3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Fight or Flight

2024, James Madigan (a couple of TV episodes) -- download

What an odd, exuberant, violent little movie. With a conscience?

In our continued series of violent movies for violent minds is what I thought was going to be a rote actioner in the vein of Bullet Train but instead of a train full of killers, we get a plane, and in some ways it is that, but I wasn't expecting a painfully indie/low-budget elevator pitch, but... with heart?

I am struggling to understand what I saw. No, not the plot. That is typical, but I guess this is the world we live in now, where films can get green lit, from the black list, with minimal Purple Suit intervention, which is both for the better, and for the worse? There is a mashup of terrible budget related issues, like lighting (even when the cabin lights are dimmed, everything is brightly, flatly lit) and ADR (Hartnett at times sounds terribly high pitched, like no one understood sound levels) and the "twist" the plot is a bug-eyed, "what if we ...." silly (and yet, somehow still appropriate) idea. But the fight choreography is top notch and creative, and Hartnett & cast really truly play their little hearts out. And its not z-grade Scott Adkins level actioner, to be relegated to the bottom row of "if you liked X, watch Y" list on Amazon -- but no doubts, it will end up on Amazon. But it is most definitely not an A or B level Hollywood flick, which is frankly what I was expecting.

Yeah we see the struggle.

So, it opens with some sort of espionage agency op gone wrong. To chase down escaped criminal "The Ghost", agency head Brunt (Katee Sackhoff, Longmire) activates her ex-BF Lucas Reyes (Josh Hartnett, Trap) in a bar in Bangkok. He will follow said Ghost to a flight out of the country. If he does this one job for her, despite their history, she will wipe his slate clean. He reluctantly agrees.

The Ghost, some sort of terrorist hacker super villain that nobody knows what they look like, has boarded a plane bound for San Francisco, but someone has leaked a bounty on The Ghost, which has filled the plane up with assassins. You know where this is leading.

But almost from the get-go, things go... weird. The strange, colourful Spanish pop singer in First Class (what do we call that these days?) turns out to be one of the "plane full of hitmen" and also happens to have Reyes information. After Reyes dispatches the guy, he unsuccessfully hides the body from the cabin crew, and then has to engage them in what is going on. Huh, was not expecting that. Instead of turning the plane around, Reyes allies with the cabin crew to capture The Ghost. But yeah, expectedly, shit hits fans pretty quickly with killers coming out of the wood work pretty quickly, and ... well, the movie's first "twist" happens -- one of the cabin crew is The Ghost (Charithra Chandran, Bridgerton). Yes, international flight attendant and hacker/terrorist. Somehow she makes that work.

Things get silly almost immediately, but that is the vibe of the movie. And bloody and very very violent. The indie nature of the movie (i.e. not everything is well thought through) has scenes flipping from "their are passengers who are collateral damage!" to "so, the cabin is empty but for Reyes and Bad Guys?" but we forgive it.

Oh, and the conscience I mentioned is because Reyes is on the outs with the Secret Service because he assaulted the diplomat he was supposed to protect, someone who liked to beat on underage prostitutes. And The Ghost is a Good Guy, not a terrorist at all. Sure, she blows shit up, but to do Noble Things like free enslaved children from greedy corporate sweat shops. While Reyes does want his life back, he also feels beholden to her agenda.

And the end of movie twist? The ridiculous thing that ... maybe kind of sorta works? The shadowy "espionage agency" led by Brunt turns out to be Facebook. Not literally but the idea of a big blue-coloured corporation that has more power than it should.

Its a fun movie, if a little unintentionally sloppy and truly the only thing annoying about it was how it wore its influence on its sleeve (insert reference to John Wick) instead of leaning all the way into the wacky nature. Sure, we get a chainsaw scene (who has a chainsaw on a plane ?!?!?) and Reyes is played like a sort of drunken master, but I would have upped the mayhem into almost farce levels.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Havoc

2025, Gareth Evans (The Raid: Redemption) -- Netflix

I am doing something I don't consider very often, if ever -- started the stub post before I am even half way through the movie. I barely ever watch movies straight through these days, but this one jumped out at me almost immediately that screamed, "Do some research, find out why you are seeing what you are seeing on the screen." So, I paused and here I am.

Literally from the get go, which starts the movie with a chase scene -- cops after a semi-truck driven by thieves in LED masks, you can see that .... well, none of it is real. There are little to no practical effects  happening here, almost the entirety of the scene is CGI & greenscreen and, well this is why I had to go and Google it, maybe some AI. From the chase scene we go to the dirty, grimy unnamed American city which is so CGI enhanced I could easily think I was watching a movie set in the same Batman world of Penguin. It was all very very surreal to look at. And yet, somehow alluring and... successful?

I could not shake the feeling I was playing a computer game.

Later; having watched what remained. Said research told me this was an Evans movie, but that became apparent soon after I passed the above preamble.

And for maybe for that reason, it really appealed to me?

At its core, this is a Gareth Evans movie, i.e. an Asian ultra-violent action movie. How exactly does a label stick to a guy after such a short career? He so very much veered away with The Apostle which traded in his Indonesian martial arts and gunplay for ... his own roots? It was a familiar UK rural horror mystery. Evans is Welsh. This movie returns to his earlier successes but given I didn't know that going in (it was a Tom Hardy violent cop movie on Netflix; perfect for my current mindset), I was kind of surprised once it became apparent.

OK. Walker (Tom Hardy, Taboo) is a corrupt cop in a nameless American city that mashes up Chicago, NYC and Gotham, but a man with some regrets. The opening violent CGI rendered chase scene ends at a Triad club where a couple of the heist kids are paying off some debt to a gangster named Tsui, when a trio of hockey-masked gunmen come in and shoot up the place. When Walker shows up, rookie "not-partner" Ellie (Jesse Mei Li, Shadow and Bone) in tow, it becomes apparent the kids were not the shooters, like all the cops on scene want to assume, but escaped after being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Also, one of the kids is Charlie (Justin Cornwell, Bel-Air), the son on a wealthy & powerful, but corrupt, city official (Forest Whitaker, Andor) whom Walker is also under the thumb of. This is all well trod dirty cop movie territory.

At this point, the Peanut Gallery, wandered in during one of my sessions, and asked, "Is that supposed to be snow? It looks more like ash...." Yes, the CGI continues throughout the movie making the Xmas setting look more post-apocalyptic when the AI prompt was likely "make the snow look dirty".

The above establishing act is followed by two acts where Walker learns what is going on, and tries to get the kids to safety while being chased by the Triad who assumes the kids killed Tsui. There are a lot of Triad members -- like an endless stream of video game spawned NPCs. The three hockey-masked gunmen (including Timothy Olyphant The Mandalorian), who turn out to be Walker's fellow corrupt cops, have not taken well to his emerging regrets about being dirty, and also want the kids dead, as witnesses / survivors. Everything is tied together, to Walker, to each other, to the corruption at the heart of the movie.

The second act takes place in a club, their John Wick moment, but replacing the precise gunplay of that movie with frenetic blade & gun & kicks. This fight scene is crunchy. Part of me chuckled as I was reminded of the Burly Brawl, doors constantly opening, spilling forth even more Triad gang members, giving us a triangle of violence. With some sacrifices, Walker and the kids escape.

The convoluted, not very clearly mapped plot ends up leading everyone to Walker's hideout, a shack of oddly connected, barely standing rooms that struck me more as the setting for a gun-toting escape room than a movie set. Again, NPCs galore, all shooting and stabbing and kicking each other, ending in a reveal of who-killed-who-why. Its all rather ridiculous, with the fake blood spraying in gouts worthy of a slasher movie, and a pretty-much-everyone-dies moment but that's what we wanted here, right?

Critics seem to hesitantly love the movie, maybe because Evans so unabashedly loves the genre he choses to embrace. The mashup of Asian action "kung fu friday" cinema with dirty cop & neo-noir setting work well for the film minded, but the audience.... not so much. I can see why. On its dirty-snow surface, its almost a farce. But I enjoyed myself.

KWIF: Pee-Pee Peeping

 KWIF= Kent's Week in Film. Three "films" that start with "P" completely on accident.

This Week:
Predator: Killer of Killers (2025, d. Dan Trachtenberg - Disney+)
Pee-Wee As Himself (2025, d. Matt Wolf - HBO)
Presence (2025, d. Steven Soderbergh - AmazonPrime)

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The classic Arnold Schwartzenegger-starring Predator from 1987 was quite a successful film, as a group of mercenaries square off against a high-tech alien Predator in the jungle. It's Danny Glover-starring 1990 sequel, taking place in a sweaty, crime-addled futuristic L.A. was less successful but even more popular among the sci-fi nerds for teasing the culture of the Predators. But it was the various Dark Horse Comics mini-series in the 1990s that showed what could really be done with the Predator....

Put him at a disadvantage in a cold-weather climate. Have the Predator hunting during the first World War.  Let the Predators square off against Aliens. Or Batman. Or Tarzan. Or another Predator!

The core idea behind the Predator (their species is the Yautja...first used in the novel Aliens vs. Predator: Prey from 1994) is that they hunt those most deserving of being hunted; other hunters. Earth is so rife with skilled hunters and killers that it's a favourite hunting ground of the Yautja, but not their only one (as witnessed in 2010's Predators). The key to a good Predator story is to not focus on the Yautja much at all, and offer little to no explanation. Shane Black's 2018 travesty The Predator and the awful Aliens vs. Predator movies explained too much, tried to probe the creatures too much. So Dan Trachtenberg's back-to-basics Predator film Prey (pitting a Yautja against a Comanche warrior) came out in 2022, it paved the laneway for what future Predator stories should be... the Predator in other cultures, in other times.

The most obvious go-to would be Predator vs. Vikings, Predator vs. Samurai, Predator vs Kung Fu warrior, Predator vs Zulu warrior, etc.  So it came as a slight disappointment when the trailer Predator:Badlands dropped and it most definitely wasn't the back-to-basics follow-up to Prey I was anticipating from Trachtenberg.  What I didn't know was that the true follow-up to Prey would be Predator:Killer of Killers, stealth dropped on Hulu (in the US, Disney+ globally) last week.

At first blush, it appears to be an animated anthology film consisting of three stories: Predator vs. Vikings, Predator vs a ninja, Predator vs. WWII aerial ace, you know, the type of stories I was actually hoping would each get the full-feature, live-action treatment, not burned off in an animated tie-in. It's a movie that simultaneously offers a little more than what the typical anthology film does, but at the same time offers each conceit less than what it could have.

Set in 841 AD, "The Shield" finds a viking warrior, Ursa, leading her clan - and her son - on an assault against a foe she has been hunting for a long time.  The enemy was responsible for the death of her father a lifetime ago, but it seems revenge has been fuelling her the whole time. As she confronts the man she has hated her whole life, her son makes the killing blow, and makes him the target of the Yautja that has been observing them in action. The Predator here is a hulking beast, literally Hulk-sized, with a unique pulse emanating weapon on his right arm where his hand should be. Ursa, the Viking queen, meanwhile, fights using two shields with razor-sharp edges.  There is some wild violence and some impressive action beats in all this that allowed me to get over my disappointment of there not being more to it than there is. I feel like the emotional resonance that the story wants wasn't allowed enough time to build, both for the big confrontation the Ursa wants, and for the people she loses along the way.  I like that, like Prey, the Predator is still a more technologically advanced creature, but that technology is more primitive, clunkier than what we would see in the 20th century.

"The Sword" is set in Japan in 1609, but starts further back with two brothers, thick as thieves, who learn and train and grow up together, are forced to face each other by their disciplinarian father to see who is strongest and fiercest enough to be his heir. Kenji refuses to fight his brother, while Kiyoshi is reluctant but the disappointment of his father is too much to bear. He attacks Kenji and Kenji flees. Year later, Kiyoshi holds his father's title, and Kenji, now a ninja, sneaks into his city to get his revenge...except Kenji, for as stealthy as he is, cannot elude the Yautja observing him from behind his invisible cloak. This story, largely wordless, was everything I was wanting, except for not being live-action and feature length. It actually manages to hit the emotional resonance that "The Shield" could not, with the silence putting more emphasis of the visuals and direction, and the music providing so much of the emotional cues. As a short, it's absolutely lovely and poetic, but I still can't help want more out of it.

The end of each of "The Shield" and "The Sword" find our protagonists victorious against their alien opponent, and there's the briefest of glimpses of them in the same confined space that looks like the hold of a spacecraft. The film is teasing that there's more to Ursa and Kenji's stories than what we just saw. And then we're introduced to John Torres.

"The Bullet" is set in 1942, and finds Torres as a second-stringer aboard an aircraft carrier during World War II. Torres wants to fly, but hasn't been given the chance. When his squadron leaves to engage the enemy, Torres and his mechanic buddy discover something incredibly foreign, alien even, that's an even greater threat in the skies. He takes off in a junker plane to alert his crew to return to ship, only to have the Pred Baron start picking them off. Clearly we know Torres is successful in defeating this alien ace, but of the three stories, it's the most implausible. Torres is not, like Ursa or Kenji, so skilled, and his equipment is so outclassed it should barely be flying. Voiced by Rick Gonzalez (Arrow) Torres is a motormouth to the point of being too much, especially coming off of the quiet of "The Sword". Torres winds up verbalizing his inner monologue, which makes it feel much more cartoony than the previous for-adult-audiences entries felt.

It all culminates with a fourth act in a Yautja gladiatorial Colosseum, which I was not expecting at all. If anything I was anticipating that our three victors would wind up in the hunting forest planet from Predators. I very much enjoyed that it was something new, and there was no explaining it. We know what a gladiator arena looks like, and we know how they work, just not Predator-style, so it was full of discovery as new elements are introduced. 

All the fighting throughout the film is brutal and bloody and quite impressively choreographed. It's clean and clear what is happening in the action, although sometimes it's moving so quickly (Tractenberg using a lot of follow-from-behind or follow-in-front of the action oners) that taking in all the violent mayhem is sometimes a bit too much to process. I like how the Predator designs were all quite well thought through and how even though our protagonists were technologically outmatched, they still were smart enough to figure out how to use the Predators' technologies against themselves.

I had an absolute blast with this movie. In the end, the three opening acts come together with purpose for a rousing fourth act that, despite some pretty hand-waivy improbabilities, makes it all comes together, not just within but also outside of this film. The victories Dutch, Harrigan, and Naru all had...well, those probably weren't the end of their stories either.  Also, it should be said that at no point did Killer of Killers ever feel like it existed solely as an introduction to the forthcoming Badlands. It will be interesting to see if they do connect in any way, but even still, this feels as stand-alone as every other Predator story, which is amazing.

[Series Minded: Predator edition]

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When I was a young lad, I thought Pee-Wee Herman was real. Like, maybe he didn't always look like that, in that suit, with the hair slicked back, but to me I had no awareness there was anyone underneath. Pee-Wee was a character actor like, say Ernest or Hulk Hogan or Mr. T, who only seemed to star as himself in movies and TV shows about himself as the character.  I didn't know Paul Ruebens from a hole in the ground until he was arrested at a porn theatre in 1991, and suddenly the magic was dispelled.  I mean, I was 15 at the time, and I knew Santa wasn't real, but this was the first true realization that Pee-Wee was a character played by someone not named Pee-Wee Herman.

We lost Paul Ruebens to cancer in the summer of 2023. He was 70 years old. In the year prior to his death, he agreed to participate in a documentary about himself, shedding off the layers upon layers of privacy he'd long, long held and opening himself up to examination and scrutiny in a way that seemed to frighten him previously.

We learn about Ruebens' early days, his family, his dalliances with theatre and art school in his teens, and we learn about his coming out story, which led to his re-closeting story once he started achieving success. He had a true love-at-first-sight relationship post-College, and he had formed a true bond with this man, as they shacked up and got a cat, Ruebens found himself content.  But that contentedness presented a crossroads: either live the life of love, or live the life of ambition. He chose the latter, broke his lover's heart and his own, and set out for L.A. where he joined up with the Groundlings comedy troupe. From there characters, including Pee-Wee were built, but there was something about Pee-Wee that demanded more attention, both from Ruebens and the audience.

Ruebens was committed as a performer. He invested himself in whatever it was he was doing. He knew how to steal scenes with looks and physicality more than words (but as we see in the documentary, he does have a razor-sharp comedy mind to accompany the sly-little-devil twinkle in his eye). As Pee-Wee became a bigger and bigger thing from stage to screen to Saturday morning subversive idol to children and college kids, Ruebens sheltered himself to the point that he barely existed outside of the character he played. His ambitions got the better of him, relationships with friends and colleagues fractured, and then the arrest.

A children's show host being arrested for something indecent coming out of America's puritanical 80's (where sex was evil, but violence and greed were good for all) was the death knell for Pee-Wee and Ruebens spiralled. 

The first half of this two-part documentary (each part 100 minutes long) follows Rueben's life through all these elements, with friends and ex-colleagues all talking about how amazing it was to be part of it all but also speaking truth to who Ruebens was at the time, as Ruebens himself struggles on camera to fully lay it out and cede control of his narrative to his director.

The second half is all about the fall of Pee-Wee Herman, and then his revival, and his third act, and all the messiness in between. The first half is a real rise-to-fame story, but without revealing in the triumph, since there were sacrifices along the way that have manifested as, if not regrets, then at least remorse. The second half is very much a rollercoaster, as Ruebens tries to find his footing as Paul Ruebens and it's full of ebbs and flows that must have been really tumultuous and stressful to live through, particularly the very public reaction and hurtful things said about him. Rueben's relationship with his sexuality is an integral part to the story, and probably a lot of what Ruebens wanted to get off his chest about in the documentary. 

There's a lot of great things about this documentary, first and foremost is Ruebens himself. Even at 68/69 years old, secretly dealing with cancer, he looked fantastic and vital with a precociousness about him that was so alluring to watch. His combative nature with director Matt Wolf is the B-story to the documentary, where clearly Wolf was constantly having to fend off Rueben's stabs at taking control of the project.  Rueben's jabs at the director start out quite playful and take on a bit more menace the closer they get to the more troublesome years. 

The talking heads are all fascinating, most coming from such a place of love, but a few coming from a point of pain, of regret or remorse around their falling out with Reubens (and there were a few). The sheer volume of personal films and tapes that Ruebens had around his life makes this documentary sing with not just the narrative but visual proof of that narrative, and transporting the audience into the past.  

There have been a slew of documentaries about celebrities of the 70's, 80's and 90's of late, most of them produced by the celebrities (or their family/estate) leading to pretty whitewashed looks at their lives, celebrating more their glories than their humanity. This is very much the opposite, really getting in touch with the person who hid behind a character for so long that he had a hard time finding his way out again. It should be a compelling watch if you ever had any affinity for Ruebens at all. 

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I wrote a bit about Steven Soderbergh's prolific output in my Black Bag review (Toasty just published his, we agree!), so I won't rehash it here, except to say that the man put out two films in the first quarter of this year. That's insane. Even more insane is that Black Bag was a critical hit but fared poorly at the box office while Presence was pretty much ignored by everyone, but its low budget meant that it would up being a modest success.

Where Black Bag was a real adult sexy thriller starring big stars, Presence is an experiment in filmmaking with a story.  While the story's unfolding nature of discovery does lead the audience through the proceedings rather well, it's unable to escape the techniques Soderbergh employs that are simultaneously distracting and effective.

The whole film takes place inside a gorgeously refurbished 19th century home which had Lady Kent and I both salivating. It's a dream home, to be sure. The film opens with the Payne family looking at the property, and then moving in. Rebekah (Lucy Liu) is the driving force of the family, clearly successful, but there are hints that her success hasn't always been above board. She is obsessed with the wellbeing of her superstar swimmer son,  Tyler (Eddie Maday) while all but ignoring the well-being of her daughter, Chloe (Callina Lang), much to husband Chris's (Chris Sullivan) constant displeasure. Chloe has recently lost two friends two overdoses, and she's spinning out. Chris does what he can to engage, but it seems like Rebekah and Tyler just ride her and push her too hard. Tyler introduces her to his new friend Ryan, and soon Ryan and Chloe are hooking up. He seems like a good guy, and lets Chloe take the lead in their relationship, but there's also an air of menace about him. He's up to something, and it's not what you think, but the film wants you to think it.

The entire production is told from a sort of floating first-person perspective, which, it's slowly revealed, is the "Presence" of the title. Yes, it is a ghost story. It's not a horror movie, but just a drama in which a ghost is our eyes into the play. At times the spirit, who Chloe believes is her dead friend, seems to be  trying to interfere in what's happening, mostly unsuccessfully, but events that elicit a particularly strong emotion from the spirit allow it to interact with its environment.

It's a bit of a trifle of a film. It exists solely for Soderbergh to play with this first-person perspective storytelling, which doesn't have a lot of true success stories in the film world outside of Nickel Boys which earned an Oscar nomination at this year's Academy Award.  But presence is more in the "just trying something here" vein of Hardcore Henry or Gaspar Noe's Enter The Void and is about as successful as either of them. When the whole story is in service of a stylistic experiment, there's a layer that gets in the way of the audience engaging with the story fully.  

As well, the third act climax felt...very Hollywood. This took a family drama with a hint of supernatural intensity and turned it into a studio movie with a legit villain. I didn't really expect too much from Presence and it doesn't ask much either. It's fine for what it is. 

Rewatch: Inglorious Basterds

2009, Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill) -- Netflix

Kent wrote about it in his mega-QT rewatch. 

I was compelled to rewatch the movie after we (Marmy and me, not Kent and me) semi-binged the British show SAS Rogue Heroes on Amazon. The show is about the formation and deployment of the British 1st Special Air Services (SAS), first in Africa, and then in Italy. The 1st SAS, according to the show, were an infamous group of commandoes tasked with, at first, the destruction of German air bases and equipment, and later as a raiding force ahead of the main forces in Europe. The shows depicts them as reckless, insubordinate and... mad as hatters. It was their distain for authority and normal British warfare style that made them so effective, so much so that Hitler himself learned of them and demanded the Geneva Conventions not apply to them -- they were to be executed on sight, surrender or not.

The "Inglorious Basterds" of the Tarantino movie were an American commando squad made up of Jewish soldiers, and a few German traitors, who were also dropped behind enemy lines to sow chaos and terror among the German forces. Except, and I recall this being a disappointment to me during my first watch, the movie is not really about the actions they perform to gain that reputation. Its about a singular rewrite of history that ends the war, and gets most of them killed.

Tarantino movies are all about conversations, usually across tables, usually about people not fond of each other. There is always at least one scene where someone monologues, in a self-satisfactorily manner, to other people. In my early Tarantino-fan days, it was exactly this that made me love his movies. Dialogue! Words! People with some thoughts between their ears! And the joy of the actor getting into the scene. Col Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, Spectre) was a horrible person, utterly reprehensible, but this movie put Waltz on the map for English audiences. He was a "joy" to listen to.

But I would almost say that too much of this movie is about these conversations. Maybe my tastes have changed, but I did get the repeat of disappointment that the actual Basterds played such a small part in the movie, and some die far too early before we get to have fun with them. Its almost unfair to them, as long as you ignore that their final mission ends the war and burns down much of the evil with it.

I find myself struggling, almost on the side of being entirely unsatisfied with the movie. I fear my tastes have become more pedestrian, but I am not sure I liked the overall. The individual parts of the movie, the dialogues and the other conversational set pieces are brilliant unto themselves, but the whole is... lacking. The movie is all about the ending, the re-writing of history, a fictional final conflagration that takes down Hitler and all his key leadership, with glorious ultra-violence. The build-up almost seems... incidental. I find much of the movie, and this seems harsh coming from my brain, wasteful and indulgent.

For example, the French basement pub scene. Its a wonderful scene of taught worry and subterfuge. Even when the British spies are caught, there is a lovely tension of, "will they, won't they...." and we wonder who will come out of it all. Well, nobody does. Sure, Bridget von Hammersmark (Dianne Kruger, The Bridge) crawls away with a single leg wound, but then she later dies ignobly at the hands of Landa. And yet the plans, seemingly going awry, carry off as intended. All of Lt Aldo Raine's (Brad Pitt, Fury) men die sacrificial deaths, but he gets away, with Landa, purely so he can disfigure Landa, participating very little in the final acts of the operation. And I am left being not sure why, on many levels.

At a first-experience, a viewing in the cinema, it was a well-executed, beautifully shot, well-spoken Tarantino example. But it didn't hold up to rewatch scrutiny.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Boy Kills World

2023, Mortiz Mohr (feature debut) -- Netflix

Also known as "Bill Kills: Vol 1".

I had this movie downloaded as soon as it became available but then I saw it was coming to Netflix, so I waited. Not sure why I felt the need to share that with you, but why begin editing random thoughts now...

I wanted to know more about the director and the making of this movie, which is is more than a decade since his last IMDB credit, and his first actual feature film. Sure, the Sam Raimi producer credit tells a short story that he impressed someone and after that, a lot more piled on, but other than a pitch short and some cinematics, what has this guy been doing?

Also because of the 10 minutes of research, all I can say is that I am not entirely convinced some of the "critics" actually watched the movie before they wrote their pieces. Do critics assign other people to watch movies and then write a review from the notes of the assignee?

Anywayz, it was a blast, as I knew it would be. Its a weird, wacky, funny, gorey, action-filled revenge flick kinda-sorta-maybe post-apocalypse (I couldn't tell if the towers were ruined and covered in overgrowth, or the society has perfected growing gardens on office towers) with some very VERY impressive fight choreography. Also, appears Bill was using this movie to kick off the uber-ripped bod he wears in The Crow.

The City is ruled by the Van Der Koy family and once a year they show the people of the city that they are the bosses by selecting 12 random "dissidents" and killing them live on TV -- The Culling. Boy's (Bill Skarsgård, It) family, including his younger sister whom he loves dearly, are killed beside him but somehow he survives and is left for dead, only to be found by Shaman (Yayan Ruhian, John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum), a martial arts kook hiding in the jungle outside the city. 

In classic rep theatre Hong Kong revenge flick style, Shaman raises Boy to be a killing machine, through a mix of abuse and martial arts training and a little bit of hallucinogenics. Also, Boy is deaf & mute but has an inner monologue that we can hear, a voice (H Jon Benjamin, Bob's Burgers) from his favourite arcade game, you know that voice, the one that shouts "FIGHT!" in all the fighter games, but with much more to say and not always the most reliable narrator. The communication is expertly paired with Boy's looks, nods, facial expressions, etc. Its a delightfully fun gimmick even when its annoying.

The idea is that Now Well Trained Boy will break into the Van Der Koy compound during the latest airing of The Culling and kill them in front of the people of The City. His whole focus is to kill their matriarch Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen, Taken). But while we are seeing Boy's progress towards getting in, we are also seeing a bit of the chaos behind the family. Hilda's sister Melanie (Michelle Dockery, Downton Abbey) is actually running things via her media empire, as Hilda hasn't been seen in a while -- gone a wee bit bonkers, hiding out in her bunker. Hilda's brother Gideon (Brett Gelman, Stranger Things) is just a fop convinced he is writing screenplays/scripts for the farce that is their reign. He writes the words that Melanie's "pretty face" husband Glen (Sharlto Copley, Hardcore Henry; really? he's the 'pretty face' ???) uses to lull the masses -- but Glen's a bit of a fool, a distraction who causes as much trouble as he prevents. Boy's coming for them all.

After accidentally killing Glen, just as he agrees to help them, "You know what, I hate them, they treat me badly, yes YES I will help you... GLUK!" <head squished by a table vice>  Boy ends up teaming with The Resistance, which is made up entirely of Basho and Benny. One of the best bits, which reminds us that Boy is deaf and must be hearing everyone via lip reading, is that Boy cannot understand a word Benny is saying. He is either mumbling terribly through his thick beard or speaking a language Boy doesn't understand. Either way, all "we" hear is a string of nonsense words strung together which Boy cannot exactly communicate he doesn't understand. So, plan Not Understood One Bit but they are off to the Van Der Koy compound!

Oh, I should mention, Boy's little sister has now joined him. His dead little sister who is quite dead, and Boy knows she is dead for she is still the age she was when she was shot down by The Culling, but she can talk to him and he can "talk" back, i.e. have conversations with her via the Voice in his Head. I know, its silly and derivative but I love it, especially when Boy simultaneous acknowledges she cannot be real while diving in front of bullets to "save" her.

Often when writing these posts, I hit this far, sometimes two-thirds, sometimes half, and I wonder can i, should i, continue with the play by play. But I run out of steam...

There are two more battles to be had, the one going in, the one getting out. Getting in is realizing the plan Basho & Benny devised, which Boy apparently enacts without understanding a single word of it ("Dodo buns for turtle bird.") which leads him to a confrontation on the set of the current Culling, a colourful winter themed commercial for a breakfast cereal where box characters kill the "contestants". Boy, Basho and Benny intercede, stopping the event live, as he always planned. Boy kills and kills and kills his way to the elevator down to the bunker where Hilda is.

Now, at this point I should mention that as the movie played along, we constantly were given visions from Boy, fever dreams of his near-death at the hands of the Van Der Koys, his brutal training by Shaman, the deaths of his family. But as the movie progresses we see details change. We see that it was Shaman who deafened him and cut his tongue out. We begin to get the idea that Shaman was not as heroic-revenge-nobility driven as we thought.

Also, there has been an incidental Van Der Koy character, an enforcer named June27 (we know that because the subtitles I had on told me so; Jessica Rothe, Happy Death Day), a lithe gunfu warrior wearing a motorcycle helmet with a display screen where the visor would be, which always has her inner monologue running on it. Its a cute gimmick, but really, its just there so that Boy can be communicated with, as he wouldn't be reading any lips behind a helmet.

I give these two points because of The Reveal. Once we have reached The Bunker, where Boy has no real chance to defeat all the guns & thugs of Hilda we learn the true SPOILERIFIC truth behind it all. Boy's family was never murdered by the Van Der Koys, Shaman never rescued him. The truth is revealed by a single painting of the Van Der Koy family, which includes a young Boy. On a Culling day, it was Shaman's family who was killed, somewhat at the hands of Boy himself. But Shaman survived and stole Boy away, and the torture slash training slash hallucinogenics was all an indoctrination plan so Boy could be sent back to destroy his own family. Hilda tries to welcome Boy, her son, back but... yeah, Boy is torn. He knows the truth but he also knows his own family are horrible monsters. "Kill them all!" Mad Hilda screams when she sees Boy is lost to her.

Buuut that then reveals as I was saying all along -- June27 is Mina, Boy's sister. It was not a ghost running around in a ballerina outfit, talking to Boy; she was really nothing more than a deluded, broken mind trying to provide Boy comfort and direction. Once June27 realizes her mother would kill her son returned, she turns on them. Together they take down Shaman and fight their way out.

One last twisty, turning, gunfu battle scene as they kill the remaining guards to escape the bunker, after having killed Hilda and Shaman. The two get out and return to their Happy Place -- a retro video game arcade where we finally meet the game that gives Boy his voice.

This is a movie that depends on you enjoying a certain number of tropes and genre gimmicks. Unlike something ultra-violent but still accessible, like John Wick, one could admire this movie for its audacity and lunacy, but to truly enjoy it, as I did, I would suspect you have to enjoy most of the elements and style choices. But maybe, even if you didn't, you could engage with the art took to make this movie so surprisingly coherent. A creator had a vision, an intent and it was thoroughly seen through, like Boy's journey to destroy the totalitarian rulers of his City.

KWIF: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (+2)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film, in other words (or the same words, just more of them) these are the films Kent watched this week. 

This Week:

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024, d. Gil Kenan - Crave)

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024, d. Guy Ritchie - AmazonPrime)

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014,d. Mark Hartley - Tubi)

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I *really* wasn't expecting much out of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire following its nostalgia-soaked-to-a-fault (let's call it "nostalgia-slimed") predecessor Afterlife. That film was cringe-inducing and I did not like it, and I vehemently did not want a repeat experience.

Frozen Empire did modestly well at the box office, repeating a pattern for all Ghostbusters films since the original. There is a brand name there, but it doesn't have the same cache as a Spider-man or James Bond. There's a loyal, devoted, multicultural, omnisex fans out there who are just eager to have more Ghostbusters in their lives, but they're a niche group (who aren't the same group as the toxic manbabies who shouted down everything 2016 Ghostbusters (aka Answer the Call) and threatened to kill the property in the process). Bigger than, say, the Avatar fanbase, but smaller than the Stars Trek or Wars die-hards, they're not enough of an entity to keep the Ghostbusters brand alive and active in the public consciousness between films, even when we've had the shortest gap between Afterlife and Frozen Empire in 30 years of ghost busting.

Something like Star Trek and Star Wars has a strong enough fanbase and large enough franchise universe to build entire major streaming services around. Ghostbusters isn't that. It needs to entice the public in, seemingly each and every time. As much of a nerd for nerdy things as I can be, I'm one of those people who needs to be enticed. With a promising teaser trailer, Frozen Empire piqued my interest, but then the subsequent trailer had me wary of it just being more nostalgia-slime, and the middling reviews at time of release seem conflicted on whether the film was or wasn't caked in it.

Having waited for it to go streaming on a service I already pay for, I was quite happy to find this second entry in this new Ghostbusters era had moved past non-stop, nonsensical nods to it's 1984 originating film, and instead embraced and incorporated the characters into its narrative in a much more organic way. Mostly.

The Spengler family, consisting of mom Callie (Carrie Coon) and siblings Phoebe (McKenna Grace) and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) have moved from buttfuck nowhere to New York City as practicing Ghostbusters, living and operating out of the classic firehouse and taking charge of the classic Hearse, Ecto-1. Their ranks now include Callie's boyfriend Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) who's still sussing out his place as part of the family. The firehouse is owned by rich industrialist and former 'buster Winston Zeddmore (Ernie Hudson) who also is the bankroll behind the Ghostbusters, now a bigger organization with more scientists and researchers.

The mayor of New York City is former EPA agent Walter Peck (William Atherton), who still has a bee in his bonnet about the 'busters. The thing is, here, as in 1984, he's not entirely wrong to be concerned, but his resistance to understanding the greater threat is what makes him such a dick(less). But after a particularly problematic ghost trapping, Pheobe is sidelined because she is a minor. As she's left to her own devices, she encounters a cool, fiery phantasm and the two become friends...and potentially more than.

The second problem hits when the containment unit at the firehouse starts, seemingly, bursting at its seams. Winston has a solution, but the introduction of a mysterious artifact, and ancient lore about a powerful force via the curio shoppe owned by Ray Stanz (Dan Akroyd) winds up setting off a chain of events that could spell utter doom for NYC (and the world).

What works so incredibly well during the first two acts of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is the sense of lived-in reality. Where each prior Ghostbusters film felt like it had to reset or start from scratch (by the time Ghostbusters II came out 5 years later, the team were already written off as relics and cooks and has-beens) this one comes out the gates with the Ghostbusters being a routine presence on the streets of New York. Maybe not the most welcome presence, but the calls were coming in pretty steadily from people who just didn't know what to do with strange things in their neighbourhood.

The film feels quite comfortable with its newer cast, as well as its older cast. Akroyd, Hudson and Atherton all feel organically placed in the narrative. Even when Annie Potts' Janine Melnitz seems to keep popping up out of nowhere, she still feels like she belongs. Bill Murray's appearances as Peter Venkman, though, feel like contractual obligation. There's no sense of purpose to Venkman in this story, and the quips are...kinda lazy this time around.

The cast is rounded out with three great comedic presences in Kumail Nanjiani, James Acaster and Patton Oswalt --all having their own essential role to play in the story of the film-- but two returning characters from Afterlife -- Podcast (Logan Kim) and Lucky (Celeste O'Connor) -- are unnecessarily shoehorned in, but GilKenan and Jason Reitman's script does find clever ways to make their move to New York make sense (as long as you don't think too hard about it).

For all the easy-going nature of the first two acts, and reintroducing the New York City of the original Ghostbusters in such a seemingly effortless and welcoming fashion, and even building a pretty compelling mystery leading to the big bad of the third act and the titular "frozen empire", once the third act launches, it all starts coming unglued. The film starts rushing through all the different character arcs it had set up, tieing them together often in forced ways and resolving many of them with a tossed off line of dialogue. The action of the piece results in a nonsense flash freezing of New York that should have killed tens of thousands but seemingly has had no lasting effect beyond some ashphalt damage and iced coffees.  

The problem with the final act is it goes too big. Every Ghostbusters goes big with a threat that only the power of proton packs can resolve, but this seems a little insurmountable beyond deus ex machina. This film even has the dreaded laserblast into the sky that was all the rage in the 2010s.  It needn't have been this visually catastrophic. It doesn't take much to fuck up a New Yorker's day. Even a summer hailstorm, as opposed to ice spikes violently shooting up from the ground (yet somehow impaling no one), would be as effective a device (just look at what happened in Calgary on August 5).

It also does that thing where a character who is otherwise inept at everything levels up so monumentally in literal minutes that it snaps the long thread of disbelief we give these productions.

With many reservations, though, the film is generally a winner. It's charming, and comfortable, and entertaining. It embraces its past in a participatory way rather than winks at the audience. Still doesn't know what to do with Slimer though. And it's still trying to make those Stay Puft minions a thing.

[ToastyPost - we agree-ish]

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A few weeks back some right wing nutjob (doesn't even matter who), an actual elected official in America (because some people just want to watch the world burn) was delivering a speech on how America entered the second world war to fight communists.

I shouldn't have to explain this, but the threat in World War II was Nazis, not communists. The communists, in fact, were allies. This shouldn't have to be explained, but in the "right wing" (so poorly named, given how they're almost always wrong) they taken to embracing Nazis (particularly the "nationalist" part, not so much the "socialist" part) as part of their voter base and ideology, and are trying to rewrite history to edit out Nazis being the worst-of-the-worst bad guys of the past 100 years (out of a whole pile of contenders).

So in times like these, with people being so unclear about who exactly we were fighting in a major war of not so distant past, it's good to have a film like this that reminds us, in no uncertain terms, that the only good Nazi is a dead one.

The plot of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, loosely based on real people and events (at least the end credits have pictures of some of the real people whose names are the same as those of characters in this film) find Britain in dire straits as the Nazi uboats in the Atlantic have been throttling their supplies from western shores (they only mention those American dilly-dallyers, as if Canada were a non-entity, and not already across the pond and in the fight... but I digress).  With the threat increasing and the military might growing, the only hope is to target the uboat manufacturing and supply depot of a Spanish controlled island in West Africa. Unable to mount any sort of direct campaign, they instead rely upon a small crew of ...ungentlemen... devoted soldiers whose "by any means necessary" tactics make them too much for regular service, but necessary for this off-the-books job.

It's a handsome people parade as Henry Cavill, Henry Golding, Alan Ritchson, Alex Pettyfer, Babs Olusanmoku and Eiza Gonzalez strategize and mount their assault against an unsuspecting enemy.

These are ruthless men who seem to relish in their task of killing and destruction, and are both efficient and effective. It almost makes them hard to root for...except for the fact that they're killing Nazis, so we root like each kill is a point-winning spike of the volleyball at the Olympics.

The film barely puts our protagonists in any peril. At any point, when it seems perilous, every person seems to have an out already at hand. It flies in the face of conventional action movie narrative, but it's oh-so-essential when the point is to remind us that the Nazis are the bad guys and we just want to see them dead.  The bloodlust is downright vampiric. 

It is undramatic, but cathartic. And so handsome.  

[ToastyPost - we agree]

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In the past decade or so it seems like the reputation of Cannon Group's films has become rather...elevated, certainly far beyond their rep at the time they were releasing films throughout the 1980s.

I think this 2014 documentary, Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films was the inflection point, the catalyst reminding a middle-aged audience of a whole pantheon of weird, wild, raunchy, violent, and largely substandard film that, as teenagers (mainly teenage boys) were giving them everything they could want.

The documentary is the story of Israeli producers and brotherly cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. It paints them as lovably difficult scamps who forcefully injected themselves into cinema, first in Israel and then in America, through sheer determination, salemanship, and an ethos of fast-and-cheap but giving people what they want. Oh, and promises unkept and lies told along the way.

The doc is reverential towards Golan and Globus and their films...or at least the content of their films that made them a success story to start with. The documentary for the first hour is 1/2 talking heads and 1/2 clips of the nudity and sex scenes from the various Golan-Globus films. That extensive stretch of boobs, boobs, boobs is just as gratuitous (probably moreso) than any of the actual films. And to cut to the actresses in some of these films, some who are proud, but many who felt exploited or even abused, and then to intercut their description of their abuses with the scenes that resulted from said abuse seems utterly distasteful and disrespectul on the part of the director and producers (that Brett Ratner is a producer on this is not surprising).

The second hour shows the shift that Golan and Globus made when they came to America. Sex sold, but violence sold even better. So the clips in the second half are much more surrounding the violent side of Cannon's productions. Then many many explosions and bloody body parts being severed.

When I think of 1980s hyperviolent cinema, I'm mainly thinking of Cannon productions. Films like Missing in Action, American Ninja, the Death Wish sequels, Cobra... they were all escalating factors in America's appetite for, and consumption of violence.  And so much of it was... unsavory. Very racist and classist and downright ugly. 

That the film basks in the glory of nudity and violence is pretty much its only point being made. It does sort of highlight the rise and fall of the ambitions of Golan-Globus, and that their success came from sex and violence, only hinting that the marriage of the two would become repugnantly disturbing (and has no restraint in showing you what it's talking about).  Golan-Globus' downfall was in sacrificing their fast, cheap, and give-them-what-they-want attitude in favour of seeking prestige by giving notable directors free reign resulting in duds like Godard's King Lear, Mailer's Tough Guys Don't Dance, or Zeffirelli's Otello, or their attempting big-budget blockbusters on a constricted budget ending up with Superman 4: The Quest for Peace, Masters of the Universe, or the Indiana Jones riff Alan Quartermain. But if the doc winds up painting a portrait of Golan-Globus (which it barely, barely does) it's not as flattering as it thinks it is.

At one point a talking head makes a comparison between Golan-Globus and the Weinstein brothers. They basically state that Golan-Globus were trying to do what Miramax ultimately did. Unfortunately this was meant as a compliment. But the comparison is apt, and the sort of boy's club revelry tone that it sets leaves very little in the way of constructive criticism, and any constructive criticism that is laid down is completely undermined by tits and guns.

Is it watchable? Of course it is. But that doesn't mean it's any good. And that's the Cannon way.

  

The Dark Year: Deadpool 2

Because we never have enough projects in this Blog, I am creating one of my own, wherein I indulge my desire to rewatch a movie (because sometimes a rewatch is easier than absorbing a new movie) but also fill in a blank left by the Great Hiatus of 2018. It will be more interesting to me to see what I will be willing to rewatch, than see what I missed writing about.

Technically, this was a rewatch of  "Deadpool 2: Super Duper Cut".

2018, David Leitch (Bullet Train) -- download

To (pseudo) quote Kent, and NTW, "You're exhausting."

Not sure if it was a good idea to watch the extended version as a reminder of the movie and to build a post for what was lost. This one is just a smidgen too much of an untethered Ryan Reynolds, and yes, kind of exhausting. Of the fifteen extra minutes of footage, about 4 minutes are worth the maximum effort put in to produce a "director's cut". And the alternate music chosen is... painful.

Anywayz, still loved it as a whole and for some very specific points, but again, not as much as the first movie. I think the first is pretty much a perfect movie for me.

The movie begins with Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds, Bolt Neck) post Deadpool doing his best, fucked up version of being a superhero -- killing all kinds of bad guys from around the world. This opening is where a lot of the extended footage goes, so Mr. Pool can kill and kill and kill and chop and quip his way through tons of Bad Guys. Someone on the team must have really liked that iconic "smashing through the glass" scene in Ghost in the Shell (both anime movie, and IRL movie) as they pretty much recreate it. And a weird twist is that because the scene is extended, they have to replace the Dolly song with a longer one. Doesn't work.

Anywayz, one of the Bad Guys that Deadie misses killing (still not sure why he runs away from them; he shouldn't have any problem with a bunch of thugs) comes back and, well... the cheese spreader misses, the bullet kills Vanessa (Morena Baccarin, Greenland). Cut to James Bond-ian opening credits featuring Celine Dionne doing her song "Ashes" while the credits react to Vanessa being killed in the same snarky manner as the first movie's credits. Its really, truly effective, but I have to say I still prefer the Jordan Smith version of "Ashes" as it carries more pathos and less diva. I believe that appeared in the yet-another different version of this movie, the Once Upon a Deadpool PG version.

Enter Deadpool trying to kill himself montage (some extra stuff), ending with his apartment filled with barrels of something fiery and KABOOM.

Didn't the explosion kill a lot of people in his apartment building or is the disrepaired state we saw the place, in "Deadpool" implying its an abandoned building he is squatting in? That might be me trying to forgive the fact that he really is truly a sociopath who wouldn't care if he killed dozens in collateral damage.

Enter Colossus (Stefan Kapicic, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare) stuffing his body pieces into a bag and dragging him back to the X-Mansion. This is the aspect of the plot I don't really care about, and yet, is essential to the story that Ryan Reynolds is trying to tell, probably something to do with contrast -- Colossus really wants to redeem Deadpool, have him become a proper "hero". Deadpool resists but eventually, seemingly, submits to the will of Colossus and is allowed on a mission as a "X-Man in Training". He gets a training tshirt.

Don't forget your favourite relationship in the whole franchise -- "Hi Wade!! Hi Yukio!"

Said first mission -- The Home for Wayward Mutants *ahem* "Essex House for Mutant Rehabilitation", basically a place for mutant children to be dumped, and abused by a sociopathic headmaster & staff. Deadpool makes some rough attempts at calming Russell (Julian Dennison, Godzilla vs Kong), the angry fireball-using kid, down but eventually he figgers out what is happening to the kid(s) and kills one of the staff. I think he also gathers that the (run) DMC ("Dept of Mutant Corrections") that showed up have mutation-suppressing technology and that could work on him, allowing him to die. So, bang, one dead pedophile, one disappointed Colossus and the two of them are off to the IceBox.

So, Russell is condemned to a maximum security prison for... lighting a few fires? There's no legal activities, no court, no sentencing, just .... clink, you're in jail ? And he's a minor !!

Also, the IceBox is supposed to be in the North West Territories, so would that make the city this movie takes place in actually Vancouver? Nah, as it appears to be in driving distance of said city, likely the IceBox is in the Rockies and the city is some west-coast California fictional city.

Prison. Deadpool with no powers, and many kinds of cancer just reappearing in his body. You would think they would grow back slowly in his healed body, but whatever, plot. We get lots of usual prison antics, and Russell seems to have taken Deadpool seriously in the opening bit, because he thinks they are friends. Deadie makes sure he knows otherwise, so Russell befriends the monster at the end of the hall -- Juggernaut. They don't say Juggernaut but we all know its Juggernaut. 

Then Cable (Josh Brolin, Old Boy) appears to blow shit up with his electro-splosive gun that Goes to 11. Shit does blow up and the two of them are knocked outside, where Deadpool... almost dies? Anywayz, one loverly vision of Vanessa telling him its not his time yet, and he has to save Russell.

Why doesn't Cable just dust himself off and climb back into the prison to finish the job of killing Russell? Cuz plot.

So, now we get the fun-tage act of the movie where Deadpool decides the best and only way to save Russell is to build a team. Over an undetermined amount of time, but it must have been long, he recruits, interviews and assembles his new team X-Force. He also hires/buys a helicopter and crew? This whole act, including the giant action set-piece that follows, is the most fun the movie has. There are injokes, Marvel references, horrible deaths, micro-cameos and the best character in the entire movie -- Domino (Zazie Beetz, Joker), who's power is luck -- and apparently a substantial lack of empathy cuz the collateral damage she "causes" is scary. But she is the perfect antidote for Deadpool's quippiness with her own droll brand. The action set-piece involving a fight between Cable, Deadpool, with some of Domino's help is this movie's (s)equal to the opening sequence from the first movie, i.e. lots of slowmo and weird/fun angles. It ends with Deadpool literally torn in half by The Juggernaut (Ryan Reynolds, 6 Underground), after he fanboys / breaks 4th wall, out. Domino collects up the pieces.

Or at least one half. What does happen to the "pieces" of Deadpool after he begins healing? Do they quickly decay and melt away or are there parts of him rotting all over the city. Also, and its referenced briefly in-movie, does his head grow a new body or do they just jam the pieces together and watch them reattach? Probably not or we wouldn't get our whole shirt-cocking baby-legs joke segment, but that makes me (him) wonder why everyone still collects up pieces when all they need is a head and whatever is attached.

So, in the last act, Russell has escaped with the help of The Juggernaut. Everyone knows he will go kill the headmaster who abused him. Cable shows up because he wants help. He also monologues the reasons why, and Deadpool convinces him to at least give Russell a chance -- if he Deadpool stops him from killing the headmaster, he stops him from becoming a kill-addicted psychopath in the future that murders Cable's family. Cable is not fully convinced, but....

Its just an OK act, focused equally on the "CGI fist fest" between Colossus and Juggernaut, and Cable & Deadpool killing a bunch of basically unarmed medical attendants -- sure some have shotguns, and they are all labelled "pedophiles" and are guilty by association, but reminder (!!!) sociopath !! Domino is also in the background realizing her whole reason for being in the movie was to end up here, as she was raised in the orphanage. So, she gets to murder some staff as well, while saving kids. 

I am kind of meh about this whole fight, but it is fun to see Colossus just let loose. It all ends with Deadpool finally, truly dying, sacrificing himself for Russell. It does affect him, it DOES stop him from becoming a murder-y fire-fist in the future, and Cable is impressed. So much so that he uses his last bit of time-juice to go back and slightly alter the scene -- Russell is still saved, still doesn't become murder-y, but Deadpool lives.

Happy ever after.

Closing montage of more referential material of Deadpool with a now-fixed timey-wimey device "setting things right" including killing his alternate version from that Wolverine movie, and killing Ryan Reynolds before he plays Green Lantern. Light chuckles. Again, like Kent, by now I am just exhausted. Also, the whole "kill Hitler" scene doesn't make sense especially since the whole point of the movie is that you shouldn't kill people as kids just because they are evil as adults.

Its a fun movie, a LOT of fun. I really do prefer the edited-down version, despite having a historical fondness for "director's cuts". 

Oh, we can't wait for your post about the uber-mega-super-long "Rebel Moon" movies !!! Squeee....

Deadpool and Wolverine

 2024, d. Shawn Levy - in theatre

[warning: light spoilers ahead]

I have come out of every viewing of a Deadpool movie feeling entertained, but also fucking exhausted. "The merc with a mouth" moniker certainly fits Ryan Reynolds' translation of the character from comics to live action, but I don't know why people telling him to shut the fuck up isn't a running gag in this series.

Actually I do know why... because this is Reynold's ego-driven spotlight, and he can't leave 20 second of dead silence without either making a quip or violating someone's privates with a sword, bullet or fist. It's all centered around him being funny.

Deadpool, however, is like The Fonze or Steve Urkel, he's the pop-in comic relief character that isn't really fully fleshed out and then becomes so popular they start to dominate the media they're in, and it lessens their impact or exhausts people's enthusiasm for them altogether. In other words, he's a low-dose character. I've met people who are like Wade Wilson (I'm mean quippy chatterboxes, not violent psychopaths) in real life, and they can be fun to be around, but they also suck all the oxygen out of the room, and you tend to want limit your time with them. Two hours is definitely too much.

There's a reason I don't rewatch Deadpool movies, I get exhausted just thinking about it.

This film is a buddy cop road movie, if the "cop" is replaced with "superheroes" (or, really, ultraviolent anti-heroes) and "road" is replaced with "multiverse". A buddy superhero multiverse movie (speaking of exhausting). Deadpool pairs up with a Wolverine -- "the worst Wolverine" apparently -- in an effort to save his timeline from being pruned by a rogue TVA (Time Variance Authority) agent.  

Truth, it's a lot of comic book gobblety gook that I personally enjoy but I suspect the general public has tired of and ceased caring to invest in. 

The TVA hails from the two-season Loki Disney+ series, but I think the film does a decent enough job of reintroducing it that it's just connective threads but not an essential binding agent. You needn't have watched Loki to get it (but it does help).   

The film introduces the idea of an "anchor character" to each timeline (not too dissimilar to the Spider-verse's  "anchor events" methinks). In Deadpool's reality, it's Wolverine, who died in 2018's Logan. So, metatextually (and Deadpool movies are all over the metatext, which is partly fun and also partly exhausting), with Logan's death, the Fox X-Men universe needs to be pruned from the sacred time, or so deems Mr. Paradox (Succession's Matthew McFadden, doing a lot with very little, and a real highlight), said rogue TVA agent.

So Deadpool travels the multiverse to find a new Wolverine to anchor his world and finds this drunken loser Wolverine who lost his X-Men family because he thought he was too cool for (Xavier's) school (for gifted children). But Paradox isn't going to let the buffoon and the lush just get in his way, and he sends them to the void at the end of time.

There they bicker and argue and run into a plethora of familiar, and almost-familiar faces, good and bad. There's a Mad Max vibe to the void and their version of Immortan Joe, who rules the space from within Ant Man's giant skeleton, is Cassandra Nova (an effective Emma Corrin), Charles Xavier's very evil twin.  Our titular duo barely escape her clutches and have a road adventure in the void where they encounter a variety of individuals who help them on their journey.  While the void seems much more expansive and ecologically diverse than I ever would have anticipated, it provides a pretty classic 80's fantasy adventure local for a fantasy adventure to happen. If only it didn't take 40 minutes to get there, and then, after maybe an hour of infighting and action scenes they're back on Deadpool's world where the stakes get raised again.

The usual schtick of a buddy comedy is the buddys don't like each other to start. They're an odd couple. They have different personalities. Wade Wilson won't shut the fuck up, and Logan doesn't really want to talk. Wilson is sort of a happy-go-lucky kind of guy (except, when the movie starts he's actually quite depressed by his state in life) while Logan is a raging alcoholic (the amount someone with the superpower of regenerative healing would have to drink in order to get drunk boggles the mind, but then Logan does chug a full 26oz bottle of whiskey and doesn't die, so there's that).  Both men are at low points in their lives, but Wade finds the purpose he's been missing, saving the world, and is trying to give that purpose to Logan, a hero who has given up.

The film is riddled with continuity issues, but when the main character of the film isn't taking things seriously, we can't really either. But that is part of my problem with Deadpool, he's not serious, and you can't take him seriously. So when they try to introduce pathos (and Reynolds is actually quite good at delivering pathos) and emotional connection, it just doesn't work for me, primarily because it's overridden by all the jokes about blowjobs and violence to nutsacks. It's the same reason I can't watch Kevin Smith movies anymore, the men have grown up but the humour is still aimed at 12-year-olds. You see a guy get hit in the taint with an adamantium-covered femur once, and yeah, it elicits an "oof", by the 5th time you're pretty numb to the trauma, and by the 10th time you're quite over it.  Yet it keeps going.

The action sequences in this are pretty tedious and lacking artistry. I could watch The Bride take on the Crazy 88s in Kill Bill a hundred times over. I was bored with every fight in this Deadpool movie within 30 seconds of one beginning. When it's Deadpool alone, or Deadpool and Wolverine fighting a bunch of faceless bad guys, there's no stakes and no excitement. These are two guys who pretty much cannot be killed, so there's no investment in them getting injured, and the goons are nobodies, which almost makes it worse the traumas inflicted upon them.  But then there's a few fights between Deadpool and Wolverine and, again, two guys who pretty much cannot be killed, and they're just inflicting pain but with no threat, which is the point, but it's far less potent than the words they could use to hurt one another. The violence is gratuitous, yet unaffecting in its excess. 

My other problem with Deadpool, and particularly Reynold's Deadpool, is that the meta-jokes really, really, really suck me out of the movie. Breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the camera is one thing, making jokes about Hugh Jackman, or Ryan Reynolds, or Blake Lively, or Marvel Studios or 20th Century Fox...yeah, they can be funny, but they destroy the very fabric of immersion into the film, the character, the story, the universe that is set up...at any expense (the film, the character, the story, the universe...we'll get back to that).

This poster gives the most accurate
impression of Deadpool's humour...
it's bumper-sticker comedy

The "universe" in question, is not actually the MCU. While it does nod towards including Deadpool in the MCU, this film is really about the end of the films of 20th Century Fox, and specifically the X-Men films. The speculation of what cameos would appear before the film came out had pretty much every major actor in Hollywood involved (Tom Cruise as Iron Man, for instance, who does not appear in the film) and every Marvel character that ever appeared on screen (or was rumoured to appear) would be involved. That the team here limited themselves to primarily the Fox characters, and even then were pretty judicious in their selection, I actually have to tip my hat to them. This could have been a non-stop cameo-fest (which is what I was bracing for) and it really wasn't. They really tried to not rest just on 'member-berries and make this a fast-paced, entertaining movie with story and character, and succeeded... well, somewhat. 

As a comic book fan, and a fan of comic book movies (yes, even still), I think with 45% less Deadpool I would love this movie (same with the two prior Deadpool movies). As it stands, I enjoyed a lot of it, but I doubt I could watch it again any time soon.  As a swan-song for 20th Century Fox, it's satisfying. Especially if it means this is the end of Deadpool and he's not being incorporated into the MCU (but, given its box-office receipts, that's highly unlikely, at least if he's incorporated into one of the planned upcoming Avengers films, he will be the Urkel he always should have been).

Alt Media: Far Cry 6

2021, Ubisoft

This was a replay, as the last one was. Sometimes I just want to shoot bad guys... 

Unlike all the previous games in this serious, you are not given the choice -- the Bad Guy is a monster and you acknowledge it down to the last second. But, you also have to acknowledge that you also are one. But isn't every main character in video games that has to slay hundreds if not thousands of people?

The island of Yara, Cuba analog but with a Spanish-background dictator ala the Reagan era action movies in tropical places. He is the son of the last dictator deposed in the 60s revolution. A few years before the game takes place, the son Antón Castillo is democratically elected and soon after, his Yara becomes more like the one his father ran: a rift between the Outcasts and the True Yarans, disappearances, conscripted work in the country's tobacco fields, an overreaching military present in all aspects of life, etc, etc, You are Dani Rohas ("fútbol is life") who are initially trying to escape the island but watch Castillo kill everyone onboard the boat, except his own 13 year old son who was trying to escape as well.

Dani is now forced into a role in the revolution. They (you can play either gender) are themselves ex-Castillo military, an antisocial natural killer who was ousted for assaulting an officer. They are the perfect pawn for the leader of the revolution -- Clara Garcia, and her supporter, Juan Cortez, a classic Far Cry sociopath trained by the Americans and sporting a manifesto on how revolutions are to be fought. And a knack for kludge-ing together fantastical weapons. Dani is tasked with meeting and uniting three diverse factions of anti-Castillo forces, because only united under Clara can Yara hope to be free.

The tropes of the franchise are present. Castillo has invented Viviro, a wonder drug, said to all but halt cancer. He intends to sell it to the world, so Yara can enter the First World as a saviour. The drug is "grown" in Yaran tobacco, which is fumigated with a bright red gas that encourages the Viviro to form within the plant. The gas is also a poison and a hallucinogen. Castillo conscripts people to work his fields. 

The islands are covered with military bases and outposts, which you are expected to liberate and bring to the revolutionary cause. They are also littered with poverty stricken villages and the dead his soldiers leave behind as they intimidate, murder and torture indiscriminately. 

As you progress your legend grows, one of skilled and ruthless killing and more than once you are called out for being as much a monster as Castillo. You don't deny it. But you are not heartless, for a number of key points in the story, you are presented with chances to kill Castillo's son, but you don't. He is only a boy, and still has a chance to learn right from wrong, to not become his father, and not become  you. 

Castillo is a classic dictator, convinced he is doing the best thing possible for his country despite racking up countless dead as he strives for "progress". His propaganda machine is everywhere, his speeches constantly play from speakers and radios. His key allies are his psychotic generals, scientists, public security minister, PR manager, and an amoral "yanqui" investor, a Trump analog who happens to be Canadian.

Of course, the game is beautiful. The tropical island, with a number of ecosystems, is lush and vibrant, full of animals (which you can hunt for resources) but it is also decrepit and shows its poverty stricken state. The radio is playing a wide variety of Latino music, from Mexican traditionals, to Cuban rap, to folk songs, Caribbean dance music, to Ricky Martin, Camila Cabello and Pitbull. You can listen here. By mid-way, I was humming along, while my character would actually sing along to the radio.

Unlike previous games, you know there is no point to thinking Castillo might have a point. Oh sure, he might have a cancer wonder drug, but you know these games, you know their misdirection, you know he is playing a shell game, and while it delayed his own cancer, by the end of the, the ravages show on his face. Not even he can lie about his own failures. He leaves only ruin, and death, and thousands of dead bodies at your hands.

Why do I play these? Because I like action movies, I have nostalgic recollections of the simplistic plots of the 80s, and sometimes, after a rough day at work, I just need to shoot someone.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Beekeeper

2024, David Ayer (Suicide Squad) -- download 

The Bee Keeper and the Brick Layer walk into a bar....

This one, typical of the kind of movie I rush to download now, that That Guy of my youth would have sneered at. Despite my comments prior, I did not waste my youth only watching terrible movies. To have found the quality actioner among the dross was a challenge, endlessly reading reviews and the backs of VHS boxes. But as I got older, I tempered, reduced my desire to be challenged all the time. Sometimes, and more often than not now, I just want familiarity, a digestible plot, the same brain chemistry release I get when I play FPS video games. Oh, I want some semblance of capability, as if all I wanted was the concept, there are endless number of Z-grades on Amazon and Tubi. 

Yes, I know I have said that umpteen times but I still catch myself wondering why Toasty Now actually looks forward to movies that Toast Then (aka That Guy) would have sneered at.

David Ayer doesn't have a great track record in my world (actually no, scratch that dude. other than Suicide Squad, you rather like his work), but TBH I didn't even know he did the movie till I clicked Start. What I knew going in was that this was seminal Jason Statham, who is still in his prime Action Hero role for at least a decade, before he gets relegated to my other favourite (one of) genre of Aging Shooter. Here, he is a retired.... agent... of an organization called The Beekeepers, Ayer's version of Vaughn's "The Kingsmen", except there only seems to be one Beekeeper at any one time, a legendarily capable soldier for America, who stands aside from the politics and the laws to always set things right.

Statham is the same age as me, i.e. we are both turning 57 this year. On one hand, he is very very VERY much in better shape for a guy our age, than  I am. On the other hand, he or his purple suit, were very concerned about his "greying" as he has the most obviously dyed beard. People have asked me if I have ever thought about dying my facial hair as my head-hair is still mostly sans grey, but after seeing how blatant his was, and he doesn't even have any head-hair, I am secure being (more) salt & pepper.

Adam Clay (Statham, Parker) is quiet in his retirement as he... well, keeps bees. That is, until Evil Scammers scam the Old Lady (Phylicia Rashad, The Cosby Show) he rents bee space from, stealing from her not only her own money, but the money from the charity she runs. In response, he uses his old Bee Keeper contacts to blow the Evil Scammer callcentre up, which strangely enough, is not in a foreign country, but in midwest US of A, and looks like the set of a 90s hacker movie, replete with tacky clothing and annoying personalities, all the while spitting out an endless litany of bee knowledge. Meanwhile the Old Lady's daughter (Emmy Raver-Lampman, The Umbrella Academy), a member of law enforecement who happens to have been trying to take down these Evil Scammers, follows Clay from blowed-up-place to blowed-up-place. MEANWHILE, the Top Evil Scammer (Josh Hutcherson, The Hunger Games) happens to be a pampered rich boy who uses his pampered rich mom's contacts (Jeremy Irons, Dungeons & Dragons [not that one]) to find out who is blowing up his call centres, leading to a John Wick "oh" moment, when they discover Clay was a Bee Keeper.

For the most part, the movie is an unremarkable, familiar action movie, paced as well as expected, with a slight twist that is more of an eye roll. It introduces an an interesting John Wick-ian organization, but never really does anything with it. So.... pretty much as I expected / sought out?

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): God is a Bullet

2023, Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook) -- download

Interesting. The last movie Cassavetes made before this was The Other Woman also starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau almost ten years ago. Hollywood's an interesting place in that despite having a few bit acting roles in a few movies, there is not much on the books that can account for his absence. What does someone do during a ten year absence? Usually the answer is "live life" but that can encompass a lot. A quick Google of "Nick Cassavetes Hollywood Reporter" shows that he has pretty much been working to get his next thing made at all times, so I guess a lot of that decade was spent having lunch on brightly lit patios with the purple suits.

That this was the product of those ten years, after the middling romcom (I won't say "that he is known for" for he does cover a wide range of styles in his career), is surprising. Its a hell of a slap-in-the-face movie about the most degenerate of America's underbelly.

Bob Hightower (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Game of Thrones) finds his ex-wife and her new husband murdered, horribly, and his 15 year old daughter gone. He is a low-key policeman, not much more than a desk jockey, and his colleagues have very little to go on. That is, until he is approached by Case (an almost unrecognizable Maika Monroe, It Follows), an past victim of the cult that kidnapped his daughter. This ultra-violent group embraces the "left-hand path" of occultism, a mix of Satanism, anti-establishment ideology, anarchy and hedonistic violence. Their leader Cyrus (Karl Glusman, Devs) likes to kidnap teen girls and convert them to his world. Case eventually escaped but she has been haunted ever since, and offers to help Bob get his daughter back.

But first she has to bring Bob into their world. I am not quiet sure why as there is very little of an attempt to infiltrate the group, but she convinces Bob he has to be full-body & face tattooed, like she is. It might be more of right of passage for Bob, to leave his safe little world of "sheep" and enter her world of violence and debauchery. She may have left the cult, but she has been left a product of its indoctrination. Together, the newly tattooed, barely healed Bob follow the cult across the south US hoping to find them and, somehow, get the girl back. Case, and Cassavetes, never really reveal how that will happen, but I am thinking Case is just embracing the chaos and do whatever needs doing, when she and Bob get there.

The movie is upsetting, the world she drags Bob into is upsetting. Bob is a "good Christian" and has trouble reconciling his own world view with all that he sees, and especially with what he has to do, to keep him and Case safe until their goal is reached. We never know if Case is leading him for her own reasons, or to truly help. There is a lot of ideology conversation and accusation about being a "sheep" vs living in the world exactly how you choose, abandoning conventions. In the end, their goal is accomplished by embracing what the cult always did -- ultra-violence. They all have to die.