3 Short Paragraphs: WolfWalkers

 2020, Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart (production team behind The Secret of Kells) -- download

This is just a fucking lovely traditional animation movie behind the same animators & production team as The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea. And like these, it draws upon Celtic mythos to build a story, a story as much about fathers and daughters, as it is about magic. I will let Kent enlighten me about the magic that already exists there.

Bill Goodfellow (Sean Bean, Lord of the Rings) and his daughter Robyn (Honor Kneafsy, A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby) have been brought to Ireland, the town of Kilkenny by Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, to hunt the wolves of the area. Robyn doesn't want to be the good daughter, and often sneaks out to learn to hunt wolves like her father. On one such adventure she runs into Mebh, a wild child who lives in the wild forest. They become friends, despite Mebh's wolfy nature, and even more so when Robyn begins to "wolf walk", leaving her body behind to play at being a ghostly wolf cub. Of course, this ends up at odds with the Lord Protector, forcing Bill to choose his daughter over his Lord. And guess what, Sean Bean doesn't die.

Again, this is just a lovely movie to watch. The music, the colours and the animation are all full of whimsy and excitement. Of course, I am drawn to the Irish mythos of the story, and these are no werewolves, cursed and to be feared. They are the spirit of the wood, the wildness being lost as Cromwell's England wants to drive the mystical nature of old Ireland away. In a day when we are having the Canadian Residential School System shoved rightly in our face, I could reflect on the evils of our settler-istic natures, needing to burn away cultures and replace them with our own. So, the creators find balance with the evil being presented, by giving us so much beauty to behold.

Orphan Black (complete series)

 2013-2017 - Crave

As the pandemmy raged and lockdowns persisted, and the flood of new entertainment was but a trickle, I decided it was time to invest in binge watching a multi-season series that had been sitting on my "to watch" list for a very long time.

Orphan Black was always a kind of cult hit that never truly broke out large probably because it was a Canadian series co-produced with (and airing on) BBC America.  Only a few aspects of the show penetrated beyond its niche market bubble: it was a show about clones; its fans were called "#CloneClub", and Tatiana Maslany netted a surprise Emmy as best actress in a Drama for her work after its final season (a surprise only in that it was a genre show with a concentrated audience).

I put the first episode on "just to give it a shot", not really sure if this would be another episodic show that would take a season, or seasons to reveal its larger story. My wife kind of rolled her eyes and buried her nose in her social media / book rather certain this show would hold no interest for her. 

The series opens with darkly made-up Sarah Manning, mid-20's, having just gotten off a train. She makes a heated call from a payphone on the platform, noting in her English accent that she's back in town and wants to see her daughter, but she's hung up on.  A woman emerges onto the nearly empty platform sobbing loudly.  Sarah moves towards the woman who has put down her bag, taken off her shoes and folds her jacket.  The woman turns and she has Sarah's face. Sarah is stunned, the other woman seems somehow unsurprised to see her, and she calmly takes a couple paces in front of a train.  Sarah is stunned at first, but amid the commotion she picks up the other woman's purse and leaves the platform towards a new, twisted reality.

It's a bold opening that sets up the series operating pattern of surprising and shocking moments but grounded with a real sense of humanity. We get in this three minute opening stretch the revelation that Sarah is a clone as well as the death of that clone.  As well, Sarah has a British accent but the train platform announces the next train to New York City (the establishing skyline is definitely Toronto, and the train platform is definitely Union Station...there is no train service from Toronto to New York), so Sarah is not native to the country.  Sarah's make-up, hair and wardrobe indicate a rough lifestyle, rebellious at the very least.  She has loose change in her pocket, and no cel phone, so it indicates she doesn't really have any money. As well, she has a daughter whom she's not allowed to see, although we don't know yet who is not allowing her to see her.  

Rarely, I think, are costuming and make-up choices as deliberate as they are here at signalling a character's identity.  Over the run of the series, Maslany plays over a dozen different clones, each with strikingly unique identities.  Maslany gives each of them - the main ones, the ancillary ones, and even the one-offs - their own speech, their own physicality, their own mannerisms but not in a way that screams "ACTING!".  It's subtle, nuanced performances that breathe life into each of them.  Of course, each identity is aided with their own style - clothing, makeup and hair - with some of the best wig work.  These aesthetic choices are labored over for movies and TV shows, used to help define the character, but they're so rarely needed to distinguish the character from other similar characters, being performed by the same actor.  Within 5 episodes Maslany earned the Emmy it would take another 5 years for her to win, but likewise the hair, makeup and wardrobe teams should have been given such commendation.

Following her encounter on the platform, Sarah, we learn, is a con artist with a troubled past.  She's an orphan who was raised by Siobhan (the amazing Maria Doyle Kennedy) alongside her orphan foster brother Felix (Jordan Gavaris). Siobhan is now raising Sarah's daughter, Kira, and has forbidden Sarah from seeing her until she cleans up her life.  Both confused by what happened and rejected by Siobhan, Sarah adopts her doppleganger's life, and stretches to the limit her conning ability.  In becoming Beth Childs, Sarah stumbles her way through being a police detective, learning that her alternate had her own secrets, substance abuse and a wrongful death incident looming over her.  Beth's partner Art is frustrated with her, but gives her a lot of latitude. 

Throughout the first episode one can't help but get the feeling it's going to be a slow burn, Sarah's journey into #CloneClub...but at the end of that first episode Beth/Sarah is approached by yet another doppleganger who is assassinated in Sarah/Beth's car as they are talking.  At the start of episode 2, she gets a mysterious phone call, helping her dispose of the body, and Sarah then poses as the dead woman to gain more info, learning about even more look-a-likes.  By the end of the episode she meets suburban housewife Allison, and Cosima, an evolutionary biology student and learns she is a clone.  

There's no slow burn here, it's pretty much momentum from the get go.
I was sucked in.
My wife, well, she put her phone/book down.

Much of season one revolves around Sarah messing around in Beth's life while also working with the clones to unravel the mystery of their origins.  It ties them into the "Neolutionists", a subculture of people who believe that they can use technology to advance human evolution (but it's also a fetish culture that sees people getting, like, webbed fingers, or tails surgically grafted onto them), but also the Prolethians, the Neolution's opposites, who believe they can advance humanity through gene manipulation.

Season one introduces Helena, another clone (and the show's most engaging character, in a show rather full of enjoyable characters), who was raised by the Prolethians as a fanatic, hating the other clones as abominations against god that must be destroyed.  She's a brutal assassin but also in her limited education and secluded upbringing, rather naive to the world.  At first a frightening adversary, she is slowly indoctrinated into the sisterhood of the #CloneClub.

While Sarah is the central character, each of the key clones - Allison, Cosima, Helena and Rachel - all have their own full arcs over the five seasons.  Likewise, Kira, being the daughter of a clone, has an important role to play, and the kindly "Mrs. S", Siobhan, has her own secrets that are revealed.  But Siobhan sees all the clones as she sees Sarah, as orphaned daughters that need her tough love.  Felix is also an integral part of #CloneClub, and he finds his own special dynamic with each of them.

Cosima finds love with her handler Delphine (the only meaningful romantic subplot of the series) but both are under the thumb of the Dyad Group who have ties to either the Neolutionists or the Prolethians or both, and given that sinister clone Rachel is sitting near the head of the Group, it's clear that they have ties to the clones' origins, a mystery that takes all five seasons to fully unfold.  As well, Cosima is trying to find a cure for the fatal illness that seems to be striking the clones, including herself.

The suburban adventures of Allison and her bumbling husband Donnie are often a point of comic relief, as their adventures seem so trivial compared to the higher stakes of Sarah and Cosima's arcs, but still they're adventures that wind up with literal bodies buried in the garage, and always tend to criss-cross with the regular shenanigans.

Seasons one and two are effortlessly breezy binge consumption, pulling you through with a lot of wild, often outrageous twists and turns.  Season three introduces a captivating additional wrinkle of a breed of rival male clones, and the mythology of the series gets fairly dense from that point in.  

Each season is a rather taut 10 episodes, and while the story is constantly evolving there's some repeating patterns in the show that become frustrating in binge watching, mostly involving Sarah and some of her behaviors or the situations she finds herself in (often as a result of her behavior).  Some of these "not again" moments the show seems oblivious to.  It's usually smart and self aware enough to call such things out, but it seems to have a few blind spots.  

Within that, even when the show ebbs (which rarely lasts more than a single episode) it's completely uplifted by Maslany's performances.  When a particular subplot isn't hitting, the viewer's attention can become even more attuned to the complex ballet Maslany has to perform, and it's always superb. (It's also to easy to forget to credit Maslany's double, Kathryn Alexandre, as the show did its first seasons.  She was no doubt was integral to every scene with more than one clone in it).

Despite being Orphan Black's most interesting character, there are long stretches without Helena, and it's baffling why that is.  It's not always like Cosima or Allison's storylines fit seamlessly into the larger narrative, and it's a palpable absence whenever the show goes more than two episodes without her. If I'm going to be drawn to rewatching the series, it will be to get my fill of Helena no doubt.

Similarly the Cosima/Delphine love story is very unevenly handled, a lot of trust issues make it compelling initially, but once they get past it and commit to each other, they resume their mistrust with tiring results.  And then Delphine disappears for much of season 3 and 4, returning only sporadically for the final one, but in a somewhat satisfactory fashion.

One factor that thrilled me was Orphan Black being a show that used Toronto as Toronto (as well as using Toronto as all sorts of international locales).  Early on the show wouldn't blatantly state it was Toronto, or Canada even, but they regularly use Toronto street names and land marks and never attempted to hide it as a participant in the show.  Eventually (I think in Season 4) the defining line that it is indeed Toronto becomes clearer, but it's almost a Toronto that lives in a world where Canada and the US exist as a "Generca" (as co-creator Graeme Manson dubbed it), where the border doesn't exist.

As much as I enjoyed the ride, the grand arc of the series, and the overall conspiracy within it got a little lost in the mythology for me.  The fifth season's "Island of Dr. Moreau" vibe was an unexpected path, and it works double time to weave all the disparate threads from prior seasons together to some success but still not without muddying the waters. 

But even still, the conspiracy of clones isn't truly what the show is about, it's really more about finding family, and the connections that bind, and the things that make them human.  The character arcs of all the characters in the show do wind up being very satisfying and worth the venture.

We consumed all five seasons of Orphan Black over a single month, with a few interruptions for some of our ongoing series.  By the time we hit season five I felt a little exhausted (again, it's pretty briskly paced and densely structured), and I was ready to reach the end... but once I did, I felt very sad to not see the Clone Club anymore.  But, there is a next phase: podcasts.  Orphan Black: The Next Chapter is a multi-episode prose podcast that picks up a new story involving our characters over half a decade from where the show left off, with Kira and Charlotte now both teenagers, Cosima and Delphine married, and a new clone in the FBI gets inaugurated into the Club, among other highlights. It's read by Maslany, making it feel extremely authentic to the tv show, and it highlights her amazing talent as she embodies some of the non-clone characters like Delphine, Felix and Art pitch-perfectly, as if she spent her time on the show studying them and aping their speaking styles. It's a really satisfying way to catch up but also experience something new, and in a new way.  A second series is coming later this year

What I Have Been Watching: The Chosen Few (Pt1)

What I Have Been Watching is the admitted state of me spending too much time in front of the TV, especially during 2020 the Extended Version. But this time, I don't even barely attempt to tell you EVERYTHING I have been watching or we would be here all day.

The Nevers S1, HBO -- download

Why do our heroes have to fall? Or more likely, why do our heroes have to be human, and once more, with more precision, why do typical humans have to be such utter shites. Joss Whedon was a guy to be respected, in ages past, when he created shows that not only established a whole generation of pith, but also highlighted & empowered young women. Too bad he decided that he was owed something from those women, given the number of stories that have come out in the Post Buffy Years, about him being quite the prick. At first, I was an apologist: it was just the era, there was some sour grapes involved, at least he is not as bad as the rest. But really, that was my own hangups. The thing is, no matter what place in the power structure you have, you shouldn't be abusing it.

But does shitty artists means shitty art? Sometimes. At the very least, it should make it so that they have to work even harder to regain back that trust and respect. Alas, I don't think he is going to get there, as I suspect he doesn't really feel like a Bad Guy. I think he feels more like someone who got caught. And yet, I was still looking forward to The Nevers, his new HBO series about women with powers in Victorian England. And committing to being conflicted, I was also somewhat glad when he departed it, claiming "exhaustion". If you are tired of being called out for being a shitty person, too fucking bad.

Whedon aside, the show was rather enjoyable, if not revolutionary. And a cut above the vast number of supernatural Victorian era shows out there.

For a reason unbeknownst to the people of London, there is a spontaneous emergence of "powers" among the disenfranchised of the city, mostly women, but not all. Amalia True leads a small cadre of these women, having gathered them in a sort of orphanage, one sponsored by a wealthy widow and her meek brother. Meanwhile, to add to the misery, one of the Touched has proven to be a psychopath, which further taints the city's already lacking trust of them. People already distrust the different but if they are women or foreigners...

The season explores how they got their powers, a conspiracy in the shadows that is kidnapping Touched, the British governments utter distrust of them and a hunt for Maladie, the psychopath. All the while we are learning that True is not as true as she claims, nor are some others. In typical pithy Whedon fashion, characters are charming, complex and funny in their own ways. I completely fell for the steampunky inventor Penance Adair (Ann Skelly, Vikings), and her shy Irish accent. But what really shone was angry, dangerous, boiling beneath the surface Amalia True (Laura Donnelly, Outlander). The rest of the cast each has their charms, and oft get a chance to shine. And once again, in true Whedon fashion, the end of the season reveals something we kind of knew had to be revealed, but was done so in a unfathomable manner, much like the whole sudden jump to the future of the now painfully troublesome Dollhouse.

Jupiter's Legacy S1, Netflix

Speaking of creators that a lot of people do not like, the first series on Netflix from Millarworld (now that he sold the imprint to Netflix) is the adaptation of somewhat critically acclaimed Jupiter's Legacy, another in the many reworking of the Superman mythic figure such as Invincible and Homelander from The Boys. 

In the comic world, and yeah big ol SPOILER ALERT, a league of justice extolling superheroes is broken apart when their children murder them. Well, really just The Utopian and his wife, Lady Liberty. They are presented as overbearing, controlling entities that demand far too much of the next generation of superheroes, which leads to their demise. But then we learn it was all a manipulation at the hands of one of their own. The comic is rather short, and was followed by a few unsatisfying sequels.

The TV series is even less satisfying, in that they wanted to stretch out the whole introduction story into an entire season. And boy, does it get stretched out, taffy strung between two wide spread arms, stretched. But not as tasty. Not that the story is inherently bad, nor is the acting or production values, but OMG backstory filler! 

We learn that The Utopian, his brother and some close companions, emerged from the trauma of The Great Depression with superpowers (by way of a mysterious magical/alien island), powers that they controlled very closely, keeping a tight rein on how they would influence the world. Oh, they could have taken over, they could have influenced world politics, but Sheldon (Utopian) wants to gently guide the world to make its own better decisions, with their league, their Union of Justice to set the example. It starts off well enough...

But it has failed. By the time the 21st century spins around (the age much more slowly) their kids are drug addicts and hedonists, the products of terrible parenting and many are fame obsessed, in particular Sheldon's kids. The comic came out almost 10 years ago, and maybe this would have been shocking and enlightening then, but this rendition of "gritty superheroes" is just ... tiring. I am sure they wanted to do a mirror reflection of the Marvel movies, but it all seemed so forced, but without the "OMG shocking!" of The Boys. 

But it has failed. The series was cancelled soon after S1 being released on Netflix, and it makes me wonder whether the network is second-guessing what they got from Millarworld.

WFH: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

 2018, Stefano Sollima (Without Remorse) -- Amazon

One opportunity afforded by the endless Work From Home is that ritualistic allotted hour where I step away from the desk and sit on the sofa, to nourish myself. After about 20 minutes or so of putting together a lunch, I find something to watch. For most of 2020, I rewatched TV or film drivel, but I decided of late to use the time to watch some of the "meaning to get around to" list. Basically things I downloaded or added to My List but never actually watched. And as Marmy is usually asleep, the intention is to keep the volume relatively low and turn on the CC. Also, the choices have to lend themselves to being watched in spurts, as I will never get the 1.25 standard hours of movie time to sit and watch before returning to the desk.

Violent drug cartels vs America fits that and I rather liked Sicario, the sombre not-quite-action flick from Villeneuve. I was always hesitant to watch a sequel that he had nothing to do with, but having recently seen Without Remorse and at least respected its action/combat scenes, I thought I could stand to see more from Sollima.

Emily Blunt's character is not here, as Sollima focuses on Matt Graver (Josh Brolin, Oldboy), the morally ambivalent CIA agent and his blunt weapon Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro, Inherent Vice). The US has had another terrorist attack on American soil and this time, illegals crossing the border were blamed. But this is not a movie about The Wall, or Trump's policy, but more about how the cartels are making bigger money transporting bodies across the border than trafficking drugs. So, if the war on drugs is taking a back seat these days, here is a better reason to take them down. The solution is simple -- have them take each other out, and Graver is chosen to start the war. Their mission objective involves kidnapping the daughter of one of the cartel leaders, who happens to be the man who had Alejandro's family put to death. She will be a pawn to pit the cartels against each other.

This was a grim, violent movie as was to be expected. But I did find myself noting it never really went in the expected directions. The end game was never truly apparent, given the murky nature of the motivations provided to our mains. And of course, once something goes wrong, ties are cut and loyalties betrayed. Graver is clearly not happy having to leave his valuable asset behind enemy lines, but Alejandro seems to know what he is mixed up in. The oddest bit about it all, is that everyone is just presented as a working man. Sure, they may be government agents mixed up in international events, or brutal cartel soldiers who know their days are numbered, but it all just seems like ... a job to them. Just a job. I think that is more dangerous than any belief system, for its easy to forgive much when you just see that as the way of the world. Something you just do day to day, because... what else is there?

T&K Go Loopty Loo: Boss Level

[Toast and Kent love a Time Loop. We love watching them, thinking about them, wishing we were in one...Wish work didn't always feel like a bad example of one. Ahem. The subgenre has basically exploded over the past decade, so we thought we would take a guided look at as many of them as we can. Maybe by the end of it we'll have deconstructed what it is that actually makes a good Time Toop (time toop? loopty toopty too!) versus a bad one...? Who knows. Maybe we do. Tomorrow. Or the nth loop.]

2021, d. Joe Carnahan (Narc) -- Amazon

[Toast] Full disclosure. I already saw this movie. And I actually wrote about it! 

We join ... wait, do I write about the plot again, since I already did? Or would that be like inducing our own Time Loop of rewatches. And yes, I did rewatch, as the original viewing was January, and I barely remember yesterday. But what the hey, we join Roy a hundred odd loops into his particular Loopty Loo. He's the reliable narrator relating to us what's going on, with the assumption of the knowledge of Time Loop mechanics, and what he has had to deal with. By the time we are joining him, he's already a bit fed up. He's been killed a.... lot.

You see, Roy gets killed every day by Mr. Good Morning, or he gets killed by the helicopter with the chain gun, or he gets killed by assassin team Pam & Esmerelda, or by Roy #2, or by Kaboom (little person with bombs) or by the German Twins, or by Guan Yin (and Guan Yin has done that). But he has learned enough each day to go on a little bit more, but not long enough to get past the diner where he gets drunk, just before whichever assassin has survived finds him.

Roy's more than a bit of a dick, and not entirely that bright. As Time Loop fans, we are expected to wonder why, if Roy is aware of what is going on, he doesn't try to understand what is going on. He doesn't seem curious about it, more than he is just resigned. Sure, there is the trauma of finding out his ex is dead, but that doesn't motivate him as much as it depresses him.

But an accidental interruption of the loop's progression (I originally said it took only about 22 minutes, but its much longer) leads him to his son, a son who doesn't know Roy is his father. But that brief moment with his son tells Roy he can indeed extend the loop, and therefore he can find out what is going on.

And get to the Boss Level.

How did the Loop Begin?

[Toast] It takes quite a few more iterations before we and Roy find out that it is not a video game, not a magical experience forcing self-reflection upon dick Roy, but a science experiment gone wrong, or ... well, setup to put Roy into a repeating period of time so he can stop the Big Bad Evil Guy Boss, Mel Gibson. Of course Mel Gibson.

Also, are sciency-machine invoked Time Loops always going to involve a big, swirly machine that likely accelerates particles? I never really got what this machine was supposed to do; I got what Mel wanted to do with it, but what was her original plan for said machine? Why did she invent it?

[Kent]  As you implied, Toasty, there's very much a video game framing aesthetic here.  The film opens with 8-bit graphic interpretations of the production studio cards with accompanying digital fanfare, as well as a SNES fighting game menu screen with which selects both Frank Grillo's Roy as the player character and the aforementioned Mr. Good Morning as the 2P opponent and then launches into the digital title card "Attempt 139".  Each time Roy starts a new loop we get a new "Attempt XYZ" title card in the same pixelated format.  This framing aesthetic is very confusing since it implies that the character isn't stuck in your conventional time loop, but rather a Wreck-It Ralph-type situation where the character becomes self-aware that they're in a video game.

But, that's not the case and it really does the film a disservice.  As you note in your original review, it certainly feels like this was intended to be more of an "in-video-game world" but got abandoned or written out of the script, even though the bones of the story feel very video gamey.

After we witness a few different "Attempts" (jumping back and forth in Roy's "Attempt" timeline) we get to "Yesterday" at the end of the first act, which tells us more about Roy, his background, and his relationship with his ex (Naomi Watts in a role that seems meant more for Malin Akerman) as he heads to her workplace with resume in hand and hangs out in her lab where top secret classified work is going on.  It's a baffling breach of security.  We meet her Boss (Melly Gibsons) and his right-hand goon (a monstrous Will Sasso) who lean into her about loyalty and commitment and weird story about a snake that I don't quite get the metaphor for.  Already keenly aware her life's in danger she puts Roy's DNA into the thingy and the thingy does its thingy which puts Roy in a time loop, so breadcrumbs his ex left him all he has to go on to figure out how to maybe stop the machine from destroying the world/universe.

[Toast] Holey Crow, if this movie hadn't been done in Australia, it would have TOTALLY been Malin Akerman!!

Also, Will Sasso? He doesn't strike me as Right Hand Goon, villain NPC type. Huh?

Also, said breadcrumbs (Egyptian Mythos) are EXTREMELY thin gluten-free crumbs !

What was the main character's first reaction to the Loop?

[Toast] We don't know. We never saw. But knowing Loopties, and knowing Roy, it was a LOT of confusion. I suspect Roy is easily confused. Also, he was getting killed a lot. That can be taxing. 

In fact, I set aside the latest game I am playing (The Last of Us 2) because it put me into one of those Boss Battles where it requires a delicate ballet of run & hide & shoot that is next to impossible with my terrible reflexes. After dying about 50 times, I just gave up. Unlike Roy, I am not forced to reload.

[Kent] Yeah, it's weird that we never see "Attempt 001".  I think you're underestimating Captain Roy Pulver, "of Delta Force fame". He's clearly not a brainy guy but I think his strength here is kind of his perseverance (of course he does get depressed at a certain point an lets Mr. Good Morning kill him repeatedly a dozen times or so), So I think when he wakes up to find a machete wielding maniac coming at him while he's asleep in his studio apartment, and he's killed (maybe a couple of times) he's actually probably pretty excited to get another chance at taking on the asshole who snuck up on him and then taking on all the other various assholes who are coming after him.

Quite frankly whenever he finds a new extension point to the loop, he seems pretty excited and goes at it with some gusto.

[Toast] Thumbs Up Emoticon.

WHY did the main character get put into the Loop? Can someone else be brought into the Loop?

[Toast] Roy's ex, the scientist who wears a stylish dress in the science lab (Naomi Watts, The Impossible), makes a machine that does ... I am not sure. Does Timey Wimey stuff. She clips his hair, gets his blood and records his current weight & height, and plugs it all into the machine. And I think, when Roy is killed the next morning by Mr. Good Morning (because Evil Boss Mel observes her being suspicious with Roy) he just resets to that exact moment. I imagine it took Roy a few times getting stabbed by Mr. Good Morning before he caught on.

No, nobody can be brought into the loop. But not because its impossible, but mainly because I doubt Stylish Scientist would have a chance to gather the required data components to get someone else into the loop. BUT if this movie wanted to do a sequel (saaaay, Boss Level Save Point) the concept is still there.

[Kent]  It's a machine meant for time travel.  Melly Gibsons (who we hate here from moment one because we know what shit Melly Gibsons has been up to and we kind of hate Melly Gibsons, so it works to the advantage of establishing this military guy as a real asshole) talks about how he's going to use it to right all the wrongs of history and ostensibly put himself in charge.  It's a Dictator Machine.

Your sequel title is PERFECT!

How long is this time Loop? What resets it? Can you force the reset?

[Toast] Its as long as it takes for Roy to die OR for the world to end. Did I mentioned the timey wimey machine is going to end the world in a big gray cloud that emanates from the machine? No? Its because I was not entirely sure of what that was about. Sure, messing with Time is often a cause of the Universe's destruction. We know that. But I got the impression that it was because Roy keeps on looping, that it is triggered. Alas, it takes Roy a very long time to survive long enough to reach the End of the World level in the game, so we are never sure how connected it all is.

And yeah, I am still disappointed they didn't tie the movie closer to video games, instead of the lame passing reference.

[Kent]  Comic book science!

Okay, so if the destruction of all reality starts at the machine ("The Osiris Spindle", and the machine is what's causing Roy to loop, wouldn't the destruction of all reality (including the machine) then negate the Loop?  It's weird that Roy's death resets the loop...

unless...

...each loop is actually an alternate timeline, and Roy's consciousness is jumping between timelines when the crisis wave hits?

Anyway, the destruction of the world/universe/all-space-and-time seems to happen early evening, and Roy wakes up around 7am, so his max Loop time is about 12 hours.

[Toast] Maybe if Roy had failed, the TVA (pronounced in French, as Tey-Vey-Ahh) would have intervened?

How long does the main character stay in the Loop? Does it have any affect on them, their personality, their outlook?

[Toast] How many loops do we get... about 200 ? Does it have any affect on his personality? Not until he interacts with his son enough times to really get to know the boy. 

Interestingly enough, apparently there is an alternate ending, one where he doesn't just step into the timey wimey Osiris Spindle but it ends with him waking up.... one more time, where he utters, "Piece of cake." Apparently it infers the looping has stopped, but he still has to live through the day and save both his son and ex.

That said, notice how we don't have the question, "How do they break the loop?"

[Kent] The last "Attempt" title card is "Attempt 249", and there seems to be at least two more loops after that before the film's ending.

For some reason, that doesn't seem like enough loops.  

It's especially egregious when he learns swordfighting from Michelle Yeoh in order to defeat Guan Yin, the one assassin he just can't seem to get past.  Guan Yin is so nimble she can literally dodge bullets, and she kills him in their face offs a dozen times over.  The training he does with Michelle Yeoh (who is introduced as a champion sword fighter) begins a handful of Loops after "Attempt 150" and their training ends on "Attempt 200" where he manages to disarm her.  Even if Roy is a quick study with weapons, there's no way in, at best, 50 Loops with at most 7 hours training each loop is enough time for him to best either Michelle Yeoh or Guan Yin.  That caliber of fighting skill takes years to hone, not a couple hundred hours,  What he should have done, at a certain point in his competency is figured out a way to best her.  And even still, there should be over a hundred, even hundreds of loops to develop his swordsmanship.

[Toast] Not just dodge bullets, but dodge FULL AUTOMATIC bullets. And Guan Yin has done that.  Yeah we commented out loud to the TV that there was no way a mere 40 loops would have given him the edge to defeat Yeoh. But, whatever, Player Character.

What about the other people in the Loop? Are they aware? Can they become aware?  Does anything happen if they become aware?

[Toast] No, I don't think they can become aware. They really are just NPCs in his great big video game life. His Ex learns she was successful, but that doesn't do much. We also get brief glimpses of others in the loop just after they kill him, probably just as the last of his life is fading. If his ending was a particularly odd choice, they notice, but that's about it.

[Kent] Yeah, it quite late in the stages before Melly Gibsons realizes that Roy has actually been put in the machine (and that the machine is working, sort of), and by that point Roy's shot him a whole bunch of times already.

[Toast] Not sure why but I enjoyed when Roy repeatedly emptied bullets into Melly.

What does the main character think about the other people in the Loop? Are they real? Do they matter?

[Toast] Well, considering he kills just about everyone in the movie and leads many a merry murderous chase through the city AND doesn't even warn his friends in the diner that a bunch of gun toting clichés are about to empty their mags into him, I don't think he has much concern for others in the loop. Then again, I am not sure he has much concern for anyone else, other than his family, any way. He probably wouldn't lose any sleep over other's deaths. So, no people don't matter so much, but its not because of the Loopty.

[Kent] Roy seems very comfortable with both death and detachment... even losing Stylish Scientist, he seemed kind of resigned to until he learns there's still the possibility of saving her.  It's really only his son's mortality that gets any visceral response out of him.

[Toast] His son is played by Rio Grillo, his real son.

Most memorable event in a Loop? Most surprising event during a Loop?

[Toast] I do love the slow mo actions scenes where he knows each and every move Mr. Good Morning will make and just counters it or avoids it entirely, sipping his coffee with little care, before tossing the hot liquid into his face.

[Kent] The big climactic moment with the Big Bad Melly Gibsons happens sort of at the end of act two, so when he gets to the end game, it's more about him saving Stylish Scientist than fighting bad guys.  He really just shoots Sasso and Gibson without any compunction, and it's more about the two reuniting and figuring out how to stop the Osiris Spindle from destroying reality.

Also, Sasso, earlier, stumbling around with the sword sticking out the top of his head.  "I smell muffins, do you smell muffins?"  It's both kind of horrifying but also very broadly comedic.  It may be too over-the-top for some, or too goofy for others, but I thought it was great, and kind of was the payoff for Sasso being the #1 henchman.

[Toast] Muffins was worth a snort from me.

How does this stack up in the subgenre?

[Toast] To be honest, I found it a rather good romp that plays with the subgenre. It doesn't do anything particularly novel but does enjoy itself. But again, I do wish it had just committed to the whole video game schtick.

[Kent] I'll be honest too, it surprised me.  I was expecting a gratuitously violent B-movie and instead, somewhere along the way, it found a real beating heart within it.  Roy wanted to be a bigger part of his son's life, but the wound of him choosing his military career over family was still too fresh for Stylish Scientist.  The loop afforded him the opportunity to connect and bond with his kid in a way that he likely never would have been able to in real life, and as much as he seemed to enjoy killing all the assassins, he really seemed to love spending time with his son far, far more  (also to note his son in the film was played by Grillo's real-life son so there was a palpable connection between them).  

I didn't think much of Grillo as a leading man to start with, but he did win me over.

This was unexpectedly charming.  But I also agree with Toasty, the video game framework and lack of commitment to it didn't help it at all.

T&K Go Loopty Loo: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

[Toast and Kent love time loop stories.  With this "Loopty Loo" series, T&K explore just what's happening in a film or TV show loop, and maybe over time, they will deconstruct what it is that makes for a good time loop]

 d. Mamoru Hosoda

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time by Yasutaka Tsutsui is a very famous story in Japan, having been adapted many, many times to film and television (and anime and manga) since its initial publication in the mid 1960's.  The original story seems to be one of the first (if not the first) iterations of the Time Loop used in popular culture.  What Kent (writing here in third person) didn't know about this highly successful 2006 animated film adaptation was that it's a quasi-sequel to the original story and therefore doesn't follow the same exact plot or situations.  As such, no Time Loop, per se.

But Kent bought the Blu-Ray and watched an anime (Kent doesn't watch anime, generally) so in for a penny...

How did the Loop Begin?
[Kent] Right, so no Loop here.  Not exactly. 17-year-old Makoto is cleaning up the science lab when she slips on a walnut and falls on top of it.  The walnut appears to have a blinky red light, and it sends her spiraling through a weird CGI maze of gears and stuff representing her movement through time.   The mix of traditional cel animation and CGI is both a kind of neat and kind of janky effect.  Thankfully it doesn't get overused.  But her trip through time winds her back right where she was, on the floor of the science lab.  Confused and on her way to deliver some peaches to her aunt (who works at the Tokyo National Museum), she rides her bike down a steep hill, but her breaks fail and she's heading right for the train crossing... and yeah, she gets smushed, except that she opens her eyes and is halfway up the hill, having collided with a very angry woman instead.

So, as we'll see, it's not a Loop as we commonly see them, but Makoto moving through the same day starting at different points in time.

[Toast] Yep, I agree. Most of the traditional concepts of a Loopty Loo are not present here. This is a true resetting of time by active choice. Well, at least it is after the first not-get-smooshed reset. But isn't it all semantics? Aren't Time Loops also just resets, if you change your perspective and take the circular nature out of it?

What was the main character's first reaction to the Loop?
[Kent] It feels redundant at this point because pretty much every character in their first Loop has the same reaction... confusion.  They were in one place, usually something bad happens, then suddenly they're in a different spot.  That would be disorienting for anyone.

When she gets to the Museum and talks with her "witchy" aunt, telling her about the incident, her aunt explains that she probably leapt through time...that it's something most girls her age do.  And then she instructs her on how she can do it again.

Now, had I any familiarity with The Girl Who Leapt Through Time story, or even just read up on this specific adaptation, maybe this bit of dialogue wouldn't have seemed so bizarre.  Because "witchy" Aunt Kazuko is the titular leaping girl from the original story. 

[Toast] J explained to me that there is a concept amongst young women in Japan where they claim (pretend?) to have special powers, in order to feel more special than they are. Some see ghosts, some can talk to spirits, some have magical powers and ... some can jump in time. Its a common enough happenstance that there is a term for it, not that I can find it on the internet. 

While the Aunt is definitely the character from the original novel, she was supposed to have had her memory erased at the end of that story. So, I think she is just humouring her niece, assuming the girl just has a need to feel special.

I do love that the one trope of loopty loo's (the fun montage) is present here. Zip back, eat the originally pilfered pudding, carry on. Zip back, have it again. Don't like what is for supper? Zip back and have teppanyaki again! Want to get really good at karoke? Ziiiiip over and over. She has a (base)ball messing around with her "worst day ever" but soon realizes there are some consequences to deferring or transferring bad luck. Then she gets distracted by high school crushes.

WHY did the main character get put into the Loop? Can someone else be brought into the Loop?
[Kent] Because she fell on a walnut.  It's a high tech future time travel walnut, because that makes more sense.

[Toast] Well most time machine control devices are fancy schmany wrist bands. Maybe those are gauche in 2260, so why not walnut? Given that she is brought into the club that can reset/loop time, I guess she could  have done it for any of her friends. But she doesn't choose to do so.

How long is this time Loop? What resets it? Can you force the reset?
[Kent] Ostensibly the "Loop" is as long as Makoto wants it to be.  She can reset time whenever she feels like it, although it seems with limited control on how far back in time she goes.

To reset time, she has to leap (like the title says).  It seems her leaps always involve some form of danger...and perhaps the more speed she brings to her leap, the further back she goes?  The rules are not very clearly explained.  It even sometimes seems like it's her landing, not the leap which sends her back in time.  And I don't know if death resets time, or if it has to be "death... with momentum". Explain it to me Toasty ...

[Toast] Well, considering her first reset was caused by her death, I guess that is assumed. But yeah the rules are entirely fuzzy. For example, her first active test reset (jumping out into the river liked a skipped rock) boomerangs back unintentionally. But yeah, I think that inertia is required for the walnut implanted time reset power to kick in. Well, for her. Chiaki seems to be just wander away... But its his toy so maybe he knows the rules.

How long does the main character stay in the Loop? Does it have any affect on them, their personality, their outlook?
[Kent] So at one point Makoto discovers a sort of tattoo on the back of her arm (tricep area) and it's a number. At the time she discovers it, the number is at 90.  By the time she realizes that it's a "use counter" it's at 10.  She'd leapt dozens upon dozens of times prior to discovering it said 90.  But then many of those uses were to repeat the same 10 minutes (or half hour or whatever) at karaoke for 10 hours, so some of the Loop-backs were very, very short durations.

I can't even hazard a guess as to how many "leaps" she had, and what the total amount of time she spent reliving parts of the day over was.  Toast, any guesses?

[Toast] Enough times to get bored with it? And being a high school kid, it really doesn't have any impact on her. Some of the things she experiences, some of the perspectives she is exposed to decidedly change her views, but its not the resets themselves.

What about the other people in the Loop? Are they aware? Can they become aware?  Does anything happen if they become aware?
[Kent] So Kazuko becomes Makoto's confidant in all this, where Makoto will often confide in her aunt after doing something she deems great with her new power, or discovering that her mucking with time has done something wrong.  So her Aunt seems to be the only one who knows...

But before she started time-travelling Makoto had a particularly disastrous day in cooking class, and so she used the Loop power to switch places with another guy, who winds up getting teased and bullied and very very scarily angry about it all... he sees Makoto and blames her for the accident and his being bullied, and comes after her...almost like he knows.

[Spoiler] And then there's Chiaki, who is one of Makoto's best friends, even though he's kind of a mystery to everyone at school.  At one point he expresses that he likes Makoto and asks her out and she keeps resetting the moment hoping he never asks, and eventually just avoids the moment altogether.  But also, eventually she realizes she does like him, but too late.  Turns out he's a boy from the future, and it was his walnut she fell on, and he knows she's leaping through time.  And now that she knows his secret, he must return.

The rules here are not explained, like, what's the deal with the painting (is that something from the original story?) and why does he have to return? (What happens if he doesn't?)  This film is awfully vague on a lot of points.

[Toasty] Yeah, open ended ideas is very very VERY common in anime. Leaving something to be explored later on, or for the viewer to fill in themselves, is annoyingly common. I think Chiaki has to return mainly because eventually he will just end up being bored with the current summer days at the end of high school. So, his counter is counting down, as he keeps on messing around with his lives, probably reliving the days he loves best (going to baseball games, playing toss-around with the other two, etc.) and desperately trying to figure out how to see that painting before it disappears from time.

That whole painting does feel like it had to be part of another story, but not one I am aware of. And once she realizes he so badly wants to see it, why not just sneak him upstairs to where her aunt works?

As for bullied kid, I think he gets the full brunt of the class bullies because they see him as the subject of bad luck. He knows he would not have been burned if she hadn't switched with him, so likely has the superstition that she purposely put this on him. And she kind of did, just not in the way he assumes.

What does the main character think about the other people in the Loop? Are they real? Do they matter?
[Kent] Makoto can't seem to get out of the day, but she also doesn't seem to want to.  She's a teenager having fun with a new power and using it all the time for almost every trivial situation.  Once she realizes that it's finite, it's almost too late.  She tries to do some good with it, as her aunt instructed, but of course it's limited to trivial high-school concerns, like getting people to ask other people out on dates and to stop a bullying incident.  But, when you're in high school, your world really is so self-centered and small.

[Toasty] Match Making is also very very VERY common in high school based anime. Its almost like the best thing you can do for someone you care for.

Most memorable event in a Loop? Most surprising event during a Loop?
[Kent] I thought Makoto's hope that by continually jumping back in time by like a minute or two when Chiaki asks her out was very very potent.  That moment where a friend you don't necessarily like *that way* expresses that they like you *that way* and you just know your friendship is irreparably changed, and you just want to go back and undo it.  That resonated with me pretty strongly.  I was in that situation so many times as a teen (humblebrag?).  They're pretty uncomfortable.

[Toast] Let's talk about my little sister !!!!

Wait, so you were the subject of friendzoning someone? Not friendzone'd yourself? P.S. I loathe that word "friendzone" these days primarily because of the toxic nature in which it is used by incel types who toss it around like an accusation, and with such vitriol. 

Personally, the karoke club, rolling into the room to get another round of the time related song in again before their time was up. 

"Wait, what the heck were you doing that your just ROLLED IN HERE SO FAST !?!?!?"

#snort

How does this stack up in the subgenre?
[Kent] Again, it's not a standard Time Loop, but since the Looping events all take place within the same day, it still does fit, it's just a drastically different by the sheer fact that Makoto can control the loop and that the loop doesn't always reset to the same point (a very rare thing in the Time Loop stories we've covered so far).

[Toast] I rather like that it undermines the standard tropes yet still also seems to have the heart of these stories. She realizes she has to use this "power" for good but not before she has so much fun wasting it.

I love Chiaki's reaction to finding out this git of a girl got hold of his power instead of someone evil, who could have done SO many things wrong with it.

3 Short Paragraphs: The Tunnel (Tunnelen)

 2019, Pål Øie (Hidden) -- download

Apparently Norwegian disaster movies are a thing now, well if three movies make a thing, and a coming fourth in The North Sea about a disaster on an oil drilling rig. I have seen The Wave and it's sequel, The Quake and I was kind of hoping this would be the third in a trilogy with poor Kristian Eikjord having yet another really bad day. Alas, its all new and not connected. This is also a more personal "disaster", the scale being localized to a single tunnel through a mountain, one of many that provide easier road travel in mountainous Norway. 

Also of note, this is not the 2016 Norwegian short film of the same name.

While everyone is hurrying to get home for the Xmas holidays, before a road closing snow storm moves in, a tanker truck full of petrol explodes in the tunnel. Primary rescue resources are cut off by an avalanche and the remaining crew , at the other end of the tunnel, has to make do with who and what they have. Stein (Thorbjørn Harr, The Last King) is a snowplow operator who used to be one of them, before losing his wife to cancer. His daughter's having trouble coping with Stein moving forward in his life (a new relationship) and was taking a bus to spend Xmas with her Grandmother in Oslo. The bus gets caught in the tunnel. 

Like many of these small scale disaster movies, it focuses on the smaller details that make up the event. Like the control room that monitors the kilometer long tunnel and has to make sense of the conditions as their equipment fails in the fire. Like the small rescue team that wants to do more, but knows the conditions are far too dangerous. Like the small groups of survivors desperate to get out of the tunnel before all air is lost to the billowing black smoke, many assuming rescue is coming as long as they wait patiently -- tragically, it is not. This movie is not about big explosions and massive body counts, but the small (relatively) tragedies and big challenges to individuals. Stein is our proxy, a stoic dedicated man who will do what he needs to in order to save his daughter, in this solid but not entirely enthralling movie. 

3 Short Paragraphs: Stowaway

 2021, Joe Penna (Arctic) -- Amazon

Space. The final frontier. Not really. Is it just me, or since Gravity was so well received, there have been many many more space movies? I see it as a conspiracy of the practical effects and props teams of the world, who get to make all those speculative-but-based-on-reality versions of space ships and space stations. So, the days of people running and hiding in completely-impractical hallways (ala Alien) are being supplanted to floating through tubes or walking short distances, to crouch down and climb through a hatch. Keeping current, Stowaway gives us the MTS-42, a ship of three on its way to Mars for a two year mission. And then they find an engineer hiding in the attic crawl space.

Once we dispense with the utter lunacy of the premise, that an aero-space engineer would somehow find himself jammed into a tight space during pre-launch, not be missed when he didn't come out, AND having caused catastrophic damage to an essential component, once we dispense with that, we are given a tense plot where the now-fourth crew member has to be integrated, while also dealing with the fact they need to share food and oxygen. Oh, and that essential component he was jammed in with? That was the CO2 scrubber, and its dead. And they only had one. I was a bit fuzzy on how they would run out of oxygen because the CO2 scrubber was dead. I was way more fuzzy on WHY THEY ONLY HAD ONE.

But the acting is great. This is about the emotions they feel weighing the reality of the situation against the humanity of it all. Toss him out the airlock would be the most expedient choice, but no. Each of the crew, Commander Barnett (Toni Collette, The Sixth Sense), Dr. Levenson (Anna Kendrick, Scott Pilgrim vs the World) and biologist David Kim (Daniel Day Kim, Star Trek: Enterprise) feel the impact of their altered trajectory deeply. Stowaway Adams (Shamier Anderson, Wynonna Earp) knows what has happened and does his best to integrate and help. So, they are all left with the hard decisions, but Levenson makes it clear they have to do everything they can to ALL survive. And they do, until it leads to some tragic circumstances, as we knew it would, because these movies always do. But...

SPOILER.

That's where the fucking movie ends! There is a tragedy, a lost cannister of oxygen, a collapse of biological backup O2 and a sacrifice by Levenson, as even with the remaining oxygen only three could survive, not four. And the movie ends. I was confused and flabbergasted, as in most movies, this would be the mid-point, where they lose a crew member and have to double-down on their efforts to not only survive but also make her sacrifice mean something -- complete the mission! Tensions would increase, something else would come close to going wrong, but eventually they would succeed! But nope, movie ends, sacrifice is tragic and we have no idea whether it helps in the long term. Like with Ad Astra or Midnight Sky, I get what they are going for here, but.... I don't buy in. Too much else is just cliché Hollywood story telling for us to get a twisty like that. Hrrmph.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

 2021, d. Kari Skogland - Disney+ (6 episodes)

 It's hard for me to see past my wife's uber-fandom for the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Captain America and Winter Soldier, to not see her unbridled enthusiasm for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as an endorsement of quality.  If she's enjoying it this much clearly there's something here.

Which is all to say I found The Falcon and the Winter Soldier ("TFatWS) hard to watch objectively with someone experiencing such joy beside me.  

The show opens with a big, bold, cinema-worthy action sequence, an incredibly well executed comination of stunt-coordination, green screen, and digital effects simulating aerial combat like we've literally never seen before.  But it's a solo mission for Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), and the titular team-up doesn't happen until episode 2 which just seems odd.

Episode 1, following its big set piece, is largely catching up with our two leads, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  The last MCU movie before The Pause was Spider-man: Far From Home which made some jokes about the people returning from "the snap" (in Avengers: Endgame) but it didn't really deal with it.  TFatWS was intended to be the first Disney+ MCU show/mini-series, but due to the impact of the coronavirus, it was leapfrogged by Wandavision which only briefly dealt with the return snap.  So after nearly a year an a half, it's TFatWS that picks up the thread, and builds its central conflict around it.

The adversary here is a collective called the Flag Smashers.  It's told that after half the Earth's population disappeared at the end of Avengers:Infinity War the world started coming together, slowly erasing its boundaries and its prejudices, really fulfilling the vision Thanos set our for it.  In returning everyone five years later, there is a lot of disarray.  People had moved on, new lives started, new agreements and treaties and borders made.  Many returning from the snap are basically refugees, the life that they knew gone.  Likewise many of the people who had forged new lives in new lands are displaced by those returning to properties still theirs, complex decisions about re-appropriation made.  The Flag Smashers are watching a world in pain trying to return to the mess it was before the snap, and they want the world to be as one, to erase all borders and to give everyone a home wherever they would like to have it.  It's idealistic, but the film undercuts the idealism with increasingly extreme acts of terrorism.

This subject alone would be a lot for our two protagonists to ponder and chew on for five hours, but this isn't a political drama, it's a comic-book action-adventure show, so this whole plight becomes set-dressing and character motivation while a half dozen other elements drag Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) around the globe.

Sam has a return to his home and family in Louisiana, where he wants to swoop in and play the hero rescuing the family fishing business, but finds the limitations of his celebrity don't extend to banks where the racism is clouded as "risk-aversion".  Despite having been snapped out of existence for 5 years, the show doesn't really show much of the impact on Sam, except a nagging need to fix everything. On top of that Endgame left Sam in the position of taking the mantle of Captain America, with Steve Rogers passing down the shield.  It's a heavy responsibility, both living up to the legacy of an idol, and in being a living representation of a country, a country that has an ugly history in its treatment of its Black citizens.  Sam gives up the shield to the Smithsonian for a Captain America exhibit, not ready to take on the weight of it all.

Bucky, meanwhile, is over 100 years old at this point, having lived much of his life cryogenically frozen, so his memories of existing all have dramatic gaps in time.  Being blinked out of existence for 5 years is par for the course for him.  Outside of his frozen dreams, much of his life was as a brainwashed puppet, a killing machine that caused a lot of damage in that controlled state, all of which he remembers, and it haunts him.  He was trapped inside his own body, with no control.  To top it off, his only connection to the past, the only happy life he's had, Steve Rogers, left him behind (again), leaving him alone in a strange time where he doesn't feel he belongs at all.

Here are two characters who are well built to approach the modern world and the chaos that plagues it, each with very clear and differing perspectives on what it means to them.  As well both are veterans of multiple wars, which, along with being friends with Steve, connects them as people.  But previous films established that they have a very antagonistic relationship.  Bucky perhaps a little resentful of Sam as Captain America's most trusted ally and Sam perhaps a little wary of this killing machine he's faced in action more than once.  There's more than enough here for a whole show to be built around, but again, that would insinuate that this superhero action show was ready to just delve into the drama of its world and people, but it's not.

It also introduces John Walker (Wyatt Russell), a well-decorated soldier, as the new, government sponsored, Captain America... complete with Steve's shield, which the government considers their property (so many want to stake their claim to that thing).  It's Walker's very public debut that brings Sam and Bucky together, if at first just for an airing of grievances.  But the Flag Smashers demand their attention, and they partner up.  Walker and his partner Lemar Hoskins, aka Battlestar (Cle Bennett) are also sent out on the trail of the Flag Smashers, so doubtlessly paths collide.  That Walker is potentially unstable, suffering from severe PTSD and an almost crippling inferiority complex, further complicates matters.  (Walker does something particularly heinous late in the series that he just sort of walks away from which the show really needed to deal with more, but there's just not enough time to do so).

Again, the complexities start to abound, as it becomes clearer that Walker perhaps isn't entirely stable, and that the Flag Smasher are somehow enhanced with the super-soldier serum.  As was warned in Captain America: Civil War one super soldier like Bucky can upset the status quo, a small army of them could take over the world. 

That warning came from Helmut Zemo (Daniel Bruhl) who is kind of shoehorned into the proceedings, as a worryingly enthusiastic ally to Sam and Bucky.  Bruhl kind of takes over the show for two episodes, stealing every scene he's in, which makes for very delightful viewing but pushes its two leads to the side in an already complex story.

In freeing Zemo - if you recall he was responsible for the death of King T'Chaka in Civil War - this brings the Dora Milaje to shadow them, specifically Ayo (Florence Kasumba) who had become close with Bucky when he stayed in Wakanda for de-programming.

Further adding to the mix a returning Sharon Carter (Emily Van Camp) who was last seen helping them and Steve out in Winter Soldier to the detriment of her own carreer, and suddenly there's yet another character vying for attention in an already cramped mini series (plus a very, very distracting "mystery" in "who is the Power Broker?" that proved a quite unsatisfying bit of fan service/comic book easter-egging)

But we're not done.  Sam is introduced by Bucky to the Captain America of the 1950's, Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), one of many Black soldiers who was experimented on with another super soldier serum. Bradley had his life stolen from him, and finds no sympathy from him in his regret of giving up the shield.  Bradley's story, a parallel to the real world Tuskegee Experiments, has real weight in the story but still can't help but only be the brightest fish in a very crowded pond.  I was hoping for at least a flash back set piece of Bucky (as Winter Soldier) meeting a younger Bradley in battle (but I suppose the show wanted to wait for Mackie's inevitable reveal as the first time we see a Black man as Captain America).

The divergences all have a flow to them (except maybe the sudden introduction of Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a mysterious, Nick Fury-esque contessa who enlists Walker into her service...it's a real show stopper, though not unwelcome) that gives them a reason to exist in the story, but it makes the whole mini-series overly complicated.  In a shared universe of comics, this depth of crossing-over and calling-back is the norm, but because the characters live across titles and years, it's easier to accept them in a larger story arc.  In the limited realm of cinema for over a decade there's only been a limited amount of space to develop some of these characters, which means there's more of a burden on a series like this to spend much of its time on further developing these otherwise limited characters.  

Again, it all works in its own way, but it detracts from ostensibly the leads of the show, the two characters with their names above the title.  They introduce a lot in the first three episodes of the show, and the worry was constantly that it wasn't going to pull together.  They keep introducing more in the latter three episodes, but mercifully things do start tying together, just not as satisfying or as neatly as I had hoped.  It's very possible that the sudden limitations because of COVID-19 meant that aspects of the show and its story's conclusion had to be redrafted to accommodate travel restrictions and protective measures.

Wandavision was pretty laser-focused, with Wanda and Vision as its center.  The world building (and its utilization of supporting MCU cast like Darcy, Jimmy Woo and Monica Rambeau) likewise proved a bit distracting and didn't have the meaningful impact to the events that maybe they should.  The same thing happens here except to a much greater degree where all this universe build-out just means Sam and Bucky are often lost as the centers of the show.  In comparing to Wandavision, that show also didn't have the same reliance/burden of the past. So much of TFatWS demands that you be brushed up on your MCU Captain America and Avengers history.  These things are just part of the fabric in my household, but I could see more casual viewers being a little lost by this show constantly referencing past events as major story plots.  It's certainly very comic-booky in this fashion, both to its credit and detriment.

But even with the focus often pulled away, Mackie is still the undeniable lead, even above Stan. Though clearly a man of action, Sam has no superpowers and knows his greatest weapon is his empathy.  He doesn't just resort to his fists or his wings or his weapons, they're a last resort when words don't have their desired intent.  Even Steve Rogers, who people always seemed ready and willing to rally behind, wasn't nearly as dynamic in his speechifying as Sam, but it also goes to show what kind of man Sam is, and what differentiates him from other heroes, particularly the Captain(s) America that came before him.  By episode six of the show, Sam's exploration of race, citizenship, legacy and identity earn him the title of Captain America, and he owns it.  Similarly, Mackie builds the confidence along the way from being a right hand man in the MCU to being not just a viable, but necessary lead.  I have no idea what a Mackie-led Captain America movie would be but I'm eager to find out, because the there are so many possibilities.

Where Stan and the Winter Soldier wind up after this, it's hard to say.  It seems like Bucky, in the end, is trying to find a sense of peace, so if we never see him again that seems okay (but now that we've finally come to know him as a character it's a sad thought).  If a second "Captain America and the Winter Soldier" mini-series were to come, I would certainly welcome it.  I just hope it will be a little more focused.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

 2012, d. Benh Zeitlin - Crave

A place called "the Bathtub", a sinking island off the coast of New Orleans. The culture there is one of community, self-sustaining, and utilizing the discards of the mainland in creative ways. They teach the ways of their land from one generation to the next, whether it's catfishing by hand or what mix of herbs to help an ailment. To outsiders their little slice of life might seem like the direst poverty, but to them it's the only way, and there's little worthwhile in the outside world, though they're painfully aware of its existence. 

The culture is painted with its own history, its own stories, its own sensibilities, which gives it such a distinct tangibility that one would mistake it for a fictionalized version of a real place, but it's all a fantasy... which in a weird way makes it one of the great fantasies put to film, and yet one cannot help but think that this is an uncomfortable glorification of poverty.

After a great flooding of the Bathtub, our protagonist, her father and what remains of her people are wrangled up and taken to a temporary evacuee shelter, where they're given clothes, food and medical attention, force upon them against their will. The severity of it recalls E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, where the people charged with generally caring for these people as a whole are villified...somewhat. There's definitely allegories at play (think of "for the greater good" policies inflicted upon indigenous populations all over the world) and yet is living unbathed in filthy squalor something we should be celebrating and championing Hushpuppy, our 6-year-old hero played by the captivating Quvenzhané Wallis, to return to?

It's a complex subtext to wade through. The traditions and the pride in community are enviable to the utmost degree, but the routine drunken nights, the squalid 3rd-world living conditions, the floating whorehouse with a heart of gold ten miles off the coast (where perhaps our hero's estranged mother works)... this isn't a healthy ecosystem. As a routine the Bathtub teeters on the brink of life and death and yet it's denizens seem more than content with it. But is it choice, or lack of choices that keep them there?

Fascinating movie especially after recently watching Nomadland which also has a complicated narrative with America poverty, and the "choice" of poverty as a liberating value.

[Toasty's take]

Double Dose...of Dornan

(Double Dose is two films from the same director, writer or star...pretty simple.  Today: two films co-starring Jamie Dornan)

Synchronic - 2019, d. Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead - Netflix
Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar - 2021, d. Josh Greenbaum - Crave

Let's talk, very briefly, about Jamie Dornan.  Up until I put on Synchronic I didn't quite know who Jamie Dornan was.  Honestly, I thought he was an actor from Game of Thrones but I couldn't place which character he was.  My wife, the GoT expert had to set me straight that he was not in the show...and wasn't he the 50 Shades of Gray guy? 

Yeah, that's him.

Like an older Robert Pattinson, Dornan's big break was as the lead male love interest in the most egregious of housefrau book-to-film adaptations, the type of film that actively rebuffs any sort of hetero male or critical viewing.  The type of film we look down upon the stars of for nothing else but association with the property what deigns to have a rabid fanbase of female followers.  The type of film that said stars have to crawl out from under the weight of.  It took Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson years to get out from under the Twilight shadow.  Dornan's 50 Shades co-star Dakota Johnson has had a bit of an easier time escaping the series, but the perception of Dornan seemed to relegate him to second-string man-candy, and the generic black-haired handsomeness that likely gets him confused for Sebastian Stan, Kit Harrington or Richard Madden by the populace at large.

Synchronic was never going to be the breakout movie for him.  He, alongside Anthony Mackie, lend the film some low-wattage star-power that gives its two directors, indie genre darlings (and Toast&Kent favourites) Benson and Moorehead, a bit brighter of a spotlight.  

Mackie is the focal figure here, a New Orleans paramedic with a brain tumor who becomes very intent on figuring out the strange deaths he's encountering throughout town.  Dornan is his paramedic partner, his best friend.  Where Mackie is terminally single, Dornan feels bogged down in his marriage and being father to a once-suicidal teenage daughter.  He's envious of Mackie's freedoms, but doesn't see the loneliness that Mackie bravely smiles through, weary of the one night stands.  They both look at each other with the view that the grass is greener on the other side.

The strange deaths seemed to be linked to the drug "synchronic", but it doesn't explain the weird, anachronisms that surround the bodies, like sword wounds and venomous snake bites.  Mackie tracks down the source of the drug and buys out the supply, and has a weird encounter with its creator who explains how it allows the user to time travel for a short period of time, but only younger users whose pineal glands are less calcified than a normal adult (as a result of his tumor, so is Mackie's).

When Dornan's daughter goes missing after taking the drug, Mackie starts experimenting with Synchronic, to learn how it works, and how he can possibly return her home.

Like Toasty , I think a lot of Benson and Moorehead, and their thoughtful, creative and playful endeavors into sci-fi via left-field approaches. Their prior features The Endless and Resolution are part of the same reality and play with time in complimentary ways while remaining independent films.  They have greater plans to explore that universe, and I had hoped, knowing that time travel was part of Synchronic that this film would further expand that world. 

Such is not the case, which is not to say that's what disappoints me about the film.  To be clear, I liked it, I enjoyed viewing it, I was happy I watched it, but I was disappointed, mainly in how the story broke down.

With the mystery of the weird deaths as a result of the drug, I was expecting an atypical detective procedural where Mackie, and maybe Dornan along with him, would start piecing together the mystery and discover the bigger scale time travel reveal.  But when Dornan's daughter goes missing towards the end of the second act, the film fractures, and Mackie is on his own in his experiments, while Dornan (and Katie Astleton [Legion, The League] playing his wife) sees his marriage disintegrating before his eyes.  

The story doesn't know exactly what it wants to do with these disparate elements.  Benson and Moorehead really like the grounding of characters and placing their woes and relationships at the forefront while the weirdness of their reality creeps further and further in until it can't be ignored.  It's a good formula, but in severing Mackie and Dornan it creates multiple streams, one kind of awe-inspiring, the other uncomfortably mundane, that don't compliment each other well.  It's to the point that you almost don't need Dornan in the film at all, that Mackie, facing death anyway, could have gone on a solo detective adventure through the whole film, then help rescue just a random girl who disappeared.

It's a film that keeps Mackie in the spotlight and tries to give Dornan something beefy for his character, but Dornan still seems shunted to the background, and he doesn't pop much at all beyond a supporting player.

It would take something very bold, very bizarre to make this handsome, raven-haired Irishman to really pop off the screen (besides his handsomeness and Marvel-esque physique).

I didn't even know he was in Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar when I put the film on.  Honestly, I didn't even know what Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar was when I put it on, except the latest Kristen Wiig-starring vehicle which she co-wrote with co-star Annie Mumolo (her real life BFF and co-writer on Bridesmaids).  In the wake of The Pause, a LOT of films were shunted on to Video-On-Demand or streaming services with little advertising or fanfare.  Barb and Star was one of those.

The most I knew of Barb and Star... was the promotional poster images, the bright Floridian inspired pastels that seem...I dunno, like Postcards from the Edge: Redux.  It wasn't inspiring me to watch, or even seek out more information.  It just said "comedy...for your parents."

The thing I forget is, I'm now a parent, and the comedy that's made for me is, well, often made for me.  But all too often comedy features are just bland, for-the-masses-but-for-noone comedy (like 75% of Melissa McCarthy's or Jason Bateman's individual outputs [and 100% of their together-output]).  I was lumping Barb and Star... into that tired "for the masses" group.  Even loving Bridesmaids and knowing that Wiig's sensibilities of comedy aren't really that mainstream, I couldn't even bother to watch a trailer.

It was a podcast recommendation that got me to put the film on... and all the person said was that they were watching Barb and Star... again and their cohosts seconded how great an idea it was.  I still knew nothing about the film, except that one group of reviewers seemed to think that this was a film worth watching repeatedly.

Well, I've watched it twice now in the span of a week, and I may watch it again very soon.  Wiig is great, playing dual roles (we'll get to that), Mumolo who I don't know if I've ever seen (or at least noticed her) on screen is fabulous, and, oh, Jamie Dornan steals the whole goddamn thing out from under them.  Yes, that Jamie Dornan.  He's the goddamn highlight of the movie and the most central part of what will bring me back to the film.

But what is this film?

Let me explain the opening sequence.  A young Asian-American boy rides his bicycle delivering newspapers, headphones on, singing emphatically along to the Barbara Streisand/Barry Gibb duet Guilty.  The production of this opening sequence is phenomenal, with Greenbaum creating a grandiose sense of scope providing overhead shots of the bike riding down the center of the street, and the boy's very casual distribution of the newspapers until he stops dead in front of one house, his last paper to deliver, the music cutting out, and an ominous moment of score subbing in.  From the POV of the house the newspaper hits the porch with a thud.  We cut back to the boy, who gives a menacing look, and without changing expression, busts back into "Guilty" and the music kicks back in over him and his emphatic expressions return.  

It's a brilliantly crafted opening that upends every expectation I had going into this film (and I honestly had no expectations).  But what was that all about?  Why the sinister moment?  What the actual eff....?

Moments later the boy is biking out of civilization, stops in front of a tree, is scanned by a robotic owl perched on a branch, and the tree opens to reveal an elevator.  It descends into the secret lair of Sharon Fisherman, a strikingly pale albino woman, with a severe jet black wig and a gap in her front teeth. Is that... Tilda Swinton?  Nope, it's Kristen Wiig basically made up to look Swinton-esque.  She's basically a Bond villain who is crafting a plan of revenge involving killer mosquitos.  The boy, Yoyo (Reyn Doi), is adopted/abducted child/protege while the doe-eyed, doting handsome Edgar (Dornan) is her loyal lackey whom she has wrapped around her finger.  She is sending him to Vista Del Mar to enact a revenge plot against the town that abused her as a teen.

Yeah, this is where the movie starts.

It's a good 10 minutes before we meet the titular Barb and Star, sitting on the couch having an old fashioned mid-western gab session, speaking a mile a minute, occasionally pausing to enjoy the rhythms of Shania Twain's "Man! I Feel Like A Woman" and drink their tea.  We catch a glimpse into their lives, their history, their personalities in this introduction, it's everything we need to know. These women are best friends, with shared losses (one is widowed, the other divorced).  They work and live together, and are basically inseparable.  They're so of the same mind that they continue each others run-on sentences.  But that means that when their lives are uprooted suddenly that they dare to do something wild, like go visit the middle-age paradise of Vista Del Mar ("View of the mar"/"View of the swordfish" they say in tandem).

Arriving in Florida and their hotel, they are greeted by a grandiose musical song-and-dance number.  It's that kind of movie.  They are like kids in a candy store, just awed by everything without any sense of where to start.  They want to do it all.  In the evening at the bar (with arch piano accompaniment from famed comedic lounge act Richard Cheese) they meet a lovelorn Edgar and they hit it off, and the night.gets.weird.

The next day, Edgar makes his walk of shame only to discover he's accidentally botched his mission, while the two once-inseparable women start talking deceit so they can go see Edgar independently.  From there Star learns that she can be loved even as a divorcee, Barb learns to embrace her independence, and Edgar learns that relationships don't need to be toxic.  Even Sharon Fisherman learns that, if she lets go of her bitterness, she can find acceptance.  But it's a radically goofy ride along the way.

Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar is just utter bananas.  Every scene is completely unexpected and the laughs are so unique, most of which is derived from this veritable swarm of delightful characters crafted in this film.  Barb and Star are indeed so alike and yet Wiig and Mumalo still manage to give them distinguishing characteristics and personalities.  

Dornan's boy-in-puppy-love routine is endlessly hilarious, even if it hits its goofiest heights in his adorably literal rock-ballad musical-number "Edgar's Prayer" early in the film.  It's the shot in the face that the dull but handsome rich man of 50 Shades... needed.  It takes that image and twists and twists and twists until its unrecognizeable, and Dornan is so earnestly game, but also completely capable comedically. 

This is a big, friendly cartoon of a movie.  There's nothing threatening here (except the hilarious Vanessa Bayer as the sole perpetrator of the famous midwestern passive-aggresive pleasantness in the role of grand diva of Talking Club), and it doesn't punch down on anyone which is why it works so well.  It could easily be taking a chunk out of midwestern women, or Floridians, or that guy who is always walking around in his yellow speedo, but it embraces them all for their own quirky weirdness.  It's a film that accepts everyone.  Everyone except Gail, who arrived just after 6:00 and is therefore not welcome to Talking Club - nor a bowl of hot dog soup - this day.