3 Short Paragraphs: Black Friday

2021, Casey Tebo (Happy Birthday) -- download

I must have downloaded this around Xmas time as an alternate pseudo-Xmas seasonal flick with curiosity on how they were going to blatantly rip off Bruce Campbell's Evil Dead style monsters, while also having Bruce Campbell star. Did it look terrible? Oh gawds, incredibly so. But remember, so did James Gunn's Slither and that still remains one of my favourite schlock creature features. Both begin their rampage via a meteor crashing to Earth infecting some hapless bystander, but alas this one lacks the guts to think outside the gift box.

So, yeah, alien symbiote thing from a meteor infects some shoppers and staff during the Black Friday weekend, at a parking lot big box store called We Love Toys. The thinly veiled metaphor of violent zombie shoppers on America's largest shopping day is there, of course but the meat of the movie is in the defending min wage workers fighting for their own survival, and only somewhat for their job's survival. The team forced to work this weekend is "led" by Ken (Devon Sawa, Nikita), the divorced dad who thinks his "why work?" attitude makes him cool, but is really self-deluding, including believing he has a chance beyond bored flirtation with the much younger Marnie (Ivana Baquero, holy crap its the little girl from Pan's Labyrinth) and managed by lifer manager Mr. Wexler (an almost entirely wasted [not drunk; opportunity] Bruce Campbell, Bubba Ho-Tep) along with a bevy of bored, not-really-having-any-choices-in-life retail wage slaves.

Zombie shoppers begin morphing into aliens, via the weird pink (yeah THAT pink shade) light at the centre of the store, monsters that go one step further (again, ala Slither) by combining into a giant, single kaiju entity. I wish there was more to say about the plot, but there isn't, and while its not entirely z-grade, as it doesn't try too hard to take itself seriously, its not going to lead to the director being the creator of some of the most creative movies & TV in a decade.

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching: A Long Long Look Back, Pt. B - Gems

 I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(!) or Toasty attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  Ottawa Freedom Convoy bad.

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me spending too much time in front of the TV. But what else was the last few years about? Sure, we got a few breaks from being confined at home, and might have actually gone outside (gasp!) and socialized with (double-gasp!) human beings (faint-dead-away) but we always ended up back on the sofa, flicker in hand, trying to find something to watch amidst the 35 shows we downloaded, and the 5 or so streaming services we are subscribed to.

Part A is here. 

When I talk about my streaming services, I always refer to the ones I pay for, like Netflix or Disney+ or Amazon Prime Video. And on occasion, one of the Amazon add-on's like StackTV -- I will get to that utter loathing another day. But SmartTVs give you apps, and some apps let you watch stuff for free, like Tubi or CBC Gem. Sure, they have limited choices and usually add in ads, but you can find some *ahem* gems in there, to watch.

Coroner, 2019 - 2022, Netflix/CBC

One of the WFH days, I was looking for something I could watch without Marmy, something I could start and stop and not worry about. Click click Crime TV ! I was caught up on the FBIs and waiting their return, so I started the Toronto-situated Coroner, based on the Jenny Cooper books out of the UK. Cooper (Serinda Swan, Inhumans) is the titular coroner for the GTA, who returns to work after her husband unexpectedly died. The show has her dealing with his loss, as well as the legacy of her sister's death when they were kids, and how they both contribute to how she handles cases, for if she didn't get personally involved in each and every death, we wouldn't have a show.

The death of the week was always fascinating from viewing the morphed geography and culture of Toronto (e.g. one of the episodes is about the owner of my fav Dumpling House on Spadina being murdered, and its relation to Chinatown being gentrified), but what really caught my attention were the creative choices the show made. I caught myself constantly saying out loud, usually to Marmy in the kitchen, "Wow, I love the direction that just took. In an American version of this, it would have..." The two main characters, Jenny the coroner, and Detective McAvoy (Roger Cross, Eureka) become close, but the two never become a couple; in fact, the show makes definite choices in the first two seasons to show how strong their friendship grows, as just friends. The police always focus on disarming situations and gun play is limited. The diversity in Toronto, and the still existing constant challenges, is at the forefront.

The show also tackles current affairs rather well, from the realization that the previous coroner was regularly cutting corners, putting the rulings on many cases into question, to the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The latter is rather curtailed, thankfully so, as it arose during the pandemic fatigue stage, but the episode on Jenny bagging bodies in long term care homes is heart breaking, more than news exposure ever could reveal. 

Alas, the show seemed to lose its way after a couple of seasons. Its that typical desire to constantly repeat the key tropes that make the first season popular: Jenny dealing with the loss of her husband (they kill off her new boyfriend), Jenny being haunted by her sister's death (panic attacks and hallucinations), Jenny dealing with challenges of work (Jenny returns from leave to find another coroner strong arming the office). I prefer to let shows evolve, not always having to return to the beats that make the first few seasons popular.

The Great British Bake Off / The Great British Baking Show, 2010 - current, CBC Gem

And then there is a format that they can repeat over and over for more than a decade and I love it over and over and over. 

We have been watching the show here and there, when it pops on, from PBS to CBC, but never putting any concerted effort into watching. That is, until we found it on CBC Gem. More accurately, Marmy found it, and began binging, and it was on every time I walked into the TV room. For weeks, I would saunter in, get caught up filling in the gaps for my favourite seasons and favourite home bakers, even seeing most of a season I had never caught at all before. And every single time, I was provide the urge to try baking that, and this, and that and that and THAT !

I didn't bake a single thing in response.

For those who don't know, Bake Off (called Baking Show in North America because of copywrite issues) is a British series created by (more than a little pompous) bread baker Paul Hollywood and legendary baker Mary Berry. Each season, a group of home bakers are presented a bunch of challenges to bake/cook, most often having a chance to practice at home, but also provide surprise "technical challenges" that are supposed to stretch their skills to the limits, providing limited instructions and ingredients. Every challenge is judged on appearance, taste and the adherence to the heart of the recipe. Along with the judges, we get a couple of hosts who walk the bakers through the stages, and provide colour commentary. As episodes end, some people are sent home, and the season ends with a winner chosen from a final three.

Most of the styles of baking are traditional British and French baking staples, with some classics from the past reaching in, as well as the occasional nearby European classic item. But as seasons progressed, other things started creeping in, and even on occasion, popping in a North American style baked good. Never was I more aware of the difference between North America and baking across the pond than I was when Paul judged cookies/biscuits.

Along with seeing all the delicious food, you also cannot help but find favourite bakers each season. And unlike American style competition shows, you might get annoyed by the occasional baker drama antics, but you are never expected to dislike anyone. This show is not about Good Guy vs Bad Guy or manufactured upset. This is about good baking and people doing something they love to do. Some of my favourites were Rahul, though his lack of self confidence became tiring when binging the season, the Ruby's and whatever endearing grandmother showed up for the season. To be honest, its hard to choose "favs" as it was all about the moments.

And the hosts. Originally comic duo Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc, they went through a few changes, including my favorite seasons with Noel Fielding and Sandy Toksvig. Paul was always presented as a stodgy, unforgiving baker short on his compliments and strict on his expectations. The comic hosts surprisingly had great leeway to play with his cranky character creating some rather surreal and down right weird cut scenes. But despite Paul's grumpy nature, every single contestant sought out the signature Paul Hollywood Handshake, that identified exactly how impressed he was with a baked good.

And now I want to go bake a cake. But I probably won't.

3 Short Paragraphs: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

2021, Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down) -- download

Movies from video games get a bad rap and most warrant it. They are either bare bones adaptations banking only on the game's name (I am looking at you, Doom) or take such liberties with the franchise, they become their own thing. This adaptation of the popular horror video game series tries to remedy what was already done (subjectively, badly; ala Milla J) by being closer to the core of the game. From what I recall, from my Playstation 1 days of turning on all the lights in the apartment and pulling my toes up off the floor, the game was meant to be fucking creepy and unnerving, but also full of gorey, nasty Japanese style body-horror monsters. This adaptation draws in much more of the feel of the game, and the characters, but really just ends up being an incredibly lackadaisical creature feature. While you can play lots of "oh, that's in the game!" I don't think fans will be satisfied.

So, evil Umbrella Corporation basically owns a town in... the Pacific Northwest? Its the 80s, Claire Redfield and her brother Chris are in the corporate orphanage. Just as she being taken away for experimentation by the Evil Doctor she escapes. Years later, the 90s, she is returning home but unbeknownst, something has escaped from the Umbrella labs, and before Claire can finish her strained reunion with her brother, the town is locked down. Meanwhile Evil Doctor is trying to ferret his own family out of town before his own bosses lock everything down, or do worse. There are overt hints that Umbrella has been using the town as an experiment, which proves true as the people begin converting into zombie-like horror shows. Meanwhile a bunch of named characters from the games played by Canadian staple actors either go investigating scary things happening in an old house, or try to defend the town police station from the growing horde outside. Things go bad for everyone, including Evil Doctor who in turn infects himself with whatever experimental drug he has been working on for decades, converting himself into a monster full of eyes and giant features and eyes. And eyes. Most characters, named or otherwise, die and a few escape before the town is pseudo-nuked. Insert nod to a possible sequel scene.

If the recap is uninspired and boring, its because the movie was. Doing a faithful adaptation of all the beats and aspects of a video game does not make for a  good movie. There are hints in this movie of something decent that could have been created if it wasn't trying to jam in all the "faithful" elements. The individual parts were decently done, mostly, but as a contiguous whole, it was just terrible. Sure, the Paul WS Anderson / Milla J ones were as well, but they were a terrible monster-combat romp with a kitschy sense of style, that I have watched multiple times. Beyond core fans of the original games gleefully pointing out not-easter-eggs (an egg is usually hidden, not overt) from the games, nobody is going to enjoy this more than one tired attempt.

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching: A Long Long Look Back, Pt. A - OK, Not So Long Back

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(!) or Toasty attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  Ottawa Freedom Convoy bad.

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me spending too much time in front of the TV. But what else was the last few years about? Sure, we got a few breaks from being confined at home, and might have actually gone outside (gasp!) and socialized with (double-gasp!) human beings (faint-dead-away) but we always ended up back on the sofa, flicker in hand, trying to find something to watch amidst the 35 shows we downloaded, and the 5 or so streaming services we are subscribed to.

Ahem. I exclaimed to Kent the other day that I had abandoned writing about TV, in order to actually have some handle on writing about movies. With a simple, "Aww I like your What I Am Watching parts A through X posts," I suddenly felt validated (yes, it doesn't take much) and here we are.

On that note, I will be doing my best to go backwards, back to the date of the last time I wrote something with the watching tag. I will miss some, but I will get to most. And considering the volume, I will likely try to write very little about each, just to give a sense of how much I actually waste in front of the TV.

Peacemaker, 2022, HBO Max -- download

Of course, we start with Peacemaker. I did threaten to basically say, "Just go read Kent's post," as we pretty much agree on every single thing he said.

For those not in the know, or didn't already read the aforementioned post, Peacemaker is a spin-off series from James Gunn's Suicide Squad movie. He takes one of the characters, an ultra-violent, sociopathic "hero" who believes in peace at any cost. He will kill any man, woman or child who gets in his way. The series picks up after he has killed a Good Man and suffered a near fatal wound. After months in a coma, he is once again recruited by Amanda Waller, to do what he does best.

I too was hesitant in my expectations -- the character was a walking, talking asshole without a redeeming quality to his name, and the funny-asshole idea would get tired pretty quickly. I was wrong. This was Gunn, and he far, FAR exceeded my expectations, not only with what he could do with this character, but what he could do with another ensemble cast and full eight episodes. This is likely going to be my favourite thing of the year.

But about the music. It sucked. No, I don't mean that the music wasn't precisely used, didn't fit the tone of the show perfectly and was (on occasion) catchy AF. But ohmigawd, I hated it. From the European hair metal bands that my coworker was crazy excited to hear, as he knew every single band mentioned, to the retro shit from my high school days that I am rather embarrassed to say I listened to back then, having been the D&D nerd who hung with the metal-heads. But they were like Xmas carols at Xmas time, when you are walking through the mall or baking gingerbread cookies -- totally appropriate for the moment.

And, of course, I did exactly what Gunn wanted, and watched each and every opening with a sense of glee, finding every growing amusement when I caught that every main character had a bit in that dance number, even before they appeared in the show.

Again, go read Kent's post.

Reacher, 2022, Amazon Prime Video

Speaking of violent assholes with their own warped sense of justice, we pretty much binge watched Reacher. I was actually a fan of the first Tom Cruise movie, but for the rather cliché ending, right down to a fight in a construction site. The second movie was a toss-away enough that I don't recall much of it. The series adopts the first Lee Child novel The Killing Floor. Child wrote the series in conflict with your standard noir/crime/detective style in that he is not an alcoholic, not a broken man, down on his luck, just barely scraping by. Reacher is a clear headed, confident, brick-shithouse of a man, a massive ex-military type who chooses to be a drifter, chooses to step aside from modern life. The series sets him up as he was in the books, not the lithe, compact Tom Cruise depiction, and Alan Ritchson (Titans) is a perfect choice.

IRL, I would hate the kind of man Jack Reacher is. In our polarized world, we can easily see him having strong opinions on gun advocacy and government oversight, opinions I would probably dislike. Then again, in the topsy turvy way of looking at things right now, real life is more polarized, allowing for fictional characters to be more... grey. Anywayz, Reacher is the kind of guy who likes big guns, and has no qualms against killing as many of the Bad Guys as he can, before they cause more harm, even going so far as to shoot them in the back. He's less the LG Paladin hero, and more the Chaotic Good Ronin ready to do what needs to be done.

Plot-wise, Reach arrives in the small town of Margrave, Georgia and is about to eat a lovely piece of peach pie, when he is promptly arrested by a flurry of sheriffs and deputies. There has been a murder in this quiet town and who else could it be, but the hulking, intimidating stranger. Of course, it wasn't him, and despite the evidence to the contrary (footage of him getting on a bus at the time of the murder), he is still sent to the holding prison, wherein he is misplaced into general population and almost immediately tagged to be murdered. This kicks off a LOT of violence and death and corruption and a deep conspiracy that involves pretty much every official in town. It only ends after Reacher and friends essentially kill everyone involved.

The plot is pretty typical crime TV, but the way the three main characters are handled is what kept our attention. Oscar Finlay (Malcom Goodwin, iZombie) is the Boston detective, a fuddy duddy in tweed who came to Margrave to disappear, but nobody likes him. His deputy is Roscoe Conklin (Willa Fitzgerald, Scream), a stalwart, upstanding citizen who never needs Reacher to save her, despite his numerous attempts. Together, the three batter away at a conspiracy that most of the town would rather ignore, as it has funded their dying little community for years. But bad guys need killing, so they get to it.

So, yeah much of the show is about the violence required to move the plot forward, but the interaction between the characters, the banter and the straight forward, admirable if oft an asshole way, Ritchson plays Reacher is the charm of the show. He is not a big dumb brute, but he can be brutal, and brilliant, when required.

The Watch, 2021, Amazon Prime Video

The trouble with having chosen to go down this "write about TV" path is that I have to actually remind myself what shows I have started (and abandoned), are currently watching, and which series I recently completed. Yes, we watch enough for me to forget how much. We recently binged through the final third of this series, even after being rather "meh" about the first few episodes. Admittedly, I am rather "meh" about Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. I have tried to like it a few times, but it never clicked. I also admit, the D&D snob in me generally doesn't like mixed genre fantasy or fantasy/comedy. The greatest thing that stops me from watching D&D livestreams, or listening to all the D&D live-play podcasts is that they are all dominated by comedy. Sure, my own games always had a dose of funny in them, but it annoys me to no end when everything has to be funny. Pratchett was, at least, doing straight parody, so I forgive him.

Anywayz, Discworld was a genre mashup of modern tropes, fantasy world tropes and social commentary. In the large fantasy city of Ankh-Morpork there exists the City Watch, or The Watch. Hinging on the D&D trope of the city watch doing the policing, The Watch is the defacto police force (badges, station house, etc.), but unfortunately, also in a city where most crimes are legally allowed to happen. The Thieves Guild is allowed to steal, as long as they leave a receipt, and the Assassins Guild can kill who they are  contracted to kill. That, along with all the political machinations leaves the Watch pretty much in a farcical existence. Leading them is chief farce, Sam Vines (Richard Dormer, Fortitude) a drunken weirdo, who is obsessed with arresting a cute puppy who constantly pisses on him. He has a partner who is a troll (think Korg from Thor:Ragnarok), and a werewolf, a human raised by dwarves and transgender forensics officer. The latter was originally written as a dwarf dealing with challenging gender identity issues, but they have dispensed with the species for a character with more familiar identity challenges.

There is a LOT to unpack for the plot of this show, as it is convoluted and filled with tons of Discworld background material, but suffice it to say Vines and crew are investigating someone from his past, and his connection to a large, shadowy dragon that keeps on attacking the city. Along the way we explore the city's use of magic, punk music, nobility, the social progression of goblins, Death's obsession with being appreciated, and much much more. Its wacky and weird in a Who-vian style but once I got over myself, I enjoyed it more. And Dormer's over the top portrayal of Vines is just begging for him to appear in another Pirates of the Carribean flick.

We Need To Talk About Cosby

2022, d. W. Kamau Bell - Showtime

In 2014, comedian Hannibal Buress was performing on stage in Philadelphia, and started joking/shit talking Bill Cosby, calling him out both for his grumpy old man antics of patronising black youth, and for being a rapist.  The former critique had been levied against Cosby by many for his then decade long crusade at critiquing segments of black culture with a sanctimoniousness and piousness that he felt he'd earned because he was rich, famous and successful at being a comedian.  The latter accusation was not new, but it was a perfect storm of social media relevance that the unauthorized phone-cam recording of Buress' routine exploded all over the internet and mainstream news.  

Survivors of Cosby's druggings and sexual assaults started coming forward, it seemed like every week for a year there was another.  With the first half dozen it was already hard to ignore the truth. Once the testimonials reached over 60, it was impossible to deny (for most people).  Cosby is a rapist.

Like pretty much every North American Gen-Xer, I grew up on Cosby.  The Cosby Show was as formative to my childhoold as Star Wars, DC Comics and He-Man.  Cosby for nearly a decade was called "America's dad", and I think the Huxtable family was the most idyllic family on TV, back when there was such a thing as an idyllic family.  Cosby was one of the first stand-ups I had seen, and his book "Fatherhood" was one of the first non-children's books I read.  

It's important that kids grow up to see their parents as human, not infallible matriarchs and patriarchs.  It's also important not to idolize blindly, to recognize that artists, writers, performers, athletes...for all their talent, they're human and capable of human things, great or monstrous.

But we're human too.  Our emotions, our history, our nostalgia sometimes cause us to think without rationalizing, to shut out any doubt or possible injury, to deny the truth.  Despite the overwhelming number of women who have come out (and, sadly, the likelihood of many many more who haven't) there are deniers, Cosby supporters who refuse to engage with the stories of Cosby's victims and blindly have faith in "America's dad". 

This four-hour, four-part documentary from comedian W. Kamau Bell isn't a product of that doubt -- although it addresses it -- it's more for the believers.  It's for those of us who have been wrestling with the conflict of this once cherished figure and the truth of the deeds he's been committing since at least the 1960's and across his entire career.  I didn't want to watch this, to be confronted with the horrible deeds of this man, but, as the title suggests, I needed to.

Bell doesn't just focus on the bad, but he gives a very thorough and wistful assessment of Cosby's groundbreaking rise in comedy, then as an actor and public figure in the 1960s, his activist roots in the 1970s that led to a passion to teach the kids who maybe weren't getting the same quality of education based on their demographic or didn't have teachers who looked like them.  As he had so broadly appealed to adults in the 1970s, he entrenched himself in the lives of young Black (and beyond) children through Picture Pages, Fat Albert and more.  The 1980's brought Cosby to new heights of fame with The Cosby Show, inarguably the biggest show of the decade, and he maintained his wholesome image throughout the 1990s up until he became so preachy about the Black culture his wealth and celebrity had detached him from.

But for all the many achievements that Bell and his broad roster of talking heads - including other comedians, college professors, journalists, sex therapists, and Cosby's victims - cite, it can't help but come back to what else Cosby was up to while he was achieving these accolades: compulsively drugging and raping women, and then either gaslighting them or intimidating them afterwards.  Even his image --the clean-cut, trustworthy family man, educator, America's teacher, America's dad -- Bell and others posit, was in service of making his ability to lure his victims easier, and to make seeding doubt in their mind afterward possible.

It's a thorough documentary that, even after four hours, still struggles with the question of what do we do with Cosby and his legacy.  He did so much, but he did so much while committing (and often in service of) his horrific deeds.  He changed the face of what Black people could be both in front of and behind the scenes, and how people saw Black culture following the civil rights movement, but that doesn't give Cosby a free pass for sexual assault.  Nothing gives anyone a free pass for sexual assault, except a patriarchal system that refuses to believe women and punishes them for speaking out, rather than their assailants for committing the assault.  

Cosby himself, Bell points out -- with documented interviews Cosby gave, comedy set pieces he would tell, subtext within his TV shows, and stories written in his books OVER DECADES -- had a deep-rooted obsession with the concept of Spanish Fly, of "loosening women up", of a miracle pill that made "gettin' it on" easier.  It's damning, and disgusting to see the comedy set from the late 60's and then Cosby talking to Larry King about the same thing in the early 90's.  The key point in the end of the documentary is noting that Cosby doesn't believe he did anything wrong.  It's not that he's denying what he did (as he did admit to it in a sealed deposition, which after being unsealed and used in court was ultimately what got his conviction overturned), it's that he believes that he's allowed to do what he did.  

I  have had a difficult time with Cosby since shortly after his sanctimonious shit started up, but since 2014, it's been cemented that I am done with him.  Though I found myself laughing at clips of Cosby's comedy routines and The Cosby Show episodes featured in this documentary, there's no way for me to go back to them, to separate the art from the artist.  With some artists, sometimes I can... most times I can't.  Yes, he's got some amazing work in his past, some stuff that remains funny in spite of his revealed character.  The man's undeniably talented.  He was good at what he does. Including raping women.  

Hawkeye

2021, d. Rhys Thomas, Bert & Bertie - 6 episodes - Disney+
Series created by Jonathan Igla

I tend to write big, long posts about superhero movies and TV shows, in case you hadn't noticed.  To paraphrase a certain toy reviewer, they're my bread and butter.  But sometimes I don't have an immediate take.  Sometimes months pass and I still don't have a lot to say.  And sometimes I'm just need to sit down and write but I don't because I'm lazy and I get caught up in playing some dum-dum game on my phone for hours on end, a bad habit which seems to have had undue influence over my life for the past half decade.

Anyway, since I've caught up to No Way Home and just laid the pipe on Peacemaker (whazzat?), I figure I should just get everyone's least favourite Avenger off the docket, and it would only be too fitting to cram him into a 10-for-10 but I'm certain I have more than 10 minutes worth of writing to do.

Yes, it's Hawkeye, but, I have to say, I've been looking forward to a Hawkeye movie or TV series for years. 

Have  I particularly loved Jeremy Renner's performance as Clint Barton? Not particularly. Renner's an amusing performer but his Clint has never really inspired any real reaction, love or hate.  He's just kinda there doing his thing.

Am I a lifelong, die-hard, deep-seeded fan of comics Hawkeye? No. No no no. I've always prefered Green Arrow if we're talking comic book archers, and really don't think I read a comic that featured Hawkeye with any prominence until the 2000s, by which point I'd been reading comics for 20 to 25 years.  I don't think I was missing much.

No, all my desire for a Hawkeye movie or series came out of one of the best runs of superhero comics ever(!), which would be Matt Fraction and David Aja's Hawkeye run from 2012-2015 which pairs Young Avenger Kate Bishop with old Avenger Clint Barton as they defend Clint's New York apartment building from the Russian Tracksuit Mafia.  It's a gloriously entertaining story that redefined both Bishop and Barton and made them favourite characters of mine, Bishop even more so since, despite being the junior player, she showed far more competency in being a superhero than Barton.  Smarter, faster, more talented, wittier... Barton is only made more interesting by not being the best at what he does.

From the first collected volume (of four) of Fraction and Aja's Hawkeye I wanted to see it on screen. But by the end of the series in 2015, it looked far more unlikely, as 2015's  Avengers: Age of Ultron introduced a whole family of supporting character for Clint Barton which made him owning a New York low-rise apartment building and living a lonely, sad life a lot less likely.  

Clearly Marvel struggled with the same desire, and when Disney+ came along and content was needed, a Hawkeye mini-series was one of the first to be announced, shortly followed by casting for Kate Bishop.  They were doing it, and somehow, some way, they were going to shoehorn this MCU Hawkeye into that Fraction/Aja framework.

I've written 8 long, rambling paragraphs already and haven't talked about the show.  Would it pull it off, would it bring Fraction and Aja's masterpiece (it literally is) to life? 

Not so much.

Here's the thing, we comic nerds really, REALLY need to stop wanting comics translated direct to the screen.  If a comic book is great, it's great because it's a comic book, if that makes sense.  The medium is the message.  The story told in a comic is different than if told in a novel than told on TV than told in a movie or video game.  And if something is perfect in one form, it's an impossibility to literally translate into another form without losing much of its magic.

So that's what happened here. What I wanted, I could never get, because I already got it.  But, what Hawkeye delivered was a fairly entertaining series that used elements of the Fraction/Aja run to further expand the MCU, which, as I pointed out in my Peacemaker review, is both part of the charm of the Marvel tv and movies, but also leads to less immediate gratification. 

With this series we're introduced to Kate Bishop, who was a tween when the invasion of New York  happened (from Marvel's The Avengers) and she got a first-person eye-view of Clint Barton in action and decided being a hero like him was her destiny. Ten years later, she's an prize winning martial artist and archer, but also headstrong and unapologetic, getting kicked out of school and antagonising her high-society mother (Vera Farmiga). When she gets embroiled in stopping a robbery of an underground metahuman paraphernalia auction, she comes face to face with her idol, Clint Barton (on a trip in New York with his family before Christmas) and insinuates herself into his life.

The dynamic between Barton and Bishop in the show is the reverse of that in the comic.  Bishop is the one whose life is a mess, and Barton is the one who is (for the most part) in control.  Clint is still dealing with the loss of Black Widow and the physical impact of the life he's led, including hearing loss.  One of the best issues of Fraction and Aja's comics run was a completely silent issue told from the perspective of Lucky the pizza dog, a stray pooch adopted by Bishop.  I was hoping that the series, by giving Clint hearing loss, would somehow emulate this issue in an episode, however, Only Murders In The Building beat them to the punch with a brilliant episode told from the perspective of a deaf character.  Instead of singling out a single episode, it used Clint's affliction adeptly as a challenge that he could persevere through, accentuated by introducing and interacting with the Marvel character Echo, a deaf assassin, as an antagonist allied with the Tracksuit Mafia (bro!). 

Along the way the dual Hawkeyes find themselves in a murder investigation and criminal conspiracy which Kate's mother and her new fiance, the sword-obsessed Jack Duquesne, may be involved (it's Vera Farmiga, I haven't trusted her since Up In The Air), and somehow shoehorns in the recently introduced Black Widow Yelena Belova into the affair, which adds poignancy to the grief still afflicting Clint.

There's a lot of moving pieces to this 6-part mini-series, but it negotiates them all quite adeptly, and all the various story elements are welcome, even if they don't all exactly gel together seamlessly.  While the series is called Hawkeye, implying that it's Clint Barton-centric, it's even more about the new Hawkeye, Kate Bishop and its success rests entirely upon casting.  

I've liked Hailee Steinfeld as an actor since her early feature debut in the Coen Brother's 2010 remake of True Grit, through to her role in Pitch Perfect and thought she really stood out as the lead of the surprisingly good Bumblebee Transformers movie. While she wasn't exactly Kate Bishop of the comics in my mind when her casting was announced, she owns this MCU version from moment one, and she leads this series to the point that Jeremy Renner is almost a supporting player, rather than co-star.  Steinfeld proves herself here to be one of Hollywood's finest young actors (I've since started watching Dickinson on AppleTV+ which has only served to validate this perception).  The meeting of Steinfeld and Florence Pugh shows that the talent in the next wave of the MCU is very, very bright.

Renner, for his part, really, really shines.  He delivers the pithy lines perfectly, while still carrying the weight of an man haunted/burdened by his past, the losses he's sustained, and the frustration of being separated from his family.  He knows his responsibilities, but he doesn't have to like them.  He sees Kate Bishop not as someone to mentor, but rather someone to protect.  She's his daughter, she's Natasha, she's his wife, all capable badasses, but all people he's lost and he can't handle it happening again, and none of this is spoken, but it lives in Renner's performance.  

That Hawkeye takes place at Christmas is only kind of a bonus.  While not overly festive, it's a "Die Hard is a Christmas movie"-type Christmas story which only kind of heightens its appeal.

I put on the first episode as background while I was writing this and I'm completely sucked back in again.  It's not that the story itself that I find enthralling, but rather the performances, the characters and their dynamics with one another all just crackle with a lively energy.  While I think that the LARPers, Echo, and Yelena are all slight distractions from the main plot, as I said, they're all quite fun, purposeful and welcome additions.

It's not the Fraction/Aja series, but it's also not trying to be.  It succeeds at its own story on its own terms. Hawkeye may not be anyone's favourite Avenger, but after this series, he, or she, is no longer at the bottom of the list.

(The only bummer about this series is that Aja wasn't fairly compensated for the series' adoption of his design aesthetic for both their credits sequence and advertising).

Peacemaker Season 1

 2022, d. James Gunn, Jody Hill, Rosemary Rodriguez, and Brad Anderson - 8 episodes - HBO Max
series created by James Gunn

I loved James Gunn's The Suicide Squad.  I know it's not the best movie of 2021 but it's probably my favourite (in tight competition with Barb and Starr Go To Vista Del Mar).  It's the first film in a very loooong time I have actually sat an watched with the audio commentary, and I just ate up every other bonus feature on the blu-ray.  

That blu-ray exposed how James Gunn likes to make a film, how he likes to interacts with his performers, and how much fun everything seems on his set.  The technical challenges seem to be at an exceptionally high difficulty level, but with Gunn in command, everyone is game and giving it their all.  He seems to cultivate an atmosphere that rewards hard work with a good time.  But my biggest takeaway was how Gunn likes to play music during the scenes he's shooting.  

Like a lot of directors of the post-Tarantino era, cultivating a killer soundtrack is a major part of the film.  But for Gunn, it seems, he gets clearance on the music for his productions before he even starts shooting, because the tracks are used during the shoot to capture the mood, to get the total vibe of the scene across to the performers just as it does to the audience watching.  It's a tangible thing in his movies, and even more tangible in The Suicide Squad spin-off series Peacemaker.

The soundtrack is a mix of vintage 80's hair metal and the modern Eurotrash version of it, but it ever present throughout the series 8 episodes, starting with the completely unexpected, but never more welcome opening credits where the cast perform a choreographed dance on a pink-neon lit soundstage to "Do You Really Want To Taste It".  I cannot underestimate how much that opening sequence sets the tone for the entire series.  It's both hilarious and serious, silly and deadpan, tough yet vulnerable, aggressive and delicate.  The cast, all do their best, and some get it down more than others, but it doesn't matter.  It's charming as fuck, and it's endlessly watchable.  Watching Peacemaker week-to-week, I eagerly (Eagly?) looked forward to each instalment, but even more was just amped to watch the opening credits again, even though I can (and have) watched them outside of watching the show over and over.

But unexpected is kind of Peacemaker's whole deal. If you were to take one character out of The Suicide Squad to follow, John Cena's Christopher Smith would have been, like, fourth or fifth choice at best.  Cena certainly was entertaining as Peacemaker in the movie, but he was a raging asshole, and kind of one of those guys you find amusing only for so long.  There was a real big chance this was a huge miscalculation on Gunn's part.  But I've seen enough of Gunn's work to know that the man knows what he's doing.  More than anything, even more than the music, the action, the comedy, he finds the beating heart of his characters and stories.  This is the guy who got us to deeply love a talking raccoon and a living tree who only ever says the same three words (not his creations, but he adapted them for the masses into something beloved).

Peacemaker then digs into what makes Christopher Smith who he is.  Coming out of a coma after the events of The Suicide Squad Smith returns home to his abusive, racist father (who also happens to be his armourer) to get more weapons as well as his best friend, Eagly, his pet bald eagle.  But before he knows it, he's conscripted once again by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) to work on a special assignment alongside John Economos and Emilia Harcourt (Steve Agee and Jennifer Holland, respectively, both returning from The Suicide Squad) with new recruit Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), who is, unbeknown to them, Waller's daughter.  They're operating to uncover the conspiracy behind Project Butterfly, an alien invasion that seems to have gone completely unnoticed.

Almost every character in this show is, somehow, amazing.  Christopher Smith is humbled by his experience from the film, having killed a good man, and having had his "peace at any cost" mantra challenged by that man's dying words.  Smith's backstory, the trauma he experienced as a child, and clearly the father he was raised by, have formed who he is, a man who has nothing but a pet bird and a cause.  That he's not a white supremist is a miracle, but it's clear his path here is one of realizing that maybe there is meaning in connecting with other people, and that using self-satisfying humour or abusive rhetoric to push people away isn't the course of action he wants to take anymore.  Cena is hilarious in the role, but also soulful.  He finds the humour and the pathos in the character, sometimes at the same moment, delivering one of Gunn's crushing lines (or even one of his own ad-libs) while his face or physicality betray the truth of the man.  

Adebayo is another gem of a character.  Being Amanda Waller's daughter, she's had training all her life to be a badass secret operative, but it's not anything she's ever been interested in.  Having lost her job recently, she took her mother up on an offer for work, and kind of regrets it immediately.  She connects with Smith in a way that nobody else has, because she sees his pain, she sees past and gets through his defence mechanisms almost instantly like nobody else has.

I could spend hours dissecting the cast of characters here, because they're all so richly formed. As someone pointed out on a podcast recently, it seems like every character, even the tertiary characters, all have their own lives and stories outside of the one we're seeing here.  They don't just exist to facilitate an end game, which is a far cry from the majority of stories told. 

Much of that exists in the form of Gunn's dialogue, which constantly takes off in unexpected ways, into frequently hilarious tangents that just as often reveal layers to the speaker as they do become weird non-sequiturs Vigilante, aka Adrian Chase -a neuro-atyipical, pretty much psychopath, who calls Peacemaker his best friend and follows him around like the hyperactive little dog to Cena's big dog - is the king of these in the series.

It's a comedy-action-scifi-superhero story that, just like The Suicide Squad, found complexity in its bad guys, well the butterflies at least, and in the end the mission of the butterflies reflects Smith's own mantra of "peace at any cost".  Smith's racist dad (Robert Patrick) is a whole other matter. 

As much as the story is about a group of disparate, isolated people coming together and finding, if not likeminded souls, companions who remind them that being emotionally cut off from the world is lonely and sad, it's also making a statement that some things in life are just hard to shake.  The teachings of a parent, the attitudes and unintentional thought processes, can haunt us, no matter how we try to distance ourselves from them.  It also, by the end, states that ugliness in the world, like racism, can't just be simply killed off.  It will linger and still haunt.  We may not want to acknowledge it, but it's there.

As I said, I eagly looked forward to Peacemaker each week, opening dance number and beyond.  It was a delightful romp from start to finish, and also thoroughly satisfying.  As much as I have really enjoyed all the Marvel Disney+ shows, they spend so much time universe building in them that I come out of them more excited for more than satisfied with what I got.  Here, if these 8 episode were it, I would feel satiated.  

But it's not it.  Season 2 has been greenlit, and I hope Gunn has the time and energy to crank out another season of scripts on his own.

T&K Go Loopty Loo this Xmas: The Twelve Days of Christmas Eve

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

The Twelve Days of Christmas Eve, d. Martha Coolidge (Valley Girl, Real Genius) - Tubi

This post was written around the Christmas season but got lost in the mix of all the Holiday Romance nonsense we like to play in around here at that time.  But since our Loopty Loo is an evergreen feature, there's no bad time to loop back in time...

[Kent] Toasty, for this one, I was reminded that within the Fantasy/Sci-fi subgenre of time Loops, there's a further,rarer subgenre, death Loops, loops that only repeat after death.  This is a death Loop, even though there's a grander hand orchestrating this, the only way the loop resets is through death...

[Toast] So, in theory, don't all loops reset with death? Or is the loop oblivious to your meat death and time continues until whatever that event that triggers the restart comes along again? We have seen a few examples where the supporting cast actually reacts to the death of the Main, implying that time continues. I suppose the TVA will eventually come along and prune whatever multitude of additional timelines are created by these loops events.

How did the Loop Begin?
[Kent] Calvin Carter (Steven Weber) is a busy CEO of a dollar store franchise.  He wakes up on Christmas Eve next to his beautiful, younger, blonde girlfriend, and prepares for his busy day impressing a Brazilian contemporary who wants to bring American-style dollar stores to South America.  He succeeds, but along the way he ignores his family, pisses off his girlfriend, and is kind of a dick boss to his right-hand man.  

[Toast] I love the nod to Groundhog Day in that he awakes every morning to a song on the radio, his stupid sliding-out coffee table and he ... prints his news?!?! WTF is up with printing the news from a website?

[Kent] As he exits out of his corporate office, basking in the glow of what he calls "the best Christmas Eve ever", the mechanical pointing finger that rocks back and forth on the face of the building malfunctions and falls on him.

He wakes up, dazed, in a hospital bed, but with seemingly no walls surrounding him. Nurse Angie (Molly Shannon) asks him about his day and questions whether he really did have "the best Christmas Eve ever", and she puts him back to sleep.

[Toast] This whole hospital bed and slightly irritated nurse thing is ... just weird.

[Kent] When he wakes up he's back in bed, next to his girlfriend, being told it's still Christmas eve.

He repeats the day, but differently than the day before, armed with the knowledge of what happened previously. He really charms his Brazilian counterpart, and makes his son's Christmas concert, and feels like he's done things even better.  He avoids the falling hand but gets hit by a snow plow.  He wakes up in the hospital room again and Angie tells him he's just not getting it.

It's on the third go around where she explains he has 12 Christmas Eve's to figure out what exactly it is he's to learn, or, you know, dead dead, like forever.

What was the main character's first reaction to the Loop?
[Kent] Calvin has typical Time Loop confusion, but acting as if he has prescient powers, or a strong sense of deja vu.  When he wakes up in the "hospital" with Nurse Angie, he thinks he just had a dream

The third go around, he's just out of his mind. A complete zombie, trying to figure out what the hell it is that's going on. He references Sisyphus, but asks were the gods testing him, or punishing him?

[Toast] That third round he quoted somebody or other saying he was going to "listen, observe, learn" so that quiet loop of him just staring into people's faces non-committaly, is supposed to represent him "learning" ?

[Kent] The fourth go around, now that he knows the rules (sort of), he proactively is trying to be a better guy, by taking out 1.2 million dollars (100K for each of the 12 days of Xmas) and giving it away to people. But it's just for show. Day 5, he shuts down all the dollar stores with a paid day off, which interrupts an important ritual his father does every year.  Day 6 he instead tries to give his family big expensive gifts (but the day is cut short, because it wasn't going very well).  Day 7, he seems to be getting what's been going wrong, seeing the moment where he could be doing more, but just not quite...still a little to selfish, still trying to figure out the answer. Day 8, he tries more, big sweeping gestures, but winds up just stepping on toes.  Frustrated, Day 9, he just gets greedy and gives to himself. Day 10 he tries to propose to his girlfriend and she declines, and he's just depressed for the whole day.  Day 11 he just abandons everything and works in a soup kitchen for the day, just completely unsure what to do with himself, but he gets some perspective.  Day 12, he kind of realizes that it's his last day on Earth, possibly, and instead of living it greedily, he tries to tell the people he knows how he feels about them, and actually spend time with them...and it works even though he thinks he has a heart attack and wakes up in a hospital (it's just extreme heartburn from eggnog and it's a real hospital this time).

[Toast] What bugs me about the "failed" loops is that he did some pretty decent things then, even with the wrong intent in mind. Even if he didn't give all his stores the day off, he could have reduced staff to just management and allowed the part-timers a full day off with pay? Salaried staff could work and benefit on another day. Also, the soup kitchen seemed a genuine moment where he just allowed himself to be exposed to what was going on around him, without expectation or judgement.

WHY did the main character get put into the Loop? Can someone else be brought into the Loop?
[Kent] What I liked about this Loopty Loop was that it's an orchestrated Loopty Loop.  There's a whole organization that puts people in time Loops at the time of their death to try to learn a lesson and become a better person. In this case Calvin needed to learn that there's no such thing as a "perfect day" and that it's not a destination but a journey, something to strive for. 

But I like this idea of an "organization" that helps people through their "death Loop" journeys.  I could see this as a pilot to a 90's style episodic television where there are the "nurses" who help people through their "death Loops" trying to coax them towards their goal.

[Toast] If it was a series, then they would definitely have an episode where he bumps into people who are also in loops. In fact, there was a comment about other beds with other "patients" who had figured it out before he did. That implies there are other people who could be figuring their own shit out while he is doing his. Does it mean they get their own independent loops, or is everyone just in their own loop?

How long is this time Loop? What resets it? Can you force the reset?
[Kent] The loop occurs from the time Calvin wakes up until he dies.  But the deaths seem orchestrated by the organization the "nurses" work for.  The furthest Calvin can make it is 11:59 before something happens to him, but usually he doesn't make it that far.  There is one exception, though, at one point he's ready to commit suicide, and he gets pulled out of the Loop before he can.  I don't know if he still died somehow, like falling ice or something else unseen, but clearly he did not get to go through with it, and suicide in a loop is a really bad thing (Angie broke the rules, whatever those are, by pulling him out of it).  So the loop ends by 11:59. Death resets it, but you can't kill yourself to force a reset.

[Toast] Her methods of death are pretty goofy. That garbage can that slowly chased him along the icy street only to bounce and crunch his head like a day old Xmas tree ornament?

How long does the main character stay in the Loop? Does it have any affect on them, their personality, their outlook?
[Kent] The Loop, as detailed, is 12 days, and the whole point of the loop is to have an effect on their personality and outlook.

Angie tells him "God is in the details" and that he needs to pay more attention to the people around him.  It's pretty simple.  It's not that Calvin was a bad guy, but he was just getting his priorities wrong.

[Toast] It might be the capitalist in me, but I found it weird that part of his "enlightenment" involved pushing off his Xmas Eve business meeting, rebooking her flight and just sending her back to her family. He didn't really care if he made the deal anymore, which is kind of weird. It was a big deal and probably would have benefited his company and family, if it worked out. Still, it did magically work out.

What about the other people in the Loop? Are they aware? Can they become aware?  Does anything happen if they become aware?
[Kent] It's actually interesting for the Loopty Loo genre, because here Calvin actually has someone he can talk to about the Loop who knows all about the Loop and why he's in it.  As such, he's given insight that I don't think any other Loopty Loo we've seen so far has about their Loop.  He has a guide, so to speak, and therefore he doesn't need to bring anyone else into it in the story.  None of the other people in his Earthen life are aware that he's looping, and he doesn't even try to explain it to them.

[Toast] Yeah, it was a unique aspect to these movies, almost making me think they were adding in some It's a Wonderful Life and she was his Xmas Angel that had to save one more person to get her out of the comfortable nurse's shoes and into some even more comfortable wings.

What does the main character think about the other people in the Loop? Are they real? Do they matter?
[Kent]  I think the point of the loop is that, at the start, the other people in the Loop don't matter enough to Calvin.  He doesn't treat them with enough respect, and that's some of what he has to learn.

[Toast] Given the short time of the total loop period, he doesn't get enough of them to be come (even more) oblivious to the lives of other humans. I suppose if they had given him the hundreds of loops we have seen in other examples, he might have gone the other direction and began thinking that nobody matters, at all, ever.

Most memorable event in a Loop? Most surprising event during a Loop?
[Kent] The deaths were fun, but I think the skydiving, with it's cheesy green screen aesthetic (looks like classic James Bond lol) is hilarious.  That first death, though, with the big, moving hand coming unmoored, was perfect, as I was just thinking how unsafe that thing seemed.

[Toast] Did I ever tell you about the friend of mine whose parachute failed? He survived and is fine now, but that scene where he goes splat/bounce made me visibly recoil.

[Kent] Egads! No.  That's bo-katan krayze!

How does this stack up in the subgenre?
[Kent] This is a middle of the road movie all the way.  It's made for TV with some really terrible editing (which I mistook for bad direction, initially), and it is just baffling in how poorly it uses the Loopty Loo language.  It doesn't set up its scenes that will be repeated very well at all, and it doesn't use them very effectively.  But, as I said before, I love the conceit of an organization that puts people, at the time of their deaths, into time loops, to give them another chance and be better people or correct mistakes or whatever the reason.  This is a series I would love to see.  

Molly Shannon is perfect in the role as Angie, being kind of aloof, but funny and compassionate, while also tough and intimidating, she effectively conveys that she knows so much more than she will ever let on.  Weber plays the smarmy dick well, but does it while also conveying there's more under the surface, and he peels back the layers quite well.  It almost feels like this needed another half dozen Loops though to effectively get him from where he was at Loop 11 to where he ultimately is at Loop 12, but I understand from his performance that his fatalistic outlook does influence his behavior dramatically.  

Ultimately, this was messy, but still a fun as both a Loopty Loo and Christmas viewing.

[Toast] I was surprisingly engaged, even more than I was with many of our Hallmarkies this year. Recognizing a few Canadian actor standards also made me feel like this was sliding in next to the Advent Calendar run rather well.

 

KIMI

 2022, d. Steven Soderbergh - HBO Max

Soderbergh took a sabbatical from making films in 2013 leaving Side Effects and Behind the Candelabra as his last releases.  He cited fatigue and dissatisfaction as his reason for leaving film, but it didn't take.  He promptly returned with the TV series The Knick in 2014 and Mosaic in 2015, both for HBO.  In 2016 he announced he was working on Logan Lucky, and since it's release in 2017, he's made at least one film per year, if not more.  

His turnaround, his re-invigoration is a result of the drastic shift in filmmaking technology, simplifying the filmmaking process for him.  Soderbergh has always had an experimental bent, and has always been prolific, but since return he's been pushing his limits, seeing how much ambition he can pack into a quick shoot and low budget.  Unlike many directors, he's not shy about the medium of delivery, his last five films appearing on either Netflix or HBO Max, and it's clear that talent is still very keen to work regardless of the medium. Meryl Streep, Benicio Del Toro, Antonio Banderas, Gary Oldman, Don Cheadle, Candice Bergen, Jon Hamm among others have all appeared in these recent films.

His latest stars Zoe Kravitz in a classic-styled thriller that plays like a cross between Rear Window and Blow-Out, with Saul Bass opening credits and a Hitchcock cameo seemingly the only things missing.  In the film a Google Home/Alexa alternative, KIMI, is about to launch its initial public offering.  Their differentiating point is that rather than using an AI to refine its system it uses people to resolve errors in understanding.  Kravitz is Angela, one of those people, working from her Seattle apartment, which, we quickly learn she confines herself to due to crippling anxiety.  While processing her daily log of errors, she comes across a partial recording, a troubling clip that seems to indicate an assault in process.  The film then follows her as she tries to figure out what to do next.

Despite the fact that Angela has confined herself to her apartment, there is a whole microcosm around her.  In the building across the way is a guy whom she's been having a dalliance with, but is frustrated with her agoraphobia. Her upstairs neighbour is renovating his apartment so there's some friendly conflict there.  Another neighbour is always in his window looking out.  Angela talks with her mom, her therapist, coworkers and consults with her dentist on video chat.  In the background, the COVID pandemic is still in effect, but later stages where people can be in public but with masks.  And there are protests, in this case revolving around caring for the homeless, but invoking Black Lives Matters.  All of these elements come into play as Angela uncovers the truth behind the crime.

It's not a complicated film.  The "conspiracy", if you will, is fairly straightforward and obvious, given the set-up in the opening moment, but it's more about how Angela, an atypical protagonist, handles the situation she's in, using her wits, and her anxiety, to survive. 

Soderbergh bring his visual flare to the piece, really embracing the natural light in a way that is somehow very lavish, but real.  His camera is playful with how it represents Angela's emotional state, and, as ever, a master of sound as a real controlling aspect of the story.  It's a rare sub-90-minute film that presents a familiar tale but with modern surroundings, not life changing, but a engaging watch.

3 Short Paragraphs: The Little Things

2021, John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) -- download

The Little Things is a neo-noir crime flick set in the early 90s. There is a genre of crime movie that relies on harkening back to previous eras of crime movies, wherein the creators are seeking stylistic choices, colour patterns, fashion, technology references, etc. -- the things that made movies of that era stand out as being in that era. Its often a nod to the creator's formative exposures. And these choices, somewhat steeped in nostalgia often allow a certain forgiveness of ... familiarity or formula? This is what I assumed this movie was, until I learned that the script was  written by Hancock himself in 1993. The project never got up and running, but I guess in the voids created by The Pause, he got his wish.

The movie is about two detectives, Deke (Denzel Washington, Deja Vu) and Baxter (Rami Malek, Mr. Robot); Deke retired to the outskirts of LA as a deputy sheriff, while Baxter is lead detective in the thick of things. Deke is sent to the city to pick up evidence and ends up embroiled in a serial killing that reminds him of the one that ended his career, after having become obsessed, and a bit of a pariah in his station. He becomes obsessed again, and Baxter, going against all the advice of his coworkers, assists Deke out. Creepy, lowlife Sparma (Jared Leto, Morbiius) is the focus of their investigations.

I am attracted to these low-key crime movies, in much the same way I watch the less than stellar FBI series of TV shows. They are a mood and a tone that I can easily slip into, but not expect too much from. Others writing about this movie compared this movie to Seven but I think that was lazy writing, going for the easy bit, as while both are trying to depict how the police can become disassembled investigating these horrible crimes, the former was all style, all crime high fashion, while this is just a worn suit, and battered uncomfortable shoes. If this movie didn't have the performances of Washington and Malek to hold it together, it would have just slipped off my radar and my attention span, but to be honest, not even they could raise it above barely middling. There were some threads of plot, the nods to family & god being a lifeline, that were intriguing enough that keep it in my mind, but... barely.

Mulholland Drive (2001 film + 1999 Pilot)

 2001/1999, d. David Lynch - Hollywood Suite/youtube

At the end of 2021, when I did my New Year's Countdown...of Excellence, I really, really, really got a hankerin' to watch Mulholland Drive again, having not watched it since the early 2000s.  As i was researching films to watch for the New Year's Countdown  (within the weird confines I gave myself), I came across BBC's list of "Best Films of the 21st Century"upon which Mulholland Drive sat at the top.  I mean, I recall really liking Mulholland Drive, but the best of the past 20 years?  It's so subjective and arbitrary, these lists, the ranking doesn't mean anything, really, except that the film consistently made it high in rankings across other lists as well.  So yeah, I needed to give it another watch, but it didn't fit my requirements for the Countdown.

Over the next six weeks I would start the film twice, making it minutes into the film before some distraction or another would pull me away.  I rarely have 2 1/2 hours to myself, and these kind of head trip movies (and Lynch films in general) aren't the wife's cuppa. 

Finally getting to the film, it's ... a rough start.  The swing dance competition that opens the film is just, completely, what-the-fuck inducing.  It looks cheap and corny, with it's puce backdrop and the multiple layers of swing-dancing couples and their shadows, accompanied by a subpar jazzy big band sound.  The sound fades into Angelo Badalamenti's ominous tones as a superimposed image tries to take focus, of a spotlit Naomi Watts, sometimes alone, crowned, sometimes accompanied by a largely smiling elderly couple.  Soft transition to fuscia bedsheets. Hard cut to a streetpost sign "Mulholland Dr." and a limo taking a trip at night along the drive. Credits and more haunting tones.

From here it's an array of strangeness as the attractive raven-haired passenger (Laura Elaine Herring) of the limo has a gun pulled on her, but is saved when a car full of drag racing teenagers crashes into the limo. She escapes, strolls down to Sunset Boulevard and eventually sneaks her way into the house of a departing traveller.  That traveller's neice, Betty (Watts) arrives from a flight to L.A., bright-eyed and bushy tailed, having travelled with the same elderly couple we saw briefly in the pre-credits opening.  Betty is staying at her aunt's place to make a go of becoming an actress, but finds the concussed woman there, who starts calling herself Rita, after seeing a Gloria poster in the apartment.  Polite Ontario native Betty doesn't see any issue with this stranger and seeks to help her out, especially upon learning she has amnesia.

The acting, at this stage, is very broad and soapy.  Twin Peaks also had very soap operatic sensibility to it, but I think Lynch was trying to pull more of a 50's cinema quality to the performances here.  Either way, it's varies from palatable to cringey. 

Betty and Rita have a few adventures in discovery in attempting to learn Rita's identity but Rita is clearly scared about what she might find, having a sense she is in danger.  Her only posession is a purse full of bundled cash and a chunky blue key.  At one point Rita remembers an name and upon investigating they find a dead woman in a house.  Rita is shocked and they return home where a freaked Rita tries cutting off all her hair (shortly thereafter adopting a blonde wig that looks not unlike Betty's hair). Bonded by the trauma they find a sense of trust and safety in each other and make love, Betty confessing to be in love with Rita.  Then, in the middle of the night, Rita convinces Betty to venture out to a theatre, where a very odd half-Spanish, half-English performance is occurring, where everything is recorded, nothing is what it seems.  A blue box appears, which seems to be the partner to the key Rita had.  Betty disappears before she can unlock the box.  And when the box is unlocked, it appears empty and Rita disappears.  Betty's aunt looks in, confused, as if she heard something, but nothing's there.

This is a drastic oversimplification of the plot of the film and really only takes us 3/4 through the film.

I've skipped over so much.  So, so much.  There's an early moment with two detectives at the scene of the crash.  There's a moment at a diner where a man explains to another man a troubling dream he had about that very same diner and that very same man, only to have his dream recreate itself. There's the introduction of the seemingly inept assassin (a strange bit of dark comedy), who later, after a series of phone calls, is hunting for Rita.  There's a whole subplot about a filmmaker, Adam (Justin Theroux), who is being manipulated by Hollywood mobsters into casting a particular woman in his film, and when he refuses, his life falls completely apart.  There's Betty's audition.  There's Adam's encounter with the cowboy.  There's the strange man in the hermetically sealed room who seems to control Hollywood by telephone.  There's... a lot of just seemingly unrelated bits in the first 2 hours of the film.

And then the blue box is opened with the blue key and everything shifts.  Suddenly Betty is Diane, the woman they found dead in her house earlier, and she's going through a breakup with Camilla, who we knew as Rita.  Camilla has fallen in love with Adam, her director, and Betty/Diane is not taking it well.   The narrative in this last half hour jumps back and forth in time, but if we're to follow, Betty/Diane finds out that Camilla/Rita is getting married to Adam at his dinner party on Mulholland Drive. She hires a hitman to kill Camilla, and he will leave her a blue key when the job is done.  Later we see Diane has the blue key and that detectives are looking for her.  There's a quick flash to a vagrant person who has the blue box from earlier, from which escapes the elderly couple from earlier but tiny little cackling monstrous versions of the elderly couple, who creep under the door of Diane's house and start driving her mad.  Diane kills herself.

The common interpretation of this is that the first 2 hours or so, is Diane's dream, that she, like Betty, came from Ontario to pursue acting, but where in her dream she seemed poised for stardom, in reality she's a struggling actor, landing only bit roles, maybe even turning to prostitution to get by.  Her romance with Camilla was very consuming, but Camilla was everything she wanted to be, and everything she wanted.  And then there's Adam, who came along and stole her love, so in her dream Adam is just subjected to humiliation after humiliation.  The elderly couple represent her demons, the ones who pushed her into seeking success but haunting her in failure.  In her dream, she saw the inevitable, that if she really killed Camilla, then should would die herself.

This "dream" narrative does make some sense.  Lynch said the conclusion to this film did come to him in a dream, there's the sequence of the man talking about his nightmare only to have it come to life, and there's lots of sleep imagery, starting with the fuschia bedsheets at the beginning which turns out to be Diane's bed later in the film.

But none of this really explains everything about the film, like what's the point of the hitman sequence and the black book?  The detectives only ever appear at the scene of the car crash, and aware of a missing female from the scene.  Diane's neighbour also appears in Diane's "dream", pretty much as she is, unchanged.  The cowboy appears to be attempting to wake Diane after Rita opens the blue box.  Who is the vagrant (let's say) person who frightens a man into unconsciousness in Diane's "dream" but then appears in Diane's reality but with the blue box from which escapes the menace of Diane's parents?  And after Diane dies, we see a similar overexposed image of Betty and Rita, superimposed, intercut with an image of the vagrant person, ending with the singer from Club Silencio whispering "Silencio".

Part of the wonder of the film is how it's hard to find a narrative that will actually satisfy everything we witness and hear in the film.  It has a dreamlike quality but is it really a story that partially takes place in a dream?  

What we know is Mulholland Drive started life as a pilot for ABC, but was not picked up.  Somehow this made it's way onto bootlegs, and the pilot can be found, in very poor condition, on youtube.  The pilot broaches 90 minutes in length, carries mostly the same plot, ending roughly after the discovery of the dead body.  The man's nightmare story in the diner is excised, and some other scenes are a tad longer or shorter (such as Betty leaving the airport, we only see the elderly woman briefly, and there's no communication between Betty and her).  There's another scene with the detectives which doesn't contribute a lot but at least makes use of Robert Forrester a little more.

Nothing about the pilot illuminates any of the secrets the film carries.  It's an intriguing archive piece, for sure, a complete alternative view of the Mulholland Drive story that emphasizes that all these disparate, weird pieces that the film just leaves hanging with a question mark would have been explored more (although, knowing Lynch, likely not in anything more satisfactory).  

Lynch repurposed the pilot into a feature, and it's amazing that it comes together as such, and doesn't feel like just a pilot with a tacked on resolution, which, ultimately, is exactly what it is.  But in examining the film for it's true story, its true meaning, the reality is, it's a film borne as a TV series with a whole slew of scenes that were setting up something more that will never bare fruit.  If they're puzzling, that's why.  Armed with meta knowledge, we're left to wonder what these things could have been.  

They're definitely intriguing, these now-vignettes of strange people, but they don't fit into the narrative of the film so uniformly.  That's part of the charm of the film, the uneasy marriage of all these elements into a whole.  Lynch compares his films to music, which are much more emotional than logical, he wants them to be about how they make you feel, less concerned about what sense they make if you think about them.  

If it were a TV show and we spent a year, or years, into the story only to learn that it was all a dream/metaphor for the trauma Diane had upon knowing she had her lover murdered, well, I wouldn't be too happy with that.  I'd be pissed.  So out of hand I want to reject this "dream interpretation".

I've been trying to push Mulholland Drive into a framework of multiple dimensions, that the vagrant person is a dimensional traveler, and that they know the soft points between the dimensions.  That Club Silencio is one gateway and that the blue box is a dimension hopping device.  It's a theory I have trouble hanging my hat on though, particularly because Diane's neighbour doesn't recognise Betty as looking exactly like Diane. Lynch started messing with dimensions with Twin Peaks: The Return and in the many ways Mulholland Drive feels like an extension of Lynch films prior, Twin Peaks: The Return often feels like an extension of Mulholland Falls as much as Twin Peaks.

Many look at the film as told from Betty/Diane's perspective, and the way it is presented as a film it can be seen from that standpoint, since Diane/Betty is the first character we see beyond the swing dancers.  But it the pilot, the first person we see is Rita/Camille, and it's perhaps then Rita/Camille's story as she suffers a concussion and falls asleep.  Perhaps it's all a dreamscape from start to finish, or a nightmare controlled by the vagrant woman.   

I don't think there's any logical answer to Mulholland Drive's story.  Lynch certainly doesn't want it to have a definitive answer.  He wants it to live as art does, to let the observer make their own choices and let their intuition and emotions guide them.   It's what makes it so fascinating to watch.  You can pick it apart, see all the clues, but you'll still come out unsure of any answer you might have wound up with.  

I think ultimately the message is, for all the vibrancy of Hollywood, there's a darker side to it, a place where dreams can become nightmares.  It's all recorded.  It's all just a metaphor.

Best film of the 2000s? No...but...maybe?

Spider-Man: No Way Home

 2021, d. Jon Watts - in theatre

[oh damn, you bet there are spoilers ahead]

Film critic/podcaster Alonso Duralde spoke of "the Spider-Man spike" on an episode of his film review podcast Linoleum Knife he does with film critic/husband Dave White.  By this he was referring to the massive spread of the Omicron COVID variant as a result of the huddled masses launching No Way Home not just into the most successful film of the past few years, but one of the most successful films ever.  

No Way Home's debut came in mid-December just as Omicron hit, and while it may have dissuaded me (both because tickets were hard to come by as theatres had to rapidly adjust to changing government restrictions, and, as well because I fell ill just as I started my holidays) it certainly didn't, and hasn't dissuaded the masses.

The buzz was all about the multiverse.  Even ignoring the MCU continuity from Loki, the concept of a "multiverse" is now just a thing people - and not just comic and sci-fi nerds - are willing to acknowledge and embrace.  Unfathomable not just 10 years ago.  The buzz was about the multiverse, characters from past Spider-Man film series, popped up in the trailer, notably Doctor Octopus from Spider-Man 2 (Alfred Molina, reprising the role with some exceptional digital de-aging), Electro from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Jamie Foxx once more) and hints of The Lizard, Sandman and Green Goblin.  

The big question was ... were there going to be other Spider-Men, like in Into the Spider-Verse?

...

At the end of the last Marvel movie before the pandemic, Spider-Man: Far From Home, we left the MCU on the cliffhanger of Spider-Man's secret identity being revealed, and also painted as a murderer for the death of Mysterio.  No Way Home very satisfyingly deals with one of those threads, and basically relegates the other to background noise.  (You don't really miss the lack of resolution on that front until a long time after the film is finished)

The fallout extends beyond Peter's life to friends and family, which means he, a teenage boy still, doesn't know what to do, what options are before him.  Except to say he has superhero friends who might be able to help, like a magic guy who can cast a spell to modify reality. 

Enter Doctor Strange.  

No longer the Sorcerer Supreme (that apparently fell to Wong when Strange disappeared during the Blip), he's kind of bored and accepts the challenge to reshape reality to help the kid who helped defeat Thanos by erasing everyone's memory of Peter being Spider-Man. But it goes awry and draws a few people from another reality into this one.

Doctor Strange just wants to wrangle the pan-versal others an send them home.  But upon learning they would be sent home back to the time of their death from which they were plucked, Peter intervenes (Aunt May's influence is strong), and wants to help them, help them get better, maybe give them a chance to live when they return.  

But they're people who are mentally disturbed as a result of traumatic transformations in body chemistry, so given the choice between death and life in another dimension...well, things get complicated right quick.  Some bad things happen, then some worse things.  Peter gets real low, but, thanfully, he has some help pulling him out of it.

[Seriously, SPOILERS]

If you've managed to avoid them this long, keep avoiding them. The sense of discovery is just so wonderful.

[Last chance]

So, as it turns out, the villains weren't the only ones to be pulled in.  Their Peter Parkers were too.  Yes, we see the Raimi Spider-Man and the Amazing Spider-Man back on the big screen, and not in just some quick little cute cameo, but as real, meaningful, contributing characters to the story.  It affords us, the long-time viewer for the past 20 years of Marvel cinema, the chance to catch up with these beloved and maligned heroes of the past, but also the opportunity to see what makes each of these Spider-men different, and the same.

Leading into the return of Garfield and Maguire, the film is a roller-coaster and a romp.  It's dealing with magic and multiverses and really awful personal dilemmas and it seems like anything is possible in this story...which is literally true.  As such, there's no sense at all about where it's heading, where it could possibly be taking us. To the point that, by the time they show up, you've forgotten that you were even wondering if they would show up in the first place.  So they manage to have their cake and eat it too, with the surprise entry of anticipated (if not necessarily confirmed) cameos.

Just don't try to logic out too much why the people that show up are the ones that show up and why characters like, say Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane or one (or both) of the Harry Osbornes  don't show up (could you imagine... Dane DeHaan AND James Franco... *shudder*) , just go for the ride.

The movie has so much fun playing with the multiverse, and Doctor Strange's magic, and Peter's multitudinous problems, that it's absolutely dismaying that it could get so much better with three Peter Parkers interacting on screen, relating to one another, discovering their differences and similarities, and just embracing each other like brothers.  Maguire's the eldest Peter, the most reserved and sensible one, while Garfield is the most emotional and self-conscious.  Yet, somehow, it's Holland's Peter that's the most experienced, having so much heroism and heaviness thrust upon him (as well as having spent the most screen time in the role) that he's the de-facto leader of the trio.  

It all leads up to a big climactic battle that, while being a jumble of CGI figures moving around a CGI set, is completely fun, every damn moment of it. It's a fight sequence that progresses, step by step, in a meaningful manner for almost all the characters involved, not just a perfunctory series of escalations.  And, as well, most of the major players of the film are involved with purpose.

...

I have heard criticisms of this film, that it trades in manipulative nostalgia and "brand synergy", well, whatever.  Sure, it does, but it does so in a way that still has resonance with Peter Parker's journey, leading to a rather massive swing (pun intended) or two in Peter's reality.  The whole movie -- despite all the injection of other MCU players and prior versions of the character and his rogues gallery -- is all about Peter Parker's journey as both a young man and a hero.  This is a boy who has been mentored by Iron Man, squared off against Captain America, fought his girlfriend's father, gone to space, blipped out of existence for five years, worked for Nick Fury (sorta), fought a near-omnipotent alien and learned more than a few hard, hard lessons.  Still, somehow, this seems like the biggest challenge yet most personal adventure he's had yet.

Where it leaves him, well, it's both kind of bittersweet, and yet with the promise of even more exciting adventures to come.

You'd never know it, but I don't really love Spider-Man as a character very much, but I've been all-in on this interpretation of him, and continue to be so.  This is so good, that it even brought deeper appreciation for Maguire and Garfield's interpretations.  It's a wild, wonderful, emotional romp.  Maybe not worth risking catching COVID at the height of its spread, but certainly worth a trip 6 weeks after release on a weekend matinee with about two dozen attendees.