3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Brick

2025, Philip Koch (Play) -- Netflix

Kent's post.

I never wrote about Rec, the Spanish horror movie (but did about the sequel, during another year's "31 Days of Halloween" series; and used the remake Quarantine as a filler for this year's) but it starts with people waking up inside a building that has been tarped over due a viral breakout. They are quarantined inside the building because someone inside is infected. I came into this movie assuming it was going to go with the same premise, just updated for technological obsessions. Maybe it would be tech, maybe it would be aliens.

Is saying what the movie is NOT a Spoiler? If Yes, then stop now, do not pass Go, pay $200.

Disappointed it was not aliens. Would have been great for them to finally break through the brick wall to find themselves on an alien planet.

Anywayz, Tim (Matthias Schweighöfer, Army of Thieves) and Olivia (Rubby O Fee, Army of Thieves) are going through a rough patch, as they say. Not so long ago they lost their child in miscarriage, and neither are dealing with it well. Well, more Tim than Olivia, and on that fateful night, she offers him a lifeline -- drop the video game he is obsessively working on and just drive to Paris; drop everything, start anew. He refuses. The next morning, they find the doors, windows and pretty much everything are bricked up. Not quite brick, but some weird geometric pattern of an unknown material. And its cut off much, like water, cellular service and Internet, but not air or electricity. Their differences are put aside to focus on escape.

They know they will run out of food and water pretty quickly so, they try going through the wall. The substance is not only blocking windows and exterior walls, but also their door and the walls leading to the hallway. But not the walls between apartments, and not the floors down. And thus begins a trek downward into Cold War tunnels as they don't think any man-made barrier could possibly extend below ground. In their quest, they meet an AirBnB couple next door, a grandfather & his granddaughter below, and find a deceased tech guy and his... intimidating friend.

Again, I wish it had presented as scary, more attuned to the theme I expected, but can I fault it for being a generic scifi thriller? No, not really. Its just that it wasn't very thrilling. As Kent said, its very boilerplate but watchable, but... meh?

I was going to shoehorn this into the current run of "31 Days of Halloween" but no, not even its alluding to "Rec" allows me to do that. Let's just leave it here with "3 Short Paragraphs".

I liked it well enough, but it again leaves me thinking about the effort put into making a movie vs the effort of the viewers watching the movie. There has to be more people, like ourselves, who just feel dissatisfied and film makers must know this ... well, at least in the editing room? I get that a movie is more akin to a puzzle being assembled where the script the box cover, but do creators/producers just accept when things are "good enough" ? I know I do, but my creative endeavours (this included) are more for me, than anyone else, and movies are primarily for the money giving audiences. Is it just because you only need to do so much to sell the movie, and its not worth retooling? Once its sold, that's it, goal achieved?  Still, no matter what the reason, I am left wondering.

I have been thinking a lot about creative materials and the mass amount of "just OK". There is so much to watch, so much to read, so much to absorb, and so very little has me thrilled at the end, and after just coming off a binge-fest, I am left disappointed at the effort it takes to absorb without reward. Is it me? Am I just hard to satisfy?

KWIF: The Last of Sheila (+4)

KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. It's been a busy couple of weeks so I missed doing a write-up last week and am trying to get ahead of it this week as another busy weekend is ahead. To be perfectly honest, my heart and mind aren't really in it to win it, but here we go anyway. 

This Week:
The Last of Sheila (1973, d. Herbert Ross - hollywoodsuite)
The Final Destination (2009, d. David R. Ellis - rental)
Starship Troopers (1997, d. Paul Verhoeven - netflix)
Hail, Caesar! (2015, d. Joel and Ethan Coen - blu-ray)
Christmas on Duty (2025, d. Jake Van Wagoner - hallmark)

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When Glass Onion, the sequel to Knives Out! came out in 2022, director Rian Johnson routinely cited The Last of Sheila as one of his key inspirations for the Benoit Blanc sequel. I, like a great many, was completely unaware of the existence of this film, whose biggest claim to fame would be that it was co-written by Psycho star Anthony Perkins and legendary Broadway musical composer Stephen Sondheim. I mean, yeah, what?

Turns out that Perkins and Sondheim are old friends and that for years they would stage grand-scale scavenger hunts and murder mystery parties for their pals (one of which was this film's director Herbert Ross). It wasn't a far stretch for them to take a few of their ideas and build a Hollywood-style narrative around it.

The result is The Last of Sheila, where millionaire movie mogul Clinton Greene (James Coburn) has invited a few of his Hollywood acquaintances from in front of and behind the screen to a weekend of games and adventure.  His six guests include aspiring screenwriter Tom Parkman (Richard Benjamin) and his wife with family money, Lee, horny and hungry star agent Christine (Dyan Cannon), over-the-hill director Philip Dexter (James Mason), superstar actress Alice Wood (Racquel Welch) and her latest husband Anthony (Ian McShane). They're all in different states of desperation as to not turn down Greene's invitation, but it seems like the only one that wants to be there is Christine.

Clinton promises fun and frivolity, but there's an air of something quite off. Clinton's beloved wife, Sheila, died, a victim of a hit-and-run about a year earlier, and Clinton hasn't been the same since. His game, and the plot thereof has sinister undertones, and it's not long before people start to suspect that Clinton is either toying with them, or planning something far more damning and dramatic. It seems the roleplaying he has each person playing is the secret of another player, and it's up to the players to figure out who's who.

Only trouble is, on the second day of the multi-day event, Clinton is murdered, and so the game becomes, well, just which one of them murdered him, and why.

The Last of Sheilah may not seem like much at first, and the first act, right up until Clinton's death, seems maybe a little frivolous, as if the whole affair is about Clinton trying to uncover, through is game, just which one of his guests was the driver that killed his wife. But it's nary so simple, and the twists just keep on twisting in rather delicious fashion throughout.

It's an exceptionally clever mystery that, like the best of them, isn't teasing the audience with clues as to its answer, because the mystery it's trying to solve isn't the mystery it's actually trying to solve, and even when the mystery is solved, there's still more to it. This film doesn't really relent until its last frame, and it ends in such a unique place that, somehow, still feels utterly unique.

The only part about The Last of Sheila that is maybe a little underwhelming is that its a cast of six, which doesn't seem like enough suspects when we can narrow them down and eliminate them pretty quickly. Of course, Ross is very clever with what he shows and doesn't show, and the script is very delicate in what it tells us and what it holds back.

I don't want to oversell it, but it's a really fun movie, and an absolute must for any fan of murder mysteries.

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It's been a roller-coaster ride already through The Final Destination franchise (and I'm not just talking about FD 3). I really liked the first film from X-Files veteran James Wong, and felt the second from David R. Ellis let go of the seriousness and went total bugnuts bonkers bananas instead, both in the wickedness of the deaths and in the ridiculousness of lengths it goes in trying to connect itself to the first film. I had really anticipated Wong's return to FD3 only to find I missed Ellis' batshittery, and that Wong's attempts to bring the tone back around to serious wasn't so fun (plus the deaths were somewhat underwhelming). 

And so, seeing that Ellis was back behind the helm for the fourth entry, doing that 2010s-era trope of using the first movie's name but with a definite article rather than a number to differentiate it, I was excited to see what absolute lunacy Ellis had cooked up.

Unfortunately what he cooked up was a cowpie served on horseshit. 

Wasting absolutely no time, The Final Destination opens on a quartet of 20-somethings (actually playing 20-somethings this time, and not teenagers as I first thought) at a racetrack. One of them has a vision of a brutal collision which dominoes into the stadium collapsing and many people dying. And so, like the other films, our protagonist has a freakout which winds up leading him and his friends and a few other interlopers outside the stadium when the accident occurs.

And then they all start dying in freak accidents.

We've seen it before, and it's all been done better.

At well under 90-minutes this is a film that takes no time getting to where its going and where it wants to go, killing off CW-quality actors in complicated fashions, while our protagonist and a few other believers follow the visions he's having to try and prevent the others' deaths.

This film doesn't care one lick about its characters. It doesn't even pretend. Any moment where two characters should be connecting with each other are quickly cut away from in favour of what narrowly constitutes this film's plot.

It wouldn't be nearly so bad if Ellis were up to his same tricks as FD 2, but the death scenarios have little of the panache that they did in his earlier movie, where he would set up innumerable potential means for a character to die, only to deke us out a number of times and blindside us to our uproarious delight. Here, he does it in half measures and it's not so exciting or entertaining.

Also there's a battle between the Wong and Ellis camps in how our protagonists learn to interrupt death's plan. Wong's films have the characters seeing signs, in shadows or scattered paperwork or splattered condiments or photographs. Ellis lazily has the protagonist see prophetic visions. I much prefer the former, because it's more clever and visually interesting, and it means that any of the film's characters can see the signs. In Ellis' films only one can have the visions.

The film is also extremely ugly. Shots are composed terribly, like sub-par Lifetime films, either a clear signifier of reduced budget, or a side effect of shooting a film for 2010's-era 3-D, or probably both. I was constantly taken aback by just how low-budget the film looked.

I had hoped FD3 was the low point of the series, but I was wrong. I know redemption is coming with Bloodlines but I'm hoping the fifth entry starts laying the path.

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I remember seeing Starship Troopers on opening weekend in 1997, and being blown away by how crazy good looking the aliens and the cgi and the costumes and weaponry and sets and gore and all of it looked. I also recall being blown away by the acting, and how goddamn awful it was. I revisited the film once more when it came out on video, and I really, really wanted to love the film, but it sat on the borderline of unwatchable for me, and I just set it aside.

In the nearly 30 years since, Starship Troopers has been re-evaluated by the critical community as a sly, subversive film that fits in perfectly with Paul Verhoeven's other sci-fi greats like Robocop and Total Recall. Except those films had good actors, acting good, while this film has a host of mediocre actors acting poorly. Oh, the bad acting is definitely intentional, I see that now, certainly in the direction Verhoeven was giving his cast if not actually a conscious effort on the parts of performers like Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards. It's evident Verhoeven was not a fan of the 90's trend of horny teen dramas starring late-20-somethings playing teenagers, and sending them into bloody combat and turning these beautiful white faces into tools of a fascist empire is entirely the point. 

But it's still a tough hang.

The action is incredible. The bug creatures are probably the best on-screen alien creation this side of the Xenomorph (they're so damn colourful), and the satire, when it rears its head, stings like a paper cut. But any time we need to spend with any of these characters is like having a root canal without any anaesthetic...so, so painful.

Just like in 1997, I really, really want to like this film, and I kind of do, but I hate it more than I like it.

I've never watched any of its direct to video sequels, as I can't imagine it being done on a lower budget with even lower tiered stars, and not with an auteur director and totally leaning into the fascistic glory of warfare rather than satirizing it...yeah, no thanks.

--- 

In the Coen Brothers' filmography, there are certainly much tighter narratives, much more character-centric stories than Hail, Caesar! and it's hard for me not to say that No Country for Old Men or True Grit or A Serious Man or Inside Llewyn Davis are definitively better films than Hail, Caesar!, because they are. I just like Hail, Caesar! more.

 I can't help it. There's a chilliness to each of those other masterpieces of the Coens' career second half, but Hail, Caesar! is all warmth. 

Their comedies, especially post-2000, tend to have a bit to then, something a little cynical. It's all love here, a true love letter to the Hollywood studio system of old and the movies that they produced, while also being very keenly aware of the sexism, the shadiness, the manipulation, the darkness behind it all. The Coens aren't saying that the art was worth the sacrifice...or maybe they are. I actually don't know. They dive into communist and socialist thinking in a manner that seems both mocking and reverential, much in the same way that they poke sharply at the studio behind-the-scenes while also adoringly creating synchronized swimming or song-and-dance numbers that rival (and possibly outdo) the similar films of yesterday.

I already reviewed the film back in 2016, and most everything I said there still stands. It's just an unabashed delight to watch with it's star-studded cast (just more and more faces popping up in tiny parts) and big time set-pieces.  It wasn't the most warmly received movie at the time, but like most Coens films, people have come around on it and started embracing it. I've always been exceptionally fond of it.

The only thing I got wrong in my review was in my prediction of how big a star Alden Ehrenreich would become. I hadn't gauged how brutal the backlash would be to Solo (despite being a movie, that itself, has become a bit of an secret success in Star Wars circles), and Ehrenreich seemed to have taken the full brunt of that backlash. He's never become a big star, but revisiting Hail, Caesar! for the first time in a while, and I was blown away once again by just how damn charming, charismatic and multi-talented he is. He's just a magnificent performer and I enjoy seeing him in everything I've seen him in (hello Weapons).  Hopefully he finds *that* movie or *that* prestige TV series that finally connects him with the public.

Watching this film reminded me that I need to get AppleTV back and finish off The Studio which feels like it's time travelling kin to Hail, Caesar!

---

Oh, gawddammit, it's that time of year again isn't it. 

Even before Halloween was over, Hallmark had already started airing its slate of seasonal romance films for Christmas 2025.  They've slashed their roster practically in half from last year, likely in part because their leaning into episodic series and reality TV more this year, but also in part likely because of the cheddar prez who started slapping obtuse tariffs on productions made out of country, and the Hallmark movie churn is heavily dependent on crossing the Canadian border.

Anyway, I've already stockpiled a few Hallmarkies for the annual Toasty and Kent Advent Calendar, but this pile of doodoo isn't going to wait that long. I can't have its stink just wafting around for that long.

In Christmas On Duty, Parker Young of (Suburgatory and Enlisted in his Hallmark debut) costars with Janelle Parrish (Sugarplummed) in...ugh... a seasonal military-themed "romance". Usually the Hallmark military-themed productions are cloying wanna-be tearjerkers about a woman pining for her man serving overseas and how difficult life is without a man around or some shit. I dunno. I don't watch them, because they're pretty much what they say they are on the sleeve.

But this, at least, was stepping away from the tearful reunions, and instead was vying for an opposites-attract/road-trip engagement. It did try, and boy it failed spectacularly.

The story opens with Young and Parrish competing for a spot in the marine's infantry, and Parrish comes out on top. Their fathers have a long rivalry that has extended to them, if in a friendlier fashion. Six year later they're reunited at Quantico training where Parrish is looking for duty commander or something. I dunno, the movie care only marginally more about the rank-and-file-ness of the military than I do.

Their rivalry immediately rears its head and they get in trouble with their outgoing Colonel. Forced to serve watch duty together on Christmas Eve, the pair instead find themselves on a mission to rescue Christmas because the delivery truck can't make it's way through the storm to bring toys. Given an official mission, Young and Parrish put their difference aside and head out in an old 5-ton and go shopping for the kids, having a couple verrrry stupid detours and encountering some very contrived obstacles along the way.

Meanwhile.... nevermind. It's not worth getting into.

This movie not only has the talents of the usually quite charming Young and Parrish, but also the always solid Peter Jacobson (Colony) playing Parrish' Lt.Col.(ret) father. None of the military personnel in this film were convincing in the slightest, and the chemistry between Young and Parrish never really accelerated. The whole production feels like a trial run, a proof-of-concept rather than anything resembling refined product.

It's a story that wants to have the big road trip side-quests that lead to big comedic or romantic or dramatic set pieces, but none of the side-quests lead to anything resembling big comedy, romance or drama. The complication (and there's always a complication) is so under baked that when it cropped up I was left scratching my head why anyone thought there was a problem.

But there is real snow. Sometimes.

And there's Doug. At one side-quest Young and Parris encounter a hapless middle-aged stoner-coded store employee who has, accidentally, locked himself out of the store. Doug is the only bright spot in this otherwise kind of dull and sparkless movie, to the point that both Lady Kent and I were left asking "what's Doug up to?" multiple times after his appearance (did we spy him in the parade afterward?).

Also "Finding Mr. Christmas" Season 1 winner Ezra is in this, for about 5 lines and is out-acted by an 8-year-old. The man's an ex-marine AND won the Hallmark leading man competition and he relegated to a cameo!?! Don't expect to see him in any Hallmarkies next year. I honestly don't know what they were thinking (having seen the first two episodes of season 2 of Finding Mr. Christmas, at least it seems they can't do worse).

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Fantastic 4: First Steps

2025, Matt Shakman (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) -- download

OK, to be perfectly honest, I am kind of angry with this movie for being so ... boring? And also reminiscent of an already twice portrayed plot line? I wanted to like this movie more, and even worse, I assumed I would absolutely love it. I thought it would be fun, over the top referential material set in a cartoony The Incredibles meets The Jetsons type world that would set the tone for the climax of whatever-fucking-Marvel-Phase-we-are-in. Instead, I felt like we got retread plot lines, barely likeable characters and, and yes I am surprised I am saying this considering what's on the screen, far too little world building.

Part of me/him wonders whether the writer/director were taking this piss, in how the plot is presented, at superhero movies and Marvel movies in particular.

For the pedantic Marvel fans, the first scene identifies this as Earth 828, vs the prime MCU which is Earth 616, which in turn lifts its designation from the comics. So, no John Krasinski here. The movie kicks off with flashbacks to the origin story, of four friends & family who get zapped by cosmic radiation while on a space mission. The movie has Reed refer to the crew as "the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet" but that has got to be sarcasm, right? Other than Johnny "working the problem" in trying to figure out what the transmissions from space are, we never see any of the others, other than Reed that is, do anything remotely scientific. I almost felt as if Reed was truly saying, "Other people would take trained astronauts and scientists, but I am more than enough brilliance for them all, so I will take my family, whom I trust implicitly." Yeah, it doesn't work out for him, and its the focus of the rest of the movie, as grumpy, depressed Reed Richards constantly berates himself for not being smart enough.

But no matter, after they came back from space kind of weird, they became the planet's superheroes and we get a newsreel style recap of their best adventures including kaiju and The Mole Man, ala Jack Kirby styles. This also affords us a look at the Silver Age styling to the world, which looks like a mish mash of 40s, 60s and far future. Other than Reed's smarts, there is no commentary on why things are so futuristic, but it seems normal life. And this should be wonderful, but its... all empty backdrops? Like glitzy painted sets, this really neat bit of world building should have been entrancing but its barely window dressing. I was more enthralled by the similarly retro-future look to the Loki show than I was this.

Other than the newsreels we don't really get to see them being super-heroic before flaming rocks fall from the sky and a silver lady on a surfboard with a brushed back coif shows up heralding doom & gloom, i.e. Galactus. Not sure how I feel about Jennifer Garner being the Herald of Galactus, but she is the current It-Girl of the moment so not surprised she got the role. And let me be clear, no issue with her per se or the gender bent choice for the character, but I am not sure she got to bring anything to the role. With today's technology, you could literally have no-one play the role and its CGI status would have worked just as well. Anywayz, time for Reed to work this next problem -- who is this Galactus guy and why does he want to destroy the planet. And that leads to space travel.

Space travel does not go well. They FTL to a place where Galactus eats a planet, get grabbed by him, recreate the Superman scene with the weird glowy river, piss him off and barely escape. Oh, and Sue has her baby, in space, a baby that Galactus senses could quell his hunger. He offers to exchange Earth for the baby and, of course, everyone yells, "NO FUCKING WAY DUDE !"

My pith masks my mirroring of what Kent said ("I really wanted to luxuriate in the aesthetic of the film, but it so quickly becomes background") in that these space scenes could have been so (cough) fantastic ! I think of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and its very basic but enthralling visuals of space travel -- everything just has a cool factor, while the depiction of scifi space here strikes me more as a YouTube scifi mood board collage. I just wanted more "oooo" and "ahhhhh" but all I got was, "yawn, OK go on." As for the team, the encounter makes only nodding referential use of the character power set.

Back on Earth for act three brings Reed again getting all mopey as he devises a plan to Save Earth without giving up his baby. And guess what, taking a flagrantly annoying note from Spider-Man: No Way Home the entire planet turns on them because they won't exchange one life (baby life) for that of the planet. I mean, I get it, they are afraid, but how quickly they turn on the supposed saviours of the planet... Of course, Reed's first solution, after he has reminded the entire planet of how his family has always saved them, fails completely, but not due to him but due to failure of other humans, i.e. Dr. Doom. Its a cute nod. In the end, they do save Earth but via an unexpected turn of events, a more hands-on approach actually making use of their power set, and a hail mary. 

But again, it didn't do anything for me. It was "basic MCU film making". It was just OK. It was "punch in the algorithm" scenery generation. It could have been so much more, and it wasn't and that is pretty much my statement for much of MCU in the ... last few phases? Again, I stopped paying attention to the phase concept after they got derailed and mashed together and abandoned and retooled and and and... Hopefully the coming Beyonder pulls a comic trick and REBOOTS THE ENTIRE MARVEL PARADIGM.

For the sake of completion, the characters are as follows. Reed Richards is played by Pedro Pascal (Wonder Woman 1984), Sue Richards nee Storm by Vanessa Kirby (The Frankenstein Chronicles), Ben Grimm (aka The Thing) by Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Punisher), and Johnny Storm by Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things). The Silver Surfer, or Shalla-Bal, is played by Jennifer Garner (Weapons) and Galactus himself by Ralph Ineson (Ludwig). And because I love to point out Dr. Sharon from Ted Lasso, Sarah Niles (Heads of State) is the Fantastic Four's attache.

Oh, we agree.

Alt-Media: The Salvage Crew

2020,  Yudhanjaya Wijeratne -- Spotify audiobook

Much of this blog is me bemoaning how something was "just OK" or "meh" or "just terrible". And then, when I really enjoy something, I find it hard to say why. But this one, this one deserves me writing something about it, because I fucking loved it so much, so much so, I have added the printed hardcover to my "gifting wishlist", because when she asks me, "What do you want for your birthday?" I so often just shrug, "Nothing. I don't want any thing." This. I want this thing.

Yudhanjaya Wijeratne is a Sri Lankan author who is able to write a story that not only gives me all the right hits I want right now in scifi, but also exposes me to ways of thinking that are outside my normal Western mindset -- I mean, the main character is a fucking non-religious Buddhist poet, for crikey's sake! And he also is able to tap into the nostalgic referential part of my brain, that I dislike / love so much. As in, he gives me plenty of references to things that are not in your "I want this to be referencing this thing because ...." but more fun little snickering asides. For example, someone names the geographical area of the planet they are exploring "Stardew Valley" without ever even hinting as to why, but you know that someone outside the experience of every actual character in the book was snickering when they named it that. I like the way this man thinks, as an author.

The book also covers three scifi topics I am digging right now: AI and the idea of machine intelligence (not to be confused with the current use of the term, i.e. shitty LLMs), that space travel and the populating of other planets could take looooong amounts of time (centuries) and corporate controlled futures.

More than a century ago, the colony ship Damn Right I Ate the Apple crashed onto a planet designated Urmagon Beta, or as I heard it, given it was an audiobook, OMG Beta ! A governmental body has hired corporate entity PCS, or Planetary Crusades Society, to recover what they can from the colony ship. Even after a century, there will be much in the way of valuable parts lying around, including just raw materials. But PCS won't invest a lot into the trip, given they might just lose the recovery crew as well, so they just send four: three bargain basement humans paying off debts and wrought with personal issues, and an AI called Amber Rose 348. They are a "cheaper" version of AI, in that they are a human consciousness transferred to machine at the end of the person's life. That means the AI comes with some human response, something truly artificial intelligence cannot recreate (intuition, spontaneous creativity, etc.) but with all the upgraded value of a bigger brain machine. They are also working off a debt, and hoping this job will pay enough release them from their contract. 

They land with the basic tools of survival: a fabricator which can turn any raw material into useful goods, a lander buggy and some bots, which Amber Rose can control wholesale. The idea is that everything they need can just be recovered from the environment, including materials for shelter and food. PCS did not want to invest more than it hoped to recover, so their gear is not really current state. Neither is Amber Rose for that matter.

The humans are assholes. Milo, an engineer and a major prick, Simon, geologist and deferential sort who grew up in a VR simulation, and Anna, not her real name, assigned as medic. They don't get along, which frustrates Amber Rose, who generally sees itself as The Boss (or "OC"), to no end. Through a lot of negotiating, emotional support and downright yelling OC gets them to do the basic things like setup a base camp, gather raw materials, and not shoot every other living thing they bump into on the planet.

Three living things they do need to shoot -- the giant megasloth creature, weird bug wolf creatures and Mercers -- cyborg mercenaries who were probably also sent there to recover the colony shift, for another corporate entity. But the Mercers landed a while ago and .... something has happened to them, something has ... infected them.

The plot is rather contained: survival, recovery, conflict. The interaction, between humans and otherwise, constantly shifts between contentious and pragmatic and while I usually don't like stories where everyone (except OC) is an asshole, everyone here is sympathetic... well, maybe not Milo, but in the end he does redeem himself. The antagonist turns out not to be the Mercers but something that has been on the planet for much much MUCH longer than human incursions -- an AI entity, something vast and representing an unknown and probably brain achingly ancient alien society. Humans are bugs, and OC is just above that designation. But eventually they come to an understanding.

The audiobook was read by Nathan Fillion, an actor I already defer to considering his body of work, but his easy voice lends itself well to the voice of OC, and as the narrator. The author's voice is also easy, digestible and speckled with pop culture references, not always my own, but relatable. OC is constantly spouting off Buddhist inspired poetry, and going on about Good Karma and Bad Karma. They are obviously once-human but also so very very not-human. Its one of my favourite representations of Artificial Intelligence in quite some time.

If there was anything I didn't like about the book, it was the ending, where OC and crew (well, who is left alive) and their story shifts to the emergence of this planetary sized AI entity and it making use of OC as an ambassador to the rest of the human dominated galaxy. The story shifts from small scale to vast impact too quickly for me, and is summed up too quickly, mainly by way of an epilogue. 

I really need to read/listen to more of his stuff, but will focus on his print text for now, as he is a writer with a fascination for current AI / LLM models, and actually used them to write OC's poetry. I am curious to see how an author with such mentality lays out his printed books.

Chiplog: Lay's Cucumber Flavor

 Pre-chip: A couple months ago Toasty and I were on a walkabout in downtown Toronto when he asked to pop into an Asian grocery (or two). While he was looking for a specific bottled sauce, I was transfixed by the variety of potato chip flavours and was perusing to see what might actually be onion-free. I was on a chip-break at the time, so nothing was purchased then, but the kernel was seeded that I would need to go back to such a grocery store and partake in some international flavours.  

Lady Kent and I perused the local Nations shop just the other day and their (potato) chip selection did leave a little to be desired, as did the English ingredients sticker ("edible flavourings" doesn't actually tell me what's in it). I only wound up with one bag, being Lay's Cucumber Flavor [sic] (Lady Kent picked up a bag of Brets salt and vinegar, which only had a small sampling of and forgot to review).

Am I excited for cucumber potato chips? I'm excited for any new flavour of chip, but only tepidly anticipating cucumber. I don't associate "cucumber" with "snacking", and I honestly can't single out what cucumber flavouring should taste like. Guess I'm about to find out...

Ingredients: Potato, Vegetable Oil, Cucumber Flavor (with Flavor!), TBHQ(?)

First smell: Well, I guess whatever that smell is, it's cucumber.  Now that I think of it, I have had cucumber water more than a few times so maybe I do know what cucumber flavour is?  It's not an off-putting smell, but I'm also not terribly drawn into it.  It's not enticing me in the slightest.

First taste: There's a potency to the cucumber flavour that I wasn't expecting. It's almost sour, but not quite. There's almost three phases to the flavour...first a bite on the middle of the tongue that I don't like, then an acceptable, almost refreshing cucumber flavour on the side of the tongue, and then sort of a slightly salty nothingness.

Aftertaste: Four phases, actually... strangely, there's like a mild honey sweetness that lingers. How is that possible?

Mass consumption: I am eating these chip-by-chip, which is rare for me. I usually eat chips in clusters, a pinch of chips between the thumb and index finger.  Here it seems like too much to go at quickly, and that initial recoil I have each time doesn't scream at me to repeat it. Yet, I don't recall my mouth ever salivating this much after eating a chip. My mouth is just watering. I'm glad this is only a 70g bag and not something larger, as I'm not actually sure if I can finish this... [timestamp 7:46]. I finished it in 

Final thoughts: I imagine "cucumber flavouring" is an acquired taste, like watermelon flavouring or banana flavouring...flavours that don't totally resemble the thing they're trying to resemble because they're a more potent facsimile of it. I have not yet acquired this taste, and while chips are chips, and I'm willing to almost power through any flavour to get that starchy-oily-salty goodness, this one's a rough one for me. I kind of like it less the more I eat it in fact.

Rating: 3.3

31 Days of Halloween: Good Boy

2025, Ben Leonberg (feature debut) -- download

Elevator pitch -- ever catch your dog staring at things in the corner of the room, where there is obviously.... nothing? Or growling at a closed door, maybe to the basement? What if it wasn't ... nothing? So, let's do a movie entirely from the dog's viewpoint -- not always literally from the ground level, but from what the dog is aware of, not what the people are. And add to it a conceit where the humans are truly secondary, often only shot from the shoulders down, to lend weight to perspective from below their knees.

As a shadow grows in the corner of their room, good boy Indy whimpers and crawls into the lap of owner Todd (Shane Jensen, FBI). Todd is coughing up blood, and not long after, checks himself out of the hospital, arguing with his sister Vera (Arielle Friedman, feature debut) on the phone. Things are not good and he is relocating from the city to the abandoned home of their grandfather (Larry Fessenden, We Are Still Here), who lived alone in a rural area, and recently passed away under mysterious circumstances. The house is off the grid, relying on generators.

Whatever shadow Indy saw in Todd's home is also here. Its ever present, a strangeness that is constantly catching Indy's eyes and ears. Todd doesn't notice; only the dog is haunted. And not just by the shadow but also by the grandfather's dog Bandit, a hollow whine from the basement that only Indy hears. Vera said something about their grandfather's dogs always disappearing, in one of the angry dismissive phone calls she has with Todd. He has not come here to recover, to rest, but to escape, and she challenges him on the choice, which only makes him angry.

Whatever haunts this family only wants its men folk, and the good boys who protect them are a nuisance. Todd is frustratingly just not paying attention to Indy's silent warnings, until it is too late. 

Indy, the NS Duck Toler plays his role perfectly. Despite a lack of fear/growling in most interactions with the shadow, he is steadfast in his dedication to Todd. The movie has fun not only depicting something that only the dog perceives, but also playing with shadows and angles and isolation, from a non-human perspective. Of course, we are keen on dogs, so we are biased, but it was quite engaging, if contained.

31 Days of Halloween: Never Let Go

2024, Alexandre Aja (Horns) -- download

Its a pet peeve of mine, but I am not fond of movies that give you the choice of believing whether its a monster or supernatural being, or believing the person is just suffering mental health challenges. I am fine if you give the characters that choice, as that is a dominant trope in horror movies (given what people experience in horror movies, most people would think them off their rocker) but when the viewer is left feeling unsure, I get annoyed. There was the briefest of moments where I thought, "Yes, its explained, we are sure their is a monster," but then, thinking back on it, I was again left... unsure, and annoyed.

Momma (Hallee Berry, Gothika) lives in a remote Cabin in the Woods with her twin sons Samuel (Anthony B Jenkins, The Deliverance) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV, Paradise). Upon introduction, you can see the boys are malnourished, food-wise and human interaction-wise. They are literally tethered to the house by ropes, long ropes that unfurl from a conduit under the house. In the woods, Momma constantly reminds, is The Evil and if they let go of the rope, it will get inside them and force them to kill each other, as it did their father, and her mother before them. Age ago, Momma reminds, the world fell to evil and her father built the house away from wicked people, and The Evil, and imbued upon it a ritual of magic, wherein the blessings of the wood of the house protect those within its light or tethered to its heart. They live by this hard-and-fast rule.

But its been a hard winter. The green house's abundance has died off, the animals they hunt did not return in the spring, and the family has resorted to eating whatever they find, including bugs, grubs and frogs. And eventually bark, once the pickled and preserves run out. The (un)dead constantly torment Momma, telling her its all her fault, that she did this all on her own, she let The Evil in, she brought it with her. The boys unwavering faith in their mother is beginning to shake, and she herself is beginning to break. When she suggests them killing and eating the family dog, Nolan loses it, cutting her rope before she can put a crossbow bolt into the dog. She is severed from the protection of the house, and instead of letting The Evil in, she cuts her own throat. Kodda the dog runs off.

Without Momma the boys completely unravel. A stranger appears on their doorstep, a hiker who has become lost. At first, he's a bit concerned to see such a ragged pair of boys alone in the woods but then they point the crossbow at him. He tries to escape but.... that is when things become unsure. The man has a cell phone, a working one that makes a call through to 911 before he succumbs to the bolt in his gut. If the world outside has collapsed, then what is this all about? Was Momma lying all along? Was she being metaphorical, and if so, weren't her responses unreasonable, or was she just completely lost, a victim of familial abuse and trauma? The boys cannot know any of this, so only we can speculate. Considering the boys are starving and likely poisoned by what they have been forced to eat, anything that comes after, including a deceptive snake girl, is suspect. I continued to watch as a monster movie, but... the annoyance seeped in.

In the end, the houses is burned down, but not before the boys are ... rescued. The outside world is there, it is not destroyed. But The Evil is now in Sam and Nolan knows it. What are we to believe? Everything is left to speculation, but there was a giant snake skin found on the river side, a moulted sign of something very very large, much larger than can be found in woods like this. So, is there Evil or is there just .... evil? Bah, some questions can be fun, but I am just annoyed.

But I cannot just leave it there, can I? There was much I did enjoy -- the setting, the built up mythology and the dressing up of the environment. Aja had fun constructing this movie, giving us something that felt both magical and mundane, current yet timeless in its depiction of how the family lived. Berry is always more than capable and the boys excelled at playing the twins they were, but with their own personalities, children growing into adolescents, discovering independence and it not weighing well on their shoulders.

31 Days of Halloween: The Occupant

2025, Hugo Keijzer (feature debut) -- download

Kieijzer made a short called The Occupant: Prologue which is tied this movie much more strongly to the scifi vein. But instead of truly building on the base of that short, he decided to go for a more emotional impact, giving us a movie that is about loss and survival. They sometimes call the genre "survival horror" but usually that is when there is more than isolation and elements to be defeated. This movie is entirely about Abby fighting to survive a helicopter crash in the remote Caucasus Mountains of Georgia, the country not the state. The scifi element, which also allows a wee bit of horror to creep in, is there, but it doesn't play a big part of the movie. And if the audience reviews are to say anything, just ended up pissing off the viewers expecting a proper alien incursion movie, which wasn't helped by the absolutely infuriating AI generated images that dominate Google searches for this movie.

Abby (Ella Balinska, Charlie's Angels) and her sister are very close; they bonded strongly after the death of their mother. Now Beth has terminal cancer and Abby is desperate to find any measure to extend her sister's life, including taking a job with a Georgian uranium mining company, which could pay for private medical care. She would rather deal with a long shot than be with her sister during her final days, and the weight of the guiltis heavy.

The speculating hasn't paid off, but she found a strange obsidian like rock she believes could fund her, but then gets "the call" -- she needs to go home. She hops the company helicopter out but it runs into a flock of starlings (murmuration, once again boding ill weather) and the copter crashes, killing the pilots. She's not sure what to do next, but a walkie talkie chirps out some static and she tunes it to hear from John (Rob Delaney, Bad Monkey). He's an American pilot whose plane also crashed; he is pinned beneath some wreckage but otherwise sounds fine, in good spirits even. He knows his long-range radio is working but cannot reach it, so as hers is destroyed, Abby decides to find him instead of walking out.

The walk in the wilderness is the bulk of the movie. As a genre, I generally enjoy the survival in the harsh, cold wilds and this movie gives it in spades. But really the talking between the two is what the movie wants us to focus on, which is weird unto itself. There is notably a lack of mention of food or water, for either of the two. And then there is the rock, the strange black shiny stone that reacts to her touch. The same rocks litter the mountain sides on her journey, exhibiting strange anti-gravity effects, but really the only other-worldly effect she notices is when it rearranges to her will, into a piton assisting her getting up the mountain. Eventually she ends up in an abandoned Georgian mountain village where some Russian soldiers are patrolling. John cautions her exposing herself to them, considering the volatile nature of border patrols. But its when she discovers she's not the only one talking to "John".

Whatever "John" is, he's been manipulating people in the mountains. Can't be many but he does mention Abby was the most "fun" of those he has played with. Its time for the Russian soldier and her to trek out, but they make a fatal error crossing a large lake. The thin ice takes the soldier and Abby partially falls through. Thoroughly soaked, she is about to give up when she sees another helicopter fly over a ridge. Through delirium, she climbs the ridge and... finds a cave. She falls down its incline into a pool of water, wherein lies the body of John, the American pilot, encrusted in the black stones and quite dead.

Then the expositional explainer, the "alien". Whether its John who became one with the strange rocks or something inherent to the alien who crashed, something you would only know after seeing the "prologue" short, it wants her to join with it, with the collective nature the stones provide. Its unclear, unsatisfying (why are the rocks scattered over an entire mountain range) but it serves one purpose -- to give Abby a choice. She can join with it and be given a hallucinatory idyllic family life which isn't real, or she can fight against its offer, get out of the mountains and return for her sister's final days -- reality. She chooses the latter, of course.

I wanted to like this movie, but... it was under-baked. Sometimes the tone and visuals can allow a tense scifi and/or horror thriller to excel, but even with the stunning landscape and great performance by Balinska (is it though; hard to tell as she is the only one present most times) so much was lacking. And frustrating, especially considering the idea that she may have never actually gone for the trek, and the whole thing was an hallucination at the scene of the helicopter crash, influenced by the shiny black rock in her bag. 

31 Days of Halloween: Shaun of the Dead

2004, Edgar Wright (The Sparks Brothers) -- download/Blu-ray

Yes, I download movies because getting the game system setup to play a Blu-Ray when I haven't touched it in months is dusty & arduous and I am impatient & lazy.

Also, and again, "You haven't written about this in one of the many rewatches since 2004 ?!?!?"

Clever. The clever zombie movie. I love this clever zombie movie, which in case you have been under a cinematic rock, is part of Wright's tap-side-of-nose "Cornetto Trilogy". This is my movie, while Hot Fuzz is Marmy's movie, if we can claim ownership.

The season has been a bit ragged, as we have been tired and distracted, so we broke a generally unwritten rule, in adding more rewatches into the mix. I mean, traditionally watching horror movies during the Halloween season always involved your favourite and even just before this blog began this series, we had plowed through all the "classics" during Halloween of years previous. Rambling way to say, we might end the season with a handful of our previously seen favs, not yet written about.

Shaun's (Simon Pegg, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One) a bit of a cockup, working a dead-end job, living with two old friends, only one of whom is paying rent. He does the same thing every day, every weekend and his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield, Byzantium) is getting sick of it. He kind of likes his life, but is also kind of just stuck with it. So, she breaks up with him and as fate would have it, its on the night of the zombie apocalypse. Like many of the genre, its happening in the background, on the telly, but everyone is too caught up in their own drama to pay attention. Shaun doesn't even notice when the regulars in the neighbourhood are either gone or shambling.

And then he's caught up in it, with two things in mind: save Liz, save his Mum.

Some day I would like to track back and watch the movies that set the tropes for the genre. Even Night of the Living Dead had it on the television in the background, but more the idea of gearing-up and going on a quest to find a secure place. The journey through the zombi-fied London suburb is strewn with obstacles and dangers, but finally motivated Shaun has it in him to prove to Liz that he can do this even if it ends up at the last place on Earth she wanted to go -- the Winchester Pub. But still, she cannot deny, it feels like a more secure location than Shaun's flat. Myself, I would suggested Liz's second of third floor flat but... Shaun doesn't know it well. They don't actually lose anyone until they are "safe" inside the pub, and it quickly goes from a slightly-buzzed safe to a shit-show very quickly, mainly because of personal drama. And it ends with only Liz and Shaun left alive.

Clever. So many cute and witty things, from the obvious to the thin. People on the bus look like zombies long before these are coughing & sneezing. As someone who rides the TTC pretty much every day, I can attest to that. And the line from Ed (Nick Frost, Tomb Raider), "We're coming to get you Barbara!" (a nod to Night of the Living Dead) always makes me chuckle. Of course, the best gag is Shaun's rag tag sloppy crew running into a mirror image group, full of capable (and recognizable ! Martin Freeman! Reece Shearsmith! Tamsin Greig! Matt Lucas! Jessica Hynes!) survivors. 

This movie is brains comfort food.

1-1-1: Fall of the House of Usher

2022, 8 episodes - netflix
created by Mike Flanagan

The What 100: Roderick and Madeline Usher were the bastard offspring of the CEO of pharmaceutical corporation Fortunato. Left nothing, the siblings work their way into the Forunato company on their own merit and climb the ranks, though a secret from their past gave them a decisive leg up. Roughly a half-century later, all the Usher's successes that seemed to have been unimpeachable actually have a bill that's come due, and the cost is the entire lineage of the Usher family.

(1 Great): The story of The Fall of the House of Usher, is told by Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood, Star Trek) to US Attorney Charles Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly, M.A.N.T.I.S.), the man who has been trying to prosecute him all these years for Fortunato's many crimes against society and humanity.  The story takes place in multiple times periods, with the "present day" - in which a grieving, repentant Roderick making his final confessions to a long-time nemesis - acts as framing sequence to the series.The late 1970s era find Roderick (played by Zach Gilford, The Purge: Anarchy) picking his path in life, pulled towards being an honest, if maybe poor man but loving husband and father, or a cutthroat businessman with Madeline (Willa Fitzgerald) pulling the strings from behind. There's also the weeks set before Roderick and Auguste are having their dark-and-stormy night chat, where each episode one of Roderick's six children face their horrific and untimely demise.  I love a good non-linear story, and Flanagan here constructs it masterfully. It's jumping from time to time, further expanding multiple different narratives, all while teasing right up until to the finale what the actual deal that Roderick and Madeline made with the mysterious figure (Carla Gugino) who is present at each of the kids' deaths. There's so many little mysteries that Flanagan teases out over the eight episode that make for compulsive viewing, once one episode is done, you want to dive right into another. As well, the premise of an awful family of uber-rich assholes each meeting a pretty grim end (each very loosely based around an Edgar Allen Poe story), makes for absolutely delightful viewing. 

(1 Good): Roderick himself was personally responsible for the development and exploitation of highly addictive, highly profitable painkiller Ligodone upon which he built an empire. He has hundreds of thousands of skeletons in his closet. I've seen Greenwood in many, many productions, and he's always a solid player in every appearance, but I don't know if he's ever been given a role like this which requires so much gravitas and control. Roderick is a man who is haunted, both literally and figuratively, and Greenwood plays both so perfectly. This is the story of a man recalling the glory and regrets of his past, a man trying to, in some small way atone for his sins, while within his story, he is a most assured and devilish man. Greenwood needs to work through an entire emotional spectrum with this character, all the while it has to feel appropriate and consistent to his character. He has the toe the line of being so evil that there's no chance we could like him, and then have Greenwood present little aspects of the character that show there's humanity underneath (we still don't like him, but there is a bit a sympathy, and even pathos among all the schadenfreude). The writing is largely fabulous, the performance is even better. 

(1 Bad): The only bad in what is otherwise delightfully grizzly October-friendly viewing was a few moments in the conceit of the framework. Some of the back and forth between Auguste and Roderick felt...forced, unnatural, often as the show was using the framework to jump between its time periods and narrative tracks and the attempts to direct the narrative through this dialogue felt shaky at points. In teasing out the history that Roderick and Auguste have, it makes investing in this face-to-face a little more difficult. But it's a really small quibble in an show that had me squealing and squicking in equal measure.

META: Flanagan has his ensemble of players that he uses again and again, and I'm of two minds about it. There's an aspect of it that's kind of fun, like how Hallmark just kind of mixes-and-matches their leads across their dozens of seasonal offerings each year, you kind of get to know and like these performers and look forward to seeing what roles Flanney decides to put them in.  But at the same time I also feel like it may be limiting the performances, that maybe by only casting familiar actors, he's maybe not getting the best performances that he could. But that reservation only holds water if I feel like any of the performances didn't deliver, and I couldn't really find flaw with almost any player. And it's not like Greenwood, Mary McDonnell, Lumbly, and Mark Hamill were regular players in the Flanney troupe prior to this, and they're all quite astonishing additions. Love to see them all in great roles.

One other thing about Fall of the House of Usher that deviated from usual Flanney tropes... there weren't the usual monologues that Flanney has a penchant for, but much of the face-to-face between Auguste and Roderick was monologue, but it's also narrative, so it made a lot more sense and felt more natural that it often does in Flanagan's shows.

[Toastypost - we agree!]

31 Days of Halloween: The Elixir

2025, Kimo Stamboel (Headshot) -- Netflix

Wouldn't be the season without at least one zombie movie.

A family patriarch is gathering his family at their home in a small village outside Jakarta, Indonesia. He is Sadimin (or Dimin; Donny Damara, Hotel Sakura), a greying widower who married Karina (Eva Celia, The Shadow Strays), his daughter Kenes' (Mikha Tambayong, Blood Curse) childhood best friend, which caused an irreparable rift between the two women. Kenes husband, whom she is also at odds with due to his infidelity, is there to finish a merger with Dimin's small but lucrative herbal supplement company. I guess herbal medicine is big there? Unfortunately Dimin's rushing to produce a new age defying concoction before his scientists have tested it thoroughly and downs a sample. Amazing, it takes decades off his appearance.

Except under an hour later, he dies in painful throes and is turned into a zombie, immediately attacking his family and staff. His staff succumb pretty quickly, while one grounds man who got sprayed in the face with blood drives off seeking medical help. He only gets as far as a large family gathering celebrating a circumcision (!!!), before he too succumbs to the zombie infection, slamming his car into the celebration crowd and immediately munching down on them. Thus the plague has begun.

Like most zombie that take place at the beginning of the plague, its about a small group fleeing the ravenous hordes of flesh eating dying and dead. There are the two young women, Kenes' husband & son and eventually another couple who they blunder into. The small village doesn't make for many secure buildings, so everyone ends up at the local police precinct where all but one cop have been eaten & transformed. How will they survive? Or more typically, who will survive.

The movie had two things going for it: a very very good special effects budget, and choosing to have the movie set absent of any "zombie" mythology at all, i.e. even the video game playing, crossbow building brother-in-law doesn't bring up zombie lore. The practical effects are pretty impressive here, and the drone shots of the running hordes along the narrow right angle streets between the rice fields in the lush, verdant rural village are incredible. CG or a cast of hundreds of extras? Hard to tell, which is a good thing. This movie treats its zombies as something of its own, their own gnashing teeth, their own twisted contortions and the panic stricken irrational responses of the survivors. These people have zero situational awareness, but they don't know they are in a zombie movie, so... In some ways, a little silly, but it takes itself seriously. 

Note: I watched this on my own, as seasonal filler, and even if Marmy had been interested in a zombie movie, and she isn't, this one would have immediately turned her off. It depicts the infection moving quite quickly through the body, visualized by a spread of holes in the flesh akin to those caused by parasites, giving a quick trypophobic reaction to even me, who is not bothered by it. It was gross; gross gross gross.

31 Days of Halloween: The Astronaut

2025, Jess Varley (feature debut) -- download

There is a plot point I have seen come up a few times in the last few years, one focused on women astronauts and the challenges they face, with a spotlight on being astronaut first, or mother first. There was the Noomi Rapace show Constellation, a German Netflix show called The Signal and a bit further back, the Hillary Swank Away. There's more, but there is an image, a scene I always recall, where there is guilt and pain about being dragged away from being a mother, whether it be caused by long training missions or the time away in space. Comparatively, the images of astronauts as "fathers" is always dominated by the proud stance the men take and how their sons look up to them. 

The movie begins with the splash down of Sam Walker's (Kate Mara, Fantastic Four) capsule in the ocean, its window broken, her unconscious, helmet cracked and covered in blue goo. She is taken to a secure facility in a remote location, one of those architecturally impressive houses in a dark forest that horror movies love so much, on the pretense of recovery & study. Her estranged husband (Gabriel Luna, The Last of Us) & adopted daughter meet her, but are not allowed to stay -- the tension between the couple is palpable; her mission has caused a rift. There is a brief moment where Sam talks to a fellow female astronaut and it is strongly hinted that Sam needs to hide any signs of fragility or she will be overlooked for coming missions. She has to be "strong" despite the mysterious trauma she has been through.

Its a horror movie, so almost immediately, she starts seeing things, hearing things, shadows in the background, on the perimeter of the house. And the strange bruises on her arm are spreading. Medically she seems fine, but they keep her detained for now. Things escalate, including the discovery that the house is more than it seems, being surrounded by surveillance technology. Sam's father, the Pentagon general (Laurence Fishburne, Hannibal) who runs the facility, hand-waves it away, showing her how it is as much a safe-house with lock-down capabilities as it is a house for diplomats -- typical shadowy US govt shit. Almost immediately after the house goes into lock-down, on its own, with strange electronic disturbances and shadows of creatures that we see, and not always Sam. Again, her father hand-waves it away. She doesn't mention the stalker.

In a horror movie, the narrator can be unreliable. While we see what is stalking or "haunting" her, there is always the question as to whether she is imagining the strange happenings, or is it actually happening. We also don't trust the authorities, including her father. Eventually things do escalate to full-on reveals, a Jurassic Park style scene of some creature hunting her through the hissing steam & blaring alarms of the locked-down house, all the trappings of previous horror/alien movies but with little thought as to why these are happening. Why are there random jets of steam from the ceiling? Why, if the basement of the facility is supposed to be secure, is it behind flimsy wooden doors? The creators of the movie wanted the trappings with little care for reasons, and its a disappointment.

Spoiler-age.

As the final act escalates, as Sam is stalked, we also see that the bruises have become bioluminescent goo & skin patches, that Sam is bleeding from strange wounds emerging on her body. The aliens stalking her are also bioluminescent, and we are given enough to see that Sam is maybe not quite what the movie has told us she is. The flashes she gets of a crater, and soldiers with guns chasing... something. Sam is the alien, an alien, one of many who many years ago, chose a bio-altering camouflage and became Sam as a child, who was taken by the general and raises as his daughter. Now, years later, her real family attacked the ISS and introduced an "antidote" to the camouflage. Sam is becoming who she really is. And the aliens take her away, whoosh.

Meh. Not bad, effective haunted house, stalking-stranger motifs with some decent acting. Despite my labelling as a "fan" of horror movies, there are those by-the-numbers that really do it for me, and those that just barely scratch the itch; most in fact -- a lot of chaff that needs to be brushed away for the grain of value left behind.

I am wont to mention my fondness for directors being given a chance, something to cut their Hollywood teeth on, and while this will not be the Neil Blomkamp District 9 of Varley's career, its a good start to a hard-working career. And the purple suits ("from the producers of A Quiet Place") have to keep on purple-suiting.

KWIF: Roofman (+3)

 KWIF=Kent's week in film. An odd drama, plus more Coens, more Nick and Nora and more teenagers foiling death's design.

This Week:
Roofman (2025, d. Derek Cianfrance - in theatre)
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013, d. Joel and Ethan Coen - Crave)
The Thin Man Goes Home (1941, d.  - DVD)
Final Destination 3 (2005, d. Glen Morgan - rental)

---

If one were to attend Roofman based on the trailer, or even the poster, one would think that Roofman was this year's Hit Man, a "based on a true story" film that turns real events into a sort of whimsical romantic comedy. The story of a down-on-his-luck veteran who turns to breaking into chain stores and fast food restaurants only to go on the lam by hiding out in a Toys R Us where he falls for one of the employees sounds like it should be an amusing, maybe even silly fun time at the movies.

But director Cianfrance, who co-writes the screenplay with Kurt Gunn, is much, much, much more interested in the human angle than finding much funny about the situation at all.  This is a true story of something that happened to a real person, and unlike Richard Linklater with Hit Man, Cianfrance isn't interested in sugar coating the story.

Channing Tatum has managed to get away from the meathead/pretty-boy perception that haunted his early career, despite still often playing meatheads and pretty boys. In between such roles he finds interesting projects that challenge him as an actor, and working with directors he likes, having clocked in time with Tarantino, the Coens, the Wachowskis and Soderbergh (so much Soderbergh). Still, in Jeffrey Manchester, the titular "Roofman", we find Tatum at his most vulnerable and soulful, walking a tightrope between sweet and sketchy with lots of fumbles to either side. 

Manchester is an Army vet, separated from his wife with alternate weekends with his kids. He's broke with no prospects and just can't seem to figure out how to get a leg up. His "super power", an exceptional innate skill, is observation. He sees patterns and details that are either invisible to the rest of us, or we take for granted. Someone with such a skill can be very effective in many situations, including crime, which is what Manchester turns to.  His series of break-ins in North Carolina become notorious over a two year span, but it's afforded Manchester a new house and won his family back...until he gets found out and goes to jail.

Tatum provides voice over throughout the film largely to give insight into how Manchester executes his crimes, the observations made and the patience needed accomplish the task, including describing how he broke out of prison, and eluded immediate capture by hiding out in a toy store. Unfortunately the narration doesn't extend to Manchester's thought process in entering a relationship with Leigh Wainscott (Kirstin Dunst), a store employee who he has been observing during store hours over baby cameras he set up. He meets her in person at her church and winds up on a date with her under a fake name and a government employee doing "undercover" work he can't discuss. But he's beefy and charming and soon they're a couple.  He meets Leigh's teenage daughters, showering the family with stolen goods, or goods bought with money from pawned video games from Toys R Us. 

Not too long ago, we would be made to feel sorry for Manchester. A film from, say, 2010, would paint him as a nice guy who went through hard times, and made the only decision he could. Such a film would root for Manchester to be free and stay free, root for the coupling of Leigh and "John Zorn", despite the cloud of deceit hanging over the whole proceedings (hell, Hit Man even did that...last year).  But this isn't that film. This film is all too aware that, as nice a guy as Manchester may seem, he's still being selfish even in his generosity. His attachment to Leigh and her family is, at least in part, a substitute for missing his own. While the film doesn't heighten or exacerbate the tension of it all, playing it pretty naturally, it's still exceptionally tense if you have any empathy for Leigh. Manchester's "victims" of his robberies all describe him as, really, a nice guy underneath, but there's nothing nice about deceit, and when Manchester is finally found out, it is a relief, more than anything.

Alongside exceptional performances from Tatum and Dunst, and Dinklage as the store manager, Ben Mendelsohn and Uzo Aduba play the pastor and his wife at the church, LaKeith Stanfield plays Manchester's army buddy while Juno Temple plays Stanfield's girlfriend while Tony Revolori and Jimmy O. Yang both have smaller cameos. These are quite some notable names for what amount to fairly nominal roles.

It's a good film, but certainly not what it was sold as. There's a few situational chuckles, but by and large it's all played very dramatically. Even the scene where Manchester is taking one of his "boys room" showers and is accidentally discovered by the store manager (Peter Dinklage), it could have been a really big comedic set pieces, but instead it's played exceptionally tense as Tatum, fully nude, tries to retreat to his hidey hole, and Dinklage is clearly traumatized by the encounter. It's the moment that spells the beginning of the end for Manchester's freedom and the new life he's deceptively built for himself. 

There's an exceptional coda to the film, though, that provides the audience with both resolution and even a little insight into the real Manchester. Interviews and news footage of the real "Roofman" and some of the people whose lives he touched play during the closing credits, and, again provide more context and a sense of closure to the story at hand.

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I have been going through the films of the Coen Brothers week-by-week for the past three months now, and we've finally hit the point in their filmography where I've already done a review on this blog for the film that I've watched this week.

It's been over 11 years since I last watched Inside Llewyn Davis, and my memories of the film were mere flashes, out of context moments that told me nothing of the experience of watching the film. I didn't re-read my review until after watching the movie. Spelling mistakes aside, and maybe a bit of reassessing my Coen's preamble, I was surprised at how spot on my review from over a decade ago mirrored my repeat experience with the film, right down to the examination about whether it was a time loop film or not (it might be, but probably not).

In that review, I talked about how it was under-appreciated by critics. In the time since, it's been added to the Criteron Collection and has been held up as another of the Coens' many, many masterpieces. It gets into the director's interests of being behind the scenes of the performing arts, following this struggling musician as he tries to make space for himself and his interests in the world. There's shades of Barton Fink without the heightened reality, this is a very naturalistic experience.

Llewyn (Oscar Isaac), it was much clearer to me in this second viewing, is a traumatized man and his response to the world is to push it away, despite his best intentions. He's an asshole, and he knows it, but he doesn't know how to be any other way, because he's angry at the world. You would think the wake-up call would be taking a road trip with jazz musician Roland Turner (John Goodman) and his driver, beat poet Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund...watching a lot of this guy of late). Turner is the vision of Llewyn 30 years in the future: a junkie who has an opinion on everything and hates pretty much all of it. 

Llewyn tries to abandon the life, the music, and just settle, but the music world proves that it isn't done with him, and karma gets him back on stage with a guitar in his hands.

My big realization watching this film, besides admiring how goddamned talented and appealing a performer Oscar Isaac is), is that I'm really, really not a folk music guy. I don't find a guy and his acoustic guitar or a trio harmonizing (with an acoustic guitar), or any of the folksy instruments and "traditional" songs terribly appealing. I appreciate them in the moment, but it's never something I'm going to put any effort into seeking out. There's a reason I haven't watched this film in over a decade (and it's been even longer since I saw A Mighty Wind) despite thinking it's a pretty great movie with phenomenal performances.

No Deakins' cinematography here, as Bruno Debonnel steps in with a very natural sensibility to the proceedings. There's no gloss here, and it's often all about the immediacy of the music. It's desaturated into greys and blues and browns, all feeling like very late fall or early winter in New York (and Chicago), cold and somewhat unforgiving. Also missing from the usual Coens production, Carter Burwell, as the music in the film is all performances, with frequent collaborator T-Bone Burnett working with Issac to arrange his performances, among others.  It's a standout film in the Coens filmography primarily because it feels so different, both musically and visually, but that said it feels like the proper extension to the shift the Coens had been making since The Ladykillers. You can definitely see, with No Country for Old Men, True Grit, and A Serious Man how this fits into this phase of their career.

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It still kind of ruffles my feathers that the "Nick and Nora" movies are called The Thin Man series and the title of each film seems to be referencing Nick as the titular "Thin Man", when the thin man of the first movie was the suspect of the murder case.  Increasingly the titles of the series make less and less sense.

In The Thin Man Goes Home, Nick and Nora travel by train to Nick's hometown for a visit with his doting mother and disapproving father. Nick, a near 50-year-old man at this point, regresses somewhat upon returning home. His father thinks him lazy and hard-drinking, so, Nick decides to switch from his all-martini diet to drinking cider, but still runs afoul of situations that leads his father to think him tipsy off his ass.

Nick's arrival in town causes a stir. It's a tight community and, all told, a peaceful one. But as we know about America of the 1900's (especially through the works of David Lynch) beneath the placid normalcy of everyday America lies a deep, dark undercurrent that most just ignore is even there. To acknowledge it is to give it power, to summon it forth. Nick's mere arrival has Joe and Jane Normal thinking Nick's there on a case and it may involve them.  Nora, the muckraker she is, adds fuel to the fire and all but fabricates a case for Nick to work on. She really wants Nick to show off his detective skills to his father and finally impress him, like he constantly impresses her.

When a man is murdered by a sniper's rifle on Nick's parent's very doorstep, Nick can't help but get involved. Like all the "Think Man" movies, the cast expands and the actual crime spirals, leading to a gathering of all the possible suspects in one room where Nick sorts it all out. This film, so aware of its proceedings, gets downright meta as Nora explains to Nick's parents exactly how it will all shake out, including maybe a gunshot or two take at Nick.

Missing completely from this endeavour is Nick Jr. At first I thought the series was just outright abandoning him as if he never existed at all, but turns out he loves kindergarten so much that his parents couldn't dare to pull him from it to visit his grandparents (uh huh).

In prior Thin Man sequels there have been sit-com-esque set-ups or sequences that sometimes feel at odds with the murder and crime aspects of the film, but here, the tone remains pretty well balanced throughout. It never fully abandons its comedic elements for a more stone-faced approach to the investigation. If anything, it may go too far with the comedy as it tries to introduce physical comedy and slapstick, it turns out, it's not one of Willam Powell's strengths.

Still a fun time is always had in the company of Nick and Nora Charles.

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With Final Destination 2, it felt like a step away from the intensity of the first film in favour of the delights of seeing annoying people get killed via incredibly elaborate cosmic jokes played on them. As well, FD2 really tried to figure out how to connect the first two films in wholly unnecessary and clumsy ways that just contributed to its delightful lunacy. I think my write-up last week didn't hit hard enough how damn entertaining the sequel was because of its ridiculousness, not in spite of it. As it lingered in my brain, I enjoyed it more and more.

I was excited to see than the makers of the first film were back, and I was keen to see what X-Files veterans James Wong and Glen Morgan had in store for a third entry of teenagers trying to escape death.

It's as if Wong and Morgan thought the ludicrousness of the second film was a flaw, with Final Destination 3 they really tried to bring back the ominousness, the foreboding dread of death and its designs. It doesn't work so well.

A young Mary Elizabeth Winstead leads the cast as Wedny, the one who has the vision of a Canadian roller coaster ride gone haywire. Next to the crazy highway chaos of the second film, a roller coaster malfunction isn't anywhere near as exciting, as wild as the deaths in Wendy's vision are.  The roller coaster accident itself is a tricky bit of filmmaking. Using a mix of practical shots of a roller coaster in motion as well as in-studio shots for the deaths, it's uneven and a bit janky-looking. The second film over-delivered on the opening calamity, and this pales in comparison.

Following Wendy and others getting off the roller coaster before its epic fail, Wendy starts to see in the photos she was taking for school yearbook signs that the survivors are going to die.  What happens often, though is Wendy and friends are looking at the wrong picture and thus the wrong signs.. the point being there's really no way to tell, no way to be certain what death's plan is for you.

While I like the vehicle for predicting the deaths much, much more than the repeated "visions" in FD2 (photos prognosticating deaths date back at least to The Omen), the deaths themselves are for the most part fairly straightforward, with no where near the level of fake-outs and surprises that the second film had, although there's a pretty decent sequence involving a drive-thru lineup, hills and a runaway delivery truck.

The finale of the film, taking place at a tricentennial fair, is pretty weak, all things considered, as the film seemed far more concerned with its three leads than anyone in the audience. There is a delightfully wicked 5-months-later coda, though, that seems so much more inspired than the rest of the film.

31 Days of Halloween: Rabbit Trap

2025, Bryn Chainey (feature debut) -- download

I feel that I have to watch at least one UK movie that highlights its wild, bleak and gloomy countryside. If it also adds in a touch of the fae, bonus! 

Daphne (Rosy McEwan, Vesper) and Darcy (Dev Patel, The Green Knight) are a married couple who have come to the Welsh countryside from London. Daphne is an established electronic musician and Darcy is ... her sound man? I was never sure what Darcy was, but he was as enraptured with collecting sound as Daphne was in creating it. It should be noted that it is 1976 and thus all of Daphne's electronic musical instruments are giant, modular analog monstrosities. Its odd that I was offered this movie, considering I have just become aware of "Look Ma No Computer", a YouTube musician known for his use of modular synthesizers. Not that he is anything like Daphne's music, which is more akin to Laurie Spiegel. Anywayz, Daphne is into discordant soundscapes, and is suffering a bit of a block, while Darcy is out recording water dropping and murmurations.

One day while wandering a forested hillside, Darcy comes across a pool of water obviously reacting to an unheard sound. He puts on his headphones, adjusts his big mic and hears.... music & voices, if you stretch your mind enough to call the sounds that. He follows them, comes across a fairy ring and before we can yell at the screen, "Don't walk into that !!" we find him waking up in its centre.

What has Darcy done...

Not long after Daphne sees someone watching the house. Darcy, on one of his wandering treks, also catches a young... boy (?) hiding in the grass. The child (Jade Croot, The Witcher) is obviously a wild creature of the hills and moors, threadbare coat, thick Welsh accent and very odd nature. Darcy introduces them to Daphne and thus begins a co-dependent relationship. Both are obviously seeking something from the other, including inspiration for Daphne's music.

Meanwhile Darcy continues to suffer from night terrors, a dream of a looming figure at the foot of his bed, which leaves him with sleep paralysis.

The Child, which never gives the couple their name, begins to manipulate the situation more and more, until they have a "gift" for Daphne, and the two walk out into the woods, through a tunnel under a hill (again, we yell at the screen, "Never do that!!") and into an ancient wooded area. By this time Darcy is already panicking and has to follow, but ends up having more and more visions. Daphne ends up being incredibly disturbed by the experience, finally seeing the Child as being something strange and otherworldly and ends up asking them to leave, after a strained night where they claim to have become the couple's child.

It gets worse for the couple.

This is an incredibly well shot, well recorded movie with powerful performances especially from Jade Croot as The Child. The problem lies in that its not sure what it can do with this obviously sly, manipulative fae creature as it shies close to folklore but also to metaphorical family trauma. The ending is weird, gross and mystical but not entirely satisfying.