KWIF: The Marvels (+3)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week Kent has a spotlight movie (or two) which he writes a longer, thinkier piece (or two) about, and then whatever else he watched that week he does a quick little summary of his thoughts. Or that's the plan anyway but sometimes a touch of the flu and an incredibly dense work schedule prevent such things being so timely.

This week:
The Marvels (2023, d. Nia DaCosta - in theatre)
A Haunting In Venice (2023, d. Kenneth Branagh - Disney+)
The Killer (2023, d. David Fincher - Netflix)
The Vanishing on 7th Street (2010, d. Brad Anderson - AmazonPrime)

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The Marvels is both good fun and a great mess.  

There's nothing fun about the meta-narrative around The Marvels and said meta-narrative is nothing but messy.

To get into it... the early word on The Marvels was that it was a troubled production, and extensive reshoots were required, before, ultimately, the director left the edit to the Purple Suits to work on other projects. Now, many, many, many films undergo reshoots for various reasons, but most of these films don't wind up costing nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. We'll get back to the director abandoning the edit.

The last Captain Marvel film, of which this is ostensibly a sequel (alongside being part of the MCU formula as the leappad for the future plans for the overall franchise) made over a billion dollars. This one's tracking to maybe not even make its budget back (but, there is hope), which is unheard of for a Marvel film.  

The release date on the film got shuffled, amidst writers and actors strikes. Promotion for the film was greatly reduced as the actors couldn't get out and support the film, and maybe having writers help with the reshoots and/or edit would have made.

The prior film, being the first female-led Marvel production, featuring a lead actress who is an outspoken champion of feminism during peak Trumpism meant the narrative around the film became pretty toxic.  The toxicity persists but I think with the actors not promoting the film, that narrative was pretty mute as the trolls didn't have a steady stream of youtube clips and red carpet premieres to react to.

And then there's the "current state of the MCU", which has been a narrative since, oh, 2015 or so, but in a post-pandemic perspective has become nothing but negative. 

And that's still not all the baggage this film carries with it. It didn't stand a chance, even if it were a great film.

It's not a great film. 

It does have a lot going for it, including a super-likeable cast of both lead and supporting actors and character, a great sense of fun and adventure, and some delightfully quirky ideas.

It reunites Captain Marvel Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) with her best friend's daughter, Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), whom she last saw as a child in the 90's.  So it's awkward. Monica still calls her "Aunt Carol", even though it's been 30 years, and there's all these abandonment issues.  Monica we saw as a child in the last Captain Marvel, and then again in Wandavision on Disney+. 

They team up with teenager Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), who is a Captain Marvel and the Avengers uber-fan. She couldn't be any more excited. Her family is less enthused. We first met the Khan family on Disney+ Ms. Marvel, where we also learn Kamala's origin story of gaining powers of hard light construction from an interstellar bangle. One of two.

It's the second bangle that's the maguffin of the story, and its activation by the big bad triggers a quantum entanglement that means any time Carol, Monica and Kamala all use their powers at the same time, two of the three wind up switching places in space and time.  This is clearly puzzling to them, to Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson with a lively comedic performance) who was working with Monica when the switching starts, and to Kamala's family, whose home is wrecked as the entanglement brings one of Carol's fights with her.

The dynamics that form between all these characters amidst the chaos of all this switching is the greatest joy of the film. The frustration on display from everyone (except maybe Kamala who just seems to be embracing it all and enjoying the ride) is highly entertaining, and the action sequences are chaotic entertainment.

Carol, Monica, and Kamala then need to seek out the source of their quantum entanglement, while Fury takes care of Kamala's family, bringing them onboard the SABER satellite, along with Carol's alien cat/flerkin, Goose, resulting which is its own adventure.  

Again, the best part of the film is how all these characters interact with each other. So it's unfortunate that the fun comes to a grinding halt every time the main villain, a Kree overlord named Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), is on screen. And she is the first character we meet in this film.  It opens with her finding the matching bangle to Kamala's and she starts opening up jump gates with it which she uses to steal resources from healthy planets to fuel her own dying one.  Her motivations have a loose connection to Carol's past, because it all needs to tie in somehow to resentment and animosity and a big punch up at the end. Yawn.

As I watched The Marvels, and laughed and giggled along with it, I also couldn't help but grumble at how apparent the seams on this film were. The Purple Suits got their hands on it and chopped it up and tried stitching it back together but with no finesse or aptitude for the job.  The reshoot scenes seemed pretty evident as there was some quality issues, and the edits wind up making for some pretty absurd leaps in story logic and internal consistency.

The word was testing of the film did not go well, and the Purple Suits got nervous. I have two guesses. First is that the film clocked in closer to 2 1/2 hours, and the new dictum of the Disney overlords is sub-2hours, and so this thing got put on the chopping block, but also the script was so woven between the the very fun, kind of wild set pieces and the drama of Carol's past deeds, Carol and Monica's familial tension plus putting Kamala's hero worship to the test that it was kind of impossible to separate them without butchering the film. Most of the dramatics seem to be handled in reshoot moments which look poorly greenscreened, hastily written, and quickly resolved.  

My second guess is that Nia DaCosta delivered a very weird adventure that made the Purple Suits nervous, and nervous executives lead to second guessing their chosen storyteller's creative instincts, and so they either drove her away or took it away from her and had their way with their hatchets.

In my mind, The Marvels has a solid foundation but took the wrong approach. In my mind I see a version where we don't meet Dar-Benn until the third act. We instead spend the first act with quantum entaglement shenanigans, the second act with the women searching for answers to their problem and bonding in the process (Monica and Carol dealing with their issues and Kamala both getting over her hero worship but also learning from Carol and Monica) and the third act discovering the source of their issues and how it's tied with both Kamala and Carol's past. But instead of making Dar-Benn an irredeemable bad guy, leading to a big multi-powered punch up, the Marvels freaking solve the problem and Carol attempts to make up for past misdeeds. You know, not following the trite MCU formulae.

In theory one could get away with having only watched Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel and nothing else in order to enjoy the bulk of this film. Mercifully it doesn't touch at all upon Secret Invasion. But where it ends, it's in very MCU fashion, teasing connectivity to the past in a very meta sense, and teasing the future of the MCU.

The Marvels had the MCU's second poorest opening apparently next to The Incredible Hulk, which is a big whiff. But the film already has its champions. Lady Kent came out the screening absolutely loving it and I've been hearing that is not an uncommon reaction. This thing could wind up with a cult life, which seems odd that an MCU product would have to fall into niche/cult category, but that may need to be the future of the MCU. It needs to start trusting its creatives, and embracing uniqueness more. 

It's clear superhero fatigue -- superhero apathy even -- has set in, and I don't think expectations need to be reset. These aren't billion dollar products anymore, and if they want one of these to break out of the pack, it needs to provide something different, not more of the same. The Marvels has glimmers of something different, remnants of big swings taken, but it's been edited and reshot into something that seems so "MCU" in a derogatory way.

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I'll admit, these Kenneth Branagh Poirot films are enjoyable. They came out the gate with an absolutely stacked cast in Murder on the Orient Express that hinted at making a stab at a blockbuster franchise. I think Death on the Nile, however, proved to both Branagh and the studio that if they're going to continue with these that maybe scaling back their expectations and ambitions is going to be necessary if the franchise is going to have a long life.

A Haunting In Venice doesn't feel like a big blockbuster. The stacked cast this time isn't nearly as stacked as the prior two films, with Michelle Yeoh, Tina Fey and Jamie Dornan being the biggest names.  And unlike the prior two films, which featured moving vehicles across exotic locations, this one is a closed-door mystery in a singular exotic locale.  

What breathes life into this film is its straying away from Christie's original Poirot stories and instead crafting a unique tale that more pays homage to "Hallowe'en Party" than adapts it. In not being faithful to the source material, it frees up screenwriter Michael Green to put more of a personal journey for Poirot into the piece. You could sense in Green's script to Death on the Nile that Branagh wanted more of that, but the two couldn't really work it into the adaptation without it feeling a little clumsy.

Here, Poirot starts the film having cut himself off from the world, and, in a way, his own humanity. An old friend asks for his help in debunking a mystic whose ability to chat up ghosts has stymied her. In getting involved Poirot is challenged in his beliefs in facts and evidence, and his trust in his own senses and better judgement.  

Branagh does effectively take you through the picture with no sense of where it might fall on its stance on supernatural phenomenon. Will Poirot come out a believer, or will he completely debunk it? Or will he come out just unsure, and shaken? For a character that supposed to be rock solid in his intuition and observational keenness, it's a remarkably engaging to take him on a ride that shakes that to it core.  It's a film with a murder (or two, or three) to solve, but the tension mostly lies in where it takes Poirot.

[we agree-ish]

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I had intended to follow along with the Blank Check podcast as they reviewed David Fincher's filmography weekly starting with Alien3. I got as far as Fight Club before I hit a blocker with not having Panic Room at hand or readily available on streaming. Had I made it through Fincher's entire filmography, I might have more to say about him as a filmmaker having just seen his new film, The Killer (on Netflix sadly, rather than in theatre).  As it stands, I can only compare the Fincher of The Killer with the Fincher of his earlier works... and you know, I kind of think that really, really works.

The Killer seems of a piece with Se7en, The Game, and Fight Club, but a piece removed... time. The Killer is Fincher approaching his earlier works with a new sensibility. It's based off the French graphic novel series of the same name (by Matz and Luc Jacamon) which makes it Fincher's first comic book movie.  But rather than set up a heightened, or even fantastical reality for the world of The Killer, instead Fincher grounds it in the minutiae and mundanity of realism.  Not reality, realism. Stylish realism.

Michael Fassbender is our focus of the entire film, an experienced hitman who has a particular perspective of the world that the film neither embraces nor denounces, simply presents via Fassbenders calm, collected narration.  There's a kinship with the narration by Ed Norton's "Jack" in Fight Club, except in Fight Club the narration was sermonizing, preaching about the how the world's gone wrong, and how anarchy is the only tool to escape it. Here, Fassbender's killer can only present the world as he sees it, full of structures designed to enforce rules that not everyone has to follow, and notes you can circumvent if you're careful, cautious and dispassionate, but he's neither advising it nor warning against it. He's just figured out something that works for him. 

Fincher's early works had a tautness to them, like a rubber band being stretched over 2-ish hours to their breaking point. They were genre films, of a sort, with an aggressive streak to them that certainly keyed into the impressionable minds of teens and college kids of the era, and created devoted fans (and even a few monsters). The Killer seems to be Fincher saying "how would I make any of those today?"  The answer is with discipline and mastery of his craft. 

The Killer isn't much of a story. The hitman's on a job, it goes wrong, he gets spanked, he spanks back. But Fincher lives with this character, and lives in his mind. We hear the things the killer tells us, but it seems as much as he's telling us, he's telling himself.  He's affirming himself. Fincher delights in the disparity between the narration, and the events on screen, even though they aren't intrinsically comedic. 

This film sits in a moment, where one of the director's earlier works would have had edit after edit across the same span. There's a surprise airiness to The Killer, and rather than build tension continually, Fincher stretches and relaxes the rubber band only in specific moments.  If there's one word that comes to mind that distinguishes Fincher's first era of filmmaking and what may be the start of his third, it's patience.  This is not an action film, it's a meditation in disguise. 

It looks great, it's unexpected, it's dark, and it's pretty enjoyable.

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There was a period of time in the mid-2000s, when Fincher was on hiatus, that it seemed possible that director Brad Anderson could be the new Fincher. Session 8 quickly became a cult horror classic, The Machinist and Transsiberian seemed to find different approaches to conventional storytelling that critics took notice of, even if the films weren't smash successes.  But Fincher-esque name recognition wasn't in the cards for Anderson. 

Anderson found a place on TV, shooting episodes of The Wire, a LOT of episodes of Fringe, and having a very healthy TV career ever since.  I always take notice of his name when it pops up as a credit on a show. You know it's going to be a little different, with starker use of shadows and light. He's continued making films throughout the 2010s and beyond, but nothing has really gained traction. I haven't even heard of most of them. Like The Vanishing on 7th Street. 

It's a post-apocalyptic horror film starring Hayden Christiansen, Thandiwe Newton and John Leguizamo, which, even if it's not very good, you would think would still have some awareness factor based on cast alone. Hell, I must have read Toasty's review from 2011, but no, I have no sense I knew this existed. 

It's a film that plays into Anderson's strength of light and shadows, but given that this is Anderson's strength, I should have been more impressed.  It feels like a TV-budget feature film, with the sense that it was shot rather quickly, and the set-ups were constrained by timelines.  

The setup is, in a blink, nearly everyone disappears, leaving heaps of clothes on the ground. In Detroit, we follow a few survivors as they literally battle the darkness for their lives. Finding refuge in a bar on 7th street where a generator is running, keeping the lights on. We have a selfish TV reporter, a mom in despair, an insular film projectionist, and a pre-teen missing his mom. The darkness is coming for them all.

What fails the film is not really budget or time or ambition, but lack of character. The script is trite, full of cheesy dialogue, the characters yelling in anger and/or frustration for lack of anything else to say or do. The script doesn't know how to explore the situation it sets up, so its full of inconsistencies, and winds up doing the same thing over and over again. By the end it's very clearly set up a hopeless situation, and so its failed attempt at delivering an uplifting finale is a wash. 

Anderson does get a lot of good visual flourishes in. The perpetually moving shadows, including ones in the shape of people that seem to move towards the camera, are very unsettling, but it's a great effect to little effect, if that makes sense. There's poor mythos building for the scenario, with unsatisfying exploration of it, and no explanation of it.  

The biggest crime is giving Thandiwe Newton nothing useful to do. 

[we disagree-ish]

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): A Haunting in Venice

2023, Kenneth Branagh (Belfast) -- Disney

I need another tag -- "fell asleep briefly mid-way through". The Over 50 stage of my life being accentuated by some recent higher levels of stress than normal (seriously? you have had different forms of this most of your/our life...) had me nodding off quicker than expected, once I found myself relaxing and enjoying the movie. No matter, I got it all. 

Do we call this the Poirot Cinematic Universe? Given there were so many books and so many movies & TV series produced from Agatha Christie's books, Branagh could go on and on. But we need to have our first spin-off movie first to officially have a PCU.

It's 1947 and Poirot (Kenneth Branagh, Dunkirk) has retired from figuring out other people's shit. He lives in Venice and is learning to have things not quite perfectly. And he needs a bodyguard to keep the constant throng of clients that line up outside his door like he's a star on a Hollywood tour. But then his American friend Ariadne (Tina Fey, Only Murders in the Building) shows up to convince him to help her debunk a medium (Michelle Yeoh, Star Trek: Discovery) being used by an opera singer (Kelly Reilley, Sherlock Holmes) to contact her deceased daughter. Ariadne is all kinds of self-serving (wait, see note above about PCU -- is she the first spin-off contender?), and is really only doing this to have Poirot not debunk the charlatan, giving her tons of source material for a new book. He last few books didn't do so well. But there is also a modicum of true friendship, as she knows Poirot needs to get out of palazzo and live some life, instead of just hiding away.

The seance happens on imported American Halloween. The night begins with the opera singer inviting a gaggle of kids into her "haunted house" to have a fun night, before she focuses on the seance. To be clear, the house was haunted before her daughter died, and there are rumours her daughter was influenced by the ghosts in the house to kill herself. Poirot is charmed by the children's frivolity but annoyed by the rest of the setup.

The seance goes as expected, and almost immediately Poirot finds the medium's co-conspirators and their toys of ghost making. The medium doubles down and spins her chair around, shouting in ghosty voices. Not long after she is killed, and Poirot is hooked. He locks all the doors, as he knows someone in the house did it. And thus begins a long night of investigating and suspicion.

The (living) children have long since departed the house, and a massive storm is raging outside, raising the water levels in Venice, threatening the house. And weird spooky shit is happening to everyone in the house, including Poirot himself. He is seeing things, hearing things. Everyone is at everyone else's throats and tensions are high. An attempt is made on Poirot's own life. There are calls from disconnected phone lines. The basement rings with loud booming sounds. Poirot is acting a little ... off.

But, of course, he seemingly pulls it all out of thin air by morning. Its not really the reveal of the mystery that is fun in these stories/movies but the winding path they take to get there, and how every seemingly disparate thread actually ties into the reveal. I didn't find this one as vibrant in its performances as the others, and to be honest, that was all marred by the desire to be "spooky". What we enjoy about Poirot is him being brilliant, not questioning his ability as he is impaired by outside influences. But still, Branagh did it brilliantly as expected.

Whodidit? Go watch it.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): A Man Called Otto

2022, Marc Forster (World War Z) -- download

Sometimes you just need a good cry.

This is the American adaptation of a Swedish movie (A Man Called Ove) from the Swedish book of the same man. It concerns a startlingly cranky, recent widower who is set in his ways and constantly at odds with his neighbours and anyone who comes to his rowhouse neighbourhood. His wife Sonya passed recently from cancer and she was his world, thus he has decided to kill himself. But first, cancel power and phone, and make sure everything is neat & tidy for whomever finds him. Alas, he keeps on getting interrupted.

I am that startingly cranky guy, minus the widowing. Alas, I am a bit more reserved about telling people to their faces about how much of an idiot they are. I leave that to social media complaining. Otto (O-T-T-O; Tom Hanks, Castaway) does not; he let's everyone know, right away. Nobody likes him; very few tolerate him. And then Marisol & Tommy move into the house across the lane, along with their two rambunctious kids. Marisol (Mariana Treviño, 100 días para enamorarnos) is very pregnant, very effusive and honest in her interactions with Otto. Tommy (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, The Lincoln Lawyer) is an IT Consultant, thus an utter nitwit. The kids are cute, instantly labelling Otto as Abuelo Luchador. 

Through his repeated and failed attempts to kill himself, we are introduced to Sonya through desperately lovely recollections on how they met, fell in love and got married. Otto was a nitwit; she helped him be something more. These scenes are lovely but sad, revealing that Sonya was eventually injured and confined to a wheelchair, after having lost their son in a bus accident. But again lovely, as you know she lived a full life with Otto having been a loved English teacher. Think of the opening sequence of Up and how it makes you feel. A good cry.

Kent recently introduced me to the Patrick H Willems film study YouTube channel. In that post he talks about who / what is killing cinema, and one of the culprits is the lack of Hollywood Stars of late, and through them a certain kind of Hollywood movie. In the past, everyone would have rushed to see this movie, because it starred Tom Hanks. Willems laments the loss of this very type of movie, the mid-level comedy drama (not just this but the level of this movie) that very few of are made, and released to the cinema. This one was a Christmas release, with moderate success and moderate critical favour. But I agree with Willems that more movies like this need to be made, so we can just have more mild flavoured movies to feel sad and happy and just smile about. In days past, this would have been the movie my parents agreed to see together, and they would have liked it, and my dad would never have admitted to crying freely during the movie. I would have teased him.

This was the reason I chose to watch this movie, and was rather surprised by my own emotional reaction to the movie. It kind of poked at a dam of emotions being held back by my own constant level of crankiness and sadness. Sometimes we just need a good cry.

1-1-1: K.E.T.C.H.U.P.

Kent's Erratic TV Critiquing Has Unveiled a Problem.
He just can't catch up.

This time:

Big Mouth Season 7 - Netflix [10 Episodes]

What We Do In The Shadows Season 5 - FX [10 Episodes]

How To With John Wilson Season 3 - HBO [6 Episodes]

Only Murders in the Building Season 3 - Disney+ [10 Episodes]

The Bear Season 2 - Disney+ [10 Episodes]

The Afterparty Season 2 - Apple [10 Episodes] 

Loki Season 2 - Disney+ [6 Episodes]

Our Flag Means Death Season 2 - HBO [8 Episodes]

Shoresy Season2 - Crave [6 Episodes]

Light & Magic - Disney+ [6 Episodes]

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Big Mouth Season 7 - Netflix [10 Episodes]

The What 100:  The Big Mouth kids are about to graduate from grade 8 and go to high school... except maybe Jay, who's too preoccupied with Lola dating his brother. Coach Steve suffers separation anxiety and teaches summer school. Andrew hurts his nuts and can't do his favourite thing, much to Maury's dismay, but his personality turns around, and he finally receives his father's love. Nick does drugs in New York and is sent to private school. Jesse gets a bully, and becomes part of the in crowd. Matthew has to up his gay-A-game.

1 Great: The hormone monsters never fail to yield big laughs, but it's absolutely Thandiwe Newton's season as Mona, Missy's hormone mistress that leaves the biggest impression...even in a season when Megan Thee Stallion makes a multi-episode appearance.  Newton's commitment and enthusiasm is just next level and delivers every time.

1 Good: I love the show's commitment to diversity, in every form. Sexuality, gender, race, religion, ethnicity, neurodiversity, it doesn't pick any lane, it keeps crossing over. Putting a spotlight episode on on-the-spectrum Caleb, is done with thoughtfulness, sensitivity and humour. You can tell they go to great depths to both get things right and still find humour that is inclusive.  The stab at an international episode finds 3-5 minute vignettes of horny pre-teens around the world and seems pretty authentic, but the very short stories run the risk of painting whole cultures with a single brush.

1 Bad: If the show is starting to lag anywhere, it's actually in its two lead characters. Nicky, Nick Krolls primary character, is, at this point, the most drab character on the show, running through the usual heteronormative dating scenarios and emotions.  With everything else going on around him, his escapades just seem so route one.  John Mulaney's Andrew, meanwhile, is probably the most prominent character on the show, but he's also the most difficult to watch. He is the show's bottom rung, the one place where, in a show that accepts and celebrates peoples sexual desires, and seems to go to great lengths to not kink shame anyone, it can just point and say "not that, though". After 7 seasons of "not that though" one would hope for some growth, but with Andrew, every step forward is a stumble that winds up five steps sideways. 

To be clear, Nick and Andrew aren't really bad, but if I'm to point at my least favourite thing in a show that has, season after season, made me laugh so freaking hard and challenged me with my own hang-ups with limits pushing, it's really these two that don't enthuse me as much anymore.

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What We Do In The Shadows Season 5 - FX [10 Episodes]

The What 100: Much of the season revolves around Guillermo hiding the fact that he got turned from Nandor, for the embarrassment of a familiar being turned by someone other than his vampire master would be so great that the vampire would have to kill both the familiar and himself.  But the vampirism isn't taking like it normally should, so Laszlo conducts experiments to try and science it out. Nadja connects with the local Antipaxos society on Long Island.  Colin Robinson runs for local office, and reconnects with Evie. 

1 Great: I thought putting Harvey Guillen as the center of the season was a brilliant move, as Guillermo was often the straight man in the prior seasons, but he's the most suited to be audience surrogate. Everyone else is just too weird. Guillen more than steps up, he crushes it, bringing his performance to another level without materially changing his character's nature.

1 Good: The visceral shock of Laszlo's experiments gone awry: the Guillermo clones. 

1 Bad: Kristen Schaal is promoted to cast member in the opening credits this season and is barely used at all. Likewise, it seemed like Matt Berry was taking a back seat most of the season.

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How To With John Wilson Season 3 - HBO [6 Episodes]

The What 100:  John learns us how to: find a public restroom, clean our ears, work out, watch "the game", watch birds, and track our packages. It's another brilliant 6 episodes of video collage, surreal visual poetry, and thematic ideas juxtaposed with the serious oddness of reality.

1 Great: John's exploration of how things get from one destination to another takes him from the doorsteps of New York, exposing the massive problem of package theft, to learning how a piano is packed up and shipped, to learning how people are packed up and shipped to the future via cryogenics. It's a wild, upsetting ride. 

1 Good: (but also great) John looks to take up the art of birdwatching, which leads him to explore the idea of surveillance, which sends him down a rabbit hole of what is "truth" in video, exposing his own role in deceiving the audience. This leads him down a couple of conspiracy wells, to spending time with a Titanic conspiracy theorist/ex-cop, and ultimately...attempted murder?

1 Bad: This is the last season of How To... and it makes me very, very sad. This is one of the most unique shows ever made, looking at and venturing out into the world from such a different perspective. It's a show (and a guy) that's both awkward and curious about what's just outside our peripheral vision...what aren't we looking at?  It's not trying to provide answers (it's just a comedy show) but in just raising the questions, exploring it in the way that he does, it's pretty illuminating.  I'm going to miss it, but Wilson is on the radar.

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Only Murders in the Building Season 3 - Disney+ [10 Episodes]

The What 100:  Oliver finally is directing a play again only for his lead, a huge superhero franchise star (played by Paul Rudd) to be murdered, dying on stage. The stress of trying to solve another murder while save his dream is too much and Oliver suffers a heart attack. Charles, meanwhile, has to sing on stage and gets engaged,  the stress of either sends him to the white room. Mabel is about to be evicted from the titular building, and finds with her septuagenarian besties so preoccupied with their lives she's left to running the podcast on her own...only she finds a new partner.

1 Great:  Despite not believing that Oliver is capable of writing a musical on his own, Death Rattle The Musical seems at once utterly inane and absolutely something I would enjoy seeing.  The patter song that Charles has to sing, which features prominently in the season, is pretty damn catchy and earwormy. As well the whole stage/backstage setting is a great place for a murder mystery (and the show connects it back to "the building" in pretty shocking and hilarious fashion. The mystery this season really worked well.

1 Good: I find myself transfixed by Selena Gomez every time she's on screen. I sometimes can't tell if she's acting badly or beautifully, but regardless, whatever it is she does, it's captivating.  She's such a specific performer, and acts and moves in such a specific manner that any role she does she has to make her own, but I think it may be hard for writers to play into her persona, because it's so hard to pin down. She's dry and reserved, but bright and charismatic.  She's very internalized, but also open.  Gomez sells us on a millennial who is best friends with a couple of boomers.

1 Bad: This season was very bad at exploring the impact of the show's events on the character. Mabel, particularly seemed unmoored, without a true storyline to call her own.  She was the primary investigator in the murder, sure, but with the talk of moving out, with the podcast shenanigans, with the new boyfriend, none of it seemed to have focus for her.  For Charles, he gets engaged and then something happens and it's over and it seems to have almost no impact on him. Similarly, the show seemed to forget that Oliver's heart attack had any meaningful impact on him.  The story of the season was really intriguing but it kind of let the characters down.  Bringing in big name distractions (Meryl Streep was good, but she can't NOT be good, but she's also distracting;  Matthew Broderick was only distracting; Paul Rudd was maybe TOO Paul Rudd for the role that perhaps needed a bit more of a straight man).

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The Bear Season 2 - Disney+ [10 Episodes]

The What 100: This is one of the most incredible seasons of television ever. As the crew toil on renovating the restaurant, the stakes escalating for each of them, they must also develop new skills and new attitudes if they're going to make it work.

1 Great: "Forks". Cousin Richie goes off to train at another restaurant for a month where he has to start at the bottom polishing forks. Richie has been the most difficult and antagonistic character of the series. He's an obstacle that every character in the show has to navigate because it seems he's always trying to stop things from changing. This episode is the Richie spotlight, where we get insight into who he is as a person (with little hints at his life dropped earlier in the season). This is the episode where Richie finds himself, and finds purpose, and decides to no longer be the obstacle, but the conveyor, the path that helps keep things moving, and it's freaking beautiful to see such transformation happen. Gorgeous work from Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and a magnificent surprise Olivia Coleman appearance.  

1 Great: "Fishes". Heading back a half dozen years or so to Christmas dinner at the Berzatto family home, where Carmy makes an appearance after having effectively disappeared from their lives for some time. It's a frantic 66 minutes of too many cooks, family tension, and some deep, deep insight into why the siblings (Carmy, Natalie and Michael) are the way they are, and by extension, why the kitchen of Chicago Original Beef that Michael established was so unruly when Carmy came along. 

It all comes back to mom. 

And holy shit, if people didn't think Jamie Lee Curtis deserved that Oscar before (I don't know who those people are, but if they exist...), well, she smashes scalding hot yam in their face with this one.  It's one of the best performances ever.  I don't know Curtis' exposure to bipolar disorder but she seems to have a keen understanding of what it looks like and how to convey it. She's an absolute juggernaut, but it's not a selfish performance at all... it's the performance of selfishness, sure, but she's is fuelling every scene, giving the other performers everything they need, creating an energy that fills the whole household, and it's as toxic as carbon monoxide.  It's beautiful chaos. It's like within minutes of being with Curtis' Donna, suddenly the whole world of The Bear comes in to clear focus. I get it now.

1 Great: Good gravy, this cast is awesome, and much credit to the showrunner Christopher Storer for recognizing that each of these characters deserves a spotlight. Of course Jeremy Allen White's Carmy and Ayo Edibiri's Sydney are the duelling forces of the show, fighting one another yet seemingly needlessly as they're trying to reach the same objective. But it's giving Richie, or Liza Colón-Zayas's Tina or Lionel Boyce's Marcus their own side journey in culinary education that provides both insight into that world but also fantastic character growth.  So many shows want to keep their characters  contained in a box, because the reality is that if characters grow, then they grow apart, and that's death for a situational tv programme. This show dares to grow their characters, and to show the dangers of what not growing can mean, (talking to you Carm).

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The Afterparty Season 2 - Apple [10 Episodes] 

The What 100: Aniq accompanies Zoe to her sister's wedding at the groom's family estate, meeting her parents for the first time, looking to gain their blessing in asking her to marry him. But Aniq's plans are interrupted when the groom winds up dead in bed the morning after the ceremony.  The groom's mother locks down the estate but refuses to call the police, so Aniq calls ex-detective Danner in to help solve the case.

1 Great: The pastiches were so on point, from the rom com sequel, to the Austin-esque period romantic drama, to hard-boiled noir, to the series high point of a mock Wes Anderson production. Nobody does Wes Anderson like Wes Anderson. And people who try to do Wes Anderson generally fail at doing Wes Anderson. It's hard to do. That's what having a singular specific vision gets you.  But the episode "Hannah" gets the closest to Anderson in style that I've seen, and it's because they balance the framing and colour palette so beautifully with Anderson's sense of humour but also pathos.  After this, the heist movie, the erotic thriller, the epic romantic drama just can't quite hold up to the same heights of ambition, but they still fare pretty excellently.  Episode 9's Hitchcock-esque neo-noir thriller with Christopher Miller in the director seat does come close to being as inspired. 

1 Good: This second season actually improved upon the first season, still adhering to the conceit of each episode being a pastiche of a specific genre or style, but in having a cast of characters that are so intimately bonded (as opposed to last season's high school reunion of characters who don't really know each other at all) it creates an intimacy and familiarity that's far more engaging to explore, and makes secrets that much more shocking when they come to light.  We binged this season voraciously.

1 Bad: As the season goes on, there becomes a burden of storytelling  that -- as with the first series -- starts interrupting the pastiche and breaks the sort of visual narrative. It's not awful, but I'm always kind of sad when we cut away from the homage and into what the rest of the cast is doing.  I don't think they've perfected the conceit of the show by any means but you can see the growth.

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Loki Season 2 - Disney+ [6 Episodes]

The What 100: With the death of He Who Remains last season, the timelines are branching out of control, and if the TVA can't contain the branching, everything...literally everything... could be destroyed. Loki, who has manifested "timeslipping" powers that he can't control, is doing everything he can to save the one place and the people who gave him a chance to be something other than what was expected of him.

1 Great: The first four episodes of this six-episode season kind of put the titular character to the side. Loki was there, but he was part of the gang. The show seemed to be focussed on the situation that Loki season one created, and not the character of Loki so much. Sure, Sylvie and Mobius and Renslayer were getting some new dimension to them, but it seemed at the expense of developing Loki, beyond turning him into a Doctor Who-esque rallyer of doing the right thing in timey-wimey adventures.  

Episodes 5 & 6, though... it was ALL Loki. Everything that came before, not just this season, but the prior season as well, was building to these two episodes of exploring this Loki variant: who he was, who he is, and what he wants to become. Head writer Eric Martin has his name on every script, and this singular driving voice creates a consistency and focus in this season that other 6-episode Marvel series are missing. All of what happens isn't to build to some future Marvel event (at least not obviously) but instead to a rather monumental change in the character of Loki from when we first met him in Thor over a decade ago.  Martin drops little nuggets hinting as to where he's going with it all throughout the season and then goes there. It's so satisfying to see a Marvel thing build to something and finally stick the landing again. It feels like most of the Disney+ series have failed in this regard.

[Also great: Natalie Holt's compositions for this series have been phenomenal. She's produced, I think, the best soundtrack to an MCU production besides Black Panther. Just outstanding, memorable work.]

1 Good: Loki season 2 seems to have been granted permission to disconnect itself from the MCU at large and just do its own thing. It's not setting anything (obvious) up, and it's not taking detours and sidetracks into spaces just for fan service.  This season establishes a tone and it persists for 6 episodes in a row. It knows the kind of story it wants to tell, it know the journey it wants to take its characters, and it delivers.  With a consistent voice on the script and Benson and Moorehead directing 4 of the 6 episodes, there's a stability to this season that makes it feel pretty grand in scope.  And also, as a fan of Benson and Moorehead's films, this series seems so utterly in their wheelhouse, a true part of their filmography that carries their signature and not just work-for-hire like their Moon Knight episodes.

1 Bad: Sigh. Jonathan Majors. He's a great actor. He's acting great here. Why can't he act great in his real life. Such a bummer.

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Our Flag Means Death Season 2 - HBO [8 Episodes]

The What 100: When last we left Steed (the Gentleman Pirate) and Ed (Blackbeard), Steed had realized he made a mistake trying to return to his old life, while Ed could think of no other option but to return to his savage ways.  In fact, heartbroken, he's gotten even more violent and ruthless than before. After Ed almost kills him, Izzy joins Steeds crew. A truce is formed with Spanish Jackie. The crew face off against Zhang Yi Sao, the Pirate Queen, who takes a shining to Oluwande. Lucius and Black Pete reunite.

1 Great:  From the Thor: Ragnarok/Jojo Rabbit era, Taika Waititi got really, really overexposed. He was asked to do a lot, and he did a lot, and he became a very public figure for a time. Then he made Thor: Love and Thunder, the only Marvel movie I kind of despise, and I wondered if a 10+ year affinity for the creator had disappeared altogether.  Recently, I realized I hadn't seen much of Waititi, he'd certainly scaled back how much of himself he was putting out there.  I realized I loved, and respected that Waititi has had his hands in two very different, very remarkable series, but that his influence (despite what I've said previously) has been primarily in using his notoriety to get the shows made and hand them over to their true visionaries. For Reservation Dogs it was Sterlin Harjo's baby that Waititi was just in the delivery room for.  For Our Flag Means Death, it's definitely David Jenkins' queer pirate child, to which Waititi just plays funcle to.  

Playing Blackbeard/Ed in Our Flag, Waititi delivers a remarkable performance that wavers from maniacally bloodthirsty, to scarily unpredictable, to genuine paramour of Rhys Darby's Steed Bonnett. I'm not sure I always buy Darby's romantic connection to Ed, but Waititi sells the highs and lows of romantic tumult, while the show also examines Blackbeard's psyche and why he is so broken emotionally.  It's a surprising, remarkable performance that evolves each episode.

 

1 Good: The show juggles its cast this season, dispensing with some crew members (thank god Nat Faxon's The Swede has limited screen time this season) and putting a spotlight on others. It's a pretty large cast for a series with such short seasons and it cannot do them all justice. But the addition of Rubio Qian and Anapela Polataivao as Zhang Yi Sao and Auntie were two glorious additions this season. Qian is an effortlessly charming performer and eminently likeable, even when she's being vicious and cunning. She has swagger, intelligence, and a vulnerability that she seems in complete control of. Auntie as her number one shows a very different parental relationship of a notorious pirate and their mentor than what Blackbeard and Izzy had and it's really quite sweet.

1 Bad: The show's episode order for season 2 was two less than season 1. It felt like the Ricky Banes storyline, of minor noble who becomes a pirate inspired by Blackbeard, only to be shamed and shunned by the pirate community. He unites with the British navy to utterly dismantle piracy altogether, but if there were supposed to be any lasting parallels between he and Steed, or if there was supposed to be a building of his threat leading to a big climax, it's more of a sizzle in the end.

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Shoresy Season2 - Crave [6 Episodes]

The What 100: Shoresy has promised the Sudbury Bulldog's owner to "never lose again", and so he's on a mission to keep that promise. The team, however, has problems threatening to get in the way of that mission. Like all the sex they're having is tiring them out too quick on the ice. Or scoring champ JJ Frankie JJ has lost his focus because his true love caught him cheating. And the Jim's are distracted because their Reach for the Top team has been losing. And Michaels is down about some bullshit nobody cares about. And the boys do a calendar.

1 Great: Shoresy was one of, if not the most annoying side character on Letterkenny.  He was an off-screen antagonistic foil to Reilley and Jonesy on that show, and not really even a fleshed out character. To me it was a dicey proposition spinning him out into his own series, but to Jared Keeso's credit, he has really managed to create a surprisingly likeable and watchable if challenging and often out-of-line lead that I enjoy watching.  The final episode of the season gives a rather sharply written, insightful moment into Shoresy as a character, and why he plays so hard, and works so hard to support the team. The basic point being that his mindset is one that only works on the ice, and makes the real world one that's difficult for him to live in. 

1 Good: It's easy to pander to Canadians, it's hard to do it subtly. As with Letterkenny, Shoresy wears its Canadian pride on its ugly poop brown and baby blue jersey sleeve. The best extended joke was the incremental rage on Shoresy's face as the team is hosted by the American Sault Ste. Marie team and to perform the national anthem is a 10-year-old learning to play the recorder.  There's two jokes there, the first being the obvious Americans goading the Canadians, but also butchering the national anthem on a recorder is a right of passage for every Canadian in grade school.

1 Bad: I was never a jock and certainly not a hockey player, and the behind-the-scenes on masculine sports teams has never been a realm I'm comfortable with, eager to experience, nor particularly enjoy. Toxic seems like a gentle word for what goes on back there. So it shouldn't be surprising to me that I bristle, often, at the language and tone that comes out of this comedy. Like Keeso's other show, Shoresy's gender and sexual politics are kind of progressive but in a rudimentary way.  In dealing with hicks and hockey players, it is surprising when they are portrayed as open-minded, accepting even, but when shades of conservative thinking crop up, is it a result of honestly portraying the field the show is playing in, or is it the creators exposing that they're still not as far along as they'd like us to believe.  When the show regresses into leering shots of lingerie clad women, I have to wonder what relevance it has on the story at hand, or if it's just some Sudbury woman Keeso met at a bar and has convinced to take her clothes off on camera.  

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Light & Magic - Disney+ [6 Episodes]

The What 100: A look behind the curtain of 40+ years of Industrial Light and Magic.

1 Great: The first two episodes focus on the people behind the scenes who made the stunning visuals of Star Wars happen, and how they did it. The sheer volume of creativity on display is outstanding. As a lifelong Star Wars nerd, I thought I had seen and read all of the behind-the-scenes making-of Star Wars had to offer, and it turns out I hadn't even scratched the surface. Even this documentary seems to be constrained by the episodic structure into how much we actually get to see, but all of it is awesome.  John Dykstra, Phil Tippet, Joe Johnson, Dennis Muren and more are given celebrity documentary treatment here, glorifying their contributions to not just Star Wars, not even just cinema, but culture in general.

1 Good: The second two episodes focus on creating sequels to Star Wars, but also the start of the dissolution of the original gang. As ILM is formalized, and moves out of LA, not everyone is asked to join them. In these two episodes, which span the about a half decade from Star Wars's debut, the leaps in technology that George Lucas pushes on the team are pretty incredible. I didn't know almost anything about what ILM had innovated over the years, and it turns out it was a lot, including what eventually becomes Photoshop and Pixar, among other things. 

1 Bad: The final two episodes, step away from Star Wars, and then right back into it, as the entire culture of ILM shifts underneath the feet of the men and women who started it. Rapidly the drive is digital, and the genius creative forces behind physical props and visual effects are more and more diminished in terms of importance and contribution. What made ILM so captivating in the first two episodes -- a massive warehouse of individuals experimenting with scale, cameras, technology, and hand craftsmanship -- gives way to largely people sitting at computers clicking buttons.  The show pretends to maintain the same enthusiasm for what ILM is today, as a primarily digital company, as it had for what was done back in the 1970s, but there's just no denying that the physical stuff was far more interesting, the creative problem solving much more enriching, and the people so much livelier.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Gran Turismo

2023, Neill Blomkamp (Chappie) -- download

The recently watched Demonic was Blomkamp's first movie since 2015 and was atypical for the director. This not-adaptation-of-a-video-game movie might be considered even more a departure from his aesthetic (action, scifi) except you can see his signature all over the movie. Oh, it is about a video game but more the bio-pic of Jann Mardenborough and his rise to motorsports racing fame from the GT Academy, a partnership between Sony and Nissan to make actual drivers out of players of the video game Gran Turismo. The movie is a very very good depiction of the "against all odds" trope that sports dramas rely upon. It took a guy like me, not at all interested in anything to do with watching loud cars go around in circles, and actually piqued an interest in motor sports, and the drama of it all. 

Of note, I watched this movie bit by bit, in airports and on planes, to and from Las Vegas. While I was there, the city was in the midst of preparing for its own motorsports extravaganza, a coming F1 race. The streets were being rerouted, massive grandstand seating structures are being built and tons of people were being inconvenienced. The locals are not happy, and everyone is hinting that sales are low. Should be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Jann is a teen living in Wales, at odds with his dad because all he wants to do is play his video game. He's a serious Gran Turismo fan, with his own race car rig, but also pretty renowned at the local video game parlour. He also can drive pretty well in real life. And then he sees his name on the screen, where he is invited to participate in the GT Academy qualifying race. He defies his dad to participate, easily wins, and is invited to the actual camp where pit boss Jack Salter will put the kids through rigorous training sessions. Nobody is convinced that a bunch of kids good at playing video games would make good drives in the real world.

Of course, Jann comes out on top. 

The rest of the movie is a trope laden escapade through Jann's rise, fall and return, to become a celebrated driver that completely defied all expectations, including his own. And I was right there for it the entire way. Blomkamp may be using his familiar kit bag to enhance the movie, adding in all kinds of CGI overlays and augmented realities for us, the viewers, to become further immersed in the movie, but it was the straight-up Hollywood-isms of an "overcoming odds" sports movie that had me. These are the reasons well-crafted movies end up in the Should Watch bin, and while I don't think this will be Oscar contending material, as few people will relate to the situation, it was incredibly well done. It had me actually wanting to watch a race IRL. I also need to watch a couple of the other Oscar nodded racing movies to see where this one may lie. I hope it gets Blomkamp enough attention to fund some more of his passion project movies.

Go-Go-Godzilla: #3 Godzilla Raids Again

The first sequel to Gojira promises more city-stomping action, and throws in big-G's first kaiju adversary.  The film nods to its predecessor more than a few times, even acknowledging that the original Gojira is dead. It was set up at the end of Gojira that there could be others awakened by nuclear bomb testing, so when another Godzilla emerges, it's not too big of a surprise.

Name: Godzilla Raids Again

Japanese Name: Gojira no Gyakushū 
Director: Motoyoshi Oda
Studio: Toho
Year: 1956

The Story:
10 minutes of tedious aviator adventures lead to two pilots stranded on an island witnessing Godzilla battling a spiky-backed quadraped on the cliffs overhead.  Scientists gather with Dr. Yamane to discuss this new gigantic creature, confirming it's Anguirus. The worry is that both are incredible threats worse than nuclear bombs. Dr. Yamane has a plan to lure them away from land, fighter jets and the navy set out search, Shikoku is put under evacuation alert as Godzilla heads towards land. But he pivots and heads towards Osaka instead, interrupting a lovely dance Shoichi and Hidemi are attending. Blackouts are mandated. As he breaks the surface of water, jets fire off flares to try and draw Godzilla's attention. It works, Hidemi's father has gone to the factory at the docks instead of evacuating for some reason, so Shoichi heads off to the rescue.

Meanwhile, a transport of prisoners hatch a daring escape plan. They go racing through the docklands in a frantic keystone cops-esque speed-ramped chase. The prisoners steal a tanker truck, but in the chase they crash it into an oil depot, setting the docks ablaze, attracting Godzilla's attention. The army once again throws everything they've got at the big guy and it only seems to annoy him. It's not long before his atomic breath starts trash planes and tanks. 

All the commotion attracts Anguirus and the two beasts fight amidst all shelling and missiles fired at them. The docks are ablaze. The titantic tussle (also speed-ramped) destroys everything in its path as the two continue to venture further and further in land. Three of the escaped prisoners are drowned in a collapsed subway tunnel. The military headquarters are abandoned. Godzilla ultimately gets Anguirus by the throat and tears its neck open, before incinerating it with his atomic breath, which catches what remains of the district on fire. Osaka is in ruins. Godzilla departs, a job well done.

Scene of weird ribaldry in the the ruins of Kaiyo's Osaka headquarters lead to Kobayashi's flying antics, and matchmaking prospects. There's an extended sequence of a pilots reunion, as Kobayashi and Shoichi meet with old Japan Self-Defense Force pilot friends. There's, like, nearly 10 minutes worth where nothing material, character or story-wise is conveyed.  Then a ship sinks, and they suspect it's Godzilla. All the pilots head out to spy the creature, but Hidemi is unhappy that Shiochi won't return to base. But no so unhappy that she won't help out Kobayashi with his romantic problems.  Shiochi espies Godzilla on an island and has a plan for containing him before he can retreat back into the ocean, but Kobayashi sees that time is not on their side so he stupidly keeps buzzing Godzilla, pissing the creature off and getting the business end of atomic breath. But Kobayashi's death spiral causes an avilanche that buries him in urinal ice.  The JSDF causes more avilanches to make sure he stays buried.

The Creatures:
Godzilla - Godzilla is now infamous. Dr. Yamane deems him to be indestructable. Godzilla is just a species name, not a character name. As was identified last film, Godzilla has a thing with lights. Yamane suspects it trigger's Godzilla's PTSD over the hydrogen bombs.  Godzilla looking very gnarly toothed, his chompers sticking out akimbo in every direction, and, above that, just dead, dead eyes.  This Godzilla also looks a lot leaner, not as squat in the lower half.

Anguirus - atomic testing has awoken an ankylosaur, 150-200 ft tall. Described as carnivorous and quick moving, they also have remarkable brains found in breast and abdomen, and are deemed agressive against other species.  There is something delightful about watching a guy in a rubber suit try to perform as a quadrapedal creature but still fight a bipedal one. Anguirus has kind of a stupid looking head, lean long and flat with seven or 8 spikes sticking out of it, but the rest of his spiky armour and weird posture is quite fun. 

The Battle:
Godzilla versus Anguirus is pretty fun to watch, even if the speed-ramping looks a little odd. The Anguirus suit makes for an awkward-moving creature, which makes it fighting the upright Godzilla look really odd, and interesting.

The final battle where the JSDF is strafing Godzilla and firing on the mountainside to create an avalanche reminds me strangely of the strafing run from Top Gun: Maverick despite the disparity in effects and budgets.

The Humans:
Dr. Yamane - Godzilla expert. Returns from prior film, for one extended sequence.

Shoichi - Pilot. He spies schools of fish from the plane for the fishing boats but has bravery in his heart.

Hidemi- Shoichi's love interest. Her dad owns the fishing company both her and Shoichi work for. Worries over the impact of kaiju rampages on their business.

Kobayashi - The other pilot. The "comic releif". He's looking for love but can't stop crashing planes. His sacrifice leads to Godzilla's defeat.

The humans are, once again, barely of any interest in this one. I guess the intent of having sort of blue-collar workers as the center is to show the ground-level impact of Godzilla, but unlike the first film that takes us into the heart of the devastation afterwards, here, the characters are joking around amidst the ruins. There's no sense of impact, save a ruined dance and some business reshufflings. Yes, the lovably goofy chubby guy dies in a ball of flame, but only starting to give him a character at the beginning of the third act isn't really enough to make us care. I'm wondering how long it will be before the human story of a Godzilla movie will actually feel relevant, because the extended scenes with the humans in this movie are its most tedious.

Friend or Foe: Very much a sequel to Gojira. Even though this is a different beast than the original, it's still got the same reputation and humanity doesn't like it so much. Less proactively troublesome and slightly more understood as a force of nature.  But we fear what we cannot understand or control, so Godzilla must be dealt with.

The Sounds:
Anguirus's squelch sounds like a dying 1930's car corn. 

Godzilla sounds like he did in the last film.  His atomic breath has a simple wet hissing sound, like squirting a seltzer bottle.

The score features none of the epicness of the original film and nothing remotely as memorable. It's serviceable and unremarkable.

The Message:
Umm. I guess that nuclear proliferation is only going to unleash more monsters?
Or, maybe, bury your problems?

Rating (out of 5 Z):
ZZz

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Equalizer 3

2023, Antoine Fuqua (The Infinite) -- download

This is the third movie in a series spawned from a TV show about ex-CIA operative Robert McCall (Denzel Washington, The Book of Eli), who placed an ad in a newspaper offering people with nowhere to go, no one to turn to, assistance with their troubles. But I am not sure if the movies ever really depicted him taking a client from the ads, in-world represented by Craig's List. And this one ends with him basically abandoning the idea entirely and not returning to south Boston. Odd pivot.

The movie begins in Sicily, with an older man and young boy, returning to a vineyard compound filled with the dead bodies of thugs. They follow the dead body trail into the cellar where a few remaining mooks have their guns trained on McCall, sitting comfortably in a chair. After a brief "do you know who I am?" moment from the villain, McCall easily finishes them all off, as we expected him to, but gets hit by a single bullet from the boy in the car, who Robert thought he scared off.

What was that opening all about? What happens to the boy now? Is this going to be a revenge thriller from the other side of the fence? Is Robert's injury dire?

No. It is not. But, back on the mainland, the uncharacteristically wounded Robert is found slumped behind the wheel and is gently carried to a local doctor, to be cared for, for reasons unknown.

"Are you a good man? Will you bring bad men here?" the doctor asks. Robert is unsure how to answer. No matter, the fatherly doctor cares for him and introduces him to his home and village, a bucolic seaside community seen in many a idyllic screensaver. As Robert heals, hobbling around on a cane, up the stairs and down, he comes to know the welcoming and friendly people. His OCD routines are questioned, even challenged, but always with a gentle note.

Then the Bad Guys appear, small time thugs hustling protection racket money. And as Robert gets involved, things escalate. The thugs represent a greater Camorra from nearby Naples, a widespread organized crime family in control of the area. Robert's retribution is not taken kindly, especially as one of the thugs Robert kills is the family head's brother.

Meanwhile, Robert has covertly contacted Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning, Man on Fire), a low rank CIA agent, providing her with invaluable data on the winery in Sicily. She is "following the money" but never gets directly involved in what Robert is dealing with. But they end up connecting.

Oooooo, nice connecting the Hollywood dots there Fuqua, bringing back Fanning to once again be protected by Washington the ex-CIA guy.

This was both the formula of the Fuqua Equalizer and a departure. In south Boston, Robert was home, but always apart from his environment. He found connection with his coworkers, from his covers, but it was a facade. Here, in Altamonte, he finds actual connection, and he doesn't resolve their situation by just killing everyone involved, but integrates the townsfolk themselves, into standing up to the Camorra. He is not protecting one person from an ad, but empowering an entire community to protect themselves.

Oh, they shoehorn in an actual ad client to close the movie, the original reason he went to Sicily (to recover monies stolen from a pensioner by scam artists), but this is a closing movie, a retirement movie. Robert will stay in Altamonte, become one of them. Meanwhile we learn that Collins, being celebrated for her win in Italy (bringing down terrorists funded by organized crime) was actually the daughter of Robert's late handler, Melissa Plummer who died in the second movie. A nice summation to the series.

If anything excelled in this movie, it was McCall hobbling around Altamonte. He, and Washington, are of an age where chasing after Bad Guys has taken its toll, and it shows. Sure, he is still in phenomenal shape, but the movie is introduced by him slipping up, getting wounded, by a child. The town offers refuge and an honourable retirement. Robert did bring Bad Men to the town, but he was a Good Man who helped the entire town do what they needed to. Now its time to quit. Its a nice swan song.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Creator

2023, Gareth Edwards (Monsters) -- cinema

Gareth Edwards has directed four feature films, starting with the indie dear (you are a man of your repetitive cliches, aren't you?) Monsters but including some pretty fucking big names: the relaunch of Godzilla, and a Star Wars movie. But for some reason I was surprised he got a big budget blockbuster scifi movie, that is so very much a passion project. I am not surprised at all that I loved every moment of it. 

I affectionately referred to this movie, based on the trailers, as the Neil Blomkamp film that Neil never got to do. But after seeing it, that is so disingenuous, I dropped that line of thought thirty minutes into the movie. Sure, it will always bear a resemblance, nee affectionate nod, to the robots that Blomkamp used in a few of his movies, and the Oats Studios shorts. But Edwards take on AI and robotic life is entirely his own, and in this age of the overuse of AI in pop culture references, but more akin to these over glorified chat-bots, it was a refreshing escape of the Fear of AI.

As the movie opened with a TV newsreel about the history of AI. At first I was thinking, this was going to be an alt-history where the use of robots and AI in the workplace started in the early 20th century, so by the time the late 21st century hit, human-level thinking (aka sentient) AI, in robots and not, was ubiquitous. Until a nuke was dropped on LA, by an AI. Given this is an American newsreel, it is an unreliable narrator, as the Bad Guys in this movie are also the Americans.

In this world, America has banned AI, so they have escaped to other parts of the world. I imagine the westernized portions of this world are fearful of what happened in America, and of America itself, so the AI have only found refuge in South East Asia, a place that already has its own reasons to fear America. The AI, both the very obvious robots, and the more human looking simulants are without question, people. But America says otherwise and acts otherwise, killing them whenever and wherever they can, not giving much care about borders. They have a giant satellite ship called Nomad that circles the globe, directed by on-ground human soldiers, launching its own nukes at any AI bases they find, forever seeking to kill the saviour of AI, a person called Nirmata, that they know next to nothing about.

Joshua is a solider, initially tasked with infiltrating, finding and killing Nirmata, he abandons his role when they kill his pregnant wife. Five years later, they find him and send him back, influenced by the belief she is actually still alive. Instead of finding Nirmata, and their new weapon, he finds a "child" -- an AI in the form of an innocent child. But "Alphie" must be something more or they wouldn't have protecting her so much. Josh does not want to turn her over to the Americans immediately, so he goes on the run, hoping she can lead him to his wife.

As we said, walking up Yonge Street doing our post-movie chat before settling in for some drinkie-poo's, this was a "show not tell" kind of movie. Josh is moving through this world, it being explained by his actions and the actions of those around him. The Americans commit heinous acts, on a people who have shown their true "humanity" while embedded in a culture that reveres all life (so many of the "robots" are monks) and have gone so far as to adopt the children of war. The Americans do not care who they harm as long as their enemy is destroyed. They claim their enemy is not people, but you can see they know otherwise. They are choosing to act heinously.

The setting is astounding. Taking place entirely in South East Asia they move easily between cyberpunk urban centres to lush, tropical jungle and sea lanes. The people live in harmony (??) with nature and technology. Massive structures which I can only guess are power generating or related to atmosphere regulation (again, shown, but it's just the world) have shanty town style villages in their shadows, and the farmers walk around with packs of technology, while still picking rice by hand. The merging of the two lives is amazing. Until the Americans show up and blow the shit out of it.

And I loved the look of the robots and technology, it catering directly to my love of technology based concept art and 3D modelling. There are many different "types" of robots, from the barely humanoid up to the fully human looking simulants, minus that visible hole thru the lower portion of their head, and odd design feature. The depiction is meticulously human(oid), never more apparent when the AI soldiers are lounging around, gambling & hassling each other.

The story is a familiar one, but well handled. The challenges faced by Josh, an American who lost so much of himself to the bombing of LA, are great as he has all his beliefs broken apart by what he sees in front of him. Propaganda can only do so much. He can say their deaths don't matter only so many times, while watching the trauma and grief on the faces the violent actions cause. He has a goal, to find his wife and seek her forgiveness. The AI have a goal, to destroy Nomad, which should allow American's stranglehold on AI rights to wane. And America's goal, the most selfish, is just to strike back at who they claim hurt them.

Kent's take. We Agree.

Go-Go-Godzilla: #2 Godzilla: King of the Monsters!

 Yes, this is my latest stupid boy project, watching all of the Godzilla films. There's 30+ of them and I think I have about half of those at my disposal.  This may take a while, as I intend to watch them in order. For the record, only LIVE ACTION Godzilla is being watched, no Saturday morning cartoons, nor anime.

The early Godzilla films have original Japanese edits and dubbed, shorter American edits. I have to wonder if the shorter editing time was to fit in more easily on Sunday morning television with commercial interruptions.  The original film, however, isn't just a re-edit but includes about a half hour of original footage cut into it, centering the story, and the narration, around an American.

Name: Godzilla: King of the Monsters!

Japanese Name: Kaijū Ō Gojira
Director: Terry O. Morse and Ishiro Honda
Studio: Toho and Jewell Enterprises
Year: 1956

The Story: American Steve Martin is a wild and crazy guy reporter, who recounts his tale of journeying to Japan to investigate the story of a series of mysterious ship disappearances. This trip takes him to Odo Island where he learns of the folklore of Godzilla, an ancient beast from the deep ocean, who has now awakened.

The Jerk Steve Martin befriends, from a distance, Dr. Yamane and his daughter Emiko, and joins them on their investigation of Odo Island, only to witness himself first hand the awe and terror of Godzilla as it attacks the island.

Back on land, he learns of Emiko's strained relationship with her fiancee, the scientist Dr. Serizawa, and since All Of Me's Steve Martin's narration is actually a recounting in hindsight and not of-the-moment, he knows all about Dr. Serizawa's Oxygen Destroyer and what it shall do.

Steve Martin and his three amigos, Dr. Yamane, Emiko and Emiko's secret lover Hideo Ogata argue over whether Godzilla should be destroyed. Since Steve Martin is a dirty rotten scoundrel reporter, he's given press access to the new Japan Self-Defence Force, and learns of their plans to electrocute Godzilla should he come to shore again. But when Godzilla breaks through that defence, revealing even more depths of terror with a fire breath, Steve Martin dictates his last L.A. Story from Tokyo as he watches the destruction and rampage first hand.

Steve Martin should be a Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid man but he survives, finding himself in a makeshift medical refuge where Emiko helps out. She reveals to him and Ogata about Serizawa's deadly Oxygen Destroyer, and they set off to convince Serizawa to use his deadly weapon. Which he does. Sacrificing himself in the process, but effectively killing Godzilla, and Steve Martin thinks the world can breathe easy knowing that Godzilla is no longer Bringing Down The House a threat.

The Creatures:
Godzilla. No new footage of the creature for this hacked American version of the original 1954 film, so the same comments as last time.

The Humans:
Raymond Burr's Steve Martin is the Man with Two Brains dominant character of the film, basically inserting himself into scenes of the original film, but telling the entire story from entirely his point of view.  As little amount of characterization we get out of Dr. Yamane, Emiko, Ogata or Serizawa in the original, they're utterly neutered as here by Steve Martin's overbearing presence.  Serizawa's particularly potent crisis of conscience from the original, the film's best character moment, is just gone.

The Sounds:
The soundtrack and the special effects are the same as the original, but they're impacted by the inserted scenes of Burr, and the attempt to try and make them seem like they're a part of the original film. 

There is some original Japanese dialogue remaining but also some dubbing (apparently James Hong was involved), but it all feels really burdensome on the script and cheaply cobbled together.

The Message:
The message of anti-nuclear proliferation is entirely lost as any reference to the war, the bombings or nuclear testing was omitted from the film. Basically the sole purpose for the film existing is defanged to rewrite history and whitewash for American audiences, turning it from a mildly effective anti-bomb polemic into another 50's B-movie creature feature.

Rating (out of 5 Zs): 
Zz -- not the way to watch this story.