Wednesday, April 23, 2025

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Mountain Between Us

2017, Hany Abu-Hassad (The Courier) -- Netflix

I have had this in The Hopper since 2017, having always had a fondness and dislike (yes, cognitive dissonance) for "trapped in the mountains" movies since I saw Survive! as a kid in a drive-in in the 70s. But I knew this was about a man and a woman, initially strangers, trapped together after a plane crash. And knowing the way Hollywood movies go, putting a man and a woman alone on a mountain together means romance, and I was hesitant about that. I should have stuck with my gut feeling.

Ben (Idris Elba, The Wire), a neurosurgeon, and Alex (Kate Winslet, Contagion), a photojournalist, are flying out of Idaho; he for an emergency surgery in Baltimore and she to her wedding in NYC. A snowstorm cancels all the flights but she has an idea -- a charted small plane with a capable pilot who can reach Denver, outside the storm's reach, before it gets really bad, and then they can grab connecting flights. Except, he has a stroke and dies as they fly over the mountains in Utah. The plane crashes; the pilot's dog survives. So do Ben and Alex.

Alex  is injured and their food is running out; most of the pilot's stash of food was stored in the tail which was torn off as they crashed. Ben wants to wait it out, wait for rescue, but Alex is adamant nobody is looking for them as the pilot didn't file a flight plan. Sure, people will miss them but where would they begin? 

Eventually his optimism gives way to a desperate need to get somewhere with food. But where? These are rocky snowcaps, but she believes if they can get below the snowline, then they can find something. After a handful of arguments, they finally head out.

The focus of the movie, and as it should be considering the leads, is the interactions between the two. These are two charismatic, capable actors and its believable when they go through so many emotions, eventually clinging to each other, grasping at hope despite the odds. 

What I should have guessed was coming, I did not, and after doing some BTS reading, seeing its based on a novel by a light-romance kind of pseudo-Nicholas Sparks kind of author, I see why it ended up where it did. They fall for each other. But that kind of desperate attraction always annoyed me. Well, not always -- there was a time in my youth when the idea of white-knighting a girl, rescuing her from danger and falling into each other's arms appealed to me. Now, knowing better, knowing the troubling aspects of such hookups, I find the trope annoying. Sure, you can be drawn together out of need, out of adrenalin, out of a connection born of desperation. But, once you are back to reality, once you are back in your lives, what will you have?  Sure, these are two powerful, independent, attractive people but... when what drew them together is resolved, can there be anything more?

The movie believes there can be, and it believes it so much, it ends with a walking-away-looking-back-running-into-each-other's-arms moment. Oh, there is a certain type that will gobble this up with wild abandon, and I don't judge them, but its not for me.

Oh, the dog survives, so there is that.

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Paddington in Peru

2024, Dougal Wilson (a bunch of music videos & ads) -- download

The first Paddington movie not done by Paul King, and it shows. 

I realized something with a recent post, that since I have not embraced "reviewing movies" as the focus of this blog, for me, it has always been more a vehicle of me, through the lens of pop culture consumption. I am sure that says something about me already as well as the choices I make in my viewing. One could say that that has always been the intent of "journalism" or any non-fiction writing, to share your own world view through what you write about. With the loss of "personal blogs" I guess this became my forum.

And we won't go into the whole "writing as therapy" bit will we....

We didn't rush to see this one, as we knew it was not King. But in the advent of January 6 and the anxiety felt, and only increased, as the weeks of doom scrolling went by. We needed an antidote. We started by the rewatch of the first two.

This movie must have come out digitally in the UK before it was released in North America because non-cam copies appeared mid-February.

Has it really been eight years since the last one? Time flies when the world is burning down around you. Were those movies really, truly pre-Pause? It just seems that the relief they provided was so endemic to the pandemic. Now, that said, eight years is a lot of years, and that means teenagers grow up. But not eight years worth, just ... older teens. But I get ahead of myself.

Paddington (Ben Whishaw, Black Doves) gets a letter from Peru, and inside it states Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton, The Crown), who is now in the Home for Retired Bears, has been missing Paddington ever so much, and has been acting strangely. So, Paddington and the Browns and Mrs. Bird (Julie Waters, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone) decide they will visit Darkest Peru. But first, we establish how everyone is doing. Mr. Brown is dealing with his company having some cameo laden management restructure, the kids are almost ready for college and dealing with growing pains and Mrs. Brown has been replaced by Emily Mortimer. Sure, she's a lovely actor, but she's no Sally Hawkins (as Mrs. Brown).

An adventure. Sure, number two was an adventure, but a proper adventure in an adventurous locale. Not a Bear Out of Water movie but the Browns Out of Water. I was reserved by hopeful.

In Peru they meet a nun, a sometimes singing nun (Olivia Colman, Secret Invasion) on the green grasses of mountainsides, but mostly a very amiable nun. Aunt Lucy has gone missing, leaving behind some clues, after which the Browns and Paddington must immediately chase. And that leads them to riverboat captain Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas, Uncharted), his charming daughter Gina (Carla Tous, 30 Coins), and his obsession for the gold of El Dorado (not the chicken shop) which is personified by the appearance of his ancestors' ghosts. So, yeah, a proper adventure up the river in search of the lost city of El Dorado, but really, searching for Aunt Lucy.

Retrospectively, I am less satisfied with the movie than I was during the watching. The tonal shift from King to Wilson is very apparent, and while I am happy he did not try to replicate the thousand little nods of charm that King did (my continuous smiling or chuckles) but he does put his own little mark on it, which include pop culture nods: The Sound of Music as nun Reverend Mother dances and sings, Steamboat Willie (Disney) music playing on Captain Cabot's player piano, an escape from a rolling boulder that I don't have to identify. Sure, they are fun and all, but.... not my Paddington charms. This is likely the Paddington movie that is more meant for the kids than for the adults that swarmed the other two. And just when we truly needed the charms. Pfaw.

I am sure I could say more about the plot and all, but I think I will find myself detracting more from it than it deserves. For me, you can put the bear back into the jungle, but that was beside the point.

Monday, April 21, 2025

KWIF: Black Bag, Anora and The People's Joker

 KWIF=Kent Watches, Intermittently, Film. I'm just, like, too tired, like, all the time.

This post:
Black Bag (2025, d. Steven Soderbergh - in theatre)
Anora (2024, d. Sean Baker - AmazonPrime)
The People's Joker (2022, d. Vera Drew - Blu-Ray)

---

A sexy espionage thriller starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender from Steven Soderbergh? That was an easy "yes, please and thank you."

Soderbergh's second release of 2025 (after Presence, which came and went so fast in January barely anyone noticed) certainly has the feel of this current stage of Soderbergh's career, marked by a curious use of different types of lenses (my knowledge of lens types and the effects they give is fleeting so I won't even attempt to elaborate any further) and natural lighting that give his digital movies almost the texture of film, while providing the filmmaker the tools to shoot fast, cheap, mobile, and prolifically.

The director "retired" from filmmaking in 2013 after his Liberace biopic went straight to HBO, skipping theatres altogether, and decided to focus his efforts on entering the golden age of television. Since "retiring" he has directed 40 episodes of television (across 1 series and 3 mini-series) and, oops, 9 more films before this one. That's Soderbergh in retirement mode. Since returning to film in 2017, he's become fascinated with digital technology, including shooting entire films on his iPhone. There are obvious limitations to that kind of exercise, and some of those productions wear their experimentalism quite proudly. This isn't one of those productions, but it's not a straightforward Hollywood-glossy production either.  It settles in somewhere in the middle between daring and refined.

A large part of the polished feel comes from a script by veteran David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible) who has scripted three of Soderbergh's last four productions. Black Bag finds Blanchett and Fassbender as a long-time married couple who both work for British intelligence. It is a field that can be difficult for romantic partners to maintain trust in one another as they can bury any secret (including infidelity) under the "black bag" paradigm. But, Fassbender's George Woodhouse is utterly devoted to his wife, even more so than to his country (which he is very devoted to). When he's given a tip that someone in his circle of friends is possibly a double agent, including potentially his wife, he holds a particularly tense dinner party with the two other couples-from-work in question (Tom Burke, Naomi Campbell, Rege-Jean Page, and Marisa Abela).

The other couples provide a contrast to the pairing of George and Kathryn St. Jean, but also leaves the audience wondering if there are similarities too. After the party, the signs seem to point to Kathryn selling government secrets, and George's devotion to Kathryn is put to the test the more he investigates. The question the film asks isn't so much a "who's really the double agent?", but instead "is Kathryn as devoted to George as she says she is?", and conversely, "is George as devoted to Kathryn as he says he is?"

This isn't a big flash-bang Mr. and Mrs. Smith action movie, but something much more cerebral, and even more so emotional, despite George's steely, near-robotic demeanour when he's in dogged pursuit of his lead. As the film delves further into their relationship, and the intermingling of relationships of their colleagues, the intensity threatens to boil over. The metatext of the messy business of international espionage is only tangentially commented upon, this is more a relationship thriller than a political one, but it's also one laden with attractive people flirting and more. What's not to like?  

---

I've been hearing about Sean Baker for quite a few years now, about his dramas starring characters who are in the sex work field that sound like they're going to be real bummers but wind up being quite entertaining.  Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket were all films outside the mainstream but received a lot of commentary with each release. I don't know that anyone could have anticipated that Baker was about to level up to become the most decorated person at a single Oscars ceremony in history.

Baker won four Oscars for Anora, in the categories as director, writer, editor, and producer (the only other person to win four Oscars in one year: Walt Disney) and star Mikey Madison took home the best actress Oscar in a hotly contested year.

I have not seen any of Baker's prior films, because I've been afraid to. I have heard of the reputation of his films, and despite what they say about his fairly light touch, I still was thinking it would be a bait-and-switch and I was going to be challenged a lot more than I want to most of the time.

Anora opens in a strip club, with dancers strip teasing and lap dancing, tits out within seconds of the opening frame. I'm still that guy who gets uncomfortable with nudity in a motion picture (what's the appropriate reaction here?!?), and the first act of this production was pretty heavy duty with nudity and sex. To Baker's credit, his camera is never leering, it's pretty passive in its observation. Madison plays Ani, a dancer, who is pulled in to the VIP lounge to work the young Vanya since she's the only one who speaks Russian. The son of a wealthy Russian oligarch, Vanya is living in the States to escape the expectations of his parents. He and Ani hit it off, and he invites her out for a private gig, which extends into a weeklong, whirlwind gig as his girlfriend, and a lot of sex. A lot. But also, seemingly, connection. The girlfriend gig ends in an impromptu trip to Vegas, where they decide to get married, and a hard line between the very uncomfortable, sex-and-nudity laden first act and the rest of the movie is drawn.

As rumours of Vanya's marriage circulate, the family fixer gets involved, bringing in some goons to sort out the truth. Vanya fights for his marriage, tries pulling rank on the thugs, and Ani fights back herself. Things would feel pretty serious and pretty dangerous if Baker didn't really twist the physicality into something more akin to slapstick than brutal violence. Once Vanya hears his parents are coming, though, he, quite literally, runs, leaving everything and everyone behind (it's such a comedic moment, you could almost picture the cartoon trail of dust behind him).  It's all kind of shenanigans thereafter, as Ani and the goon squad try tracking down Vanya in the clumsiest manner possible, and the third act brings Vanya's parents into the picture.

It was as I heard it was, a surprisingly entertaining, light on its feet drama that basically sits on the Pretty Woman trope and farts quite loudly upon it. It's not a rousing or uplifting comedy, it's still a drama, but it's much much lighter than what I was expecting and the laughs come more from performance than situation (as the situation remains pretty intense for Ani). Madison's Oscar winning performance at the front of the film require her to craft a character who is comfortable with her profession, and knows how to handle herself in pretty much any situation. The second act finds her taking a back seat (sometimes literally) to the goon squad and much of her role is reacting to her increasingly desperate situation, quietly assessing the level of threat to her, and contemplating what her connection to Vanya really is. What Madison is able to get across in these quiet moments is, at least for me, the more impressive part of her performance.  Saying a lot while saying nothing can often go under the radar, but the film absolutely hangs off it through the latter 2/3s of the film.

I'm not going to debate whether Anora was the best film of 2024 or even the most deserving of the Oscars best picture nominees...awards do have meaning, but they are never unimpeachable (and the categories are so subjective to one's particular tastes anyway).... I will say I have no problem with its successes at all, I think Anora earned them.  I will work my way back through Baker's filmography at some point. Anora has confirmed the expectations that were set for me.

---

The People's Joker debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022 with the threat of a copyright infringement hanging over its head. The film screened once and was pulled from its remaining screenings, the result turned an unofficial, ultra-low-budget, cult-ready satire of the Batman-mythos-as-trans-allegory from maybe a blip on the radar of the Festival into a full-blown cult phenomenon. 

On the blu-ray menu screen, writer-director-star Vera Drew, in her "Joker Harlequin" guise, introduces the menu, and then proceeds to vamp for near upon five minutes before starting to launch into reading the letter from "an unnamed media conglomerate" and also to read from the multi-paged legal review of her film from a battery of lawyers she hired to ensure that her use of the characters fell under the fair use and parody banner. (Drew does mention that she was told the menu screen can handle up to 20 minutes of recorded content, and she seemed intent on pushing it all the way).

The People's Joker is a very personal tale for Drew, who starts off as a young boy (whose dead name is bleeped out whenever it is said, save for one choice moment) in Smallville, rural nowhere America, feeling lost in her skin, with a mother whose expectations for her child are utterly conformist (and a father visually absent from the story despite still being around). Young Bleep upon expressing her feelings of discomfort is taken to Arkham Asylum where Dr. Crane (not Frasier) assesses the child and prescribes Smilex, which chemically helps Bleep get through the next 20 years of life by numbing their everything with a smile.

Bleep becomes fixated on Lorne Michaels (voiced by Maria Bamford) and his UCB Live sketch comedy show, and its star Ras Al Ghul (David Liebe Hart of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! of which Drew was an editor on), and ventures to Gotham to be a part of the UCB, only to find it's a multi-tiered system requiring a lot of money to progress through.

Bleep meets the Penguin and the two start an outsider comedy club which brings in more outsiders like Bane and Poison Ivy, and also the Joker, a trans man who Bleep immediately falls head over heels for.

The film is an exceptionally personal one for Drew, pretty much an autobiography told through a superhero filter. A scene between Nicole Kidman and Val Kilmer's Batman in Batman Forever was the key that unlocked Drew's gender awakening as a child, and her relationship with a trans comedian contained the combination that finally opened the vault. 

It's also a film about Drew's experience in the comedy scene and the various institutions that cowtow to profit-driven expectations rather than art (though Drew is the first to admit that her comedy, and that of her collective, is also pretty out there in its experimentalism, and often not very good).

This intersection of comedy and superheroes is certainly two of my big pop culture interests, and having trans and non-binary people very close to me in my life makes trans film a gateway to helping understand their experiences better without having to be totally invasive about it.

I found the story of The People's Joker very compelling, even if I did spend a lot of the run time doing mental gymnastics trying to translate Joker Harlequin's experiences in the film to maybe Vera Drew's real-life experiences with Lorne Michaels and the UCB. It's all the more disappointing then that I found much of The People's Joker to be somewhat painful to watch, especially when I have so much respect for the creative effort that was involved in its creation.

Drew's primary visual vehicle for the film is green screen acting in front of digital backdrops. The effects is not much different than the backdrop you might have on a Zoom call, and the weird fading and halo effects it causes. It's a style of production that was clearly one Drew was familiar with from her Tim and Eric years (as well as her many low budget and public access projects beyond that), but what's maybe entertaining for a 2-minute sketch is just rather ugly to sit through for the better part of a 93 minute runtime of a movie. 

There's a heavy dose of mixed media throughout, including extended fully animated sequences in different styles (as well as animated sequences inserted into TV screens), some stop motion and experimental visuals. It's a visually dense production that regularly and brazenly shifts styles that it embraces in the editing rather than feeling like a patch. It's pretty scrappy, and, as I said, admirable, but it doesn't make it any prettier to look at. (I should note that some of the costuming and makeup is pretty terrific...and also some of it's pretty bad). Drew's editing though, bridges it all into something quit legible.

But it's that personal story at the centre, with Vera Drew's writing, editing and acting talents carrying the film past it's less than appealing aesthetics and into key trans cinema, and its wild experimentalism, not to mention it's barrage of multimedia asides (like the in-world "Suicide Cop" TV show) that is certainly what has already made it a cult classic ready for midnight screening rotation.

(I should note the blu-ray comes with a low-budget pilot, a full 20+ minute production of Suicide Cop which felt like ready-made Adult Swim programming and I enjoyed quite a bit).

Sunday, April 20, 2025

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Bird Box: Barcelona

2023, David & Alex Pastor (Carriers) -- Netflix

OK, that's just weird. I listed a 2009 American infection movie above, and it had a very young Kiernan Shipka playing a character named Jodie. I just started watching "The Last Showgirl" and it has a still-young Kiernan Shipka playing a character named Jodie.

I just rewatched Bird Box and wrote about it for the first time as a fill-in for The Dark Year. Its a decent apocalyptic horror movie about creatures (we never see them; we don't know what they are) who inspire people to commit suicide, should you gaze upon them. The movie barely explained what was going, nary a "news stories in the background" as its all "the day off". In the not-long-after the only addition to the world-building was in the form of people who had looked upon the creatures, but didn't die --- they just went mad, and became focused on making sure other survivors did look. Like zombie movies, the greater enemy is other people.

Like its predecessor, this movie dances back and forth between "the day" and current day, some months after the event ended the world. But it does something unexpected -- the viewpoint is from one of the "seers" (get it? see-ers or prophets? how clever) who is convinced this is all a biblical event. He believes the people who die at his hands, never directly, are actually having their souls released to go to Heaven. He even sees a bright spot of light launch itself into the sky. A Bad Guy is the main character. But can we follow him through a movie entirely as one deluded by the insanity imposed by monsters? No, not in a mainstream flick; this ones finds a spot of redemption for him.

I honestly dislike the need for sequels to follow the beats of their predecessor. Sure, there are trope laden ideals in survivalist post-apocalypse stories where there is a road to be followed, a safe haven to be sought, but since this movie already started with a twist on ideals, why not skip the whole road story? Because it provides a frame work for the story to work upon. The journey from the last place that Sebastián (Mario Casas, Los hombres de Paco) dispatches some survivors to a safe haven for his next batch of victims is how we are allowed to see Sebastián's transformation, his redemption. A to B, down the river, up the road, salvation at the end. Death and thrilling action along the way.

As a rework to the existing predecessor story, A Quiet Place: Day One did a better job. Despite my lackluster reaction to that movie, as I was expectedly comparing it to its own predecessor, it was just so much better done than this, connected you more to the story, the circumstance and the characters involved. It did not use up each of the journeyers as fodder, but presented them as people. In the end Sebastián's redemption is interesting but the overall journey was not. 

Saturday, April 19, 2025

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Last Showgirl

2024, Gia Coppola (Mainstream) -- download

Repeat. I will not create a That Guy tag.

Yeah, this was definitely a "That Guy" movie, a small indie flick, a slice from someone's life, about the choices people make with their lives. It was unpolished, made no big swings and had a modicum of recognizable Hollywood faces. And yet, in what it was, what it worked with, it was more than successful and satisfying.

Once again I am thinking about why I continue to write in this blog. Sure, there is the compulsion to write and that is worth indulging, if but for myself, but there is that loud shouting voice about audience. Even as I write that sentence I know there are likely less than a half dozen people who will read this post, and likely I know them all personally. They read it because its there. But if I am only partially invested, why should they be? You. Whatever.

And likely check out now. No judgement, but its a bit of a broken record.

There is also the fear of letting something end. We have been writing this blog for just over 14 years. We started it with lofty ideals, inspired by proper movie reviewers like Roger Ebert, believing we had a voice, an opinion and a modicum of at least legible writing talent to back it up. I will say that Kent continued his development of that ideal as he listens to and draws upon a number of movie related podcasts. They give him inspiration and topical subjects upon which to build his own proper critical writing. Meanwhile, I have not enjoyed reading movie critic reviews for over a decade, as I find most are just stringing words together without any heart. They write to fill a slot on a page.  As for the podcasts, I end up shouting wordlessly back at them, more often than not annoyed by the personalities. I have not had the desire to improve upon what I do here and yet, here I still am. 

But why? Its not like I am even viewing with lofty ideals anymore. I continue to consume a lot but is it worth consuming? And beyond a bare minimum, do I even let what I consume influence or educate or inspire me? Do I even have a passion for watching movies anymore because, so often, when asked about the latest objectively great movie, my answer is more often than not, "I haven't seen that yet." And yet I downloaded Statham's latest actioner.

Its a David Ayer movie, and I am watching it as these words were written.

Yet, I can tie all that anxiety into the watching of this movie. Why this movie? Why a small, low-budget, indie movie about a showgirl in Las Vegas, starring an actor more often mocked for her roles than anything. Sure, the primary reason was my fondness was the imagery of Vegas, born of my few trips there to spend time with friends I have barely seen in the last 25 years. Those trips are outside my staid, isolationist norms, and therefore, given me an odd connection to that seedy false city. There were also a few kind reviews I heard/read about this movie which generated a mild bit of interest. Can she act, given the role?

I would say yes. Its a ... bitter-sweet movie that doesn't try to make a hero of the main character, more just tries to establish a level of sympathy. Shelly (Pamela Anderson, Barb Wire) is a 50+ showgirl at the last showgirl show in Vegas, "Le Razzle Dazzle". There are rarely more than a dozen people in the audience. Her fellow showgirls are a mix of young dancers come to Vegas seeking fame, and others just making a buck. There is a certain statement of them all taking the only job they could take, outside of being strippers in a city known to eat up thousands of such. The show is tenaciously adhering to its original act, something that hasn't been popular for thirty years. That is, until its cancelled. Its going to be replaced with something arguably more delusional -- Cirque de Soleil meets Lewd Sex Acts. Shelly has no desire to be part of it, not that any producer would have a woman of her age. The only life she has known is coming to an end.

And that's it, that's what the movie is about. Its about those last few weeks, about how she handles it, about the other people in her life, and its about the choices she made that led her to where she is. It is not a glamorous movie in the least. There is Shelly's estranged daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd, Booksmart) who she is desperate to reconnect with, but on her own terms only -- she won't acknowledge that she sacrificed her daughter's formative years for her own (lackluster) dreams. Hannah is at a crossroads in her own life and comes to see her mother to see if choosing the path of self-fulfillment is worth it. Neither her nor Shelly like the answer. There are Mary-Anne (Brenda Song, The Social Network) and Jodie (Kiernan Shipka, Carriers), fellow dancers who see Shelly as a mother-figure, looking for support, but Shelly cannot see beyond her own crushed dreams & hopes. There is ex-showgirl and close friend Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once) who now waitresses at a casino, in skimpy outfits, for ass-grabs and tips -- her life is likely all Shelly has to look forward to, and its utterly depressing. Again, there is no glamour here. And Eddie (Dave Bautista, Riddick), a stage producer who will just move on from "Le Razzle Dazzle" to the next show; his unrequited crush on Shelly will take him nowhere, even if her friends see him as a lifeline for the last showgirl, which is a depressing statement unto itself.

And yet, these are real people, and the movie handles everything with a sympathetic, maybe sad, observative mood. We are not meant to dislike these people for their choices, just understand that they made the choices they did, and that doesn't make them bad people. Hell knows pop-culture has been telling people to chase their dreams for as long as I have been alive, and well... sometimes that just doesn't pay out. Doing something just because you like it doesn't mean it will reap rewards - monetarily or spiritually.

Honestly, this movie is why, when I was That Guy, I watched movies. Stories, people, emotions. And I think its why people who make movies, even those that never really find acclaim or money, do them. I mean, yes, half the shit I watch was done just to generate a buck, but this is why they should be made. Its a Gia Coppola movie, she who is granddaughter of Francis Ford, and niece of Sofia, a family of film makers. That Guy would have been fascinated by that, would have followed her career, her pursuit of a passion, her making her mark on her family's legacy. Me, I just bumped into it.

And yes, the ties between possibly giving up on something I initially felt passionate about but didn't generate any great ... anything... is not lost on me. But like Shelly, I am pretty sure I will just keep on doing what I do not for any good reason, but... just because.

Friday, April 18, 2025

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Mickey 17

2025, Bong Joon Ho (Memories of Murder) -- download

Yep. Definitely a "Toasty Movie" as Kent is wont to call them.

So much so, I am doing something I never did before (but not for any good reason) and I am now currently "listening to" the audiobook of "Mickey 7" by Edward Ashton on Spotify. It says 9 hours, which sounds like a lot, but considering it takes me MONTHS to read any book (snail pace reading + only during transit) this is not so bad. Still dealing with snobby "listening isn't reading" intrusive thoughts.

Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson, The Batman) is an "expendable". Its a job title more than anything. But its also a statement of lifestyle choice. Doing a spin-off of the "teletransportation paradox" (think that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called "Second Chances" where Riker is "doubled" by a transporter accident), Mickey is assigned to a colonization ship with the duty of ... being killed, after which he is printed out and uploaded with the consciousness from the last time he backed-up. If  they need someone to do something that will most definitely get them killed, such as being exposed to fatal diseases in the atmosphere of a new planet, so they can come up with a vaccine, then he is the guy.

Mickey ends up with this job because: A) he is desperate to get away from a loan shark he owes money to, and B) he's a bit dim. Despite the astonishment and light discouragement from the recruiter (Holliday Grainger, Strike; <rawr>), Mickey signs up because it will get him a berth on the next colony ship leaving Earth. The dim part doesn't allow him to really conceive how exactly nasty this job will be to him.

And it doesn't help that the planet they arrive at (Niflheim) is a frozen ice ball with no plant life, and in fact, no animal life beyond a nasty pill bug that the colonists call a "creeper". When Mickey is sent out to capture one of these bugs, he falls into an ice crevasse and .... well, left for dead. His "best friend" Timo (Steven Yeun, Nope) should rescue him but doesn't consider it worth the effort. And just when Mickey thinks he is about to be eaten by the biggest creeper he has ever seen, it actually rescues him. Buuuuut Timo has returned to the ship and having reported Mickey (17th iteration) dead, they have printed out Mickey 18. Nobody knows, not even Mickey(s) until 17 shows up to his room and finds 18 in his bed.

And that is the crux of the movie. Mickey(s) are now "multiples" which are not looked upon favourably by the colonists. So, what will they do? How will the rest of the colonists handle it? How will Mickey's girlfriend Nasha (Naomie Ackie, Master of None) handle it? The answer, as expected, is not well.

The movie is a satirical dark comedy which I could not help but continually, internally, compare to The 5th Element. Head canon could allow me to think its the same universe, just different time periods. There are lots of Big Characters, caricatures of people. There is Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things), the leader of the colony ship, who is a washed-up politician and pseudo-religious leader with big hair, and bigger teeth that he seems to have issues looking past. And his wife Ylfa (Toni Collete, Knives Out), who wants nothing more than to turn creepers into sauce. Mickey himself is goofy looking with a yokel accent and perpetually sadsack look about him. The supporting cast look like they just walked off the set of the aforementioned Luc Besson movie, which is not entirely unsurprising, considering Bong obviously has a fondness for French comic-booky movies considering his first English language movie, Snowpiercer, was an adaptation of the French comic "Le Transperceneige".

I liked this movie enough to regret not seeing it in the cinema, but ... something is still nagging at me. I guess by the time we got past all the exposition about Mickey and his deaths, I was wondering where they were going to go with the story, and the focus on dealing with the creepers pretty much dominated the third act, and ... didn't interest me all that much. I might have a recurring theme with Bong Joon Ho in all the movies of his I have seen since The Host. And yes, I still have not seen Parasite. Who knows why. This theme is that I love the experience, but... they don't pull together entirely as a whole for me. I excruciatingly love aspects and details of all these movies (never wrote about Okja; thinking it might have been eaten by The Dark Year, despite coming out in mid-2017) but they don't capture me as a whole. It is for that unattainable reason that I have never ReWatched them.

I will rewatch Mickey17 if only to do a running comparison with the book which I am still reading listening to. So far, much of the book has made it into the movie, but that Mickey himself is not as dimwitted, but still, definitely not the brightest star in the sky.

Kent's view. We pretty much agree, but I may be a smidgen more taken with the movie.

Thursday, April 17, 2025

A Pan-tastic Journey: looking at various renderings of Peter Pan

Peter Pan - 1924, d. Herbert Brenon - youtube
Peter Pan - 1953, d. Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi, and Wilfred Jackson - Disney+
Hook - 1991, d. Stephen Spielberg - Netflix
Peter Pan and Wendy - 2023, d. David Lowery - Disney+

"I don't ever want to be a man. I always want to be a little boy and have fun!" - Peter Pan

I have been alive for just shy of 2550 weeks, and in the past week I have spent more time partaking in and thinking about Peter Pan then every week prior to that in total. I have never really cared much for Peter Pan as a character, nor the "boy who never grew up" mythos. Neverland has never enchanted me as an escapist fantasy. 

There are famous people who have obsessed over Peter Pan... Michael Jackson probably the most notable, himself a boy who never truly grew up. Stephen Spielberg was another, as for quite some long time in the first two decades of his career, he seemed to be targeted by his most severe critics as a director who never wanted to grow up. The Blank Check podcast has been picking at Spielbergs early career, especially framed in the light of his pseudo-biographical film The Fablemans, leading up to the trifecta that was the turning point in his career: Hook, Jurassic Park and Schindler's List.

But I'm here to talk about Peter Pan, not Stephen Spielberg, suffice it to say that I decided to watch Hook (perhaps for a second time?) before listening to the Blank Check episode on it, and knowing the pop-culture tourist tendencies that I have, I knew I would be sampling other Pan wares soon after. 

Hook is an "unofficial" (whatever that means) sequel that presupposes that one knows the tale of Peter Pan rather intimately, which, at the time of viewing, I did not. It posits Robin Williams as Peter Banning, a workaholic father of two who can't seem to break away from his career to spend time with his children. It's very Spielbergian in this regards, the regrets of fatherhood and the feeling that one's career means both abandoning one's own youthful enthusiasms and one's tolerance for youth. Many times Williams' Peter yells at his pre-teen son to grow up. 

In a 1992 interview (stealing from the research done by the team at Blank Check) Spielberg said about initially abandoning his intents for a faithful Pan adaptation following the birth of his son "...suddenly I couldn’t be Peter Pan any more. I had to be his father. That’s literally the reason I didn’t do the movie back then. And I had everything ready and Elliot Scott hired to do the sets in London. In a way, my son took my childhood away from me.”  This unlocks a lot of Hook for me, the fact that Peter has given up his childhood to be married, and to have children and to have a career...he's bitter and resentful for having let go of his eternal youth.

Hook is not a great film, but then again, I don't think Peter Pan in general is a great story. Hook at least has a...ahem... hook to it, a reason for existing, which is to remind adults that it's okay to still connect with your childhood.

It's a long, long half hour (plus!) of the film before we get any hint of real whimsy or magic, and in that time the film is exploring its theme intensely while also trying to catch us up on Peter's life following the fabled story. It's definitely too long and most of it wholly unnecessary (although there's a bittersweet sentiment to Wendy becoming the mother to lost boys for decades, and something unsettlingly weird about Peter, effectively, imprinting on Wendy's granddaughter...it's like when Steve Rogers kisses Sharon Carter in Captain America:Civil War...it's hard to explain exactly why it's wrong, we just sense that it is).

Peter's kids are kidnapped by Captain Hook (how Hook enters the real world and steals the kids, I don't rightly understand) and Peter is brought to Neverland by Tinkerbell (Julia Roberts) to get them back. Peter, having forgotten all about his past youth, hasn't the skills, the magic, nor the playfulness to take on Cook.  Tinkerbell bargains with Cook to get Peter into fighting shape over three days so the pirates can have their epic war with the Lost Boys that they've been dreaming of (boys will be boys).  This leads Peter to the current spate of Lost Boys who have been living under the protection of Rufio. Where we see Lost Boys in other interpretations in animal costumes (like Max from Where the Wild Things Are), here they're like the lost children from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, all feral looking.

The best part of Hook is the actual Hook of the film. Dustin Hoffman puts on a surprisingly game performance (I don't know why I'm surprised any time Hoffman puts on a game performance, I always just am...like I think he's a more annoyingly serious actor than he is) and his plot to woo the children, which leads to him effectively adopting Peter's son Jack, is the smartest and most resonant part of the film. Unfortunately, Hook isn't terribly interested in developing Captain Hook beyond his well-mannered, if anxiety-ridden pirate persona. It never truly establishes any desires, any objectives, any growth beyond Peter's destruction, and the film is the poorer for it.

Roberts is wasted as Tinkerbell, a real thankless role, given a sub-plot that intones that she has still been pining for Peter all this time, even for grown-up, hairy Robin Williams-looking Peter.

What the film really needed was a character Peter could introduce Neverland to, whether it be his wife (who just gets left behind for the whole adventure) or his kids. Instead it gives us an amnesiac Peter rediscovering Neverland which, for me, didn't work at all.

Of course the classic Disney animated feature would be the first stop after Hook, as it seems to be what Spielberg's film is most directly referencing. The cartoon is, point blank, gorgeous. It's is so vibrantly coloured and so lovingly illustrated that it's clear this was a labour of love for the folks at Disney at the time.

I noted in the opening credits that the film was based off a play, which was the first that I'd learned that Peter Pan was indeed first scripted as a play by J.M. Barrie in 1904 ("Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up") and only later adapted into a novel in 1911 ("Peter and Wendy"). The credits also held the tidbit that the right to Peter Pan were (and still are) held by the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital (though it seems anyone can use Peter Pan without oversight, as if in Public Domain, royalties must be paid to the hospital by special concession).

The credits also play under a groan inducing choral crooning of the like that was surely outdated even by 1953's standards, and there's a few other sing-songs in the feature that don't quite hold up to the high standards of songs featured in Disney films.

As we saw in Hook, and we'll see again in Peter Pan and Wendy, here the Darling children, John and Michael are playing Peter Pan and pirates in their room. It's this weird part of these stories where Peter Pan is already a legend, and not something new to be discovered, and I don't quite care for it. It doesn't make a lot of sense, and adds nothing to the story.  In the cartoon though, it hints that Wendy has been having visits with Peter on a regular basis, and so it makes sense when her father is telling her it is time to grow up that Peter looks to remove her from that threat.

It seems like the story is meant to focus on Wendy's turmoil over growing up, with "the boy who never grew up" both her guide and her cautionary tale, but once taken to Neverland, the perspective of the tale shifts quite heavily to adventure centering around Peter, such that we lose most of the narrative thrust on what Wendy is going through.  

Tinkerbell is great in the film, Peter's faerie companion who gets immensely jealous of Wendy, as does every other young lady in Neverland, from the mermaids to Tiger Lily, the daughter of the (*cough*) "Indian Chief". (Ok, those are the only other female characters in the film, and they're all gaga for Peter who doesn't seem to have the time of day for girls or kisses. 

There's an aspect of this story where Peter's only relation to women is looking for a mother figure, for which he presents Wendy to the Lost Boys as. It's weird, and confusing and oedipal in so many ways that I'm sure there's many an essay written around it.

The use of indigenous people on Neverland basically intones that they are fantastical beings like elves and orcs, and not real people and culture. Peter and the boys like to appropriate that culture, and the godawful reductive stereotype that they're presented as here is really hard to stomach.

The Captain Hook of the joint is, again, a highlight. Hans Conreid (in a performance very much coopted by Hoffman for Hook) delivers a vocal performance that make Hook far more charming than insidious. He is a likeable guy, but can be totally callous when the time comes. The rivalry with the alligator leads to some intense Looney Tunes-inspired slapstick which is both delightful and somewhat out of step with the rest of the story.  It's a real mixed-bag of a production.   

But that bag only gets more mixed up in Peter Pan and Wendy, David Lowrey's follow-up to the assured and magical The Green Knight. Disney has been on a decade-long kick of turning their classic (and even not-so-classic) animated features into live action versions, with, at best middling results, and this is not a best-case scenario. In many respects, Lowrey seemed to be keen on re-imagining the Peter Pan story into something more Wendy-forward, but then seemed to have to compromise that with being beholden to scenes and sequences from its animated predecessor.

From the film's opening moments it shows this Wendy is much more free-spirited and action oriented as she gets in the mix of John and Michael's bedroom swordplay, taking a sword of her own, until a mirror is smashed (no talk of 7 years bad luck) and father (Alan Tudyk) comes down hard on her. In the animated version, Wendy is the great bedtime storyteller that Peter wants to bring back to the Lost Boys as mother, but in this version, Peter's been listening to Mary Darling (Molly Parker) tell bedtime stories. It's because Wendy is sad that she's getting sent off to a boarding school that she proactively asks Peter to take her with him to Neverland.

This Neverland, like all the Neverlands, is a small, unimpressive island in the middle of a great sea. As a fantasy retreat, I just don't get the appeal. Here, at least, the Lost Boys aren't all boys at all, which I liked tremendously... or would like if they had any distinctive personalities to speak of at all. At least in Hook there were a handful of the lost boys who had prominence and screen presence.  Here, they're basically crowd fill.

Jude Law plays Captain James T. Hook (ok, I added the "T") and... well.... Look, Law is a great actor, but he's a pretty serious one. He can be playful, and charming, but his playful charm is always filled with different levels of menace (see A.I. Artificial Intelligence or Star Wars: The Skeleton Crew), what he's not great at is giving over to anything overtly comedic or silly, and, in my very limited and recent experience with the Peter Pan mythos, that is absolutely what Hook needs.  As such, Law's Hook comes off as too intimidating, too scary.  Peter Pan and the Lost Boys shouldn't be frightened of what are essentially bumbling pirates (clearly the animated Hook and crew was part of the inspiration for Our Flag Means Death...like a total prototype) led by a Captain with a clock phobia.

In any of these adaptations the flying sequences have all been pretty ho-hum though each of them have a moment or two that comes close to grandeur (if never fully obtaining it). Here, the flying is perhaps overextended, basking too much in it, but I did like the visual of flying through Big Ben, the clock separating into component pieces intoning that they've left our reality and are traversing to another. But the effects of Peter Pan and Wendy vary drastically, from very impressive to utter ass. I have no issues at all casting a Black actress (Yara Shahidi) as Tinkerbell, but it's the way in which they shot her, the cut-tos, the center-of-frame framing, the clearly Volume soundstage backdrops...it's all really ugly and the effect is off putting. I appreciate that they kept her dialogue as a tinkling bell, but they took away Tink's swooning and territorial aggression towards Peter which was, I have to say, one of her charms in the animated feature, and in the 1924 silent film as well.  There's not a scene that I can think of in this production where Tinkerbell works well, and it's all a matter in how they decided to employ her visually (again, nothing to do with skin colour and all to do with cheap special effects that look more Disney Channel than Disney Motion Picture).

The biggest change of the Pan story (besides the total elimination of the "Indians" as residents of Neverland - Tiger Lily is instead another Lost Boy ... I think...) is in Hook's story. The reveal here is the Peter and Hook used to be mates, best friends, Lost Boys forever, until James decided he wanted to go seek out his mom, and Peter would not accept him back. James did not find his mom, and he lost his friend, and his youth. No wonder he's so bitter and angry. I actually liked this shift to the story, it really did add something, it's just a shame it's largely an ugly, muddled mess of a production that truly doesn't work.  If there's a signature style to COVID lockdown-era productions, this one hoists it in spades. Everything seems so sparse, and full of hesitation. I really would have liked to have seen Lowery's vision for Pan without meeting the needs of Disney.

Of the versions of Peter Pan I watched, the 1924 Paramount production, available in multiple forms on YouTube, was perhaps my favourite. Maybe it was because it was a silent picture and I could put it on double-speed and not lose anything at all about it, and for me, shorter Pan is better Pan... but also the practicality of it all, the hybrid between early studio cinema and stage production really gave it a feeling that I was watching something closest to its roots.

I'm not a lover of silent films, generally, but I was rather engaged by this, I feel moreso than I have been about any of the other Pan films. Weirdly, because of the title cards in the film, I had to pay more attention to it, rather than distract myself with IMDB deep dives or looking up trivia (or playing a game) on my phone while the film runs its course.

Nana, the Darling family's Saint Bernard which also doubles as the children's nanny, is played by a man in a dog suit. It's not convincingly real in the slightest, but for 1924 it's pretty great (except those eyes).  Nana performs all sorts of actions, like drawing and bath and giving the children their medicine, which are clearly tasks above and beyond what an real-world dog can do. I thought the ever-active Nana in the animated Disney version (the best character in the film) was purely a Disney creation for comedic purposes, but no, it's clear it was in Barrie's source material.  Lowery didn't bother with much Nana business at all in his movie and Hook, being sequel decades in the future meant Nana wasn't around anymore.

Though used sparingly, I think Tinkerbell is incredible in this film. For the few up-close scenes, they created maximized sets to look like she was interacting with giant drawer handles or window latches, and in other scenes the compositing is astonishing (any time I see compositing in a silent film I'm always astounded, first by just the sheer ingenuity in the face of limited technology, and second because it almost always looks fantastic). 

In this telling of the story, Wendy is once again running away from growing up, and Peter is her escape. As in most versions, its clear she likes Peter and, as always, wants to give him plenty of kisses. And just like in most versions Peter is curious about kissing, but where later films try to play it as youthful romance, here Peter seems to be confusing romantic versus maternal.  All throughout he debates with Wendy about whether she's a mother figure to him or something else...and he's always on the side Wendy being his mom (except when he's not).  The oedipal confusion is especially high in this version, as is Wendy's vexed feelings about Neverland. It is an escape from the growing up her father is charging her with, but if she's only going to become a mother to all the Lost Boys then isn't that just another form of growing up too soon?

Peter here is played by a woman, Elisabeth "Betty" Bronson, as was traditional for stage versions of Peter Pan. I really would like a version of Peter Pan that plays with the gender fluidity of Peter, and tells a more queer story of puppy love. It's subtext that should have been there this whole time but seems to have been cleared out of every major version of Peter Pan where a male lead stars.

This version also has "Indian" inhabitants of the island, but I dare say (besides my earlier comment of envisioning indigenous culture as something mythical) they're role is far less ugly than in the animated version, in no small part thanks to it being a silent movie. Their role is much more limited as well, but, unfortunately they're also brutally slaughtered by the pirates when watching over the Lost Boys encampment, so they're definitely not treated well.  In fact there's certainly more death and violence in this version than any of the others I saw (the Lost Boys, including young Michael get real busy stabbing pirates dead).

This silent version moves the story's framing base from London to...somewhere in America, and along the way makes young Michael into a rah-rah-America boy, who at times elicits yelps of pro-America patriotism that, somehow, remains quaint, I guess. At one point, the boys (all the Lost Boys included) start singing "My Country 'tis of Thee" (how do the Lost Boys know that song)a, and in another scene after the boys defeat the pirates, they lower the Jolly Roger and raise the Stars and Stripes (where'd it come from....? Magic?). 

"The Lost Boys are the children who fall out of their perambulators when their nurses aren't looking," Peter says, and to me, there's an aspect to Peter Pan that has me wondering if metaphorically Neverland is meant as some form of afterlife, that the Lost Boys are dead children.  It's a theory that doesn't hold water in the actual execution of these stories, but it is said that Peter Pan was based on Barrie's brother who died at 14 and his mother would say he was the boy who never grew up.

One of the aspects of Peter Pan that isn't always consistent is that the actor who plays Captain Cook *sometimes* also plays Wendy and the boys' father. I'm not really sure whether that's just casting simplification or, if there's supposed to be some thematic connection there, well I'm not seeing it, especially since Wendy barely interacts with Cook at all. This is true of 2003's Peter Pan from Australian director P.J. Hogan for Universal/Columbia where Jason Isaacs plays both roles.

I started watching this version of Peter Pan, and, honestly, think I was enjoying it more than any of the other retellings, since as a live action translation it was really effectively threading the line between live action and cartoon, and it was setting Wendy up in a way I found lacking in most other interpretations. But I only got maybe 20 minutes in before I was pulled away and I can't say I've found the urge to go back to it. My trip into Neverland is over and it's likely to be a while before I'm ready to go back.

[For the record, my favourite all-time Peter Pan adaptation is the legal musical Michael Bluth starred in as a child in Arrested Development.]


Saturday, April 12, 2025

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Wild Card

2015, Simon West (Con Air) -- Tubi

William Goldman was a writer known for screenplays for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Princess Bride. After ducking out on Hollywood for a while he went back to novels, one of which was Heat which he adapted into a screenplay for this movie. He wrote it in his 80s; he died not long after. Bruce Cook of the "Chicago Tribune" wrote of Heat and Goldman's post-Hollywood movels, "They are somewhat skeletal in form, reduced to dialogue, abbreviated narrative and a twitchy interior monologue that reads like some kind of high-speed Socratic Q & A..." I have been thinking of writing, as in fiction, for about 20 years semi-seriously (not a single thing completed) and I think it is this kind of writing I would love to do. I should probably read some of Goldman's work.

Anywayz, I had expected the Statham (A Working Man) character, a man "with a particular set of skills" (in this movie: doesn't use a gun, can kill with a spoon) to be an add-in especially playing to Statham's strengths. But no, it is the character from the novel. He is Nick Wild, a body guard in Las Vegas who works out of a strip mall, and is listed as "chaperone" in the phone book. This is fictional Vegas of the recent past, less The Strip and its franchise resort hotels, and more the grotty casinos, multi-bulb marqui's, run down motels and diners. Despite the movie shooting in, and taking place in the mid-2000s, it looks older, looks more 70s or 80s. And sticks to the neo-noir tones.

Nick has a plan. He has calculated exactly what he needs, down to the last dollar, to head to Corsica, buy a sailing boat, and spent a number of years just living that life. He also knows that he will eventually run out of money and have to come back to reality. He also kind of knows that he is a degenerate gambler, more likely to lose the money rather than fund this fantasy.

He hears that Holly (Dominik Garcia, Magic City), a friend of his and escort, needs his help and finds out that she was horribly beaten and raped by three mobsters from "back east". She wants revenge. Nick wants nothing to do with it, as he always told her to stay away from The Golden Nugget and its notorious mob connections. But Nick relents as all loyal heroes do and confronts the three in their room. Like all four-colour mobster Bad Guys, they attempt to mock and intimidate Nick, only to find him more than capable of dealing with them. After subduing them, he invites Holly over to exact her revenge. Nick doesn't seem too concerned with how far it will go, but she only humiliates their "boss" but leaves all three men alive, taking a $50K stash. Nick and her split it and she leaves town, as he originally advised.

With his money in hand Nick returns to Cyrus Kinnick (Michael Angarano, Sky High), the client who hired him earlier that week, a nervous young man who wants to have a quiet time in Vegas but feels he will be taken advantage of. Nick takes him to a small off The Strip casino where he can gamble in privacy. And Nick begins to gamble his money away, doing surprisingly well, like ASTOUNDINGLY well, making his Corsica money and then some. Until the mania grips him and he loses it all.

Meanwhile, the back-east mobsters think they can ambush him, but fail, and eventually go to Baby (Stanley Tucci, The Electric State),  the old-school mobster who runs the Golden Nugget. They seem to have an amicable relationship but a complaint has been made, and Baby must deal with it. Exceeept, DeMarco (Milo Ventimiglia, This Is Us), the humiliated leader of the back-easters has actually killed his two henchmen, who witnessed his humiliation (crying like a baby), and is trying to pin it on Nick. I really don't think Baby would have cared one iota that they beat and raped a prostitute but lying about who Nick is while murdering his own men on Golden Nugget property is not something Baby can stomach. He releases Nick, and DeMarco, with a warning for the guy to head back east.

As we dial out of the movie, Nick is broke again, and about to return to his old life, when Cyrus reveals he is a tech mogul and he came to Nick, not as a gambler seeking a chaperone, but for guidance as to how to banish his own internal fear. Nick is a man of action, a code, and bravery to back them up. Cyrus needs some of that. He offers Nick all the money he needs, and the plane tickets to Corsica, when they are interrupted by DeMarco with a vast number of henchmen. Cyrus distracts them by making a singing fool of himself, allowing Nick to escape out the back door, where he makes quick work of them.... with a spoon or something similar. And he finally kills DeMarco. Nick has no choice but to leave Vegas and takes Cyrus's check.

I do love a noir-adjacent movie. There is a moll in need of our broken hero's help. There are mobsters and seedy bars and run down motels and diners serving up greasy food. Nick's not a detective in a wide brimmed hat but he is a man with a violent past more than capable of taking care of himself. Its a familiar story told well with the expected but well-rounded characters.

Friday, April 11, 2025

ReWatch: Paddington + Paddington 2

2014, Paul King (Space Force) -- download
2017, Paul King (The Mighty Boosh) -- download

In my recent "Snippets" post, I noticed that I had <shock & awe> not ever previously written about these movies that I so adore. Not sure why. Likely in the 2018-ish dark era I had a "post in drafts mode" that I eventually just deleted. So, I felt I needed to rectify that, if for any reason but to give respect to the movies.

I don't have kids and my years of being exposed to child programming culture via the kids of friends and family, are long in the past. So, I don't know much about this loveable British bear other than his love of marmalade sandwiches and his sartorial choices.

But for ages I heard about how exactly incredible these movies were. While I don't recall exactly, I have a feeling I heard more about "the second movie is even better !!" which prompted me to want to watch both. Its also entirely possible that my viewings emerged during a desperate, grasping need for positivity during The Pause. As Kent mentions in his writeup, the advent of "kindness porn" probably allowed these movies many many rewatches during those dark years.

Paddington charms the pants off me. Sure, its a kids movie with all kinds of juvenile humour and the conceit of a talking bear from a race of bears who not only speak English (and bear) but also live in homes and wear clothing should they so choose. Plot at a nod is that the little bear from Darkest Peru comes to London seeking out the Geographer who invited his family (of bears) to visit him ages ago, but being Peruvian (and bear) he doesn't get this whole weird world of cities (and humans) until The Family Brown invites him in to live with them -- not entirely without some misgivings. And there is a Moustache Twirling Villain in the form of Nicole Kidman who wants to stuff Paddington. The charming bits come not so much from Paddington himself, though the soothing tones of Ben Whishaw and the iconic "hard stare" do make me smile, and smile, but they come from around Paddington. 

Its the world of Paddington that is so utterly charming. It is sort of Wes Anderson adjacent with a twee sensibility, and the world is so full of likeable, lovely recognizable British faces. And while the bear can definitely be slapsticky (with marmalade) he always interacts with everyone with manners and sincerity, making quick friends where ever he goes. And then there is the calypso band playing music on street corners every so often. Big Silly Grin. The flashback scenes to when Mr. Brown (Hugh Bonneville, Downton Abbey) was full of daring and bravado and a hippy-stache. Snort. The tree painted on the stairwell in the Brown's house changes with the seasons and moods. Smile. Peter Capaldi as the "don't trust those (foreigner) bears" neighbourhood watch guy is just... on the nose. There are so many more moments, it all just escapes me, as they are in-the-moment things.

And entirely worth all of it.

Paddington 2 is said to be the better of the two and startles people by sending the lovable bear to prison. Yup. There is another Moustache Twirling Villain in the form of washed-up actor Hugh Grant who frames Paddington for stealing a book from his close friend Mr. Gruber (Jim Broadbent, Cloud Atlas). Even Paddington admits that all the evidence points to him. Our wee bear ends up one of those cold stone British prisons full of ... well, charming, funny, likeable criminals including Knuckles McGinty (Brendan Gleeson, In Bruges), an irascible prison cook. As Paddington is wont to do, he messes up, initially laundering everyone's striped prison uniform to a uniform pink, but once he introduces the lot to marmalade, all is forgiven. 

The caper of the film, and these films would be wonderful even without the caper aspects, is that the Browns have to clear Paddington's name, by finding out who stole the book, and why. That leads them to Phoenix Buchanan who just needs some legendary treasure to fund his return to the glitz and glamouor of the stage. He's not as evil as Nicole Kidman's taxidermist, which is why we are not chagrinned to see him become rather successful when he himself is sent to prison, with a captive audience, pun intended. But he is delightfully unlikeable.

What made it better than the first? Full on embrace of the world and the characters. Once dispensing with the need for setup, the whole movie can just move from one charming scene to the next. Lovable bear, lovable Browns and ... well, lovable prison gang.

Kent's lttrbx'd.

Tuesday, April 8, 2025

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Cleaner

2025, Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) -- download

Die Hard but she's a window cleaner. I mean, really, its essentially that. She even has a person on the inside she has to protect and is in contact with a cop on the ground, and the cop has to deal with trigger-happy SWAT agents, and the Bad Guys say they are there for one thing, but are really there for another thing. No duct crawling though.

Joey's (Daisy Ridley, Murder on the Orient Express) the window cleaner in a big building in downtown London. I guess its possible that buildings owned by Musk-level moguls have permanent cleaning staff for their 75+ stories of windows? But none of that matters; all we care about is that she is doing the job, she's shit at the job (good a window cleaning, shit at working), and that she has a brother on the spectrum. There's a history there, wherein their father beat on him for being "a freak" while she just sat with her feet dangling out the window. So, now she's making up for it by taking care of him and being very very insolent with people.

The fact she pisses people off, including her supervisor, is why she is stuck outside the building when the Bad Guys, disguised as catering staff, infiltrate the party on the top floor. The CEO brothers are announcing one thing or another, about how their company cares and is not polluting everything. The Bad Guys are eco-activists, but not ones who have ever crossed a line (i.e. hurt people), but they have a point to make. Their leader wants to push the envelope, threaten the CEO Brothers (truly, they are the real Bad Guys here) into giving a confession to all their dirty little secrets, which will be broadcast by a hacker with a cool haircut. Exceeeept, some of their number are a bit more extreme and actually just want to blow the building up, to make a nihilistic point.

I wonder at my trend of late, to be pretty verbose in the setup of the movie and its characters, but.... I trail off in the rest, not presenting a proper "recap".

But Joey is not just a window washer, she's also an ex-military type who was booted from the army for being an insubordinate ass. And the angry people inside are ... well, eco-activists with guns. Its not surprising when she starts kicking their asses. What is surprising is when their leader Marcus Blake (Clive Owen, Gemini Man) is killed and sociopathic nutjob "antihumanist" Noah (Taz Skylar, One Piece) supplants him as leader of this little escapade. Noah also happens to have been Joey's coworker in window cleaning. Noah doesn't so much as want to expose the evils of the corporation as he wants to kill a lot of people. Meanwhile Joey has linked up with the negotiator on the ground, who has to deal with eager policemen with lots of guns, and ... well, you know how these movies go.

Interesting note: Joey's brother Michael is played by Matthew Tuck, an actually neurodivergent actor in his first role.

I fully admit, and I did in the first paragraph, this one was derivative to the max and if we were still in the video store era, it probably would have been a tier-2 or 3 shelf movie, something people would take if all the new release or "good movies" were gone. But I rather enjoyed its nonsense. I highly doubt they are trying to position Daisy as the next female action star but it at least gives her another in her cabinet of curiosities. Die Hard was also considered a B-lister, and really it still is, but it was embraced and while I don't expect this one to become a regular rewatch-er, it was decent enough.

Didn't you just bemoan the state of so many movies just being "all right" ? We do need another "John Wick" surprise or at least something so terrible it becomes a giggle fest.

Sunday, April 6, 2025

ReWatch Snippets: Indulged

Literally, the same paragraph from the original snippets post applies:

"In a desire to embrace the mental state which leads me from NOT watching a movie proper, but after flicking through the "channels" for a bit, end up rewatching a movie I have seen before, and not always enjoyed that much. So, why? What drew me back? Let's see if I can put a bit of it to words."

I am not sure I will always tell the why but maybe the words I use will tell me why. 

The Accountant, 2016 Gavin O'Connor (Producer Mare of Easttown) -- Netflix

The sequel is coming out, so I thought I would remind myself of the movie. What I recalled. Christian Wolff is a hitman that works a side-gig as a forensic accountant, and he meets Dana Cummings for a bit role. He has lots of guns and kills lots of people, and yet the movie is somewhat quiet and thoughtful. What I didn't remember. Wolff is autistic, and he's not really an assassin. But he does have a massive armoury outfitted like he was an assassin. He does work for criminals, doing the accounting they need, and does the forensic accounting on the side to explain away his money. Anna Kendrick's role is kind of the love interest but not really, though there is attraction there; in the end, he gives her a painting she likes, worth millions. JK Simmons also plays a bit part, as a Treasury Agent who is fed enough information (by an anonymous source) to make him a good cop, but also keep him off Wolff's real trail. Also, Christian Wolff is not his real name, just that of a famous mathematician. Jon Bernthal comes in as Christian's brother, also violent, but a good brother in the end -- he forgives his brother for killing all the men in his employ.

Oblivion, 2013 Joseph Kosinski (Spiderhead) -- Amazon

Jack and Vic are an effective team. In a future where the world was destroyed by aliens, leaving not much but gritty ruins, the pair monitors the integrity of ocean sucking machinery which is supposed to be making fuel for the space colony that the remaining humans have escaped to. But Jack is more attached to The Earth that Was than he should be, or is allowed to be. Until he learns the truth, that he is not fighting the remaining alien invaders, but the remaining human survivors. And he's a clone, one of many protecting the ocean sucking machinery which makes fuel for the Evil AI in the Sky, from the remaining humans.

Its such a beautiful movie of greys and grit and clean white plastic, and for me is an enduring scifi movie full of things to be constantly rediscovered. Still don't like the ending which implies Jack Clone Two is going to hookup with Jack Clone One's wife, who I guess consummated their "marriage" (its complicated clone stuff) before he left to blow up the Evil AI in the Sky. I mean, yes they are very similar, but are "people" that replaceable? I don't think I would like the answer.

The Girl with All the Gifts, 2016 Colm McCarthy (Bagman) -- Amazon

Also rewatched The Last of Us TV series (still not writing about TV), based on the video game that came out around the same time as the short story from which this movie derives. Its hard to know if one spun off the other, as both deal with an apocalyptic plague after the cordyceps fugus jumps to humans turning the infected into ravening zombies, and both stories have a young girl who could be the hope for a turnaround, as long as you are OK with them being murdered ... for science. If I want to get pedantic about zombie sub-genres, and I usually do, its more "infected" than "zombie" as in both instances they are still living creatures that can die from too much traumatic force.

The first two acts of the movie really do it for me; an eerie introduction to the hungry kids who were found as newborns after eating their way out of their infected mothers, and the subsequent road story as the main characters escape from the collapse of their "safe" zone. The third act, which is properly apocalyptic, just bugs me for some reason... too nihilistic even for me? From the loss of the friendly soldier Kieran to the gnashy teeth of adolescents, to the true End of the World, I just felt depressed.

The Fall Guy, 2024 David Leitch (Bullet Train) -- Amazon

I just needed some light fare, and the movie warranted a rewatch purely for all the little fun bits and the charming cast members. I confirmed that though the movie's central plot is toss away, it is more than made up for by the wink-wink-nod-nod nature of the entire movie's construction. That the movie is based on a hammy 80s TV show and the plot is as much. That pretty much every big scene in the movie is a stunt within a stunt. That the first time I did not even know Teresa Palmer was in the movie, and this time I still did not recognize her as such. Hannah Waddingham is great, Stephanie Hsu is great, Winston Duke is great. Its a great Hollywood Hollywood movie and deserved more attention.

Casino Royale, 2006 Martin Campbell (Dirty Angels) -- Amazon
Quantum of Solace, 2008 Marc Forster (World War Z) -- Amazon
Skyfall, 2012 Sam Mendes (1917) -- Amazon
Spectre, 2015 Sam Mendes (Jarhead) -- Amazon
No Time to Die, 2021 Cary Joji Fukunaga (Beasts of No Nation) -- Amazon

Is it OK to say I watched this run of James Bond movies for Daniel Craig's brutally violent and ruggedly macho version of Bond? And yet, at the same time, I am turned off by his callous probably way over the misogynist line treatment of women. I mean, in the first two movies he gets two women killed, and there is no fine line on that he is purely using them to reach his goals. He seems to have a wink of regret but that is about as far as it goes. This doesn't even change much when he unabashedly loves a woman. James definitely has some clinical issues with women. Its good that there are at least a few that don't fall to his wiles, my favourite being Paloma, of course. Swoon.

I liked that he died in the last one, in that it gives this Era of Bond its own continuity, even if they shared an M with earlier movies. Despite recent murmurs of an attempt to break the mould (of who could play the next Bond), I don't think the current climate would stomach it, and my favourite suggestion (Idris Elba) might age out of the possibility before we could embrace it again. 

Slither, 2006 James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) -- Amazon

"Leaving soon," the tag line on Amazon said. "Why not," I asked. Still love this gross, goofy, irreverent horror-comedy. I remember having a pang of sympathy for Grant ... Grant (yes, his name is Grant Grant) a few rewatches ago, but this time I just see a sad, controlling man who gets what's coming to him. 



Paddington, 2014 Paul King (Space Force) -- download
Paddington 2, 2017 Paul King (The Mighty Boosh) -- download

We were about to watch the new one, so we again thought, "Why not." Also, the political climate of late has added a solid lump of anxiety pain in the pit of our stomach and these movies are so full of moments to brightly smile at.

Repeatedly so. Non-stop. During the first one I just smiled and smiled and smiled. Not at the comedy meant for kids, like him cleaning out his ears with their toothbrushes, but the sweet nice stuff like the painting on the stairwell, or ... holey freholey, I never wrote about these movies when I first saw them!! So, stopping here, as these two deserve their own, must more written about post.

Thursday, April 3, 2025

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Reptile

2023, Grant Singer (music video director; feature debut) -- Netflix

Reptile is most definitely a movie with style, which is not surprising considering the director came from the music video world. The colour palette, the way it framed the characters and, of course, the metaphors depicted, which would have most viewers, myself included, looking for one of those "_____ ending explained". That Guy is shaking his head at This Guy who recognizes that movies are alluding to something, that what is on the screen is not always taken as matter of fact, but doesn't always catch the meaning, in full.

That said, many of the negative critic reviews suggest they didn't "get it" or there wasn't really anything to get. I am more likely to think along the latter lines, in that the movie was a tad overcooked, with lots of symbolism, but with too little payout to warrant the stylings. And yet, I really liked it.

Tom (Benicio Del Toro, Sicario; wearing his usual leather blazer) is a cop in the town of Scarborough. They don't state where this town is (some people say Maine, but it just didn't have a Maine-feel to me; I am thinking more upstate NY), but it is most definitely an affluent rural community not far from a "big city". Tom has a history, something to do with shady cops -- either he ratted on them, or he stayed quiet while the rest were indicted. Either way, he gained a reputation and had to leave for quieter locales. The force there is small, they are all friends, they attend each other's birthdays, they call Tom "Oklahoma" because he likes country square dancing.

Summer Elswick (Matilda Lutz, Zone 414), a young real estate agent, is horrifically murdered in a house she was trying to sell. There are the usual suspects, and some shady characters, but almost immediately Tom starts finding things that don't add up. Her boyfriend, Will Grady (an incredibly sad-sack Justin Timberlake, In Time) is heir to a wealthy & influential real estate family. There is a desire to end the investigation quickly, and the most likely suspect is Summer's ex-BF. Only when the precinct believes they have the real suspect does Tom begin to unravel the deeper mystery, and crimes, that this sleepy little town has.

The movie presents like a horror movie. The angles, the tones, the general untrustworthiness of all the supporting characters, and the constant very eerie music. But the mystery is actually quite straight forward as murder-mysteries go. I was really carried along by the tone, and the sense that a lot of symbolism was happening, not all caught by me, but at least acknowledged. But part of me wonders whether the movie didn't embrace its symbolism enough. The title of the movie is Reptile which gives way to a few thematic ideas: cold-blooded killers, skins being shed, lurking danger. There is a bit of such, but only thinly offered.

There is a final scene in the movie, Tom laying his hand in a wax bath, a treatment often used for hand injuries, and then pulling the "second skin" off is the aforementioned "____ ending explained" bit. Not sure it was required.