3 Short Paragraphs: Last Night in Soho

2021, Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz) -- download

I am pretty sure this appeared during the last week of our 31 Days of Halloween from 2021, but for some reason we never watched it. Maybe I was not sure it was a true horror flick, and something more left for Kent's HorrorNotHorror tagline, but no, it was indeed a somewhat scary "ghost" story albeit more about being steeped in the fashion and nightlife of 1960s London.

Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie, Old) is young woman from small town / rural England who leaves the over-protective eye of her grannie for fashion school in London. She is obsessed in the Swinging 60s music and culture, something she ties to her mother who committed suicide while Ellie was a child. At school, Ellie is awkward and distant, not fitting in with the other girls, especially after she begins zoning out from night dreams that fade into daydreams, where she is a passive observer / inhabitant of a beautiful young woman trying to make it in the London 60s music scene, but is dragged into its much more seedy underbelly. Ellie is becomes convinced that Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy, The VVitch) is more than a dream, that she is the haunting of a real girl who died tragically at the hands of her manipulative pimp Jack (Mat Smith, Doctor Who).

Wright definitely has a desire for each of his movies to have style. While few could identify them as a Wright movie directly, besides the Cornetto Trilogy, he likes his movies to stand out from the crowd. This one drips with his fondness for the Soho area of London in the 60s, while acknowledging very loudly that it was not exactly .. innocent. Anya Taylor-Joy just fucking embodies the character of Sandie, a girl who came to London to be a singer, understanding that seduction was to be a part of it, but who gets lost in the outcome. The fashion, the music, the colours and the psychedelia that Wright uses to depict the horror and dream sequences are enthralling. While the horror movie aspect is more traditional, it felt made for teenage girls who will get wrapped up in Ellie's story, and squeal and hide their eyes at the grim imagery. All in all, I do wish we had watched this during the October season.

Director Set: that Carpenter charisma

Perhaps my favourite podcast over the past few years is Blank Check with Griffin and David, which finds actor Griffin Newman and critic David Sims covering the entire filmography of a director (one film per episode) specifically those who were given a blank check at some point in their career to make whatever passion project they want.  It's an entertaining, inviting, insightful, thoughtful and incredibly well researched podcast which goes into deep (and sometimes juvenile) conversations about the director and actors and productions of the films they cover, frequently to the point where the podcast episodes are longer than the films. 

Perhaps their most exciting series to me, to date, was their coverage of John Carpenter's career.  I followed along with *most* of the films, but didn't get around to sitting with all 18 of them.  I covered 10 of them in a recent 10-for-10 (a horrible idea I had that I've never truly made work, and has created some of the sloppiest postings in this here blog, so I guess I'm hereby announcing that I'm retiring that??).  These are what remain...of what I saw.  I I didn't manage to get in Ghosts of Mars or The Ward, the former I'd seen and remember feeling very middling about, and the latter still sounds like a dull time.

Escape From LA (1996) - DVD
Body Bags (!993) - tubi
John Carpenter's Village of the Damned (1995) - rent
John Carpenter's Vampires - dvd

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In 1996 Escape From L.A.  seemed so clunky and old fashioned, out of date, not keeping up with the times.  25 years later, it looks (for the most part) and feels (for the most part) not so much like the sequel to Escape From New York but rather the fifth or sixth entry in the Snake Plisskin Escape series. If only we had 8 more of these.

There is, by 1996, a sense of Carpenter's lack of evolution as an action director, which means he wasn't comfortable with an excessive amount of digital effects, nor the in-vogue fight choreography of the era.  So, it actually lends the film, 25 years later (shit, I'm old), a similar sense of nostalgic filmmaking that EFNY had.  Carptenter's reliance upon old school practical effects and sets lets the film age more like an 80's Carpenter vehicle rather than a forgettable stock 90's actioneer. It's mainly the soundtrack that gives it away.

At the time I originally watched this, a burgeoning cinephile with not a lot of Carpenter experience under his belt, I wanted to like this more than I did.  I was rooting for it.  Though I had little to no investment in Plisskin, I already knew the fanboy chatter around the character.  My disappointment in it meant I'd not really watched it since.  Coming back to it after all this time, it's absolutely wonderful in much the same way its predecessor is. It's definitely just retreading the same ground as New York, but the change of scene and personnel make all the difference.  

Carpenter's cynicism is in full force in the setup (and conclusion), which is what makes it feel so immediately relevant. It's not necessarily prescient, just an astute awareness that the things that always sucked, but perhaps were a bit more under covers or sunshined over, still suck just as much, only now we're a lot more aware of it all.  As with so many of his films, it was undervalued and underappreciated on release, but it's unabashedly really good.

Given the end of this film I could see a 25-years-later post-modern western (ala Logan) with Russell as old-man-Plisskin... oh, that sounds great... someone throw 40 million at Carpenter and Russell and let them do their thing.  And maybe they could do some animated features that fill in the years between them all.  More Plisskin is needed.

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I'll keep this chatter on Body Bags brief.  It was originally intended as a new Tales From The Crypt-like anthology tv series, but only had these three acts made.  As with any anthology, an utter mixed bag.

"The Gas Station" is exactly what you'd want out of a 30-minute Carpenter. Great creeping tension until it finally bursts, it get selectively gory, and impressively fun-scary. I like how Carpenter makes monsters out of men but then reminds you that the monster is still just a man. 

"Hair" is delightfully silly, like a half hour length Kids In The Hall sketch, and I think Stacy Keach might just give his finest performance as a hair-obsessed middle-aged narcissist. The twist is pure 80's creature feature in 90's wrapping.  I like it when Carpenter gets silly. 

Turn it off after the first two, because "The Eye" is a real turd. A hoary play on the old "cursed appendage", with Mark Hamill making some definite choices, and Twiggy trying to keep up. Unless you're really keen to see Luke Skywalker's taint....  I ask the question, but I have no answer, is Tobe Hooper a good director? 

The framing sequences are acceptable camp, but it was probably a mistake to make Carpenter the host of this.  Though quite a character, he's not much of a performer.  I get what they were going for, it's only marginally successful.

If it were a series, I wonder if Carpenter would have remained playing the undead host, and whether he would have directed more episodes.  I would still like to track down his Masters of Horror episodes.

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I recall watching John Carpenter's Village of the Damned in theatres in 1995 and leaving quite aware that what I had seen was a terrible movie despite wanting to champion it (Carpenter? Superman? Luke Skywalker? Nerd worlds collide!). 25-plus years later and little has changed.  The script is still awful, the acting just as stilted as it ever was, and the direction feels lost, unable to escape the story's 60's B-movie trappings or the director's 80's filmmaking tricks.  The ingeniousness Carpenter brought to his remake of The Thing is completely lacking, his lack of interest in challenging himself quite evident. It's very unrewarding, unfulfilling, and largely boring.

There is the possibility of extrapolating themes or analogies out of this (prenatal anxiety, postpartum depression, liberal vs conservative stances on pregnancy, erm...training advanced/artificial intelligence to feel emotion...(?), but none of them seem baked into the script, nor even remotely adequately explored.  Carpenter seems on auto pilot, and while everyone's making choices, none of them seem right for the movie.  

The only glimmer of something more behind all this, a sense of world building, is a couple mentions of similar children in other countries.  I would like to see that...how things go right or, more likely, horribly wrong in the UK or Brazil, or Russia, or Japan...especially Japan.  These damned villagers seem built for J-horror.

This exists now only for Carpenter completists to check off their list, or real dyed-in-the-wool Village of the Damned fans.  There's no other reason to watch it.  

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Is it any wonder my experience with Carpenter was not love-at-first-sight when the first four films of his I saw theatrically (I kept going back) were Village of the Damned, Escape from L.A., Vampires, and Ghost of Mars.  Woof.

I'm sure the allure for Carpenter with Vampires was "blue collar vampire hunters" but it's a little too blue collar for my taste. The hunters are crass and arrogant and vehemently misogynistic (do they hate vampires more than women? Hard to say...), and unbearably stupid ( they are so obsessed with their guns, but the guns seem to be absolutely useless against vampires).  These characters are direly unlikable (hey, they're led by James Woods so, of course they're unlikeable), and they're supposed to be our heroes.  Anyone who likes these characters as protagonists are probably people who act just like them.

Poor Sheryl Lee is forced to suffer every indignity, not the least of which is being alternately abused and then doted over by Steven Baldwin while she's basically incapacitated. It's all...just... ick.

Carpenter had a much bigger idea at play here for the story, but late-stage slashes to the budget meant a hefty re-write and the mass slaughter early on of the team.  It feels like a film that's not true to its intentions, a film that only a shadow of what it could have been.  Yet, I have no desire at all to see what it could have been, so much I detest the characters in this film, I really wouldn't want to spend any more time with them.

In an attempt to distinguish itself from Buffy and Blade, the vampires of Vampires have this strange "fire out of all holes" effect which is really just road flares up the stunt person's sleeves.  I'm not sure if the effect really works or is extra cheesy and doesn't work...or works because it's extra cheesy.

Carpenter seemed to be having fun with the soundtrack, if nothing else, the only redeeming aspect of the picture.

-fin-

3+1 Short Paragraphs: The Adam Project

2022, Adam Levy (Night at the Museum) -- Netflix

I am not sure what irritated me more about this movie, the fact that it wasted it's Time Travel premise by hand-waving all the concepts away for more pew pew pew opportunities, or that it is another flick that banks more on Ryan Reynolds being all quippy than having a tight script. That said, it is definitely skillfully done, as I was not as irritated while watching it, but nor am I likely to end up lightly praising it inadvertently, like I did with Red Notice. OK, maybe.

Ryan is Adam, a pilot for some sort of ... military time travel organization? Or a military pilot who knows about time travel? Or ... I dunno, I really didn't catch what he was supposed to be or where time travel fit into his Future. I mean, that works entirely in Travelers but the mysterious nature of the future, and why the time travelers risk everything, is essential to that series plot. But Adam steals a time travel jet (again, why jets? they need to reach 88 mph?), escapes the baddies but the plane, and Adam, get shot. He flies to 2022... by accident? He was actually heading to 2018 to find out what happened to his fellow time pilot, and wife (Zoe Saldaña, Guardians of the Galaxy). Adam believes she was killed by the baddies, and if he goes back to the time when his own father CREATED time travel, he can stop it from happening, therefore ... saving his wife's life? He also believes that very little he does in the past affects the future, because ____ (???), so I am not sure why he thinks changing his father's mind will affect the future of time travel. But <hand-waving> !!!

Really, the charm is Adam bumping into Adam (Walker Scobell, his first role!) who is younger Adam, still grieving the loss of his father, and getting beat up by bullies. Young Adam really embodies the Reynolds snark, and the best bits of this movie are while Big Adam and Small Adam hang out, while Big Adam and his ship heal from the damage -- yup, the ship "heals". But, that comedic respite is interrupted by more baddies from the future, in stormtrooper style body armour (i.e. serve absolutely no protection and you can PUNCH the wearers unconscious) which Adam proceeds to kill off in droves with pew pew guns and "totally not a lightsabre laser sword". Once safe, they escape to 2018. Yup, both, because ___ (???). 

In 2018, Adam and Adam find dad (Mark Ruffalo, Begin Again) who immediately recognizes who they are and is rather upset that a) he invented time travel successfully and its nothing but trouble and b) his son(s) from two different eras are here in front of him causing no ends of havoc. Dad has opinions on time interference, but agrees he needs to end his experiments and destroy time travel from ever happening, BUT still has an issue finding out how he dies in the time period between 2018 and 2022, because _____ (???). I am not sure why this movie gives a shit about some paradoxes, while hand-waving the rest away. 

That all said, the movie sure was damn pretty and the Adams are a treat, like all Reynolds are.

3 Short Paragraphs: Iron Sky

2012, Timo Vuorensola (Jeepers Creepers: Reborn) -- Amazon Prime

I remember seeing the teaser / POC back when it came out, loving the look & feel, the "ironpunk" (post steampunk, but more about big gears and diesel engines) motif and the idea of Nazis invading from the moon in flying saucers. But then I saw the full film come out as a farce / comedy and my interested waned. But really, how could such a premise not be a farce? I just prefer my gonzo scifi to come with a certain amount of taking-itself-too-seriously. The movie that came out felt more a mockery of the premise. Fast forward and more movies came out, and I never rented (did we still rent in 2012 ?) or downloaded it and it dropped from memory. But then it appeared on Amazon, I added it to my list, and it again dropped from memory. But in a recent Saturday morning spate of click click click, I gave it a shot.

I pretty much got exactly what I thought it was way back then. In 1945 as the Third Reich collapses, Nazis escape to the moon with their "advanced" technology, biding their time until ... 2018, when a return moon landing crew ("Black to the moon") bumps into them, and is captured, the course is set for the Moon Nazis to return. You see, their plans have been on hold due to internal stagnation and an inability to launch their biggest flying saucer. But the smart phone taken from one of the astronauts, and integrated into ironpunk tech gives them another chance. BUT the battery soon runs out, and they hatch a plan to return to Earth to get more.

Despite the great visuals that were used to sell the original idea, the movie spends far too much time trying to be the next Space Balls, but without the Mel Brooks skill. The humour, softly off colour, is usually only worth a light chuckle or blank stares. I get it, they needed us to laugh at the ludicrous Moon Nazis, but the story and script are very weak, feeling more like some late 80s bottom shelfer. We do end up with an exciting segment of Moon Nazis invading NYC via space faring blimps & flying saucers, but it is overshadowed by the barely laughable ISS turned space battle cruiser. I am not sure why I continued to watch, but I suppose it was better than going back to click click click.

The said, it gave me an idea for ANOTHER theme for this blog, focused solely on Amazon movies, which Kent and I have access to. The service has a "suggested titles" shown below any movie you think to watch. If the movie is low grade, like this one, the suggested ones are ... even lower grade. In 'Since You Watched X' we would choose one of those terrible Straight to Amazon flicks and torture ourselves by watching it through, and then mock/tear it to shreds in a post. Now that I have written that out loud, I wonder if I need the pain...

We Agreeish: Turning Red

2022, Domee Shi (Bao) -- Disney+

This movie will always be remembered for the pulled review from CinemaBlend wherein the managing editor (white, male, adult) professes he cannot connect with a movie about an Asian adolescent girl. At first, I assumed this was some middling website courting woke/cancel culture controversy for clicks, but then I read the review. Nope, just a dumbass white male adult. Luckily, I avoided the pile-on from the conservative crowd who complained more about the "period metaphor". The thing is that the "period metaphor" is a not a metaphor, its used very directly, but its a fakeout for what the movie is really about - lycanthropy.

*snicker*

Meilin (Rosalie Chiang, Clique Wars) is an adolescent Asian girl in Toronto, oh not the Toronto I live in, but one with a MUCH more vibrant Chinatown and much more colour everywhere. Just as she's discovering boys and boy bands, she gets her (shudder) "visit from Aunt Rose". Her mother assumes its "that time" when in fact, it's THAT TIME, time for the emerging of her family ... curse? More like characteristic, for while it might be a major inconvenience, it was created by an ancient family member who really needed it at the time.

And yeah, she turns into a Giant Red Panda.

Mei's Mom (Sandra Oh, Hard Candy) wants Mei to suppress her impulses, and impulse to turn into the creature, until she can reach the ritual time to suppress it forever. Buuuuuut, Mei really wants to go see her fav boy band, but will need to raise the funds to sneak out of the house to see them. Thus she starts selling time with the Panda. In a weird world where everyone not only accepts her lycanthropy, but is willing to pay good multi-coloured Canadian cash to spend time with it, Mei and friends are raking in the bills. Until Mom finds out.

Confrontation! Betrayal! Realization! More red pandas! Destruction of the SkyDome!

I am fond of this movie, but I didn't love it. I guess being a white male adult, I just cannot (/s). I just found it full of great moments, but wasn't finding myself all pulled together by the telling of the story. But in retrospect, the moments were more than enough, especially the kaiju ending. I do know very well, I will enjoy it more and more with subsequent watchings. 

Kent is much more enthusiastic, but he may relate more as he has his own lycanthrope daughter.

Horror, Not Horror: white millennial problems

 "Horror, Not Horror" movies are those that toe the line of being horror movies but don't quite comfortably fit the mold.  I'm not a big horror fan (Toast is the horror buff here), but I do quite like these line-skirting type movies, as we'll see.

Malignant - 2021, d. James Wan - Crave
Daniel Isn't Real - 2019, d. Adam Egypt Mortimer - amazonprime
Titane - 2021, d. Julia Ducournau - amazonprime
Fresh - 2022, d. Mimi Cave - Disney+

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I'm not a devoted follower of James Wan's career, but from what I've seen I do like him.  I'm not sure I've ever watched all of Saw, or if I've just read all about the Saw franchise.  I haven't watched any of the Insidious or The Conjuring series of films.  What I have seen are Furious 7 (though ask me to explain which one that is and I'm not sure I could tell you.  The Statham-as-villain one, I think?) and Aquaman.

As you might guess, given my proclivity towards superheroic things, it's the latter that really made me sit up and take notice of Wan as a director.  Aquaman is a delightfully bonkers movie and is a hundred times better than it had any right to be because the Warner/DC execs just let Wan's creativity explode and just jump through every type of genre.  That trust was his reward for having delivered an obscenely successful horror universe to Warner Bros.

And his reward for Aquaman being a billion dollar smash hit was a 40 million dollar+ blank check to make this, one of the most absurd yet entertaining pseudo-horror films in years.

Malignant is one of those movies that one doesn't want to say too much about as it might give too much away.  I can only imagine what it was like for someone unaware of the general premise of the film to sit through and discover what was really up.  And yet, after listening to the Malignant episode of How Did This Get Made, wherein Paul, June and Jason had no prior knowledge of what was about to be revealed, I think the movie plays better with a bit of that forehand info.  It's certainly a movie that was designed to be rewatched and to provide a little more upon second viewing.

There's a bit of setup that takes place up front using VHS video recordings of a psychiatric institute where something is brutally attacking the people in the facility.  The doctors seem completely aware of what is going on and have little concern for the lives being lost.  We never clearly see what being it is causing all this mayhem, but the last shot is of the feet of a child being dragged off.

Two and a half decades later, we meet Madison Lake (Annabelle Wallis, Peaky Blinders) a pregnant nurse and living with a real shitheel of a boyfriend.  After disrupting his important UFC-watching and cel-phone twittering, he cracks her head against the wall, knocking her unconscious.  When she wakes up she finds her dirtbag brutally murdered, his body twisted and cracked from inhuman force.

Madison is spooked, and she reconnects with her estranged sister, while working with the police to try and figure out who or what could have done what was done.  And then there are more murders, only Madison is having real-time visions of those murders (there's a neat effect of the world melting away around her when she starts having these visions).  Is she psychically connected to the murderer/entity.  And the ...thing is killing the doctors we saw on video 27 years earlier.  When the detective encounters the murderer, it's clear this thing is humanoid, but how it moves, how it speaks (via electronics, able to manipulate electricity), it's not quite human.

The fun of the film is how all these threads are connected, but I knew going in exactly how they were all connected and I could delight in what the film was holding back on, but also kind of plainly showing you. It's pulpy and purposefully schlocky.  There's very much a heightened sense to this reality, Wan really interested in making a big-budget homage to the low-budg direct-to-video horror of the 1980's.  It's violent, and gross, and wonderfully action heavy, but it's not especially scary.  Wan's inventive camera is constantly in play finding very inventive and impressive ways of navigating spaces and following action.  It's such a gonzo film, and a delight for it.  It's absurd in the best way, not caring if it's not realistic, it's just having fun with what it's doing.

But, is it horror?  
Yeah, it's totally residing in the genre despite not being particularly scary.  It's a cracking good time.

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Playing in similar ground as Malignant, though getting a bit deeper in the psychological horror, Daniel Isn't Real starts incredibly strong with an opening moment that, when it transitions to the next moment seems utterly disconnected and random, only to quickly come back in play again.  Young Luke, his parents on the cusp of divorce, walking alone down the sidewalk, pushes his way through a crowd, only to be horrified to have a dead woman staring back at him.  The trauma seems to conjure up Daniel, and imaginary friend, who takes him away from the horror, and they become fast friends.   But Daniel pushes Luke to do things, nefarious things, and Luke's mom (Mary Stuart Masterson) forces him to lock Daniel away in a literal doll house (but a figurative mind prison).  Daniel pounds, pounds, pounds, screaming to be let out.  

The pounding is heard over the scene transition, as we join Luke (Miles Robbins) to a little over a decade later,  now a quiet, studious college student who is sharing a dorm room with a total he-bro.  But there's that noise in the back of his brain, that knocking that has never left him, and his therapist (Peacemaker's Chukwudi Iwuji) tells him that by locking Daniel away he's locked a part of himself away, that's holding him back from being more socially engaged and threatening his happiness.

When he returns home for a visit, he finds his mother deep in the throes of a manic episode, her schizophrenia serious enough to hospitalize her.  Luke, left to his own devices, unlocks the dollhouse and sets Daniel (now Patrick Schwartzenegger) free, immediately appearing, having seemingly aged along with Luke.  Their friendship immediately rekindles and Daniel starts pushing Luke into doing more in the world, engaging more with the world, being social, sleeping with girls.  But Daniel also starts pushing Luke to behave in ways that don't seem like his kind, sensitive self, and ultimately Daniel learns how to take control of Luke's body.

Throughout, the film expertly toys with the question "Is Daniel real, or does Luke have schizophrenia like his mother, or is he possessed by demon?"  There are possibilities.

Is this a creature feature, or a metaphor for mental illness? There's a definitive answer (which I'm avoiding spoiling) but I'm not sure if the film is any more satisfying as a result of being so definitive.

Good performances from Robbins,Schwartzenegger,  Masterson, and Sasha Lane, but could have used more of Peacemaker's Chukwudi Iwuji as Luke's therapist (both cause I like Iwuji and I also think that character should have played a larger part as a barometer for Luke's sanity). The electronic score from "Clark" is quite good, it stands out and you take notice.  Director Mortimer and Cinematographer Lyle Vincent have quite a few well composed shots that add a bit more artistic flare than the average horror.   

This apparently is part of a trilogy along with Mortimer's Archenemy, and a yet unproduced third film that the writer/director teases as crossing the two films.

Be it now horror? 
Yes, it's very squarely in the horror genre, and really seems to be positioning Daniel as an old school horror franchise creature.

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I'm not sure what's going on in France but they're just not happy unless they're really, really, really pushing the limits of what a movie can be about.  I don't even go into French films that often, but even just using High Life and Annette as barometer, things are definitely getting weird over there.

Titane is by far the weirdest of them yet to come (though I've still to see Aline the bizarre quasi-Celine Dion bio-pic in which the writer/director/star plays an analog to the French-Canadian singer at every age!).  But clearly, with winning the Palm D'or at Cannes, this kind of madness is what French cinema wants, and celebrates.

AmazonPrime, the current rights holder in North America, classifies the film as "science fiction, suspense, horror".  I'm not sure that covers it.  It start with Alexia, a real shitheel of a kid, being really annoying while her father is trying to drive the car...first being really loud imitating the motor's hum, and then kicking the back of his seat, before disconnecting her seat belt and moving freely around the back.  This causes an accident, and Alexia gets a big chunk of metal in the side of her head.  20 or so years later Alexia is a dancer at car shows, where she wears trashy clothes and crawls all over cars for the pleasure of men around her.  Another dancer has taken an interest in her, hitting on her in the shower, while a fan tries to profess love to her in the parking lot.  What none of these people realize is Alexia is a killer.  And after a kill she likes to have sex with cars.

If you think you know what this film is based on that brief description, well, that's just the first act, and it definitely does not remain what you think.  

Now pregnant with a car baby, and a failed attempt at a self-performed abortion, Alexia's proclivities catch up with her, and she has to go on the run.  Where she hides, and with who, and how that relationship play out is the meat for the rest of the film, and given the set-up you never quite know where it's exactly going.

Agathe Rouselle, playing Alexia, delivers a very bold performance, spending much of the film naked (though rarely seeming vulnerable) and in prosthesis as well as heavy make-up on her head and body.  It can't have been a comfortable shoot, but she delivers a really off-putting but also compelling portrait that I don't think can ever be completely understood.  It's certainly a performance I wouldn't feel comfortable, at all, receiving from a male director (*cough* Blue is the Warmest Colour*cough*), but Ducournau's lens never ogles, somehow it's more belwildered.  I don't know if the body-binding, the body-oil, the metallic uterus, or even the metal plate are specific allegories at play (body binding is now very much trans-male coding but I don't sense that there's any specific trans commentary at play her), or if this is just the most bizarre story to show how far the desperate need for human connection will take us.

Boy howdy, that sounds horrifying, but is it?
It's not playing in any of the usual tropes of horror, it's simply by offering us a very disarming, potentially damaged personality in the opening that does horrific things that we can get a supremely intense tale about connectivity where you're on edge because anything could happen...even dancing.  A lot of dancing.  So, maybe?

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And catching us up to one of the most recent releases that's just buzz-buzz-buzzing around the socials, it's Fresh, a not-entirely-successful allegory that, at the same time, is just too well made to ignore. 

I'm going to just spoil it, because there's no easy way to talk about it without doing so...but here's a stab at it with minor spoilers below.

Fresh relies on presenting the unexpected, but how many people are going to get the true unexpected experience of this? If you hear a review, or someone tells you about it, even just a little, even if they just mention it's basically in proximity of the horror genre, the whole first act loses its potency, and if you see a poster, you can kind of see what's coming.

But it's still a harrowing story, like the Human Centipede but with an actual emotional core and a bit more purpose.  And there's definitely influence from  Bryan Fuller's Hannibal series, though comparatively a little light on the gratuitous food porn. Mimi Cave works the hell out of her environments, covering the space beautifully. I liked her use of portraits and forced perspective, just a great looking film that visually guides us where words do not.

I was quite engaged, but did check the runtime at least twice. It could have used a little shave here and there, carve another 10 or 15 off, really tighten it up. The end and doesn't wholly satisfy, and you really gotta wonder what's next. As much as I'm saying trim it down, it also could have used a (different) coda.

BIGGER SPOILERS below

So the first half hour of Fresh is directed and performed like a romantic comedy. Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) coming off bad "swipe right" app dates, finally meets cute at the grocery store as very charming and handsome reconstructive surgeon named Steve (Sebastian Stan) gets her going with talk about grapes.  A couple dates later they're sleeping together and Steve invites Noa out to a weekend getaway, much to the chagrin of Noa's best (and seemingly only) friend, Mollie (Jonica T. Gibbs).

Their first night away, where there's no cel reception, Steve drugs Noa, and when she wakes up he informs her that he fully intends to carve her up and sell her to a cabal of the 1% of the 1% who get off on eating young women.  Noa gets the lay of the land, gathers her wits and, looks to survive what Steve says she most definitely will not.  Meanwhile, Mollie gets her amateur sleuth on and starts trying to track Steve down.  It's both easier, and harder than you would expect.

At play we have a commentary on rape culture and human trafficking, and while Steve isn't sexually abusing his victims, he's still assaulting them and using their bodies for his own pleasure and profit.  The commentary is pretty surface level and the resolution is very Grindhouse, yet still somewhat satisfying in the turnaround, but it's just in how the story closes that it feels like we should still know more.

The opening act fake-out, in hindsight, really only works if you don't have any clue at all as to what you're walking in to, and as such it's overlong when you know this "romcom" pretence is just masking the terror that's to come.  As much as I like that it plays out this way, and that the credits drop 30 minutes into the film, separating the two genres if you will, it's probably not all necessary.

Horror, or not horror?
It falls into the genre of chained up people having terrible things done to them, but it's more about head games than gore.  That said, like Titane before it, it's second and third acts are pretty low key but then tremendously intense because of how their set up.

We Disagree: Eternals (Rewatch)

2021,  Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) -- Disney+

I am not sure why Marvel did this movie. I guess the next wave of Marvel movies is going to be more... cosmic? I don't know, I really no longer follow along, knowing full well I will see all the movies not long after they come out, but very little is actually anticipated by my brain anymore. I don't dislike them, they just don't excite me like they once did.

I watched this just after it released on Disney, because of course I did. But not a lot of it stuck with me, in fact not a lot of it struck me with any emotional impact even while I was watching it. So, I didn't write about it. And so I am here rewatching it, so I can finally write about it. It won't be one sitting, so expect tonal shifts as I watch in chunks.

Marvel in Space has a historical race of beings called The Celestials. They are ancient, powerful beings at the god-level of existence, and not pseudo-god-alien beings like the Asgardians who leave an influence on Earth, creating mythos, but truly godlike, incredibly powerful creatures literally responsible for the birth of galaxies. 

We have met them before in the movies. Starlord's daddy Ego was one. The mining colony of Nowhere was the severed head of one. But this is the movie where we are introduced to their role in the Universe and their influence on Earth in particular. But we do so without involving any of the heroes of Earth at all, which is kind of weird considering the big event the movie ends with.

The Celestials created the Eternals, an ensemble cast of superpowered beings sent to Earth (and other planets before) to fight the Deviants, whom the Celestials also created, but lost control of. The Eternals are tasked with protecting humanity from Deviants, but ordered to not get directly involved with the evolution of humanity. By the time we reach the current day, they believe they succeeded in eliminating the monstrous Deviants, and after some family squabbles, they settle into mostly anonymous lives amongst the humans they resemble.

And then they discover their true purpose.

I am about mid-way through my second watching, and I am finding myself not all that interested in it. I don't like most of the characters, and don't understand the existence of many of them. They were sent to be soldiers, to fight Deviants, but most of them have ancillary powers that don't directly contribute to combat. In standard superhero groups, people get their powers in weird, random ways and end up putting on suits and cooperating to fight Bad Guys. Those with not-direct-combat powers become support members, and all work together defeat the baddies. But this team was created with one purpose in mind, so I am not sure what molecular transformation really provides in the middle of a battle. Most of Circe's actions barely slow the Deviants, and much is cute or almost comedic in effect. I guess, at the very least, she (and a few others) were there to be support for the team, to reduce the loss of human life during these battles?

(one week later)

I am hesitant to say, "I don't like the movie." But I also cannot be an apologist. Its just that the story and the characters leave me flat. And its meagre integration into the MCU is almost laughable. How could that event, and even the lead up, not have alerted some of the more powerful beings into action? Where was Doctor Strange? Where was Wanda Maximoff ? Even if Fury was not around, what's left of SHIELD must be paying attention to world impactful events? Considering the speed at which "new superheroes" are introduced to this world, there must have been a few sitting in the wings catching on to the Earth about to ... die? 

But, don't get me wrong, I get it, this is introducing the new stage of MCU and its an establishing movie. So, some prior connections are severed for the sake of the reality of movie making. But even taken at face value, I wasn't absorbed. Even the grandeur of Zhao, the wide panoramic beautiful shots just didn't do anything for me. Maybe they were best left for the cinema? But even in 4K, and on my new bright and colourful TV, everything was just ... muddy. And the battle scenes were just incredibly pew pew pew lackluster to me. When I hold up to comparable battle scenes, such as the arrival of Captain Marvel in Endgame, I wonder why I wasn't in awe, like I was for her. There was so much behind every action she took, so much weight and power, and these Eternals should make her pale in comparison. And don't get me going on how utterly disinterested I was in all the characters, but for Circe and Ikarus, and the latter only because they are pushed to the forefront and therefore have more room to ... evoke. The rest, had occasional hints, but for the most part were ... devoid.

So yeah, we disagree... for the most part. I do agree with Kent that the movie wasn't bad enough to dislike for not being like all the others before it, I just don't think it did well on its own.

I Saw This!! The unfinished TV seasons of the COVID years (pt2)

(part 1 here)

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 about it cuz that would be bad.. like bad, bad, not good bad: 

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The show/season: Superman and Lois Season 1 - cw/ctv scifi

Episodes Watched: 12 of 15 

Why I no finish?:  I've talked before of my CW DC superhero fatigue, and while I felt that Superman and Lois really distinguished itself and distance itself from the "Arrowverse" of the past, it still got bogged down in CW-ness.  I liked the show quite a bit.  I liked that Superman and Lois had an established and committed marriage full of love and respect, and I liked that the show just jumped right into the kids being teenagers.  One of the twins having superpowers (the awkward, anxious one) and the other (the popular jock) not, could have been a big point of contention, but the show seems to remember they are twins and that they support each other in a way non-twin siblings wouldn't understand. While I think the move to Smallville affords the show a lot of interesting opportunities for commentary on, well, what is happening to American small towns, we've already done Smallville and it's kind of my least favourite Superman setting.  The show seemed to run it's course by the 10th episode with some spinning wheels in between. It's a problem all CW shows have, filling episode orders rather than fitting a season to a story line. 

Will I return to it?: I would like to but I feel exhausted just thinking about it.

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The show/season: Y: The Last Man season 1- Showcase

Episodes Watched: 3 of 10

Why I no finish?: I loved the comic book of Y: The Last Man.  It's one of my favourite Vertigo books ever.  It's adaptation to film or TV has been circling in development hell for well over a decade.  I was once really excited to see it, but as I've gotten a lot of distance from the comic (a re-read is probably necessary at some point) my excitement to see it come to any screen has certainly lessened.  And frankly, it's probably a victim of seriously unfortunate timing, debuting in the midst of a pandemic.  Not an ideal time for a show that's about a pandemic that wiped out all of the genetically male population on the planet, save one man and one monkey.  I was engaged with the show, and I thought it wonderful that it incorporated transgendered persons into the story as well, but I just wasn't in the mindset for it, and I think the masses felt the same.  It was not renewed for a second season.

Will I return to it?: Seeing as the series will not finish its story, there's not really any point in going back to it.  However, I may decide to give it a go again if I'm extra curious following a reread of the comics.

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The show/season: Star Wars Visions - Disney+

Episodes Watched: 4 of 9

Why I no finish?: It's Star Wars.  I love Star Wars.  But I don't love Star Wars blindly.  There's Star Wars I don't like (Rise of Skywalker, Resistance), and there's Star Wars I just won't watch (Freemaker Adventures). And then there's this: an anthology of non-continuity, anime-influence Star Wars shorts.  

I'm not an anime guy. Paging Dr. Wenowdis. But I thought I would try it anyway, because the love for Star Wars, though not blind, is strong.  The first "episode" is titled "The Duel" and is animated in a style that I can only think to describe as 1980's manga.  It's mostly black and white, in a very line-heavy, scratchy illustrated style, with little pops of monochromatic colour throughout.  It's set in a Star Wars reality that resembles feudal Japan, and it's all really quite gorgeous and exciting.  It's one of my favourite things to happen to Star Wars ever, just so striking and bold, taking Star Wars back to its western and, moreso, samurai roots (just two of many influencing forces on George Lucas).  I would love to side-step out of regular Star Wars continuity for a while and just live in this one.

And then there's the rest of the shorts, of the three I've seen, they're the usual mess of flash and strobe and big heads and eyes and gaping mouths and yelling and just a style I do not connect with at all.  "The Ninth Jedi" is pretty but way more anime than Star Wars.  "The Twins" is an even bigger mess that distorts Star Wars in a way that nauseated me.  Disney+ tells me I watched "Akakiri" but I don't even remember the slightest bit about it (and a quick scrub through it revealed only the slightest recognition). I started "Tattoine Rhapsody" and got about 2 minutes in before I had a "hard nope" out of it.

Will I return to it?: It's possible I may get bored one Sunday afternoon and watch the rest. I'll definitely be going back to "The Duel" with some frequencey.

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The show/season: Star Trek: Prodigy season 1, CTV SciFI

Episodes Watched: 2 of 10

Why I no finish?: I like Star Trek. I love Star Wars. Star Trek: Prodigy feels like a Star Trek version of The Clone Wars cartoon, and it's like mixing milk and orange juice.  I think the animation was good and the design and story was good, but it didn't all fit together for me, and didn't feel recognisably like Star Trek.  It's not something I disliked, but I wasn't enjoying it, so I just didn't continue.

Will I return to it?: Nope.

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The show/season: Yasuke season 1 - netflix

Episodes Watched: 5 of 6

Why I no finish?: On my friend GAK's radio show, he played the soundtrack to Yasuke and I fell in love with it.  It's such a bold sound, blending beats with traditional Japanese sounds and heavy synthetic textures, one of the best soundtracks in a long time. Musician/Producer/Artist Flying Lotus also shares the "story by" credit on the show with creator (and animator/writer/director/designer) LeSean Thomas, bringing to Netflix this anime (it's a very American-styled anime, about the same aesthetic as the recent Masters of the Universe: Revelations) about an African samurai in 16th century Japan.  The show is full of great character designs and intensely violent action, as well as some meat for the characters, specifically for Yasuke who can't hide being an outsider.  I did find the injection of fantastical technology into the show presented a bit of a disconnect from the era, but a few bold fight sequences later and I came to accept it.  Frankly I binged 5 of the 6 in one afternoon and just didnt' get back to that last episode

Will I return to it?: For sure. Eventually.  But I feel I need to start back at the beginning again.

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The show/season: The Great season 2 - amazonprime

Episodes Watched: 2 of 10

Why I no finish?: I got through season 1, that was enough of a triumph for me.  As I said in my brief writeup, I struggled with it. For season 2, it remains a very funny, tremendously well acted, gorgeously shot, staged and costumed satire, but it also remains so dark.  And I just hit a point where I didn't like any of what I was confronted with.  I've reached a state of awareness of the horrors of humanity that I don't need to be reminded of them even with the sharpest and most cutting of humour backing it up.  But what got me the most was that I wasn't really rooting for anyone...at a certain point ambition for power and the desire to lead just becomes distasteful, and so everyone in this show has become unsympathetic.  Watching an underdog triumph over a despised adversary, only to become a comparatively unlikeable figure isn't fun for me. So I stopped

Will I return to it?: No.

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The show/season: Landscapers - HBO

Episodes Watched: 2 of 4

Why I no finish?: Even at only 4 episodes this true crime drama felt overlong and draggy 2 episodes in.  I love Olivia Coleman, and great as she is, she wasn't compelling enough for me to care about finishing this story of two late-stage middle-aged lovers who may or may not have murdered people and buried them in their back yard.  The way the story was told, as well, seemed kind of the dullest avenue possible, just slowly and methodically.  There's only a tinge of humour where I think it really wanted to play it up, while also being respectful.  The characters though, are just kind of dour and sad.

Will I return to it?: No

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The show/season: Saturday Morning All-Stars Hits! season 1 - Netflix

Episodes Watched: 2 of 8

Why I no finish?: SNL's Kyle Moony put a lot of love into this retro spoof on 90's Saturday Morning cartoon blocks, the type that just don't exist anymore, where a youthful host (or two) present cartoons to kids for three hours.  In this case the 3 hour block is condensed into 25 minutes making the cartoons about 6-7 minutes long each.  And the cartoons of course spoof some of both the hits and weaker sauce offerings of the era.  Here there's a "radical dinosaur" who now lives and goes to high school in the modern age but is just kind of depressed all the time.  There's an Alvin and the Chipmunks-meet-Alf-meet-Care Bares thing where the art-making creatures live in secret in the dude's garage where they hang out and get high.  The Strongimals are space animals fighting a valiant war against their nemeses (Thundercats style) only to come to modern-day (90's) Earth to be very confused by mundane reality, like sandwich shops.  The hosted scenes feature twins Skip and Treybor (both played by Mooney) who have a energetically antagonistic attitude towards each other that seems to solely be worked out on screen rather than in private.  It's conceptually funny, the kind of shit I loved 15 years ago with Wonder Showzen and the like...I just don't have a lot of time for stuff like this today.  But I like it.

Will I return to it?: Probably in fits and starts.  I mean, I get what its doing immediately and I worry that it's just running the joke into the ground further each episode, but I also want to watch just it case it does go somewhere gloriously weird.

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The show/season: Macgruber season 1 - Showcase

Episodes Watched: 2 of 8

Why I no finish?: I like Will Forte a lot of the time, but not all the time, and Macgruber the movie didn't do much for me.  A lot of people seem to think the film was hilarious but I recall it being a rather flaccid comedy that forgot the jokes.  And now it's a TV series, bringing back Ryan Philippe and Kristin Wiig from the movie, adding Billy Zane and Laurence fucking Fishburne.  It's funnier than the movie, from the two episodes that I watched, but Macgruber, as a character, is exhausting. Forte likes to play comedic protagonists who intentionally keep you at arms length with their selfishness, but add in Mac's cowardice and idiotic belief in his own (sorely lacking) capabilities, and I'm not always sure who the joke is on.

Will I return to it?: Not likely.  I tried. This character's just not for me.

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Turning Red

 2022, d. Domee Shi - Disney+

I moved to Toronto from smaller, more northern climes in 2001, I'm not sure how I missed this giant panda incident less than a year later, but now I finally know what happened to the Skydome. 

Basic plot: as Mei hits puberty she starts crushing on boys and liking pop music, and hanging with her friends. Her overbearing mother does not like these things Mei likes and kind of forbids her from liking these things, which, you know, is kind of an unreasonable ask.  But also with puberty brings changes, and for Mei, it's turning into a big, floofy (apparently smelly) red panda, which was a spell of protection once granted on her ancestor, now handed down as sort of a curse, since the transformation is triggered by any strong emotional response.

I loved this movie. Films about loving-but-complicated parent-child dynamics really get deep under my skin, and this is a great one at showing how these dynamics tend to be generationally influenced.  Plus, it's set in Toronto, where I live, which...you know, has never happened in a massive animated movie before, and rarely happens in film in general.  And there's a great sense of friendship Mei has with her friend group, full of love and support that's so differently rewarding from familial love and support that the film makes tangible.

Of course my stupid head just wants Mei to become a local superhero (like Squirrel Girl meets the Pitiful Human Lizard) but that's always where my mind takes everything. 

I liked that Mei at the onset is a little too much, a little off-putting, but the film allows us to quickly understand her, how her goals and achievements aren't fully for herself but to maintain her mother's love, or inhibit her wrath. That she loves things - and starts to want and desire things - that are outside of her mother's comfort zone invites us to see her true self, and then showing us the full brunt of her mother's overBEARing personality (Sandra Oh, Canadian legend!) gives us complete sympathy for Mei...and then she turns into a big, fluffy, adorable red panda, a metaphor for puberty and hormonally influenced emotions. 

IMO if anyone can't relate to this story because it's about a Chinese-Canadian family, or a pubescent girl is its lead, or it's set in Toronto, at best you're just kinda dead inside and emotionally unreceptive, at worst you're the problem, not this movie. I'm happy this doesn't have to compete against Encanto for awards (not that awards really matter) because I think I would have to choose Encanto but feel really bad about it.

As excited and happy as I am to see Toronto play Toronto in a major motion picture, an animated one at that, It did drive me a little nuts watching this that the geography was all nonsense. Is this what New Yorkers feel all.the.time when NYC is played by other cities in movies?

Swiss Army Man

 2016, d. Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan - amazonprime

Swiss Army Man entered my consciousness when it was making its festival rounds years ago.  It sounded weird, like a riff on Castaway but instead of Paul Dano talking to a ball, he instead talks to a corpse, who responds with farts. Daniel Radcliff, already half a decade away from the role was still trying feverishly to shake Harry Potter off of him.  What a better way to do so than playing a dead, farting guy?

One of the big moments of the film that critics cited, sometimes in praise, and sometimes in damnation, is the moment where Dano's Hank rides atop Radcliff like a jet ski, the farts be so powerful as to propel them through the water at a surprising clip.  I have to admit, it sounded too weird to me, which was a sign I was getting old.  20-year-old me would have rushed to the theatre to witness such a spectacle. 

Truth is, it is a truly weird aspect of the film, and yet from that we get a beautiful bit of movie magic about a depressed man becoming friends with a flatulent corpse and learning to actually love himself. It's also about learning that even trash can become something, if not beautiful, at least clever and interesting, not worthless, if the right bit of inspiration is applied.

Hank and the corpse, "Manny", have an adventure together as they make their way back to civilization.  Manny does start to talk which was a huge surprise to me, as after half an hour I thought that Radcliff was going to just commit to being the Bernie of the film.  Manny also proves exceptionally useful, his finger when snapped together create sparks, and he has a sort of karate-chop action that can splinter wood.  He does come true to the film's title, a swiss army man.  But, is it all in Hank's head? Probably, but maybe not. There's perhaps just a little bit of magic to life.

Has Hank's many days of isolation skewed his perception of reality? Absolutely, but that new perception somehow leads him to a much healthier place than where he was before.

Along the way Hank and Manny start discussing a woman Hank has a picture of on his phone, but has never met.  It's uncomfortable the level of investment Hank (and by proxy) Manny put into this woman who doesn't even know they exist.  There's a romantic fantasy there, but it's a film that's aware that it's an unhealthy fantasy.

Is it cool to obsess about someone you've never met (or even someone you have met) and put feelings and emotions and personality upon that person without their knowing? Never. It happens, though, and it's important to understand that it's unhealthy and not real and that beneath that obsession is usually deep seeded unhappiness or other psychological issues. It's a tad oversimplified here as Hank states (she) "seemed so happy, and I wasn't". Hank (and likewise the film) doesn't really reckon with his fixation, mainly because he's moved past it by the time it blows up, and the true emotional center of the film is between Hank and Manny, who may or may not be a construct of his own imagination. 

This is a surprisingly deep and rewarding journey while also being absurdly funny and strange.  The farting frequently makes for good comedic punctuation, but it surprisingly has much more than the one use.  Radcliff really nails the demands of the performance (the odd moment where he seems too alive aside), but this is the first time I've really, really liked Paul Dano.  He's soft, internal, and warm which hasn't been my experience with him before.  I usually find him off-putting.  He tends to take more agressive, or darker, unlikable characters, but it was really nice to see his congenial, sympathetic (rather than pathetic) side.

Directors, the Daniels, certainly had a vision for this film, and they achieved it pretty precisely.  They navigate their very unusual waters with exactly the right tone, never going too broadly comedic, and never getting too deeply dramatic.  It has the exact right weight it needs to have.

I kinda loved it.

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

 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.  Freedumb 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. Part B is here. Part C is here.

The problem with watching too much TV, is that it goes in one eye, and out the other (the left one, my bad one). I start forgetting what I am watching. Or it might just be Marmy choices, that allow me to walk in and out of the room at leisure. Here are some that I am just randomly remembering I have watched or have to get out of my head before I forget again.

Hawkeye, 2021, Disney+

The most annoying thing about watching this series was being three-quarters of the way through before I recognized that the quality was REALLY low. It was then that I found out that the Disney+ app on my Hisense Android TV does not show 4K, and in fact, lowers 4K content to 540p. For a brief moment I had thought they were going for a rustic look, but I switched over to my xBox and lo-and-behold, 4K in all its glory.

Anywayz, the six episode series ran just before Xmas 2021 which means we were watching it while deeply embedded in T&K's XMas (2021) Advent Calendar. So, forgive me if things are a little fuzzy. Remember, I never intended on writing about TV this year, but what the hay, I am easily influenced otherwise.

Full disclosure, my comic reading days are long behind me, but for the occasional before-bed digital reading via a pirate site. So, I am not all that familiar with the source material for this series. I was aware of it, but unlike Kent, I could not be disappointed at how badly they adapted it. Also, the MCU is not known for being gentle with its adaptation of existing source material, more like wolfing it down and picking out the choice bits from the litter box (ed note: ewwwww, nasty "metaphor"!).

All that is to say, I rather liked this series, and it might be the one I am likely to re-watch.

So, Hawkeye / Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner, The Bourne Legacy) is in NYC to recover some missing items from his 5 year stint as Ronin... or just to do some Xmas shopping with his kids; cannot remember, maybe both? Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld, Begin Again) is his Number One Fan, a little rich girl who lost her father during the Battle of New York and pseudo replaced him with Hawkeye. She's been getting into trouble and becoming a great archer since. She seems to believe its only a matter of time before she's a superhero in her own right.

The two become acquainted when she blunders into an underground auction selling off Ronin stuff, and it is attacked by the Track Suit Mafia. She shows herself as being more than capable, but still, an inexperienced kid. But, Clint has no choice, as something else is also going on, and she's wrapped up in it. Clint delays Xmas with the family and stays in NYC to unravel the caper.

Hawkeye is showing his age; remember, he is one of the superheroes without any powers, and time has caught up with him. He's mostly deaf in one ear, muffled in the other, and being bounced around by baddies night after night wears on him. Meanwhile Kate just bounces back like all 20sumthins do. He's not all that into her hero worship ideal, but the best way to keep her from getting into more trouble is by keeping an eye on her until this who escapade is worked out.

The best thing, and yes I am extremely biased about this, was Yelena (Florence Pugh, Midsommar). She's in NY tasked with assassinating Hawkeye whom she personally relishes killing, blaming him for cutting her time with her sister Natasha short. Yelena is also an ex-Black Widow, and only recently reunited with her sister before blipping out, returning to a world where Natasha died to save it. She blames Clint. She's going to kill Clint. But that doesn't stop her from bonding with Kate in the most charming, amusing, confounding manner. I swooned a wee bit.

Highlights of the show were Aleks Paunovic as Ivan (bro!), one of the Track Suit Mafia, and one of the quartet of my favourite Canadian Supporting Actors (including Chris Heyerdahl, Michael Eklund and Ty Olsson) and the liberal use of trick arrows, in both purple and green flavours. The LARPers were also worth a chuckle.

The Expanse S06, 2022, Amazon Prime Video

I am a huge fan of this series, both the books and the TV show, but I have to admit that by the time the series hit this stage, I was bowing out. In fact, I haven't read much beyond this point in the books. As the stories moved away from the troubles affecting a crew of a small ship in a single star system (our own) and towards the troubles of the entire star system, all its planets and peoples, and even out into the myriad of worlds now discovered via the Ring Gates, I began to lose interest. But don't get me wrong, I still love the characters and the world, its just now its too big, too familiar space opera ground covered by a hundred other books I haven't read.

So, micro-recap. James Holden (Steven Strait, Sky High) and his ragtag crew on the Rocinante, a Martian warship (as in, built by humans on Mars, not little green men) having saved the system from an alien (first contact!) organism that took over an entire asteroid space station, by redirecting it into the sun, had garnered system wide acclaim and celebrity status. And then they never stopped getting mixed up in the political affairs of the three powers running our little solar system: Earth, the mother planet who prefers boots on necks, Mars, the first breakaway planet who maintains military superiority and a single planetwide devotion to evolving Mars, and The Belt, all the little asteroids and moons and space stations populated by peoples who were pretty much serfs to Earth. The latter were not happy, like REALLY not happy, and a revolutionary leader arose among their factions, uniting them by tossing stealth shielded rocks at Earth, basically creating his own weapons of mass destruction. They broke Earth's spirit, but that doesn't stop the coming war.

Season 5 dealt with the aftermath of the "bombing", and season 6 is all about hunting down Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander, Tyrant), the madman responsible for the rocks. He is a supremely charismatic leader, but also one quick to abandon his own people in favour of his agenda. The once-again leader of Earth, Chrisjen "Chrissy" Avasarala (Shoreh Aghdashloo, 24) tasks Holden and crew with hunting Inaros down, further complicated by the fact that Holden's first mate and lover, Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper, Death in Paradise) once had a relationship with the revolutionary and they have an adult son. Also, she just escaped him. Meanwhile, something weird is going on one of the newly colonized planets, something related to the alien organism and another charismatic leader, this time a Martian to disappeared with a bunch of Mars fleet.

Again, not sure how I felt about this season, as I was luke warm about the "hunt for Inaros" in the books, further complicated by the "colonized planet" actually being drawn from the next book, which I have not yet read, further complicated by this being the final season of the show, and that entire subplot being SETUP with no resolution. Sure, they might have movies in mind, or even reselling the show again, but it felt extraneous not knowing this for sure. The season did a good job in having an already amalgam character, Drummer (Cara Gee, Strange Empire), assume the role of a new character from the books, and if anything, I was onboard for this story, as among all the complicated motivations in the season, hers was the most pure.

But we get lots of space battles, lots of kick-ass character moments from everyone (except Cas Anvar, who was killed off last season due to his toxic behaviour with fans) and basically one last "get the gang together" season. And now, I have to back and rewatch on a laptop because apparently Amazon Video did their "x-ray" thingie (where you get info when you hit Pause) and added "shorts", but not on TV apps, only web, which is supremely stupid.

CSI: Vegas, 2021, StackTV

I was never a big fan of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, as it emerged when I expected more from my TV, and even more from my depictions of technology. The show came out at the beginning of the Internet Age, and fully embraced the idea of technology as magic that was such a thing for most of the 2000s, and still is now, to a degree. But uttering the word "enhance" followed by all the chirps and whistles from computers, and my mockery of it, overshadowed any desire I had to watch. Later on in life, as all the sequel series began to come out, I had tempered my dislike, and begun garnering more of a desire to watch easily digested crime TV.

And then I went to LV.

So yeah,  despite being supremely "meh" about the original show, this "bringing back the old gang" short series caught my attention purely because the show is LV based. Annoyingly, most of the show is actually shot on stages and sets in Los Angeles, but what they hey, I can enjoy the stock video they will have to use to establish things. Also, my fondness for LV right now is purely "fond memory" based, not inherently based on a fondness for the location, so any trigger of those memories is welcome.

Unlike the "murder of the week" formula that all the previous shows had, this one has a single season arc, wherein a cantankerous member of the original team, David Hodges (Wallace Langham, The Boys), the tech everyone loved to hate, has been framed for faking all of his results, over his career, including the time when Gil Grissom (William Petersen, Manhunter) ran the crime lab. So, Grissom and Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox, Memento) return from their ... sailing on a boat (?) ... to assist in clearing Hodges name. But it isn't as easy, as politics are at play, and their own reputations are on the line, and also, they are RETIRED. No matter, there are things to enhance.

Amusingly enough, the show tempers its magic-science-technology schtick by introducing a lot of actual CSI technology. Now, don't get me wrong, there is still a murder of the week, as there is an LV crime lab out of which Grissom and Sidle are working, and it still has day jobs, and the CSI staff are still weirdly as much investigators as they are scientists doing field work, but the show felt more... grounded.

The LV stuff was lack luster but still clicked my buttons, but all in all the show was lacking a lot. Sure, for big fans of the show, there was plenty of nostalgia, but me not being there didn't provide.

But the big thing, and I mean BIG, was that it was on StackTV. OMG, I cannot elaborate more loudly on how terrible a service this is. I only had it because they offered Hallmarkies for the season, but U watched a bit more just to get ... my money's worth? I pay for Amazon Prime Video, and I have to pay to get StackTV, but they then toss in commercials, which are intrusive and badly timed, often cutting into the middle of scenes instead of being properly timed like normal commercials. I mean, broadcast TV is specifically spliced to allow such thing, and this is being delivered via TECHNOLOGY, so you would think timing would be easy. And, on top of that, either they cannot figure out their show storage, or maybe their broadcast rights, but some shows are provided with backlogs, some are only the current season, and some ARE ONLY THE LAST FEW EPISODES ! They are selling a service, literally advertising themselves constantly, as nobody has bought any slots, they are advertising shows YOU CANNOT WATCH. I couldn't get to the "cancel" button quick enough. 

n Ranty Paragraphs: Blacklight

2022, Mark Williams (Honest Thief) -- download

Blah blah blah, I watch a lot of Neeson movies where he is an "aging ____" who gets wrapped up in something blah blah blah. Sure, Williams did a moderately successful directing job of one of these (Honest Thief) and produced a few more of similar ilk, but dude, WTF was this ? Like, seriously, this was "my grandmother yelling at the TV screen" stupid. And that's even ignoring the fact that Neeson is beyond pushing himself to represent the aging skilled violent man who looks like he is going to throw his back out just jogging up the sidewalk. Not that I know anyone who is in THAT bad of shape.

*cough*

OK, premise. Neeson's Travis Block is a fixer for the FBI. For most of the movie I assumed he was an actual FBI agent, just doing the less than legal work for his boss FBI director Robinson (Aidan Quinn, Elementary), but in the third act, it is revealed for the past 40 or so years, he has just been ... doing the dirty work under the table. I wonder what the line item in the budget was for that. His primary role seems to be extracting deep cover FBI agents who are in trouble, and in doing his latest job, he discovers from one such FBI agent, that deeper, darker things may be going on. Said agent Dusty (Taylor John Smith, Shadow in the Cloud) is trying to make contact with a fledgling journalist Mira Jones (Emmy Raver-Lampman, Umbrella Academy) when he is killed by goons we know were hired by Robinson. Now Block is invested in finding out what is really going on.

The thing is that it takes almost half the movie to get to this point. We spend FAR too much of the movie dealing with Block and his OCD and the strained relationship with his daughter and granddaughter, and in introducing Jones and her strained relationship in becoming a proper respected journalist. In most movies these brief dramatic notes would be introduced just to give the main character motivation to leave his dark life, only to realize he cannot. But this shit ain't brief. And it cannot even be chalked up to character building, as only the most obvious uses of this background is even used. It could have all been covered in fifteen minutes.

Another thing. Block is sent to stop Dusty from making contact with Jones, and in response Dusty jumps into a garbage truck and destroys half of downtown Washington DC because ... I don't fucking know why. Because some stupid producer decided the movie needed a destructive chase scene? It just made no fucking sense whatsoever. 

Eventually, after Dusty is killed, and another reporter is killed for stealing Jones' story, a story that they don't have any real facts to back up yet, Block decides to take on his friend and boss. Sure, these movies always have the "confront the bad guy" scene, but in this case Block actually seemed to think that by yelling at his friend to "do the right thing" it would actually accomplish the goal! In response, Robinson unsuccessfully tries to have Block killed, and successfully disappears Block's family. Not nasty, shot and dumped in a hole, which he basically threatened to do, but just sends them into witness protection in about ... 4 hours? Seriously, he deletes their entire lives in less than a day, without anyone catching on that something weird is happening.

How will Block reveal that the FBI are involved in a nefarious plot that has them killing American citizens for the Greater Good? Steal a harddrive that has everything ever done laid out. They might as well labeled it "Evidence to Incriminate Me". Oh, that and he grabs Robinson and drives recklessly, scaring him into confessing to the public. Yup, one nerve wracking drive in the back on an SUV and the movie fucking is ... over !! I was pausing to see if there was another 20 minutes or so to go, so they could have some back-tracking and further violent actions, anything to actually influence Robinson to confess, but nope, "bad driving, me scared, stop, me confess!" Movie over, day is saved.

Oh, and family in witness protection, having their entire lives uprooted and pretty much destroyed? Happy Day, we are reunited with Grampa Block whose paranoia has been ruining their lives for ages, but he saved the day, so all is forgiven!

So, one last OMG thing. Marmy pointed this out to me, as Block was experiencing a bit more of his paranoid OCD, they were doing the dramatic "echo echo echo" thing used ... in the 70s ... to depict a fracturing mind? Well, they pretty much did this scene.

Finally, why was the movie called Blacklight?