KWIF: A House of Dynamite (+2)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Usually when I take a week of work just to have time off I spend much of that time consuming and writing about movies. We'll stupid mice in the house have had me checking and repositioning and rebaiting traps, cleaning up messes and hunting for nests while only getting 5-6 hours of sleep at night because they're stressing me out. In the other times, I've been boardgaming or rearranging the house for new shelving so I haven't had much time at all for movies. Poo. 

This Week: 
A House of Dynamite (2025, d. Kathryn Bigelow - netflix)
Final Destination 5 (2011, d. Steven Quale - rental)
Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025, d. Adam B. Stein, Zach Lipovsky - crave)

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A House of Dynamite is a political procedural taking the audience through a "what if" scenario from as many vantage points as it can in its just shy of two hour runtime. That scenario asks what would happen if a rogue missile was launched from an unknown source. What would we actually know? What could we actually do? And by "we" I mean the United States government officials and military personnel who are in charge of monitoring and responding to such things. [I'm not really part of that "we" statement].

Because of the nightmare landscape that America (and much of the world) is in now, politically and socially speaking, A House of Dynamite already feels out of date. It's a film that presents an intense and terrifying scenario that assumes competency at the helm of all these levels of decision making, which we're all (mostly) keenly aware isn't the case anymore. Hell, there's a character played by Moses Ingram that is a FEMA agent... does FEMA even exist anymore?

The commander-in-chief here is played by Idris Elba (with a real wonky American accent...didn't he have a better one nearly 20 years ago in The Wire), he loves podcasts and basketball, so he's very Obama-coded. Honestly, somehow I feel more comforted by an Obama-like presidency where there may be a nuclear strike on American soil than I do about anything the cheeto-in-charge is doing these days.

The film takes place in three segments, each focusing on a few central players. In the first it's Anthony Ramos at a military monitoring station, Rebecca Ferguson at the White House Situation Room ("the Whizzer") and Moses Ingram's FEMA agent as she gets evacuated to the safety bunker in the Appalachians. The subsequent two segments loop back to the other sides of conversations being had from different perspectives, be it Tracey Lett's STRATCOM Commander, Gabriel Basso's deputy national security advisor, Greta Lee's foreign military expert, or Elba's president, among others.

I get the impulse to really drill down deep into the procedural aspect and try to show this situation from as many different points of analysis and decision making as possible, but it only leads to diminishing returns as we keep looping back. There are far too many characters to really care about any of them, so all we have to really care about is the situation, and, somehow, it's not strong enough to sustain itself satisfactorily.

There's no doubt that Bigelow is a great filmmaker, and this is constructed so well, with a commitment to detail and nuance, and it is an incredible feat of editing, but it presents its conundrum, repeatedly, and it doesn't have an answer. America is about to lose a major city to a nuclear strike that may or may not have been intentional. Does America retaliate against an unknown enemy with a show of strength, and if so, against whom? Will the nuke actually hit the city, or the nearby major body of water? And will the nuke actually go off?

There's a lot of positing that this film teases and tease and never resolves. It's going for "clever" but it's just edging the audience with no relief, and it makes the journey a frustrating one.

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James Wong and David R. Ellis see-sawed on the Final Destination franchise for four years, each with a slightly different take on what the spectre of death should look like, and how the films' protagonists would deal with death's designs for them. It would have been more fun if each of the directors' second efforts weren't so bad.

With fresh blood in the form of unremarkable director Steven Quale from a screenplay by soon to be accomplished screenwriter Eric Heisserer (Arrival, Bird Box) they present the Final Destination equivalent of a workplace sitcom.

The scenario the protagonists here face is a ludicrous but thoroughly entertaining bridge collapse. It's a pretty epic spectacle that is the series' second best disaster to date (though about to be trumped by the next film). It's shot decently enough, the special effects aren't as atrocious as the previous two films, and the script has all but gotten rid of the cast of characters you just immediately want all dead.

Here wanna-be chef Sam (Nicholas D'Agosto) is on a bus on a work retreat when he has a vision of the bridge collapsing. Stuck in traffic on the bridge, he manages to rile up a few other passengers who follow him off the bus and to safety as the bridge collapses. This includes his best friend/manager Peter (Miles Fisher), his girlfriend Molly (Emma Bell) who literally just dumped him, intern Candice (Ellen Wroe) and a few others who will all die horribly later.

This is a series that's all about the deaths, and the fake-outs leading to the deaths. It's about teasing the audience with possibilities before executing Death's design. Final Destination 2 did this the absolute best, and while this doesn't fully live up to that, nor does it really recapture the magic of discovery of the first one, it's pretty decently entertaining throughout, with some particularly squicky kills (one involving a laser eye surgery laser that had me flinching)

There are two big diversions here. The first is the inclusion of Courtney B. Vance's FBI agent who is investigating Sam's vision, wondering if Sam committed an act of domestic terrorism, only to come to understand that as connected as the dead are, there's no corporeal perpetrator. I really would have liked the whole movie to be from his perspective, as he comes across the scenes and he and his team need to try and unpack what happened, Will Graham from Hannibal-style ("this is my design"). The second is a new explanation as to how to end the cycle from Tony Todd, "Mr. Final Destination" himself. In this case, it's killing someone else and taking their remaining time for one's self. It's an interesting premise on its own that, while constituting the focus of the third act, doesn't get explored much outside of its needs for a horror film.

If you pay close enough attention throughout the film, the coda shouldn't be a surprise, but it's still a delight and probably the best ending of the series.

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14 years later and Final Destination is back, and bigger than ever. Enough time has passed with the series laying dormant to build up a nostalgic reverence, plus the current state of Hollywood is all about exploiting intellectual property so a new Final Destination was inevitable.

What wasn't inevitable was the love and care that seemingly went into this franchise re-launch. It's not that the film is straying very far out of its lane, but rather it just navigates the series and its concepts in a manner that seems to indicate the writers (Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor) and directors Stein and Lipovski are all real fans of the series and have been thinking about how to freshen it up for some time.

The centerpiece of the film is its opening prologue, an epic 20-minute sequence set in the late 1960's where a young couple (Max Lloyd-Jones and Stargirl's Brec Bassinger) are out for a special evening at the newly opened Sky View restaurant, a posh space-age joint at the top of a Space Needle-esque building. They encounter some class-based prejudice that threaten to ruin their evening, but it turns out all it would take is a little 10-year-old shit chucking pennies from the lookout to destroy the whole facility. It's a spectacular disaster, at least the rival if not the better of the highway disaster from Final Destination 2.

The whole sequence is so vibrant and colourful with that gauzy 60's feels to it, and the polite menace beneath chipper smiles that I really wanted the whole movie to be a period-set Final Destination. Alas, it was not to be, as we smash cut from the collapsing building to a modern day lecture hall where Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) has just awaken, screaming, from the nightmare. It's a recurring vision she's had, and she thinks the woman in it is her grandmother.

It turns out it is her grandmother, Iris, in Stefani's vision. Iris has been estranged from the family for decades. She was an intense mother, overprotective to a fault, hounding the family about safety once grandkids were born. Nobody will talk about her, so with the only clue she has, Stefani goes to meet her grandma for the first time as an adult, at a remote cabin in a clearing in the woods surrounded by all manner of defences to ward off death. Iris is a kook, but we watchers of the franchise know that despite how nutty she appears, Iris is right.

Turns out Iris had that same vision and saved everyone from the Sky View disaster. But the ripple effects have been a constant in the 55 years since. Death is still cleaning up this mess, and it's only now catching up to Iris's family. [In this explanation, but no hard connective threads, it assumes that the events of the previous movies are all connected to this one event]. Stefani thinks Iris is crazy until Iris says "seeing is believing" and she intentionally lets up her guard for one second, affording Death the opportunity to claim her right in front of Stefani. Stefani tries to convince her dad, uncle, cousins and brother of the danger that's coming for them but it takes two freak accidents before they start seeing things her way.

As much as I wanted the fully-period-set Final Destination, Bloodlines offers a thoroughly entertaining and trope-twisting entry into the series. While I seem to like the hamminess of FD2 more there's a playfulness to Bloodlines that's hard not to be amused by. I mean the sequence where Stefani's cousin jogs off into the background only to get hit in the head by a soccer ball, sending her off balance and into a big garbage bin which is then promptly picked up with the side arm and dumped into the back... maybe the best single moment in the franchise for sheer delight in execution.

The deaths aren't as Rube Goldberg-ian as I would have liked them to be but they are plenty gross, with more than a few that had me squirming in my seat while also giggling in delight.

This also is probably the most accessible cast in the entire series. There are no annoying characters or performers here, for probably the first time since the first movie, we're actually not rooting for these characters to die.

This also marks Tony Todd's final on screen appearance, shockingly gaunt, but still full of gravitas and an absolute legend.

[poster talk, briefly - the Final Destination series has had a skeleton-based focus for most of its poster life, with the first two films being the very late-90's-styled muddy blue and black, shadow-heavy group head shot which got real boring real fast. But Bloodlines' main poster, selling the whole "space needle" thing is vibrant reds and oranges popping off, real solid seller. My favourite though is the series of four posters selling the backyard barbecue and the dangers lurking there...just a real deviation from the norm of the series while also maintaining the skull motif]

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I've really enjoyed my time watching Death work its designs out on screen. Regardless of how bad some of the acting or directing or scripting could be, there was always entertainment value to be had. It's super obvious that the third and fourth entries are the worst of the bunch, which means the rest are all great fun... four out of six is pretty good! Plus, Final Destination: Omen is apparently in production, this time a cruise ship disaster. Keep em coming I say.

Ranking Final Destination:

1. Final Destination 2
2. Final Destination
3. Final Destination:Bloodlines
4. Final Destination 5
5. Final Destination 3
6. The Final Destination

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): John Candy: I Like Me

2025, Colin Hanks (All Things Must Pass) -- Amazon 

Full disclosure: 1) I was never the biggest John Candy fan, but I have seen a lot of his movies and 2) I am not a great viewer of documentaries, but Marmy is a fan of Candy, so we watched together.

It was fine, but perhaps I am not the best judge.

For those not in the loop, John Candy was a beloved (and even I, not the biggest fan, knew that) comedic actor from Toronto who passed away too early due to weight & stress related health issues, at the age of 43. The documentary covers his youth, the start of his career, its rise, and with the rise, the rise of the demands on him. It is obviously a movie made by people who loved him and his legacy, but it does not shy away from the dark aspects of his life & choices. That said, given the darkness emanating from the US at the moment, Candy was angel by compare.

Documentaries follow formats, always dodging between stock footage and interviews with people. Nobody interviewed didn't love John Candy and the expected SCTV and Saturday Night Live crew are there, along with Hanks' dad Tom - I was not aware of their connection beyond the single movie they did together. but Tom seemed to adore John.

The problem I have with documentaries, which is the same I always had with journalistic media, and even more so with everything we read on the Internet now, is that its all about the creator's agenda. We are being manipulated by the techniques of film making into taking everything we see on the screen, edited entirely for the script of what needs to be said, as bold fact. For me, successful documentaries unfold facts and then let you make decisions, but this is not that -- this is about idolizing a man, but admittedly, not assuming he was perfect.

If there was one aspect of the purposeful editing in the movie that entirely sucked me in, it was the number of times the movie chose a shot of Candy being vulnerable. He's seen as a big laughable bear, keyword "big" and that focus hurt him. The script says it, but you also see it in his face and hear it in his voice from interview snippets and it was almost as if the entire documentary was built around a need to remind us of this aspect his personality. His feelings could be easily hurt, and because he was big and he was a comedian, people felt it was alright to poke at him for it. They wanted to deflate the jolly. And that was wrong.

But, he stood up for himself, as his character in Planes, Trains & Automobiles did, giving the documentary its title. I think I would like him as well.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Site

2025, Jason Eric Perlman (Threshold) -- download

I would have plugged this into the most recent "31 Days of Halloween" but, a) its been too long hence to insert posts into a chronological stream that is so deep in the past, and b) it wasn't very horror, more scifi thriller. It had horrific elements but its an example of how just tone and intent can change a plot from one genre to another. The poster wanted to imply horror, the creator did not.

On that note, I am listening to audiobook of Joe Hill's "King Sorrow" about college students who accidentally summon a malevolent dragon spirit and thought, "This is a horror book but you could do a fun contemporary fantasy adventure novel about an ancient dragon slayer who gets resurrected every time a dragon reappears in the world." How about it, Joe?

Family drama. Do plots exist without them? Are they the rote framework that people write dramatic fiction on? Would a scifi thriller exist if the main character had a happy home life, liked his job and had a good social life absent of toxic people? Or would people just see that as farcical, for who doesn't have something going on? I know a lot of people who have utterly bland mundane lives sans any drama.

Anywayz, so we have recently separated Neil Bardo (Jake McLaughlin, Will Trent), cuz of a drunk driving accident that he won't accept full accountability for. He works as a site surveyor for recently divorced Garrison Vey (Theo Rossi, The Penguin) who plays at understanding accountability but really, blames everything on everyone else. Garrison has a lucrative potential job turning an abandoned government facility into a new school -- basically loot the thing for anything worth selling, plow it all under and build a school. That is, if there aren't any pollutants that could quash the deal. So, Neil and Bardo survey the massive site on their own, poking around in the offices, and find an unmapped sub-basement with a classic scifi particle accelerator at one end of a long tunnel.

Like most of these movies, the physical setting depicted vs the plot-based setting don't usually match up. The structure appears from the outside as a massive warehouse compound, which the pair could not have quickly surveyed on their own and which they also seem to bypass entirely. The two end up focusing on abandoned office buildings, and the strange lab beneath. So, what was the above used for? Just an empty cover so the weird science being done below could be ignored? Also, if an illicit scientific experiment, that had unforeseen dark consequences, had happened in the building, I doubt the government would allow it to end up on the market. But I guess they needed a reason to have grown adults blunder into it, outside of the usual "curious teens jump the fence on a dare" idea.

Anywayz, Bardo turned on the power so he could see what he was surveying and that activates the weird science thing. Almost instantly he is given visions of the past, of a Chinese internment camp during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in the late 30s. He also loses time. Garrison is pissed.

The visions / hallucinations continue. Things degrade. The sale is in jeopardy, during one of his hallucinations, his kid is injured so badly, the boy might lose his eyes if surgery doesn't happen immediately and they are in no place to afford it - the tension between Bardo and his wife Elena (Arielle Kebbel, Midnight, Texas) is increased exponentially. But its not just Bardo having them, but also Garrison, though he won't admit it to anyone. And when Bardo's college friends show up, friends with baggage pertaining to Bardo's behaviour in college, Bardo's ex Naomi (Miki Ishikawa, The Terror) starts experiencing the hallucinations as well, as he exposes her to show others he is not insane. It just makes things worse for all, baggage opened again, drama between all being enhanced.

This all boils down to those exposed to the device, flashing back into the histories of those in the internment camp. The experiment was one with the pseudo-science catch phrase of "entanglement" which in this case implies particles which make up people are tied together, forward and backwards in  time. The visions can reflect the kind of people they are, or can be. Bardo is not the hero of the situation, but the "evil" camp director, and the "two" are influencing each other through time. Bardo makes a decision in our time, which changes history in their time, allowing the focal point family to escape, changing historical fact of "nobody escaped Unit 731" to "a single family did". Bardo had to accept that he has perpetually made terrible decisions, and in that understanding, make a choice that is not about him, but for the benefit of his family. In turn, it influences the chief scientist in the original experiment, in the 70s, to change his own choice, creating a paradox -- if the experiment was never completed, how did Bardo change his mind? All of it never happens in the first place; well except for Unit 731 in Manchuria, which was still a horrible event in actual real world history.

I do like pseudo-science quantum / entanglement scifi stories and this was a decent example, marred by, in my opinion of course, heavy handed family drama. I do understand that human emotional conflict is core to story telling but I do tire of the constant people-making-bad-decisions of American story telling.

KWIF: lazy Sunday

 KWIF=Kent's Week In Film. This week's film watchings was interrupted by the return of AppleTV to the household, and by the awareness of a mouse in the house and the rampant messes that it made beneath our own cluttered masses. After a five day hunt the mouse was finally defeated, and I am exhausted. But prior to both of these events, I had a lazy Sunday of movies and Hallmarkies.

This Week:
Devil In A Blue Dress (1995, d. Carl Franklin - Hollywoodsuite)
S.O.S.: Save Our Skins (2014, d. Kent Sobey - Hollywoodsuite)
Three Wisest Men (2025, d. Terry Ingram - Hallmark/W)
A Keller Christmas Vacation (2025, d. Maclain Nelson - Hallmark/W)

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When you think of detective noir genre, you're thinking 1930s or '40's, black and white, lots of sultry horns on the soundtrack, cigarette smoking and stylish hats, dames in dresses and so much sexism, twisty plots and downer endings.

I never really embraced the detective noire genre. It seemed so...outdated when I was younger, and couldn't get over how much of it seemed like...affectation. It didn't help that the genre was riddled with cliches which comedies had mined to death. So at 19 years old when Devil In A Blue Dress came out as Denzel's sixth movie in the two years following Malcom X, well, I wasn't interested in this olde timey claptrap. Give me Virtuosity and Crimson Tide, all day everyday.

But, I've been in a detective/noir mood of late, inspired largely by rewatching the films of the Coen Bros., and it struck me, pretty hard, that I should give Devil in a Blue Dress a shot. I mean, if detective noires demand a strong lead, you don't get much stronger than Denzel J. Washington, Esq.

Devil in a Blue Dress is an adaptation of Walter Mosely's 1990 neo-noir novel of the same name, and introduced the world to Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins (Washinton) [just try to tell me that Easy Rawlins is not the best noir detective name ever], a veteran of WWII who gets laid off but is desperate for work to pay his mortgage. He gets sent his way a smarmy, suspicious looking character, Albright (it's Tom Seizmore, so you know he's bad news) who wants Rawlins' help in looking for a woman. Easy sees the money, and even though he already senses something is off about the request, can't help but take the work.

Even though Easy is not a detective and has no past with law enforcement, he has a way with people, a confidence most others lack, and a physicality which is very intimidating even if you're twice his size. Soon after taking the case, an acquaintance who knows the woman he's looking for winds up dead, and suddenly things are getting real. Albright we quickly learn is a thug, and has misrepresented what exactly he's after. There's also an L.A. mayoral race at play and somehow both candidates are involved in whatever this big mess is.  At a certain point, Easy needs help, and calls in his army buddy Mouse (Don Cheadle) but Mouse's more...trigger-happy tendencies may be more of a hindrance than a help.  

Beneath it all, Easy still has PTSD from the war, and whatever the active version of traumatic stress disorder is from just being a Black man in America. The cops harass him, the white men play him, and he knows a white woman need say but a word and a mob will come after him.

Devil in a Blue Dress is an incredible noir story, featuring incredible characters, from the most major to the most minor (there's a mentally challenged man on Easy's street who keeps trying to cut down people's trees, and Easy is constantly chasing him off...while still acknowledging him as part of the community), and there's nothing quite like watching a character get chucked into the deep end and having to learn how to swim, only to discover they're an olympic caliber swimmer.

Devil in a Blue Dress did not do great at the box office, and it's a damn shame. Mosely has written 14 novels since 1990 starring Easy Rawlins (the latest came out this year), and we should have gotten a new Washington-starring Easy Rawlings adaptation every three years. With AppleTV killing it with their novel series adaptations, I think we need an Easy Rawlings relaunch as a series, maybe with John David Washington in the lead?

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In the before times, one would surf channels until they found something the caught their attention and just watch, usually all the way through, no matter how bad it was, because options were limited. We have nothing but options now, and it causes "analysis paralysis" where you just scroll and scroll and scroll through your various streaming services, often watching nothing more than a 60 second auto play snippet before moving on to the next thing. So much of the pain (and sometimes fun) of sifting through streaming is cutting past the cheaply produced, licensed-in-bulk amateurish garbage, only to occasionally find one starring a whole bunch of name-brand actors from TV series you used to watch 15 years ago, or it features a conceit that you just can't pass up watching.

S.O.S.: Save Our Skins is very much from the cheaply-produced, licensed-in-bulk pile, a British/Canadian co-production starring nobody I'm familiar with, but tantalized me on concept alone.

Two British nerds, Ben and Steven, have travelled to New York City for a comic book convention, only to wake up and find that the TV is off and their mobile service is down. Oh, and when they hit the streets the city is empty.

Right off, it's incredibly impressive for this exceptionally modest production to have managed to capture scenes on absolutely vacant NYC streets. This was shot 6 or 7 years before the idea of lockdown was in anyone's mind.

The nerds do what nerds do, which is annoy one another, look for junk food, go shopping, and panic only a little... er, well, a lot when they encounter a blue monster (which looks like if a pro wrestler from the 1950's joined the Blue Man Group). While foraging at a bodega, they encounter another man who invites them around to their place, and, yeah, he's a creep. The internet still works (I really have to wonder how much of our infrastructure can truly run on autopilot and for how long without human intervention) and they send out a message, which in turn they get a response from two Canadian nerds who beckon them to Toronto.

Along they way they encounter a mentally deranged woman who tries to assault them. Ben takes a liking to her and calls her "Killey". It's not a very flattering portrayal of the mentally ill, and also the fact that Ben, a lonely nerd, effectively grooms this woman who doesn't seem completely in her faculties is all kinds of ick.

At the centre of the entire story is a series of random images that flashes on screens, subliminal messaging from a strange figure who plays into the final act, where we learn about what's actually happening and why.

S.O.S. is meant as a comedy, but is rarely ever funny. The character portrayals are incredibly thin, with Ben being kind of oblivious and id-drive while Steven is the worrier who just wants to get in touch with his mum. 

The film does manage to effectivley capture, at least visually, the sense of emptiness with nobody else around, but emotionally you never truly feel it. I can only imagine what this would look like as a Pegg-Frost-Wright joint, which this is clearly a pale shadow of.

The ideas are definitely there, and it's decently well acted, but the characters, the adventure, the humour are all very much lacking.

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A  Light Toast to HallmarKent: Three Wisest Men

The Draw: Three Wise Men and A Baby was a goddamn delight. The casting of Hallmark superstars Andrew Walker, Paul Campbell and Tyler Hynes as brothers in a legit comedy was inspired. The sequel was diminishing returns, but still the leads made it more than worth the while. A third entry was going to be the "must watch" of the season, because even if it was lesser-than what came before, there was no doubt it would still be a joy to watch these three men perform together.

HERstory: Mom (Margaret Collins) is selling the house! Taylor (Hynes) has been given a job offer...in San Francisco... and his ex Fiona (Ali Liebert) is there too. Mom selling the house means he has to move anyway, but he's having commitment issues with current girlfriend Caroline (Erin Karpluck). Stephan's (Campbell) indecisiveness is getting in the way of marriage preparations with Susie (Fiona Vroom), and their house springs a leak just as Fiona's dad (Lochlyn Munro) comes to visit. Luke (Walker) is expecting twins (well actually it's Sophie [Nicole Major] expecting twins but Sophie's always been such a non-entity in these movies) and Thomas is getting jealous and acting out. Um, they're all staying at Mom's for one last Christmas in the home and it gets tense. Hijinks ensue.

The Formulae: Oh cripes...there's really none? Even the "getting a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve" trope is brought up but skipped over. There's no snowball fights, no cookie baking montage, and no overt propaganda for Big Hot Chocolate.

Unformulae: At one point the three boys, each in the midst of their own personal dilemmas, sit down to have a drink...and they're drinking beers, not hots cider or cocoa. This, unlike other Hallmarkies (not even the Evergreen movies), is very invested in its franchise and brings characters back from previous movies. Unlike the first sequel, it avoids callback-as-comedy which is great. This also steals a sub-plot from other movies like Jingle All The Way where Thomas wants a popular toy for Christmas but it's hard to get, so the boys go to extremes to get it. Where that could have been a whole movie, it's just a 10-minute aside.

True Calling? Who cares at this point, it fits the series, and it's more eloquent than the clumsy Three Wiser Men and a Boy.

The Rewind: There's an early sequence in the film where Luke and Sophie are at Lamaze class for parents expecting twins (or more) and the instructor is in the midst of a meltdown, providing no reassurance for the attendees as to what life will be like with multiple babies. As she starts bemoaning her husband's own mental breakdown, there's a brilliant smash-cut to "Tom" on his knees with three babies strapped to him like a baby bandolier.  

The Regulars: They're all regulars at this point, if not of Hallmark, then at least of the series.

How does it Hallmark? Because it's the third in a series, it's kind of way outside the usual parameters of a Hallmarkie. Where the first was still infused with holiday romance, because each of the brothers was single and they meet someone, and at least the second one hat Tayler meet cute-ing the awesome Caroline, this one has no romance at all. There's the hint of complication with Fiona (Taylor's love interest from the first) but the film doesn't play it out. So with that, and not leaning into any of the usual holiday tropes, it's not very Hallmarkie.

How does it movie? It remains a joy to see these three leads together. But this should have been a six- or eight-episode half hour sitcom. There's too much going on and not enough time for the movie to explore it all, and the shenanigans they get themselves into together feel disconnected from their individual story arcs.

The Taylor love triangle never pans out. Luke's anxiety over becoming a dad of twins isn't adequately explored. Stephan's Meet The Parents anxiety is the most underwhelming sub-plot, but make this a sitcom, give these stories room to breathe for both emotion and comedy and I think it would have been solid gold, rather than tarnished silver in need of a good buffing.

How Does It Snow? There's less than 60 seconds of outdoors in this movie, and what little outdoors we see are establishing shots of real winter scenes, or backgrounds where they've tufted some batting to make it look like snow around the edges. 

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A Light Toast to HallmarKent: A Keller Christmas Vacation

The Draw: Brandon Routh makes his triumphant return to Hallmark movies in a non-cat-centric movie this time. I'm here for it.

HERstory: The Keller kids are joining their parents on an Austrian riverboat cruise visiting the best Christmas markets in the world. College football team manager Cal (Routh) just lost out on what he thought was the love of his life. Construction executive Dylan (Jonathan Bennett) needs a break from his boyfriend (William) after his proposal is met with a "this is not the right time". Data analyst Emory (Eden Sher) has just been laid off. So they each are coming to the trip with baggage. But when a kindly grampa introduces Cal to his comely granddaughter Felicity (Jill Winternitz), and the ship's events coordinator takes a shine to plucky Emory, and William decides to join the family trip anyway. Mom and dad have a secret they need to share. It's all, well, it's a trip full of family bonding and romance. 

The Formulae: There is a scene where Emory and her bestie talk while decorating a Christmas tree. There's a gingerbread house making contest on the boat.

Unformulae: The film's opening credits play over a photo album that features the main family cast in different locales at different ages which is, I'm sure, all AI generated. The photos are too clean to be Hallmark's usual sloppy photoshopping. Strauss' "Waltz on the Beautiful Blue Danube" plays overhead, a touch of class over the AI tarnish.

Hallmark rarely springs for location shooting, and here they have a riverboat as a main set, they have beautiful Austrian cities and markets as backdrops, there's a rustic converted barn that's an ale house and lodge, and the kids have to take "Hansi" (a motorbike with a side car) through the hillsides to catch their boat after missing it the previous night.  Actual production values and wild, non-Canadian locations are so exciting and rare in Hallmarkies.

True Calling? They are Kellers, and they have a Christmas vacation.

The Rewind: So, Felicity is introduced to Cal by her grandfather and these two very attractive people take one look at each other and say "huh...not right now". Felicity is recently divorced, and Cal has some thinking to do. But they keep talking to one another, not flirting, just being friendly. But then in the Vienna market, Cal starts getting hit on by a pretty Austrian lady who is entranced by this American and Fiona, even though she has said she's *not interested* totally cock blocks him. "I love being rescued from an adorable Austrian who is totally flirting with me, especially when it's by a super-cute American whom I'm not allowed to flirt with." But in the scene right after that, the leering glare of the Austrian in the background...oh, the daggers her eyes are throwing.

The Regulars: Bennett is Hallmark royalty, Routh has a few of these under his belt, but this is Sher's first, but probably not last (she's got serious Lacey Chabert vibes, so it seems like they're seeding her). Winternitz's only prior is "Christmas in Scotlan", while handsome and charming Anand Desai-Barochia is a first timer as Bennett's boyfriend, but he's so sultry on screen without even trying (their kiss is great). Mom and Dad (Laurel Lefkow and Nigel Whitmey) are new to the genre, which is surprising given how the parent roles are usually where you find the most veteran of Hallmarkie actors. Beyond our leads, I think most of the performers here are regional hires.

How does it Hallmark? It's a top notch Hallmarkie, not defying the standards of a Hallmarkie too much while still offering something heartfelt and Christmassy. It's charming and funny with some sweet moments and a few pretty decent romantic moments.

How does it movie? As a Hallmarkie it's on a much grander scale than most, but even at that scale it's still shot like a Hallmarkie, and as well as it's acted, I don't think anyone could confuse this cast for a movie-movie. I mean Jonathan Bennett's hammy physical comedy and over-the-top snoring immediately take it out of contention for actual movie movie.

How Does It Snow? REAL SNOW! And LOTS OF IT!......

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Ranking the Coen Bros.

2018, d. Joel and Ethan Coen - Netflix
[Reposted from my letterboxd, typos and all, originally written Nov 16, 2018]

Anthologies are always a challenge for me. Movies, books, comics... I'm never left satisfied. There's too many stories, usually of different length, sometimes connected by theme or genre, sometimes only tenuously connected, often not really connected at all. They usually vary in length and tone, often by different creatives, and invariably you have to compare one story against the rest, and even in the best cases there's always a dud, or one that overshadows all the others. It's never a satisfying experience.

I think the only place where the anthology can really work is television. We're talking The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Black Mirror, but also the idea of season-length anthologies like Fargo, True Detective, or American Horror Story. With the former, the episode by episode format of anthology gives separation, but also structure. Not every episode will be equal but the separation between stories (talking about old school weekly viewing, but also the separation provided by opening title and end credits sequences) provides a buffer to immediate juxtaposition. As individual episodes they're standalone, like short films, not treated as a necessary part of a whole package. The season length anthology is just more fulfilling, a mini-series that lives on it's own each year, all the benefits of regular television but with the satisfaction of both an intended story structure and closure.

Which brings us to The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, an anthology feature from the Coen Brothers (Ethan Coen no stranger to anthology storytelling, having written more than a few collections of short stories). The early rumour was this exploration of the old West was intended as a tv anthology but it's six tales each run at wildly different lengths (from 10 to 40 minutes) which would make tv serialization impossible. [edit: the "series" rumour has been disproven]

The only real way to tackle reviewing an anthology is story by story, but that type of reviewing also exemplifies the fact that an anthology cannot really be viewed as a whole unit, rather only it's pieces.

The film takes its name from the opening story, following Tim Blake Nelson's singing gunslinger through a breif and violently whimsical journey (it makes me want a Shaolin Cowboy movie adaptation from the Wachowskis). I had incorrectly inferred that Buster Scruggs would be the film's Cryptkeeper, the connecting thread between stories, but no such luck. Just the turning of pages transitions us from one to the next.

James Franco robs a bank in the next story, but gets foiled by the teller played by Stephen Root. It's the shortest of the stories but tonally consistent with the previous, if a little less fantastical.

The third story follows a limbless orator as he travels the countryside with Liam Neeson as his caretaker making a meager living entertaining meager (and thrifty) crowds. Is this a friendship? A business partnership? Or an exploitative relationship? Ultimately, it's overlong, cast in such grey, and lacking the wit and charm of the previous entries, destroying the cohesiveness for the rest of the film.

The next story takes full advantage of Bruno Delbonnel's beautiful cinematography as Tom Waits panhandlers for gold. It's luscious color palette is in stark contrast to the four dankness of the previous story. It's just as deliberate a story as the last, really getting the sense of the time to spare on such endeavours people had way back when.

While the first two stories were rather pithy and energetic, these two slow things right down, peeling away the idealism of the old West, leading into the fifth story, a forty minute romantic tragedy on a wagon train to Oregon. Due to it's length it's easy to invest in the characters, and understanding the painstaking hardship of travel seems to be the point. The early romanticism of old West tropes have washed away, here there's bare practicality and excruciating nothingness, coupled with a gut blow of an ending.

The final story finds five heads in a carriage, talking, a spectre of darkness aptly surrounding them, but the Coen's see fit to return levity via the uncomfortable, forced interaction of strangers who would otherwise not associate with one another. It's an engaging dialogue but quite much to take after three tales of a more photographic quality and already nearly 2 hours deep. If anything, it serves as a reminder of how awesome Tyne Daly is, and she should be in more things.

As a whole, it's a Coen Brothers production so it's worth the time spent, but as a Coen Brothers production it's on the bottom end of their spectrum. I also wished the had better Native American representation than just as attacking war parties.

---

I'm being lazy with Buster Scruggs i, not writing a brand new review because, well, I don't have a lot more to say about it, just as I didn't have much to say about it then. I did find it generally tedious to watch and frequently checked the timestamp to see how much was remaining. The Coens love a tight movie so whenever one goes over two hours, you feel it.

The Blank Check Podcast pointed out that the connecting thread of these stories is death, but it's tough for me to really think of it a theme of each of these stories. 

My ranking of the Buster Scruggs stories:

1. The Gal Who Got Rattled
2. All Gold Canyon
3. Near Algodones
4. The Mortal Remains
5. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
6. Meal Ticket

Now that I have rewatched all 18 of the Coens films together, here are my rankings, subject to change.

1. Fargo
2. The Big Lebowski
3. Hail, Caesar!
4. Inside Llewyn Davis
5. A Serious Man
6. No Country For Old Men
7. The Hudsucker Proxy
8. Blood Simple
9. Burn After Reading
10. Miller's Crossing
11. True Grit
12. Barton Fink
13. The Man Who Wasn't There
14. Intolerable Cruelty
15. Raising Arizona
16. O Brother, Where Art Thou
17. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
18. The Ladykillers

It's a difficult list to make because 60% of these films are flat out masterpieces, and most of the rest are troubled but still generally likeable. I mean, True Grit is an incredible, maybe even perfect film, and I have it out of the top 10, which is absurd.

My top 3 was my top 3 going into this rewatch and they remained relatively untested. LLewyn Davis and A Serious Man were both a lock for the top 5 and jockeyed back and forth, with Llewyn taking the edge because I couldn't stop thinking about it for days. The films in the 6-13 slots could probably be re-arranged any which way and I would still be happy with that ranking.

The only real surprise in making the list is that Raising Arizona jumped 3 spots from the bottom...and maybe that Burn After Reading made it into the top 10. It's probably the only non-masterpiece in the top ten, but it is so much fun. It's very possible that I may be finally warming to Raising Arizona but I just don't have the sentimentality towards it like so many others do. But sentimentality is why Fargo and Lebowski are my 1 and 2.

Of all these films, only the bottom three do I feel hesitant to watch again. In fact, I would probably watch The Ladykillers before O Brother or Buster Scruggs but it's pretty unanimous that The Ladykillers is absolutely their weakest film. For the record, if I were to add in Joel and Ethan's solo works, Honey, Don't would slot in between The Man Who Wasn't There and Intolerable Cruelty while Drive Away Dolls would slot in just after Raising Arizona. I don't even know where to put The Tragedie of Macbeth because it's nothing like the rest of their oeuvre. It sits on its own outside of it all...or it's last, I guess even though it's clearly a better film than The Ladykillers at least.

But what an unbelievable delight it is to have all these films in the world, and to revisit them in succession. It was a real effort to watch them week-to-week and not gorge myself on them. But, next time there will be a gorging.

Chiplog: Brets Cream cheese and herbs

 Pre-chip: This looks to be the sophisticate's version of the classic sour cream and onion potato chip, and I couldn't be more excited, but also, nothing the "chive" flavouring ingredient I'm concerned if it will trigger my onion sensitivity or not. In the past green chives have not really triggered me like onions do, but then, one rarely ever consumes much chive ever. It's certainly not as common an ingredient as onion. Even if my body doesn't instinctively reject it, I wonder if I'll have a psychosomatic response to an onion-y flavour?

Ingredients: Potatoes, sunflower oil, whey powder, salt, fermented milk powder, lactose, creme fraiche powder, sugar, garlic powder, natural chive flavouring with other natural flavourings (milk), parsley, aromatic harbs extracts (parsley, dill, mint)

First smell: Heavenly. The hint of fermented dairy and the subtle aroma of garlic and chive and the other herbs are even subtler, but it's are jiving so well with the potato-and-oil combo. So inviting.

First taste: Oooh, there's a tartness to the dairy ingredients I really like. The garlic is stronger than the chive that's for sure.

Aftertaste: The garlic lingers as garlic does, but it lingers with that dairy flavour, like a smooth soft cheese sticking to the roof of your mouth a little. Very pleasing.

Mass consumption: Oh yes, this is a mow-down bag of chips for sure. As much as the dairy and garlic are the predominant flavours, the dill and the parsley are both coming through, though juuust slightly. As I plug away, enticed as I am to keep triggering those pleasure receptors repeatedly, I occasionally get a hint of the mint extract. It is the one thing I've noted previously about Bret's chips, each chip isn't seasoned equally. That may be a bad thing for some, but for me, it slows eating a little bit as each chip tastes a little different than the other. For full flavour, I grabbed a handful and ...wow pow! That's a good flavour palette. There's strangely a "freshness" to it, like eating a sprig of parsley or mint leaf with your fully loaded jack-et potato.. I think I would like this even more if those herbs had just a slightly bigger punch though.  The chive is a softer flavour in the onion category and works great. The "cream cheese" is the centrepiece here for sure. I could easily finish this in one sitting. But I do want to have a break just to see if I do react to it in any way at all.

Final thoughts: It really does seem like a hoity-toity low-key sour cream and onion flavour, and while, if I had an actual choice I would go for that fully-potent sour dairy/onion flavour most of the time, but if I didn't want my tastebuds absolutely assailed, this would be the perfect alternative to satisfy the craving.  I wonder if stinky breath will result regardless.

Rating: 8.1

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Frankenstein

2025, Guillermo del Toro (Pacific Rim) -- Netflix

After moaning about "meh" (well, again), I am sort of afraid to start writing about this movie, by a director whom I unabashedly adore. I have seen, and enjoyed, all his movies sans Nightmare Alley, which while being in the bucket of "not seen yet", I am also a bit hesitant based on Kent's panning of it. But its been a while since I saw something of his, besides Pinocchio which I know I saw, but didn't write about for one reason or another, so I was really really looking forward to this.

That said, I am decidedly not "meh" about this movie, as I was enraptured almost entirely the way through. This is del Toro reaching into that part of his psyche that decorates his house, and allows him to have created Crimson Peak, not just a nod to classic horror (not horror) fiction but an homage to the story where the monster is not the monster. If I was to say anything to lessen the experience, it is that is only a faithful adaptation of the novel, which I admit, I was never really able to get into.

We start with Victor Frankenstein's childhood. Well, technically it begins full in the action, in the Arctic, as Frankenstein (Victor, not monster, to be pedantic) is found by Danish sailors whose ship is trapped in the ice. Victor is pursued by a howling, screaming monster, and as the captain of the ship secrets Victor away in his cabin, the monster attacks --- the movie truly begins with Victor's tale as "creator" of the threat.

Daddy was mean to me -- the age old excuse of horrible people. In Victor's case, he was raised in a family of wealth, one born(e) on the back of two merged families. Victor's father (Charles Dance, The Last Action Hero) was a harsh demanding man, and Victor was always at his mother's voluminous skirts. Until she dies giving birth to his younger brother. Daddy wants Victor to follow in his footsteps, and become the most renowned surgeon in Europe. Of course, the man is expects nothing but the utmost from his son, and abuses him if anything less happens.

The visuals !! The dresses mother wears, diaphanous material flowing like blood down the steps of their house !! The stone sarcophagi connecting the Frankensteins more to ancient Egypt than Europe !! The houses !!

An adult Victor (Oscar Isaac, Moon Knight) has become enraptured with life and death, and how to overcome the latter. He has absorbed his father's coldness, a disconnection from reality depicted during his hearing where he shows his marvelous puppet show, bringing life back to the stitched together corpse of a man. He sees only his fantastic accomplishment, the college sees him playing God and the profane exhibit before them, and we, well we see the horror of it all -- that is the mind of someone there, animated and responsive, but with no hint of caring for the pain they must be in. For Victor, bodies are tools, they were not people. As for souls, Victor cares not. Neither does del Toro -- that's for us to debate.

One witness of his accomplishments is Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz, Alita: Battle Angel), a munitions magnate who is equally fascinated by life after death. And his niece Elizabeth (Mia Goth, X), who happens to also be the fiancée of Victor's little brother William (Felix Kammerer, All Quiet on the Western Front). Henrich offers to finance everything Victor is doing, as long as he can observe and capture his progress with photography, something Harlander indulges in. At first Victor refuses, seeing only someone who only wants to watch him work life one watches freaks in a circus. But once Victor meets Elizabeth, and something in him is stirred, he accepts, tasking his own brother with building The Laboratory, in an abandoned tower in ... I am not sure where -- they mentioned Scotland, but they are also within a quick wagon's ride of the battlefields of the Crimean War, where Victor gets fresh bodies, and once The Monster escapes, the nearby peasants are very central European. Anywayz, They take a tower that was designed... for water, and fashion a place where Victor and work and live and ever entertain.

Ugh, I am doing it again. I am procrastinating on writing about something I actually LIKED because it is always much easier to write about something I didn't care about, no commitment to writing just the right thing.

Victor takes his time, not only being distracted by the delicate butterfly that is Elizabeth, and being rebuffed continually by her, despite her appearance at being... fascinated with Victor, but also by his own lack of progress. But finally he cracks it, and in the onset of a coming storm, and the angry arrival of Harlander, who reveals his own agenda in the endeavour, Victor ties the intimately stitched together body into the cage and ... boom. While initially he fails it has failed, due to faulty parts, suddenly his Adam, his creature, his Monster (Jacob Elordi, Saltburn),  is awake and uttering one word, "Victor" ... a hapless mimicry.

The harvesting of the bodies, the tearing up of sinews, tissues, pieces and the horrible/beautiful jigsaw puzzle, is so so del Toro, so lovingly constructed in practical effects, simultaneously gore filled and yet artful. And it also depicts the disposal, the charnel house basement, discarded remains rotting.

What follows shows even more of Victor's self -- he wanted the monster to be a perfect example of recreated mankind, but got a fearful man capable of only one word. It enrages Victor, an angry father striking his "child" as he was strike. Cyclical. That is, until Elizabeth shows up and not only finds the monster, but charms it. Seduces it? Victor is going mad with jealousy, seeing the affections he wanted heaped upon his creation instead of him. So what does any bitter petty man do when he cannot have his way? He blows up the fucking tower, seeking to burn down and destroy his creation. Victor was never very good with his emotions, and he should have stuck with that, instead of letting them get the best of him and end his life's work.

And that is Victor's story. Back in "current time" back on the Danish ship, the monster comes in, to tell his tale.

He escaped that fiery night, the conflagration, and escaped into the woods nearby, to discover a farmstead abandoned, probably due to the ongoing Crimean War. He finds comfort and refuge ... and a weird almost Disney Princess effect with the local wild life. I assumed it was meant to imply he did not smell like the humans they would naturally fear, but in death, he should smell... worse. No matter, the farmers do return to their home come Spring. The Monster hides away in a section of the farmstead they do not explore, and becomes a watchful, helpful "Spirit of the Forest" quickly learning language and human behaviour. We see, given his own timeline and patience, he is not only intelligent but empathetic. This is the establishment of sympathy for The Monster we are expected to have.

Until it sours. Human wolf hunters misunderstand his presence and shoot at him. He responds in kind, with terrible violence. He is shot multiple times and left for dead, only to discover... he cannot die. The Monster realizes his own fate is now eternal -- Victor has succeeded at what he wanted all along -- to defeat death. The Monster sees it more as a curse, that he will be alone forever. So he party-crashes William and Elizabeth's wedding demanding a companion of Victor, but only succeeds in the death of Elizabeth, and William. A dying Elizabeth shows true affection for The Monster, confessing that she never felt right in the world, and she is fine with dying.

The imagery of the blood flowing from a dying Elizabeth, turning her white dress into the bright red dress of Victor's mother.

It was these two tales that ended with Victor chasing The Monster into the wilds of the Arctic, seeking its destruction, his destruction, in revenge for the deaths he caused but also for the terrible consequences of Victor's successes. But, in hearing the tale, Victor has had a change of heart, and in his dying, the two reconcile.

If I was disappointed at all with the story, it was around the adherence to Shelly's story. As I mentioned, I was never all that enthralled with the real source material and I hoped for.... more? Oh there were divergences, of course how can there not be, but for dramatic effect, for even more del Toro grandeur, I was hoping to be swept away.

But still, I got what I loved. Maybe not as chilling as his earlier horror movies nor as rewatchable fun like Pacific Rim but an entirely comforting, satisfying del Toro feature in effects, vistas, practical effects and camp.

Chiplog: Miss Vickie's Risoranti Series Cacio E Pepe

Pre-chip: I'm not sure if I've ever had authentic Cacio e Pepe pasta, but I love a creamy, buttery noodle with Parm and pepper. My go-to "Cacio e pepe" is taking Annie's Butter and Parmesean Mac and cheese and zhuzhing it up. I'm basically expecting that, but in chip form, which, if so, should be awesome. 

Ingredients: potatoes, vegetable oil, seasoning (maltodextril, buttermilk solids, salt, spices, whey powder, cheese powder, cream powder, natural flavour)

First smell: smells of powdered dairy and pepper, and not too far off from Miss Vickie's Lime and Black Pepper flavoured chips.

First taste: Oh, yeah. Definitely, getting that zing of pepper on side of my tongue, and the whey/cheese/cream powers coat the top of the tongue. I'm definitely getting the cacio e pepe-adjacent flavour 

Aftertaste:The creamy cheesiness lingers while the tingle of pepper haunts the taste buds. Delish.

Mass consumption: It's a pretty rich potato chip, so I may get oversaturated at some point but I'm certainly enjoying them in a very addictive fashion. I can probably keep eating and eating but I know that eating kettle chips, more so than regular chips, tend to unsettle my stomach, so I need to nosh lightly.

Final thoughts:I freaking love it. It's a limited edition flavour so I'm going to have to stock up.

Rating: 8.9

KWIF: Bugonia (+3)

 KWIF= Kent's Week in Film. I've been delinquent in keeping up with each of the many series' I've been following this week. It's Hallmarkie season, which means some of the usual time I set aside for film and TV watching goes to the delightful brainrot that are holiday romances. The heart wants what the heart wants.

This Week:
Bugonia (2025, d. Yorgos Lanthimos - in theatre)
Predator: Badlands (2025, d. Dan Trachtenberg - in theatre)
Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper (2025, d. Jason Bourque- W/Hallmark)
Christmas Above the Clouds (2025, d. Peter Benson - W/Hallmark)

---

[I don't know how to talk about Bugonia without potentially spoiling anything, so before I even get started, potential spoiler warning]

When I think about a Yorgos Lanthimos film, I think about discomfort. More often than not, a Lanthimos film is about making the viewer uncomfortable by challenging their perception of the world, or by putting them in a world that challenges the familiar, the pleasant, the demure or the polite. In other occasions, a Lanthimos film challenges the comfort of his characters, which, in doing so, may or may not challenge the audience as well.  Lanthimos' regular screenwriting partners like Tony McNamara or Efthimis Filippou get the assignment, and every Lanthimos film has been unequivocally unique.

I had assumed, based on the trailers, that Bugonia - written by Will Tracey as a loose adaptation of the 2003 Korean film Save the Green Planet! - would be more of the same level of discomfort. The trailers showed Jesse Plemons and an unfamiliar associate kidnapping power-CEO Emma Stone and holding her captive in a basement, spouting some Q-anon-style, possibly manosphere-influenced conspiracy bullshit. The last time I saw Plemons was in Civil War in a deeply upsetting and all-too real "oathkeeper"-style role. Plemons is very good at awkwardness, it's no wonder Lanthimos' has paired up with him again after Kinds of Kindness (a deeply uncomfortable movie I've only seen about 20 minutes of but may return to). So simply by putting Plemons in the role of kidnapper of a woman, the discomfort alarm is sounding at max volume.

I was not going to see this film, simply because my discomfort bucket is pretty much maxed out by the political and financial climate these days, but a review of the film (Alonso Duralde and Dave White on the Linoleum Knife podcast) said the crux of the film was Plemon's Teddy Gatz trying to get Stone's Michelle Fuller to confess to being an alien, and the film -at least in the review's telling- expertly distorts whether she is or she isn't one. That was enough for me. I've been watching a lot of Twilight Zone lately, and this really fits the vibe.

There's a lot to unpack in Bugonia, simply because it's not against Teddy. He is our protagonist. As we spend time with him and his autistic-coded cousin, Don (Aidan Delbis, himself a neuro-atypical actor) as they train for their mission, we get hints as to what's fuelling Teddy. He's a beekeeper, and the bees are dying. He's been deep in the weeds in online conspiracies, and his conclusion is that Earth has been invaded. His mother and possibly other family were victims of something megacorp Auxolith did. Teddy is angry and vengeful, and believes he has found purpose. There is a bit of sympathy played towards Teddy, who, clearly has had a troubled past and on the brink of a mental breakdown, and Don is such a kind and accepting partner, Teddy's only remaining family and best friend, but also our sympathies towards Teddy are strained because he manipulates Don constantly into following his own goals. 

But our sympathies largely stay with Teddy because, Michelle, the ruthless CEO of a big-pharma corp Auxolith never plays the victim. During the kidnapping Michelle puts up one hell of a fight, and the tone waffles between the comedic and the deep discomfort in watching a man use his physical size to overpower a woman. But it's a remarkably smart movie from Tracey's script to have Teddy and Don chemically castrate themselves, as it takes the threat of sexual violence off the table. Michelle even asks point blank if that's what the kidnapping is about and Teddy just chuckles it off.  She has her head shaved and she's slathered in antihistamine cream, something about sending and receiving messages, and then the cat and mouse psychodrama is afoot. 

Teddy's concern, on the surface, is the fate of the world. He thinks Michelle is from Andromeda and her species is trying to terraform the planet, using capitalism as its device. Subtextually, Teddy is angry for what has happened to him and his family, and all his energies have been hyperfocused that this alien invasion is the reason why. It is the portrait of a lonely, isolated, traumatized man who, rather than going to therapy, has fallen down a conspiracy rabbit hole to try and make sense of it. It's a modern film for modern time.

We're all anxious about the state of things. Capitalism run wild is spelling doom for the planet, and if one's hypersensitive enough, that could drive you mad. But to be directly and personally affected by the agents of this ecological chaos... there is sympathy towards Teddy. 

Of course, we also are given hints that Michelle isn't the first person he's had in his basement, and, once again, it's hard to stay sympathetic.

Bugonia is a film about ecological anxiety. It's a film that twists around anti-capitalism and class structures. It's a film about the dangers of online echo chambers. It's a film about trauma and mental health. And it's a film that in its end, somehow, makes you feel at peace with the end of the world.

Despite the trepidation I went into it with, I didn't really feel uncomfortable at all watching Bugonia. It's much more amusing than I thought it would be, Teddy's delusions are so far gone that, when they're not threatening, they're absurd. Since we're never really rooting for Teddy to succeed, nor are we really on Michelle's side, the usual anxiety around such a situation isn't present. We kind of like both characters but only so far, and there's a strange peace to wanting to watch the scenario play out.

Lanthamos shot the film largely with VistaVision cameras on 35mm film, and even though I can't outright quantify what it contributes, there is a quality to it that is so warm and cinematic and textural that is both tangible and intangible at the same time. It looks great. I had a great time.

[poster talk - the main poster, the only one I've seen promoting the film, is the one of Emma Stone's head being enveloped by blood an honey. It's a striking poster, but insinuates something grotesque, and the film...isn't. The "see it in 35 mm" poster, a painted image of mostly empty space with sort of a traditional Japanese feel, is beautiful, but doesn't sell the film at all. And the third poster, with the space backdrop and Emma Stone butting heads with the Earth is...well... even after watching the film...confusing as an image.]

---

Where Bugonia is a film heavily rooted in the present reality, Predator:Badlands is pure escapism.

Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is the runt of his clan, and in his species the weak are culled unceremoniously. Protected by his older brother his whole life in a society where bonds are not formed, and emotions are eschewed, they're both targeted by their father/clan leader. Dek need to prove himself, to become Yautja (the term "Yautja" for the Predator species is a relatively new one to me, and this film recontextualizes it... you are not born "Yautja" you have to earn your place in the clan, in the species through the hunt). To do so he plans to go to Genna, a brutal world where it seems all the flora and fauna is deadly, and kill the most fearsome of beasts, the creature even his father is afraid of, the Kalisk, motivated even more by having watched his father kill his brother for protecting him.

On Genna, Dek learns fast the planet's deadly nature, and is put through a gauntlet before encountering the synthoid Thia (Elle Fanning). The Wayland-Yutani corporation (of Alien infamy) has sent a platoon of synths to the planet for research purposes. Thia had her sympathetic and emotional receptors enhanced so that she could more emotionally in tune with the planet. The planet repaid her by tearing her in half. She offers to help Dek on his hunt, and Dek declares a Yautja hunts alone. Thia stranded in a nest and without legs, reframes herself as a tool for Dek to use, and the highly unexpected buddy road comedy adventure begins.

There's no point in hashing out any more of the plot or events of the film. It's your standard sci-fi/fantasy adventure, which aren't so standard anymore. This felt like an 1980's throwback, pure escapist fiction that whisks to away to a world of discovery, both of culture and environment. The film explores the Yautja like never before. Trachtenberg, having successfully revitalized the franchise with the incredible pandemic-era streaming release of Prey, has been handed the keys to the kingdom, and he's unlocking it really for the first time. With the animated Disney+ movie Killer of Killers, there was some revelations of the Predator home-planet that we'd never seen before, as well as some small hints at their society.  But Badlands gives us our first Yautja protagonist, a main character. 

It's with efficiency that our sympathies are tipped towards Dek. His opening training with his brother reveals a lot about how he is an outsider, he is looked down upon, and he feels lesser-than but with a relentless desire to prove himself. The killing of his beloved brother by their heartless father also shows Dek as an emotional creature, one who carries trauma with him on his subsequent journey. 

Meeting Thia, he's given company, a companion, a chatterbox that should annoy him but seems to comfort him in his grief. She teaches him that not all hunters are solitary, that some are pack animals, and that the alpha of a pack is not the greatest killer, but the greatest protector of the pack. Dek accepts the lesson, and the idea of the wolfpack is such a wonderful thing contribute to the Predator mythos.

Badlands, while playing squarely in the Predator/Aliens universe, relies upon no prior films. Every Predator film in the franchise has been stand-alone so far, and I was curious, in being given authorship over the property, if Trachtenberg was going to start tying his stories together. Mercifully not. Badlands is unlike every other Predator film - there is no human being hunted by a Yautja here - but it still can be watched on as a stand-alone film. It also earns its distinction, it earns not being a typical Predator-hunts-man story. Its characters are enjoyable, its world building of the Yautja society isn't terribly surprising, but it does codify much that's only previously been teased, and the planet of Genna is a fun place to visit as a distant observer.

The most surprising thing about Badlands is that it has a sense of humour. At times it's downright silly and it owns that silliness. Some may bristle at any levity, but...I mean...how can you not enjoy a choreographed fight sequence where a lower torso, just a pair of legs, takes on three guys? 

It's a fun time at the movies (and somehow, the first Predator film I've seen on the big screen).

[Poster talk - there are a lot of posters for Predator:Badlands, and none of them are particularly striking or eye catching. The best way to sell the film, I think, is the image of a bisected Elle Fanning strapped to the Predator's back, and obviously I'm not alone as there are a lot of posters with such an image, but none of them are very stylish. They are the epitome of perfunctory posters. They're there to do one job, and sell you on the ideas of the movie, which is a Predator and a half robot getting in scraps on an alien planet. Most of them do that job, but not with a heck of a lot of excitement.]

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Toasty and I put together a format for reviewing holiday romances (or "Hallmarkies" as we call them) because they're so formulaic that the fun in watching them is in picking apart the formula. We called the format "A Toast to HallmarKent", and it's just one of the many ways we like to amuse ourselves with this blog.

The "problem" in recent years is that Hallmark has decided they don't really want the formula anymore, which neuters our "A Toast to HallmarKent" template somewhat. It ruins our fun!

But after a few years of deep-diving into Hallmarkies, it became the outliers that I tended to appreciate, the ones that dared to do something different, the ones that said "what if we actually care about this thing we're making?"

Movies like Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper and even Christmas Above the Clouds, 5 years ago wouldn't have been Hallmark movies. They're bucking the formula so hard. So rather than the big sprawling recaps that breakdown the insanity of what use to constitute a Hallmarkie, let's rapid-fire through the "A Toast to HallmarKent" template with these films, and see how it goes. (Usually I need to be working through the template while watching the film, and I didn't do that here so it may be sketchy).

Merry Christmas Ted Cooper

The Draw: Robert Buckley as a performer has had more authorship over his Hallmarkie appearances than most, and those tend to be much more comedic movies, so I was expecting something funny and outside the normal holiday romance.

HERstory: Time was it was rare for a Hallmarkie to have a male lead. It's not so uncommon anymore. Ted Cooper is a small-market weatherman beloved by both his station and his community. He's been given a job offer in his home town of Buffalo, but feels loyalty to the station that gave him his break (this would be a lot more resonant a plot if Ted Cooper wasn't in his 40s). Buffalo is his hometown, and he's returning home to help promote his sister's fundraiser for a children's wing at the local hospital.

Ted has a history of unfortunate events around Christmas, but he's a terminally upbeat person and doesn't let that get him down. He gets conked on the head by a box of lights while helping set up his sister's place and winds up at the hospital where he runs into his high school crush Hope Miller (Kimberly Sustad).

They connect and start enjoying the seasons together while more mishaps befall Ted, though it never gets him down.

The Formulae: The meet cute (it's pretty cute). The absurd event that the production doesn't have the budget to pull off (in this case, the fundraiser is some sort of gingerbread fair with the biggest gingerbread person competition, and those big gingerbreads are so not real). There's a "complication" in the romance (but it's also unformulaic so we'll get to that). Ted has a sibling, Hope has a best friend who are pushing them towards each other.

Unformulae: Ted is coming from the small town returning to his big city (Buffalo) home, and is feeling the tug to return, which is kind of the opposite of the typical Hallmarkie story. Nobody has a kid, not even Ted's sister. There's no wise parent to turn to here, instead Ted befriends his old high school teacher, Ms. Mittens, and starts hanging out with her seniors walking club (that dynamic is freaking delightful). The complication is Hope worries that Ted isn't honest about his feelings, that his perpetual upbeatness is a mask for real emotions... and she tells him in an earnest, adult conversation that these dumb movies so rarely have... and Ted, later, responds in an earnest and emotionally intelligent way that shows that these two peopler are fucking adults and not high-schoolers in middle-aged bodies.

True Calling? It IS a merry Christmas for Ted Cooper, and it will be no matter what happens.

The Rewind: Honestly, I would watch this whole thing again. It was just warm, feel good, fun and funny vibes, all resting on the back of the delightful charm of Robert Buckley.

The Regulars: Buckley broke into Hallmark with The Christmas House, and has had a few others. Sustad is Hallmark royalty, and definitely in my top 3 Hallmark leading ladies. Ms. Mittens is played by Barbara Pollard has been all over the Hallmarkie spectrum for years. Brendan Penny, a usual leading man, is in a bit part as the news anchor at Ted's station and they have a bit of a rivalry.  Canadian Meghan Heffern plays Kate Cooper, Ted's sister and she is phenomenal. Heffern has been working steadily for a long time, but in nothing I've watched before...she stands out in this sister role like Carrie Coon did in Gone Girl...if there was any justice this would be a breakout performance.

How does it Hallmark? "A" tier. This is in the top level of Hallmarkies because it succeeds at pretty much everything it's trying to do. It's funny when it's meant to be funny, the romance is super charming and full of sparks, and its secondary cast are all great and unique in the sphere, people who seem to have lives outside of being associated with the leads. The stakes, to be honest, are pretty low in this film which is the only thing that dials it back from the "A-plus" tier (or "S" tier, as the kids call it?). 

How does it movie? It's a Hallmark romcom, and doesn't pretend to not be. I don't know that more budget would have accentuated this film any more, it seems tailor made for the size of production it is and for the channel it's being aired on. A director more skilled in comedy, and maybe a little more attention to detail in shooting the news anchor sequences would have made it stronger.

How Does It Snow? Was there even snow? I didn't even take note. But it's Buffalo at Christmas...there should have been mountains of snow, and there was not. 

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Christmas Above the Clouds

The Draw: I'm not a full-blown, year-round Hynie, but when it comes to the Christmas season you can bet I'm keeping my eye on the Tyler Hynes entries that year. He's my favourite Hallmark hunk.

HERstory: Ella Neezer (gesundheit) is the owner of her own mid-level travel company. She's sacrificed everything for this business including her empathy towards others. She would be the titular "B" in Apartment 23, if you catch my meaning. She's awful to everyone and making them work on Christmas without telling them they have to work on Christmas. She's catching a flight from New York to Australia which, given the time jump, means she will leave on the 24th and arrive on the 26th and miss Christmas entirely, and she likes it that way (unfortunate for her assistant Bobbi, who has to bend to Ella's every whim in order to pay for her sick child's treatments). On the plane, seated next to her happens to be her ex, Jake. There's still a spark of connection there, but there's also a lot of baggage.  

Now, stop me if you heard this one before, but Ella is visited by the ghost of her mentor, Marleen Jacobs, the woman to taught her everything she knows about running a business with a cold heart. Marleen is in purgatory, stuck in an airline safety tutorial teaching grinchy businesspeople life lessons. She tells Ella she will be visited by three ghosts on her flight, the ghosts of Christmases past, present and future.

You basically know the rest.

The Formulae: It's A Christmas Carol, on a plane! With Tyler Hynes! The formulae isn't very Hallmarkie, but it is ALL Dickensian.

Unformulae: Uh... it's A Christmas Carol, but on a plane!

True Calling? It's a dumb title, but probably because it's hard to think of a plane-based pun that will fit into A Christmas Carol.  "Flying Past Christmas" or "Christmas Flying By" would be more apt..."Skipping Christmas"... and yet, it should really be referencing A Christmas Carol. Like "Scrooge in the Sky" (that sounds dirty). Ok, yeah, it's a hard title to come up with.

The Rewind: Rather than rewind, there are things I would like to skip past, thank you very much, like any time Bobbi's kid Tim (he's sick...with asthma, because asthma is the Hallmark sickness, and is the deadliest disease in existence in Hallmark reality). The kid playing Tim is atrocious. 

The Regulars: Erin Krakow plays Ella Neezer (gesundheit), and is one of the most regular of Hallmark regulars...in fact she's been the star of a thousand episodes of When Calls The Heart and an equal number of Hallmark movies. Here, she does a really good job of putting the "B" in "boss", but I also just watched Emma Stone in Bugonia a few hours before watching this and it's, like, not the same, but Krakow holds her own. Hynes is my Hallmark boy, y'know, and I can't wait for the next "3 Wise Men" movie this season, but this was a nice lil' stocking stuffers, an amuse bouche. Hynes is wearing one of those Hynes sweaters he looks so good in. Gabrielle Rose has been all over Hallmarkies for years in parent and senior statesman roles. Emily Tennant who plays Bobbi has led a couple Hallmarkies of her own, so this is a bit of a downgrade. Faith Wright plays the Ghost of Christmas Past and is super charming, she should hopefully level up from here. Canadian Matt Clarke playing Ghost of Christmas Present puts on a decent Aussie accent and is pretty fun, but more than a few Hallmarkie credits under his belt.

How does it Hallmark? It's actually a pretty effective modernized production of A Christmas Carol but Hallmark-ized to *really* emphasize how much Jake used to be part of her life and how much he needs to be again. There's a definite budgetary impact to this whole production as the plane set...migawd is it awful. it looks like a bunch of lounge chairs in office cubicles and not a first class plane compartment. And the flashback to college, where they give Krakow a really late-90's-styled wig, but Hynes looks completely unchanged (they didn't even do that thing where they comb the hair all forward to hid the receding hairline - see Batman Begins for example). It leads me to believe Jake is a highlander. In a proper budgeted production we would have had younger actors playing them as teens (or they would have paid Hynes to shave the beard and shot that sequence last).

How does it movie? Again, a decent production of A Christmas Carol, but not even close to cinematic quality. As much as I like Hynes, and Krakow puts in a good performance, they're not movie stars. They're Hallmark stars, and there is a difference. As well, I didn't fully buy into the chemistry between them. These two have history on screen together, and clearly are pals, that was undeniable, but the romantic spark just didn't come across. I also couldn't buy that Jake has basically been celibate since they broke up 5 years earlier. Not that handsome man with his laid-back charm, no way.

How Does It Snow? Again, forgot to look, but it was largely on a plane or indoors so there wasn't much to look for as far as I recall.