KsMIRT: step timber

 K'sMIRT is Kent's Month in Reviewing Television, where each month (ahem) I step through the TV series I completed watching each month in the 1 Great-1 Good-1 Bad format.

This Month:
Bad Monkey Season 1 (2024, 10/10 episodes, Apple TV+)
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 (2024, 8/8 episodes, AmazonPrime)
Nobody Wants This Season 1 (2024, 10/10 episodes, Netflix)
Slow Horses Series 4 (2024, 6/6 episodes, Apple TV+)
Squid Game Season 1 (2022, 9/9 episodes, Netflix)
Unsolved Mysteries Volume 5 (2024, 4/4 episodes, Netflix)

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Bad Monkey Season 1 

The What 100: Andrew Yancy is a police detective with a problem... he can't let go. It's got him in trouble before, and it will get him in trouble again. Having been booted from the Miami PD to a small cape on the southern tip of Florida, Yancy's motormouth and unwavering conviction that the worst should be punished have now got him suspended and working as a health inspector. When a severed arm is reeled in by a fishing tour boat, Yancy can't just follow his chief's directions to just get rid of it. Instead it takes Yancy on a winding whirlwind of romance, action, deceit, and even a little magic.

(1 Great) Vince Vaughan. I was reticent to watch the show, mainly because I haven't watched anything with Vince Vaughan in it in a long, long time. Sometime after Made I just realized I didn't like his energy, his arrogance. But either I have softened or Vaughan has, because the energy he gives off as Yancy is astounding. Yancy is a very upbeat guy, very positive even in the face of bad things happening. Even if he genuinely dislikes someone he still tries to go at them with positive vibes, kill them with ...well, not kindness...affability. He's a lot. He's always talking, but the way in which Yancy twists moments, changes the timber of a situation...it's not that he de-escalates (though I think in his mind, that's what he's doing) but instead of making people want to shoot him, they just want to smack him.  It's a skill. He's charming in a way I haven't seen from Vaughan.  He carries a high energy vibe that still seems, somehow, chill.  And I like the way he wins people over with compliments, just as much as I like it when he pisses people off with the very same tactics.

(1 Good) It's so hard to limit myself to just 1 Great and 1 Good thing with this show. I enjoyed it so, so thoroughly. I haven't mentioned that the show hops between South Florida and The Bahamas, where an unscrupulous land developer has impacted the small coastal town there. Jodie Turner-Smith was a real surprise for me in After Yang, a stunning woman but also a strong performer who, seemingly out of no where is acting alongside Colin Farrell. She turned up again in a smaller part earlier this year in Star Wars: The Acolyte and had real presence. Here she's The Dragon Queen, the mystical protector of the island who doesn't quite believe in her practice. Her role in the whole proceedings seems very outside the centre, but she gets her own story arc that weaves in and out of the main thread and it is both beautiful, intense, and tragic. 

(1 Bad) If I had one complaint, which is not even really a complaint because I enjoyed this show pretty thoroughly, it's that it felt maybe an episode too long. The eighth episode felt like it was barrelling towards its conclusion and the ninth episode felt like it was resetting for the finale.  In actuality the ninth episode was more about setting up character resolution where the finale was about closing out the plot, so it has its place...I think in this modern age of shortened seasons, any sort of breathing room feels like wasted space, even when it's certainly not wasted. It speaks more to changes in modern storytelling on television and how we consume it, than it does about quality of storytelling or even purpose of storytelling.

META: What got me into Bad Monkey, past my Vince Vaughan reticence, was Bill Lawrence's name in the trailers. I liked Scrubs, I loved (still love) Cougar Town, I really liked both Ted Lasso and Shrinking, so he has a very winning track record with me.  I knew that there would be something here that I would enjoy, as I always do in his productions...I just didn't think I would enjoy pretty much everything.  This may be, I'm boldly stating, Lawrence's best show.

There's a minor character, the owner of the charter fishing boat that opens up the series played by Tom Nowicki, who winds up being the narrator for the series. He's somehow in the head of every character (including Neville's pet monkey Driggs) telling you there innermost thoughts, sometimes at inopportune times. He also provides the best "previously on" recaps maybe ever, or close to it. The bit is he hates doing the recaps, and he lets you know this. They're spiteful recaps.

I could see some people finding the show a little unfocussed, the way it darts between Yancy's story, the Dragon Queen, Neville, Yancy's sometimes-girlfriend Bonnie, and others in ways that don't directly connect to the central crime story that Yancy is working on... but I love the fact that this show is more interested in the characters as characters than it is in them as agents servicing the main story. It a show where the world doesn't exactly gravitate around its main character and the main character's interest, and that's damn refreshing.  

The cast is uniformly phenomenal, with Vaughan, Turner-Smith, joined by Michelle Monaghan, L. Scott Caldwell, Rob Delaney, Meredith Hagner, Natalie Martinez and so many more. Even minor players in the story make multiple appearances, and it's always a delight to see them pop up again.

I imagine a second season will only see some of these players return, for obvious reasons, but the experience to see how it jumps around a whole new ecosystem of characters Yancy endears himself to (or pisses off)  absolutely puts a smile on my face just thinking about.  

An utter treat of a series.

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The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2

The What 100: Lord Sauron has disguised himself as an elfin deity and wormed his way into Celebrimbor's forge, encouraging him to make more rings of power, rings that he himself will taint with his darkness, thus eliciting control over their wearers. The dark elf Adar and his army of Orcs, aware of Sauron's return, are on the warpath to find and vanquish him once and for all, and they don't care what they have to destroy along the way. King Durin, wearing one of the tainted rings of power starts making some terrible decisions for the Dwarven realm, leaving his son Durin conflicted over his devotion to his father and doing what's right. The Stranger and his Harfoot companions get separated but each find new allies who are somewhat familiar. Back in Númenor, following the awful defeat against Adar's army, the queen finds herself challenged, and her throne wrested from her by the most evil-looking guy in history. And other stuff.  A lot going on in Middle Earth.  

(1 Great) I could have just watched just a whole series about Prince Durin IV and his turmoil over, first, his spat with his father following his actions last season, and then the dire situation as Khazad-dûm enters a dark age following a tremor. And when King Durin III puts on that ring, and starts getting money hungry and going mad with an unquenchable thirst for riches, it's just really wonderful melodrama. I love all the dwarf actors - Owain Arthur is probably my favourite performer on the show. Just real soulful, deep-thinking performance in such a heavyweight layer of makeup and prosthetics and wigs and wardrobe.  

(1 Good) I've been strangely invested in the journey of The Stranger and the Harfoots Nori and Poppy in both seasons, even though their trials have kind of been the most gentle and most disconnected from the central plot. As disconnected as they are, they also provide a very whole-view look at Middle Earth, a "what else is happening" outside of the main conflicts, and their Hobbitsy adventures are so much more gentle than what's going one elsewhere, it's a nice respite.  But that gentile nature of their story means that any threat seems that much more severe.

(1 Bad) There are entire character plots that just get shoved aside, like Isuldur seems to be an afterthought every time he pops up. It's like "oh right, him!" His story gets tied up with Arondir, the ronin Elf, who I loved in the first season, but has no storyline at all here. His human love interest died last season, and his attempts to connect with her son don't work out, so he takes off and just roams realm looking for action. He's a badass fighter with the coolest chest plate ever, but he gets nothing. Ok, that's actually 2 Bad...well, here's a third... I freaking hated everything going on in Númenor.  Just the most blatantly evilest group of fucks with the most obvious tactics of riling up crowds into supporting them in overthrowing the queen.  They're goddamn Republicans and it was just too real.

META: At about the midway point of this season of The Rings of Power I was starting to stretch a leg out, ready to step away altogether. I didn't but so much of the show was about the corruption of power, of the people in charge, and how it was all so inevitable that it was all going sour everywhere. Given that this show takes place, what, 1000 years before The Lord of the Rings trilogy, it just means that it all goes very dark, very quick and doesn't come out of that darkness for a very long time.  I don't know if showing people the descent into darkness works as a cautionary tale or just reinforces the hopelessness of opposing it when people are acting so irrationally. There really isn't any light this season to guide the way and it's feeling quite oppressive...and feels like it's only going to get worse from here.

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Nobody Wants This Season 1

The What 100: Joanne hosts a successful dating and sex-themed podcast with her sister, Morgan. She's been very unlucky in love and her frankness about talking about it has garnered her a sizeable audience and a pretty relaxed lifestyle.  Josh is a rabbi -- some might even go so far as to call him "Hot Rabbi" -- who has just exited a long term relationship with his very devoted (and attractive) girlfriend after she dug out an engagement ring out of a locked drawer. Everything was perfect on paper, but the sparks were not there. At a mutual friend's get-together Joanne and Josh meet, and sparks fly, but can a rabbi really be with a gentile and keep the respect of his family and congregation, and will being in a stable relationship impact Joann's podcast success?

(1 Great) One of my favourite aspects of the delightful friends-sans-benefits sitcom Platonic was how low stakes it was. It didn't spend much time at all revelling in drama or tension. It presented its characters as conscious, conscientious, thinking human beings who don't immediately always jump to the tropey sitcom conclusion to create tired hijinks for our amusement. It's a comedy of rapport, and I'm on board for any show that wants to be such. Here, not only are the characters presented as thoughtful, but they're also observant, and they're open to conversing about difficult topics. Sitcom comedy was borne out of withholding and misunderstandings. Cringe comedy exploded out of the rise of Seinfeld which was not just withholding, and misunderstanding, but genuine selfishness and bad behaviour. It's really time for our entertainment to show us a new way of coexisting, a new way of engaging with one another, a way that shows us that bringing up a mistake or a shameful emotion with a loved one is far better than hiding it, only for it to explode like a time bomb.

(1 Good) The cast here is uniformly awesome. Kristin Bell is a bankable and reliable comedic presence at this point, and though it's sometimes hard to shave the Eleanor-from-The Good Place feels from my brain, she's really fun. Adam Brody is charming, funny, and thoughtful, very aware and receptive and open. He is the ideal dreamy nice-guy boyfriend, who happens to be a rabbi. As a duo they're exceptionally cute together and they play off each other well. They're both over 40 now, but playing like they're in their late 30s, which works, but just barely.  The real flavour of the show though comes from their respective siblings. Morgan (Justine Lupe, Mr. Mercedes) is both fearless and shameless and will shake up any room she's in, usually for the better, but not always. Sasha, Josh's brother, (Timothy Simons) is less fearless and shameless than he is kind of oblivious. He's desperate to be included and so he includes himself in everything whether he's invited or not, wanted or not. Morgan and Sasha become platonic buddies is one of the most far fetched but delightful spins of the show (a lesser show would create some weird secret romance, but here Sasha clearly loves his domineering wife [probably because she's domineering] and family, he's just happy to have a new friend who actually wants to talk to him).

(1 Bad)  Nobody Wants This does a great job at showing the stakes for Josh: he's up for head Rabbi at his synagogue, and the faith has a very strong edict to congregate and procreate, so his relationship with Joanne, while providing him the sparks he's always thought a relationship should have, threatens his professional life, as well as creates friction with his family (his sister-in-law is best friends with his ex, his mom is really against the pairing). For Joann, there's less intense focus on what she's risking.  According to Morgan, at least, her being in a happy relationship is having an effect on the podcast (she's telling boring stories), which is being eyed for purchase by Spotify. Most of the gamble here is the romcom threat of "losing the guy". It's a fairly savvy show, but (from my very male perspective) it doesn't adequately emphasize what she's giving up or sacrificing, it rather seems to only imply that she should.

META: A very quick blast of research finds that show creator Erin Foster a) looks a lot like Kristin Bell, b) worked a lot with her sister (including as Insta influencers and as creative heads for the dating app Bumble among other things), and c) converted to Judaism before getting married.  So this show, while not autobiographical, comes from a place of authenticity and truth. It's a really charming romcom that isn't about the act of getting together, but about what it takes to stay together.  It's not even that interested in the drama of tearing Joanne and Josh apart but instead the joys and rewards of unifying and being together.  I feel like this is such an antidote to Hallmarkies, and we're still a week away from those things ramping up.  EEP

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Slow Horses Series 4 (aka "Spook Street")

The What 100: There's a terrorist attack in central London. Meanwhile River Cartwright's grandad, suffering from dementia, shoots a man he thinks is River in his house. River fakes his own death and takes the place of this man, heading into France on a passport that's actually a "cold body", one of many MI-5 fake identities created for their field agents. But how is this one "in the wild" so to speak, and now in River's hands? It all billows out into something very personal and very dangerous.

(1 Great) This is the first season where it feels like Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb is a supporting character and not the lead, and that's actually a good thing. Lamb has been so front-and-center that it's left him a little exposed as a character, as someone who is very much who he is, and not likely to change. River's always been the secondary lead of the show, and giving him the full spotlight here reveals the wild depths of his history and, in learning his origins, has potentially disastrous ramifications for The Park.  It's the most character-centric of the series yet, and it really, really works.

(1 Good) Nothing is stagnant in this show, things are always moving. When we ended last series, Taverner was looking to finally be accepting her place as First Desk, but this season we learn she's right where she was last season, with instead new First Desk Claude Whelan, a died-in-the-wool bureaucrat appointed to the position. He's an idiot, and an idiot is dangerous in his position. Taverner's used to playing games with other very intelligent intelligence officers, so manipulating an idiot is surprisingly difficult.  Whelan is played by James Callis who played the conniving Baltar in Battlestar Galactica... his character here is not that different than Baltar in ambition, but Callis plays him much, much differently. Kristin Scott Thomas as Taverner really revels in that steely, all-business, woman-with-secrets-that-you-will-never-know energy. I really hope one of these series deep dives into her life and history.  The games at the Park were some of my favourite bits this season.

(1 Bad) Oh God, I get angry watching this series week-to-week. I just want to eat it all up in one bite. It's so consumable, and it just pulls you through its story.  You can tell these were crafted out of novels because they're so perfectly structured to deliver the right amount of story and character moments for every ongoing character. We lose some, we gain new ones, and it's a roller-coaster where you're not sure what's happening to start with and it unfolds alluringly and brilliantly.  So yeah, it's great, but I don't like being confined by AppleTV's pacing (I could always wait...but I can't, I look forward to it too much).

META: Mick Herron's Slough House series currently consists of eight full length books and five novellas. I really, really wish that they would produce the novellas as like a standalone episode or extra-length episode between the series'.  So far we've only missed one, between series two and three, and there's two more series before there's another one, so we'll see... or maybe once they tap out of the eight books, they'll just do the novellas as specials to keep it going... I dunno, I just want it all...without having to actually read. Yuck!

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Squid Game Season 1

The What 100: You know what Squid Game is already. I'm just that fool who waited two years to watch it. Ok, quickly... 456 desperate individuals sign up to play games in hopes of winning a massive cash prize. Once they learn it's games of death, well, it ultimately doesn't change much, and the people enlisted will see it through to the bitter end. A detective, looking for his missing brother, infiltrates the compound and starts to uncover what, or who, is behind it all.

(1 Great) Despite this series being absolutely something right up my alley, it got real popular, real quick and you know me with popular things...I bristle. Well, if that many people like it, then it can't be any good, because people who make things popular generally have terrible taste. It was watching Lee Jung-jae in The Acolyte (second Acolyte references this post) that drove me to finally watch it. He was such a charismatic and soulful performer in The Acolyte that he really made an impact and I wanted to see more from him. And yeah, he's absolutely great in this. Here he's Gi-hun, a man in debt, divorced, and just mooching off his diabetic mother. He's not a good guy. It's not even that he wants to be a good guy, but he knows he should be. If he wants his daughter to respect him, if he wants his ex (whom he obviously still loves, but knows she's better off without him) to respect him, if he wants his mother to live and have a good life... then he needs to be a better man. But he doesn't have the tools for it.  And then he's offered an opportunity. It's within the confines of this horrifying environment that Gi-hun learns to be a better man, supporting other players, trying to understand people and help them survive, and giving most people the benefit of the doubt when it's obvious he shouldn't.  He's obviously going to be the victor, because the show is centred around him from the beginning, but can he actually live with himself if he does survive? 

(1 Good) So much of the show, being such a phenomenon, was spoiled for me before I even watched it, but  even if it hadn't been so popular, I probably could have guessed the rhythms of it. It's a formulae for a group of people in a confined space. They tribe up, there are betrayers, there are people who appear one way but are revealed to be something else...there are archetypes to these things and this plays right into them. But, the Squid Game offers the contestants an out...if they collectively, by majority vote, decide to end the games, they all get to leave. And after the first game, in which over a hundred of them are murdered, they decide to leave. So the second episode finds them back in their lives, back in their abysmal lives which have no hope, no promise of reward, just more misery. It's its most bold critique of capitalism in this second episode showing how without a social safety net people fall into despair and ruin with no opportunity to get out. As such, the Squid Game, with its death-or-prizes alternatives, seems like the more appealing option. It's unfortunate that it's the high-point of the season only two episodes in, but it's a great episode.

(1 Bad) Like I said, Squid Game relies upon tropes for character drama and conflict so it can feel pretty routine. It's only the games themselves that electrify the series, but even then I found the games to be oddly primitive, and designed with a lack of competitive spirit in mind.  They're games of death designed to kill, not to be won. The way the games masters manipulate their players especially outside of the games is all part of their fun, which is less fun to watch knowing that it's all stacked against them.  it feels like the games masters are just the writing staff who want to see as much death and misery and heap it upon the audience It should be a poignant commentary, about our fascination with observing human misery from a distance, but it never really does ask the audience to consider their role as spectator in all of this. So it loses its juice, its motivating factor if it's just entertainment and not asking anything of its audience in return.

META: I've said before how much I like the "man-hunting-man" subgenre of thrillers, your "Most Dangerous Games" and "Hard Targets" but this sort of "game show" version is another sister subgenre in the "Running Man" or "Hunger Games" style where it's a spectator sport. I thought it was going to be more of a spectator sport, much more public in a dystopian future, but no, instead it's a secret spectator sport for only the richest of rich to observe.  The detective who finds his way into the back-end of the Squid Game, and starts digging into its secrets unfortunately demystifies it too much, in a way that breaks the logic of it.  If they're stealing 400+ people off the streets of Korea each year for decades, leaving behind a lot of trace evidence like their weird cards, surely people will take notice.  I dunno, I found the more I learned about the behind-the-scenes, the less I bought into it.

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Unsolved Mysteries Volume 5

The What 100: An upsetting double homicide in broad daylight in a public park in Cleaveland. Roswell revisited. A paranormal investigator and his ghostly companion. Cattle mutilations are back (and really haven't ever left).

(1 Great) "Great" sounds too enthusiastic to talk about the very upsetting story of the two friends murdered in Cleveland. It's not great, it's fucked up and horrible, and the interviews with the loved ones of the victims is heartbreaking.  But it's also compelling the circumstances around it, and just how bizarre the situation is. Each season of Unsolved Mysteries on Netflix has had one of these... a murder case so unusual that it kind of breaks one's brain about how it could happen in the first place... and they linger with you, unanswered questions that, were I closer to the case, would drive me mad.  In this case, two friends of about 40-years-old meet up on a park bench. Within clear eyeshot is a parking lot where sits a truck. The two friends are executed, shot in the back of the head, and the guy in the truck sees and hears nothing. Less than 15 minutes pass between the time the woman last used her phone and their bodies are discovered. There's a busy road that goes right by there. Any suspects that knew the victims have been ruled out. Gang related? Hate crime (the man was black, the woman white)? But how brazen an act, and how is there nothing to go on? It's viscerally upsetting.

(1 Good) The investigation into the rash of cattle mutilations in Oregon in between 2019 and 2022 is just freaking bizarre on its own, but when put into the context of thousands of reported cattle mutilations across the US and Canada since the 1960s it's the silent epidemic that nobody talks about. The surgical precision of the removal of skin and the tongue and, often, genitals, why? To what end?  And the weird states that the cows are found in, sometimes upside down on fences, or sitting upright in full rigor, with very little blood on the scene... just completely eerie.  A true unsolved mystery that wants to lean into the "alien abduction" of it all but holds itself back at least somewhat by talking all angles.  Just wild.

(1 Bad) As much as UM gives us some upsetting cases of murder, and mysterious mysteries, sometimes its exploration of the paranormal just seem like weirdos or mentally unstable people putting on a show, being excited about things they're making up. The case about the paranormal investigator and his ghostly companion just made me giggle. The revisiting of the Roswell crash made it seem more and more like "this is a thing because people want it to be".  Here's where I've settled on Roswell... if there were actual aliens, and the President of the United States is advised about it, do you think Trump could shut up about it. He's worried about Mexicans, you don't think he'd be stirring up shit about grey aliens if they were real? He would not be able to contain himself. 

META: The past couple UM volumes have been more paranormal-heavy than I'd like. It's always been an aspect of the show, but I like the weird crime (doesn't even have to be murder) aspect far more, and it seems far more helpful to talk about unsolved crimes than it does about sasquatches and aliens.  But I love how the show upsets me with the horrors of humanity, and I've always had a bit of a soft spot for entertaining these flights of metaphysical fancy. I wish this were a weekly show again.

31 Days of Halloween: Infested

2023, Sébastien Vanicek (feature debut) -- Shudder

Or Vermines.

This season we are doing the recent "spider trilogy". They are unrelated movies from the last few years only connected by the theme of spiders being the monster. The first is this French movie that strikes me as a nod to Rec (we saw that movie before this blog existed) and any French movie that deals with underprivileged surviving in one of the many "housing projects" where immigrant families gather together, likely because they have no choice, and end up building communities among the residents. Also, hints of Attack the Block.

The tower depicted in this movie was something so fantastic looking, I assumed it was CGI, but no, the Arènes de Picasso are very much real buildings built in the 80s. Unlike in the movie, the scant information I can find on the structures implies they are not as rundown as the movie depicted.

Anywayz, spiders. The movie starts with some Arab collectors digging around in the desert for spiders they can sell. They gas an underground nest and collect the spiders as they spill forth, but one man is bitten. As he is writhing in pain, another kills him.

The spiders make their way to Paris, to the grotty shop behind a convenience store where Kaleb (Théo Christine, Gran Turismo) is looking for earrings to give as a gift, but one of the spiders catches his eye. He seems genuinely intrigued, an enthusiast, supported by the veritable zoo in his room, filled with rare species of bugs and lizards. This introduction also includes his sister Manon (Lisa Nyarko, feature debut), who keeps turning off the power in his room leaving all the precious creatures in the dark & cold. She is trying to renovate the apartment, left to them by their late mother, so she can sell it. Kaleb is the opposite, a member of the community of the tower, over-protective and entrepreneurial despite being seen as a requisite criminal by the local busy body, this time portrayed by a man in his 40s instead of the familiar old lady. Kaleb actually seems popular with the elderly of the building. In fact, Kaleb is selling shoes, not drugs.

So yeah, his spider escapes. This is not any normal spider. This is a scifi spider. It replicates really quickly, they grow really big really quickly. Soon the place is infested, webs are in every corridor, every air vent, every dark room. Pretty soon, I was pulling my feet off the floor, and squirming all over the sofa. You see, I like big bugs, I really think hand-sized beetles and stick insects are fascinating, but... spiders... spiders give me the non-stop heebie jeebies. When the palm sized spiders were spilling out of the bathroom air vent I squirmed. When a spider the size of a small dog appeared on the ceiling behind a character, I visibly cringed.

The movie escalates really quickly. Kaleb and his "friends" (one friend, one ex-friend, a girl who hates him, and his sister) decide they have to convince the neighbours to escape the building, but the casualties rack up really quickly. Soon it is just a matter to survive long enough to ... run into a quarantine. Apparently the authorities are aware of what's going on, but have trapped all the residents in the tower, barricading doors, sealing exits, etc.  So, the kids have to find a way to get out before they join the rest of the building as spider food.

This was a fun movie, frantic and chilling, creepy and, if you are like me, scary AF. Well no, not truly scary for me, for I am able to acknowledge my fears and enjoy the ride. The portrayals are really tight but that is made easier by focusing on only the kids, where everyone else is incidental and expendable.

31 Days of Halloween: It's What's Inside

2024, Greg Jardin (feature debut) -- Netflix

Is there now potentially a new sub-genre of watching privileged beautiful young people undo themselves purely through the nature of their vapid and self-centered personalities? Usually in a violent way? If so, I think that makes more commentary of the creators of such sub-genres than the subject matter they are commenting on. But who am I to talk, as I yell at clouds...

FYI, last year's example was Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. And again, full disclosure, this did not end up identifying as horror. It could have, but instead, it more went down the path of scifi thriller with dark comedy elements.

OK, the movie begins with Shelby (Brittany O'Grady, Star) trying to convince Cyrus (James Morosini, American Horror Story) to have sex by wearing a blonde wig, but ends up just interrupting him wanking, which then leads to a realllllly awkward argument. Shelby is gorgeous, Cyrus is an idiot, but she suspects he is thinking about influencer Nikki who, of course, gets more Likes than Shelby does.

They are all meeting in The Countryside at the estate of Reuben's (Devon Terrell, Cursed) late mother, a shock artist (giant chrome vulva on her lawn), for one last shindig before he gets married (hashtag Reuphia). These old college friends include aforementioned Nikki the Influencer (Alycia Debnam-Carey, The 100), Dennis the Hedonist (Gavin Leatherwood, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), Maya the Hippie Dippie (Nina Bloomgarden, The Resort), Brooke the Artist (Reina Hardesty, The Flash) and eventually Forbes the Tech Mogul (David Thompson, Gotham). You could build a red yarn "murder board" connecting all these "friends" together in contentious and misguided ways, especially Forbes whom most of them haven't seen since college (which, said out loud, tells me they are not all that young -- late twenties, early thirties) a decade earlier, where a singular event involving Forbes high school age sister got him kicked out of university.

When he shows it is with a party trick -- a suitcase (with a nod to Pulp Fiction) with something mysterious within, something analog, something full of switches and electrodes and lights and nobs. He says his company has been working on it. He doesn't explain what it is, just sets it up, electrodes on everyone's temples and BLINK, for a brief moment they are all in each other's bodies. Freaky Friday the app. For even the even more briefest of moments they are all freaked out, and then they agree to play along with a "game" of guess who is in who's body.

Much of the middle act is about people freaking out at each other, interspersed with artistic flairs supplemented by the strange setup of the late artist mom's house: hall of mirrors, halls of all red or all blue lighting, etc. The director is really REALLY impressed with himself, and all his visual representations of the characters' temperaments. The only thing I was impressed with was the ability of each actor to play another character; even if you dismiss us as only having seen their extreme traits, the actors do an admirable job playing through those roles.

Things are already going wrong when they go worse --- Reuben and Brooke, in the bodies of Dennis and Maya fall off a balcony and die horribly. So, that means  at least two of them will have to stay inside the bodies not their own, but they also have to explain the accidental deaths. It wouldn't be that bad but for the fact the "game" has led to almost everyone letting everyone else know how they really feel about each other. Everyone is very unpleasant. I don't have any sympathy for anyone, not even "nice girl" Shelby.

It was a sliver above ... just OK ? The tension is often overwrought and the setup is ridiculous but its played through decently enough even if you don't count on the "twist" which was mostly extraneous to the movie, but tied up things in a bow?

Dude, what the fuck was the twist? Nobody here cares about the spoiler.

OK, said twist was that it was never Forbes to begin with. It was always his sister Beatrice (Madison Davenport, From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series) who was slasher-movie level nutso, completely unhinged, and had stolen the machine from Forbes who was stuck in her body. I felt the whole thing was an unneeded add-on which should have stuck with just showing how horrible all these kids were.

This is the point in watching this season where I hit, "Why do we do this, if there are so many 'just meh' movies?" Good question. It could be as easy an answer as, "To find the diamonds among the coal." But that is too pat because as we sit down each night, we ask, "What do you want to watch?" even when there is a list of Good Choices right in front of us. I do feel we have to temper it, not binge on high-tension high-quality too quickly or we will..... become over satiated? That makes a bit more sense, no?

31 Days of Halloween: Azrael

2024, EL Katz (Channel Zero) -- download

Still not sure about this movie. At first blush, a post-apocalyptic post-Rapture survival movie with a gimmick where speaking draws The Monsters thusly a movie with little dialogue, would be right down my alley. And it should have been, if they had just fucking done something in the movie. Instead what we have delivered is just chase scene leading to chase scene leading to chase scene. I don't require a "Ending Explained" type movie, and I know without even looking there will be at least half a dozen genre movie blogs writing such articles, but I do hope for at least a bit of world building.

OK, so via sectional leader cards, we are told The Rapture happened. Starting in media res, a Woman (Samara Weaving, Babylon) and a Man (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Misfits) in love are escaping pursuers. She is caught and tied to a chair, and cut open so as to bleed. The remaining captors stand with their backs to her while she struggles to escape, as weird burned zombie creatures emerge from the wood. One of them sees she is escaping and tries to prevent it, only to be struck in the neck, and subsequently taken down by the monsters. She escapes into the wood.

Despite IMDB and Wikipedia having names for the characters, and the latter having a detailed explanation as to what is happening, none of this information is present in the movie. Nothing is explained and almost nobody is named. Seems silly to fill in blanks you don't have info on, unless they are taking headcanon as truth.

The Woman finds the encampment of her captors, surrounded by a ramshackle fence that makes lots of noise, and she sneaks in. Why did she come here? We don't know, but it is an opportunity for the movie to show us the church with the pregnant woman in white, someone they are obviously following. Why? Who knows. But the Woman is discovered and has to escape.

Later she comes across a road and a man in a brightly lit truck, who is not under the imposed "no speaking" rule and seems ... less PA ? He is confused as to why she is bloody and offers to take her somewhere for food and safety. He even plays her some music that briefly calms her before he is shot by one of her captors. She survives the crash, they struggle, she shoots him.

Back into the woods for pretty much more aimless fleeing. But she does her her Man, nailed to a tree, trying to gesture she should not come closer because... sproing... rope trap. While she dangles by one foot (fool pose) another of the captors appears, as well as more monsters. She scrambles up the rope, higher into the tree while the monsters take her Man as well as ripping the head off the captor. So much for his devious plan. One monster does climb the tree but she nags it in her rope and kills it by hanging, and ... back into the woods for more escaping.

Back to the encampment where The Woman goes into the church to kill the woman in white but barely scratches her before she is caught. The captors toss her into a recently dug grave and coffin, covering it up and tossing a few perfunctory shovels of earth on top. The foot of the grave is open to tunnels but they are full of the monsters, which as she scrambles back, they smell the blood of the woman in white on her finger nails and back off, giving The Woman time to dig her way out of the grave.

Back to the encampment where the Woman breaks in and starts killing willy nilly. The camp is on fire, people are dying left and right, and the monsters are coming out of the wood drawn by blood and noise.  She goes into the church to confront the woman in white again, and they fight. The Woman bites her in the neck and the woman in white is driven back, going into the throes of childbirth. The leader of the captors appears but is mortally wounded by The Woman. The woman in white has given birth but recoils from  the terrible crying sounds of the baby, and cuts her own throat. The Woman, who we are now realizing is likely the titular Azrael, aka The Angel of Death, picks up the baby, a cutie patootie goat thing with multiple eyes, aka The AntiChrist, as more of the monsters appear crying out to the skies.

The End.

To quote the peanut gallery, aka Marmy, "A Big Ol Meh!"

Sure, we got lots of cool PA imagery but we have no world at all. Are these just looney cultists hiding in the woods, cutting out their own voice boxes for fun? The lone guy in the bright truck implies that could be the case. What are the monsters? They look like full body burn victims and act like zombies, or vampires, ripping people open and drinking their blood. Perhaps Hell has broken open and they are sinners burned by the flames of the pit? The movie doesn't seem to care to even hint at an explanation... And if the movie doesn't care, why should I ?

The Dark Year: Bird Box

2018, Susanne Bier (Things We Lost in the Fire) -- Netflix

This one gets to serve dual duty, slotted into an empty spot in the 31 Days of Halloween calendar and covering a gap from 2018.

This movie slides into the sub-genre of post-apocalypse / survival horror / monster movie that has grown in the last handful of years; I guess, it likely has existed long before, but it garnered attention with the A Quiet Place. This one was based on a 2014 novel from Josh Malerman, wherein an invisible force causes those that look upon it (so, is it invisible or is it just not able to be depicted?) to commit suicide. I can only assume Malerman was inspired by Shyamalan's The Happening which also has an invisible force caused mass apocalyptic level death by their own hands, though he claims he had a rough draft written before. Yeah, uh huh.

Anywayz, the movie does as the book, telling in different time frames, the bulk of the story being done in flashbacks to the time during and just after the event, the arrival of whatever or whoever it was. Malorie (Sandra Bullock, The Lost City) is pregnant, a single expectant mother only connected to the world by her unflappable sister. Said sister (Sarah Paulson, Glass) dies almost immediately and panicking Malorie is ushered into a house where a number of survivors are hiding out. They have quickly ascertained the cause and black out the windows. The rest of the movie, the "current timing" is Malorie escaping with two five year children, Boy and Girl, to a boat on a river to a place of refuge.

There is just enough world building to satisfy my brain. The "creatures" are depicted through shadows, whispers and the swirling of leaves. The movie begins, as all do, with news reports of this phenomena emerging first in Romania or Russia and quickly spreading to the rest of the world. If you do not look at whatever it is, it will eventually leave you alone. It also will not enter a location with closed doors, which led me to wonder if there were hints of vampire mythos in there. This was also supported by the "Renfields", those that had looked upon the "creature" and survived, and were now obsessed with making sure all survivors looked upon the "beauty".

In my rewatch I once again enjoyed myself. The movie goes quickly enough from an ensemble bottle episode format to survival so as to not drag out the expected conflicts between personalities. Bullock really does a good job of embracing the personality of a woman who really wasn't suited to being a mother, but tenacious about protecting her family. I suspected she had not really decided whether she was keeping the child until the day the event happened. The journey, both literally and figuratively is handled well.

31 Days of Halloween: Trap

2024, M Night Shyamalan (The Visit) -- download

Full disclosure, its definitely more a thriller than a horror, but we approached it as Shyamalan's latest flick about a serial killer, and thought it would turn down the horror road, but it did not. That said, the road it did turn down (one near the Roger's Centre) was very satisfying. Well, maybe for me the Proud Shyamalan Apologist, but I did enjoy myself immensely and liked how so much of the movie was not trying to have us Root For the Bad Guy, but literally see the tables turned on him at every turn. I also liked that  he (he Shyamalan) knew we would see trailers, and the "twist" (or premise FFS) was revealed almost immediately. The movie was all about how it would play out.

An anti-Shyamalan from Shyamalan???

So, we have Cooper (Josh Hartnett, Oppenheimer) and his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue, Wolf Like Me) off to see a big concert for a popstar Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan, feature debut; she actually is a popstar) who at this point in time would be a Taylor Swift analog. We are talking a young singer with LEGIONS of fans packing a stadium in the middle of the day, a stadium also mysteriously (not mysteriously, remember trailer) packed with cops and federal agents. Cooper learns quickly, from one of my favourite Toronto actor / Skittles Guys Jonathan Langdom (No Tomorrow), they are indeed here for him, a serial killer known as The Butcher because he disassembles his victims. We also learn quickly that he has a young man trapped in a basement who he keeps checking in on via a phone app.

I wonder, is it an off the shelf serial killer app, or did he have it custom written on the Dark Web?

So, on his mind: find a way out, and keep his daughter oblivious. There is a bunch of fun cat & mouse game stuff where once again, I get distracted by Shyamalan's film techniques popping up here and there, his usual nods to directors like Hitchcock. By distracted, I mean I love it, because I do so love a well framed shot. Eventually his machinations lead him to positioning his daughter in the place she would love the most -- on stage with the popstar. If anything this derails her suspicions, because she has constantly asked him, "Dad, why are you being weird?" He knows his only way out of the stadium is through the pre-approved entourage of the popstar, so he... corners her and admits all, but with the not-veiled threat of murdering the young man trapped in the basement. Lady Raven has no choice but to help him escape.

You are now entering Spoiler Territory.

This led to my favourite plot turn. Lady Raven is no meek fraidy-cat and positions herself in a situation where she forces him to reveal himself, tragically to his oblivious suburban family, and she can use the power of her Lady Raven Army of Fans to find & release the trapped young man. The act is not entirely realistic, but its a beautiful thriller technique wherein she has less than two minutes to mobilize thousands of fans, crowd-sourcing the location of the trapped man from only a few scant clues.

Lady Raven gets to play a hero for proud daddy M Night. Of note, while I so did not enjoy the music in the movie, I was so impressed at how real it all felt. Sure, Saleka is a real popstar so she probably has a fanbase, does stadium shows, has real music she has produced and performed, but it was how it was presented and how the teen girl fans reacted that felt so very real.

But no, again, the movie is not over yet. Sure he's revealed, and sure the FBI shows up immediately to arrest him, but the movie reminds us that he is actually smart, and he has been evading the authorities for years through meticulous planning. BUT again his machinations are foiled by a woman he thinks he can easily manipulate, his wife (Allison Pill, Star Trek: Picard). Whether you like them or not, I always love that Shyamalan movies make active choices and you rarely feel like you are just a plot on rails.

So, not a horror movie, but a solid thriller in my books.

And yes while the movie is obviously shot in Toronto, it is still Philadelphia.

31 Days of Halloween: Cuckoo

2024, Tilman Singer (Luz) -- download

Weird. Everything I had been reading about this movie was that it was the most bizarre thing ever. I guess this would assume nobody has seen anything but the most straight-laced Hollywood movies. It was odd, for sure, but unlike his previous movie Luz, it was actually a mostly straight forward horror thriller. Also weird, I have fonder recollections of watching Luz than my writeup leads me to believe. Much of this season is full of VERY straight forward movies that once watched never come to mind ever again, so I guess its a good thing that I at least remember it making an impression? Old brains are weird.

So we'll go with the lack of thesaurus aspect of that last paragraph as intentional? Yes? Ok then...

Germany; clearly Germany, or at least clearly not US or UK with big picturesque mountains that look so postcard like I wondered if they might be AI generated. But no, just the Bavarian Alps. Gretchen (Hunter Schafer, Euphoria) arrives with her family; technically, she arrives with the moving van, a useful technique to highlight that she stands apart from this family, the daughter of a first marriage now stuck with her dad's new family. They have come to Herr König's (Dan Stevens, Downton Abbey) resort to help him design a hotel. König is creepy-nice, as Dan Stevens does so well, and gives Gretchen a job at the reception desk of his resort, something to put money in her pocket and fill her time.

I mean, it might technically still be AI generated, "Chattie, please generated a photogenic scene of mountains that look like the Bavarian Alps."

Stuff gets weird. Female guests are seen wandering the resort at night, vomiting on things. Nobody cleans up after. König states loudly that the desk is closed down at 10pm and everything must be locked, and Gretchen must not bike home; he will come and drive her home. She ignores him and on her bike-ride home, is followed by a running-faster-than-she-should-be-able hooded woman in weird sunglasses, which frightens Gretchen into running to a nearby hospital; unfortunately she also runs smack into a clear glass door and gets a nasty cut. The police state it must have been a prank.

Meanwhile her dad (Marton Csokas, xXx) is occupied with his daughter Alma who earlier had strange time distorting seizure after hearing weird sounds from the forest. Dad sees all this as Gretchen acting out and is very unfair with her. Gretchen responds by running away with a Parisian woman who stayed a single night in the resort, and stealing all the cash from the resort. They don't get far as the Hooded Woman does the deer-in-headlights thing and they crash. We see the Hooded Woman grab the Parisian Woman and toss her like a ragdoll, just as Gretchen passes out, saved by a mysterious man who shoots at the Hooded Woman.

She awakens to even angrier Dad and "I'm not angry, I'm disappointed" Herr König who seems more annoyed she is upsetting his plans. Yeah, its obvious some sort of machinations are going on here. Gretchen loses it on her father and König, but her father derails her outburst by giving her a box of her remaining belongings from her mother's house -- he has sold it, so she has nothing to return to. Also, confirms that her mother has passed and she has been calling, and leaving messages on an answering machine, for no one and said answering machine is in the box. Gretchen retreats to her room to listen to the sound of her mother's voice and hears an additional message, one from Alma who has called what she assumed was Gretchen's mother to say "Gretchen is very sad, please call her back". When Gretchen comes back out, everyone has gone to the hospital again, another seizure for Alma, but König will drive her to the train station. BUT first a stop by his house so he can give her money for her journey... away.

Yah right. Final act, the exposition, confrontation and conflict ! König has been experimenting with a rare species of .... bird person? Homo cuculidae, of course, the titular cuckoo which is known to leave its eggs in the nests of other birds. He has been using guests at the resort as surrogates for his mute bird ladies, and the mysterious man who saved Gretchen from the Hooded Woman was an ex-cop who lost his wife to this experiment. Said Hooded Woman is the said cuckoo, who disorients people with her call, causing some sort of time loop, likely just a massive déjà vu experience. Just as König is about to have Gretchen "impregnated" (icky goopy stuff from... down there) ex-cop guy escapes confinement and shoots König. Gretchen becomes focused on saving Alma, who is revealed as a cuckoo child, and while the two men shoot it out she is just trying to protect her sister and avoid the Hooded Woman. Luckily the two men kill each other and Gretchen is able to kill the cuckoo mom with Alma's help. Outside, the Parisian Woman appears and they all drive off together.

As said, much of the Internet thought the movie was confusing and really out there. Not so much. But it is weird, and fun, and tense and pretty decently acted. Obviously Singer does lean on the weird with Stevens hamming it up as much as he can, which is something he has been embracing since Legion. I have said it before, if I am engaged, I don't grab my phone, I shift around on the sofa dispersing tension, and this movie definitely had my attention throughout. I also do like that the season has its returning players, and even with the middling movies, I am always keen on exposing myself to their later work, as long as we didn't actively DISLIKE our introduction.

31 Days of Halloween: May the Devil Take You

2018, Timo Tjahjanto (Portals) -- Netflix

Or  Sebelum Iblis Menjemput.

OK, I don't care if someone is doing an enthusiastic homage to Sam Raimi; to me, if the movie ends up looking a patchwork of pieces lifted from other horror movies, and yes, many of those patches are Evil Dead ripoffs, then I am not impressed. So, if you are going to do such, at the very least you have to have a tightly done movie with consistent internal structure and a decent plot. Instead, here get an hour & half of screams from the antagonists and protagonists.

Way to just jump into the disgruntle !

Indonesian (horror) films, for us at least, have almost entirely been about tragic family situations in rural areas. So, when this movie started in the city, with Alfie (Chelsea Islan, Headshot) being called about her father in the hospital, I was thinking, "OK, something different." Bzzzzzzt, nope, because no sooner does Alfie have a nasty encounter with something clawed & terrible in the hospital (just a typical jump scare vision, followed by daddy blood fountain), then she returns to her father's house in the country. This is the house she knew as a child, before her mother committed suicide, before her father remarried and started another family she didn't fit into. There is literally a line, "We are her family, but she is his biological daughter."

Now, let me not forget the preamble where father dearest is shown making a pact with a evil priestess lady for... well, for cash. She shows up at his house, knocks on the door (evil shamans knock?!?!), and is shown to a pre-prepared ritual chamber in the basement, where she eats hair and fills up his briefcase with cold hard cash. Then we transition to opening credits where he is suddenly, unexpectedly rich, gets richer through real estate but soon after tragedy befalls him. Guess evil witch hair magic is temporary? Don't trust Satan based ponzi schemes? Who woulda known...

Not moments after Alfie arrives at the house, her not-family shows up. They want Alfie, who has the deed to the house, to liquidate it, partially to cover hospital bills, but mostly because failed actress New Wife needs to be kept in the lifestyle she has become accustomed to. Her husbands financial downfall and really nasty, obviously demonic disease is truly inconvenient.

Of note, there is a basement door, covered in those little rune printed prayer sheets, the kind you should never remove in anger or disgust. Its also nailed shut and padlocked. What does that mean? GOOD STUFF DOWN THERE ! In most movies they contrive a reason to go through the Scary Go Away Door, but not this family. Devil Gotten Gains must lead to ludicrous levels of greed. No sooner do they open the door then New Wife (mom!!) is dragged into the dark, only to return moments later Possessed By a Demon. After a bit of fighting, a nibble on one of her daughters and some more blood fountaining, Mommy Demon jumps through the window.

OK, what? That's it? She just wanted to leave? Well then, everything should be fine, right?

Alas no...

The movie continues, finding unending reasons to have the kids confront demons, spirits and anything else the director has seen in other horror movies, usually Japanese or American. For example, having someone trying to climb their way out of a muddy, water filling grave, but... why is it raining the basement? In the Sam Raimi spirit, some go mad and turn on the others, while Alfie remains true to saving the family that has rejected her. Eventually we have to actually go into the basement to have Visions of Exposition, and background visions of a Horny Goat Fellow -- I have mentioned before my dislike for having scary imagery in the background that is purely for our benefit; like, if the Devil is taking time to show up, why not reveal himself to people? Oh, the exposition? Dad came back to the house to sacrifice his family for more money but... changed his mind? He stabbed the witch and she cursed him with the blood fountain disease. So now Alfie has to unravel some blood hair paper magic to stop it all but not before pretty much everyone dies.

In much the way western horror movies often draw upon Christianity motifs, while this one is wrapped up in such to a degree, the meat of the movie is about family. Alfie just wants some, Dad is horrible for sacrificing his for money and mom (Old Wife) did not commit suicide, but was his first sacrifice. Sure, most American horror movies have a focus on family as well, but the direct focus of this movie is on them as a unit -- only Alfie is an individual. Much of the screen time, when not presenting us with low-budget monster makeup, is about the trials and tribulations of keeping a family together, especially ones that don't deserve it.

And again, if you are going to wear your Sam Raimi love on your sleeve at least do something interesting with it. 

31 Days of Halloween: Baghead

2023, Albert Corredor (feature debut) -- download

This was Corredor's first feature, adapted from his award winning short of the same name. Unfortunately, this movie fell into the all too familiar category of ... streeeeetch it until you have a feature film. There were some genuinely creepy things about it, all drawn from the original premise, but to make a full film, with a proper ending, they needed to expand the story.

I really need to find how many movies I think fall into that trap, but obviously enough for my brain to say "they made a short, now its a full length feature!" It has to be more than "Mama".

This season is going to be like most, rife with "meh" movies wading through the dross to find gems in the muck. Its not like we are choosing to watch bad movies, for if we wanted to do that we have Tubi or the "suggested" piles under Amazon movies, but an interesting premise and a decent trailer does not always beget an enjoyable movie, and rarely a good movie. At least we also rarely run into those that force us to turn them off.

Premise. A man (Peter Mullan, The Vanishing) somewhere in the UK owns a pub with a creature in the basement. A young man (Jeremy Irvine, Treadstone) is demanding access to "her" which the pub owner denies, as he goes into the basement, finds a witchy looking womanly creature strapped to a chair with a bag over her head. He basically claims that her hold over him is at an end, douses her in flammable alcohol and ... click, his lighter fails. When it finally works, she knocks it from his hand and he catches on fire. Screaming, he escapes the inferno in the basement only to die at the top of the stairs, as the fire dies as well. We also see these scenes interspersed with the "in case I am dead" video he is making, the exposition to tell us the viewer WTF is going on here.

Enter his daughter, his heir, Iris (Freya Allen, The Witcher), a screwup breaking into her own apartment/art studio that she has been evicted from, when she Gets the Phone Call. She immediately flies, which in UK-set movies means a really long distance, like the length of England, but possibly another country? She meets a "solicitor" (Ned Dennehy, Zone 414) who hands her keys and a deed, but claims he can have the pub sold off before the end of the week.

The wikipedia article says this is Berlin but absolutely NOTHING in the movie implies they are in Germany beyond a few, small details that could be easily hand-waved away. I am pretty sure the original script had it as such (Germany) but it was edited out and left... ambiguous.

The pub really is a character here. While it does the annoying thing of depicting the structure inside (cramped, ornate, lots of wood) not matching what we see on the outside (industrial building, big windows, lots of space) the whole space is really cool. Beyond having some alcohol on the premises it doesn't strike me that dad was running the place as a proper pub but Iris is intrigued, more as an opportunity to better understand her estranged father.

Then the young man with the money arrives. He offers her a lot of money to see what is in the basement. He walks her through what is going on. They draw the woman out, force her into the chair, give her something "the deceased" owned and then the baghead woman transforms into the dead one, so questions can be asked. But only for 2 minutes; any longer and the interaction is corrupted. The first time the young man tries, he gets his mother and lots of abuse heaped on him.

It may be indicative of horror movies, or my writing style, but I more often than not start with a detailed play-by-play of the opening, but then... fade out into the broader strokes. I think it is part of how these movies play out for me, especially the "adapted from a short" ones, in that once the premise is played through, and they have to get an entire rest of a movie from it, things get ... strained. I get bored.

Iris really likes the idea of getting money for this utterly fucking scary, insane, truly supernatural situation. Sure, her dad is finally, in death, giving her something. But she has numerous warnings this won't go well, but as per the equivalent of "don't go down into the basement" shouted (by the audience) entreaties, Main Characters never do the smart thing.

They don't even do a good job of expositing what she actually is. A witch. OK, yeah but she's immortal and angry and.... what? There needed to be something more than a secret society with an undead woman trapped in their basement.

In the end, the movie follows some tiresome trope laden paths until it does a weird WTF twist, which I guess is supposed to leave things open to a possible sequel? Too bad the only character I cared about (the pub) is finally successfully burned to the ground.

KWEIF: Will & Harper (+the Bounty Hunter Trilogy)

KWEIF=Kent's Weekend in Film, because I did a Kent's Week in Film already this week (twice!). I took a couple days off work to decompress an watched a pile of movies, and that continued over the weekend.

This Weekend:
Will & Harper (2024, d. Josh Greenbaum - Netflix)

Killer's Mission (1969, d. Shigehiro Ozawa - bluray)

The Fort of Death (1969, d. Eiichi Kudo - bluray)

Eight Men to Kill (1972, d. Shigehiro Ozawa- bluray)

---

Tactic number 1 of the conservative political playbook is to make the people afraid. Make them fearful, make them hate. Give them an enemy as the root cause of all their problems. Distract them from the real and exceeding complex issues of sustaining a democracy. Distract them from the glad-handing  deals, from the dissolving of social infrastructure, from the capitalism-run-wild that favours the few at the expense of the many. Keep them pointing fingers at anyone but the (primarily, but not exclusively) conservative political powers that are the true root of the problems.

Conservative politicians, and their public mouthpieces (from talk radio, to social media feeds, to 24 hour cable news channels) keep a large swath of populace under their sway through tactic number 1, and have been doing so for generations. They do so because it works. People want easy answers in a complex world. Explaining global economics or spelling out the complex chain of events that lead to a small town falling into ruin or understanding how a prosperous country slides into negative population growth and thus needs immigration to bolster it's economic infrastructure...well, the average person doesn't want to sit through that lecture. They just want to know who they should be angry at, and most conservative politicians have no moral compunction about pointing a finger. At any given time it's been Blacks or Mexicans or Asians or Muslims or gays or all of the above. It's only been recently that it's been trans people, and more specifically it seems to be pointing a finger at trans women.

The largely patriarchal world is a dangerous place for women. It always has been. Men have objectified and othered women as something less-than for centuries. Objects of desire, prizes, possessions, muses, tools, toys. When men don't see women as human, as equals they can do horrendous things. 

So imagine how scary it is when you've got politicians and political mouthpieces shouting to a massive and receptive population that you, as a trans woman are not even worthy of being an object of desire, a prize, possession, muse, tool or toy. That if you are not a man than you are nothing. It says a lot about how these men not only perceive trans women, but women in general.  But it's not that politicians and political mouthpieces are saying that trans women are nothing, they are actively saying trans women are predators, they are perverts, they are the root of leftist blabbetyblah (and these are the nicer things they say). They are making a populating dehumanize, hate and be angry towards a population that just want to be free, to have the liberty to live in a skin the is comfortable, to be who they feel they are inside on the outside rather than be trapped in a construct, in the confined definition that the patriarchal society has determined they should be.

Most trans people go through a period of deep depression and suicidal ideation before they come out. Most of us cannot truly understand this struggle, to feel so trapped by one's own skin by societal expectations that death seems like the most straightforward answer to it all.  And then imagine when a whole political segment is saying they would rather you kill yourself than wear the clothing of the opposite gender to what you were born with. It's frankly repulsive.

I have trans people in my life. I love, support and accept them unconditionally. Radical empathy should be mandatory teaching, not just in school but at work and throughout everyone's life. It's a health and safety issue. Not everyone has trans people in their life, or has encountered trans people socially, and so if you don't have exposure, it's easy to other, to give any credence to the inane ramblings of those political mouthpieces.  

Will Ferrell has made many movies which play well in conservative spaces. His comedies have rarely been political or exclusionary, they're usually pretty silly and play pretty broadly. He knows films like Step Brothers, Anchorman and Talladega Nights have earned him a wide audience of fans, and now he wants to attempt to engage that audience and introduce them to a trans woman, his dear friend Harper Steele.

Harper was, in her masculine disguise, a writer for Saturday Night Live when she met Will and they became fast friends, and remained very close over the decades. During the pandemic, Harper came out to everyone in her life as a trans woman, no longer able to tolerate living the lie she was living. Post-pandemic ("post"), the friends decided upon a road trip for the two of them to get reacquainted, for Will to meet Harper properly as the friend he's always known but now could truly know.

But the film is only half about Will meeting his friend in total, the other half is Harper coming to terms with being a trans woman in America, of exploring the spaces she used to freely engage with as a man...spaces that, by all accounts from news reports and political discourse, would be dangerous for her to enter.

With Will's celebrity presence acting as buffer, they set forth on a New York to L.A. trip that takes them to some of the most gorgeous vistas the world has to offer, and to some formative spaces in Harper's life, and to those rural red state places where she gets those leering looks that, if not for Will or the camera crew, could spell danger for her.

There are genuine moments of connections with people that Harper has that surprise her, but there are fresh wounds made by daring to even enter a space where she knows she's not wanted. I'm sure Will okayed it with Harper, but every time he announced her publicly as his friend who transitioned, I cringed. But it came from both a place of pride, and from of place of hope, that simply by stating he, Will Ferrell is an ally, he might get others to be so as well. It's bold, perhaps brave, but also naive. 

This is a funny, sweet, heartwarming film about friendship, but also intense, painful, and, at times, dispiriting film about Western society and its constructs, and the pain its very arbitrary and imaginary boundaries inflict upon much of the population.  

There were few times where I felt Harper was safe.  When she was among friends or family or alone with Will, I felt she felt at ease, and it was lovely to see. Every other public space felt extremely loaded, just bracing for someone to say something, to incite.  It makes me sad. I am worried for the trans people in my life, but also for those that I don't know. I'm most empathetic towards those who witness the discourse about them and decide not to come out, to stay trapped. I wish society wasn't so primitive, that it would evolve enough to see through patriarchal  rhetoric and conservative dogma, and see the spectrum of humanity for the beautiful thing it is.

I hope this film is effective, that cisgender people engage with it (I think it's much less vital for trans people, as it's not presenting them with much they don't already live or know), and learn and grow and become more open and empathetic. It's truly lovely.

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I had never heard of The Bounty Hunter Trilogy before, a trio of films in Japanese genres of jedaigeki and chambara from the late-60's early '70s starring Lone Wolf and Cub's Tomisaburo Wakayama.  (If you don't know these terms, that's okay, because I don't really either.  "Jedaigeki" are basically period dramas, where "chambara" are the subgenre of sword fighting films. Both are kind of used, maybe inaccurately (?) as a general term to reference samurai movies.) I'm not well versed in these genres largely because they weren't very accessible when I was younger. Outside of Kurosawa and Godzilla, there wasn't a lot of access to Japanese cinema until the double-boom of Power Rangers and Pokemon started a whole mass wave of interest in Japanese entertainment, primarily manga and anime.

The chambara I started with were the Kurosawa movies, mainly through the references to them in my readings about Star Wars (if you look at the genre terms above, you see where Lucas got "Jedi" from). Kurosawa's samurai films are gorgeous, intelligent, and masterful cinema. But what I glommed onto most immediately was the pulpier, more violent, more stripped-down Lone Wolf and Cub. I watched most of the films and some of the TV series in the early 2000s thanks to an incredible local video store when I moved to Toronto (no longer exists sadly).  I coveted the collection for years, and finally acquired the six-film series on blu-ray last year. I really need to review it. I got halfway through before I got distracted. 

Outside of Kurosawa and Lone Wolf and Cub I haven't explored the jedaigeki much, in part because there's just so much of it out there, and also because it's still not extremely accessible. Unlike Chinese martial arts films, the jedaigeki and chambara films haven't been Sunday afternoon cable classics, video store hallmarks, or Tubi essentials. If you want to watch them, you have to seek them out, and if you don't really know what you're looking for it can be difficult (and expensive) to traverse.

I only learned about The Bounty Hunter Trilogy by visiting one of my local video stores (we have a few in Toronto, thank the gods - Bay Street Video, Eyesore Cinema, and Vinegar Syndrome, to name three) and spying the boxed set on the shelf. Released by Radiance and limited to 3000 copies, it features a quarter-sleeve on the box that tells you what this is: "Tomisaburo Wakayama [stars] in this triptych of violent samurai spectacles inspired by James Bond and spaghetti westerns." 

Films blending the genres of samurai, British super spy and Italian westerns...plus Wakayama in the lead? I had to see these.

Killer's Mission most fully realizes this promise of genre-blending. Wakayama plays Shikoro Ichibei, a doctor who moonlights as a "bounty hunter" (we'll get to that), taking missions to help fund his medical practice. The premise of this first in the series seems to stem from the same historical incident as James Clavell's story for Shogun. A Dutch ship is possibly selling firearms to a rogue state that could give them the potential power to overthrow the Shogun.  Ichibei is hired to prevent the sale from happening by any means necessary.

Ichibei suits up, assembling his armory of transforming weapons and hidden gadgets like an 18th century Japanese super-spy. It could only have been better if there was actually a quartermaster there who were devised these gadgets and explained their use to him.  He sets out on his mission using disguises, lies, and trickery, as well as lightning fast reflexes, expert swordsmanship, and a butt load of super-spy testosterone to make his way to his destinations.

Much like Sean Connery's Bond, Ichibei is a lustful being who thinks he's god's gift to women. In this same movie he tricks one woman into sympathy fucking him by pretending to be a blind man, and fights a female ninja who he'd rather be kissing.  There's a lot of that "the lady doth protest too much" attitude here where Ichibei forcefully kisses someone but though they initially resist, they ultimately cannot resist his manly manliness (and what a man, as a clowning, Don Knotts-esque sidekick catches a look at Ichibei's dick in the lavatory and is beyond impressed and effusively complimentary). This film, and the series, is not the best at serving its female characters, though Ichibei is less handsy in the subsequent films. It's one of the unfortunate ways in which it's in fitting with the Bond-ian stereotype.

Also like Bond films, Killer's Mission gets pretty convoluted plot-wise, as the political side of things weaves its way through multiple double-crosses and some shifting of allegiances where the motivation isn't entirely clear.

What the film lacks in plot clarity and respect for women, it almost makes up for in style. It's score is so 60's espionage with emphatic, propulsive guitars and horns (with just a little bit of surf energy), that it sets the vibe. The character, the swagger, the "romance" and even the almost free-flowing nature of the mission all have that 60's super-spy tinge to it, but in the guise of Japanese samurai tropes.

It's the staging though that evokes Westerns. The fights all have a dusty showdown nature to them, the camera closing in on Wakayama's eyes like he's Clint Eastwood, he will quickdraw his sword and return it to his sheath like a sheriff will his six-shooter in a showdown shootout.  It's hard not to be charmed by the mishmash.

The subsequent films in the series, then, are that much more a disappointment in their abandoning or the spy genre. While the music cues remain very brassy, the second, and especially the third in the series lean more into to the samurai-meets-western.

Of the three, I think The Fort of Death is my least favourite, primarily because it is effectively a lower budget, more primitive riff on Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. It's the knock-off version, like Orca to Jaws, or Battle Beyond the Stars to Star Wars. It seems cheaper, more exploitative, and yet it's also not without its excitement or charms. While it mostly abandons the super spy element it adopts the 50's/60's British-esque war movie into its repertoire.

A coalition of farmers is being taxed literally to death by its regional lordship. They've protested and pleaded but their lordship has his own political aspirations, and whatever he achieves will be on the backs of the working class. They either fall in line, or get shut down. Though it doesn't pay much, and Ichibei is not a man to interfere in politics, he cannot dismiss the suffering of others, nor can he abide bullies.

He gathers a team, including his ninja love interest from last film (though their relationship has seemingly gone largely platonic since then) and they descend upon the fortified wall. Ichibei takes command and organizes the people, their few fighters, and the unruly ronin who have gathered.  They would be overwhelmed by the lord's forces if not for the gatling gun Ichibei has brought with him (possibly recovered from those Dutch traders he defeated in the prior film?)

There's something about gunplay in a samurai film I really, really don't like. Obviously guns were a game changer after ages of swords and arrows, and this ugly progression naturally would hit Japan's shores, but there's something so much more elegant and tangible to swordplay and arrows that is lost when you have people falling over after being hit with invisible bullets. The special spray of arterial blood is lost as hammy extras overplay their falling-over-after-being-shot moments.

That said, it's still pretty exciting, and has kind of a first-person-shooter feel to it when the forces are just so overwhelming that they're pretty much flooding the frame of the camera and being shot by Ichibei's gun at point blank range.  It does feel effectively overwhelming.

In terms of Ichibei being the number-one-lover-man-in-Japan, the film turns the tables. A widow in the village assaults Ichibei, taking his pants off while he sleeps and tries to force herself upon him repeatedly as he attempts to flee. It's played semi-comedically, but assault is assault. It's not right when Ichibei was doing it in the prior film and it's not fair play to have the tables reversed.  Another widow, who has gone mad following the deaths of her husband and baby, also assails Ichibei, and literally throws him around, mirroring his first encounter with his ninja love in Killer's Mission.

The film ends with a field of dead and the ruins of a community. An inspector from the Shogunate finally arrives to assess the conflict, but obviously too late to do anything about it. It's a dark note, left with the little promise of the children of the village emerging and being embraced by the farmers of neighboring communities.

These films do not shy away from being critical of government, and the corruption that lies within. Ichibei is often an agent for the government but he is not of the government.

Eight Men to Kill opens with a gold heist, which makes its way to Ichibei doubly so. First the government implores his assistance in recovering the gold as it's crucial to staving off an economic collapse. Second, a witness to the heist found a gold piece and swallowed it, but it's causing severe intestinal issues and Ichibei needs to operate on him.  Operations on screen before sterile environments really wig me out.

So Ichibei suits up and heads out to discover the whereabouts of the gold. He meets and kills and helps many people along the way. Unlike the first film, which establishes Ichibei as a sort of solitary badass, and the second film where he's like a military general, here he's a man for the people. His mission to recover the gold is so he can get a cut of it to fund more medical outposts in the region, something he criticizes his government contacts for not doing.

Eight Men to Kill is framed almost entirely as a western. The score still retains its super-spy tenor, but mixes in a lot more Morricone influence than before. The visuals are exceptionally dusty, and even the Japanese villages seem to be staged more in a way like Western towns, ready for a showdown.

There's also a lot more gunplay. While The Fort of Death was wartime gunplay, along with swords and arrows, there's more gunplay than swordplay here, a lot of horse chases as well. It's more American/spaghetti western than jedaigeki. Even Ichibei's outfit looks more gunslinger than samurai (he actually looks more like the Friendly Giant, if I'm being honest.) The mustard coloured outfit and the shaggy near-afro screams early 1970's.

While the first film was complicated by its political intrigue, here's its complicated by the ever-shifting allegiances of the characters. Everyone's shifting who they are aiding and it's not like they're double-agents, they just keep shifting sides. In the end I really lost track of who was supporting whom and what individual motivations were.

On the women front, again, not great. Ichibei threatens a sex worker who has info about the gold. She refuses to give up her knowledge and offers herself to him basically as a distraction. About the only Bond-ian element remaining in this film is the fact he fucks the villainess so good she immediately falls in love with him and leads him to the man with the gold, and she starts acting irrationally out of her uncontrollable affection for Ichibei.

The end of the film is very dark, and once again reiterates this films seemingly connective tissue about governments needing to be for the people and not exist for power, wealth and control.

Despite being the most misogynistic of the three films, Killer's Mission was the most successful at what it promised on the box (and honestly the misogyny of the film is absolutely aping James Bond, in an almost child-like, they-don't-really-know-what-they're-doing fashion) and the one I liked the most. I wished they had stuck with the super-spy genre and leaned into its tropes more. Period-specific super-spies may not be all that accurate but it's pretty goddamn fun. 

Chambara films already have a western feel to them as is, so leaning more into the Sergio Leone of it all isn't really redefining the boundaries of samurai movies... or maybe it's that I just care less about westerns than I do about spy movies.

These three films aren't great cinema, they aren't giving Kurosawa any challenges. They're pulp, their entertainment, and much like Ichibei himself they get the job done pretty efficiently (all of them clocking in around 90 minutes).  Yet, I really would like there to be more of these. It's surprising there weren't more of these, or that they didn't go on to be a TV series like Lone WOlf and Cub or Zatoichi.