Series Minded: Bourne and Bourne and Bourne Again

[Series Minded is an irregular feature here at T&KSD, wherein we tackle the entire run of a film, TV, or videogame series in one fell swoop. The funny thing is, almost every "Series Minded" I've done has had at least one follow-up movie since I wrote them, so expect another Bourne movie soon.] 

The Bourne Identity - 2002, d. Doug Liman - netflix
The Bourne Supremacy - 2004, d. Paul Greengrass - netflix
The Bourne Ultimatum - 2007, d. Paul Greengrass - netflix
The Bourne Legacy - 2012, d. Tony Gilroy - netflix
Jason Bourne - 2016, d. Paul Greengrass - amazonprime

After compulsively gorging on season two of Andor [review pending] like a perfectly cooked steak that was only slightly oversalted, I was kind of jonesing for more of the Tony ("I made Andor") Gilroy dramatic intrigue. I had no prior awareness that he had co-written the screenplay for the Bourne trilogy, but it immediately piqued my interest about this franchise I had all but dismissed from my life 20 years ago. I think it was time for a re-watch (and in some cases a first watch) of the trilogy.  I mean why watch that ill-fated Jeremy Renner-starring spin-off that...what? Tony ("I made Andor") Gilroy wrote and directed The Bourne Legacy? Ok, well, I guess I'm all in then.

So yes, I had seen and enjoyed damn well enough The Bourne Identity back at the turn of the millennium enough to buy it on DVD and give it a permanent home in my collection. Doug Liman directed a brilliantly paced, taut action-suspense story about an amnesiac assassin who grew a conscience and the poor, unsuspecting German woman who gets swept up in the madness as killer Jason Bourne targets his former black ops handlers who are operating waaaay off book.

Of all the Bourne movies (now that I've seen them all) The Bourne Identity is still the best. It is a satisfying and complete story in and of itself, with a happy, romantic ending for our leads who are so well matched in this film. Damon, at the time, was such an unlikely choice for a super-assassin, he was not on anyone's mind as an action star. Having come out of Good Will Hunting, Rounders and The Talented Mr. Ripley in the preceding years, his success in high profile and award winning dramas saw him going the prestigious actorly route.  Even third-wheeling it in Oceans 11, nobody suspected he could be an action hero. It was only after Bourne that he achieved super-star wattage, suddenly he was the guy who could do everything.

I'm sure at the time I thought Damon was out of his element as an action star, and the success of The Bourne Identity was thanks to Doug Liman's exciting and assured action direction, but Damon plays both hyper-competent and out-of-his-element very, very well. Franka Potente as Marie, even more out of her element, was the perfect tag-along-come-romantic interest for this amazing mash up of Euro-thriller and American-action. Potente sells falling for the wounded dog so very well, even though she should just run. The various looks in her eyes that say "I should leave, but I can't help but stay" give this film another level that none of the subsequent features have.  Potente sells that this movie is as much about her being kept safe from all this as it is about Jason Bourne finding out whatever it is he needs to find out and stop whatever he needs to stop.

We get an excellent supporting cast with Chris Cooper and Brian Cox as the CIA ringmasters, super-assassin Clive Owen, Lost's Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbage as the target Bourne failed to clear before his amnesia, and Julia Styles in a small role as station agent Nicky Parsons.

There are some flat out brutal fights with excellent choreography, the chase sequences are maybe just a notch below the top-tier of cinematic chase sequences, but they're very well shot and so energetic. And the sequence at the farmhouse where Bourne matches wits with The Professor is the most memorable sequence in the whole series (for me at least). It's a crisp, vibrant, great looking movie that satisfies from start to finish.

The franchise deviates almost entirely from the Robert Ludlum novel series with the sequel to The Bourne Identitly, but I have no practical experience with LudIum's work, so that was of no influence on my reaction to it.  That said, The Bourne Supremacy is where I "noped" out of the franchise back in 2004. It was an even bigger success commercially than its predecessor, but I found Paul Greengrass' frenetic quick-cut editing and loose handheld camera work disorienting. It was considered kind of a revolutionary style at the time, something people hadn't seen before, and it was undeniable that it did make the fights feel more visceral. The problem was the success of this film spawned countless imitators who had neither the control nor forethought for what they were shooting (they thought it was all about the editing) and the mid-2000s to the early 2010s are littered with TV shows and movies that are virtually unwatchable as a result.

The second film in the series opens with Bourne and Marie living in India. It's clear they've been continually on the run since the last movie ended, destroying the peaceful resolution we thought the characters had earned. Jason is haunted by his past, but Marie is there every step of the way, helping him work through the traumatic flashbacks and comforting him in his guilt. It's clear that she's is so in on this relationship and doesn't regret a thing being on the run with him.  What Jason doesn't know is that someone has framed him for a professional assassination of a prized informant.  New CIA Deputy Director Pamela Landy (Joan Allen), and her section chief Ward Abbot (Brian Cox), put everything they have into finding and eliminating Bourne, killing Marie in the process.

This was a choice the film in 2004 made, the term "fridging" - or to kill off a female character as motivation for the male character - had already well entered the zeitgeist. Greengrass' stylistic choices as well as this narrative choice were the exact elements that contributed to my early souring on the franchise.

The rest of the film has Gilroy's fingerprints all over it, as it does get fairly twisty as it builds a mesh of lies and intrigue, sewing discord inside the CIA as Bourne starts forcing people to examine his past.  It is a fairly engaging thriller by and large, but whatever victory Jason gets at the end feels empty without Marie to share it with.  It would have been far more satisfying if he had left her behind to "take care of business" and then return to her in the end. I mean, we all know that assassins and superspies can have no rest and no home and happiness is fleeting, but it really sucks when the best part of the series is destroyed in the first act of the sequel.

Karl Urban is fantastic as a Terminator-like killing machine, the yin to Bourne's yang in this one.  He is the Russian assassin that frames Bourne to begin with, and then is tasked with taking him out before he makes too much noise. I think of everyone Bourne goes up against in the series, it's only Urban who seems like he's the superior warrior.

The Bourne "Trilogy" ends with The Bourne Ultimatum, which once again features Greengrass' hyperactive camera and editing style. It's never easy on the eyes and it's a pretty ugly adjustment getting used to it each time. Those knock-offs and rip-offs that popped up in the years before and after don't make it look that much better by comparison, even though it's clearly Greengrass' thing.

The third film, in a bit of a twist, starts somewhere late in the timeline before The Bourne Supremacy ends. I can't imagine if someone were watching Ultimatum in the theatre that they would have cottoned onto this time play unless they were huge fans of the series or had just watched the previous films prior to the screening. 

The film opens with a journalist (Paddy Considine), operating from Intel from a secret informant within the CIA, writing articles about the history of Jason Bourne. Jason, having just escaped a precarious manhunt in Russia (following his encounter with Karl Urban), is only now reading these stories. It's the factual inaccuracies around Marie's death that particularly set him off and it seems like he wants to meet with this reporter to clarify a few things...but really, he wants to know where he's getting his intel. Jason has more questions, based of some new memory flashes that are returning.  

The film finds Pam Landry picking up that something hinky is going on in the CIA and she's trying to suss out what it is  Her director (Scott Glenn) has basically set her up to take the fall if the whole takedown of Bourne doesn't go as planned and their ultra-secret operations are blown. They're after the same thing Bourne is, the source of the leak, only Deputy Director Noah Vosen (David Strathairn) is hellbent on making sure things stay quiet.

The cat and mouse sequence with Bourne and the reporter trapped in the train station with the hounds closing in is thrilling, just a tremendously tense sequence of trying to evade detection, and elude being captured or killed. Bourne can do it in his sleep, but whenever he has someone to watch out for who isn't as versed, it's always ten times more suspenseful.

What the Bourne franchise does well with from start to finish is convey how much of a surveillance state we live in, how difficult it is to hide and to protect your whereabouts should you want to. If Big Brother really wants to find you, to follow you, they can and with each subsequent movie, it seems easier and easier for them. 

It's also a series that, in a low-key, but obvious manner, paints the security forces of the United States as particularly villainous organizations, playing with lives in such a callous manner with "patriotism" and "security" and "saving American lives" always being the rationale for egregiously heinous acts of terrorism and espionage.  I won't go so far as to say they're anti-American, but they're not very pro either.  The film's CIA adversaries always try to present the end justifies the means, but Bourne (and the filmmakers by proxy) are clearly saying they don't.

After two smaller appearances in the prior films Styles' Nicky Parsons gets a bigger play here, and the film reveals a very juicy nugget that Nicky and Jason were an item before his amnesia. He never recovers that part of his memory unfortunately, and after a pretty good sequence of eluding their watchers, Jason sends Nicky off, telling her that it gets easier, living on the run.

Again, the romance sub-plot of the first movie was its strongest character and storytelling element, and that seemed just baited on the hook here, but the storytellers didn't bite, and all the possible chemistry and fireworks that could be fizzle out as Nicky boards a bus.

The third act takes place in New York and it's another hearty mix of cat-and-mouse and action as Jason toys with the Agency, while still very desperate to resolve the mystery behind his most recent flashbacks. The flashbacks are the most unsatisfying part of the film, and the third-act culmination in revealing that, despite the glimpse he remembers telling him otherwise, he did volunteer to be Jason Bourne, super-assassin, and in the end he has to live with that. But also, he enabled Pam Landy to expose not just the Treadstone project he was borne out of but also other shady operations that followed.

It ends where it started, with Jason in the water, being reborn, the poetic symmetry of the franchise left there.

Until Tony Gilroy, freed of any obligations to past directors and stars, is given the task to relaunch the franchise with Jeremy Renner as the star. (The decision to replace "aging" Matt Damon with an actor barely one year younger than him to reboot the franchise is a strange one). The opening act of the film takes place during the third act of Ultimatum, and finds Edward Norton trying to suss out the damage that Bourne could cause, and ensure it's contained, and that there's no blow back. There's all sorts of secret black-ops operations out there and if they're all going to be revealed then they all need to be shut down.

Oblivious to this all is Renner's Aaron Cross, part of the "Outcome" project which found its subjects taking mentally and physically enhancing drugs to make them smarter, faster, stronger. While Bourne is exposing the CIA's black ops in New York, Cross is in the snowy north, getting chased by wolves on a sort of muti-day survival/obstacle course. He finds his home base where he meets another "Outcomer" in Oscar Issac, and they don't bond at all despite Cross' efforts. And then they are drone strikes as part of Norton's renditioning of the black op programs.

Rachel Weisz's Dr. Marta Shearing was part of the medical and research team that was testing and metering the "Outcome" subjects, and she winds up being the sole survivor of a mass shooting in the lab, again part of the cleanup process. When assassins are sent to her home days later to kill her, it's Cross who saves her.

Norton's team get frantic about Shearing going missing and only become more rattled to find out that Cross is also still alive. It all leads to a showdown in Manila, that, once over, finds Shearing and Cross disappearing.

With Legacy it's clear that Gilroys Tony and Dan were tasked with not just writing one film but setting up a bigger story. In the wake of Marvel's big successes, the idea of world-building and not resolving the major plot points in the first film was all the rage in the 2010s, and this film is a victim of that era. I really did enjoy the first act of the film which weaves the events of the prior film into the narrative of our new characters, and even provides some deeper background on those prior characters. It's the Gilroys in total world building mode, as pretty much perfected in Andor, but somewhat sloppier here. I really ate it up though. It's fun to get into it after three character-centric films.

Renner is charming enough and has a sense of humour that Jason Bourne does not, that gives a little levity that was particularly absent from the trilogy. Unfortunately with all that groundwork to lay, it doesn't get to its central story until about the halfway point. The action, the intrigue, it's all pretty good, but we don't really get too connected to these characters until the second half, and the film runs out of runway to make their journey a meaningful one. It doesn't crash and burn at the end of the tarmac, but it doesn't take off either.  The ending is really, really abrupt.

Gilroy's directing hearkens back to Liman's first entry, only maybe even more livelier, brighter. He abandon's the graininess and quick-edits of Greengrass, and crafts some really, really solid fight sequences. Even still, my favourite moments are those between Renner and Issacs, and I'm sad it had to come to an end. What a buddy movie that could have made for.

It's clear whatever was planned here was abandoned. Gilroy was seeding in the background that the dark secrets of the CIA that Pam Landry had exposed last film managed to get buried again and Pam got scapegoated once more by powerful white males who painted her as a poor confused woman.  It's infuriating and I would have loved to see how Gilroy planned to play that all out.

All told, Legacy wasn't the cynical joke I thought it was going to be, but it's a frustrating half-a-story that isn't much satisfying at all, despite some tasty elements. Legacy had to die in order to give way to the Gilroy-less return of Jason Bourne in... Jason Bourne.

And what a sour note this third Bourne collaboration between Damon and Greengrass is. Just a purposeless, emotionless, cash grab of a film it is. Without the planning of Gilroy, left to Greengrass and some other scriptors, Jason Bourne feels like every other late-stage return to a character in the Rambo and Rocky vein.  The character is on hard times, fighting in illegal pit fighting matches in Greece for money. Is this where fans wanted to see Bourne wind up, hanging out in Fight Clubs for petty cash?  Meanwhile Nicky seems to be actively collaborating with hacker groups and WikiLeaks type associations, taking here CIA experience and dumping it in the public.  At least, that's what one would think if Nicky's latest hack wasn't so spectacularly ill-advised and goes so terribly awry.  I mean, she suspects that she doesn't have much leeway breaking into the CIA and stealing their files, but their cybersecurity head, Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander) is better than Nicky and manages to trace her location as well as plant a tracing virus in the data download.

I was ready to think that Nicky was working with Jason because maybe their relationship from pre-amnesia had resumed, but nope. They haven't seen each other pretty much since Ultimatum a decade earlier. Their reunion is not warm, and seems unwelcome. Their meeting is in central Athens during the riots that were taking place while Greece's economy was tanking. The purpose for Nicky and Jason meeting is exhaustingly trite, but the cat-and-mouse/evading-detection/sporadic fights/chase sequences is a pretty impressive set piece set against the riots (however, the 2022 French film Athena does riots and action sooooo much better). And in the latest indignity to Nicky, she gets Marie'd in their attempt to escape. Honestly, I couldn't believe they did it again.

Nicky's whole purpose of meeting up with Bourne is because she discovered some documents linking Bourne's dad to Treadstone, and so the rest of the movie is Jason trying to uncover just what that connection means. It's treated like it's an unresolved plot thread from the previous movies, but it was never ever mentioned and it seems, ten years later, utterly irrelevant to Jason moving on with his life.

Of course Heather Lee, who is given the assignment to take Bourne down, thinks she can bring him back in the fold. Her boss, CIA director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) just needs Bourne put down so that he doesn't interfere in CIA operations any further, so he's operating in the shadows from Lee, undermining her initiative. Dewey has an operative (Vincet Cassell) with a personal reason for wanting Bourne dead, so he's charged with taking him out. Meanwhile there's a whole subplot about a tech billionaire social media magnate (Riz Ahmed) that has some shady dealing with Dewey but now he's having reservations. The film in a very clunky, hamfisted manner brings these threads together and none of it feels at all necessary or relevant (or rather, it's trying way too hard to feel like it's saying something relevant when it's really saying nothing at all).

I really hate to say it, but Jason Bourne is a dumb movie. It truly lacks purpose and momentum. Greengrass still hangs on to his quick-cut editing and handheld-style camera work, but it's well past  innovative, and he seems like he's now just another knock-off of his former groundbreaking work. Also it's now shot on digital instead of film and it looks so much worse, like it was shot for Netflix instead of theatres (and that's exactly where I watched it, so... well done?). It looks muddy and dull, and feels the same. There's no energy to this picture, including in Damon's performance in which both Jason Bourne and the actor portraying him both seem tired. Styles, Jones, Vickander, Cassell, Ahmed... all of them seem in it for the paycheck, and are not giving anything more to this very middling script than what it asks for. 

The most interesting part of the film, as mentioned before, is just how O.P. (overpowered) the CIA has gotten, in this global watchdog reality, it becomes hard to believe anyone can traverse the world through normal means without being found, without obfuscating their physical identity as well as their travel documents There are some decent procedural sequences here (and others not so much).

Franchises and intellectual property never die, so this is not the last we will see of Jason Bourne. It's likely not the last we will see of Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. I can bet that in within the next five years we will get an "Old Man Bourne" revival as Damon tries for one last cash grab while he's still physically able to punch and jump, but I can also most assuredly say we don't need it.

I also would hazard a guess that we will get some type of Bourne reboot as a TV series under the premise of "more closely following the Ludlum novels", and it fizzling out by season two once people realize that what they like most about the series was the intensity and intrigue Tony Gilroy brought to it, and not actually what came from the source.

Ranking: -> 1/3/2/4/5. The first film is great. The trilogy is largely solid. The franchise spinoff is an enjoyable enough failure and the revival is at best forgettable, at worst miserable. 

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Survive

2024,  Frédéric Jardin (Nuit blanche) -- Amazon

Or Survivre.

This low-budget (more accurately, economical budget; low has connotations) French apocalyptic survival (pun intended) movie strikes me as the pilot episode on a 90s scifi survival series, right down to the make-shit-up "science" of the situation and the "every other person is a Bad Guy" setups. Like those shows, it just rushes along on a wave of adrenalin and the screaming, without really trying to have a plot. Its almost big dumb fun, but not quite, as it takes itself far too seriously, considering how absolutely silly the whole premise is.

It starts with a family on a boat and wee bit of character development, just a wee bit. A French family, he is German, they live in Miami. The family vacation at sea is interrupted by weird storms and satellites falling from the sky and ears bleeding. When they wake up the next morning, the ocean is gone. They are in a desert in the middle of nowhere. Sucked through a rift in time and/or space? Nope, that would make "sense"; instead they are still off the coast of Miami but the oceans have been sucked away. 

By looking at his compass, Dad (Andreas Pietschmann, 1899) determines the poles have reversed after which the oceans went onto the land, leaving what they left behind as dry land. Wait, dry land? So, the water went... uphill? Dry land was not dry because the magnetic poles kept the water there, but because the continents had rose above the water. Furthermore, one night's departure of water would not leave a dry, gritty desert (filmed outside Morocco) but a muddy morass probably massively deep in many places. But no matter, oceans gone, boat stranded, what to do what to do.

They talk to people on the radio. The scientist who was in a deep sea diving rig explains to them what happened, in details only a scientist could and that he is in a vehicle that can hold three people. Also, the oceans will return. How he knows this, who knows or cares -- sense of urgency! Save our kids! And that tense setup is also interrupted by the arrival of a stranger with a dog. Men with dogs are to be trusted, right? Nope, stabby stabby, Dad is dead. Wait what?

The rest of the traumatized family (as if oceans going bye bye wasn't enough) run off into the desert, towards the man in the yellow submarine. Bad Man gives chase, sans dog, cuz Mom (Émilie Dequenne, Brotherhood of the Wolf) killed it. Poor dog, not his fault his owner was a dick. They find a plane that obviously crashed into the ocean years ago, and hide out the night. But not before the bad man catches up to them and Mom stabby stabby kills him. BUT the next morning, his body is picked over; what's been chewing at him?

Delirious with thirst, young teenage Son drinks from a puddle. "Don't do that !" yells Mom! And almost instantly he gets sick, but that's alright, cuz she has a first aid kid with a needle that makes things alright. Further on, they spy a crashed container ship in the distance. Should be LOTS of people on the thing, right? Full of sailors, right? Nope, just a couple of scavengers breaking into a cracked container of bottled water and food. Help a family out? Nope, they wave their guns around cuz in this new no-ocean world, nobody can be trusted. BUT the unknown threat from earlier, that picked over the Bad Man, is now chasing everyone -- CRABS ! Deep Sea Crabs! Not bothered by the lack of pressure, they are hungry and like to pinch pinch everyone to death. The family crawls on top of a container until the sated crabs depart. Now they have food, water and guns.

Eventually they make it to the yellow submarine, but only after leaving Mom behind in a trench. Yellow Submarine Guy says they only have hours until the ocean returns, BUT he's been bitten by crabs so that will make room for Mom. So, back to the trench to get Mom, and everyone gets in, and Submarine Guy dies, and the oceans return. Whoosh.

The next morning they are awash on a ruined beach, inland, oceans where they should be, but proper dry land has been wrecked. Cue the sequel.

If this had been a terrible 90s action survival TV show, I would have probably forgiven it because even That Guy of the 90s liked disaster and survival plots. And back then you forgave a lot but this is now and This Guy, despite having devolved into Terrible Action Movie Guy, has developed an identity of snarky complaining. While being decently shot and acted, where acting was required between the running and screaming, it just diverged from reality so far without giving even the littlest of shit, that it irked me. Pretending that all this lunacy could be caused by natural disaster just strained credulity to the point of breaking.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Death of a Unicorn

2025, Alex Scharfman (feature debut) -- download

First time director, mostly producer, I don't know much about Alex Scharfman and in looking at his catalogue, and his AMA, I am not sure there is really anything to know. Yeah, I know, that's harsh. I know I have commented on my admiration for hard working people in the film industry and just giving them kudos for keeping on keeping on. But... 

There is a metric ton of shit horror movies out there, kept alive by the horror movie film fest circuit and con fanbase. I am on the periphery of that fandom, but I wholely do not subscribe to making shit horror movies for the sake of making shit horror movies -- the spate of "just come into the public domain", shit horror movies about Winnie the Poo or Steamboat Willie, are a waste of energy. Not that this down to that level, but for the immense talent included, but I am not sure I understand how it got made.

Elliot (Paul Rudd, Ant-Man) and his disaffected teenage daughter, more caricature than archetype, Ridley (Jenna Ortega, X), arrive in Canada, yes Canada, so they can head to the estate of his employer, high in the Rockies. Elliot is obviously failing as a father but is heading to the rendezvous in order to secure their economic future. That is Elliot's motivation -- money. His employers have their home in a "nature reserve" but almost instantly we know "nature reserve" means "big game reserve", a place where Odell Leopold can hunt to heart's content. The Leopolds are not good people.

On the drive into the pristine nature of the Canadian wilderness, a distracted angry Elliot hits a unicorn. Rather than try and help it, as it lies suffering on the ground, he beats it to death with a tire iron. I imagine he does not envision a satisfactory explanation where he injured a legendary creature in the Leopold nature reserve and still get what he wants from them. While killing the poor thing, its blood splatters he and his daughter. And they stuff the corpse into the boot.

The Leopolds are the worst. They are a caricature of late stage capitalism. Horror movies often lean into archetypes, but this one leans heavily on characters that are more farce than anything else. Belinda (Tea Leoni, Deep Impact), the wife, is constantly going on about her benevolent, charitable activities while son Shepard (Will Poulter, We're the Millers) is jumping from one scheme to the next, desperate to impress his dying father and family patriarch Odell (Richard E Grant, Loki). I guess Elliot is in there to help manage the corporation after Odell dies. Except there is a dead unicorn in his car, which turns out to not be dead, until the Leopold's security head Shaw (Jessica Hynes, Spaced) shoots it in the head. Not long after, they discover that the blood of the dead creature has healing abilities and... well, you know where that goes.

Its fun, watching them all conspire on how they can monetize the healing potion they make from grinding up the unicorn horn. For example, it pretty much instantly heals the dying Odell, and while he seemed slightly redeemable on his death bed, a healthy Odell is pure evil. But the unicorns have other ideas. You see, that was just the baby, and when the parents show up, it becomes a slaughter. Like all these horror movies, they just love the creativity of the death scenes, and while Rudd and Ortega and the rest of the cast give it their all, its all rather a weak formula played through.

Part of me kept on wondering why there were unicorns on his "nature reserve" to begin with. I have a feeling one generation of the script had Odell knowing full well he had at least one mythical creature on his grounds, but that was dispensed with. Canada has been going on about Big Foot for decades; I am sure we would have been all over "unicorn sightings". 

I lump this into my current state of ennui for mid-range movies, the kind I used to be able to enjoy for just being what they were. And while I enjoyed this in the viewing, it just feels like wasted effort in the long run. And yet, I am still not making an effort to watch the back-logs items I know will be proper good.

Stupid brain.

ReWatch: Deep Impact

1998, Mimi Leder (The Code) -- Netflix / The Shelf

What do they call it when two movies come out at the same time and are about the same topic? Oh yeah, Twin Films. In 1998, in May and July respectively, we got Deep Impact and Armageddon; both movies are about world ending astral bodies (one's a comet) heading towards the planet, and both are about sending teams of astronauts (and working men) up to destroy the rocks. That Guy instantly disliked the latter Michael Bay movie, for all the reasons everyone dislikes Michael Bay movies -- it was loud, crass, flag-waving and full of rock n roll. The former was more thoughtful, more about the human experience at the end of it all.

This Guy probably likes "Armageddon" more now because its just stupid fun.

Mimi Leder gives us a more human movie, a movie about the emotional impact it has on the world, instead of disaster porn. That I like it more is odd, considering my love of disaster porn, the bigger the scale, the better. But even now, I love the weights and measures of this movie. And like with every rewatch, I forget that there is almost no actual disaster until the very end of the movie. Ninety percent of the movie is about people. The rocks barely hit.

Speaking "the bigger, the better" disaster porn -- surprised I have not ever done a rewatch writeup of "2012", the ultimate in end of the world scenarios, by the master himself, Roland Emmerich. Maybe the next The Shelf post....

It starts with an observatory and a high school class. Leo Biederman (Elijah Wood, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency) notices something new in the sky. They send his findings to the scientist in the observatory who panics, loading his data onto a floppy drive (for you youngin's, its the physical representation of a Save icon) before dying in a firey crash on the road.

Cut to news people, Washington DC news people to be more precise. Some politician has unexpectedly retired and fledgling TV journalist Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni, Jurassic Park III) starts digging, and learns about "Elly", which immediately gets her detained by the secret service and interrogated by POTUS. Elly turns out to be ELE or "extinction level event" and her blundering forces the government to reveal the existence of comet Wolf-Biederman, which is on collision course with us.

Their plan? Two fold -- one, send a team in a big fancy space shuttle to blow it up, and two, to jam a million lottery winners into caves, to preserve "our way of life". Jenny has skyrocketed to the top of her news station, which is bittersweet, as the world falls apart around her. Meanwhile Leo and his family watch the ensuing chaos from afar. 

The timeline is long, in months, but as expected in these kind of movies, the mission is a failure. All the astronauts end up doing is breaking the big comet into two big chunks, one that will land in the Atlantic, flooding the eastern seaboard, and the other into Western Canada, which will effectively end life on Earth.

But the astronauts pull off a Hail Mary, igniting their own nuclear engine to destroy the bigger rock. The littler rock still hits, giving us a bit of actual disaster in this disaster movie. Jenny dies in the arms of her estranged father, a final touching moment of forgiveness and connection. Leo and his new bride, and her infant brother, escape high into the hills Appalachians, while everyone they knew is washed away. Leo could have gone into the caves, as his discovery afforded him and his family a place, but he loved his high school sweetheart too much. The world is saved by the sacrifices of the shuttle crew and a very ruined planet gets a chance to heal.

Now, all these years later, I am still surprised I (still) like this one more than the other one. It affords us a dozen lovely moments of pure emotional human element: Jenny giving up her seat on the helicopter out of DC to her boss & child, "Spurgeon" Tanner (Robert Duvall, Open Range) reading to the blinded shuttle mission leader, said leader Oren Monash's (Ron Eldard, Black Hawk Down) wife & child rushing into mission control to give last goodbyes to husband & father, the Hotchener's forcing their teenage daughter Sarah (Leelee Sobieski, Eyes Wide Shut) to take her infant brother and escape on Leo's motorcycle to higher ground as a wall of water washes up the grid-locked highway, President Beck (Morgan Freeman, Se7en) dispensing with the teleprompter to give his final "we failed" speech to the nation. There are so many moments that are not high-drama but sweet, tragic events that make the movie what it is.

Speaking of "a rock will smash the Earth, let's hide people in a bunker", the more recent disaster porn movie (which is more about the human element) "Greenland" is getting a sequel.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Minecraft Movie

2025, Jared Hess (Nacho Libre) -- download

One, yes I watched this movie, though not in the cinema.

Two, yes it was terrible, but in a sort of expected Jared Hess sort of way.

Three, no it is not just for kids. Technically, I was "into Minecraft before it was cool". But it would help with this movie if you were one of the generation that is actually still into the game.

So, background. Back in the late 00s, a co-worker knew I was into gaming and introduced me to this weird non-linear game he was playing. At first I was off-put by the low-end looking graphics, the blocky nature of it, but I gave it a try, especially intrigued by the open world, no goals nature. And soon after, entranced by the music, the open ended nature, the self guided play - I was hooked. This was the early days, the Java days. I actually bought it. Not long after, this coworker recognized this was a good game for kids, and built a server for his own boys, and their friends, to play on. All I can say about that is that kids are generally sociopathic when playing games.

The game evolved, expanded from being worked on solely by one developer (Notch; even mentioning his name is too good for what he devolved into) to a small company (Mojang) and then eventually was bought up by Microsoft. By the time it actually launched 1.0 it was a phenom game. It was known the world wide and it was a thing that parents were now peripherally aware that kids were into, not adults. But I still subscribed to its early versioning, the pre-multiplayer days, when it was about a single person, in a single world, exploring and surviving and building to their heart's content, wary of danger but with infinite possibility.

It is this last ideal that the script hinges off. The movie itself, as all Hollywood versions of "cool things" took over ten years to come to actual life, arguably long after it could have actually banked on that cool factor. I mean, many of the kids who were originally into the game have now graduated high school. Sure, its still a thing but not the phenomena it once was. Yet, the core story, the idea of a guy (Steve) who finds a weird blocky world which is open to his singular creativity, is there. And you get the sense the writers at least heard of this earlier ideal to the game.

But most of the movie is from the phenom era. All the in-jokes and monsters and items and world building are things that leave me wondering, having abandoned the game when it became ubiquitous, when it garnered a purpose, instead of just being entirely open ended. So, this movie was not for me. But who was it for, as I heard it got lambasted by even "the fans" ?

Anywayz, yes, Steve (Jack Black, King Kong) gives us a preamble wherein he explains his Hess-ian life of being denied a life as a child-miner, until he finds his way into a magic world. After establishing his perfect life in this world, a portal into yet another world is found (the Nether), one that is the opposite of his own blocky, bright world, one of pig men and monsters and dark magics. To protect his world, he sends the portal generating magic orb with his blocky wolf pet Dennis into the "real world" to hide it.

Enter the "real world", well as real as anything from Hess is. Its surreal more than real. Natalie (Emma Myers, Wednesday) and Henry (Sebastian Hansen, Lisey's Story) arrive in Chuglass, where they've been forced to move after their mother's passing. Natalie is a social media guru and will help increase interest in the town's potato chip factory, that is, until Henry accidentally destroys the mascot/statue stuck to the factory roof. Henry is a bit of an inventor, but in the Wallace & Grommit vein... weird, not quite working stuff. His rocket pack experiment doesn't go well. 

Henry ends up at the gaming store of hot pink garbed loser, and ex-arcade-gaming-champion, Garrett "The Garbage Man" Garrison (Jason Momoa, Aquaman). Hidden in his store is the orb (magic portal generating one) and through a conjunction of plot requirements, everyone, also including real estate agent / mobile petting zoo  entrepreneur (basically a llama in the backseat of her station wagon) Dawn, end up in the blocky world, called The Overworld.

As is expected of their first night in Minecraft, night comes far too quickly and with it, zombies. Henry has already discovered how to punch trees and build "a house" but zombies and skeletons riding spiders are still trying to defeat them. IYKYK. That's when Steve appears to then provide exposition and prowess for the rest of the movie, explaining all the elements of the game that appear, especially the in-jokes and wink wink nod nods. Oh, and they accidentally break the orb, but just before they do so, a "villager" (Minecraft's NPCs who speak a mumbly language) wanders through the portal into our world, where he is hit by a car driven by the school vice-principle (Jennifer Coolidge, 2 Broke Girls). Insert disturbing romance side plot.

After this, the movie is all quest quest quest. Steve knows where they have to go to get a new orb, but his nemesis, Malgosha (Rachel House, Thor: Ragnarok), queen of the pig men, who only has interest in mining for gold, and using the orb to allow her Nether world to enter the Overworld. She wants the orb, Steve doesn't want her to have it, but she has an army at her back.

Its fun, its silly and its bright and fanciful. I said the movie was terrible, but naming Hess as the reason makes the terrible the intent? His movies are all a wonky left-of-centre depictions of odd people doing odd things but with their heart. I just wish he had reined in Jack Black a bit more, who plays his Steve as an unhinged maniac constantly screaming his methods of madness to all around -- in other words, being full Jack Black. And while I am tempted to say I would have liked the movie more if not for the Hess-ian style to the characters, I have a deep seated belief the movie would have been much much more terrible if it took itself too seriously.  I strive to envision a better movie for this property, and I fail.

KWIF: Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning + Sinners

 KWIF = Kent's Week(ish) In Film. 

This Week:
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025, d. Christopher McQuarrie - in theatre)
Sinners (2025, d. Ryan Coogler - in theatre)

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[Missions: Impossibles 1-6 and 7]

The TV series from the 1960s from which the Mission: Impossible film series takes its name was a team-based ensemble series revolving around a group called the IMF - the Impossible Mission Force. From the opening sequence of Brian DePalma's first entry in this series, in which Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt is the sole survivor of a mission where his entire team was killed, it was laid pretty bare that this Mission: Impossible was all about just one man.

Oh, every film it tries to pretend like its interested in Ethan being part of a team, amassing Luthor (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) and a rotating cast of others as his support base, but the films have never been interested, not one iota, about who these other characters are. They are there for one reason, and one reason only: to heave up the corniest dialogue that reiterates just how singularly awesome and important and noble and unique and courageous and handsome and incredible Ethan Hunt (and thus the man portraying him) is. But it hasn't always been so unbearable as it is in the latest (and last?) bloated entry in Cruise's vainglorious celluloid espionage exploits.

When Christopher McQuarrie joined the franchise with its fifth feature, it picked up the threads from JJ Abrams' third feature and started really investing in Ethan as a character, and what the toll of his role as sole saviour of the world has on him. It gave him an equal in Rebecca Ferguson's superspy Ilsa Faust, and took away from some of that centrifugal force that Cruise generates. Ilsa had her own world she existed in and it just so happened to cross paths with Ethan Hunt. Rebecca Ferguson didn't play Ilsa as a love interest, she had her own shit going on and Ethan was either getting in her way, helping her out, or a nice distraction.

With the sixth Ilsa-heavy M:I entry, Cruise squared off against a scene-stealing moustache and the super-tall, super-jacked, super-man that is Henry Cavill behind it. Cavill is the physical ideal I think Cruise wishes he was. When Cruise played Jack Reacher, a character described as a brick shithouse of a man (which Cruise most definitely is not) I can only imagine he was thinking he was Henry Cavill the whole time. So Cavill's nefarious turn and death in Fallout, well, it's like in Fight Club, when Jack bashes Jared Leto's face in. He just felt like destroying something beautiful. Mission:Impossible - Dead Reckoning (formerly "Part 1") was Cruise's direct response to having any of the attention taken away from him, and despite some spectacular stunts, it was the worst film in the franchise since John Woo's much maligned second entry. Slated to be the first of a two-part swan song to Cruise's run on the action franchise, he made it all about him. No more Ilsa, no scene stealing villains, and everything... EVERYTHING revolves around Ethan Hunt and just how goddamn important he is.

All this preamble is to say Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (no longer Dead Reckoning - Part 2) is the apex of Tom Cruise's self-fellating on screen. It's a 170-minute, $300 million(or more) budget spectacle that commands you to revel in the majesty that is Tom Cruise.  Every goddamn character - even the ones who are trying to take Ethan Hunt down - can only every talk about just how wonderful and noble and just the best-person-ever Ethan is, often directly to his face while Cruise just stands there, looking off screen, doing the best acting of his career by pretending to not be revealing in such effusive admiration. Dead Reckoning at least still deigned to have some personal investment for Ethan (though it involved fridgeing Ilsa, so fuck that noise) while here there is no journey for Ethan to go on, except to prove that he is the one man, and one man alone who can save the world.  At a certain point I had to wonder if all this ego-fluffing was camp. My wife assured me it was not self aware enough to be so.

There is a nominal attempt at building a team around him. Pom Klementieff's assassin, Paris, from Dead Reconing joins the squad, as does Greg Tarzan Davis' CIA Agent Degas. They hook up with Benji, Luthor and Haley Atwell's master pickpocket Grace. Atwell has the unfortunate role of having to pretend her character is totally infatuated with Ethan ...but then ALL characters kind of have to as well, except she has to pretend to be romantically interested in him while Cruise's sexual energy seems to have gotten lost somewhere between putting on his Lev Grossman fat suit for Tropic Thunder and belting out "Wanted Dead or Alive" for Rock of Ages, and he give her nothing in return. Oh, Cruise is totally down for taking his shirt off but he just wants people to be impressed with the physique of his 60-year-old body and what he can do with it, and not all all with any sense of allure. (Ok, I am impressed, you got me there). The team is a team only to ensure that Ethan's mission, and thus his rightful place as Best Person Ever, is affirmed. 

There are no character arcs in this film. There is a small redemptive arc for one character calling back from the first Mission: Impossible but that's about as close to a character arc as we get. Ethan's sole motivation in this rather absurd endeavour, is to save the world because only he can.

Picking up from Dead Reckoning, The Final Reckoning finds "the Entity", an artificial intelligence let loose upon the world, taking over, one by one, each nuclear power's arsenal, getting set to destroy everything, while nations still strive to find some way to control the Entity for their own benefit. Ethan and team have figured out how to stop the entity, but the mission...it's practically impossible! 

I can accept the multitude of far-fetched coincidences and microscopic margins of error that Ethan and team need to successfully achieve in order to save the day. That has always been a part of the series. It's a lot harder to accept the James Bond-meets-MCU-level threat and globetrotting adventure that doesn't at all seem like the style of the series. There's is such heightened levels of absurdity in this that it makes Indiana Jones' surviving a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator look realistic by comparison.

Despite Cruise's borderline insane commitment to practical physical spectacles in death-taunting-level action sequences, these last two films have stretched so far past reality that they're really not that enjoyable. The absence of any character development or journey means you're all too aware of "Tom Cruise" on screen, and "Ethan Hunt" is just the innocuous shadow he casts.

That all said, the middle act of this film, starting with a sequence on a submarine captained by Severance's Tramell Tillman and with Love Lies Bleeding's Katy O'Brian on board (let's spin off a film about that crew please), just sings like a proper impossible mission. This segment of the film sets up the stakes, reiterates the dangers, adds more complications and we watch as Ethan and crew execute the impossible. It involves a gorgeously filmed underwater sequence and even as it keeps adding layer upon layer of danger to admittedly absurd levels, it never stops looking great.  It helps that Ethan is underwater and unable to communicate with anyone so it is just pure spectacle, with no one reinforcing just how incredible or awesome or necessary he is. Of course, it ends with one, perhaps two dangers too many, and its conclusion, well, if it were a Stretch Armstrong doll it would be spilling its inner sand everywhere.

This did not need to be a three hour movie. Scaling back the flashbacks to past instalments, shaving back the layers upon layers of peril (sorry to say but President Angela Bassett -- as much as I wish that were a real thing instead of Tangerine Palpatine -- is utterly unnecessary here), and cutting a dozen or two of the speeches about how fucking incredible Ethan is could pare this back a good 40 minutes. 

I didn't hate The Final Reckoning but these big bloated multi-part finales to film franchises are getting out of hand and they generally don't earn the right to be so damn self-important. These final two entries of the Mission: Impossible series feel more on par with ludicrous-ness (Ludacris-ness?) of the Fast and Furious franchise (a series itself that's failed to maintain its own standards). Nothing will be worse in this series than Mission:Impossible II, but these Reckonings have kind of sunk to a new level of mediocrity.

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There is a comic book series called Phonogram written by Kieron Gillen and illustrated by Jamie McKelvie that posits that music is magic, that the sounds we hear from bands, the creative energy that infuse them, unlocks the ethereal aspects of existence. In the comic, there are people who see the literal magic at play and can navigate it where as the rest of us just experience the surface impact of the magic, but the metaphor at play is a strong one. Music can unlock every type of feeling and elicit sensations that cannot be adequately described with even the most florid language. Music can transcend reality and take the listener into another plane of existence, at least for a moment.

There is a sequence in Sinners that is transcendent in this same fashion, a prolonged moment that marries music and moving pictures as well as human movement to create a powerful experience that conveys that idea of music being magic and lets the audience join the ride. In this moment in the film, music opens a metaphorical gateway between the past and the future, director Ryan Coogler's fluid, sweeping camera navigates the scene as barriers between reality break down. Ludwig Goransson and his talented ensemble of musicians, as well as the film's co-star Miles Canton providing deeply soulful blues vocals, bridge these worlds with a harmonious cacophony of sound. The scene captured is of the beautiful cast dancing, only to be joined by ancestors and descendants in the joyous movement.  I'm underselling its power. I let out an audible, uncontrollable "wooooooow" as the sequence evolved. The magic was real, and transformative. 

Often, when a film has a big idea moment like this, the entire story is built around it, it leads up to it, and then rides the high for the remainder of its runtime (or futilely tries to top it, risking undermining the whole endeavour), but not Sinners. This moment is an unexpected moment when it happens (oh...sorry, spoiler warning, I guess?) but it's really the pivot point of the movie. The sequences leading into this moment build up the characters and the scenario. Coogler deftly invests us in Michael B. Jordan's twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, as well as their blues-playing cousin Sammy, and the women they all love, and the town they all live in, the peopley they're all connected to, and the nefarious forces they face be it the Klan or the white devils with pointy teeth and glowing eyes.

I wrote about how Mike Flanagan's Midnight Mass was a masterclass in character and setting introduction and set-up.  Sinners has much the same brilliance. Smoke and Stack departed their Clarksdale, Mississippi home to engage in World War I, and after they returned, they stole away to Chicago to work for Capone. They have returned to Clarksdale armed with knowledge and experience and no fear. The legend of the Moore twins lives large in Clarksdale, some of it rumour, most of it not.  

The twins are opening up a juke joint, and fast. They want to get operating immediately. The don't so much as see the need as impose the need upon the town. There are warnings they receive, but there's a fearlessness and ambition in their endeavour, and they're going to put their all into it.  Smoke reunites with his lover Annie (the radiant Wunmi Mosaku) while Stack tries unsuccessfully to hide from Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), the daughter of the white woman who took the twins in when they were kids who Smoke had a fling with before leaving town.  They recruit their younger cousin to play, despite the protestations of Sammy's preacher father who wants his son's talents for the church, not for the sinner crowd. The twins also wrangle in alcoholic blues pianist Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) to play, and local grocers Grace and Bo Chow (Li Jun Ji and Thomas "Yao" Pang, respectively) among other help.

Meanwhile they don't know the threat that is coming. An Irish immigrant, Remmick, is chased through the desert by Choctaw hunters, well aware he is a demon in human form. Remmick gets refuge in the home of a Klansman and his wife, and in short time he is not alone, but a fledgling horde.

Remmick senses the power of Sammy's music, and wants that power for his own. So he descends upon that lively event of Smoke and Stack's grand opening, and it's not long before vampiric chaos ensues.

Coogler ties together the joys of music, the strength of community, the power of solidarity and the terror of systemic racism and injustice, and can't resist as the fleeting satisfaction of revenge, and underlines it all with a deliciously entertaining action-horror genre picture. Sinners is one of the most entertaining movies of the 21st century.  It's hard not to acknowledge From Dusk 'Til Dawn but Coogler has little to none of Tarantino or Rodriguez's interest or deference to Grindhouse pictures, and so when the bloodbath begins, it's all still so very rooted in character rather than spectacle. The choices Coogler's script makes in this last act are never not surprising, up to, and including the coda to the film.

Everyone is great in this picture, everyone. But when Michael B. Jordan is on screen (sometimes on screen twice) everything just orbits around him, caught in his gravitational pull. He is magnetic, capitvating and so good looking. Smoke and Stack are so smooth, collected, menacing yet sympathetic, and stylish as hell. It's impossible not to wish for stories about the Moore twins in Chicago, or their World War I experience... if not movies, then comics or novels from Coogler.

But Sinners is a singularly awesome film that wants to exist on its own, just one story start to finish, with no franchise ambitions. It stands apart as not just a movie, but an experience.

What I Have Been Watching: A Catchup Post

I said many times recently that I am not currently writing about TV. As my brain is powered on whim, I decided to write "watching" post, but not in the adopted Kent Method (1-1-1) but just my old catchup kind of post where I write a paragraph or two on shows I recently watched, or I am currently watching. Its a blather-on kind of post. It will skip ones from way back when.

Dropping stubs; to be filled out.

9-1-1, Season 8, Disney+

We used to download this show as it came up, but eventually our dedication to the show waned, so we now just wait for it to appear on Disney+, where they are actually dropping weekly episodes. They just finished off Season 8. 

Given I am not using the 1-1-1 format, I will just blather on a bit. 

This was the season they killed off not just a main character, but the main character -- Captain Bobby Nash. In a two part episode about a crazy epidemiologist who releases a mutant virus, and infects some members of the team, Bobby sacrifices himself to save one -- Chimney. There's no fake out, no walk back with a miraculous cure. He dies, horribly, quickly. And it tears apart the people present. This show has always been good at trauma, less the people they are supposed to be saving, and more the members of the 118 Station House. I mean, this year, 911 Operator Maddie Han had her throat slashed by a serial killer who had kidnapped her. But she survived, unlike every other throat slashing on TV which is played out as insta-death. But the show is silly and melodramatic and over the top and near-deaths are the norm. Real Death is not and it was really really tragic. 

Also, on a less traumatic note, the hunky hunk Buck came out as Bi; oh wait, that was last season. Also, yes there was a season opening episode about bees.

Andor, Season 2, Disney+

Likely the best thing I watched in the past year. Definitely the opposite of the last show given it is smart, well written and deftly paced. Never has there been a show which successfully had me rooting for the Bad Guy, and not in an ironic way, but growing to actually like them. Begrudgingly, grumpily so. Not entirely, and not for the usual quippy Buffy-Spike reasons, but because they are played as such strong characters with strong motivations. But they remain the Bad Guy. And I commend the show for having them remain a Bad Guy until the very end, not shoe-horning in some redemption arc, despite giving us openings. Such. Good. Writing.

The tailoring of this season through 3 episode arcs that cover one year's period, counting down to Cassian Andor leaving the rebel base, to begin the movie Rogue One, was brilliant. Utterly brilliant. It allowed build up, in degrees, and also resolution, in degrees. It also allowed us to fill in some details, build out the characters, establish some utterly engrossing moral dilemmas and sum up some things that just had to be summed up. More precisely: the establishment of Yavin as the Rebel Base, the rise and fall of "necessary evil" Luthen Rael, the rise and fall of aforementioned Bad Guys Syril Karn & Edra Meero, 

Doctor Who, Season 2, Disney+

I am still kind of annoyed at the rebranding of this as a new series (i.e. the 'season 2' component) and also somewhat disappointed that Ruby Sunday only truly lasted one season as the main companion. While I really like Belinda Chandra as a companion, I just haven't really warmed to the season. Just nothing stands out, at all. I watch, I mildly enjoy and then I burp, and its gone. 

The show definitely continues the "piss off the anti-woke folks" being more gay, more brash statements than any other series, which is kind of gleeful unto itself. The episodes which were blatant send-up's on incel rhetoric were a hoot. And, they have been having some fun extending the pantheon related storyline from "first" season, but I am just ... not invested.

Doctor Odyssey, Season 1, Disney+

I wanted to watch this for two reasons: I have an odd fascination with alternative cruise ships, i.e. the more akin to classic, smaller ships than they mega-ships run by companies (ironically) like Disney -- see Death and Other Details. And because it seemed it would be in the vein of 9-1-1 with a "situation of the week" wherein the mains have to deal with something dramatic and tense. Alas, it more devolved into personal politics, which I am not adverse to in theory, but the whole love-triangle (full blown, let's have a threesome triangle stuff, between a "boss" and co-workers) between the mains just had me rolling my eyes.

I have just stopped watching.

Murderbot, Season 1, Apple TV / Download

Based on a scifi book series I just started reading ("just started" at my snail pace and attention span means I read the first book over a year ago) and enjoyed. But for some reason, they have positioned the TV show as a straight up comedy, something I did not attach to how the free-willed cyborg behaved in the books.

A Security Unit, a cyborg that is more weapon/tool than person, is assigned to a hippy-dippy group of scientists. Unbeknownst to them, this SecUnit has devised a way to break their "governor module", the device that keeps them from thinking for themselves. But it, and it most definitely identifies as "it", doesn't want to be found out, so it has to play the part. Exceeeept, its doing weird, more human things.

Two thoughts, as not much has happened two episodes (30 minute-r type episodes) in, but: since "it" is played by Alexander Skarsgård, it will soon, inadvertently become "he". And when reading the books, I somehow identified it as she. And I really like that they "let" David Dastmalchian display his vitiligo. Not overtly, but at least its not all covered up.

The Bondsman, Season 1, Amazon

Horror/Comedy show about a hillbilly bail-bondsman who is murdered by his ex-wife's new criminal boyfriend, and then is kicked out of Hell to act as a demon-related bounty hunter, for Hell. Its a long line in ?killing demons for Hell" shows we have watched, and weirdly enough, they are almost comedic in tone.

Kevin Bacon, who plays main Hub Halloran, is ten years older than me!! Jeezus the guy looks good for over 60. And he just moves well, considering its an action role and he's likely playing a guy in his 40s.

The show itself unfortunately dials down some of the stock elements of these shows. He has a handler, who helps him "identify" the types of demons he is hunting, but really, other than it presenting some flair for the demons, it doesn't play much into his interactions with them. Most of the drama of the show plays up his dysfunctional family situation, and the reasons he went to Hell in the first place. 

It was not bad, but I doubt it will get renewed.

MobLand, Season 1, download

This is another Guy Ritchie series, right? Its very dialogue heavy violence heavy in the Richie-an style. It covers an Irish mob family syndicate in London who get broiled in a war with another family syndicate after their shit grandson murders another shit grandson. Tom Hardy tags along as the unflappable fixer for the main family.

But alas, no, it's not direct Guy Ritchie, just has him in to direct an episode or two. 

It has just started and horrible people are doing horrible things to each other, but I am convinced that the matron of the Harrigan family, Maeve played by Helen Mirren, is plotting to bring down her own family just for the spite of it.

Poker Face, Season 2, download

Yay! Charlie's back! 

When season one ended, she had finally met up with her nemesis, mob boss Sterling Foster Sr, who had had his mook Cliff chasing her all season, pretty much a year's worth of bad hotels, bad food and near misses. But he finally caught her and sat her down in front of Foster. But the year had softened him to the ideal Charlie represented. What got her in trouble in the first place was the cluster-fucked deal Foster's son tried to strong-arm her into, using her lie-detecting ability to con high-roller gamblers. Foster Sr offers Charlie the same deal; except Cliff has turned on his boss, likely due to  the shit job he had been on for a year, and kills Foster. Cliff tries to frame Charlie for it, but fails.

Season Two starts with Charlie being offered the same deal by Beatrix Hasp, a boss of one of the "five families", but Charlie turns her down, and is on the run again. The first few episodes play out like a speedy version of season one, with Charlie solving a murder, and then running from mob goons with guns. BUT pulling an Andor out of their butt, they end that chase quickly having Hasp turn informant on the mob. Now Charlie, having become used to the idea of stopping in town to town on her windy-bendy trip around the US, solving murders, continues the ideal.

They have changed showrunner for this season, and the quick opener sum-up was a surprise. Time will tell whether we enjoy this season as much as the first.

The Last of Us, Season 2, download

The popular, critically acclaimed mushroom-zombie series based on a video game returns and actually does the shocking thing that the sequel game, that the season is based on, did -- killing its main character! Well, one of them. I was shocked that they took the second game, which pissed off the fan-base for the first game to the n-th degree, and are following it pretty much verbatim. Not having finished the second game, it will eventually diverge from my memory, but having played out the primary element, with heart-wrenching results, they seem just as invested in legitimacy.

Ellie has aged, Ellie has come out, Ellie is very very VERY angry. With the murder of Joel, the season quickly shifts from her being an annoying teenager with daddy issues to a Quest for Vengeance. It leads them west to a Seattle where a war is being waged, a war into which Ellie and Dina blunder.

This season is going to be all about the moral dilemma of violent response. Joel killed each and every Firefly because he couldn't sacrifice Ellie for the "greater good". After the death of his daughter he devolved into Not a Good Man, and during his travels with Ellie, he gained some of his pre-apocalypse viewpoint back. But the ruthless murders come with their own consequences. Not only does Ellie, when she eventually finds out, find it hard to forgive him, to believe he was that man, but also the children of those Firefly leaders he killed finally, many years later, put two and two together, and lay the blame squarely on his shoulders. And they track him down, and they most brutally kill him in front of Ellie. They leave Ellie and Dina alive with that memory.

Ellie understands what they have done, and why they have done it. But in a mirroring of Joel's choices, she sets out with Dina, against the wishes of all in their community, to find and murder Joel's killers. The same kind of vengeance for the same kind of reasons. The daughter becomes the father. 

Just like the game's release itself, the season is pissing off, or at least it is fueling the unhinged rage that anti-woke Internet has for.... well, pretty much anyone who is not a straight, white male. I know the Angry Internet has awoken significantly in the past decade or so, when they used to hide in the 4Chan holes to only share with each other, but part of me still wonders/hopes is the online rage is fabricated (to a degree) by foreign/local parties that just want to foment disruption. An unstable world is easier to control, and we do know how much this utter clusterfuck of a situation down south (of Canada) is about controlling the utterly stupid masses. I am just so fucking tired of it all. Can't we just enjoy something good because it is well done, instead of finding ways to bring it down? If anything, the review bombing will not stop the people who enjoy it from being the people who enjoy it.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Bullet Train Explosion

2025,  Shinji Higuchi (Shin Ultraman) -- Netflix

This is considered a direct sequel to the 1975 Japanese disaster movie The Bullet Train. 

Now, is it just me who calls these movies "disaster movies" even when the disastrous events are rather localized? I have always likened movies the The Towering Inferno, and The Poseidon Adventure as "classics" in the (disaster movie) genre and this would fit into the mould -- some background, lots of innocent people gathered together, something goes horribly wrong, people have to be rescued or saved. But there have been runaway train movies where I wouldn't claim them to be "disaster" movies. What about the structure of these makes them more "disaster" and less generic "thriller" ? I mean, purely, a "disaster movie" should be a big thing, a natural or man-made event, wherein there is mass death & destruction. Or maybe just the ... threat of such? 

Quit rabbit-holing. And no, this is probably not a disaster movie, as nobody actually dies.

Train 5060B is scheduled from the Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan to arrive in Tokyo, some 700 kilometers away, in likely less than 4 hours, at its normal rate of speed. That is, until a bomb threat is called in. The bomber wants ¥100 billion (just under a billion $ CAD) which they believe can easily be collected from everyone in Japan, or they will blow the train up in a populated area. Also, if the train slows to less than 100 KMh, it will explode. Yes, the premise for Speed, the bus movie with Keanu. To demonstrate their intent, they explode a cargo train sitting in a yard, and that forces the authorities to take it all seriously.

Like Shin Godzilla much of the movie focuses on the bureaucracy of response. The company that runs the train feels an obligation to save all the passengers and the reputation of their company, and the men leading these efforts are burdened by the immense weight of the responsibility. Yes, the fiction of a benevolent corporation that cares. They also have to deal with the conniving government representative who doesn't want the money to be collected because of the whole "don't negotiate with terrorists" ideal. Meanwhile onboard the train, the drama is led by conductor Kazuya Takaichi (Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Seiten wo Tsuke), who in great Japanese tradition, takes his job Very Seriously and wants to defend each and every passenger from harm. He has so many conflicting and contradictory responsibilities as the passengers themselves are the typical mix of sympathetic and entirely dislikeable people, some who calmly follow the instructions given to them by Takaichi, and others just cause chaos.

I loved the little detail, when focus would shift to the actual train driver (Non, Amachan), who has to disengage all the automated procedures and lower the train speeds, but just enough to delay arrival in Tokyo, but not enough for them to go boom. She is very precise in all her actions, double and triple checking each action with little visual flairs and shouts of confirmation. She doesn't care what is going on out there, she has a job to do.

The corporation arranges a rescue of most of the passengers in a tense, exciting, intricately planned derailing of some of the train cars (which have bombs, so go boom) while having another train match speeds and collect terrified passengers. The ingenuity of the Japanese people is on display as even the handing-off of required equipment to facilitate the rescue operations is done in a very detailed, precise manner, and in very short time. Dispatch Manager Yuichi Kasagi (Takumi Saitoh, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl) arranges all these things unbelievably quickly, as dozens of co-workers, police and government officials stare him down. 

In the end, the actual bomber and her plan matters very little. The usual disaster movie / thriller details mattered very little. The fun was watching the background folks accomplish the nie impossible in short order, allowing destruction (that must amount to billions of yen) to ensue, as long as the passengers are saved. And they are, all of them, including the terrible people and the bomber herself.

We have a "train" tag?!?!

ReWatch: The Core

2003, Jon Amiel (Entrapment) -- Netflix

Wait, this movie isn't on The Shelf ? Really? Are you sure?

For some reason I assumed I had already written about this one during a previous ReWatch. Even within my fondness for silly disaster movies, this one stands out as silly for the sake of silly. Something has stopped the core of our planet from spinning, so our magnetosphere is dissipating, which will eventually destroy all life on the planet. It starts with birds going wacky and ends with them sending a team of scientists to the centre of the Earth in a special ship to blow up nuclear bombs, to restart the "engine of the planet". I was mildly disappointed they didn't discover a land of dinosaurs at the centre of the planet.

Now, most disaster movies hinge on silliness, asking us to believe outrageous things for the sake of the plot. This one jumps the shark. For one, there is the presence of Unobtanium, a fictional composite / alloy that not only can protect someone from heat in the thousands of degrees, but it can also transfer that heat energy into electrical energy. The term has been around since the 50s, but this was the first use in a movie. The metal is used to coat the shell of the train-worm-ship (named Virgil) the team uses to reach the core of the planet. There are more, but I will get to them.

So, as alluded, something is going awry with the core of our planet. Once people start noticing things going weird, they, being the US Govt, respond by kidnapping schlubby college professor Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart, Battle: Los Angeles) and asking him if someone is using a weapon on the US. They, being proposed terrorists, aren't but it does have him do a bit more digging, and then in a fit of panic, confront a renowned celebrity scientist, Dr. Zimsky (Stanley Tucci, Big Night), about his findings who then gets Keyes in front of the POTUS. I have seen this movie at least half a dozen times and I still don't recall what field Zimsky is actually an expert in -- not that it matters to the plot; he's a celebrity scientist. He's the opposite of schlubby and therefore more credible. 

Anywayz, The magnetic field around the Earth, that protects us from harmful cosmic radiation, is dissipating. If we don't get the planet's core spinning soon, we will all die, which he demonstrates by putting an orange on the end of a fork and flambéing it with an aerosol can + a light = FIRE BALL ! 

That leads them to Zimsky's one time scientist buddy, Dr. "Brazz" Brazzelton (Delroy Lindo, Get Shorty), a sort of mad scientist working in the desert on weird shit, like the Unobtanium and Virgil. He will build the vehicle that will take them to the core where they can blow up some nukes to kick start it again. Why exactly did the core stop spinning? Oh nobody knows, but we do get a few conspiratorial scenes between Zimsky and the US General (Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water) running the show. Add to the team a pair of space shuttle pilots, one who almost lost her job by landing a shuttle in those water run-off canals in LA, which was totally unfair cuz she landed after their navigation equipment failed, due to, you guessed it, the issue with the core and the magnetic field. And there is Serge (Tchéky Karyo, La Femme Nikita), the nuclear scientist, and best friend of Josh, who will help them set off the bombs properly. I mean, he will set timers, which totally requires a nuclear specialist. The final member is a hacker named Rat (DJ Qualls, The Man in the High Castle) who will hide them diverting the trillions of dollars required to build Virgil and train the team. He hacks, as all movie hackers do, via buzz words and hot pockets. He does not go into the train-worm-ship, but works in the control centre, with the General. I was never sure where the trillions were actually going, but again, doesn't matter.

Virgil is dropped into the Marianas Trench, and using some sort of sound-lazer ('z' is important) they will blast their way through the chocolate layers of the planet to the sugary centre. It basically is like flying, just more worm-like. Their guidance system shows a sub-par digital representation of .. stuff but also doesn't know what diamonds are, so they are black, and are very very big and best avoided. And empty space is static, which is scary, especially when they drop into the inside of a giant geode. They have to go outside to dislodge a piece of crystal, in soft style space suits that don't seem to be affected by pressure so I guess the Kevlar version of Unobtanium? That's where they lose their first crew members, astronaut Commander Bob Iverson (Bruce Greenwood, Exotica) and the other astronaut, Beck Childs (Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby) has to step up.

They eventually lose pretty much everyone. Serge is lost when the caboose of their train-worm-ship gets damaged and he jumps in to save the nuclear detonators. Josh loses it on Becks because he believes he could have saved Serge if an override was used. Based on how they drag the scene out, I think he could have as well. Serge is squashed in the quickly collapsing section of Virgil, which is then ejected. I wonder what else was supposed to be inside that section. Braz is lost when someone has to volunteer to disengage a safety switch, which is only accessible from outside which is really really hot, like melt his special space suits hot. Finally, Zimsky does not quite sacrifice himself but gets stuck in a section that has to be ejected so they can set off their nuclear payload in a timed succession. He dies narrating into his mini-recorder and smoking a cigarette. Classy. 

Though pretty much everyone is dead, and the nukes haven't been enough, they realize they have to use the nuclear engine that powers Virgil. But then how will they fly-worm-tunnel home? Remember the line about how Unobtanium can convert heat energy into electricity? Well, all it takes is attaching big cable wires from the hull to the system and buzz whir click, everything turns back on. But they still have to guide Virgil out of the area around the core and back to the surface, and since we remember how long it took them to get there it will... oh, don't bother... if they just ride the nuclear wave, it will push them faster towards some hereto unknown crevasse that leads to the ocean and bob's your uncle, saved!

Also, they have discovered that it was indeed a weapon that caused all this havoc, one devised by Zimsky and the General. Rat the Hacker uploads everything about this conspiracy to the Internet. And I guess the magnetosphere repairs itself like a living organism? 

Yah lots of silly, and yet, the movie still takes itself seriously, seriously enough that the emotional moments feel like real emotion. Zimsky is an ass, and Tucci plays him perfectly, terrible toupee and all. The deaths of likeable Braz and Serge are tragic. The "disaster" is rather minimal, with only the third act depiction of cosmic rays melting the Golden Gate Bridge -- the movie doesn't seek to overwhelm you with death -- as Serge says, they are not trying to save the entire world, just three people -- Serge's family.