1-1-1: 2024 Hallmarkies before December, part 1... or, the nightmare has begun

In recent weeks, with work being really demanding and the post-election existential dread we all should be feeling (yet far too many are not), I needed comfort food, and Hallmarkies were one of the first places I turned.  It started with diving into Deck The Hallmark Podcast's preview episodes, making lists of films that actually sounded interesting to watch, and checking them twice.  I held off on watching any of them for as long as I could, and then the dam broke, and I watched all five of the following movies in under 24 hours. It was too much, too soon and my brain was simultaneously asking for more while screaming at me to stop.

The pop culture tourist that I am, I know I've had my time as a Hallmark junkie, and logically I don't want to return to that mode of watching 30 of these damn things over a 6 week time frame. But soon, soon we will have our revered Toast and Kent's X-Mas Advent Calendar where Toasty and I switch off days and recap an X-Mas holiday movie from December 1 to the 24th, and it's truly one of my favourite things to do each year.

Last year I tried to avoid Hallmarkies, this year, I think I'm going in pretty hot and heavy. But Hallmarkies truly ain't like they used to be. They've all but abandoned formulae and now they're much more reliant on higher concepts than "upscale working woman returns to small town home for the holidays only to find love" and sidestepping all the well trodded tropes. I kind of miss the tropes.

Let's get into it...

Hot Frosty (2024, d. Jerry Ciccoritti - Netflix)
Meet Me Next Christmas (2024, d. Rusty Cundieff - Netflix)
Trivia At St. Nicks (2024, d. Marlo Hunter  - Hallmark)
Santa Tell Me (2024, d. Ryan Landeis - Hallmark)
Jingle Bell Run (2024, d. Lucie Guest - Hallmark)

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Hot Frosty

The What 100: Widow Kathy (Lacey Chabert, Mean Girls) seems to be having a hard time of it since her husband's passing but when a magic scarf brings a hunky snowman (Dustin Milligan, Rutherford Falls) to life, she decides to give the handsome stranger a home. But before she found him, "Jack" caused a bit of a stir, and the bored and overzealous Sheriff (Craig Robinson, Killing It) will stop at nothing until he's behind bars. Jack's wide-eyed optimism, positivity and eagerness to help out quickly makes him a town favourite and the town, let by Kathy has to save him before he melts away in prison.

(1 Great) These Netflix Christmas movies, since they started dedicating resources to making them, have long "crossed over" with each other, usually by playing in the background on TV. Jack is a sponge and absorbs so much knowledge through TV, he becomes a pretty good chef, baker, and repairman. When Kathy walks in on him watching a Christmas movie, the 2022 Netflix Lindsay Lohan Xmas movie Falling For Christmas, to which Kathy states "she looks like a girl I went to high school with". Great timing on that gag.

(1 Good) Craig Robinson and Joe Lo Truglio, reuniting Brooklyn 99's Doug Judy and Detective Boyle. They're practically in a different movie, pretty much doing their own thing. Robinson's Sheriff Nathaniel Hunter is really, really into the pastiche of playing the cool cop with the one-liners, and his sunglasses game is so much fun. It's encroaching on lampoon territory but it really just seems like Sheriff Hunter is bored. So his right hand, Deputy Ed Schatz is his hype man, he keeps him going and enables his little routines. Like I said, they're sort of out in their own little world, and I wish the rest of the movie were as silly as they were.

(1 Bad) This film falls into the "born sexy yesterday" milieu (see also Splash or The Fifth Element, among others) and while Milligan commits to the bit of being a neophyte to living, reality and everything it entails, the role doesn't seem to be written with any particular sense of in-world logic to how Jack exists and develops in the world. It's all over the place and it drops him in weird situations. By the end of the second act he's working at the junior high school helping set up the Christmas semi-formal? It's like the writer couldn't get out of his Hallmark experience and write a real movie, instead relying upon small-scale, low budget tropes. I mean, Jack being chased by the police, as much as Robinson and Lo Truglio are the best part of the film, really interferes with the characters having much meaningful connection. Chabert, for her part, gets her role and nails it acting wise, but Kathy is a woman in pain and Jack helps ease that pain...but, pretty much with that 1 Great exception, she's not haha-funny and it brings the mood down. She can do the romance side in her sleep by now, but the comedy portion falls flat. But even the romance seems odd...with Kathy relationship with Jack seeming more maternal than romantic, and so when it makes that pivot to try to turn them into a couple, it falls real flat.

Meta: This movie, I've heard, started off as a goof, much like Kevin Smith's Tusk. It was just idle goofy chatter about a dumb story idea that the writer then was encouraged to actually write. And it seems like he wrote it in a day and a half. There's no care put into this world, or these characters. They're roughly hewn. I wish it committed either to being supremely silly/satirical, or it committed to the heart of it, where the lesson should have been Kathy learning to open up her heart even if it means more pain and loss.  There's absolutely something, many somethings to be done with the bones of this piece, but this wasn't the best way to go.

Also, filmed in Brockville, Ontario.

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Meet Me Next Christmas

The What 100: Layla gets snowed in at the Chicago airport at Christmas. She has a quick encounter with a nice, charming man at the premium lounge, but has a real deep connection moment with tall, broad, handsome and stylish James. After hours of intense chatter, and Layla introducing him to a capella group Pentatonix (who Layla sees perform at Christmas in New York every year), James need to catch his flight, but proposes that, should he and Layla be single next year at this time, they should meet at the Pentatonix concert. A year later, a week before Christmas Layla catches her boyfriend cheating on her. Her bestie says it's time to make good on all that talk about "Airport James", only the Pentatonix concert is totally sold out. So Layla consults a concierge agency where she's given Teddy, on his last chance to prove he can do the job, to help her find her ticket.

(1 Great) It seems like such the typical, dumb, Hallmark-style story that will find its leads on a substandard "one crazy day" quest through Winnipeg subbing in for New York, without really delivering on the adventure, the romance, or the Christmas. But with a Netflix budget, and a real director in Rusty Cundieff (Tales from the Hood), and big-timing it with Toronto subbing in for New York, it's a film that achieves "next level" Hallmarkie status. It looks great, it's got actual funny, not accidental or improvised humour,  and it pays off the story it's trying to tell... which is that Teddy is the real catch, here, not "Airport James". And when we get to the fireworks, oh boy is it hot.  The film builds well upon itself, of remembering its motivation (as silly as it is) as a vehicle for building a romance.

(1 Good) Christina Milian and Devale Ellis as Layla and Teddy. They're both attractive, cute people, but when I say this film builds, it builds in many different ways, and here, it builds Layla and Teddy out from being cute, to being gorgeous, to being sexy, and a lot of it is personality and character building. The second act ends with the couple at Teddy's mom's house, where flamboyant cousin Jordy (Kalen Allen, An American Pickle) becomes the couple's drill sargent for a lip syncing competition (that Jordy's been banned from). The only way the Teddy and Layla can even hope to compete against the fabulous drag queens is by making their performance real sultry, and boy howdy do they. The big finale, at the Pentatonix concert leads to big reveals of their super fine attire, and Teddy's suit is absolutely incredible (no leading man in a holiday romance has had a better costume reveal), only to be outstaged by Layla's awooga-inducing red dress that blows every off-the-rack Hallmark dress out of the water.

(1 Bad) Pentatonix. Not the band. They're actually characters in the film, and they're pretty self-effacing, playing arrogant, petulant celebrities who randomly bust into harmonies and seem bemused by Teddy's social media tweets about trying to find a ticket to their big sold-out show.  It's not their music, as much as a capella music makes my teeth hurt like a sinus cold or chewing tinfoil. No, it's their name. Their damn name is said so many damn times throughout this show, you couldn't even have a drinking game for it because you'd be dead from alcohol poisoning by the end. I don't ever want to hear their name said aloud again. No thank you.

Meta: I saw the facade for the big Pentatonix (augh!) concert at the Princess of Whales Theatre after work one day when I was walking in the area. I kind of knew what Pentatonix was, but I was wondering why the theatre was so decked out, in a way that it's not usually decked out all the many other times I walk by there.  Then I noticed the fake posters were proclaiming it was a Christmas concert, and this was, like, April? May? So I immediately knew it was for a Hallmarkie. So I had been keeping my eyes and ears out for this one. I always enjoy pointing out Toronto locales as it plays other places around the world. It delights me.

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Trivia At St. Nick's

The What 100: Celeste is an astronomy professor at a Vermont university. She's kind of a big dork, and her most cherished thing to do over the Christmas holidays is the 6-day trivia competition at St. Nick's. Her dream of having big brain handsome British math professor (who won Jeopardy) on her team (and maybe more) is dashed when he gets a thing in China or something. Who cares. She also hates the football department because they get all the attention and money. So wouldn't you know it, her only hope for a sixth for the trivia contest is Max, the new football coach who won the team some big championship. Wouldn't you know it, opposites attract, except, they're not all that opposite.

(1 Great) I liked that the romantic complication in this wasn't a misunderstanding, but instead Celeste's type-A personality coming out in the worst way. It's seemingly rare for these movies to show its female lead with having a real flaw in their character, and then to acknowledge that flaw and work exceptionally hard at atonement. And then to find that Max understood that her freakout wasn't directed at him seemed to present two characters who have some level of emotional maturity, which is sometimes rare for the lighter Hallmarkies.

(1 Good) I thought it was funny one of the trivia questions was about Hallmark Christmas Movies. And I knew some of the answers. 

(1 Bad) I hate that this film didn't commit to its bit. It didn't really care about the trivia competition at all. It never once tried to manufacture any tension or drama or excitement around the trivia challenge, it was always just backdrop. It so often would pose a question and then show the characters processing the question and smash cut to the gang's emotions following victory or defeat without actually showing the moment in between where the elating or deflating moment is revealed. A more competent film would build a whole world around the trivia competition and set the romance in the midst of that, as opposed to having a romance with the competition as framework.

Meta: I actually watched this thinking it was the next movie. You'll see why. Keep readin'!

FIlmed in Connecticut (then why not just make it a Connecticut-based University? Hallmarkies are bizarre.)

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Santa Tell Me

The What 100: Olivia is getting her big break on "the network" with her own interior design Christmas special, which will have it's big reveal aired live on Christmas Eve. But Liv's dreams are sort of dashed when a new producer/director, Chris, is brought on board and starts changing everything, including the home that's being redesigned. Chris, and the network, bought Liv's childhood home, and one night while visiting the old place with her sister, Liv finds a glowing envelope in the vent. Inside is her childhood letter to Santa asking for him to tell her the name of her one true love. Also in the envelope is a card, with words that magically appear and tell her...Nick. She balks and throws it away, but it keeps finding its way back to her. She then has a mix-up at the coffee shop where her order gets switch with a tall, good looking professional named Nick A. He gives her his number, as well as his coffee. A little flummoxed Liv exists the shop and immediately spills her drink on a broad, square-jawed hunky dude. She apologizes and gives him a sweater to wear over the stain. He plugs his number into her phone, cause he has to get the sweater back to her, right? His name, Nick B. Reeling from the double-Nick encounter, Liv steps into traffic, only to be rescued by another hunk, who very forwardly asks her out. His name: Nick C. Wowza.  As Liv dates the three Nick's, the Santa letter tells her she will have to make a decision by Christmas Eve or lose her true love forever, which stresses her out alongside the big reno/redesign, and Chris, whom she starts warming to...then really warming to as they actually get to know each other and misconceptions are laid to rest.  It all culminates in disaster but romance, of course. 

(1 Great) It's a super-fun plot. I really enjoyed the triple-dose of meet-cutes one right after another and how much fun they had in coming up with different ways to reveal their Nick A-B-C names.  And the big climax where the three nicks meet, and the dumb one, Nick C, says "we should have nicknames".

(1 Good) The "Christmas Magic" of the letter that keeps changing and putting more and more pressure upon Liv to make a decision (not to mention Liv's sister who is way into her weird predicament) added a flourish to this film that is missing from most holiday romances. Hallmarkies that have "Christmas Magic" will often forget about their magical device, or underplay it, but this one never loses that focus.

(1 Bad) I really wish this were a real romcom, with a really punched up comedy, as well as investing in Liv's dates with the Nicks more. She has multiple dates with each of them at the same restaurant? And in montage? Come on! (Although the host's facial expressions as she keeps coming back with her multiple dates is pretty funny... but could have been funnier if it were, say, Kenan Thompson or an experienced comedic actor).  I really would have loved the movie to invest in the Nicks as viable romantic candidates, but we know from the outset it's going to be Chris. I also would have loved the movie to care more about Liv's career, but it tries to make us believe Liv cares about her career, even though the movie truly doesn't. This, as a Hallmarkie, was good, but it could have been terrific.

Meta: Erin Krakow, who plays Liv, is a big time Hallmarkie leading lady. She's got pretty good acting and comedy chops, but she's also got a real soccer mom haircut here and I found it very, very distracting. She's not unattractive, but the soccer mom 'do really made me question that these four guys were really so immediately gaga over...her?

Filmed in Langley and Vancouver, B.C.

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Jingle Bell Run 

The What 100: Teacher Avery (Ashley Williams) lives a very low-key life. Too low key. She's mid-40's and single and never leaves town. So her sister signed her up for a Christmas-themed Amazing Race-like reality show, which she really didn't want to do but then thought she should. On the show, she's partnered up with arrogant he-bro ex-NHL superstar Wes (Andrew Walker) who is watching his celebrity status dip with each passing minute. As much as Avery seems like an angel on earth and can't be mad at anyone, Wes kind of gets under her skin.  And they need to work together on challenges across the country in order to win. As they get to know each other, Wes' edifice of doofy jock falls away and he reveals how scared he is moving on from playing hockey where he knew what his role in life was. Avery, meanwhile, finds her adventuresome spirit. And they make friends with their fellow contestants, and have silly adventures as they seem to fall in love. Only, Wes has been asked by the producer of the show to play up his attraction to Avery to make a better production and maybe reignite his stardom.

(1 Great) Fucking Ashley Williams and her big goddamn smile just melts me every time I see it. She does this thing when she smiles where you can see her tongue press between her teeth that's so damn adorable. She's a very talented actress with a broad range, but she excels at this sort of light comedy where she gets to be playful and lean into her exceptional charm.  She always delivers "Ashley Williams" in her performances, which are always welcoming even when the movies are bad. Just a sheer delight to watch on screen.

(1 Good) I liked watching Andrew Walker in doofy sports jock mode. It's just too bad he couldn't sustain that energy or that character. It was a humorous mode to be in but eventually that had to fall away so he could be "Hallmark leading man Andrew Walker" and make the housewives all swoony. Once the arrogance fell away, Wes started to be more competent, less doofy, and I get it, he needs to be an intellectual match for Avery for the pairing up to be believable at all, but I wish Walker could have found a happy medium. Walker's strong suit isn't comedy, though. He's not terrible at it, but it's not his top mode, and he seems to have a default setting he falls into with these productions. It was nice to see him try something new, even if it didn't last. 

(1 Bad) Like Trivia at St. Nick's, once again the production doesn't give a real shit about its conceit. The amazing race around the country is just the vehicle for the characters to get to know each other. There's no investment there, and just like those trivia scenes, it cuts from the characters competing in the challenges to their victory or loss without any tension or drama. It doesn't care about them at all. But then the challenges are, by and large, asenine, and show the constraints of a Hallmark budget. They seem like corporate retreat challenges and not something you would be travelling cross-country to partake in. 

Meta: Filmed in Vancouver.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Canary Black

2024, Pierre Morel (Taken) -- Amazon

I guess there is a micro-trope for assassin movies to begin on the top of a building (in Tokyo, for bonus points) so the killer can rappel down the side and, either enter spectacularly, shattering the window, or just go in all sneaky sneak. Also, bonus points if she wears a very audacious wig. I am not sure why CIA operative Avery Graves (Kate Beckinsale, Underworld) needed to be wearing a wig to sneak into the building-top home of some Japanese Bad Guy, only to drop it on the floor as she was leaving, but sure, she had to do her.

Kate Beckinsale is not an "aging" action/thriller star. She is only 51. OK, sorry, maybe that is long after the age at which an actor is considered "aging" by the status quo ? Either way, she is not presented as aging -- the character could be anywhere from 35 to 45. But either she is feeling it, or she is just not skilled at the running and diving. I know that most of the key scenes are via a stunt double, but there are a few where she has to sprint down a hallway in boots-not-made-for-assassin-work and she just looks.... awkward. At least Keanu's troubled running was explained away by the fact he had just been battered against the side of a car. What I am trying to say is that if Graves is not presented as an "old" character, then maybe not having her doing the "old man run" is a good idea? Give her sensible assassin shoes to run in.

I am power-rewatching thru the Craig Bond films (Bond, Craig Bond, James's lesser known cousin) and as they start in 2006 and end with "No Time to Die" in 2021, where Craig was 53, after a career of being battered against EVERYTHING (Bond, not Craig) at least he has an excuse.

Anywayz, after a job well done she returns home to her Oblivious Hubby (Rupert Friend, Hitman: Agent 47) and talks about her business trip, and his coming business trip and their happy happy love love life. Its their anniversary and she has screwed it up with novelty undies while he got her a really cool leather short coat. She sucks at the lovey dovey stuff. And that's because her mind is always on The Job, especially the tracking down of ultra-anonymous assassin called Kali.

Anywayz, later on, after a debrief about the intel she got in Japan blah blah Kali blah blah, she comes home to find the place wrecked and her husband gone. An altered voice (why alter, unless she is expected to recognize them?) tells her they have her husband and if she wants him back alive, she has to grab a secret file hidden in the tooth of a detainee at a CIA black site. She knocks the tooth out of the guy, which sets off the alarm bells, but alas, there is no file. But now Avery is on the Naughty List.

What was the file? Something called Canary Black, something about a list of blackmail material for all the key people in the world including espionage agents and world leaders. "If it gets out...." Anywayz, Avery has to get the file or they kill her husband. And the CIA is now after her.

What follows is a chase-me, chase-me movie. Since the tooth was empty, which is never explained (or if it was, I was not engaged enough to remember), she has to find it another way. One way is beating up her boss's (Ray Stevenson, Ahsoka) boss and using his access to a Top Secret Computer in a Top Secret Building but once she has the file, she discovers (via "hacker friend" with requisite haircut) the file is not blackmail but a more appropriate spy-movie computer virus that can "take down countries". With the virus the Bad Guys can blackmail the entire world into giving them trillions of dollars/euros/whatnot. Let the chase-me continue!

At least it was not "a list" of the identities of spies around the world as per "Skyfall" but I suppose the fake-out had it as a list.

Its not a "bad" movie, but neither is it a very "good" movie, more stock n trade for Straight To Streaming. Beckinsale will always look good in right leather and it was nice to see the last movie of Ray Stevenson. It tosses in a minor twist for good measure and it does present a nice romp around Eastern Europe for good measure. If I was ever to "rank" my Women with Guns tag, it would be around the middle of the lot, and its most definitely not going to be Morel's new Taken.

KWIF: Hundreds Of Beavers (+4)

KWIF = Kent's Week in Film, which in this case is actually Kent's Week in Film two weeks ago and then again this past weekend. Assuming I finish this post this weekend.

This "Week":
Hundreds of Beavers (2022, d. Mike Cheslik - Tubi)
Cast a Deadly Spell (1991, d. Martin Campbell - HBO)
Absentia (2014, d. Mike Flanagan - AmazonPrime)
Hush (2016, d. Mike Flanagan - Tubi)
Emilia Pérez (2024, d. Jacques Audiard - Netflix)

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A lot of movies have tried to emulate zany cartoon energy in live action. It so rarely works. Whether they're taking inspiration from Tex Avery or Chuck Jones or they're trying to put live actors into a Hanna Barbera or Jay Ward property, the results have mostly been of the "not great" sort. Outside of films that blend human actors with animated characters (again, more misses than hits), the only flat out successful humans-as-cartoons production I can think of is Stephen Chow's masterpiece, Kung-Fu Hustle.

Hundreds of Beavers (surprise! It's not porn!) isn't quite that level, but as an independent production it is quite ambitious and remarkably clever in its aping of animated forms. The film's creators, director Mike Cheslik and star Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, credit the slapstick of the 20's and 30's silent and black and white era of cinema as inspiration, but it's hard to not see the Loony Tunes influence painted all over the first act, especially as characters pop in and out of rabbit holes that join different points of the terrain.

The film opens with a merry melody that spells out the disaster that befell our applejack-selling protagonist, a drunkard name Jean Kayak. Left with nothing in the dire 1800's winter wilderness, Jean is forced to learn how to hunt and trap in order to survive, and square off against the ingenuity of the wild animals he cohabitates with.

He finds the trading post where he can exchange his hides or fish for goods that will level up his trapping ability. The trading post also houses a fair belle who can skin a carcass in record time, and their flirtatious connection in the lonely wilderness is much to the chagrin of her father. 

The "animals" of the film -- beavers, wolves, racoons, rabbits, even a horse -- are just people in cheap mascot suits, but in washed-out black-and-white contrast, the cheapness has kind of the perfect effect.  Especially early on, it's the suits as much as anything else that establish the surreal world of the film.  

The environments are snowy and vibrantly white, which gives director/editor/effects creator Cheslik all he needs to disguise his deceptively rudimentary effects. As much as the film takes inspiration from slapstick and cartoons, it's also feeding off of video game structures at their most primal level. Feeling much more "Commodore 64" than "X-Box One", Hundreds of Beavers finds over it's hero levelling up and level restarting constantly over its 108 minutes, until its final act which goes full-blown Super Mario as Jean Kayak must navigate his way through the massive and intricate fortress the beavers have constructed. There's a Temple Run chase, a Frogger-like crossing, there's map discovery and puzzle solving of the try and try again variety. 

The film's title card doesn't really emerge until the 30-minute mark, complete with another song and credits, but it feels like it should be at the point where a cartoon with this kind of energy would normally end. Yet it keeps going for [time check] another 75 minutes. From what we've seen to this point, it doesn't feel like there's enough juice to sustain another 75 minutes, but it's a clever switching of gears, changing the pace and rooting down into the silly character drama, establishing relationships and rivalries and running gags that, quite astonishingly, actually sustains the enjoyability and fun of the production.

I should also note the film is completely silent, or at least, there's no spoken dialogue (what dialogue there is we see on olde-style screen cards). The score, from Chris Ryan is absolutely essential to the success of the film, and it's flawless. It's doing so much heavy lifting in a film where every element is pulling more weight than it should bear.  To me it felt like Terry Gilliam drawing Looney Tunes but directed by Guy Maddin. It's irreverent, pushing boundaries, but also reverent towards old cinema styles. It's a film that shouldn't work at all, and that it not only works, but works resoundingly well and manages to sustain it's total running time is an absolute feat (even if I think shaving off 20 minutes would have done it some good).

Dam fun and dam enjoyable.

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Cast A Deady Spell is a fantasy-noir set in an alternate 1940s where everyone seems to have some capability to use magic. It's a film that stars Frank Grillo precursor Fred Ward (Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins) as former cop, now hardboiled P.I. Harry Philip Lovecraft, a good detective who refuses to do magic.  A case comes his way to recover a stolen book, the Necronomicon, which leads H.P. to a swanky club owned by his former partner, an ex-dirty cop also named Harry (Borden, as played by Clancey Brown, Highlander). Singing at the club is Borden's girlfriend, H.P.'s ex, Connie Stone (as played with full femme fatale sultriness by Julianne Moore, Boogie Nights).

There's undead henchmen, gargoyle spies, deadly magic, and clever tricks, not to mention the looming threat of a Lovecraftian elder god. It's a film full of special effects, extensive prosthetics and make-up, not to mention being a period piece, so it's all quite stylized.  Martin Campbell, not yet the man behind Goldeneye, or The Legend of Zorro, or Casino Royale, but he's been in the game for 20 years at this point and shows off all the skills that would put him at the helm of some truly great action and genre pieces [and, to be fair, some not so great ones *cough*Green Lantern*cough*). While not the most lush visual production, everything work quite well in unison. There are no flat beats, no wrong notes, it builds its world adeptly, leaning both into its fantasy and noir influences (it's far heavier on the noir, and it abandons any real attempt at the horror side of Lovecraft).  

So I have to ask... why have I never heard of this before? I know all manners of sci-fi, horror and fantasy films from the era, including a broad range of low budget, direct-to-video garbage (now on Tubi!) but I've never heard of this film from a known director of some renown, with a handful of quality (and, in Moore's case, A-list) actors, with really good special effects, and a thoroughly enjoyable production. 

The answer comes back to the same problem we're facing with streaming: movies that don't go to theatres get lost. They get no promotion, and so there's no awareness of them. They don't get a second life on video, so there's no secondary "new release" push. They just live on in the archives to be randomly discovered. Oh, here's a Jennifer Lopez sci-fi movie I've never heard of, or a hanful of Chris Pine action movies that nobody knows existed, or movies starring Chris Evans we've watched and all forgotten about. Without being released to theatres where it would reveive even a modicum of marketing push, there's no sustaining a movie in the consciousness. They just disappear, a faint whisper of a memory when playing a movie trivia game.

Even now, at the end of this write-up, I've already forgotten the name of this film and had to scroll back up to read it.

[Side note: there is a gay and a trans character in this film who are a couple, and I'm not certain how I feel about their representation. H.P. drops casual slurs and gets physically rough, which I feel is to the detriment of H.P.'s characterization. At the same time, I feel like the couple are treated sweetly and sympathetic by the filmmaker and script, and their fate is tragic which may fall into the "kill your gays" trope, but also so many people die in this thing...so Idunno. Is it inclusive or exploitative?]

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As noted on my previous post, I'm all aboard the Flanagan train, and I'm wading knee deep in the Mike Flanagan waters, but I'm starting to worry it may be too much too soon.  After watching Midnight Mass, I started trolling Toasty's Flanagan reviews past, and I decided to hit up a personal favourite of his, Absentia. Both Midnight Mass and Doctor Sleep impressed me so much I really needed to go back and see Flanagan's beginnings.

Watching Absentia reminded me of watching the films of Benson and Moorehead, The Endless and Resolution... just supremely well executed small-budget indies that intone much grander conceits and ideas without needing any real budget for it.

Here, a woman is in the final stages of having her husband declared dead in absence of a body after 7 years. She's pregnant, having become close to an officer on the case, and she's looking for a new start on life. Her sister, fresh out of rehab from heroin addiction is there for the mutual support feedback loop. 

A couple weird things happen to the sister, and then the husband returns. Questions are asked, emotions are heightened, and the whole world seems to go pear-shaped. The sister's maybe relapse-fuelled investigation yields dozens of disappearances in the neighborhood in all recorded record. There's something going on here. It only gets worse from there.

It's an early example of what Flanagan seems to do exceptionally well, which is set up a supernatural scenario, maybe even a horrifying one, and then let his characters live in that world, getting really intriguing reactions from them as they try to psychologically rationalize what is happening to them, or get a little off kilter from the realization that their understanding of the world is completely upended. Flanagan also likes to toy with religious themes as well as ideas of perception, and with the sister's substance abuse history, her view of what is actually happening is perhaps distorted.

I liked the film a lot, but it's let down by many of its performances. I've noted that Flanagan enjoys giving his characters a monologue (we've watched The Haunting of Hill House since I watched Absentia and that show is absolutely rife with them). It's a stylistic choice of his, as he must know it's utterly unnatural for people to monologue like that in the presences of others. What has made it tolerable in most of his productions is skill of the actors in delivering their speech, but here, these indie, probably novice actors, can't quite get there, and they come off pretty clunky.  Also, the only "name" actor in this is Doug Jones, and I would have loved to have so much more of him.

I tried to watch Hush immediately after watching Absentia but it's a film starring a deaf character (unfortunately not an actual deaf performer, instead co-writer and Flanagan's wife Kate Siegel) and I was multitasking so I couldn't track the subtitles and had to stop early on. What I didn't know was that within 15 minutes there's no more sign language and most of the film is pretty wordless.

The gist is Siegel plays a deaf writer who is terrorized by a serial killer. The killer has murdered her neighbour and now is outside her home holding her hostage, toying with her rather than going straight for the kill.  It becomes a tense cat-and-mouse game as the killer waits to see what his victim will do, only she starts incrementally getting the better of him, though not without taking a few hits herself.

I don't like home invasion thrillers/horrors. It's a definite thing that causes me anxiety, so movies like this, even when they're not particularly very good, are still pretty effective in raising my blood pressure, and that's really all Siegel and Flanagan are banking on here.

It feels like a small, contained indie production, like Absentia, but with much better cameras and lighting. It looks good. And if you don't think, like, at. all. about it, it's pretty intense. But the more you start looking at it, the more the flaws become apparent. 

The mask the killer wore had a texture of melted flesh, with a slight smirk on it, which gave the killer a cockiness that made sense when he decides to toy with her. But he very quickly reveals his face and the threat level drops sooo many notches once he does.  Something about that mask really brought out the angry, misogynistic alt-right white kid vibes that dissipate once we see John Gallagher Jr.s face.

There's also not much, if at all, in this home invasion/hostage thriller that utterly necessitates the lead character being deaf, except for the gruesome opening murder scene in which Siegel's bloodied neighbour is banging on the patio glass with Siegel completely oblivious. It's not an essential element to the story, or really, the character.

Siegel does a very good job at alternating between afraid, in pain, and steeling herself to do something probably stupid or brave or daring. She's the defacto final girl by nature of being pretty much the only girl in the cabin in the woods.

Overall, I was entertained but it felt like it was maybe a 30-40 minute short film stretched out into a feature length, and it's easily the weakest and least Flanagan-esque of his works I've seen so far.

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It's been a stressful few weeks at work with time being eaten up by demands in the off hours, so while I was working on a volunteer project I did so with Hallmarkies as a backdrop. I got three of them in before I finished by project and once complete I needed something ... not so trashy and mindless to watch.  I had clocked that Emilia Pérez was available on Netfilx and it was one of those titles I had stored in the back of my brain, even though only had a vague memory of what it was.  What I knew was it was boldly a musical about a drug kingpin who is a trans woman and wants to transition. It also won the Jury Prize at Cannes.

What I also learned, less than a minute into the film, is it's set in Mexico, almost completely in Spanish and stars Zoe Saldana (as well as Selina Gomez, of the familiar names), all from a white, cisgender French director.

Saldana is, Rita, an exceptionally competent lawyer overlooked by her superiors because of racism. She's approached by drug kingpin Manitas in secret with the promise of untold riches if she can help source out his transformation. Manitas tells her his whole life is a condition of his circumstances and as wealthy and powerful as he is, he cannot live this life anymore. He would commit suicide, if not for the desire to first live life as she truly would like to live it, to experience the world as her true self.

Manita's wife (Gomez) and children are escorted to Switzerland by Rita, while Manitas undergoes her surgeries, and Manita's death is faked and reported on television. Satisfied with the job, Rita is set free, with her riches, to live her life. 

Except, four years later, Rita, now living big shot lawyer life in London, meets Emilia Pérez, and Rita soon fears that this is a spectre from her past coming to kill her. Instead Emilia once again wants her help to bring her family back to Mexico, under the guise of being Manitas' beloved aunt.

While settling in, Emilia and Rita meet a woman searching for her son, who has been missing for 10 years. Emilia knows through old connections she can find out where the body is buried, and does. Emilia soon finds a path for her wealth and atonement for past sins, in trying to uncover the whereabouts of the hundreds of thousands of missing persons, all likely a victim of the drug cartels of which, in a past life, she was a part.

It is indeed a bold film, weaving between its criminal elements and its trans elements, it's attempts to be both an ally to trans women and innocent victims of the drug trade in Central America, all while jutting in and out of song and dance numbers that, more often than not, never fully flourish, or feel complete. The lyrics dip in and out of singing and dialogue in a way that's largely unsatisfying. Some tunes that have catchy hooks never play out in full song. I never thought about pulling up the tracks on Spotify because they never felt like whole songs.  

The nature of this hesitant musical is intriguing in its own right, and I found myself drawn to its rhythms, its beautiful costuming, its lush colours...even its dingy settings were captured so perfectly. But all the while  I was feeling uneasy in my gut with how it was portraying its transness, its victim advocacy and its conceptualization of the drug trade.  It all felt... at least to some small degree... exploitative.

I never truly got a sense of the characters in the film, what they actually were feeling. In a musical, emotions are supposed to come out in song, but the emotions presented seemed beside the plot of the film. I didn't connect with these characters like I wanted to, and every turn that sent the plot in a new direction seemed to put more distance between me and them.  I think the performances throughout were fabulous, but the material let them down.

I came out of the film feeling like I watched something very unique, but I didn't feel enriched by it. I didn't feel like the film ever really dealt properly with the material it was presenting. I was entranced, but not enlightened.

In watching the film, I was reminded of Annette, another askew musical by a French director that couldn't be more different, story-wise, and yet tonally felt so much the same.  Probably a very fucked up double bill to explore one night.

[I'll come back to all those Hallmarkies mentioned at the top of this review another day]

 

KsMIRT: October bleeds

K'sMIRT is Kent's Month in Reviewing Television, where each month (uhhh..?) Kent steps through the TV series he completed watching each month in the 1 Great-1 Good-1 Bad format.  These "reviews" were actually written at the end of October and just needed to be formatted...so precious little time/energy to do so. I mean, formatting documents is what I spend half my days doing as is, who wants to do more of that when the work day is done?

This Month:
Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy Season 1? (2024, Disney+, 4/4 episodes)
Only Murders In the Building Season 4 (2024, Disney+/Star, 10/10 episodes)
Midnight Mass (2022, Netflix, 10/10 episodes)
Agatha All Along (2024, Disney+, 9/9 episodes)
Lego Masters Australia Season 5 (2023, CTV, 14/14 episodes)

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Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy 

The What 100: Sig (Gaten Matarazzo, Stranger Things) is a total Skywalker fan-boy who also is force-sensitive kid and eager for adventure. His loving brother Dev (Tony Revolori, The Grand Budapest Hotel) finds out Sig is force sensitive he encourages him to follow what the Force is telling him, which takes them to an ancient Jedi temple. Sig accidentally pulls out a single brick holding the fabric of the universe together, and when the dust settles everything's fucked right up.

(1 Great) When I saw the trailer for this, it looked like a lark, a goof, just a ridiculous "what if" scenario where nobody is like we remember them. Turns out, underneath, there's actually a character-centric story which pits Sig as the new hope against Dev, who is now a sith lord.  Where I thought the story would just be stepping through all the changes eventually being made right, instead, it's really just about one brother caring for another while trying to do the most good he can.  Matarazzo and Revolori are great in their voice roles here, even if the character drama is simplified for a child audience.

(1 Good) In the end, the universe isn't righted, it remains all fucked up, and given that it's Lego, that's OK. It's more fun that way. It's kind of bold to abandon the known Star Wars universe in favour of this weird remixed one.

(1 Bad) I've seen a few Lego Star Wars productions at this point (on top of the video games) and what I have the most difficulty with is the Lego look. It's not the reality of Lego...where characters and spaces are limited to their blocky brickiness and the kind of knowingness that their reality is made of of brick parts. Instead, it's literally the look. With Star Wars I want amazing ships and cool lightsaber fights and oddball designed sets, and while those are here in principle, they look terrible in Lego form and I never stopped wanting them to be in nearly any other medium than animated Lego brick.

META: This is a 4-episode mini-series that...well, doesn't end. Altogether, the 4 episodes *could* form a short Lego Star Wars movie, perhaps the first in a trilogy? It features some great voice talent on top of Matarazzo and Revolori, including a bunch of Star Wars veterans reprising their roles in a different context: Mark Hamill, Naomi Ackie, Ahmed Best, Kellie Marie Tran, BIllie Dee Williams, and many of the Clone Wars voice cast. 

It's Lego Star Wars so it's not deeply memorable, nor is it as funny as The Lego Movie or even The Lego Batman Movie, but it's also surprisingly not as interested in being a joke machine as its trailer may have indicated. It's nothing I'll obsess over, but it's enjoyable enough with some fun little gags for the Star Wars nerds. 

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Only Murders in the Building Season 4

The What 100: In one of the biggest losses for the show thus far, Charles' longtime friend and stuntperson stand-in Sazz Pataki was shot and killed in Charles' apartment, a seeming case of mistaken identity. This leads Charles into a bit of an emotional tailspin. Mabel is verging on homelessness, and is unsure of the career opportunities before her. Oliver and Loretta try a long distance relationship which puts him in as much of an emotional tailspin as Charles. A movie is being made out of the podcast which brings celebrities, excitement and more attention to the Arconia and the mysterious west-building tenants. 

(1 Great) The central murder here is a pretty good one, with Sazz being killed, and then completely disposed of before anyone finds her, it's dark and haunting...at least to start. It gets pretty out-of-hand quickly, at times taking pretty broad strides away from the central mystery into complete other mysteries. It's a bit chaotic, but the show makes it work... even if it undercuts how seriously bummed, and angry, Charles is. But the sentimentality, the performance Steve Martin gives of Charles' grief (and maybe guilt) is very affecting.

(1 Good) The show's penchant for bringing in celebrities in smaller parts hits a whole new dimension this season. With the movie of the "Only Murders..." podcast being made, our trio gets casted, with Eugene Levy as Charles, Eva Longoria aging Mabel up, and Zach Galifianakis resentfully playing Oliver. And that's just the start, with Paul Rudd, Meryl Streep, Amy Ryan, Jane Lynch and Davine Joy Randolph all returning, as well as Molly Shannon, Melissa McCarthy, Kumail Nanjiani and Richard Kind among others. You can either find it very "stunt-y" or you can embrace how much fun the show is and how many people want to be a part of it. And, honestly, I have to give the show credit for not stunt-casting every role. There are still quite a few plum parts that are being filled by characters actors and up-and-coming comedic talent. As much as season 1's very story and character focus was the highlight and it's only been a bit in decline since, it's still committed to dishing out fun, and it's fun.

(1 Bad) I was initially very enthusiastic about this season, but that has waned a bit as it falls into its usual rhythms of drumming up a suspect Number 1 each episode and then writing them off by the end of the episode. While this season doesn't do so each episode, it does keep pedalling on that particular cycle. 

META: What I thought was going to be a pretty heavy season, based on how it started, has wound up being one of its sillier ones, but the final two episodes do start to circle back on the emotional aspects, particularly on the just mutual respect and admiration in Charles and Sazz's friendship. It all ends with, of course, yet another murder in the building (though I already have my theories) but not before Tea Leoni, looking very sterling, and with the huskiest "noir dame" voice tantalizes the crew with a seemingly unrelated mystery that's clearly going be the focus. 

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Midnight Mass

The What 100: Crockett Island is home to a small, remote fishing village off the east coast with a populace of around 120. A new priest is assigned to the island church, noting that the vacationing octogenarian monsenior fell ill while on holiday in the holy land. But Father Paul has a secret, a secret he's sharing with the faithful, and only the faithful. The sudden spate of "miracles" cause some islanders to question whether these are truly gifts from God, or something else entirely.

(1 Great) The first episode is an absolute masterpiece. It's an ensemble mini-series and the first hour so adeptly introduces us to every major player in the story without needing to drop gobs of clunky exposition. We get a sense of some characters by their actions, or their demeanour, or how other characters talk about them. We learn about some characters more from what they're hiding than what they're showing us. We meet probably two dozen characters in this town in this first episode, and we kind of know each of their deal, at least on an instinctive level by the end of that first hour. Plus we have a total sense of the island, its tempo, the dynamics of working and living there...we know the confines, the limits of the place and how people are able to reach the mainland. It's just an incredibly immersive environment, even without the creepiness and weird shit that is just lurking in the backgrounds. This isn't a show about a horror visited upon people, but a show about people who have a horror visited upon them...and they're convinced its a godsend, so they welcome it. 

(1 Good) I am not a religious person. My spirituality could best be described as "absent for attendance". While I have no patience for overtly religious productions that largely serve as confirmation bias propaganda, I do always appreciate a production that clearly comes from a point of examining what it means to be faithful and religious, especially in modern times.  And I have even more respect when it's critical of blind faith, or faith weaponized as a tool of power or control, or faith as superiority complex. In having a large cast of characters Flanagan could explore faith and religious belief in layers, with Bev (Samantha Sloyan, Hush) on one end of the spectrum -- the most vile of people who choose to interpret the text of the bible to serve their own selfish, racist and judgmental nature -- to Riley (Zach Gilford, There's Something Wrong With The Children) who has completely lapsed in his belief, to Ali (Rahul Abburi) a Muslim teen who gets caught up in the fervor of the miracles at the church and abandons Islam for Catholicism. It's a rich show, with a lot to say while still very adeptly delivering some good spooky shit.

(1 Bad) There's a moment where former childhood sweethearts Riley and Erin (Kate Siegal, Hypnotic)  talk about what happens when you die that was really overwritten. I liked the sentiments each of them had, but the way in which they were conveying them to each other was not like two people in a room who were having a conversation, but like stage monologues with the performers projecting out into the audience. Its relevance comes back again later on, twice even, so it's not purposeless, but it's like Flanagan just had these ideas which needed to be expressed, point-counterpoint essays that carry the themes of spirituality vs science in the show forward, just very awkwardly. To be honest, I'm really nitpicking. I absolutely loved this mini-series. It was incredible.

META: Toasty's been singing the praises of Mike Flanagan for the better part of the last decade, and I'm only now catching on. I blame Toasty for not selling me on it hard enough.  Midnight Mass is very, very Stephen King influenced, but for me King is an idea man who writes to his idea, where Flanagan, from what I've seen of his work so far, is a planner. I don't know if I've ever gotten the sense that King knew where he wanted a story to end where I thing Flanagan, at the very least with Midnight Mass, the path, while not at all obvious, seemed entirely deliberate and purposeful. It's an exceptionally satisfying watch.

[ToastyPost: we agree, other Toastypost: we still agree]

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Agatha All Along

The What 100: Since the events of Wandavision, having been bested by the Scarlet Witch, Agatha (Kathryn Hahn, Free Agents) is caught in an unreality, and can't seem to find her way out, until a witchy ex-lover (Aubrey Plaza, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre) snaps her out of it, and a teen injects himself into her life looking for help to find the legendary "Witches Road". They're going to need a coven...

(1 Great) Episode 7 "Death's Hand in Mine" is a particularly great episode of television and just an incredibly well constructed character spotlight piece for Patti LuPone's Lilia. The structure of the show started with two episodes of getting the coven together and discovering the Witches Road, making the journey through a series of trials that should ultimately provide them with a power upgrade. The episodes that follow had a pattern of being character-centric to a member of the coven, and then they die at the end (spoiler). So when this episode put Lilia in the crosshairs, its end result was inevitable. And yet, it's the journey, and the journey is one incredible example of timey-wimey storytelling that would make even the best Doctor Who scribe green with envy. 

Also great, Aubrey Plaza. Always.
Kathryn Hahn too.

(1 Good) If there's one thing the basement-dwelling, mouth-breathing neckbeard trolls hate, it's an empowered woman. If there's another thing they hate, it's an empowered gay character. If there's a third thing they hate, it's a d-tier superhero character getting a prominent spotlight over whatever "kewl anti-hero" is in their top-50 personal favourite of boy-rage-power-fantasies.  So, just on its mere existence, Agatha All Along gets a big thumbs up from me. But even more so because it's not in any way, shape or form intended as a loogie-in-the-face to the aforementioned trolls. If anything it's not even paying any attention to them, not considering them in the slightest. It's just selling the shit out of this witches adventure that's part folklore, part Wizard of Oz, and part escape room horror (it's not too far askew from Cube, in its own way).  It's the right mix of genre premises with a nod to both its MCU history and future but dwelling in neither. 

(1 Bad) If there's a "bad" to Agatha All Along at all, it's that it's saddled with "Marvel" expectations. The show is small, and contained. It's a cast of seven primarily, with each episode introducing a fairly static set-piece as the "escape room" they need to solve. I'm sure just because it's Marvel it cost more than the average show, but for Marvel, it still pared things down in a way that some might call ...theatrical-looking.  The road, for instance looks every bit its on-set homage to Wizard of Oz, complete with painted backdrops that, at one point a character literally cuts into and walks through. But even that is an intentional choice in the end, to not completely mask the pastiche. As I said, being "Marvel" is going to set expectations, even when expectations have seemingly been dashed over and over, that Agatha All Along isn't going to live up to. But it did quite well anyway. 

META: There's a scene early in Star Wars: The Acolyte (I seemingly bring this show up once a week) where a group of space witches start an incantation that leads to singing and moaning and undulating, and in my head, if not out loud, I said "this is where it loses people". And I smiled. I was challenged by that scene of women moving and moaning not with any sexual connotation but as a moment of power induction, as a moment of collective purpose. I acknowledged my immediate reaction to it, which was to balk, but I then analyzed that reaction and came out on the other end appreciative of the fact that we don't get much representation at all of the power of feminine collective, especially in the masculine-dominated space opera and superhero genres. So when the coven in Agatha All Along begins their, well, far more harmonious chant that was the song "The Ballad of the Witches Road" (from Frozen songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez) I got the same feeling of this event being about feminine unity and solidarity, even as I whinged a little bit (the song is reinterpreted many ways throughout the show, and I think this initial example was maybe my least favourite?).

Was this whole show all an excuse to bring Wanda's superhero offspring Wiccan into the MCU for the inevitable (and anticipated) Young Avengers? I think if it were a far lazier show that didn't really care about any of its other characters, it would be an easy criticism to lob, but it does so much without putting too much weight or expectations on Billy's shoulders, nor without the burden of setting up expectations. It lives entirely within its own microcosm of Wandavision and Agatha All Along without needing to easter egg the hell out of it.

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Lego Masters Australia Season 5

The What 100: Contest of champions (and almost-champions), the winners and runners-up and a wild-card or two from the past four seasons of Lego Masters Australia return in their teams of two to see which pair will be dubbed "Lego Grandmasters". Some of the most insane challenges and incredible builds in all of Lego Masters, globally, happen in these 14 very bingeable episodes.  

(1 Great) I don't watch a lot of "reality" or "competition" television, but, next to Taskmaster (original UK flavour), Lego Masters Australia is my happy place. I've written before about some of the differences between LegoMA and the American version, but what really, really comes through in LegoMA is the sense of community, not just between the contestants but the also host and judge. Especially with all these contestants being returning contestants, there are established dynamics and running jokes that continue. Plus, the contestants are fans of the show and know each other's work, so they know the calibre of the competition, and it's pretty fierce. Also pretty loving. But they're pushing each other to the breaking point.

(1 Good) Lady Kent and I have watched a lot of brick laying between four seasons of US Lego Masters, the prior 4 seasons of Australia, whatever that was in Lego Masters UK... and episode 7 might have been the most stressful and intense build of them all. It finds the remaining teams having to collectively build a Rube Goldberg machine that will move a tennis ball through a continuous obstacle course from one build to the next, start to finish. There are easy ways and hard ways to go about it with design challenges needing to be met in each segment, but with square blocks and notoriously finicky motor systems, there's a lot of potential for things to go awry.  

(1 Bad) Why did they need to bring Kale back? In season 1 of Lego MA, there was this wee squeaky-voiced know-it-all who was so full of self-importance and arrogance that would constantly tell the judge, Ryan "Brickman" McNaught (recognized as one of the world's premiere Lego builders) that he had no idea what he was talking about. Kale's partner in that season you could tell was suffering by the end. Here he returns with a runner-up from Season 1, Trent, and, at the very least, Trent seemed to know what he signed up for. It's hard to see Kale as anything but a drama-generator, and it's minutes before he starts pissing people off (least of all, me).  If what works for the show is the sense of community, this man is like The Big Bang Theory (that's a joke for me and my Greendale Human Beings out there) 

META: Unlike American reality TV shows, LegoMA doesn't eliminate contestants every episode, or even every other episode. With 8 pairs of contestants, 14 episodes and 3 sets of contestants advancing to the finale, that means 5 of 13 episodes are elimination episodes. It would be easy to say there's drama every episode when we don't find out until the end whether it's an elimination contest or not, but I've figured out the formulae. Basically the first two or three episodes are non-elimination as they are showcases to see what the contestants can do. Then if there are any challenges of a technical nature, those are non-elimination because the technical side can unfairly advantage the experienced (and a lot of randomness present in technical challenges). And, if there's ever a "sponsored" episode (eg. Disney, Marvel, Star Wars) there's no elimination. So, I think with only one exception, I predicted when an episode would be non-elimination.

 

Watching: Bad Monkey

2024, download

We are always on the look out for a "new crime show". I have been a fan of noir, but later in life I gained a great fondness for certain procedurals. Not everything. Its hard to define what attracts us to what crime show. We loved Longmire but have never got into Justified despite trying. We watch The Rookie but not Chicago: P.D. I am always on the look out for a new Luther but we have tried a number of times to watch Broadchurch and failed.

When this came along, I was curious. I am not a fan of Vince Vaughn, but also not bothered by him; he's just in that vein of comedy that generally never attracts me. I do currently have a thing for Florida, the Keys in particular. Not sure what it is, but it has replaced that desire to run away to a tropical island. 

What 100. Andrew Yancy (Vince Vaughn, Freaky) is disgraced Miami cop sent to do health inspection duty in the Florida Keys. He's a bit of a dick, but a lovable dick with a good heart, and he never lets anything go. When a severed arm shows up, Yancy can't let a good mystery go unsolved. It drags him into a somewhat low-key conspiracy involving con man Nick (Rob Delaney, Deadpool & Wolverine) and Eve (Meredith Hagner, Search Party), his sociopath wife, but travels around a lot with a bunch of supporting characters, including a Bahamian witch called "The Dragon Queen" (Jodie Turner-Smith, Nighflyers), the Miami coroner who Yancy falls for, and the socialite (Michelle Monaghan, Source Code) Yancy had an affair with.

And a bad monkey.

1 Great. Surprisingly, it was Yancy himself. As said, I am not a huge Vince Vaughn fan but what I do like is when humour is used to make the characters in the show laugh. Yancy is always cracking wise, but he never looks happier than when he makes coroner / new-GF Rosa Campesino (Natalie Martinez, The Fugitive) smile or chuckle. He's also just a good guy. Despite wavering towards fuck-up, he cares for people, even strangers.

1 Good. The locales. I love me some sitting in a comfortable chair looking out at the water, sipping on a tasty beer. When the series spins up, you have two characters, Yancy and Neville (Ronald Peet, Dicktown), both who have their Happy Places on the beach, one in Florida, one in the Bahamas. Neville wants nothing to do more than get back to that, while Yancy does yearn for more, as long as he can come back to his comfortable bungalow on the beach. The show contrasts this ideal against the "villains" who want big, expensive, gawdy and superfluous, and will stop at nothing to get it. Florida is usually the villain in fiction, but I have always had a fondness for warm sea air, even if I have never experienced it. I am from the Atlantic Coast far beyond any "warm sea air" but my desire for a place on the beach is always in the back of my head.

1 Bad. Any bad? That it ended, and that unlike ten years ago, with only a few exceptions, pretty much anything I enjoy only gets one season, and is then cancelled? This was a neo-noir (which is odd to say considering almost the entire show is in the bright sunlight) show about good people going up against bad people, and I am not sure the affability of Yancy fits today's climate. 

Alternative version of my own post is Kent's own, because we completely agreed.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Slingshot

2024,  Mikael Håfström (Outside the Wire) -- download

I'm in an extended bad mood (see my last post, whose publish date plays with space & time, on purpose) and I am still annoyed that this long term space travel movie turned out to follow all the beats and notes of a song I hate.

There is a kind of space travel, spaceship, scifi movie that I really like. Its where the design of the interior of the ship is as much a character of the movie as the humans. Is it NASA-punk, with wires and boxes and cramped corridors traversed by floaty gymnastics? Or is it wide industrial corridors, lots of metal grates, hissing pipes and rattling chains? Or is it padded curved walls, white everything, glass touch screens and understated design choices? A lot of my favourite examples use the last. And sometimes I can enjoy a movie even if it does the last thing I want to see --- explore the mental breakdowns that long term space travel can cause. I think of movies like Voyagers which tried to be about other things, but I ended up only remembering it being about people being shitty to each other.

This movie is about a long term (years) journey to Jupiter followed by a slingshot maneuver to Titan, the moon of Saturn, where they can retrieve the natural resource Methane in such vast quantities they can Solve All of Earth's Problems. The movie is not about the retrieval of said resources, nor is it really about the slingshot maneuver despite the title and the deceptive trailers. What it is about is Space ... Madness !! And you should say that in your best Ren & Stimpy impression. You see, long term space travel requires hibernation sleep, in this case, drug induced. The drugs have issues.

The ship is crewed by three: John (Casey Affleck, A Ghost Story), Captain Franks (Laurence Fishburne, Event Horizon) and Nash (Tomer Capone, The Boys). They sleep, wake up, confirm the ship is OK, go back to sleep... years at a time. But one time the ship is not OK; something has bumped into causing all sorts of anomalies that Nash is freaking out about, Captain Franks wants to ignore and John is "meh" about --- you see John is focused on pining for Zoe (Emily Beecham, Outside the Wire), the woman he left behind, a woman he occasionally sees wandering the corridors, as a side effect of the drugs is ... cough ... space madness?

I did not want to watch a fucking movie about people never sure if what they are seeing is real. I definitely did not want to watch a movie where the MOVIE wants us to be always unsure of what we are watching. What is real? What is madness? What is hallucinated? Is any of this movie real? What is "real" anyway? 

The movie uses some techniques to further its obfuscation goal, such as skipping right past all the other tropes of proper space travel movies, like long lovely exterior shots of the exquisitely crafted ship, or beauty shots of Jupiter as the ship rounds its orbit. Instead, this is a chamber piece movie, taking place almost entirely within the minimal 3 or 4 rooms of the ship, with liberal use of flashbacks to help us establish John's pining.

Should I torture you and not spoil the truth? No, let's not do that.

Its all real. They are going mad. The possibility that its all a simulation, supported by the lack of anything seen outside the ship, even for dramatic effect, is just misdirection, even the detailed "walk out of the simulator" scene, turns out to be the "last few seconds of a dying man's brain". If there was any satisfaction in learning this, it was in the acceptance that all three were going fucking mad in one way or another: John missing the woman he didn't know he loved, Captain Franks unable to admit he is losing control so he waves a gun around, and Nash unable to admit he's just fucking terrified he's doom- scrolling his own end.

I need a proper space movie.

Watching: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

2024, Amazon

I am just going to assume the writeup for the first season got eaten by my great TV Writing Malaise, which was not as bad as The Dark Year but does contribute to my "really, I didn't write about that?" reflections.

Kent did though. And this season as well. I am entirely fine with them making this series even if they don't attempt to be faithful to any Tolkien writings. For me, and my currently short attention span, simultaneously easily amused / bored by everything brain, just watching Tolkienest swords & sorcery play out on the screen is worth whatever travesty they are causing. Oh look, cool looking elves with sword & bow. Oh look, nasty orcses getting chopped. Oh look, a known Tolkien character! And another one! I am fine with it all. Marmy is not and she refuses to watch. But remember, she is the one who held a viewing party for one of the original movies and started it all with a background primer to the world. She knows her Tolkien and cannot abide the bastardization.

What 100. When we last left our liberal interpretation of the pre-LotR Tolkien world, a lot of shit had happened. We now find ourselves with Sauron (Charlie Vickers, Medici; sorry, but they need an actor with a more intimidating name than "Charlie" for such an evil figure) finding a new identity and a new patsy in Celebrimbor (Charles Edward, The Crown), vain smith of the elven city of Eregion. The survivors of Mt Doom flee the orcs back to the ruins of Pelargir. The rings have already started corrupting bearers and Durin's dad (Peter Mullan, Baghead) is fully engulfed. Galadriel (Morfydd Clark, Dracula) is at odds with Elrond (Robert Aramayo, Behind Her Eyes) about what should be done next. And not-yet-Gandalf (Daniel Weyman, Foyle's War) is separated from his not-yet-Hobbits but meets Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear, Men). Oh yeah, Númenor is fucked.

1 Great. To be honest I find it hard now, at least 5 weeks since I completed it, to remember anything actually great about it. I enjoy watching just about everything but nothing really digs in deep. I guess if there could be anything, it is the continued depiction of the dwarves. I have always loved everything dwarf and even the slightest bit of world building satisfies me greatly. The mirrors that bring in outside light to allow the gardens to grow! The appearance of other dwarves lords from other realms! The dwarven market place! Love it all, give me more please.

1 Good. Tom Bombadil. An almost unrecognizable Rory Kinnear as the cheerful, wise, always humming a tune side-character is just grand. He is there as a reminder that the wizards of the Tolkien world are not a bunch of normal guys who went to a school and learned stuff, but almost divine beings in their own right. 

1 Bad. I was not at all interested in the power-corrupts story of Númenor. I always balk at stories where an entire people can be entirely invested in their beloved "Queen" one day, only to be led down a garden path of "kill her! kill her!" the next day. Sure, if we currently look south of the border, utter lunacy is happening IRL but Númenor did not have social media and fake news, and to be such a power in the Tolkien world, they must have had more than a couple of people with backbone willing to stand up against obvious corruption. Its just tired story telling to me.

31 Days of Halloween: In a Violent Nature

2024, Chris Nash (ABCs of Death 2: Z is for Zygote) -- Shudder

This was one of the first movies I downloaded for the season, made moot by the fact we activated Shudder powers, but the last movie we actually watched. I heard it was a deconstruction of the slasher-in-the-woods (aka, the Friday the 13th / Jason Voorhees template) but it was less deconstructed, as it was stripped down and mostly from another viewpoint (aka, the slasher). 

I rather liked it.

Somewhere in Northern Ontario some stupid kids from the city are wandering around in the woods. They come across a ramshackle falling down... something and are talking off camera about stuff when one notices a necklace hanging from a pipe. He takes it and they depart.

The ground begins to burble and shift and a massive figure climbs out, shaking the soil from his shoulders. The Antagonist immediately sets off in... a random direction? Or is he being drawn to the necklace? The forest is ... beautiful? This is not the eerie forest of 21st century horror movies, no tall stark trees draped in spanish moss, no dead undergrowth and cold mists. Its quite lovely -- wild flowers and chirping birds. This is the wood you would wander with no worries of machete carrying freaks wearing hockey masks, even if it is Canada.

The Antagonist's (Ry Barrett, The Hyperborean) first stop is a poacher's place. We hear the argument between the Park Ranger and the poacher long before the shambling monster wanders into the guy's yard; we won't begrudge him being the first gruesome death. But no stupid kids, no necklace, so back into the woods.

And that's how the movie goes. We literally are following the killer as he makes his way through the long trek, finally drawn to where his totem is being held. The stupid kids joke with each other, tell each other tales, tell camp fire stories about the killer known to be in these woods, from some 70 years ago.

And then he starts killing them. But with patience, with graduated ferocity as these movies were always wont to do. The movie is not breaking new ground on the style for it is all horrific, unwarranted and terrible but how they choose to tell the story is ... interesting? I mean, there is already an assumption of some "enjoyment" to this sub-genre of horror, so I applaud the exploration. And its not overly festooned with extras, no useless adornments or shocking plot twists. He is a dead killer, who had shoddy reasons, and there is no reason why he keeps on coming back from the dead to kill again, nor why he also can be killed... well, kind of. 

In the end there is a Final Girl, as there always is. And only after she actually escapes the antagonist did I actually feel any sense of fear. She may be far away from him, far away from the gruesome deaths of all her friends and lover, she may be safe inside the vehicle of someone who picked her up on an empty road, but she is... utterly traumatized. And we know, we feel, we fear that the killer could appear at any moment. And we are afraid. Utterly.

This movie is like a study of these types of slasher movies, but in narrative form. In presenting each of the sub-genre's tropes it is commenting on them and their use in the movies that follow it. The mask, the weapons, the "creative kill", that the isolated wilderness should be inherently scary, that callousness carries karmic response from the universe and sometimes the universe is murderous. But the fun bit it carries through the movie is that the wilderness may be wild and terrible, but it is still so... beautiful.

Well, except for the black flies... the little black flies, picking your bones.

31 Days of Halloween: I Saw the TV Glow

2023, Jane Schoenbrun (We're All Going to the World's Fair) -- download

I entered into this movie, hearing only a bit of the buzz, with a concept as to what it was about... one that proved not quite accurate. I knew it was about a cult TV show that may be more than just a mere TV show, maybe one that was not quite ... real ? Like Channel Zero? And it was that, at one layer, but at the deeper layer it was more about the experience of gender dysphoria and being trans.

But let's talk about the horror movie as a horror movie aspects first, as I am not sure I am qualified to make much commentary on the actual meanings to the movie.

Owen (Ian Foreman, Let the Right One In) and Maddy are weird kids at school in the 90s. They find connection and Maddy invites him to experience a TV show she is into, a late night, sshhh-only-we-know-about-it low budget magic realism show about teenage heroes fighting odd creatures led by the evil Mr. Melancholy. 

The opening act sets the tone for the movie, definitely indie, definitely left of centre, weird and nostalgic, everything tinted in other worldliness. It wouldn't be for everyone, it would definitely be for That Guy, but it would also draw a lot of mundane viewers down the road of "I don't understand what I am seeing, but I know I am supposed to think its important". The creator has mentioned being influenced by Donnie Darko and I can definitely see that.

The movie shifts to years later, Owen (now oddly Justice Smith, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, only two years later) is still sneaking off to watch The Pink Opaque, at Maddy's (Brigette Lundy-Paine, Downsizing) place. I believe the horror is carried through the obsession the kids have for the very very bad looking show, the pink glow (yes, that pink glow) and the mild hallucinations Owen is having. Then Maddy confesses she is going to run away her abusive mother and wants Owen to come along. But at the last minute, he panics and bails. He confesses what he is doing to the mother of the child he was supposed to have been doing sleep-overs with. But Maddy does disappear, and it is depicted that its not seen as just a running-away, police tape and investigations.

And The Pink Opaque is cancelled.

Eight years later Owen lives a lonely, isolated life. His mother has passed and he is entirely disconnected from his father, an actor with nary a line, a father who he has to apologize to for coming home late, even though Owen is an adult. He works at the local cinema and is mocked by his coworkers.

Then Maddy shows up again. She tries to tell Owen what The Pink Opaque was really about, that it was not just a TV show, but... the real world? Maddy confesses to Owen that they are the main characters in the show (she does so in a bar on the edge of town; oh, look, there's Phoebe Bridgers on stage) and they were captured by The Big Bad of the show. This world, the one Owen lives in, is The Midnight Place, the scary dark realm of the show. And the only way to get back to the "real world" is to bury yourself alive. And she is going to do that soon, to go back, and wants Owen to come with her, because Owen is actually Isabel, the main character.

It is during these confessions that we get brief flashes of Owen wearing a dress, Isabel's dress from the show. There was more than just obsessing over a TV show going on in Maddy's basement. And when offered the opportunity to run away and embrace who Owen really was, he chose to stay. He chose to stay "he". Its not overt, the scenes are brief, but the disconnection you see apparent on Owen's face is terrifying, his voice thin and strained, his wheezing even more apparent.

Another time jump. Owen is in his 40s. He has embraced modern, adult, male life. He has a family (which we don't see), a career (fuck, he just works at a kiddie ball pit / entertainment zone because the movie theatre closed down) and a big screen TV. He looks half dead. He lives in the same house he grew up in, his father now also dead. The Pink Opaque is now available on streaming (so, it was a "real" show after all) but Owen sees it for what it was --- terribly low budget and badly done. 

One last time jump; he's in his 50s. He looks older, barely alive. During a kids party he has a breakdown, and... the other characters just... fade out... just NPCs without a script. We see Owen cut his own chest open, no blood, just the glow & static of an old CRT TV. Its still inside him, the "real world" but... he just leaves, meekly apologizing to everyone.

So, you may ask, where was the horror? What I recapped didn't have it, maybe a little bit here and there. But the style of the movie, how it was shot, scored and the tones all say that Owen was trapped in a world, both of his own making, and not ... real. Its too terrible a world, that initially was tinted with nostalgia for the 90s but once that has faded, the world is dark, dim, cold and empty. Nothing colourful, nothing PINK about it at all. Its fucking bleak. And the supernatural elements are very real to the movie, not just metaphors on top of the allegory. 

The director is clapping back against the response to the ending of the movie, people commenting on and complaining about its bleakness. But the salient point is that The Pink Opaque is still inside Owen, the possibility of finally letting it out, of finally embracing Isabel is there. There is always still time. Not everyone has to be trapped in an utterly mundane, middle-American, work to live, live to work lifestyle (OK, that's a bit of transference from my experience), where your true self is hidden -- you can become The Real You.

Kent's take on it, different yet more poignant.