Ah-Ah-Argento, #1 - The Bird With The Crystal Plumage

1970, d. Dario Argento - blu-ray

My memory of how I discovered Dario Argento is extremely hazy. I suspect it was in the late 90's when I was helping a local shop with their mail-order cult video rental business by writing synopses and reviews of the films. I'm pretty sure this is where I saw The Bird With The Crystal Plumage for the first time. It put Argento on my radar, but it would be a couple more years, when Anchor Bay was releasing them on DVD that I would see any further Argento films. 

Phenomena would have been the first, a blind buy (as was my disposition at the time, following early websites that would provide details on upcoming releases and hitting up The Future Shop in Thunder Bay on a near-weekly basis to peruse the new releases), and it remains my favourite, but Deep Red, Tenebre, and Suspiria would follow in subsequent years, and I really, really liked them all (I don't know why I never got Inferno). I'm a horror dabbler in recent years, much more comfortable with the genre than I ever was, but 25-ish years ago and I certainly was still a wuss about it. But Argento's style, and the giallo subgenre in general, wasn't full of the gore and jump scares I was trying to avoid.

The Bird With The Crystal Plumage is very much a traditional giallo, but an early version of the more horror-laden subgenre it would become. It leans more into the mystery/discovery element and less into the acts of violence. It has, since my first viewing, held a real soft spot in my film-loving heart. To be honest, I think I've been nervous to rewatch for the first time in probably two decades because I'm worried it wouldn't hold up.

But it does hold up, in its own way. Not perfectly, but it's still full of the charms that originally endeared me to Argento, and has its own little surprises.  There are, of course, aspects that are outright absurd, such as the police basically encouraging a civilian to conduct their own investigation into a string of serial murders and even providing assistance. And there are also terribly outdated sexist tropes, like how the women just crumble into hysterics when faced with any sort of threat, that this feels like it should be smarter about.

Beyond that it's a somewhat jaunty mystery, where an American writer comes across the scene of a woman being stabbed in an art gallery, which is then correlated to a string of murders over the prior weeks. The writer cannot seem to resist carrying out his own investigation, even when threatened by the killer and had a couple attempts on his, and his girlfriend's life.

What one has to be mindful of is that The Bird With The Crystal Plumage is not a horror movie. It's leaning more into Hitchcock suspense terrain, but it also has a playfully subversive sense of humor that I found charming.  Since this was made in 1970, there have been countless hours of "procedural" television that show us how an investigation works, and there have been countless hours of forensic television that we have a sense of how that works as well. This film takes stabs at procedural investigation and forensics and it's almost tongue in cheek with how ... off... it all is. I delighted in it.

But the bones of The Bird With The Crystal Plumage are a solid mystery, one which is actually quite compelling to watch as it weaves an veers in unexpected directions from the typical mystery (in one sequence our protagonist is dodging bullets from an assassin, only to escape into public, and then immediately turn around and follow his attacker...I still don't think I've seen that anywhere else). I went from being worried about whether the film was actually any good to being completely sucked in by minute 20.  It's flawed, but super fun.

I had lent out my modest Argento collection to a friend of a girlfriend, only to lose touch with the lendee following the break-up. It was a write-off. I've lamented the loss of my Argento Anchor Bay DVDs for two decades now, and just last year started re-acquiring them and filling in some of the other Argento gaps I had. I'm excited to explore these films again, and some for the first time.  I've heard that by the 1990s Argento had lost his touch (and giallo, as a subgenre had definitely gone dormant in the wake of 80's slasher movies) so I may bow out of covering his entire portfolio at some point, but I know I'll be covering the 70's and 80's fully.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Venom: The Last Dance

2024, Kelly Marcel (directorial debut) -- download

Not sure why I watched this movie given my loathing for the previous, as well as the first movie, but I was curious as to how they were going to handle the whole interaction with the MCU, which was quickly followed the dissolution of any such plans. In fact, with the utterly disastrous flopping of Kraven the Hunter, I understand the whole "spider-verse" is over with? But I have a train-wreck fascination with this whole "franchise" and cannot help but watch them, like I cannot help but click those car crash Reels on FB (yeah yeah, allusions to living a train-wreck life?) and to be honest, I was actually tempted to go see Kraven in the cinema.... well maybe, once this three-month cough goes away.

ANYWAYZ.

They do answer my MCU question immediately, having this movie begin with Brock at a bar in Mexico, in the MCU after his multi-verse bloop for reasons I cannot remember, and then immediately having him bloop back into whatever you wanna call this other universe he is from... is it the spider-verse? He traumatizes the bartender Dani Rojas (Cristo Fernández, Ted Lasso) in both universes.

Brock (Tom Hardy, Inception) is once again aimless for reasons I cannot remember, and my lack of memory, supported by my "nodded off" comments in the last movie's post, explains why I have no idea who this police man (Stephen Graham, Snatch) Eddie is accused of killing is. Either way, they cannot return to San Fran and instead, decide to do a road trip to NYC to see the grand green lady. Well, technically, an air trip where Venom (Tom Hardy, The Dark Knight Rises) attaches himself and Eddy, to the side of a plane. Until the monster shows up.

Oh yeah, previous interlude -- Venom is being tracked by some sort of government agency based out of a being-shut-down Area 51 and they have lots of symbiotes (colours of the rainbow!), including the cop Eddie supposedly killed. And Keeley Jones (Juno Temple, Ted Lasso) works there as an alien obsessed scientist with an arm ruined by lightning. 

Anywayz, the monster fight dumps them in the Nevada desert where Venom tells Eddie his character backstory. Apparently the symbiotes were created by an ancient evil that calls itself Knull, who is an "as old as the universe", Elric of Melnibone, guy on a throne, Big Bad. The symbiotes rebelled and trapped Knull on his home planet, but eventually he created new monsters, called Xenophages, and sent them out into the universe to collect a particular symbiote who happens to have a key thingy inside it, called a Codex. Guess who has this Codex? But it really doesn't matter at all, all you have to care about is that there are monsters that even scare Venom the Chicken / Human Head eater.

They never really make it to NYC. They are interrupted by the government agency and captured, who in turn are interrupted by the monsters portal-ing there way to Area 51 for the Big Battle. This is where the movie decides the symbiotes are not all that bad -- "the enemy of my enemy...." and all that, and the soldiers from the government agency have to fight along side their symbiote-suited compadres against the monsters, which is not as successful as you would hope, as the monsters have a wood chipper in their mouth which makes quick work of the colour coded symbiotes + human. Things are dire.

And then Venom saves the day by ending the franchise / sacrificing himself. Oh, there are implications that now Knull knows where the Codex is, so we could continue the story, but we all know better. I guess the script was written with optimism & miracles could happen. But....

In general, I was less annoyed by this than the previous two. I still find the interaction between Venom and Brock irritating but there was enough interesting stuff happening elsewhere for me to find fun. The Vegas segment is worth a chuckle as is the insert of Eddie hitching a ride with Rhys Ifans (Knotting Hill) & hippie family, though it would have been funnier if Venom just lost whatever "humanity" he was learning, and ate the lot of them. Like everyone: the entire government agency, the other symbiotes, the xenophages and finally.... Eddie. The End. Now, THAT would be a movie I would probably like.

Also, I wished they had doubled-down on having "Ted Lasso" cast members in the movie. Why go for two when you could have Brendan Hunt (Beard) as a random American General assigned with shutting down Area 51 ! And Brett Goldstein (Kent!) as a black suited commando that only grunts, and Nick Mohammed (Nate) as a rando he bumps into while in Vegas... so many options!

KWIF: The Brutalist (+2)

KWIF = Kent's Week in Film. I've got the week off, so I've been doing more of what I like to do... consume! I am but a product of our capitalistic society.

This Week:
The Brutalist - 2024, d. Brady Corbet - in theatre
My Old Ass - 2024, d. Megan Park - amazonprime
Longlegs  - 2024, d. Osgood Perkins - amazonprime

---

The Brutalist had, without a doubt, the most striking trailer of 2024. It's striking imagery, bold score and alluring typeface had a visceral impact on me as an audience member. Oh it was absolutely unclear to me, at all, what this movie was about, I just new it was something I must see. Leaving nothing about Gladiator II made even close to the impression that The Brutalist trailer did before it. 

Learning of its 3 hour and 35 minute runtime did not deter me (much...but any reservations I had abated once I noticed at the theatre earlier in the week that there was a sign posting about an intermission...bless the intermission!), and having no other agenda I set aside the better part of an afternoon to the film. 

There's something exciting about this process of discovery. Information is so readily at hand, our age of social media, podcasts, and other online discourse, it can be so simple to find out everything about an experience without ever having the experience, just as it can also be hard to avoid information at time. I knew The Brutalist was making top 10 lists (but not universally), but I still managed to avoid descriptions and even knowing what the film was about. I didn't even watch the trailer again, because I just wanted to experience it...thinking it would be an experience. At 215 minutes, one expects to be taken on a journey.

So, even knowing nothing about the film's story, I had expectations of what the film would be, and I have to say, dear reader, those expectations were not met. The Brutalist is an accomplished film, of which there's no doubt, and those key elements from the trailer (Daniel Blumberg's incredible score, the utterly unique credits, the myriad of gorgeous tracking shots) were indeed present in the film, and kept me present in the film.  Alongside stylistic details such as old film reel inserts (whether it's inforeels on Pennsylvania where the film is primarily set, or even the curiosity of vintage celluloid pornography) Lol Crawley's cinematography contributes to the exceptional style of the film that engaged me at times when the story seemed to lull.

I don't mean to say that the story is, in any way, badly executed or performed. I don't recall the last time I've seen Adrien Brody (Golden Globe winner for this role, for whatever that's worth) so invested in a role. He plays László Tóth, a Jewish Hungarian architect displaced by World War II, separated from his wife as they were filtered to different concentration camps, whom he's not even sure is alive when we first meet him upon his arrival in New York in 1947. It is a Jewish immigrant story, and broad strokes of assimilating in the polite hostility and microagressions of American culture, and the overwhelm of a society already in the thrall of capitalism are definitely felt. But László's story seems highly individualistic, that of someone who is already accomplished in his field given the opportunity to return to his chosen profession by an appreciative benefactor and struggling to complete his vision without compromise.

The first hundred minutes are very effective in establishing László's character, who he is as a person. He feels deep love and connection to his family, coming to America to work with his cousin at his Philadelphia-base furniture shop, but he doesn't feel the same need or desire to assimilate that his cousin does. László's experiences have only solidified his identity in a world cruelly intolerant towards it. He had an incident where his face was bashed in and to deal with the pain, he was given heroin on the transport overseas. He's now addicted. And he is recognized as a womanizer, at least by his cousin, and the way Corbet frames every meaningful female character on screen from László's point of view (from his cousin's American wife to his benefactor's 20-year-old daughter), center screen, gives the impression of attraction and danger. 

The film makes plain these weaknesses, alongside his pride and ego, and decades of similar stories have them feeling like a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. We're so familiar with the dramatic conflict between womanizing artist and their spouses, we've seen the story of the creator who loses everything to drugs, we've seen the story of the visionary whose ego inhibits their success. Every moment one of László's weaknesses presents itself, I would groan, just a little. I was predicting how it would contribute to László's inevitable failure.  As someone who is constantly getting in his own way, I have little patience for stories of people whose character flaws impede their success. Ironic, I know.

So it is much to Corbet's credit that his story never does explode these bombs that are set. I'm much more impressed with it in hindsight than I was in the moment.  I can't say, without a rewatch, whether these act as effective character colour, or if it's just Corbet subverting tropes (I go back to his framing of women in the first act as objects of desire, to the impression that it's definitely the latter).  But the setup of the pride/drugs/womanizing take up such space when Erzsébet (Felicity Jones, Rogue One) and his niece join him in the second half of the film (following the intermission) and she is forgiving of his past infidelity, and turns the moment of her forgiveness into a surprisingly sensual and intimate scene.

Erzsébet is a charming, cultured character who surprises everyone, including the audience. She is a gentle force to be reckoned with, to be sure. She's a devoted wife who adores her husband (as he adores her) but she's also got her own life, ambitions, and issues outside of László's concerns. She is rich enough to support her own story.

The thrust of the film, what most of it is centered around, is the build that László is leading for the Van Burens. His benefactor, Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pierce, Lockout) takes a deep liking to László despite their first contentious encounter, and the community center he wants László to build is in part a memorial to his mother but also a means of (quite literally) cementing his presence in this rural Pennsylvanian community.  It constantly seems a folly. László is at odds with seemingly everyone except Harrison about the build. The barrage of microagressions he receives from the foreman Harrison hires, Harrison's son who is managing the project's finances, the local townsfolk wary of this non-Christian foreigner all threaten his work. It is clear, from both László and Erzsébet's perspective of the project that there will be no compromise of his vision, even if it means he doesn't get paid.

For me, the film's most impactful moment was Harrison and László's trip to the marble quarry in Carrara, Italy. László had a pre-war relationship with one of the miners whom they meet up with and he takes them up the mountainside to show them the marbles. I have never seen a marble quarry before, and, looking at it from a macro scale, I was at once one is taken aback by the marrying of the terrain, but what is exposed underneath and the erratic design of the carving is visually fascinating.  Up in the mines themselves, there are corridors of marble, that László's friend explains, they miners used to resist (and literally crush) Mussolini's forces. There's the blood of resistance and freedom on those stones (it marries with László's artistic vision for his project nicely). 

An incident between Harrison and László on that trip to Italy wrecks László, and the sequences following the trip are the most difficult to process, as they end the story of our main characters with unexpected uncertainty, and the epilogue then jumps two decades into the future. The epilogue is a complete shift in tone stylistically that doesn't fit at all with what came before. It feels much like the end of a long-running TV show that jumps to the future to give you a sense of where things end up, only here, it doesn't feel like we've gotten a resolution to the story at hand. The epilogue serves up the specific intent and meaning of the build, which László never specifically mentions at any time to any one during the build process. In hindsight it does make events of the earlier film more resonant, but it's a really, truly weird mechanism to convey it.

It's this epilogue that I think left me so cold to the film. It doesn't fit.  And as much as I loved the design of the closing credits (although it is to read the stylized font as it scrolls horizontally upwards across the screen in multiple columns), Blumberg's accompanying electro-pop closing track, "Epilogue (Venice)" is just so anachronistic (despite otherwise being right up my alley) that it doesn't close out the film on a note that feels representative of the film.  The whole epilogue is just bizarre.

Going back to the trailer, it features such experimental boldness, but feels so assured, I was expecting a similar film that would stimulate, maybe even overstimulate with style. But it's not that. The Brutalist is much more subdued, maintaining a consistent mood throughout that makes it easy enough to lean back into, but didn't give me the capital e "Experience" I was thinking it would be.  It's good, not great.

---

I've been meaning to catch up on Aubrey Plaza's filmography. There are a half-dozen or so well regarded smaller-budget films (eg. Emily the Criminal, Ingrid Goes West) that Plaza stars in that live on Netflix and Amazon that I keep popping up but I never actually watch. My Old Ass is just the latest of these.

The conceit of My Old Ass is that a young woman, Elliott (Maisy Stella), living on a cranberry farm in the Muskokas of Ontario is getting ready to leave for university, when she encounters her future self during a shroom trip. Even following the encounter, they, through magical realism, continue to maintain long distance contact, as Elliott spends her last summer at home.

The "time travel" conceit threatens to overwhelms story of this film, which is a lightly dramatic but breezy and comforting coming-of-age story of this turning point in Elliott's life, but it can only overwhelm conceptually. It is not the focus of the film.

Future Elliott warns herself to stay away from anyone named Chad (not sure if this was meant as a meta joke, or not, given the place "Chad" takes alongside "Karen" in our current lexicon), but when she inevitably meets Chad, he is sweet, funny, and they seem to click with disarming ease. She knows she should stay away from him, but she cannot help but be drawn to him.  This flies in the face of her identity as she's known it, a proud and out lesbian. This reexamining of her sense of self, and sexual fluidity seems like such modern, and necessary, exploration in cinema.

On top of romantic encounters, future Elliott provokes her with the initiative to connect more with her family during the summer, to get to know her younger brothers in a way she's failed to do so as she's explored her independence in her teenage years. She is changing, just as everything is changing around her.

It's an exceptionally sweet, charming, and lightly emotional film. It's wonderfully scripted by Park, and Stella, who cut her teeth on the TV series Nashville, carries this film ably and sublimely, like a Canadian Florence Pugh. She's a talent to watch. Plaza is only featured physically in the early and late stages of the film, but her very specific and well-known on-screen persona acts as a useful shorthand for us to understand Elliott (both now and in the future). She is a welcome presence and despite literally phoning in her role for much of the movie, invests a tremendous amount into the character that we only really see in the emotional closing minutes of the film.

I adored this movie.

[As I was writing this, I learned that Plaza's husband had died by suicide this week. Jeff Baena was a director, three of his films I had seen -- Joshy, The Little Hours and Horse Girl -- and he was still and emerging talent with a large support network, at least creatively. I am saddened by this loss. To my Toronto friends, if you or anyone you know is in need of mental health support, call 211.  Other Canadian resources can be found here. ]

---

There is definitely a divide in the reaction to Longlegs, at least from what I've seen. Critics have been praising it and planning it, audiences have been reacting much the same, with a plethora of 5* reviews, but even more 1* reviews. One thing for sure is the division has been profitable for the film's distributor, Neon, to the tune of over $125 million at the box office.

I avoided Longlegs when it was in theatres because it was already a zeitgeisty thing, and I tend to recoil when things get too popular. If it's already become a meme, I'm less willing to engage with it. Plus, I knew Longlegs came from The Blackcoat's Daughter director Osgood Perkins, and I hated that film. A friend petitioned me to watch Longlegs as he was curious my reaction to it, and a recent podcast episode of Comedy Bang Bang where Taran Killam played "Longlegs" in a sort of Emo Phillips-esque affectation spurred on my curiosity.

I hated this film.

As I watched it, I wondered if how I was reacting was just my preconceived dislike for Perkins, because visually, this is a striking movie. Perkins' stylizing of flashbacks as, like, super8 film, or his title cards, or throughout his framing in sequences are all so striking, I should be drawn to it. But his stylizing doesn't make up for the faults in his storytelling.

Like The Blackcoat's Daughter, Perkins' story works its way backwards and forwards to a semi-twist ending, but so much of his storytelling is the obvious and frustrating omission of information as to leave the twist to the finale.  These both are stories told where it's not so much the protagonist - in this case FBI rookie Lee Harker (Maika Monroe, in a performance which I'm not thrilled with, but is clearly what the director was asking for) - unfurling a mystery, but the story being a mystery to be unfurled for the audience through the storytelling of cinema(!). Oh, there are discoveries for Harker to make in the process, but we as the audience are intentionally having key things withheld from us that Harker already knows (as opposed to the common tension-raising device where we as the audience learn things ahead of the story's protagonist). It doesn't work for me, at all.

On top of that, the film presents Harker has having some low level telepathic or extrasensory ability, and just drops that nugget following a visually appealing but contextually confounding testing sequence, and then doesn't follow up on nor explore it. We're just supposed to accept it. Perkins wants this to be a reality where the paranormal exists, but also wants it to be real-world grounded, and he doesn't marry the two effectively. This feels like it is trying to be Silence of the Lambs married with some early Hollywood Cronenberg psychodrama vibes, but it doesn't come close. It doesn't help that its astoundingly clear Perkins has zero concept of how the FBI (or any investigative agency, for that matter) actually function. The investigation is a bigger fantasy than any of the metaphysical aspects of the film. 

Nic Cage plays Longlegs, the serial killer of the film, and does so in heavy falseface makeup that makes him look like Teddy Perkins in that great Atlanta episode. Cage is allowed to do his Cage thing and it is what it is. A lot of the divisiveness in audiences seems to stem from whether this performance is good or terrible. It's neither, it is just Cage and it didn't excite me one way or the other.

The film's ultimate reveal, for me, was simply unsatisfying. I had two or three other scenarios playing in my head as the film was withholding so much, all of which I would have found superior to what resulted, and yet would not have changed my opinion of the film.  I just didn't buy into anything this film was selling at any point. 

To Oz Perkins: you're an incredible stylist, please let someone else write for you. Until then, you're on my shit list.

But Is It Horror? Maybe to some, but I found it more frustrating than scary. I don't think Perkins ever really settled on whether it was suspense or horror, and that indecision is tangible.

[Toastypost - we disagree, vehemently]

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Long Distance

2024, Josh Gordon, Will Speck (The Switch) -- Amazon

Also called Distant. Also written about by Kent.

Random space-movie time during the Xmas Break, this one doing a typical riff on Pitch Black as in "crash on planet, survive ugly monsters, in the dark". And yet, despite being a "borrow most everything" kind of movie, it did have some interesting details.

OK, so Andy (Anthony Ramos, She's Gotta Have It) is a space miner on a sub-light starship, which means everyone is cryo sleeping, when the ship veers too close to an asteroid belt, catches some rock, and begins to break up. Andy is tossed into his escape pod which is installed with an AI assistant called LEONARD (its a long acronym for something) which is ... the value model. As his pod jets off, we see most others are destroyed upon launch or upon atmo entry -- they are just not very good "escape" pods, I guess. Also the value models?

After extracting himself from the wreckage, and constantly arguing with LEONARD (Zachary Quinto, Heroes), he comes across another survivor Dwayne (Kristofer Hivju, Cocaine Bear), a cockroach of a man -- this is not his first flirtation with disaster. Dwayne lets loose some details about the company only caring about the bottom line, which seems contradictory to his attempts to send a signal to The Company so they can be rescued. If The Company didn't care enough to give them fully functional escape pods, why would they send out a likely VERY expensive rescue ship? Also, if starship travel is generally in years, then why does Dwayne think it will only be about 18 months? Whatever, one of the charms of low budget space movies is all the logical fallacies and screenwriters who don't care they don't know much about space. No matter, Dwayne gets snatched by a Giant Monster as soon as Andy turns his back. Andy just assumes Dwayne dumped him and continues on his way.

Andy ends up making communications contact with Naomi (Naomi Scott, Charlie's Angels) who is trapped in her pod, but has plenty of air and supplies, enough for the both of them. Her pod was not the value model -- depending on your rank in The Company, the more likely you are to have actually serviceable gear. Maybe the rescue ship is only for them? Also, Andy's air is running out cuz value model space suits tear easily. LEONARD thinks Andy should just head to the remains of the ship, but Andy feels beholden to finding Naomi, even after he discovers that Giant Monsters are stalking him. 

Much of the movie focuses on the quippy, almost flirty conversations between Naomi and Andy. She knows she needs him and he knows she is so very much more capable than he is. And considering the entire walk is at night, the movie is able to keep its budget down, so that which it does give us is pretty decent. Its a good looking space movie. 

Eventually Andy does rescue Naomi and they do get to the remains to the crashed ship and they do survive being eaten by the Giant Monsters and find a safe place and enough supplies to await the company, which is completely only coming because Naomi is in the right social strata, to come pick them up.

Given, there is very little original about it, it still kept my attention with minimal annoyance beyond seeing Dwayne used as cannon fodder --- Kristofer Hivju deserves more work. Also, Anthony as Andy, and Naomi as Naomi... is there a phrase for when characters are provided the name of the actors playing them?

Nosferatu(s)

 ...or... Nosferathree?

Nosferatu - 2024, d. Robert Eggers - in theatre
Nosferatu the Vampyr - 1979, d. Werner Herzog - tubi
Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie Des Grauens - 1922, d. F.W. Murnau - youtube

The theatre I watched a midday screening of Robert Eggers' adaptation/iteration of Nosferatu was brutally cold. I had taken my winter wear off and placed it beside me when I sat down, but over the opening 20 minutes of the film, I started putting them back on, first draping my 3/4-length wool coat over my lap and legs, then wrapping my scarf around my neck, followed by pulling up the hood of my sweater and tossing my gloves back on. Eventually I had my coat in reverse draped over my shoulder and my hands clasped together underneath.

This was unintentional experiential cinema. Eggers' film is a chilly damn film as is. It is so desaturated and bereft of colour at times as to be completely black and white (the rhyme and reasoning of the actual black and white footage within the film I could not completely grok). Shadows, as well as the cold, have an equally heavy part to play in conveying the vibes of the film to the audience. The dark of the the theatre, especially a cold theatre, welcomes the light of the screen, and psychosomatically one can seemingly feel the heat emanating off the flames of a fireplace or candle that offer the only salvation from the frigid blackness.

Needless to say, I was kind of swept up in it all. While not outright scary, there's a simmering intensity that always threatens to erupt into a roiling boil if it can ever get up to temperature. There may be a startle or two in the film, but mostly it's just raising one's blood pressure (makes it all the faster to extract from one's veins).  It was my heartbeat shaking my whole body not shivers.

Nosferatu originated as a German bastardization of Dracula, a German production featuring German characters in a German setting for a German audience. Like a monster from a classic movie, F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu was targeted for its evil (copyright infringement against Bram Stoker's estate) and ordered destroyed...but still it survives.  What's more, Murnau's story is considered perhaps the superior of the early cinematic vampire tales. Much like Bram Stoker's Dracula by Coppola revitalized that classic tale in the 90's for modern audiences, restoring the character's menace after years of being reduced to a camp figure, I think Eggers' masterful expansion of Murnau's film into a gorgeous gothic epic will cement the Nosferatu as the superior cinematic vampire, even if Dracula remains the most widely recognized name.

What Eggers does with Murnau and Henrick Galeen's Dracula riff is quite remarkable. The allure of vampires has, for generations, been a sexual one, at least subtextually. The idea that the victim of a Count Dracula or Orlok is helpless before them, perhaps even drawn to them, and then, in some regards, excited or aroused by the act of bloodsucking has been made text before, but here it's the whole backdrop.

Ellen (played by Lily-Rose Depp, a long way away from Yoga Hosers) is the first face we see, a flashback to her younger years. If not immediately clear, the brief prologue finds Ellen in her burgeoning womanhood, lonely and longing for some form of connection. This draws Orlok to her, and a connection is formed through her desire, broken only upon meeting and wedding Thomas (Nicholas Hoult, About A Boy). Following their nuptuals, Thomas returns to work, eager to climb the ranks and provide for his wife, and is immediately assigned by Herr Knock to Count Orlok's affairs, as Orlok (a completely unrecognizable Bill Skarsgård, Barbarian) wishes to emigrate from his Transylvanian estate to a local Wisborg manor. Thomas is tasked with the extensive trek to Orlok's home to finalize the paperwork. What Thomas doesn't know is that Knock is Orlok's servant in darkness, and this all seems to be a set-up. 

Upon Thomas' arrival and, in a manner of speaking, subjugation at Orlok's castle, Ellen's connection to Orlok returns, and her troubles worry her friends to whom her care was entrusted. They seek the help of a doctor who, after long bouts of sedation, speculates that her disposition may be supernatural in nature, and turns to an blackballed professor Von Franz (Willem Dafoe).

In Eggers' telling, it's not just that Orlok is enamoured with Ellen, but he's metaphysically drawn to her. Von Franz discerns that Ellen is possessed, and the incoporeal being inside her is what has enthralled the Count, but it was her primal urges that let it in (Depp's physical performance in expressing the possession is incredible and unsettling). The metaphor here of women's sexual awakening, and demonization at the hands of the patriarchy, is pretty exposed, but necessary in its bluntless.

I had not seen Nosferatu in any of its iterations before (I may have read a comic adaptation once...maybe), and yet its story was not unfamiliar to me (as it is such a spin on the Dracula tale). But the spin I love is how Orlok's travels from Transylvania to Wisborg brings with him plague, first on the ship he and his caskets are transported upon, and then upon arriving to the town's shores.  The rats that spill out from the ship then become an ever-present backdrop within the film. (Seriously, if you have musophobia, avoid this or any of the Nosferatu films). 

Where the first act is largely Thomas' story, and the second act is squarely Ellen's, the third is devoted to the shadow of the vampire.  It's not Orlok's character that gets explored, but his impact upon everyone and everything as his plague spreads.

Having immediately turned to watching, in reverse order, the Herzog version and the Murnau version, I had thought Ellen's bravery at facing Orlok on her own to be Eggers' invention, as she is the clear hero of the story, but no, this is an element present in each of the tales. If anything, in the prior versions, it's Ellen's own initiative that she does this, whereas in Eggers it is partly by Von Franz's suggestion.  It doesn't rob her explicitly of any agency, and it is a more logical solution that this man who studies the occult does have the answer, but I think Ellen finding the answer on her own is just that much more resonant.

The production of Eggers' Nosferatu is gorgeous and massive and so particular and detailed. It is a feast in its own right. But what Eggers does, which neither Murnau nor Herzog do in their versions, is tell a story that is character-centric. Eggers invests in Ellen and Thomas and the Hardings in a way that neither previous films does. Eggers shrouds Orlok in shadows for much of the film, he's a towering, intimidating figure with an affected, slow, rolling, gravelly Balkan accent that forces your attention upon him, but you never see him clearly, not until the final moments of the film.  It's a stark juxtaposition to the Max Schreck and Klaus Kinski versions who are thin, sallow, and intimidating more in their eeriness than any physical threat. They are presented in stark light, casting shadows darkly behind them, instead of living among them. It's a pointed difference.

The Herzog version, now 45 years old, is a tough watch. Herzog has his ways about him, some good, some not-so-good, and those ways are quite present in his adaptation. For some odd reason, Herzog decided to revert the characters to the Bram Stoker-originated names. Huller becomes Harker once more, Ellen is Mina, Orlok is Dracula, and Knock is Renfield.  It didn't seem right, Nosferatu having taken on its own distinct life, to marry it so boldly back to its source (it would be like turning the 50 Shades of Grey characters back into Twilight figures).

Herzog casts his best frenemy Kinski as Dracula, the stunning Isabelle Adjani as Mina, and Bruno Ganz (looking distractingly like Noel Fielding here) as Jonathan Harker. It seems the majority of the other roles were just people pulled into production, and not professional actors. There's a real fly-by-night, no-rehearsal atmosphere to this. The actors all seem all be at odds with the material, and there's no tangible connection between the ADR line readings and the material. If Eggars' version was a cold production because of the atmosphere of the film, Herzog's version is a cold one by the sheer detachment everyone seems to have with the material.

If anything, Herzog's desire is to capture the imagery of the original but in his own manner. There's clearly reverence to Murnau's film, but also deference. Herzog retains or directly translates scenes from Murnau's film that should have been modernized for a "talkie" or adapted into his own sensibilities.

The edits in Herzog's films lack fluidity. It's a staccato production that doesn't seem to possess an inner logic of its own, the events that happen seem to happen as reference to the classic film, not as its own story progression.

As much as I found this 1979 production of Nosferatu to be stiff and very, very awkward, it does feature some affectionately captured imagery of the Czech countryside and the city sequences in Delft, Netherlands (standing in for Wisborg).  The film also features an immensely powerful score with music by the collective called Popol Vuh -- and including some classical tracks and folk songs -- but it's never more potent than in the opening moments as Herzog-the-documentarian lingers on imagery of real Mexican mummies (the Mummies of Guanajuato) which become more unsettling the more you stare at them... the expectation that they will move, or are moving is hard to escape.

Kinski's Orlok is, as to be expected from the performer, quite an odd presence. There's no outright threat that Orlok presents, but there is an inferred menace. Kinski's vocal performance is pinched, quite, a bit whiny, and his demure physicality (borrowed from Schreck but even further receded into itself) has a certain self-consciousness to it. In none of the films do we see anyone else present at Orlok's estate (he notes that the staff has been dismissed for the evening upon Thomas/Jonathan/Hutter's arrival, but it's later clear there is no one, just Orlok) but it's only in Herzog's film to we feel that absurd loneliness, and the realization that the elaborate feasts prepared for Jonathan were made by Orlok. Just the image of him in a kitchen slaving away all night (and then for Jonathan to only eat the grapes!) is absurd and hilarious.  We find Orlok doing his own physical labour, many times, and he comes off as a sad, lonely old vampire, a weaselly wimp who would not be worth paying any attention to if not for his control over the plague he's brought.

Herzog did unleash his own plague of rats on the location of this film, and while it's much more staged than the presumably cgi-accentuate rats of Eggar's version, the ever-presence of rats in the third act is just as squick-inducing.  There were allegations that Herzog's treatment of the rats and other animals were exceptionally inhumane, which makes this already disappointing film that much harder to like.

Stepping back to Murnau's original silent black-and-white, I first had to find a version that didn't seem too modern. The iterations that first pop up on Tubi or YouTube have a score that seems far too modern. The version I wound up watching had a vibrant orchestral score, but  Hans Erdmann's original orchestral score for the film is mostly lost to time with only partial elements preserved. I believe score for this 2005/2006 restoration was by Berndt Heller, and serves the film well by and large.

The cards in this restoration are said to be the original German cards (with new English subtitles), and what's interesting is much of the tale is being told to the audience by a narrator.  I'm not sure if the narrator is intended to be a character in the film... I suspect it could be Harding, the shipowner, but it's not conclusive.  Unlike later "talkies" which have a narration which intones the telling of a tale, this narration doesn't at all take away the immediacy of the story. It's the magic of silent films.

I was worried after watching Herzog's film that Murnau's original would be similarly stilted in its storytelling, but it is an absolutely fluid tale, with Murnau at times getting lost in the minutiae of it all (especially in the plague scenes). The transitional moments is clearly what was missing from Herzog's film, but they rarely feel labored here, instead providing necessary context and an overall natural sense to the world.

Like I mentioned with Herzog's version, Murnau's story is straight story, not incredibly focused on character or motivation. In a radical departure from what would come in the later adaptations, Huller here (played by Gustav von Wangenheim) is an exceptionally happy-go-lucky fellow. He seems overjoyed by the opportunity presented to him by Herr Knock, and every step of the way, up until the moment he reaches the castle, he approaches with the dopiest smile on his face. At one point a Romani woman gives him a book about vampyrs, witchcraft and the like and he looks at it briefly before tossing it carelessly over his shoulders and falling off to a troubleless sleep. In the morning he picks it up again, has a good laugh, and throws it to the ground mockingly.  This performance reminded me of much of Billy Magnussen's repertoire of playing conceited idiots too ignorant to see the trouble before them. 

This tone to Huller, of being just a generally jovial fellow, is so starkly different than what either Ganz or Hoult did with the character, that it doesn't convey nearly the same foreboding sense of doom before him. And yet, being so upbeat, it kind of accentuates the threat to the shadows that will fall upon him. The score finds a middle ground between foreshadowing and Huller's mirthful attitude, but the moment he encounters Orlok, in the guise as his own coachman, it goes to full symphonic intensity.

Murnau's version is never scary, because it never truly invests us in the figures at play, but it is exceptionally accomplished in its storytelling and its clarity of intent. The first act here is mirrored very similarly by its successors, but the second act is largely transitional. The events on the boat, which heavily foreshadow the plague to come, continue to build the menace that comes to full fruition in the third act, but there's no characters carrying us there.  

The spread of plague is and the city's reaction to it is, as in Herzog's version, my favourite part, but for very different reasons. Here it's the details, the specificity, the measures the town goes through to try and alert people to the plague and to halt its progression. It's all for naught as it's not a common plague.

After consuming all three films in a 24 span, I can safely say that Eggers' version is my clear favourite. It's the only one of the three that held me rapt in attention. It seemingly embraces both Herzog and Murnau's versions, and takes many steps beyond what both of them even attempted to accomplish with the story.  It's not a perfect film (held back only by some puzzlingly abrupt cuts and perhaps too theatrical of a performance from Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Harding) but it is so very strikingly visual and takes the story and characters to a whole other level. Murnau's version is a classic, and retains some vitality over 100 years later, if now completely overshadowed by Eggers' revision (the only thing that won't be bettered is the visual of Count Orlok, which is a permanent fixture in pop culture). Herzog's version can just fade into the background as irrelevant.

Watching: The Lincoln Lawyer S3

2024, Netflix

I am tempted to not write about this show that I thoroughly enjoy, even so far as to anticipate that I am on season 3, in an era where so much I enjoy gets cancelled after season one. But the problem is that I am not watching any particular reason (a crime to solve, brilliant lawyer antics) but for the characters. I just so much like the characters, and I never stop talking about how I like shows with likeable characters. And the more the climate of the world makes all parties playing unlikeable, and the more my own toxic work environment makes me wonder if "niceness" is a myth, the more I gravitate towards decently written, decent people.

As I have said before, its hard to do these TV posts about later seasons, because.... do I explain the premise all over (dude, its not "all over again" because you have never actually written about the show before), or forget about all of that and just talk as if you already know everything? 

What 100. Last season ended with Mickey (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Pedro Páramo) taking on new client Julian La Cosse (Devon Graye, Nope), a tech mogul accused of killing Giselle Dallinger, who turns out to be Mickey's old client Glory Days (Fiona Rene, Tracker), who he assumed had left her prostitute life and returned to Hawai'i. Mickey is determined to defend La Cosse, but also find out who actually killed Glory, and why. Meanwhile Izzy (Jazz Raycole, The Quad) is replaced by an old babysitter Eddie Rojas (Allyn Moriyon, acting debut), as driver of the Lincoln(s) while Lorna preps for and passes the bar exam, to become Mickey's partner in the firm. Mickey's attempt to have a relationship with rival lawyer Freeman, but fails.

1 Great. To be honest, for me, the entire season was about Mickey's case manager & legal assistant Lorna (Becki Newton, Love Bites), who happens to also be his ex-wife (second ex-wife) getting her law degree. Lorna is portrayed as a bit of a ditz with flashy clothes and a cliche LA attitude -- an easily dismissed woman. But she was also always portrayed as whip smart and its no surprise she, despite some imposter syndrome, passes the bar exam on first try, with flying colours. And immediately Mickey installs her as a partner (fellow lawyer?) in his firm, but not without using the offer letter she typed up for him. She's fearless and fierce and I spent the entire season rooting for her.

1 Good. (look at you, using the format properly) The continuity and connectivity to previous seasons and characters. The show could take on the "case of the week" aspect, but being a Netflix series and not broadcast network, it has to have a more contiguous feel. Reaching back to season one for characters to expand upon the dangerous circles Mickey runs in felt like the showrunners know this show, and its characters, and its world.

1 Bad. The fridging of secondary characters for a bit of into and mid season drama. The season has to start with a shock that Glory Days has been murdered, which is annoying. But later on, they have introduced a character that I frankly didn't trust for most of the season, having expected him to emerge as some sort of mole or having an ulterior motive. Instead, they kill him off in a flash of violence, to remind Mickey and the viewers how dangerous the people he is going up against are. It was upsetting for the sake of drama.

KWIF: 10 for 10

[KWIF=Kent's Week in Film
10 for 10... that's 10 movies, each written about in 10 minutes. It's an old format I'm dusting off because I have way too much in the backlog.]

This Week:

1. They Came Together (2014, d. David Wain - tubi)
2. Yacht Rock: A DOCKumentary (2024, d. Garrett Price - hbo/crave)
3. Streets of Fire (1984, d. Walter Hill - blu-ray)
4. Gladiator II aka GladIIator (2024, d. Ridley Scott - in theatre)
5. Carry On (2024, d. Jaume Collet-Serra  - netflix)
6. Drive Away Dolls (2024, d. Ethan Coen - amazonprime)
7. Distant aka Long Distance (2024, d. Will Speck and Josh Gordon - amazonprime)
8. Polar (2019, d. Jonas Akerlund - netflix)
9. Outland (1981, d. Peter Hyams , hollywood suite)
10. The Thirteenth Floor (1999, d. Josef Rusnak - hollywood suite)

---

I saw the Paul Rudd/ex-Saturday Night Live star (in this case Tina Fey) romcom Admission a few years back and it was slight but enjoyable-ish in its straightforwardness. We Came Together has been popping up on Amazon, Netflix and Tubi over the years and I thought, given that it was Paul Rudd paired with an ex-SNL star (in this case Amy Poehler) that it would be much the same.

I hadn't realized it was from writer/director David Wain (of The State/Stella/Wet Hot American Summer), and it was aiming for a Zucker/Abrams/Zucker-style parody of romcoms. It's marginally successful.

If you've watched Wain's work before with the likes of Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter, then you will have an idea of what to expect. Arch, very winking, fourth-wall breaking, and a lot of word play and juvenile humour and visual gags, often in the same beat.  The style is very rapid-fire and try-anything.  The problem with this style is it's not refined or honed, and it comes off as sloppy and unfocussed more often than it comes off as funny, even if there is much funny to be had.  

---

Yacht Rock is a musical genre coined by four comedy writers for a web series that was a satirical reenactment of a specific era and sound of music in the late 70's and early 80's. Yacht Rock, as a term, did not exist before this comedy web series that was both taking the piss out of the dominant personalities of the genre and a loving tribute to them and the music they were making. Sometimes something can be both respectful and disrespectful at the same time.

The men who coined "Yacht Rock" have also been acting as the gatekeepers of what is and isn't "yacht" via podcasts since the mid 2010s where they judge whether user-submitted songs are "yacht or nyacht", but the genre has, since its gestation, gotten out of their control. There are ironic parties playing yacht rock music where everyone wears captains hats and boat shoes, and there are dedicated satellite radio channels just for yacht rock music.

Director Garret Price decided to unpack this retroactively coined "genre" of music with the musicians whose music has been subsumed by the genre. People like Kenny Loggins, Michael McDonald, and Christopher Cross, and bands like the Doobie Brothers, Toto and Steely Dan.  As important, if not moreso, are the people behind the scenes like the session musicians like Steve Lukather, the Pokaro brothers and Jay Graydon.  

This is a fun, but hardly robust documentary. It covers all the ground it needs to in pretty expedient time, but there's not a lot of depth. As most of the artists interviewed state, they were just playing the music they liked to play, there was never any concept of a genre beneath it.  Some have argued, there is no actual genre there, just the whims of four comedy writers. 

---

I recall seeing Streets of Fire in the video store as far back as I can remember going to video stores. Streets of Fire always seemed like a "video store" movie. I never really knew what it was about, or even what type of movie it was. I guess I just assumed it was a crime drama, something that has never been of great interest.

Recently YouTube essayist Patrick Willems did an extensive video on his love for Streets of Fire, a film he acknowledges has its problems, but he feels has merits that outweigh its problems.  What stuck out most to me, having watched that essay, was Willems' insistence that the opening 20 minutes of Streets of Fire are, for lack of a better term, pure fire, and that the ending comes close to reaching the same heights. The middle is a bit mushier.

Willems was right, the opening moments of Streets of Fire are absolutely lit up, with a massively energetic rock opera track in the vein of Meat Loaf or Bonnie Tyler (because the opening and closing songs were written by Jim Steinman, who wrote rock opera hits like "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" of which opening track "Nowhere Fast" and closing track "Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young" are easy-fitting siblings of).

Streets of Fire is also a gorgeous-looking film, sweat-soaked streets - like it always just rained - reflect the vibrant neons that light up the backlot of an unnamed city where pillars holding up a skyrail interrupt every street. It's fantasy city, like Gotham, but much more condensed and even grottier. 

It's just too bad then that the film's exceptionally weird tone and style of 40's noir, 50's greasers and 80's rock just don't blend, especially when you add a Ry Cooter score that sounds like it belongs on The Dukes of Hazzard and not a semi-dystopian greaser-punk near-musical.

It's a weird one.

---

I own a copy of Ridley Scott's Gladiator on DVD. I'm sure most guys who were 20-something in the year 2000 do. It was like we were mandated to have one.  But I haven't watched the film in a very, very long time. I'm sure it's still a good watch, there's just little there to entice me.

So if I don't really have any love or affection for Gladiator, why would I bother with Gladiator II, you might ask? Because I heard there was a scene where they fill the Colosseum with water and shark and the gladiators have a big boat fight.  This level of audacious absurdity was really the only direction to go if you wanted to get butts in seats for a nearly-25-years-later sequel to a beloved Oscar-winning hit.

The film is pretty much pure spectacle while pretending to have some sort of anti-monarchy/pro-democracy stance. It has just enough substance to it to not be totally trashy, and Denzel Washington as a behind-the-scenes manipulator carries the movie, though Paul Mezcal's young, hot titular gladiator is appealing enough.  

I honestly don't have much to say about Gladiator II, except that if you like this sort of thing, then you will like this sort of thing.

[Toastypost - we agree]

---

We haven't had a competent mid-range action-thriller like Carry-On for a while. A young TSA agent is blackmailed by a high-tech mercenary black-ops team into letting a bag through security screening. The TSA agent clearly believes the threat on the other end of the earpiece he's been handed, but he also just can't let the bad guys get away with whatever it is they're trying to get away with.

What results is a tense, pulpy cat-and-mouse game where the cat is tracking every movement the mouse is making, but the mouse is just sly enough to get away with the occasional movement. 

Carry-On is a pretty taut action-thriller that of course feels Die Hard/Die Hard 2 inspired, but also Speed and a dozen other entries in the genre. It is not at any point exceptionally unique, but it does what it does very well. The minimal backstory on our protagonist, played by Taron Egerton (Robin Hood), is just enough that we get the sense of a man who has been coasting, underperforming, and unsure of how to step up in life. Here he finds his moment, and Egerton plays this everyman, and his struggle with confidence but also his determination quite well. The main bad guy is, surprisingly, Jason Bateman. Even more surprising is how effective Bateman is at shedding any sense of being the comedic straight man, and being a damned cold-hearted capitalistic bastard.

It's a really fun watch, one of Netflix's best originals this year.

[Toastypost - we agree-ish]

---

Drive-Away Dolls (aka Drive-Away Dykes) is the first solo directed narrative film from Ethan Coen (one half of the Coen Brothers pairing). Co-written with his wife, editor Tricia Cooke, it follows lesbian friends as they take a "drive-away" gig (wherein you are basically driving a car from one destination to another for compensation) in order to get out of town after Jamie (Margaret Qualley) has a bad break-up with her cop girlfriend (Beanie Feldstein).  Unfortunately there's a mix-up at the drive-away agency and they wind up getting the wrong car with the wrong items.  They are pursued by the mobsters who want the item recovered, but the women decide to take a series of lesbian-hotspot detours which are effective at throwing the mobsters off their trail.

It's hormone-fuelled (and sex-filled) journey as Jamie is flirty and dirty, while her traveling companion Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) is buttoned-up and reserved. Jamie wants to loosen Marian up, and Marian just wants to read her book.

The mobsters (Joey Slotnick and CJ Wilson) are patented bumbling boobs in the Coen vein. Obviously they have some proficiency, or else they wouldn't be given any job to do other than clean toilets, but their proficiencies are definitely lacking refinement. Coleman Domingo, an always welcome presence, plays their boss, and Bill Camp's Curlie, the drive-away owner, needs a film (at least a short film) of his own.

The film is briskly paced at 84 minutes, and is maybe ever-so-slighly undercooked, in an over-before-it-begins kind of way, but I think I like it more for its lack of overstaying its welcome. The maguffin of the piece is so absurd that once it's revealed it's best it books it for the finale rather than lingering with it too long.

The artsy flourishes, particularly the weird 60's kaleidoscope/lava-lamp LSD-tripping interstitials are so out of place, and yet has its relevance. I recall disliking The Big Lebowski's weird flourishes on first watch too, so maybe they will grow on me. 

[Toastypost - we agree]

---

I don't tend to go into any film cold anymore. I've always seen a trailer, or read a review, or heard discussion on a podcast. There's always some prior awareness that draws me to a film (or repels me from).

Distant, aka Long Distance, just popped up on AmazonPrime with no fanfare and no promotion (at least, not to me). It featured an image of two people in space suits with an alien-looking-planetary backdrop, something which used to be an immediate interest pique, but these days elicits more of an eye roll as there's so many low-budget sci-fi stranded-in-space movies that pop up on streaming, especially Amazon and Tubi.

I clicked the "trailer" button and the brief clip it started showing (not a trailer) had good enough production values that I just pressed play on the movie. 

Starring Anthony Ramos (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts), the film opens with an asteroid colliding with a large bulky cruiser of a space ship. It's passengers are in long-range hibernation when the alarms go off, and they're all ejected in pod into space hurtling towards a nearby planet. Most burn up in the atmosphere. Ramos survives. He's on alien terrain in a space suit low on oxygen and there are hostile creatures stalking him. On his comm, he's talking to another survivor, pinned in her pod, and he must make the "long distance" trek to her while they connect as distant voices.

There is very little original about this film, but it manages to scratch a very satisfying itch. It does what it does inoffensively enough, and with a very healthy production that propels it well past other low budget features that try to do the same thing.  It's not an immediate favourite, but I was engaged throughout.

---

Despite what I said about Carry-On above, Netflix's reputation, generally, is that it makes terrible (or, if I'm being generous, not so great) movies. Polar is a prime example of this, a Netflix original, adapted from a comic book, by a director who is primarily experienced in working with musicians on concert videos, music videos or documentaries. The flash-over-substance of music videos really doesn't translate into feature-length storytelling, even if some of our best directors of the 90's and 2000s came out of music video production (like David Fincher or Spike Jonze).

Polar is an unchecked production, clearly having little oversight from the producers. It is a tonal mess of a movie that looks to capture the frenetic energy of a Crank-like action feature, riddle itself with excessive sex and nudity, and at the same time attempt to have a pensive reflections of later-in-life character looking to retire from his profession as a hitman.

It's an assaulting production (as well as an insulting production) that features an assassin character whose "finishing move" is to get her target into position of her sniper by giving him a blow job. The opening sequence of the film find a just-killed Johnny Knoxville's erect penis going flaccid (beneath his swim trunks I should clarify), which then cuts to a very sombre, sterile medical examination of star Mads Mikkelsen. That's the tonal whiplash of this film in a nutshell.

The thrust of the plot is that the organization Mads has worked for is pruning all their retired-or-retiring assassins to save on their pension. Hell, if this were a smarter, more contemplative movie, they could have really said something about the nature of big business and how they undermine the working class, but it's anything but a smart movie. 

I don't even know how, in the time I have left (I'm over time) to talk about the whole subplot featuring Vanessa Hudgens as a traumatized neighbour who Mads befriends.  It's like something out of a completely different movie. This was bad.

[Toastypost - we agree]

---

It's quite amazing that a film like Outland exists. Made in the wake of Star Wars fever, Peter Hyams' stab at a "space" movie is so not interested trying to be Star Wars. Instead he seemed to take more inspiration from the grimy, industrialized future of Alien, minus any aliens.

Set at a mining colony on the moon of Jupiter Io, it's a suspense thriller about a newly assigned marshall (Sean Connory) who starts looking into the increasing rash of deaths happening in the colony, only to find drugs and conspiracy.

I had seen Outland a couple decades ago and it stuck with me how low-key the film was, in terms of its sci-fi elements. It could have been a thriller set in any remote mining town at any time, but the choice to set it in space and capitalize upon Star Wars mania was a brilliant stroke.  The sets are like a mix of industrial working environments, 1980's near-future technology, and prison-like living conditions. It's a sweaty, unpleasant looking atmosphere, where it seems everyone is just trying to get through their tour.

But Hyams makes sure to put his space environment to good use, adding it as the dangerous x-factor in the whole scenario. The deadly vaccuum of the inhospitable Io environment is made know pretty quick.

The mystery and dangers aren't complex or anything revolutionary, but this remains a hidden gem of 80's sci-fi.

---

I wrote about Rainer Werner Fassbinder's TV mini-series World on a Wire, about 15 months ago, and found it to be an incredibly surprising, engrossing, and far ahead of its time in terms of how it contemplated virtual realities and artificial life, as well as being really sharply made with some brilliant choices that used its budgetary limitations to its storytelling advantage.

The series was based on the novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye from 1964, putting these ideas of simulated reality even further ahead of its time. I was surprised to learn that the 1999 flop The Thirteenth Floor was based off the same story, because The Thirteenth Floor left no impact on me whatsoever. 

My meagre recollection of the film was merely that I didn't particularly love it nor did it make any cultural dent.  It was released in the wake of The Matrix, which, as we all know, had its own take on simulated reality and had the benefit of revolutionizing filmmaking and being a complete visual spectacle, among other things.

The Thirteenth Floor really couldn't help but be seen as a poor man's also-ran.

The film opens with Armin Mueller-Stahl inhabiting a glossy 1930's reality where he's clearly living the high life, only to learn that he's actually from 2024 and was engaging in a very realistic VR.  He is killed at a nearby bar and his successor in the tech firm, played by Craig Bierko, investigates his death in two realities while also being suspect number one of police detective Dennis Haysbert.  And in walks Gretchen Mol, as the femme fatale of this very noir-styled techno-thriller, who claims to be Mueller-Stahl's daughter, and the rightful heir to the company and claims it was her father's wish to shut it all down.

It's honestly not a bad production. Its 1930's replication looks really amazing, and it's layered realities storytelling is competently handled. It's key problem is the worlds the film inhabits feel pretty claustrophobic.  There's really only about five meaningful characters in the whole production, which hems the film in as it tries to tease out a murder mystery.  I suppose since I was already familiar with the story's foundations there weren't many surprises to be had anyway.  This film is fine if you're, say, bored of the Matrix, or as an exercise after watching World on a Wire if you can track it down.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Gladiator II

2024, Ridley Scott (Napoleon) -- cinema

I don't remember much about the first movie. Its been years, likely decades since I saw the 2000 flick. Sure, it was great then, all spectacle and excitement, but obviously, nothing has compelled me to return to it. I am not a Ridley Scott fan, but nor am I a detractor. He just ... is. That said, I do own Kingdom of Heaven, its on The Shelf, and I semi-regularly watch it. But not Gladiator.

Weird, but I also have anachronistic memories of this movie, as in I feel like I saw it in late-high school, back when everything "swords and...." would have been fodder for my D&D games, and I can viscerally remember applying the cool Maximus face mask to a character.

It also should be said that I went to this movie because in Sault Ste-Marie, ON, everything is pretty much closed on a Tuesday AND the snow storm that started when I arrived on Monday morning had not yet abated, so I trailed along behind Chatzz to see the movie. He is still of that age where he absolutely LOVES movies, seeing them in the cinema, the whole experience. Otherwise, I would probably have waited to pirate this movie.

So, that means I did not catch up before going to see. I recall he died. I recall he had a son. The movies does some brief, in story, recapping for us but mainly the movie is about Rome some 25 years later, the latest conquers, the latest turmoil and how Maximus's son fits into it all.

Its a two and a half hour movie I spent the trailing third twitching painfully in my seat. My personal seat does not like sitting that long, and it takes a LOT of distraction / attention span to ignore the inevitable pain. This movie did not distract nor keep my attention well enough, which should say enough.

So, some 25 years later, Rome is one again in dire straits. The latest loons running the empire are the brothers Geta (Joseph Quinn, Stranger Things) and Caracalla (Fred Henchinger, Kraven: the Hunter), bolstered in power by their favourite general Acacius (Pedro Pascal, The Mandalorian), who starts the movie by taking the last independent city in Africa, the Kingdom of Numidia, where Maximus's son, though you are not supposed to immediately realize this, but really, who wouldn't guess, is hiding out under the name of Hanno (Paul Mescal, Normal People). Acacius's invasion is successful and Hanno witnesses his wife's death and the enslavement of those left alive.

In Rome, the empire, not the city, when they make land in Ostia, Hanno is immediately sold to gladiator ... (googles) ... lanista named Macrinus (Denzel Washington, The Equalizer), after impressing him with his savagery. That brings him to Rome proper where  he gets mixed up in Macrinus's plots & machinations. Meanwhile, Acacius is denied the right to retire from war, and gets up in the plots & machinations of his wife and a group of Senators who wish to depose the Emperors.

Plots & Machinations. Yawn. I watched the first episode of the newish Amazon series called Those About to Die, and I realize that this is what these shows are always about, so I want to see a wee bit more to keep my attention. I also wanted .... more spectacle? I can usually be distracted from my boredom by Big Bombastic Scenes, but .... it all felt just too familiar? I mean, the only thing I was ever impressed by in this movie was Macrinus's sleeves, and in general, Denzel Washington as this character. I was just intrigued by him at every turn, as just when you think you got where he was going, he went one step further and basically did a speed run from running a dusty gladiator ring in the provinces (think of the place where Conan the Barbarian learned to fight) to (SPOILERS !!) taking down two emperors. Maybe if he hadn't moved so fast, he might have survived.

Recently, I came to a realization that I generally don't have much to write about movies that I really enjoy because I have rewired my brain to focus on complaining. Its not just in the media I watch, but also in my life in general. Ask me "how are you?" and if I don't have anything to complain about, I don't have much to say in general. But get me started and.... And yet, I don't have much to complain about this movie, I just ... don't have much to say.

Watching: Star Trek: Lower Decks S1-5

2020-2024, download

For some reason I was biased against this show when it first aired. More likely I was biased against the comedic stylings of the show, lumping it into the same category as many other prime time animated shows I don't care for, e.g. Bob's Burgers. But then Marmy started watching, and I walked in a few times, and I was amazed -- you see, she doesn't like Star Trek and will barely tolerate me watching it, let alone enjoying it herself. But at the same time this is a legit Star Trek show, it is also gently mocking everything, and it has a wonderful lampooning of all things Star Trek, particularly a focus on TNG.

What 100. It is chronologically happening just after the TNG series, and we are onboard the California-class starship Cerritos. Our main characters are not the bridge crew, like every other show, but the lower ranks crew from the "lower decks", as in literally the bottom of the ship, where they all live in bunk beds in a hallway, not cabins of their own. The ship's assignment is "second contact", after all the glorious work is done with, to get papers signed. Buuut, because they are a show they end up getting mixed up in ALL kinds of major events, usually blundering into them.

1 Great. For me, it was the callouts to all the Star Trek mythos: an ExoComp, from TNG episode where Data discovers utility robots have become sentient, who calls herself Peanut Hamper, Lt Dayshon, a Tamarian ("Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra"), assigned as Security Officer, Boimler gets a "transporter clone" who ends up playing a role all the way to the final episode, the crew uses a magical-techno doohickey to prank call Armus, the oil blob that killed Tasha Yar, apparently Mariner was in the academy with Wesley Crusher, Sito Jax and Nick Locarno and they even call out how much Locarno looks like Tom Paris, Ensign Olly who is descended from the Greek Gods who appeared in an Original Series episode, and of course, the opening credits to each show which depict a battle between The BORG and an continually increasing number of Star Trek villains/characters, including V'Ger, a Crystalline Entity and the Big Green Hand, from the aforementioned Greek Gods episode. The callouts are done both as fanservice and as continuity commentary on ALL Star Trek series, including the Animated Series.

1 Good. The Lower Decks crew we follow who include: Becky Mariner, a disruptive, insubordinate Ensign who has been kicked off a bunch of ships and ends up on the Ceritos, captained by her mother, but who is also the cliche "good at everything" typical Trek character; Bradward Boimler, who is basically a nerdy, Star Trek super-fan who probably would have been promoted long ago if he wasn't so annoying; D'Vana Tendi an Orion who prefers science over piracy, and Samanthan Rutherford, an ensign with a cyborg implant who also happens to be a great engineer. The show is really about friendship and the ties it creates, as the characters become close, sometimes romantically so sometimes not -- the tie between Mariner and Boimler is the strongest of any characters in the show and neither has any romantic interest in the other, usually eliciting an "ew" if brought up. All the characters get to grow, eventually becoming the bridge crew they spend so much of the series complaining about.

1 Bad. If I could say anything was bad about the series it was that it had to have the main characters end up being promoted up from The Lower Decks into "bridge crew" officer roles. I get that this has to happen in order for a series to progress, as you cannot spend entire season after season focusing on the elevator pitch for the show, but I felt it could have continued to explore the unexpected, unknown aspects of being on a Federation starship, instead of becoming "the Next Generation with humour" it evolves into.

Further META: The show ended after five seasons with some wacky "multiverse" hijinks that added to the whole "mirror universe" mythology which I really hope plays into OTHER Star Trek series, and considering they have already done a cross-over episode between it and Strange New Worlds (where they don't call out that Kirk is not TOS Kirk), there might be some fun to be had in future series.

Xmas Leftovers: There's Something in the Barn

2023, Magnus Martens (TV Good Behaviour) -- download

I never got from Kent's post that this was an actual Norwegian movie, and with all those opening shots and all that real, GLORIOUS snow, I somehow expected more of the movie. I mean, I have more of a tolerance for terrible horrible movies than Kent does, and if he kind of liked it, I thought it would be decent enough? 

No, not really.

Bill Nordheim (Martin Starr, Spider-Man: Homecoming) is Norwegian-American and is bringing his family from California to Norway, to the house he inherited after his uncle passed. They must be really down on their luck to make such a massive move. At first I assumed they were just coming here for Xmas to close up his uncle's affairs, and show the kids where he comes from, but no, they want to start a B&B.

On the land is a barn, and in that barn is a "barn elf", a "Nisser", basically what IKEA has distilled into a gnome. But like all mythos, all is not soft and cuddly and cute; there are rules to be followed when you have a resident elf, and of course, the movie is all about breaking those rules so that we can have the elf go all "don't feed the gremlin after midnight" on the family.

This is a very sloppy, uneven movie, that despite itself, was ... kind of fun? I mean, its not like Gremlins was considered Oscar material in its time, but that is it with the comparisons, because at its heart, Gremlins had heart; this movie does not really. I don't like the family, and while they are not horrible, they are cardboard "family with issues". Teen Daughter, who I couldn't get past her Norwegian accent constantly slipping through, is typical dismissive and cranky, Dad is an oblivious buffoon, Step Mom is annoyingly optimistic, but by design, as she is a life-coach, and the kid is the kid. Meanwhile, the village Norwegians are basically the country's versions of country bumpkins, present only to fill background and die at the hands of the angry elfs. You would think there would be a rule that the elfs are not allowed to harm humans other than who angered them. I mean, if they go around killing willy nilly everytime they get pissed off, you would think there would be professional elf hunters taking out the pesky buggers.

Its a horror movie, so of course there have to be deaths, but mostly its just chase chase chase, with only a few incidental deaths so the family can be dabbed in blood in later scenes. The deaths are not particularly inventive nor do they really try to, but these elfs are not exactly invulnerable supernatural killing machines. A few self inflicted gunshots takes some down and a broom handle makes a nice skewer. For the most part, they are just scary murderous little folk. And, as Kent also said, better to just rewatch Rare Exports and its exploration of Xmas Horror.