captain American at the time) and Joaquin stop the planes, but not without injury and an escalating, growing rage from within Ross. The man is doing his best to not Hulk Out.

Back in Washington, DC, Ross has a press conference where he finally gives fully in to the Mr. Blue initiated Hulk serum in his blood and ... Red Hulk !! He's a wee bit smaller than Green Hulk, enough so that Captain American and his Vibranium enforced armour can take the rampage head on, in the beautiful cherry blossom orchard near the White House, whiiiiich Red Hulk has pretty much destroyed. This whole battle is such a let down, and not the Olympus has Fallen impact they wanted from it. Its just a building smashed by Red Hulk in this movie; any emotional baggage has been drained by apathy and a complete inability for the movie to generate the reverence it wanted. Also, since Captain America is so obviously outmatched by a Hulk, he takes down Ross with guilt over his estranged daughter Betty, who has been MCU absent since the Edward Norton movie. 

Red Hulk defeated, Ross resigned and in The Raft along with Mr. Blue. Blah blah blah, sum up and ... well, I just don't care.

Kent comments on how the movie was Purple Suit Butchered, and while that was not obvious for me, the lack of commitment was apparent. I Just Don't Care should not be an emotion elicited from a MCU movie. And not one in this sub-franchise. Sure, the threading together of continuity was fun for the nerd, but... will anyone else care about this movie? I sure didn't.