I Saw This (!!): Hallmarkies Interruptitis

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

As mentioned in the "2000th Post (Spectacular)" my "3 Short Paragraphs" (never short) have overtaken the "projects" but primarily because I get a stub-post in such format placed, and eventually fill in the rest of the details. But in this instance, while I have had all the stubs in place (here, look behind the curtain) I doubt I am going to remember enough (because I saturated my brain with Xmas Movies and Hallmarkies) to write... all... three... oh wow, that sounds lame saying it out loud. Anywayz, excuses aside, I am going to resurrect the format for at least this post. And steal whatever I had in the stubs.

Kind of weird to say you are stealing from your own writing.... or is it that you are stealing from me, your other voice?

Amusingly, to me only of course, I believe this was the last time I used the format, which includes a film that is the first in a pair I write up in THIS post.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, 2025, Rian Johnson (Looper) -- Netflix

It irritates me to no end that I thoroughly, almost painfully, enjoyed every moment of this movie, but so little stayed with me. But for key scenes.

Knives Out introduced Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, Logan Lucky), a flamboyant celebrity detective. I wasn't overly impressed by the movie at the time, but in times since, it has both grown in admiration in my mind's eye and in rewatches. Sometimes solid, very solid, production & performances is all you need to be impressed. And again, Johnson delivers.

Set in a small town in upstate NY, Blanc is brought in unravel a locked room murder mystery (literally, by the book) of an infamous local priest, one Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin, The Goonies). His deacon, Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor, The Crown), has been accused of murdering him but not even the local police believe he did it, enough so that they allow Jud to follow around Blanc, gathering clues & information from Wicks core group of "followers".

Wicks was a horrible HORRIBLE man, but a man reflecting what we see now, every day, down south. Johnson ignores what is going on around him in America (not really, more he ignores the danger of speaking plainly and with conviction) and it is obvious what he thinks of the current political rabble. This is a movie which speaks openly and loudly about faith and decency, Good and Evil. Blanc is more vocally an atheist, but also very respectful of the people he is working with. Jud is a Man of God, a proper good man who believes in what he is doing and WHY he is doing it.

The movie had some chef's-kiss moments of film making, things like light & colour playing out in a cathedral more appropriate to Europe than NY state, where dialogue and sunshine reflect each other. Like a shifting of tone and mood, mid spoken sentence, when a priest shoves aside the murder mystery he is wrapped up in to tend to one of his flock, a woman in pain, who needs his shoulder, his voice. This is the kind of movie watching I want to do more of, which is made easier by a genre I am attracted to and performances I just chew on.

Kent's.

Tron: Ares, 2025,  Joachim Rønning (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) -- download

People dislike Jared Leto as much as Jared Leto loves his (currently) luscious long hair, and probably himself. It only takes a little bit of research to find numerous examples of him as a sex pervert / douche or him as a toxic method actor who annoys everyone he works with. But he does decently with the roles given him even if many of them just add to Dislike Bucket (i.e. Morbius and his Joker).

After the mediocre draw of the last legasequel (which was 15 years ago!!) I was surprised this was being made, but not all that surprised that it distanced itself from the previous, and I was mildly disappointed they dumped the whole Sam Flynn and Quorra storyline.

Ares is a program made by Dillinger Systems, an ENCOM competitor company. He is a security program (i.e. soldier) and is part of an experiment to bring programs from "the grid" to the Real World. The movie uses the lovely visuals of a 3D printer on a massive scale, and envisions programs being used to create soldiers, support vehicles and weapons for the military industrial complex. Problem is, no one has been able to recreate the indefinite "solid state" of Quorra -- all "printed" programs fall apart after 29 minutes. That is, until Eve Kim, current CEO of ENCOM discovers that "permenance code" on her dead sister's computer in Alaska, which turns out to actually be Kevin Flynn's computer.  The movie is a race for Dillinger to get that code, with the added hiccup that his primary security program Ares has gone rogue, because after countless failed iterations, he has become not only sentient, but bearing morals.

Its a visually stunning movie and along with the soaring soundtrack by NIN, its quite thrilling but probably meant to be seen on a  very very big screen. I was only mildly enthralled despite being objectively thrilled by what I was seeing -- probably because of the lackluster story. 

Another thing caught my attention, in that much of the cast were the odd-ducks from other movies/series. Of course, we have Ares (Jared Leto, Blade Runner 2049), and then there's ENCOM CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee, Russian Doll), Dillinger's CEO Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters, Monster), and Kim's assistant Seth Flores (Arturo Castro, Road House). I am not entirely sure where my brain was going, considering other casting choices (e.g. Jodie Turner-Smith, Gillian Anderson) but the others seemed... interesting cast choices.

Kent's. And yes, I should have posted something during my recent-ish rewatch of the second.

Troll 2, 2025, Raur Uthaug (The Wave) -- Netflix

In hindsight, I was not convinced I really enjoyed the first one, Troll. Sure, I remember enjoying the over-the-top American action click approach (I called it "Michael Bay Norway Method" totally missing calling it  the "Michael Fjord Method") but I seem to feel I should have been more... annoyed with it? Maybe its just my perpetually cranky state of late, but this one... well, the sequel annoyed me in the way the most recent Godzilla vs Kong movie did -- of note, I recently rewatched that and yes, I softened on my dislike for it.

Anywayz, I think I literally nodded off three times during this one, so write-up may be spotty.

Good thing we lifted & dropped it into this collection, where all is forgiven.

So, in the first one, they killed the troll they woke up by using giant ultraviolet lights despite the ecologist main character Nora Tideman's (Ine Marie Wilmann, Furia) cries of, "Its not evil, its just following its nature!!" This movie follows up with her being introduced to a SECOND troll, one the government did not tell her about. They accidentally wake it up so it can, insert comedic element, walk through the newly re-built house of a random rural farmer on its way to purposely stomp on Oslo. Meanwhile Nora had her own secret, in that hidden in a deep abandoned mine shaft, she had discovered a "child" troll which she has made some sort of connection with. She tries to get Baby Troll, who is also kaiju sized, to convince Angry Troll to not stomp Oslo but all that does is get Baby Troll murdered. All that is left is the military intervention, once again in grand Michael Fjord style.

In said style, the American style of overbearing military types, bleeding heart liberals and stupid people making stupid choices, they end up choosing the most ludicrous, annoying, but dramatic (!!!) way to end the Angry Troll -- by sacrificing a lovable supporting character, even when there were so many other ways they could have handled it, such as, "You know you can try original plan again; there is nothing stopping you from TRYING AGAIN LATER !" Anyhoo, was... fun?

Deathstalker, 2025, Steven Kostanski (Psycho Goreman) -- download

Oh my. They did it, they actually re-made a terrrrrrible fantasy action movie from the 80s, one of those Conan rip-off's about a bare chested barbarian warrior doing fetch-quests for a witch, and starred the most ludicrous sword in all the terrible sword & sorcery movies made at the time. But, of course as a child of the D&D playing metal-music listening era, I saw this movie and probably... liked it at the time? Maybe not so much, as I have never felt the urge to rewatch. But other such now grown children must have had fonder memories as it was remade. And no, its not a requel, its pretty much the a full remake, but with ... 21st century sensibilities?

Deathstalker (Daniel Bernhardt, John Wick) is an ex-knight from a country losing a war against an evil sorceror named Necronemnon and his magical red armoured soldiers called Dreadites. We find him picking the carcasss of his own ex-army when he is attacked by Dreadites, but he makes quick work of them. The fallen prince is amazed at his survival and expects Deathstalker to help him; instead the man just picks him of valuables including a strange disk/medallion.

The rest of the movie has Deathstalker, who does have a real name but few call him by it, mainly people from his old life, trying to get rid of the magic medallion which, when the plot remembers, will return to him automatically if tossed away. He consults a witch, ends up in a cave where bandits have died but left behind a tiny imp-like minor wizard, with a complicated name but who Deathstalker calls "Doodad". Doodad (voiced by Patton Oswalt, The Sandman) knows that the medallion is coveted by Necro-dude, but thinks Deathstalker should try and return it to the remaining member of the royal family. Meh whatever, is DS's point of view.

Its a silly, over the top, badly acted, badly scripted movie with badly done (OK, decently done) practical effects but amusing because its very very self aware. It knows what nostalgia its drawing upon and the tone & style is akin to the source, which is not neccessarily a good thing but... appropriate? It was very popular with the D&D playing celebrity crew, so I guess it knows its primary audience.

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, 2016, Michael Bay (Transformers) -- Netflix

Was in the mood for a soldiers movie; didn't recall it was a bay-splosion movie until the credits rolled. But should have guessed, while watching, due a good amount of a) American flags and b) bay-splosions. The funny thing is that its not much of an American rah-rah, given that the government did not provide any support to this compound, and its staff, when shit hit the fan in Libya.

So, "true story" movie. In 2012, an American CIA compound in Benghazi, something not publicly disclosed, was attacked by Libyan forces, just after they destroyed another American compound where an Ambassador was staying. This was all part of the chaos going on in the region after the 2011 Libyan civil war and interventions by NATO forces. The US did not officially have any CIA presence there, but a handful of contracted soldiers were assigned to the compound as protection. After the walled home where Ambassador Christopher Stevens was staying, with minimal protection as he was generally seen as a "friend of Libya", was burned out, the attacking forces moved onto the supposedly secret CIA compound - they lost the ambassador. The American soldiers defended the place until Libyan government forces showed at dawn and escorted the survivors to the airport.

This is rough & tough men being all tough and rough. Given that each is working a job, not fighting a war, there is lots of regret and emotional turmoil bandied about. Still, as in all Bay films, the actioned is well done and the characters are admirable.

Neighborhood Watch, 2025, Duncan Skiles (The Clovehitch Killer) -- download

Small movie with a deceptive title and accompanying trailer -- it is not about a neighbourhood watch at all, just a small movie about Simon, a young man recently released from a hospital, but still suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and Ed, his asshole neighbor, a retired campus security superintendent. Simon sees a girl get slapped around and then abducted by a man in a white van. But does he? The police don't believe him, or if they do, they don't care. So, Simon goes to Ed.

Ed decides to help Simon, but more because it plays on his ego to do some real detecting. He may be retired but he cannot help but hang around the college he once worked at, looking for criminals, and the security staff left behind hate him. Like, loathe him. He's alone, lonely, refusing to acknowledge he has any number of over-50 health issues and is losing money to online poker sites. So, Simon and his assumed-hallucination is at the very least, a distraction. Meanwhile, Simon is taking this very very VERY seriously needing to prove the voice in his head (his dead father) wrong. They begin asking around about the girl, the van, the guy.

Things don't go well, eventually leading to violence and deaths, with the cops chasing them as much as seeking out any bad guys. Since the police didn't believe him, Simon is the only one seen as a Bad Guy. But despite these odds, he pursues what he thinks he has to do. And Ed finally sees something admirable in the fucked up kid. As you know, I like small performances, focused and narrow on what is happening as much as the characters themselves.

That is a great poster.