Watching: Shogun

2024, Disney

We took our time with this one, cuz it was so good. But as it came to a close, without any vast payoff, I realize I don't care -- didn't need that plot payoff. The individual pieces: performances, production values, imagery, are all just so fucking incredible, the plot almost doesn't matter. And yet, if I take the time to think further about it, to absorb and process, that was pretty incredible as well.

I don't recall much about the original series, and while I have the big, fat novel on the shelf, I recall not getting far into it. I was 13 when the mini-series came out, during the full reign of my D&D phase, so anything with swords and battles and armour and mysterious other cultures was My Thing. I was probably lost in most of it, but Anjin probably ended up as a character in a few of my games. But there was one thing I remember -- that the white guy saves the day. Thirteen year old Toast probably was fully onboard with that being the role of white men in mysterious cultures.

But now, I exquisitely enjoy that Anjin (Cosmo Jarvis, Persuasion) is not the white saviour in this show. He is more the vessel in which we travel this unknown culture. And he definitely more pawn that protagonist. He plays a role in almost every major activity in the show, but often he is just a tool being used by one person or another.

John Blackthorne is a ship's navigator on the Dutch ship Erasmus. The crew is starving by the time they arrive on the shores of Japan. They claim to be traders, but Blackthorne definitely has an English agenda, and I am not sure even the crew is fully aware. But the logs show them to be doing pirate things against the Portuguese, and the Jesuits living in Japan want him dead. But the local ruler sees benefit in keeping the boat and its guns available. Still, he is not beyond boiling a guy or two alive to see how these barbarians react.

Meanwhile Japan is in turmoil. The Taikō has recently died, leaving a regency of five rivals. But if anything truly unites the regents, it is that four of them are against the fifth, Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada, Helix). The entire show is about the political machinations in trying to have Toranaga pressured into being a traitor to Japan.

Its a dense show made further opaque (to what I imagine is the general audience; I have no issue with them) by the consistent use of subtitles for the Japanese being spoken. English is sparingly used to substitute for Portuguese, to give us anglos a break. But the subject matter is thick with cultural nods, exquisitely planned out political actions and responses. Everyone has their own agenda, and almost everything plays out with the expected extreme level of politeness and care of a tea ritual. Blackthorne, called Anjin (or pilot) by everyone, spends much of the show flustered & confounded by his lack of ability to control the situation and cultural norms he considers barbaric, and even when he thinks he is manipulating people and situations, he really is just falling under someone else's machinations. And yet, he has heart.

It is the character Mariko (Anna Sawai, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) who shines the brightest. She is vassal to Lord Toranaga, from a disgraced family he took pity on. She wants nothing more than to die honourably but Toranaga has a use for her, and not just because she is an acting Christian who speaks Portuguese fluently. She is entirely held by honour and custom, a husband who just uses her and family ties and shame that people constantly remind her of. But when Blackthorne shows her unexpected gentleness and respect, a bond is formed.

Even so, my favourite character is the always-three-steps-behind Kashigi Yabushige. He is ultimately in it for himself, willing to betray his lord Toranaga, but also immediately switch allegiances when his enemy's plans fail. He genuinely seems concerned for his family but never gets that he is not doing the manipulating he thinks he is doing.

What did I mean by the lack of payoff? Multi-season arc shenanigans is all. You know Toranaga's goal is to finally reach the capital and take control of the council of regents. Will it be by war? Or by assassination (strangely uncommon aspect considering how cliches of Japanese fiction) ? Or by a mix of politics and honour games? In the end its a mix of all of the above but is not really resolved. All we got was the expected tragedy of Mariko. Will be interesting to see how following seasons play that out for Blackthorne. I mean, I knew it was coming, but really this is a show about the beauty of its parts, not necessarily its whole. But even saying that, the whole thing continues to come together nicely, just not.... unexpected.

Kent speaks.

I think you need a tag for untethered blathering....

Watching: Scavengers Reign

2023, Download

This one is pushing back the Watching tag all the way back to the I Saw This(!!) tag realm, wherein its far enough back that it sits upon my vaguest of recollections.

Scavengers Reign is an animated series created by Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner for Max, based on their original short. 

It's like something out of my notebooks, mixed with the artwork of Moebius and an old comic by Paul Chadwick called The World Below, which itself was a throwback to Challengers of the Unknown comics, and not least, inspired by Studio Ghibli's amazing wide shots. How did I mix myself into all that? A number of my vignettes are about space travel and survival on strange worlds, but it felt like something I could have spun off into during one of my dream influenced stream of consciousness writing sessions. 

The interstellar cargo ship Demeter 227 is heavily damaged and much of the crew escapes in pods that fall down to an unknown, uncharted planet Vesta. Most pods are destroyed. An unknown time later, there are three groups of survivors: pilot Sam and Ursula, on a journey back to the damaged Demeter which they program to land from orbit, Azi and robot Levi who have learned to live with the strange environment, and Kamen, initially trapped inside his pod, high in the trees, but then freed by a strange telekinetic creature and they become co-dependent.

The other main character of this story is the planet itself, and its ecosystem. Everything about this planet is bizarre; it just teems with life, but life unlike anything we would know. Much of the strangely relaxing show focuses on depicting how that various creatures of the planet interact with each other, and the human interlopers, and their technology. It often feels like a nature show, where you watch a beautiful interaction between rain and wind and plant and animal, except there are tentacles, and massive walking towers, and parasitic bugs, and carnivorous beach balls, whirly gigs and countless blobby things. Normally scifi is sparse in its depiction of ecosystems, usually smattering our experience with a few things, like a bug on a leaf, or a wolf-creature they have to run from. But Vesta doesn't have a human-like species to knock back the wildlife, so its utterly over-full with life, dangerous and wondrous.

The show is a road story, as the three "main character" groups converge on the fallen Demeter. There are a smattering of other survivor stories, but they exist to ... well, be devoured or killed by the planet. Like Australia, something that will kill you is around every bend. There is an underlying mystery to be solved -- what caused Demeter to become so damaged -- and there are human, and robot, stories to tell, but really, I was there for the planet.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): My Name is Vendetta

2022, Cosimo Gomez (Ugly Nasty People) -- Netflix

Or Il mio nome è vendetta.

Was in the mood for a revenge flick, so clicked Add to My List on a few from other countries. This one is from Italy.

It would be nice if more of these movies decided to establish some style, instead of just watching a few dozen of the better know examples of the sub-genre and doing a low-res copy & paste. Everyone wants to be the next Taken or John Wick but most are pale imitations. Giving the young girl a haircut straight out of Leon does not make this a Luc Besson movie -- leave him to his own terrible movies.

That is my way of saying that the movie is not very good, not very innovative, just a serviceable example of the revenge/retribution genre but from Italy. But I have been thinking about the act of creation, and once again going back to Kent's comment about intent. All the choices here are definitely intentional, they are just not very... thought through far enough. But, I think, that's OK? I create: I write here, I write spontaneous flash fiction in my notebooks, I take photos with a higher end point & shoot and post them to my decades old blog site. And in all, I call myself tenaciously amateur. I am willing to create, but only willing to invest so much into it. I don't expect myself to excel, so I don't really try. And that's OK. The act of creation is what I am doing, for myself, and occasionally, like you five fine folks, for an audience. So, the writers and directors of these middling movies are... doing this as well? Sure, there is a business and lots of meddling Purple Suits in this mix, but sometimes I think the creatives behind the movie are still doing their best with what they are given, and the act is worthy unto itself. A lot of people get to do their thing when a movie is made, even a bad one. And that's more than OK.

Uh, so what about THIS movie?

So yeah, the movie.

Santo (Alessandro Gassmann, Transporter 2) lives in the woods in northern Italy with his wife & daughter, and his beard. They are in an isolated area but not off the grid. But Santo has secrets, which are revealed when his daughter Sofia (Ginevra Francesconi, Regina), celebrating a day with him after a win at hockey, snaps his pic (something he always forbids) and posts it online. Within hours, their house is broken into, Santo's wife and her brother, are murdered and Santo & Sofia are on the run.

Santo was a thug for a mafia. He killed a mafia Don's brother. Then he met a girl and ran away, to mend his ways, and his soul. But now that he has been revealed, and they have taken his wife from him, he will end things.... finally, and permanently. 

This one is by the books, paint by numbers, a text book example of how these movies go, cookie cutter. There are things about running on rails plot that bother me, for example, when the Good Guy breaks into the Boss's mansion, why is it always so... easy? Sure, there are always the requisite number of goons in the way, to be shot, strangled or blown up, but eventually he finds the Boss just sitting there. But sure, that is what I have been saying... there is just enough effort, and part of it requires giving the audience what they expect, what the genres have told them they want to see, the easily digestible template. And that's OK.

Santo was a solid (literally, for a man over 50) lead character, rough and tough looking, especially after doffing the beard and hair for the serviceable shaved-down look. He is capable but not a Wick-ian superhero. His daughter has to run the gamut from idyllic life, to denial and rage, to final acceptance and... well, as we know how these go, to sequel-ish revenge.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Drive-Away Dolls

2024, Ethan Coen (True Grit) -- download

This is the first non-brothers for Ethan Coen. Its still very Coen-ish, which then lumps it squarely into That Guy territory. Do I need a tag for That Guy?

No sir, no you don't.

That said, I just did a search for the combination of words, and it has two distinctive uses on this blog: one is the painfully repetitive reference to a time period when I considered myself a movie buff, and also a reference to those recognizable faces in movies, whose names often escape memory. Even if I don't do a tag, it might be fun to do a ReWatch series of That Guy movies. And maybe find some movies from the same time period that I should have seen, but didn't for one reason or another?

Anywayz, enough rabbit-holing.

Yeah right.

This was a weird movie, a quirky little thing that was both off-putting and very charming. But other than No Country for Old Men that pretty much describes all Coen Bros movies, no?  So the same and different when lacking one Coen?

In an alleyway outside a bar, Santos (Pedro Pascal, The Great Wall) is murdered for the briefcase he has chained to his wrist, and he is beheaded in the attack. Kind of extreme. Meanwhile Sukie (Beanie Feldstein, Lady Bird) kicks girlfriend Jamie (Margaret Qualley, The Leftovers) out of her apartment for cheating on her, so Jamie  decides to join her friend Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan, Blockers) on a trip to Tallahassee, Florida in a drive-away rental car -- the idea that a rental car has to be driven from A to B, so you get... a reduced rate? The thing is that the car was supposed to be picked up by a representative of some shady characters, but the girls showed up instead. Something is in the trunk of the car and the shady characters want it back.

Of course, that's the bland story bit. The real Coen (brother) thing is the characters. Marian is repressed, sedate and nervous. Jamie, with her over-the-top hillbilly accent, is the opposite -- free, excitable and all about the casual sex. The girls are friends only. The gangsters are loquacious and constantly badgering each other. The rental agent is peak Coen mumbly. What's in the box ... er... trunk is hilarious and off-putting.

Don't you want to tell them?

I do want to tell you "what's in the box", and you can probably guess... half of it. You see, there is the wrist-chained briefcase and there is a head hat box. The former is key to the story, the MacGuffin everyone is chasing while the latter is just incidental. But...

Just go ahead and tell them!

OK, the case is full of dildoes! Big rubber schlongs! You see, there are these weird transition pieces in the movie, all 60s psychedelia and ... is that Miley Cyrus? Apparently she was some crazy lady who slept with emerging people of power, drugged them just enough so she could do a casting of their members. And that case of dicks has been used as currency (Santos was a collector) and blackmail evidence against the now powerful said people, including right-wing Xian Senator Gary Channel (Matt Damon, The Great Wall). The goons chasing the case are his goons and he wants his facsimile penis back before it can be revealed to the world, which would no be good for his Whitehouse run.

Of course, the girls now ... cough... empowered by the use of the senator's manhood foil his plans and reveal him to the world. And run away with the bribery money. And another copy. Marian has finally admitted she is attracted to Jamie, despite their opposite end personality spectrums, and is very forthright about her fondness for the instrument of pleasure. Jamie is willing to explore the idea of commitment -- insert joke about moving in together. There are some weird things being said here, such as, why are all the "men of power" so well endowed? Why is a realistic penis replica so attractive to a pair of lesbians? But the entire movie is sex-positive, and doesn't judge anyone, and is also sort of a commentary on the foibles of repressing who you really are.

It was OK, not as ground-breaking as the Bros used to be, but fun, and quirky, and well done.

KWIF: The Fall Guy (+5)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week (uh huh) Kent has a spotlight movie in which Kent writes a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else Kent watched that week (or maybe a month ago and forgot about) Kent does a quick little summary of my thoughts. Just not in third person.

This Week:
The Fall Guy (2024, d.  David Leitch - in theatre)
Millennium Actress (2001, d. Satoshi Kon - the shelf)
Witness (1985, d. Peter Wier - the binder)
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023, d. Guy Ritchie - AmazonPrime)
Clear and Present Danger (1994, d. Phillip Noyce - the binder)
Blackhat (2015, d. Michael Mann - the binder)

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I don't know if I can really write a longer, thinker piece about The Fall Guy because it doesn't seem like much thought was put into the film itself. 

I'm being rude. 

The Fall Guy was a film I actually had a good time with, largely based on the explosive and almost effortless chemistry between Emily Blunt (Gnomeo and Juliet) and Ryan Gosling (Young Hercules) -- two extremely attractive people that look even more attractive together. Do Eva Mendes and John Krasinski need to be worried? Or at least extremely jealous?

This film is director, and former stuntman, David Leitch's love letter to stuntmen and stunt crews, wrapped in an action rom-com. Leitch over the years has proven his action-directing chops with Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Hobbs & Shaw, and Bullet Train. Each of those films may not have the greatest of stories, but the action tends to be really fun. 

And the action is fun here. There's a great "tripping balls" fight in a nightclub, and a swing arm garbage truck chase/fight sequence through the streets of Sydney that strive to stand out. I think the problem with post-John Wick action-heavy films is the action is too heavy and so nothing really stands out, and the same goes here.

What's more, I found the fact that we were watching a lot of stunts from the perspective of a film crew, seeing all the cameras and cables and tracks required, which was necessary as part of the film's narrative, but it ruins the illusion and lessens the impact of the stunts (most stunts, really, should inspire at least a bit of awe, but we've seen and know too much now, and they've become a little commonplace, undervalued).  I do appreciate that Leitch lets everyone in on the action, with the welcomed, if under-utilized Stephanie Hsu and Winston Duke each getting a sequence of their own, and Blunt reminding us she's more than capable of throwing fists when needed.

As a crime/mystery story, the more it reveals itself, the dumber it gets. It's a real nonsense plot which requires an acceptable amount of suspension of disbelief to start with (the star is missing, Colt is asked to discreetly track him down only to find a dead body and have things go even more wrong for him from there. But there's no real world logic to how wrong it gets, and the more you pick at it, the more it bleeds. There's only so much belief I could suspend and this stretched it to its breaking point.

What eventually made my suspension of disbeleif snap, though, was the film-within-a-film. A sci-fi epic called "Metalstorm" that looked, at best, like a sequel to Battlefield Earth. It looked like a mid-budget remake of the Barry Bostwick 80's b-movie Megaforce. This film would have you believe it was the next Dune or Star Wars, and it just looks like trash. The Fall Guy is a pretty good looking film. It really needed "Metalstorm" to look incredible, or play into it being B-movie action trash, not say it was an A-tier movie, but look like B-tier trash.

As a romcom, this is aces. I was in for every sleepy and/or doe-eyed stare that Colt and Judy give each other. Their dialogue was charming, funny and seemingly effortless in its delivery, and that split-screen sequence was terribly cute. Gosling and Blunt, all day, every day.

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Watching Perfect Blue last week felt like a revelation, like there was a piece of cinematic language missing from my vocabulary all these years which I now understood. Millennium Actress couldn't compete with that type of lifting of the veil.

It also didn't help that I just wanted to sleep the entire time it was on. 

I didn't fall asleep, though, which is a testament to how engaged I was with it (I did fall asleep while writing this post).

Once again director Kon proves his mastery at the transition and edit. Where Perfect Blue was a Giallo-tinged suspense thriller, Millennium Actress is a romantic drama that, all at once, tells us a character's life story and steps us through seventy years of Japan's cinematic history through which we get a staggering sense of Japanese history.  Let me tell you that as a viewer having a very limited amount of knowledge of Japanese history -cinematic or otherwise- it does this film a disservice.

The story is of a studio executive and a young cameraman visiting a famous, but long-retired, reclusive actress to interview her after the demolition of the studio of which she was a big part of building. The exec, who you would expect to be forceful and entitled, is instead a gushing fanboy with nothing but the utmost respect and reverence for the actress.  He presents her with a key which the actress thought lost years ago, and the totem unlocks a lifetime of memories.

The actress recounts her birth, how she was discovered by a producer, her first film, but also her encounter as a teen in the 1930s with a young artistic rebel whom she helps escape by shielding from the law. She is instantly smitten by him, a soulful artist, and the key was a gift from him which she was made to promise to return to him, what became her life's mission.

Her real life blurs into her acting roles as she describes them. Like Perfect Blue the transitions between real life and her acting are seamless and, at times, difficult to discern.  Her roles, or at least the ones that matter to her in retelling her life, are the ones of a young romantic longing for an unseen man who she desperately wants to find. The roles step through the eras and genres of film, from samurai to geisha to Kaiju to sci-fi.  All the while as she recounts her blurred story of life and work, the producer and cameraman are present in the story, the producer injecting himself into roles in the films he clearly knows so well. It turns out, he was a young production assistant during her later films at the studio and was, once or twice, a part of her story.

It's a surprising film in how down to earth it is. It is a film that deceptively seems like it should have been live action, but to have the actress span the ages she does is almost impossible for a single performer, and to have the scale of adventurous productions in her repertoire would make for an expensive film.  Plus, I don't know that any live action director alive has a handle on seamless transitions like Kon.

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For four years I had an art teacher in high school who loved Peter Weir films, and would play them in class while we were toiling away on our sketches. I've seen Dead Poets Society, Green Card, and Fearless numerous times. Of the three, only the latter did I actually like.  If you look at the release dates of those films, you can tell which years I went to high school (accounting for the delay between theatrical and home video release). I don't know why, if he was such a fan, we never saw The Cars that Ate Paris, Gallipoli, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Mosquito Coast, or Witness.

I have just assumed all this time that I'm not a Peter Weir fan. And I'm not. But I've spent some time thinking I'm opposed to Peter Weir, and, after watching Witness for the first time, it turns out I'm not. 

Witness is a surprisingly patient movie from an era of filmmaking where its action movies were increasingly bombastic and its thrillers were full of sex, violence and cliches. This lacks almost any bombastic action, and there's no sex, an anti-violence message, and its cliches are tossed out the side of the horse-drawn buggy. 

It's got plenty of Amish. And I thought this story of a police man protecting a young Amish boy (Lucas Haas, Mars Attacks) who witnessed a murder would be full of crude, reductive stereotyping of the community instead places Harrison Ford (Working Girl) as Captain John Book within the community where he is largely respectful of its traditions, keen to help out, and even finds a bit of peace while he's there. 

He also starts falling for Rachael (Kelly McGillis, Stake Land) the boy's mother, but also keeps his hands to himself, respectfully remembering they are people of two very different worlds.  There is an intense attraction between the two of them that just builds until, following the climactic conflict between Book and the bad guys, deflates like a balloon. The scene of Rachael looking out her window to see Book chatting up his police pals by their cop cars, smoking a cigarette, it is just an incredible moment that reinforces the gulf that separates the two of them. The thread of attraction that seemed to grow inot a bridge made out of stone turns out to just be a wispy thin thread.

Along with the film's climax -- where Weir, instead of delivering that oh-so-American release of catharsis and shooting up the bad guy instead ends with an appeal to his humanity -- proves the director isn't interested in the most satisfying ending for the audience, but the one that feels most real.

This is a pretty great movie, held down by a drone of a score that might as well not have been there at all, and one of the most awkward impassioned kissing scenes I've seen.

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One of the dumbest titles in recent cinematic history, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre finds Guy Ritchie delivering a script with plenty of charming flourishes, and leading a cast where everyone seems game (even Jason Statham (The Beekeeper), well, at least for the first 20 minutes where he flirts with the idea of adopting a character before he falls back into default Statham mode). 

Josh Hartnett (Halloween H20) does that "proof I can be funny" supporting role mid-life crisis thing that modern actors have done since Tom Cruise appeared in Tropic Thunder. He's good, and handsome, and, yes, funny playing a pompous, pampered superstar actor (if we're comparing, he does a better job than Aaron Taylor Johnson in the same role in The Fall Guy).  Aubrey Plaza (Ingrid Goes West) sometimes feels like she's in the wrong movie, but I would watch that movie. Cary Elwes (Robin Hood: Men In Tights) gets some good cracks, and Hugh Grant (Wonka) genuinely seems to be enjoying himself. 

There is that odd take in the elevator with Hartnett where Grant breaks after barely delivering his line... which speaks to one of the larger problems of this film: it feels unrefined. There's a lack of care, and certainly a lack of flair to the overall production. It doesn't look great, it looks barely a cut above, say, Burn Notice or some other action TV series. This obviously wasn't a cheap movie, so why then does Ritchie's work on Netflix's The Gentlemen TV series look so much better? The editing here proves serviceable but we've been so locked into the idea that Ritchie movies are highly stylized, that this largely doesn't feel like a Ritchie movie. 

Ritchie already did his take on Bond with Man from U.N.C.L.E., while this feels like his riff on Mission Impossible if it were done by Asylum. It's certainly inessential to his repertoire.  I think the director just likes to work, he's found a mid-range groove and he's maybe going to coast there for the rest of his career.

---

The third entry in the Jack Ryan "series" (and the second with Harrison Ford [Cowboys & Aliens] in the role) finds Ryan becoming embroiled in the "War on Drugs". The PotUS's friend is found murdered alongside his whole family, the culprits being the Cali Cartel. The President wants swift retribution, under the guise of the War on Drugs, and discreetly has his national security advisor run an off-the-books operation to take out the head of the cartel.

When Ryan's friend and mentor Admiral Greer (James Earle Jones, Conan The Barbarian) falls ill, Ryan takes his place as Deputy Director of Operations in the CIA. He is dispensed to Columbia to try and find other means to cutting off the supply chains to the US.  He petitions Congress for more funds, and Congress agrees so long as no military engagement is enacted. Little does he know he is set up to be the fall guy for it.  

The film is a pretty taut political thriller that falls apart only with a jingoistic third act that finds Ryan single handedly going to Columbia to bring back the soldiers left behind by the NSA.  It turns into a ridiculously out-of-place rescue-the-POWs action sequence that neuters the political intrigue that had been the film's raison d'etre up til that point. 

The finale of the film finds Ford's Ryan dressing down the President ("How dare you, sir!") by holding the most powerful position in the land to a standards of decency and responsibility that have absolutely been abandoned in the past decade. It's perhaps the most upsetting (and unintentional) note of the film.

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In the past dozen years of massive disastrous box office performances, Blackhat still stands out as one of the biggest bombs, recouping under 20 million of its 70 million dollar budget.  

It's not just that the film tanked at the box office, but it was both critically and socially derided at the time. That beautiful brick wall of a man, Chris Hemsworth, Thor himself, playing a nerdy master computer hacker. It was laughable in its very conception.

But a funny thing happened in the years since, the Michael Mann fans have managed to drown out the knee-jerk reactionaries and get the film into a "reclaimed" status. Certainly the podcasts and socials I feed into have been saying as such for a couple years now.

Having seen the film (then forgetting to log it) I have to say, bluntly, not bad. In fact, good. Not great, certainly flawed, but good.

My biggest gripe with the film is how Mann shot it.  It's a film that puts Mann in Steven Soderbergh mode, using a lot of different types of digital cameras and lenses and I found jumping between them quite distracting.

The film begins with a nuclear power station melting down. It was hacked and the cyberwarfare arm of the People's Liberation Army want to find the culprit. Captain Chen (Leehom Wang) of the division aligns with the FBI in the US, needing genius-level hacker (and his college roommate) Nick Hathaway freed from prison in order to sniff out whomever was capable of such an attack.  A subsequent attack on the stock market only exacerbates the need to find the culprit.  

It's a pretty taut globetrotting cyber-thriller all told. It takes some tense and scary turns as it leans into just how reliant we are upon technology, and just how vulnerable that technology is to malicious interference.

I can ignore the sketchy accent, and I can even buy into Hemsworth as a hacker, but how did Hathaway get so adept at knife fighting and shooting guns? There was a lot of nonsense in the film, questions raised and never answer, but I still just rolled with it and enjoyed the ride.

I had just watched Decision to Leave the night before watching this, so I was pumped for more Tang Wei and this did not disappoint in that regard. Loved the cast which also features Holt McCallany and Viola Davis.

Watching: 3 Body Problem

2024, Netflix

Quickly, I am realizing, as I put in more of these one-shot TV writeups, that there was a reason why I left so many shows to mega-posts, where I would breeze through a number of shows, to catch you all up. Its hard to write about a full season of something coherently. Maybe Kent's 1-1-1 format is what I should lean on? Maybe.

I have been hearing about the novel this is based on, for forever. Every time I would try to read a synopsis of the book(s), I would get lost in the deep plot and then very bored. It did not sound like a story for me. There was no "catch" that would draw me in. But I thought that D&D did a decent job of distilling the massive amount of world-building content from A Game of Thrones into a watchable TV show (until they diverged from the books) so maybe they can do the same here? I was right. It was definitely watchable, and is actually inspiring me to attempt reading the book. Maybe.

Note: I don't intend on following the "surprising reveals" nature of the book and story, so SPOILERS ABOUND.

So, it is a show set in a couple of timelines. We have seen that done before. They don't try to do the fakeout here, just establish that the real story has been going on for a long long time, all the way back to The Cultural Revolution in China, where a young Ye Wenjie (young: Zine Tseng, debut; older: Rosalind Chao, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) watches her father murdered on stage , because he is an intellectual. She is conscripted into the military where, because she is a brilliant scientist in her own right, she is brought in on a secret -- that the Chinese Govt has made contact with an alien species who live in a system with 3 suns. She is cautioned by a distant alien to not provide details as to the Earth's location, for its people will come, and not be friendly. She is angry and despondent at what her world has done to her; she contacts the aliens.

In current times, science is starting to fuck up. Commonly known laws of physics are breaking all on their own. And scientists around the world have been killing themselves. Clarence Shi (I wish IMDB would not list the book character's name; Benedict Wong, The Martian) is investigating things for... some sort of independent organization, under the watch of Thomas Wade (Liam Cunningham, Safe House). Meanwhile a group of friends (who are all science types) are caught up directly in it, as one of them commits suicide and another, Auggie Salazar (Eiza González, Godzilla vs Kong), starts seeing the impetus for it -- a countdown clock is forever in her vision, counting down to who knows what, but a mysterious woman gives her a warning that if she completely shuts down her nanofibre company, and destroys all its research, her clock will disappear.

It is this group that the TV show centres around, as they each become more or less directly mixed up in the conspiracy at the centre of it all --- the aliens who are on their way, but will take 100s of years to get here -- want us to desist our scientific breakthroughs. They are a race that while having been around for a VERY long time (they have space travel) they also live in a star system that is regularly almost destroyed, knocking them back "to the stone age". They want Earth for themselves, but know that humans, given a couple of hundred years, will find ways to defeat the aliens. So, they sabotage us before then using all kinds of super science.

The show was well paced, as I already mentioned, and distills all the Big Ideas in the books down rather well. The trouble remains, I just am not sure I care about much of it, which kind of weirds me out -- this is supposed to be the kind of scifi that excites me. There is a subplot about a magic level VR game system that is using human players to help them solve their astrological issue, the titular "3 Body Problem" wherein the three stars in their system regularly destroy their civilization. The game is supposed to supply a way for them to survive. But the whole idea just left me .... flat, uncaring. And the whole story of a woman who survives the Cultural Revolution only to get mixed up in a cult that is welcoming the aliens, providing a message they will be benevolent "pet owners" until she learns the aliens would rather squash us like bugs. This whole storyline was supposed to chilling and cautionary. But again, I was left unaffected and more annoyed by all her choices.

One story did keep my attention, a simple human story about one of the group of friends, Will (Alex Sharp, How to Talk to Girls at Parties) who is dying of cancer. He ultimately doesn't care about what's going on in the Big Wide World, as he won't be around much longer. While he doesn't play a direct part in anything, he does inspire so many of his friends to make better choices, as they are directly mixed up in all that's happening.

In the end, I enjoyed watching the show, but like Kent mentioned, its not likely to memorable or even the remotest rewatchable. When, and if, a new season comes along, I will watch, but will not rewatch to remind myself. I just didn't end up caring that much, but I am keen to see how it goes.

We Agree.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Courier

2019, Zackary Adler (Casual Encounters) -- Netflix

Why do I watch these movies? Easy to digest? Familiar plots so I can spend part of my time looking at my phone? Time wasters? They are not often BAD bad, or boring enough to turn them off, or terrible enough to watch gleefully, so just continue to be middling. And with the occasional diamond rising from the depths of the dross.

Maybe you need to make THAT a tag?

Part of me actually wants to turn the watching of these middling movies into a Kent-style Project wherein I pull them apart at the seams and comment on how design, structure and execution of movies that take just enough effort & money to produce, but don't care to have any passion for the product. But to do so would require effort, and research, and front-lobe thinking that suggests I have the mental energy to do all of the above, but if you revisit the first paragraph, you can see I don't. If I had that energy, why wouldn't I just give it to watching actual GOOD movies?!?!

He doesn't have any real answer, you know that, right?

Ezekiel Mannings (Gary Oldman, Leon)  is a crime lord under house arrest in NYC awaiting trial... by video for some reason. In London, a courier is given a last-minute package to deliver under a strict deadline. On her motorcycle, in her super sexy leather, she flies to the secret location where a witness will testify, hinting that this single act will put Mannings in jail for all the crimes he normally gets away with. 

The courier arrives with the package -- a fancy, schmancy Zoom webcam contraption, but SPOOF (!!) it was all a setup!! It releases a gas and one of the FBI agents (yes, FBI in London) betrays her fellows and lets everyone die. And tries to kill the courier. She is supposed to be killed in a hail of gunfire, a patsy. The witness happens to be hiding in the bathroom when the room fills with poisonous gas. Little did they know The Courier (we will capitalize her now; Olga Kurylenko, Oblivion) was actually a very capable ex-special-forces-type ex-soldier that easily survives the attack and escapes with the witness. BUT they are trapped within the parking garage by Bad Guys and chained doors. Thus begins a bottle episode or "locked in a room" episode; whichever trope you want to ascribe to it. Good thing this is one of my favourite tropes.

Again, note how much easier it is write these posts when you can mock them?

So, what happens next is what we expect. She fights off the Bad Guys, most often one at a time, sometimes two until it comes down to the Boss Battle. Initially the witness is a pain in the ass, but eventually he sees this stranger is here to help him, and is incredibly (and mysteriously) capable. Surprisingly, they allow The Courier to have some humour in her reactions & responses to this very violent altercation. Sure, heroes in these movies are supposed to be quippy, but usually Kurylenko is relegated to very sombre roles. Anywayz she shoots or stabs everybody to death and saves the witness... barely.

But we cannot comment on this movie without talking about villain Mannings played by Gary Oldman in suuuuuch a terrible terrible role. He is supposed to be Eastern European menacing with his black leather, scars and eyepatch, sitting around his home all day in a dressing gown, intimidating the Agents assigned to watch over his house arrest. But his character is very video game background Boss Bad Guy, but never really actually does anything but act menacingly. I mean, the whole act that they are going to convict him (and apparently end his crime empire reign) was a single shooting of a single person, by his own hands. Booorrrrring. Most Evil Bad Guys would not be bothered by a single murder conviction, either running things from a posh country club jail or arranging to have the conviction overturned on a technicality. Instead, he arranges a very complicated corruption & betrayal by FBI agents willing to kill their own for money.

Oh, and one final Bad Guy nod. The interim villain, another betrayer character (Interpol? FBI? MIsumthin?) is trying to run the "kill the courier!" activity from a security room, talking to her over the PA system and yelling at other Bad Guys to "SHOOT HER YOU FOOLS !!" He was a lot of fun actually, constantly popping pills and washing them down with booze, doing his best to soothe Mannings anger that the job was still not done. You could just feel his frustration, in his constant whining, "This was supposed to be an EASY job betraying everyone who trusted me; she is she screwing all this up for me?!?!?!"

So, in the end, did I enjoy myself? Was it worth watching? What does the shoe-gazing voice say?

Yes, that's me.

Yeah, kind of. Its a cut above the usual dross. Its executed decently. It provides exactly what its meant to provide, but does not go above its station. But it still makes me wonder what it takes to go to the next level, to become the next John Wick, to not just be sold to Netflix amidst a long list of other movies called The Courier. I don't have the answers; maybe when I do The Project, I can do some research.

Riiiiiiight.

Also, what's with the novel you write about THIS kind of movie?

Watching: Death and Other Details

2024, Disney

We watch a lot of whodunnits and crime series, in general preferring the week to week procedurals, particularly in the light British style (as opposed to the grim Broadchurch-ish shows). When I say we, I mean Marmy for the most part, but I have the ones I will wander in and sit down for. There is one particular style choice of such that I ascribe to adaptations of Agatha Christie, more accurately, movies of such in the last decade or so, that is as much about the styling of the period piece, as it is about the ensemble cast murder investigation. Think the Branagh Poirot movies and how pretty they look. Only Murders in the Building is something I would shoehorn into this category; Knives Out as well. This series, which came out of the blue for me, is another.

At its heart, it is a whodunnit, who stuck the intolerable American guy to the wall of his cabin with a harpoon bolt. Also, at its heart, it is the entire season unravelling of an older murder, that of Imogene's mother, when she was a child. But the entire show is wrapped up in the decadence of wealth, real and fabricated, it taking place on a luxury cruise ship built by (false) magnate Sunil to appear authentically as an ocean liner from the .... 1920s? And all the guests seemed to have got the note, and dress to fit the part. It knows it is doing this, for the show opens quickly, not explaining to us what is going on, causing confusion and wonderment, as anachronisms appear and then are accepted.

I loved every pretty moment of it. Well, most. I am never one for full on commitment to anything. Its been a while since we finished it, given it was a week-to-week show on Disney, which is rare these days. The thing about doing a season long whodunnit, as opposed to a single-episode-per-murder is that you have stretch things out. False leads, false solutions, double-turns, twists, conspiracies, and twists. And twists. 

When Imogene Scott (Violett Beane, God Friended Me) was 11 her mom was car-bombed in the driveway of her uber-rich boss Lawrence Collier (David Marshall Grant, Air America). "World Famous Detective" Rufus Coteworth (Mandy Pantinkin, Criminal Minds) was brought in to solve the case, and promises Imogene he will. He doesn't and she is devastated. Years later Imogene, having been raised by the Colliers, is on a luxury, anachronistic, period piece cruise with the Colliers and a bunch of other uber rich people. The primary reason is to negotiate the merger of the Collier family business so that Lawrence can retire, and his daughter take control. The murder interrupts that action.

Initially Coteworth steps up to take over the case, with Imogene loathing him every step of the way, but also recalling all the investigative methods Rufus instilled in her when she was a child. Then an Interpol agent arrives to take over the case, and Rufus reveals the murdered man was secretly his assistant, who was helping him trace leads from the original Collier case, hoping to reveal who actually murdered Imogene's mom.

Yes, the twists & turns are typical fare for this kind of murder-mystery, but they were all handled decently well. And migawd, this was a pretty pretty show full of lovely sets, incredible costuming and Imogene's perfect coif. I fully admit to swooning over Imogene's bright blue eyes for much of the show. By the time we were on our third twist, I realized I wouldn't be able to seriously commit to the "oh, but did you expect THIS !?!" aspect of the show, but everything was handled so artfully I forgave it of it's Lost-isms. And no, by using that comparison, I don't suggest there was something supernatural at play; it was all summed up via human greed, and evil and desires to take or keep power, like all good murder-mysteries do.

Notice how this write-up suffers from the old Toasty style of "i liked it, all done" lack of anything of substance to say? You should have really talked more about how pretty it was, like Mabel Mora's outfits from S1 level pretty.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Kill Room

2023, Nicole Paone (Friendsgiving) -- download

My habit of late is watching trailers: on YouTube, on Plex, on IMDB, etc. If something perks my interest, I usually grab it when its available for download. And yes, I know that these middling movies usually end up on streaming at some point, maybe a year from now.

Patrice (Uma Thurman, Batman & Robin) runs a not-currently successful gallery in NYC. She's part of the art world, deeply embedded in the nonsense lingo you see written on those cards next to the art. She also does a lot of drugs and since sales are down, she owes him money. She gives him an unsellable piece of art instead, and that gives his boss Gordon (Samuel L Jackson, The Hateful Eight), or The Black Dreidel, an idea. Gordon, who runs a bialy bakery (polish "bagels", generally lacking a hole), cleans money for mobster Andrei, but their front shops have been getting caught and shut down. But galleries sell nonsense for vast amounts of money all the time, and since Patrice has a money problem, they could work together. His enforcer Reggie (Joe Manganiello, Magic Mike) will make the art, Patrice will log it on the books, Andrei will "buy it" and Patrice can cut them a check. Clean money. Exceeeeept, Reggie's art gets noticed, and Reggie actually gets into it.

This is a middling, enjoyable, crime caper movie. It starts off rather weak, the characters are all rather paper thin, but once it gets up and running, once Patrice embraces the art work of The Bagman (Reggie kills people by suffocating them with bodega bags) and genuinely sells it to her clientele, it becomes kind of engaging. Kind of. This is not high quality by any means, which of sort of sounds like I am justifying enjoying it, but sometimes just seeing fun things play themselves out, where the actors are not phoning it home, makes a story rewarding. For me, the weakest part remained the satire of the art world. Sure, most people think art is all bullshit, that anything can be art, and considering we live in the world of NFTs, who can blame them, but it would have been nice to see at least one artsy fartsy say, "Wait, this is a joke right? We are actually considering it art?"

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Civil War

2024, Alex Garland (Annihilation) -- cinema

The post was started right after we saw it.

Ugh, my stomach still hurts. This movie had me anxiety ridden from almost the first moment. As a man who watches a lot of violent media, often as comfort food, and plays very violent video games, often as a relaxation mechanism, I was rather surprised how I reacted to the constant anticipation of very realistic violence, to something that seemed plausible. It was not a pleasant feeling.

And I believe that was the point of the movie.

One of them?

America is at war, with itself. Not the metaphorical version we are IRL, but a civil war. Texas and California have seceded, Florida breaks away (allies? on its own?) and the rest of the US is at war with them. It is not an isolated war, not one with clear lines. It is everywhere and everyone is affected. Who are the Bad Guys? Who are the Good Guys? This movie is not here to answer that for you.

You're ALL the Bad Guys, even the quiet motherfuckers who just sit quietly by and watch all this shit go down !!!

Lee (Kirsten Dunst, Bring it On) and Joel (Wagner Moura, Elysium) are war correspondents, journalists covering the war in their own country. They don't take sides, they just go where the action is and report on it, Lee with her camera and ... Joel writes? They are in NYC, suffering water shortages, brownouts and suicide bombers, but they want to get to Washington, DC to interview POTUS (Nick Offerman, The Last of Us). Despite the President's rhetoric, this seems to be the final days of him being in office. They want that story.

Tagging along is Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson, Dune): veteran reporter, old, overweight, walking with a cane, and Jessie (Cailee Spaeny, Priscilla): in her early 20s, but looks much younger, and softer and very very naive. The movie opens with Lee saving her from a bombing. But Jessie wants to be a war photographer like Lee, her hero, with her vintage film cameras and know-nothing attitude.

Its about a 1000 miles from NYC to DC by way of older highways and back country roads, because the interstates have been destroyed. A thousand miles of unknown danger. Their trucked labelled with PRESS and their badges are only expected to protect them so much. And in DC, "they shoot journalists on sight."

I am not sure if it was the anticipation, like I mention above, or recent latent anxiety I have been supressing of late, but it was tangible to me, the ache in my gut. In a lesser movie, the chosen music, style of filming, the mannerisms of the characters, would have set this journey as an adventure, instead of an ordeal to be survived. But here we get well-built characters: Lee, the world-weary photographer with the same name as another famous war photographer who suffered extreme PTSD after her WWII experiences, and Joel, seemingly unphased by it all, drinking, smoking, hitting on much younger women, and Sammy, who is tired of taking chances, and knows its all bullshit. And Jessie, young, scared, but very much assured this is the life she wants, hero-worshipping Lee and her namesake, not afraid to push past her fear to take the shot, but also so prone to stupid stupid moves. 

I feel I was aligned with Lee: she was upset at her own country doing what she had spent her entire career trying to caution them from doing, she was tired of atrocities, tired of scary little boys with big guns, and the people in power who just let it happen. She's doing what has to be done, but looks for the quiet moments, instead of finding herself in the key centre of action. Until that becomes impossible for her.

Part of what elicited the anxiety, extracting itself once again from lesser movies, was the sound design. From that first boom of the suicide bomber's explosion, which is less the familiar boiling rumble, and more the sound of a sledgehammer, to the sharp, angry retorts of gunfire, to the deafening din of helicopters at the staging ground, this was not your average action flick. These are the sounds that make you cringe, startle, not feel adrenaline and excitement.

What is Garland saying in this movie? Its obvious, and its not obvious. For those who walked out of the movie because its not the exciting, travelogue action movie of some of the deceptive marketing done for the movie, the clear cut "look at Americans doing right by their country, doing The Right Thing" is not there. Oh, there are hints of a side being chosen here, in that we hear about "the Antifa Massacre" and wonder what was so horrendous that it inspired Texas and California to ally against DC, but for the most part, we don't even know what side the soldiers we meet are one. When the journalists come across a battle between a small cadre of uniformed soldiers holed up in a university, while a handful of irregular looking, civilian clothing wearing, soldiers hunt them down, which side is which? Are the uniforms members of the Western Front and the un-uniformeds fearless locals defending their home? Or are the uniforms the standing army of the US while the un-uniformeds are just those who picked up arms to help fight the civil war? We see war crimes from "both sides" but most often, we don't have a fucking clue which side is which. Again, scary little boys (and girls) with big guns getting the opportunity to shoot at each other. Like Kent mentioned as we walked away, a strong comment in this movie is about the US being a country with a lot of guns, and its just itching to use them, on anyone, including each other.

The movie ends as the civil war is brought to an end, by an action we have seen in a couple of other movies, with the White House invaded. Where those movies were about the invading forces being very clear Bad Guys, and the brave men & women within the White House were defending America, this movie steps sideways, and this act seems more like a street action from any other war movie. But again, more visceral, more scary. The handful of secret service people and supporters are defending against a large force of heavily armed, highly trained soldiers. It also ends with Jessie becoming who she wants to be, getting the award winning shot that will be on the cover of Time Magazine, but at a cost she probably won't understand until she is Lee's age.

I liked this movie, a lot. It dragged me out of my usual comfort zone, or more accurately heightened my already severe discomfort zone? It made me feel things, for reasons more than my usual work drama. Unfortunately, all it left me was feeling bleak. I don't see the movie as much of an exaggeration of the US situation. The possibility of Americans killing Americans, almost gleefully, seems very real. And scary AF.

Kent: We Agree.

I really dislike most of the posters for this movie, not because they aren't evocative, but because most are deceptive. The movie doesn't take place there, that is not really what the movie depicted. And that's not even mentioning the incredibly terrible AI generated posters highlighting major American landmarks being destroyed.

KWIF: Civil War (+3)

 KWIF = "Kent's Week In Film", so...stuff he watched this week, or the week before and forgot to write about.

This Week:
Civil War (2024, d. Alex Garland - in theatre)
Perfect Blue (1997, d. Satoshi Kon - bluray)
The Great Muppet Caper (1981, d. Jim Henson - Disney+)
Patriot Games (1992, d. Phillip Noyce - DVD) 

---

Despite being saddled with conceits mined from the modern shitstorm that people politely call "political discourse" this felt like a very 1970's-styled dystopian future road movie where the fears and anxieties of the current era are projected onto some skewed alt-reality or alt-future where they've completely gone haywire. It works for me like Soylent Green or the Omega Man or even a lot of Grindhouse B-movies.

We've seen so many dystopian/post-apocalyptic films (and TV) where the imagery of everyday America is a desolate or abandoned wasteland but we don't often see everyday America as battleground, and certainly not to this effect. Where some may shrug it off or alternately find it sensationalist or distasteful in it's gratuitously violent imagery, I found it potently discomforting to see battles waged in terrains that should otherwise feel so safe. Cities and towns, high rises and parking lots. There's a very blunt statement, delivered early (and in the trailer) by Kirsten Dunst's photojounalist, that can be interpreted as "I thought we were better than this" or maybe "I thought we were immune to this". But we'll get back to why America is not.

This film skirts around the specifics of the factions at war and what led them there very pointedly. I get why that angers some but I think it's meant more to extract it from any specific dividing lines, to not put the audience on one side of this fictional civil war or the other. It's really not about investing in whether one side or the other wins and I like it that way. That Texas and California form a coalition is just the start of the film's blend-of-both-sides-isms ... on both sides that proves perplexing to our current bisected left-right political reality. Yet there are little clues as to the breaking point....

Our protagonists clearly don't like the three-term president, the one who still claims to be winning in the face of defeat, the one who has reporters shot on sight, the one who inspires Americans to suicide bomb protesters running into the crowd with a massive flag of stars and stripes (did she yell "For America?" Or did I do a Mandela Effect). There's a clear extrapolation here, that a Trump-like figure has taken the office, loyalty-oathed a whole army of people, and sought to destroy all that was not bent to his vision. And people, under the banner of the two most secessionist states, have banded against it. 

Is it that the journalists don't seem to have any real leanings towards one side of the war or the other or that the Civil War is being fought, on both sides, by military and civilian alike that it's never clear, just by uniform, which side they're tagging along with? The character narrative is that they are compelled to do this, they're there to capture the story (and the photo) not purely out of a need to do news, but because there's a level of addiction to it, despite the associated trauma.

What many seem to be struggling with is "what is the point?" Or "what is the message?" Or "what should we do about this?"

I'm still processing it. I really don't know there's any singular point or message of the film. Is it a simple warning that America is not better than this or immune to it? There is a fairly basic character study of wartime journalists and their trauma, with no real surprises in terms of characterization. There's a study of an America viewed through smoked glass, where you can make out a recognizable but vague shape, but it's not exactly a clean image. Is it a warning? Sure. But is it entertainment? Yeah it's freaking scary, I was a bundle of nerves throughout. Nearly every encounter is a total step into the unknown, into engaging personalities who you have no idea what their ideals or motivations are. As wartime journalists they had gone to far flung places where they are outside observers, here they are members of that ecosystem at war and cannot maintain the distance or impartiality they're used to.

Garland also makes death a very hard thing to look at here. He doesn't shy away from the agony and brutality of war (or the outside elements that will capitalize upon chaos for their own purposes) even as it ratchets up in its final act. Throughout he kind of dares you to feel dispassionate, to step outside yourself like the characters try to, to just be the unaffected observer.

But back to America being immune to this sort of thing.... What hit me the most about the movie had nothing to do with political ideologies (or perceived lack thereof), rather the sheer amount of guns, mostly big, automatic weapons. There's an all too frequent sense that the people our protagonists encounter had the weapons at hand pre-war and have just been waiting to use them, for whatever reason. This is my takeaway of the film. Our scariest neighbours to the south have been arming themselves up for decades in what's supposed to be the safest, most prosperous country on the planet. Why? Because they expect something is going to happen, whether it's invasion, or rising up against a government, or to stave off some form of reckoning for a long history of abuses. Whatever. But nobody amasses that amount of weaponry without some desire to actually use it. And that's the backdrop of this film to me, that desire actualized, on both sides. And i think the final shot of the film, a single photo of militarized big game hunters proudly and triumphantly crouching around their kill that slowly develops in the frame beneath the credits, it hits that nail right on the head.

Too blunt? Not blunt enough? I get why people are divided about this film, but it worked for me.

---

I have had a thorn in my paw about anime as long as I can remember. I've treated it like it's a genre, but it's just a category of moving picture that means "Japanese Animation".  It's not "all the same" as I have dismissively claimed in the past. Within that category can be all different types of styles, stories, characters, and genres. As well, within the category can be found all different types of artists.  Just because I saw Akira in my teens and loathed it, I shouldn't paint all anime with the same brush, should I?  

For some time, my only exception to my self-imposed "no-Anime" rule was the works of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli.  I think it was a concession to the "That Guy" within me to say that I wasn't totally closed-minded.  But I still am. How many anime films have I written about in my share of the 2000 posts on this blog?  I've only used the "anime" tag 5 or 6 times (shockingly more Toasty).

My favourite "must listen" podcast, Blank Check, is covering the films of Satoshi Kon starting this weekend and my impulse was to just take a break from the show for a month as they cover the director's four films, but then, I thought, why not challenge myself. After all, Kon directed Tokyo Godfathers, a film I recall fondly from a screening at Toast and Marmy's flat, like, two decades ago (I tried to coax my anime-loving kid into going to a theatrical screening a couple months ago and was denied...they later regretted it and said "I sold it wrong").

So yeah, Perfect Blue. A filmed I knew literally nothing about going into it beyond the quote on the back of the package that called it a psychological thriller. I mean, I was intrigued. If I had to guess, I would have thought it was a neo-futuristic world with rain-drenched neon-lit cities...basically anime blade runner with someone questioning their humanity. But that's me being reductive in my view of what anime can be.

Instead what Perfect Blue delivers is truly an intense, Giallo-inspired, yup, psychological thriller about an aspiring pop idol whose management pivots her into being an actress, but the move upsets the most fanatical of her small-but-loyal fan base, leading to stalking and murder.

But it's not that straightforward. Mima is a young woman who doesn't have much agency in her life... her agents do. So the move from aspiring pop icon to actress betrays her innermost desire, but a need to please and a legit talent for acting propel her on this new career path. Following the path means shedding her flirty, not-so-innocent, bubble-gum image, and shooting a rape scene becomes a pivot point for her career, her psyche, and her obsessed fan who writes an online journal about Mima's life, except from the vantage point as if she never left her pop music girl group.

Mima herself becomes obsessed with both the identity of her stalker, and the alternate life that has been envisioned for her. The more she deviates from her good-girl image, be it in acting roles or nude magazine spreads, the more she obsesses over her alternate reality, seeing visions of pop-Mima everywhere.

Kon's direction, for his first feature, is masterful. It's an odd thing to say about an animated film, but it's all in the edit. The way Kon blurs the lines of reality, and time, with absolutely stunning and seamless scene and sequence transitions is the greatest marvel of the film. The first such "edit" (it's animation, where everything is storyboarded and purposefully drawn, so it's not like a live action film edit) I thought "how clever", and then they kept coming, and I was kept pretty rapt by the whole thing. It's largely an incredible production.

Story wise, things are a little more complicated. It takes place in the world of Japanese media (in the 1990's no less) and I don't really know much about how film and television get made over there, but have heard that it's not the same as the Hollywood system. But the concept of men controlling the movements of a woman through such an industry, using and abusing their talent and their image, it's not a regional problem.

That it deals with being a female celebrity in Japan is intriguing, and it's very pointed with the leering looks of men. The opening scene at one of Mima's pop concerts with half-full stands is populated, notably, entirely by men.  There's a total "ick" factor to the whole proceedings. The on-set film-within-a-film rape scene is almost perfectly handled in playing with the blurred lines of fantasy and reality.  The fact that Mima agreed to do the scene but internally was reluctant, does that make it just as traumatic even if it's only simulated. In between takes I kept waiting for the intimacy coordinator to step in and ensure it was safe and ok for Mima, but this was the 1990s and there weren't such people on set.

The after-effects Mima shooting the scene is basically the crux of the film in a way. It's a dividing line in Mima's public image, and the sense is that there's a taint to Mima having done such a scene, akin to victim-blaming.  I wasn't sure if this was a critique of something specific in Japanese culture, but one only needs to look at the heavy scrutiny America female teen pop stars undergo when they try to shed their youthful image for "I'm a sexy adult now" to see what Kon is mirroring. Mima's psyche seemingly fractures between her desires to press forward in her new career (which she is getting praise for) and deep regret for abandoning her puerile past.

I would give Kon more credit for tactfully handling all of this image and identity and sexual politics if he didn't fall into the anime trope of gratuitousness with his assault scenes. I'm not a puritan, but when you have full control over every image on screen, to purposefully orchestrate the scenes he did, in the way that he did, is, bluntly, gratuitous in a 70's and 80's exploitation cinematic way.  It's of its time but I always find putting titillation in scenes of violence disturbing and problematic.

These moments mar what is close to otherwise being among the best of classic psychological thrillers.

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I loved the Muppets as a kid, and have continued to love the Muppets as an adult. But I realize that I'm not a fan, I'm a tourist. The Muppets is just a pop culture space I like to visit, have a look around, buy a memento or two, and be on my way. I'm not one of those people who have tremendously strong opinions about the early films vs the 90's films vs the Disney films.  Some people have really powerful feelings around how the Muppets should be used in movies and television, I haven't taken the time to have such feelings.  I haven't studied the Muppets, and I don't know all the nuances of their trajectory.  While both The Muppet Show and Muppet Babies were an immense part of my youth, I haven't engaged with them much in my adult life.  My favourite Muppet film are 2011's The Muppets, 1999's Muppets From Space, and 1987's A Muppet Family Christmas, but according to Muppet fandom, there's something wrong with this opinion.

I know I've seen The Great Muppet Caper before, but I would hazard a guess that it's been about 40 years since I last watched it (Jesus I'm old).  The only thing trapped in my mind about this film was the bike riding scene (because it's constantly being shown as a clip for a multitude of purposes) and the vague recollection of John Cleese (Fawlty Towers).

The film opens with a very meta title sequence and song about starting the movie and getting into character. It's not the only time they break the fourth wall this film, but we'll get to that. Kermit (Sesame Street News) and Fozzie (Muppets Tonight) play reporters and twins. The gag of the frog and the bear being twins is an excellent one, but one not employed nearly enough.  It is a running joke, but there are so many missed opportunities to keep bringing it up and it pained me that it's employed maybe five times in the film.

So the reporters are on the scene when a fashion designer (Diana Rigg, The Avengers) has her jewellery stolen right before them. They travel to London, staying at a Muppet-infested dive hotel, where they follow up on the story. Kermit meets Piggy (Pigs in Space), who was just hired as an assistant to the fashion designer, but doesn't correct Kermit when he assumes she is the fashion designer. Keeping up the ruse is such a Muppet  thing for a bit. Of course, Kermit isn't the only one enchanted by Piggy (he isn't really), so too is the designer's bored gold-digging courtesan, played by Charles Grodin (Beethoven's 2nd). It is he, along with his trio of lithe, long leg, leggy lithe legged model cat burglar associates, who is planning the heist of the ultimate "baseball diamond".

It's a total farce, not without its charms or its laughs, but it's not nearly as charming or as funny as it could and should have been.  The pieces were all there, they just weren't played up, nor played out enough.  The running gags should have been ran into the ground, not held in precious reserve, and the meta comedy will be done better in the future.

But there's one scene that sticks out above all others that takes the Muppets to another level. Some might say it's the stunning technical accomplishment of Muppets riding bicycles, but no, I'm talking about a scene where Kermit confronts Piggy about lying to him, but then the scene starts blurring the line between the in-story Kermit and Piggy and the "real world" Kermit and Piggy, wildly leaping back and forth over the fourth wall until both character and "performer" are confused. It's a meta comedy perfection, performed brilliantly by felt figures.

Otherwise, not my favourite, but decently entertaining.

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Patriot Games came out when I was in my mid-teens. I had no interest in it even though it starred Han Solo AND Indiana Jones. To me, it was a total dad film, a movie for dads who enjoy those kind of dad movies.

I'm now in my late 40's and I'm a total dad, and I'm sure my teen+ kids look at the things I watch and consider them to be dad things. So why not lean into it and finally get around to watching the various Jack Ryan productions from the 90's? I just watched The Hunt for Red October, and Lady Kent's DVDs of the two Harrison Ford Ryan movies live in the binders, so they're readily at-hand.

And yeah, having seen it, total dad movie. 

Ex CIA agent Jack Ryan, in London on vacation I suppose, just happens to be on scene when IRA terrorists make an attempt on the Royal Prince's life. Ryan intervenes, getting shot in the process, but kills one of would be assassins. It's just a young man who turns out to be the brother of Sean Bean, a big time IRA guy.

Bean is also captured but is freed from prison, and vows bloody revenge on Jack Ryan, and the film is basically his campaign of terror against Jack, but also putting him at odds with his IRA colleagues.  Jack rejoins the CIA, at least temporarily in trying to hunt down the man who is hunting him.

While The Hunt for Red October is also a dad movie, it's transcendently so. It's a film that conveys an understanding of how everything works, from submarines to chain of command to diplomatic relations. Even if it just makes it up, it gives the appearance of understanding these things. Patriot Games is base level dad movie where it plays fast and loose with any sense of how things work in the real world, and puts characters in places they need to be because they need to be there. It's not terribly interested in its characters, except to have Jack Ryan get the bloody bad guy in the end because bad guys need to get got. The film toys with the idea of insight into Sean Bean's terrorist but any sense of empathy is all in performance an not the script. He's just the bad guy who needs to die a horrible Sean Bean-style death

This is a film the has Samuel L. Jackson in the pocket as Jack Ryan's navy buddy, but gives him only a couple lines and a gun to shoot. He's not a character and Jackson is a captivating presence (as always) but utterly wasted. James Earle Jones reprises his role as Jack's CIA boss Admiral Greer, but if he's in the film for more than 5 minutes I'll be surprised. Anne Archer and her magnificent mane of hair plays Mrs. Jack Ryan, and is relegated to something just marginally better than the nagging wife. She's so close to having agency in this film but never quite gets there. Thora Birch plays the Ryan daughter and is incredible. I dare say it might be a better performance than anything Birch has given as an adult, but that would be hyperbolic and rude because there's always Ghost World. Harrison Ford plays action-hero-Harrison Ford, and I wish that Alec Baldwin had kept the role. Ford's cinematic person can't help but dominate the character and so Jack Ryan doesn't feel like the same character as Red October, he might as well be Regarding Henry, or guy who is Presumed Innocent for all we care.

Patriot Games. It was a movie.

1-1-1-KsMIRT: April twice around

K'sMIRT is Kent's Month in Reviewing Television, where each month (or twice each month?!?) I step through the TV series I completed watching each month in the 1 Great-1 Good-1 Bad format.  These are shows I finished (or was finished with) in the past two-ish weeks. 

This Month (part 2):
Shogun - Disney+/FX/Hulu
Fallout Season 1 - AmazonPrime
3 Body Problem Season 1 - Netflix 
Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent - CityTV 

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Shogun (10 of 10 episodes watched)

The What 100: In 1600 Japan, the Taiko is dead, and his heir is too young to yet rule. Five regents rule in his stead. But Lord Toranaga sees the machinations of the other regents, the power they lust for, and the Catholic religion starting to hold sway over decisions being made for the county. He is targeted, impeached and marked for death. He retreats to his lands, but with sophisticated cunning. At the same time arrives Protestant English sailor John Blackthorne, with a warning of the ill dealings of the Portuguese Catholics. He too makes immediate enemies but finds an ally in Tornaga. Catholic Mariko, hailing from a disgraced family and married to an abusive but revered samurai, is assigned as his translator by her Lord, Toranaga, and the two find connection. Things get complicated. Very, very complicated. For everyone.

(1 Great) One great thing about this show is...this show. It is thoroughly great from start to finish. Every aspect of it works, and works well. I cannot think of a wrong step it makes. Visually it is pure allure, just a feast for the eyes. The costuming, the sets, the landscapes all are so evocative and apparently the dedication to accuracy is there in recreating Japan on the British Columbia coastline. It is an epic story but managed tightly and efficiently. It features a sprawling cast of characters, all who are managed so, so well. Even among the dozen or two seemingly minor players, they still get their own arcs.  We see who they are to start with and where they wind up, and how they've changed is evident. Each character gets enough moments to have an impact (with the exception of our sailor pal played by Nestor Carbonell who sets asea in the second episode). 

(1 Good) It cannot be understated how brilliantly this American show manages to divorce itself from western standards. That it has a white character who is important to the story, but cannot be called the lead character, and who appropriately disappears into the background, or off-screen altogether for long stretches while the other performers deliver long sequences of subtitled Japanese dialogue, it's pretty unreal. But it feels more natural than had they tried to force Blackthorne into being The Protagonist.  Equally good is the way the show throws the audience into the deep end of Japanese politics and culture, largely without turning Blackthorne into a expository gravity well.

(1 Bad) If I need to nitpick, it's that I wanted more Nestor Carbonell. But the show in no way needed more Nestor Carbonell. As well, I didn't think a lot of the fighting sequences (and there weren't many) were exceptionally well choreographed...but then most of the fights that happen were about the story impact and not making an impressive-looking fight sequence.  The CGI was decent (used largely for boat scenes or rendering 1600's Osaka, but still was very CGI. One can't expect too much out of the CGI on a TV show of this sprawling scale, so it really didn't bother me

META: I have not read James Clavell's novel, nor have I seen the 1980 TV mini-series adaptation, so I don't have those as frames of reference. What I do have is the recent experience of watching 30+ Japanese Godzilla films and some history with samurai movies.  As such, I wasn't really prepared for this, in terms of the culture and traditions being so foreign to me.  However, like Blackthorne, I quickly came to respect it if not always understand or embrace it.  Blackthorne is unkindly called "barbarian" throughout the show, but himself sees aspects of Japanese culture as particularly barbaric. But eventually he see the culture of honour and tradition as something admirable and sophisticated, as does the audience (and it's not all through his eyes).  And will I see a more likeable character on screen than Kashigi Yabushige, even when he's being utterly terrible. I don't think so. I hope we get more Tadanobu Asano all the time, everywhere.

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Fallout Season 1 (8 of 8 episodes watched)

The What 100: It's over 250 years in the future of an alternate reality where the asthetics of the 1950's never abated. The world got nuked and a small number of people went underground in corporate-built-and-sold "Vaults" where society has persevered with one mission in mind...outlast the radiation then return to the surface to restore order to a wild land. Of course, the surface has other plans, an irradiated wild west show full of mutants, the chemically undead, and a lot of desperation. The surface invades Vault 33 and take Lucy's dad (Kyle McLachlan), the beloved Vault administrator. Lucy (Ella Purnell) ventures to the surface, against everyone's wishes, and finds tenuous allies in The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a centuries old bounty hunter, and Maximus, a squire in the Brotherhood of Steel, all equally seeking a severed head Maguffin that might be the key to saving the world.

(1 Bad) I have to say I wasn't certain how I felt about the show after watching the first two episodes.  Show creator/director Jonathan Nolan (Person of Interest, Westworld) in the first 10 minutes delivers a flashback sequence that ends with nuclear bombs going off in Los Angeles, and then about another 10 minutes later, now in the far-flung future of the late 24th Century, delivers a massacre within a very pop art-styled "Vault". These two scenes are not played for laughs and there's a sort of stone-seriousness to them that, when the show tries to pivot in to archness, it clashes. For both of Nolan's opening episodes the tonal shifts are abrupt and hard to reconcile. It's not until the third episode, in which the characters from different worlds start to really crash into each other, as well as take on some delightful side quests, that the show finds its rhythm (with Nolan still at the help). It's kind of crackling fire from there.

(1 Good) Like Westworld there's a lot of mystery to be untraveled over the past and present timelines, and in the different territories. They are tantalizing mysteries.  Lucy's brother Norm, seen early on as a wimp and coward becomes the bravest person in Vault 33 as he starts asking questions (and finding answers) about the connected Vaults 32 and 31. On the surface, there's so much mystery around how this reality and civilization functions, and it seems like there are competing controlling factions. But Michael Emerson's head contains the salvation of society and everyone wants it. Why?  We find out. It's not an endless puzzle box of mysteries. It seems pretty evident that the show is confident in its abilities to answer the big questions but also give you more to think about.  There's so much to explore.

(1 Great) The greatest enemy in the world of Fallout is not gigantic fleshy mutated beasts, or desperate bandits, but rather the inescapable crutch of capitalism. In flashbacks that double as both the origin of Fallout's post-apocalyptic reality and The Ghoul's, we learn how corporate interests were clearly the motivating factor for the annihilation that happened, and how the very same corporate interests continue to drive, motivate, and collide even in a toxified wasteland.  I should have known Nolan wasn't going to just be delivering an oddball romp for oddball romp's sake.  Not only is it anti-capitalist, but it's anti-establishment and even cocking a eye towards blind faith religion.

META: I've never played a Fallout so I cannot attest in any way, shape or form how well it adapts the video games, nor can I say how fan-service-y it is. I assume it's very fan-service-y. Even I know, through osmosis, the image of Vault Boy, with his gleeful wink and wildly gesticulating thumbs-up gesture, and I delighted in the origin story of this image, as I did with so much of the show. I really want to see the deep dive from a black culture critic looking at the world of Fallout examining the shape of blackness in the wake of the very white-centric culture of the 1950s being the dominant template for life for the next 340 years.  I noticed how the black characters in this spoke in a very over-enunciated, proper midwestern tone, and I really wonder how much the show's creators put thought into it.

[We Agree]

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3 Body Problem Season 1 (8 of 8 episodes watched)

The What 100: Amid Mao Zedong's cultural revolution of China, fervent pro-communist youth beat an prominent astrophysicist to death before a fervent crowd, only his daughter, his greatest protege, protesting. She finds herself at first interned into a work camp, then conscripted into working on a deep space communications program. When she gets a response from an alien civilization, she receives a counter-message not to answer it. Angry at the world, she answers it anyway. Half a century later, this is what happens as a quintet of science nerds in their 30s all find their way into the inner circle of the defence against this alien force. 

(1 Great) There are a lot of Big Ideas in 3 Body Problem and I was really engaged with how liberally the Big Ideas were just tossed out and thrown around the show. What could have easily sustained a 20+ episode season makes for a pretty breakneck 8 episodes of television that, while neither powerful nor perhaps even all that memorable, proved quite entertaining.  

(1 Good) If the show ultimately proves unmemorable, what will no doubt linger is The Boat Scene. If you've seen the show, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't yet, well, you'll know it when you come to it. Speaking of The Boat, it's clearly an analog for Scientology and the Sea Org, right?

(1 Bad) I could lay out a laundry list of things that the show could have done better with.  It's not that they were all bad, just perhaps needed more time to breathe and explore concepts and characters more than they had time to do in 8 episodes. What did start to get to me was the lack of orientation in time. With the exception of the flashbacks, which were very clearly flashbacks, from scene to scene we never really knew where we were in relation to the prior scene. Is it hours since the last scene? Days, weeks or months? The show moves for rapidly through its timeline without truly signifying that it's doing so. Where Shogun was a show that approached its audience as intelligent adults capable of keeping up, 3 Body Problem seems to think its crowd is a gaggle of dumdums who would only get more confused in some numbers popped up on the screen.

META: 3 Body Problem is the first scripted product from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss in their reportedly massive deal with Netflix. Having experienced HBO's Game of Thrones I was both optimistic and wary of what the end product would be. These two guys proved that under their guidance they could create a hell of a series when following the template and story of a book, but equally proved that when the source material runs dry, they are about as focused as a deflating balloon zig-zagging around a room. I think 3 Body Problem works but it's almost in spite of itself. If it weren't for the novel laying out the template who knows how great a mess this would be. As it is, I don't have any great emotional attachment or affection for most of the characters, except those played by Benedict Wong and Liam Cunningham who are just unique and charismatic performers.  That said, there weren't any characters or performers I disliked so that's also a feat on its own. 

I hadn't read Liu Cixin's 3 Body Problem novel (because we know I don't read) but I has heard of its successes and, for some reason, equated it to more speculative fiction (eg. extrapolating present scientific or tech breakthroughs into how they might shape a future reality) than wild science fiction about aliens, unbreakable microfibers and weird virtual reality shit (that seems so important, until it's not, which is the show in a nutshell). 

I liked it, reservedly.

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Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent (7 of ? episodes watched)

The What 100: It's Law & Order, but in Toronto. No, not that Law & Order, but rather the Criminal Intent flavour from the Baskin Robbins of Dick Wolf's hyper-extended franchise. 

(1 Great) Lady Kent and I just get a kick out of watching the show navigate Toronto, and we try to fact check it for its locales and timelines getting from point A to B.

(1 Good) Aden Young as Detective Sgt. Henry Gaff is the quintessential erudite police detective. The guy just knows everything about everything. He'd be the guy doing a three-week undefeated run on Jeopardy until he got bored and let someone else win. He has no perceived life outside of police detecting (in true L&O fashion) and yet he seems so cultured that he must constantly be traveling the globe visiting art galleries and reading every biography ever written about anyone ever.  He's a ridiculous person but that's what makes him fun to watch, and Young, with his thick, vague Canadian accent really makes a meal of every scene.  It's all to the detriment of, well, every other cast member who seem like they don't really need to be there, because Det. Sgt. Gaff has it all under control.

(1 Bad) Let's face it, Law & Order is straight copaganda through and through, overvaluing and sensationalizing the capabilities of the police, solving crimes and getting confessions within days, mainly by outsmarting the perpetrators.  It's bullshit that perpetuates itself.  

META: I wanted Law & Order Toronto to be the Law & Order structure, not whatever this Criminal Intent business is. It's a novelty, but I don't know that it will sustain as regular viewing. There's no meat on them bones.