1-1-1-KsMIRT: odds on endings

KsMIRT=Kent's month in reviewing television. This month, the definite end of one series, the probable end of another, the first seasons of two others, and one show I've been waiting some time to get eyes on.

This Month:
The Bear Season 5 - 2026, disney+ [8/8 episodes watched]
Deli Boys Season 2 - 2026, disney+[6/6 episodes watched]
Spider-Noir Season 1 - 2026, amazonprime [ /8 episodes watched] 
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed Season 1 - 2026, appletv [10 /10 episodes watched]
Year of the Rabbit Series 1 - 2019, tubi [6/6 episodes watched]

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The Bear Season 5
[created by Christopher Storer]
Seasons 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

The What 100: Carmy has told Sid he's quitting The Bear, she's now head chef, so it's time for a change. But uncle Jimmy's made some bad investments and has no money left to prop the Bear up, and is looking to sell the property. The credit cards are cut off, the cupboards are practically empty, and a heavy duty storm is wreaking havoc in Chicago. This could be the Bear's last night, but nobody wants it to end, and they're all going to fight for it's survival.

[1 Great] There is a moment in the penultimate episode that had both Lady Kent and I sit up and say "holy shit!" A literal magic trick that blew our minds.  I don't know if this particular feat is something that's famous in the fine dining world, or if it's an invention of Storer (or someone on staff), but wow. If you're not immediately aware of what I'm talking about, well, Marcus (Lionel Boyce) totally big-times his estranged father, whom he invited to the Bear (as he said, because he couldn't invite his mom, who passed away last season), but also to show off his talent, to show up his father, and possibly even reconnect (but that seems far down the list) and with the Bear's impending doom hovering overhead, he doesn't have much opportunity. A pretty great arc for Marcus this season.

[1 Good] Last season had a literal ticking clock over its head, a countdown to profitability issue by Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), though his reasons weren't as clear as they are within moments of this season's start. In this season of eight episodes, seven of the eight episodes take place on the same day as the staff need to battle their own insecurities, their anger and disappointments, the weather, other failures in the building, and fight not just to make it through the day but to hold their family together. While Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) quitting was supposed to remain a secret through to the end of the day, it gets blurted out in the heat of the moment, and it just raises awareness to the fact that Carmen wouldn't be a bonding agent, but one of division. He's immensely creative, and assuredly talented, but the job brings out the worst in him too, and he recognizes that his heart isn't in it, not like the rest of them. "I can't stay", he says to Sugar (Abby Elliott). "Nobody's asking you to," she replies in the way only a sibling can. It's not to injure him, but it's a double edged sword that is both supporting his decision, and cutting down his egocentricness. This season is propulsive (as many of the seasons have been) but the "all in one day" motif really, really makes it feel like a necessary binge. It could have been a four hour movie, but I think it works well with chapter breaks, as each episode still has a distinct and defined segment of the day.

[1 Bad] There's a lot of great things happening in this final season of The Bear. Every main character gets their spotlight, but the secondary characters don't quite get the same spotlight. Uncle Jimmy becomes the comic relief as he and his investment manager/best friend Computer (Brian Koppelman) and Computer's business savvy niece Cheese (Elsie Fisher) try to sort out how Jimmy can get some money, any money, out of the only asset he has left (the Bear). Last season Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) had a subplot working with a mentor (the late Rob Reiner unable to return this season) to develop a plan to franchise out The Original Beef of Chicagoland, and this season Ebra spends his time fretting over presenting his pitch to Carmy and looking for a spoon thief. The scenes of him practising his pitch are great (the running gag about him being bewitched by Carmy's blue eyes was fantastic), and the resolution to this plot is satisfying, but it's Cheese who finds Ebra's proposal and then it cuts past what should have been a great scene of Ebra and Cheese talking, leading to Ebra and Jimmy and Computer meeting. Ebra gets so shortchanged, the only bad thing about this otherwise terrific season.

META: Finales are hard, but this one nails it. I don't usually like it when a series spends the whole final season acting as if each episode is a finale, giving each character a specific spotlight to go out on. I much prefer it to be business as usual with a big final episode, but season 5 of The Bear has it both ways, and it works. It mostly works because it's not trying to close out individual character plots one by one, it's teeing up each character arc in the first episode or two, working through it through the single day, and winding it down by the end of the day. It's all about pacing and it is so very well paced.  The finale then give us moments that follow. We know that pretty much everyone in the cast is still working at the restaurant, making it work, but it's Carmen's story that we need resolution on and we see what's next for him. But we also see hints at where everyone else is going, and showing them still progressing, and reinforcing the found-family dynamic of the Bear.  It's an uplifting, hopeful, and celebratory ending that actually satisfies. I wish I had written this out as a fine dining metaphor.

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Deli Boys Season 2
created by Abdullah Saeed
(Season 1)

The What 100: Brothers Mir and Raj Dar have successfully taken over their deceased father's business and are now the cocaine kingpins of Philadelphia. District Attorney and mayoral hopeful Andrew Chadwater seems all too aware that the impact the Dar family is having and, more than for the social good, just wants the good press of taking them down. The only problem the Dars have is they are making too much money and can't launder it fast enough. They approach mobster/casino owner Max Sugar, who hits it off with Lucky. And then Uncle Ahmad - who the boys discovered was responsible for their father's murder - winds up dead and Raj is arrested, and becomes the internet viral sensation, the "Fuck Me Felon". Mir wants to buy a golf course for some semblance of legitimacy.

[1 Great] Deli Boys is a farce. It's not taking the world of drug dealing, money laundering, corruption and murder seriously in the slightest. In fact it's perception is that it's all very silly. The trick is to have the characters take it seriously, even if some of them are buffoons, or hyper-serious to the point of ridiculousness. Mir (Asif Ali) and Raj (Saagar Shaikh) are incredibly entertaining characters, with Mir being the more nebbish but also educated but also still out of his element, while Raj is very of-the-moment and, well, often high...and charming, but usually not charming enough. The show is not a joke machine like 30 Rock and its ilk, but instead is a character and situational based comedy, and the characters, pretty universally are wildly entertaining, and the situations are constantly surprising. It's an incredibly funny show which many might be put off simply by the premise (which requires us two root for two outsiders succeeding in doing everything illegal, including murder).

[1 Good]  I don't know that this write-up is much different than the season 1 write-up, just saying the same things in a different way. Of course Poorna Jagannathan is the show's superpower. She's a commanding screen presence, a gifted actress, and an absolutely stunning woman. It's almost unfair to put her in a relationship with Fred Armisen (playing Max Silver) because, at least in attractiveness, she's so far above him (she was paired up briefly with Common in Never Have I Ever and that felt more appropriate), but Armisen is a wizard of comedic characters and so she has to go toe to toe with him in these comedic situations and holds her own. I'm excited to see she's appearing in Lanterns this month.

[1 Bad] This second season of Deli Boys had a reduced episode count...and a significant one at that. Whereas season 1 had 10 episodes, this season only had a 6-episode order. Yeah, that's not good, but the real bad is that the first three episodes of the season feel like they're condensing five or six episodes worth of plot into three episodes and so the events of the show move so incredibly quickly. Raj is barely in jail for a full episode and so they don't get a lot of time to really build upon the scenarios that presents (plus we could have had more of Kumail Nanjiani guest starring as Raj's lawyer and Lucky's ex).  There feels like there was more story, more comedy to be had this season, but whatever plotlines were constructed between seasons weren't reworked but just compressed.

META: The reduced episode count in itself felt like a token gesture from Hulu, and less that they had any faith in the show growing their audience. Unless the series suddenly multiplied its viewership, I don't think it'll be back, which is a bummer because it's a super-talented cast and crew and a hilarious show which could really do with more room to breath and expand (there's so many wild characters they haven't had the time to build out or explore).

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Spider-Noir

[created by Oren Uziel] 

The What 100: In an alternate reality 1930's, Ben Reilly used to be a superhero called the Spider but is now a washed-up private dick who scrambles to make ends meet. The trauma of losing his fiancee Ruby still weighs heavy and he finds it hard to care about the world anymore. In the Spider's absence, mob boss Fin "Silvermane" Byrne has taken control of New York City, but the once meek mayor, seeking re-election, is now fighting back, and things are getting ugly. It only gets worse when new super-powered beings emerge. Reilly somehow winds up in the mix of it all after taking a case from lounge singer Cat Hardy.

[1 Great] Without resorting to heavy-handed exposition, the creatives involved in this series manage to build a world of the 1930s NYC that is recognizable from history but distinctly its own vibe. It doesn't shy away from the ugly nature of segregation and racism of the era, but also never makes it "a very special episode" material. It is just part of the underpinning of the world that these people live in. The sets, costuming, hair, and special effects are all constructed and displayed in a manner to evoke classic noir, all aided by the decision to let the audience choose their own viewing adventure: colour, or black and white. (The series was shot with b&w in mind, so this was the option I went with, and it looks fabulous.)  The aesthetics extend to the sometimes ham-fisted or melodramatic acting which feel very much of the classic noir genre, and the injection of superpowers into the whole thing may be much more advanced than what had been done in the serials of the '30's and '40's but at the same time, there's a baked-in bit of clunkiness to the make-up, the fights, the digital powers to give it a tangible charm even when it might not be so real (the b&w really helps to cover its tracks).

[1 Good] Spider-Noir is not a show meant for kids. It's got a bit of swearing, drinking and smoking, and some violence that goes just beyond the typical MCU cartoonishness. It feels very much like the superhero shows of the 2000s, where a character is either divorced from the greater universe he or she would normally exist in, or is made up from whole cloth. In this case, Spider-Noir has always been an alt-universe character who exists outside the normal "616" and the Spider also has a very minimal history in publication so there's really not much for the series to be beholden to. They pretty much had a blank slate to start with.  We basically know what a spider-man is, what his powers are, so we get a series that begins without necessitating an origin story (but we get that eventually anyway). That frees up exposition for world building. And like the superhero shows of the 2000s, it's able to employ the names and/or power sets of other characters onto pretty much wholly new figures, while still capturing the essence and giving the audience the charge of seeing an "Electro" or "Sandman" or "Black Cat" on screen without requiring fealty to source material. This felt both fresh and retro at the same time.

[1 Bad] Without Nic Cage, I don't think this show was getting made, and given that the actor voiced the character in Into the Spider-Verse and is a lifelong comics nerd (he named his son Kal-El) who really wants to be in comic book properties (eg. Ghost Rider, his ill-fated turn as Superman) it's clear he was putting everything his 60-something-year-old body could into this. It wouldn't be the same without him, and it's a role, once again, without much lore or history to it, that he can own outright and make it his. He sure does. In all honesty, he does a really great job 90% of the time.  He gets to be a smartass with a bit of a mouth, he gets to be a drunk, he gets to have trauma, he gets to act aloof or detached from repercussions (until they hit home)... and he delivers on everything...almost. There is a romantic sub-plot between himself and Cat Hardy that flows in and out of amenable chemistry. Sometimes there's a real flame cooking, and other times Cage seems in his own goofy world of amour. But the hardest part to accept in the series is that Ben Reilly seems like he should be in his late-'40's, not early '60's so no matter how good Cage is, there's always a bit of a disconnect when watching him in the role.  The show does do an excellent job, however, of making Ben Reilly a bit of a broken down veteran. He takes his damn lumps, over and over.

META: I really wasn't expecting to like this show, but honestly I was pretty hooked from the first episode. I watched it in two concentrated viewings, the first four episodes over a two day span and then all the remaining episodes in one sitting a few weeks later. It's a show that seems like it has very little fat on it, but that's just how good it is at hiding it. The flashbacks, and some of the side-quests aren't altogether essential to the story so much as understanding the Spider and where he came from, and yet, the way the show bakes in the origin story is as much about the supervillains the Spider is facing this season as it is about him. There's not much backtracking in this show, it maintains forward momentum excellently and it winds up in the end right where it should. It's quite satisfying in a way that, say, Daredevil was not. The pastiche really helps.  I hear a second season has been ordered. It doesn't need it, but it's not unwelcome.

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Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed
[created by David J. Rosen]

The What 100: Paula Saunders is an ace fact checker at a New York-based magazine. She's a divorced, friendless mother who puts all her energies into her job and her daughter, Hazel. With what little time she has left, she finds relief with a cam boy, Trevor, with whom she's intimate with both visually and emotionally. And then Trevor is assaulted on camera and Paula is called for Trevor's ransom. The police say it's a scam. Paula puts her researching skills to the test and tracks down Trevor, only to find him dead. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

[1 Great] Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is a very modern series, both in subject matter and in storytelling style. It's an exceptionally taut thriller, bristling with intensity, but also it has a wicked comedic streak that helps balance out its heavier impulses. And it's very well balanced. It's obviously a product of the streaming era where episode lengths can be whatever, but most of MPG clock in at around a half-hour. These shorter episode lengths make for a propulsive series that, more often than not, feature an final shot or sequence at each episode's end that just kind of slaps you in the face and makes you want to know what happens next. I honestly can't think of anyone other than Tatiana Maslany who can negotiate the tonal shifts of this show so effortlessly, and manage the many, many demands on her character to be an isolationist, to be snarky, to be an emotionally devoted mother, to convey the stress of the situations thrust upon her, but also find the resolve to quite literally work her way through them. Maslany doesn't make a single false step in the entire series. She's riveting, and the show, while, excellent, is twice as good because of her.

[1 Good] The end of episode 6. I jumped out of my seat and applauded.

[1 Bad] The series spends 9 episodes putting Paula deeper and deeper into trouble and in the end she manages to work her way out of it, and never manages to feel like cheating (well, save for that one cliched moment in the penultimate episode). In the process she uncovers a whole other world of trouble that it seems like she manages to side step, but in the closing moment of the season, Paula receives an alarming text that indicates she's falling right back into the intensity. Hey, it makes sense for Paula to have found her way out of the hole she dug for herself, but not completely escaped it. The layers are many and we've only seen a few without full context. I don't have any issue with this. Really what bothers me is the video Paula was sent. It is confounding in its origin. Where did it come from? Why was it not unveiled before? We know exactly what trouble it spells for Paula and I'm keen for her to once again use her research skills and tenacity to keep her head above water and eventually find the shore.

META: I've watched a bunch of giallo films recently, and some commentary on the subgenre of Italian cinema. Giallos are horror-tinged murder-mysteries where there's a killer on the loose and a non-professional everyman (or woman) either gets thrust into the position of figuring out what's happening or thrusts themselves into the position of investigating. In some respects, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is a sort of Giallo, only the killer is a professional cleaner and not a crazed murderer. MPG has much in common with The Flight Attendant, a show with a magnificent season one and a middling season two, but had its title character launched into a Hitchcockian murder mystery but with a heavy side of humour. I genuinely hope MPG is able to avoid the second season curse and find its way into a stellar second chapter.

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Year of the Rabbit series 1
created by Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley

The What 100: In 1887 London, Rabbit is a police detective whose violent and self destructive impulses get in the way of his sometimes astute sleuthing skills. He's saddled with a new partner, the keen and upbeat new recruit Wilbur Strauss, as well as receiving the unsolicited aide of the Chief Inspector's adopted daughter Mabel, who wants to be a copper (but, you know, 1887+sexism+racism). Rabbit has a nemesis on the force in Tanner, makes enemies with public officials, and is only starting to see the signs of a secret society of puppet masters pulling strings around London.

[1 Great] It's always going to be Matt Berry. The man just has an incredibly distinctive way of delivering lines and the characters he inhabits are always a very Matt Berry type. Here Rabbit is boorish and dismissing and self-aggrandizing and hyper-sexual but also on the right side of gender and social issues (well, kinda) and ignorant of the advancements in technology and politics and the social contract around him. His ability to sleuth and deduce are sometimes very Get Smart/Inspector Gadget where he gets it so wrong based on assumption but the people around him direct him the right way. He's a delight to watch, even in the fithy surrounding of grimy 19th-century London.

[1 Good] For a sub-30-minute comedy series, the production values are pretty great at making a particular corner of Londing circa the 1880s look like an absolute shit hole (not to mention the amount of times over six episodes they drop into the sewers or meet filth merchants). But it's the setting that makes everything turn in this show. Playing with the realities of the era in juxtaposition against modern sensibilities is a great source of humour (there's a particularly incisive takedown of the anti-immigrants, the Brexiters and Nigel Farage joke throughout the series). 

[1 Bad] I don't know if making the "big bad" of the series a secret society of women seeking equality with violence and manipulation is really the message that we need today. But hey, Keeley Hawes makes for a great nefarious master manipulator and we get Sally Phillips adopting a deliciously ridiculous accent as a Bulgarian Princess.  Plus this main storyline gives Susan Wokoma's Mabel her narrative thrust and Wokoma is an excellent second lead, and Mabel the show's most interesting and well developed character ...in other words, not all bad.

META: I'm not sure why Year of the Rabbit didn't get a subsequent series. Perhaps it was scheduling with Barry in Canada working on What We Do In The Shadows for years. Maybe it was budget, as period pieces always cost more. Or maybe it was COVID related given the timing of the series 1 release. The show works, though, and it could do with another two or three. I've been wanting to watch the show since its initial release but as far as I know Tubi's the first North American streamer to pick it up. Happy to have finally seen it.

KWIF: Spider-Man: Brand New Day (+2)

KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Back at it in cinemas, doing the after-work movie thing. The goal is to have an average once a week in theatres for the year (so 52), and currently I'm behind pace (27 screenings, 2 rewatches, 1 rep screening over 30 weeks). I'm going to have to push myself out of my comfort zone, like I did this week, and just try something out, rather than going by critical response or leaning into genre films, or basing desire on trailers I might have seen. It's nice to have a project I guess.

This week:
Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026, d. Destin Daniel Cretton - in theatre)
Rose of Nevada (2025, d. Mark Jenkin - in theatre)
The Dink (2026, d. Josh Greenbaum - AppleTV)

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At the end of No Way Home - the previous entry in the Tom Holland era of Spider-Man movies - in order to repair a rip in space-time he had caused, Peter Parker (Holland, The Odyssey) had Dr. Strange erase everyone's memory of Peter Parker, including his girlfriend M.J. (Zendaya, The Odyssey) and his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon, Tarot). 

Brand New Day starts with an montage of what Spider-Man and Peter have been up to across a four year span, which is basically fighting super-villains (we see quick glimpses of a half dozen or so of Spider-Man's plentiful rogues gallery here) and following Ned and M.J. on social media, but keeping his distance.  They were all supposed to attend M.I.T. and dorm together, and Peter has missed all that. The death of his Aunt May in the prior film has him thinking that, if he's going to do the superhero thing then he needs to do it alone, or else the people he cares for might get hurt. His only meaningful connection is with a detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas, The Bear), whose innate compassion and empathy find her unwittingly playing as an Aunt May substitute for Peter.

The plot of Brand New Day, kicks off with a runaway tank heading for the headquarters of Damage Control, the governmental organization responsible for cleaning up after superhero battles and alien incursions. Spider-Man stops the tank only to find inside not a hardened criminal or military wing-nut, but a janitor who suddenly doesn't know where they are nor how they got there. Spidey tracks that someone is hopping bodies, and is after something within Damage Control. Spidey manages a meeting with Bill Metzger, head of Damage Control (Tramell Tillman, Severance) who, somehow, Peter doesn't clock is maybe doing more nefarious things beyond his department's mandate.

Peter's attempts to track down whomever this new supervillain is (with a bit of assistance from New Avengers Yelena Belova (an always welcome Florence Pugh, Thunderbolts)) prove difficult, in part because he's distracted by the fact that his body is mutating, deeply affecting his emotions. (He consults Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) for help on how to control his mutation). His fight with this new, unseen villain escalates, and they discover his secret identity and also his affection for M.J. and Ned. Threats on their life put them right back into the mess he was trying to avoid, but, he also finds the connections in his life that he's been so desperately missing.

The promise of the end of No Way Home was street-level Spider-Man, a guy with no connections to Tony Stark and all his resources, a guy with nothing but a spandex suit and web shooters doing his best to help out his city. Sony had been handed the perfect opportunity to detach itself from the flagging MCU, to have Spider-Man stand on his own, the golden goose of Marvel's pantheon. What's utterly clear with this film is that the Peter, M.J. and Ned dynamic is its emotional core and its greatest strength. If you just have those three in a Spider-Man film, it's going to work.

But instead producer Amy Pascal chose to continue the partnership with Marvel producer Kevin Feige and so Brand New Day not only keeps Spider-Man firmly tied to the great Marvel world, and also is used as a strategic launch point for yet another wing of the MCU (one which Sony has zero stake in). Here we get, as mentioned, appearances from Hulk and Black Widow as well as, surprisingly, teaming Spider-Man up with Frank Castle, the Punisher (Jon Berenthal, The Bear), which winds up turning into a sort of buddy cop-style dynamic of bickering and opposing world views, but also respect and fraternity. Plus, Peter still has a high(er) tech computer set-up with an AI (voiced by Naomi Watts) and a head's up display in his mask helping him out.

There's a totally spoilery element I can't talk about without spoilering, but its revelation (which will only be a surprise to anyone who doesn't watch or read about MCU speculation) threatens to derail the entire picture into some half-baked backdoor launch for more Marvel stuff. The character who winds up being Peter's adversary here is not much, if at all, a part of the Spider-Man real of Marvel comics, and soon could very cynically denounce the character's involvement in this film. But, credit to writers Chris McKenna and Eric Sommers whose script manages to thematically pull together this character's emotional arc with Peter's, and to use that character to accelerate Peter's naval gazing into action.

Would Brand New Day have been a better film had it found a way to tell the same story without the trappings of involving so much Marvel world building (which are just as often distracting as they are exciting)? Absolutely. But at the same time every incursion here of the MCU into Spider-Man's friendly neighbourhood has purpose. There's set-up and payoff to all of it. Plus, I'm still a comics nerd, and this connect universe shit I eat up with a spoon.

Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi) takes over the Spider-Man franchise from Jon Watts and...wow. It's not that Watts did a bad job at all. Far from it. Each of Watts' entries were supremely enjoyable, but Cretton uses his extensive budget to really, really push the visuals storytelling of how Spider-Man engages with the world. The web-slinging scenes add geometry to the equation which really give you the sense of Spidey's reaction time. We feel how fast the world moves by, the velocity of the swing and the spring of Spidey's webs. It builds upon what Mark Webb was attempting with POV webslinging in the Andrew Garfield Amazing Spider-Man and goes much much further. And with Spidey's wall-crawling ability it's like Cretton watched the Spider-Verse movies and questioned why that kind of camera work couldn't be done in live action. 

It's visually an exceptionally playful movie, and its stars are all very game. Holland seems even more invested in the franchise now that Watts has moved on. He seems like he's very much committed to taking the lead here. No doubt he was the champion of the four-year time jump, as Holland, while still very youthful, does now look like a man. Zendaya is one of those performers for whom everything seems effortless. She can convey so much with so little and while much of M.J.'s character here rests on what came before, Zendaya gives everything you need to know where this character is (and more) without really any verbal confirmation. The Punisher here is toned down to PG-13 levels, so his severity from the Netflix/Disney+ runs is tamped down quite a bit, but this gives Berenthal a chance to be playful in the role in a way not afforded to him otherwise, and he's a damn delight. I've never enjoyed Frank Castle even half as much as I do here. Besides a few other MCU mainstays, the rest of the main cast is filled out with amazing performers from hit streaming series, and they all deliver.

The sum is a very entertaining, surprisingly emotionally grounded movie that fits with what came before but also pushes forward.

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I ran into a friend at the theatre coming out of a late-afternoon screening of Rose of Nevada. He had only a vague awareness of the title, and was very interested in me sharing my thoughts and opinions of the film. Unfortunately, I really didn't have the time yet to process what I had seen. Not that it was anything scandalous or salacious, but Rose of Nevada is such a ... unique(?)... peculiar(?)... distinctive(?) film that I really wasn't sure how to receive it and equally unsure of my own reaction to it.

The opening minutes of Mark Jenkin's latest film are a montage of static images of the remote Cornish fishing village, its derelict docks, and run-down vibes. We see extremely brief glances at some of the characters in our films, and nobody looks happy.  The first half of the first act is somewhat perplexing, as we're slowly let in on the connective threads of the images we've seen, but even then, there's a real lack of exposition. Wherever in Cornwall this is, the people don't talk much. 

The score, intense with it's low registers tones, implies that there's something...haunted about this place, and there's just a whiff that something ever so slightly sinister is afoot. The images don't corroborate the tone, but the intention is there. It's like those youtube videos where someone recuts a trailer to a comedy or drama with new music to make it a horror film. This is low-key British drama that carries something else with it.

Jenkins films in a grainy 4:3 aspect ratio, so the movie looks like 1970's era British television, and it has to be intentional. Jenkin leans into the aesthetic with framing and lighting that seems like it would be at home on Coronation Street. And yet, it's not at all a made for TV production and very much feels like a film that yearns for some nostalgic trappings of times past.  There's an etherial quality to the camera choice, the editing, and the shot composition. Maybe it's recency bias, but I couldn't stop comparing it to Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, which would make for, tonally, an apt double feature.

The problem with even providing a loose plot of the film, it doesn't convey the equally fascinating and perplexing way in which the story is assembled and told. What I write herein is pretty straghtforward, but most of what's even laid out here is doled out in nuggets in the film's telling. 

The gist of the story is that this small town survived almost entirely on the service of a small fishing trawler named Rose of Nevada. It went missing about 30 years ago, its two crewmen lost at sea. The ship, however, has returned. The very same ship, barely the worse for wear. Mike (Edward Rowe) has been the longstanding money man and organizer for the town, is stunned by its arrival, and does everything to disguise the fact that it's the Rose. The only person who's in on it is Tina (Rosalind Eleazar, Slow Horses) whose husband was one of the lost crew.

Mike wastes no time setting up a crew to send the ship back out and get to work, and this includes handsome vagrant Liam (Callum Turner) and struggling father Nick (George MacKay), as well as a mysterious old salty dog named Murgey (Francis McGee) who takes on captaining the boat and teaching the boys the trade.  

Their three days at sea go fairly smoothly (though there's continued intensity in the soundtrack as well as the editing and penchant for cut ins that make you think anything can go wrong any second). The ship arrives to shore to find a party of people waiting, ready to get to work off-loading the haul and processing it.  But, Nick realizes, he's not home. He's 30 years in the past. His neighbours, whom in the future were still grieving the loss of their son, in 1993 think him to be their son returned from his fishing sojourn. He panics about being apart from his wife and child.  Liam, meanwhile, is believed to be Tina's estranged husband, and given his vagrant and solitary life from before, he's ready to settle into.

But the sea beckons, and the town can only survive if the fish come in. Everyone has a role to play, and so Nick and Liam are back out to sea for days on end. Each time, Nick hopes to return home, only to find himself in the past...where he has a role to play in the survival of this town if he can accept it.

It's a time travel story unlike any other I've seen, the fantasy aspect serving only as a mechanism to highlight how entire cultures have dwindled in the past 30 years. Here, the profession was what the community gravitated around, but it hasn't been like that since the disappearance of the Rose, and the community has suffered for it.

It's a methodically paced film, uninterested in the hows or whys, but instead focused on what it means not just for a character or two, but for the community and maybe society in macro. I still can't tell you if I truly liked it, but at least I'm certain I didn't not like it. I was captivated and intrigued constantly, unsure of whether Jenkin would drop the other shoe or not, or escalate the scale of the story at all. 

It's definitely different, and just as different doesn't have to mean bad, it also doesn't have to be good. But I'm pretty sure, at the very least, Rose of Nevada is good. I'll have to tell my friend.

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I was writing last week about the sad state of comedies in North American cinema, and then, as if to accentuate the point, AppleTV released The Dink on their streaming service to minimal promotion and very little fanfare.  AppleTV doesn't release most of their features in theatres, at least not widely. They might get limited showings for meeting awards requirements but outside of F1, Argylle, Fly Me To The Moon, and Killers of the Flower Moon, I don't recall any others getting wide release.

The Dink has no aspirations of being awards bait, so it wasn't going to get one of Apple's token limited releases, but I would still be curious if a small-but-enjoyable little comedy like this could have gotten any traction in cinemas.  

The set-up is fairly standard sports-comedy fare: Dustin "The Hammer" Boyd (Jake Johnson, Let's Be Cops) was once a promising junior tennis champ who lost it all when, in his first big pro tournament, supposedly, Andy Roddick (also in his first big pro tournament) sabotaged the match, causing The Hammer a wrist injury costing him his career. Now he's a tennis pro at the racquet club his father runs. The club is getting hit with demand to increase their pickleball presence, to cede more courts to the low-impact racquet sport.

Most sports comedies, though, tend to be about that one final shot at glory, about the protagonist getting another shot at the fame that they lost. Here though, Dustin's just reaching for his father's acceptance. Chuck Boyd (an overqualified Ed Harris) has barely any affection for his son. He's mostly embarrassed by him, sees him as a failure, and doesn't trust him. Dustin always wants to prove himself, but he's never given the opportunity.  But Chuck, in trying to ward off the pickleball plague has found a by-law in the club's charter that allows decisions to be decided by a duel on the courts. Dustin, desperately, wants to be the guy in that duel, only to be ruled out after he injures himself trying to show off jumping over the net.  

Dustin's doctor (Ben Stiller) prescribes him pickleball as a low-impact rehab treatment, and also some dating service called Sticky Honey that he seems pretty intent on. Hiding his shame, Dustin joins some septuagenarians on the pickleball court and makes fast friends with Candace (Mary Steenburgen). 

Their unlikely friendship is the core of the film, less so tennis or pickleball. It's a sweet and funny quasi-May-December that, for all the sillier bits, remains pretty emotionally grounded.  This isn't a Will Ferrell or Ben Stiller sports comedy like out of the 2000s, it's not going to extremes or pushing the plausibility of what can happen to absurd levels.  Its characters don't lack self awareness, and their actions don't contradict their emotional intelligence. I hesitate to call it a smart comedy, but it's certainly not dumb.

The surprise here is that this is a film at all, that AppleTV didn't ask to have this rather tightly constructed 90-minute script turned into a 8-or-10 episode TV series. The tide winds are changing. Maybe there's hope for more comedy movies, and more comedies in theatres coming.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): They Will Kill You

2026,  Kirill Sokolov (Why Don't You Just Die!) -- download

Well, that was a bucket full of bloody fun.

Part of me is wondering whether there is something wrong with us when this is the definition of a "fun time".

Should I start a new tag for movies where women are led to the slaughter, but turn the tables? Ready or Not comes to mind, but there are definitely a few more examples. Its a sub-sub-genre I can get behind, and yes, there will be a watching of the sequel (referenced movie, not this movie), but in October, probably along with all the highly praised, recently released horror movies from 2026.

Asia and her little sister try to leave their abusive father but it only goes wrong, ending with Asia shooting, but not killing him, and her having to flee into the rainy night, leaving her sister behind. Because the world is a horrible place, Asia is caught and convicted while daddy dearest recovers and retains custody of his youngest daughter, so he can go on to further abuse her.

Ten Years Later, another rainy night and Asia has shown up at the door of a creepy high rise in NYC, creepy as in it has Satanic bas-reliefs and a pentacle on the roof. She is invited in by the building manager who explains the history of the building and the exclusive nature of its tenants (i.e. rich white people, poor black servants [!!!]). Asia has come for a job, under another name. She is welcomed, given a room, but while she is sleeping, someone finds his way into the room, a someone in cult-y robes and mask. In an incredibly stylish fight sequence, she fights him off, kills him, only for more cult-y robed figures to break their way into the room. She kills them all only.... it doesn't stick. Yup, an immortal Satanic Cult.

Asia (Zazie Beetz, Deadpool 2) is here to "rescue" her little sister, now all grown up, from this cult. But first she has to survive the night. She is helped by one of the cult members who has grown tired of immortality and Satan worship and human sacrifice, and probably the racism inherent to these assholes. Sure, they think they are "enlightened" by occasionally offering immortality in replacement of sacrifice, but that's only so they can have consistent servants / support staff. And that includes Asia's sister Maria (Myha'la, Bodies Bodies Bodies); she's been offered a "position" as long as she sacrifices someone, but her sister, who she is still pissed at for leaving her behind all those years ago, has fucked that by showing up in the sacrifice's place. 

People my age, when writing about movies, compare. This feels like a Hong Kong action movie meets Sam Raimi with exquisitely well choreographed fights scenes, laugh out loud horrible gorey stuff like an eyeball with independent thought chasing after Asia as she attempts escape. Its Raid: Redemption but reusing the same antagonists over and over, because they keep on coming back from the dead. 

The fight takes her to the top of the building, to face The Devil Himself.. in the form of a very big pig head tattooed with the names of all the immortals, so she gets to not only end them but also this little conduit he had to Earth. You have to think about what this cult was actually doing. Sure, immortality is nice, but what does The Devil get out of it, beyond the souls I mean. I can only assume this rich white assholes, who were doing very well for themselves were out there in the world making Evil every day, making lives of others worse, corrupting who they could, making things more terrible for everyone. You know, beyond the sacrificing a person every year.

A fun fun movie. Will need to see what else Sokolov has to offer.

Kent's -- we agreed.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Caught Stealing

2025, Darren Aronofsky (Pi) -- download

Tangential thoughts.

Was this the guy who did Pi? Yes, this is the guy who did Pi, but then why does it feel like he was known for so much else that wasn't Pi? Because he was, and it was/is so so much more. Black Swan, Mother!, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, The Whale, and more. All films that got a lot of buzz, both critically and audience-wise. And yes, my brain always goes, "The guy who did Pi."

But also, because of my current viewing habits, and late-to-writing habit, the mushed up "violence in film" has Hold the Dark and Normal ping-ponging around in my brain pan. I didn't consider Aronofsky in that company (Saulnier and Wheatley) but this movie feels at home with them.

And yet, I recall, as Kent did, the trailers depicting a violent, quirky romp of a movie involving crazy Russians, crazy Jews, a mohawk-ed punk and a baseball player with his bat. We got that, but with a darker, much darker mentality, adapted for the screen by Charlie Huston who wrote the original novel, a violent little page-turner. Huston authors his own mish-mash of work including Wolverine and Moon Knight comics, and a vampire noir.

OK.

Late 90s, Hank (Austin Butler, The Shannara Chronicles) is a bartender in a dive bar in NYC's Lower East Side, back when pop culture depictions were still grimy and not IG ready. He's a friendly popular sort with hot girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz, High Fidelity) and punk neighbour Russ (Matt Smith, Morbius). He's also haunted by a car accident from his past, and calls his mom at least once a day to talk about baseball, in particular the San Francisco Giants. Russ has to rush out of town and leaves Hank to take care of his cat, who likes to bite, but likes Hank.

That's the setup. How it starts is when two bald, but maybe not skinhead, Russian mobsters show up at Russ's door and end up beating Hank into the hospital, where he has lost a kidney. For a heavy drinker and bartender, that's devastating, as we skip right past the likelihood of Hank actually having health insurance that would have paid for that. He talks to the police, and is questioned extensively.

It only escalates in violence from that, and Hank just gets dragged from one horrible situation into the next, all connected to some money Russ stole from his employers. The movie is not a fun romp; its a gut-wrenching escapade, where Hank, charismatic and likeable, doesn't deserve what happens to him, and really doesn't want to be involved. EXCEPT after Yvonne gets killed (pissed off at that fridging, but Huston wrote that in heyday of fridging) Hank doesn't really have a way out, but to see it through... somehow. To say that things only get worse when Russ returns from England is... saying it lightly.

I am still not sure how I feel about the movie. After the killing of Yvonne I was just soured on the whole thing, but still engaged by the whole quirky Coens-not-Coens aspects of the movie. To be honest, I found the "fun and wacky" kind of jarring, but yet... it still worked? You can do fun and yet dark; Bad Monkey did it really well, and Huston and Carl Hiaasen are from the same paperback crime world, but really, none of this is fun. I guess the only "fun" I had was when I recognized the two Hasidic Jew criminal Drucker Brothers, Lipa (Liev Schreiber, Ray Donovan) and Schmully (Vincent D'Onofrio, El Camino Christmas) but that was more a realization that the characters were played so well, so reserved, that I didn't see the faces behind the fake beards. 

Yes, like my mind, I flip-flop with my words on it.

This is the kind of movie I should probably watch again, to view the actual film making, but I probably won't. I have a feeling I would appreciate it more once the sour taste of the murder is out of my mouth; I probably won't be less pissed about it, but at least I know its coming. 

Kent's take - we agree. 

Credits rolling notes: glad Aronofsky gave some work to D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, and I was amused by the stunt-casting of Griffin Dunne as the owner of the bar Hank works at, considering all the After Hours comparisons in this movie. Kent wrote about the movie here; I probably saw it on VHS but got bored.

KWIF: The Odyssey (+4)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Well, two weeks. Time has been occupied. 

This Week:

The Odyssey (2026, d. Christopher Nolan - 70mm projection)
Gail Daughtry and the Hollywood Sex Pass (2026, d. David Wain - in theatre)
Operation Avalanche (2016, d. Matt Johnson - amazonprime)
The Truman Show (1998, d. Peter Wier - in theatre)
Irma Vep (1996, d. Olivier Assayas - hollywoodsuite)

---

Look, I've been a geek my whole life. History and literature couldn't compete with superhero comic books and sci-fi movies. As such, I've never read Homer's epic poem Odyssey. But, as one of the first great works of literature, it's resonated for over two millennia, and influenced so much media. So even without having ever read it, I have at least a passing awareness of many of the Greek king Odysseus' trials and tribulations, including the siege of Troy and the Trojan horse, the encounters with mythical beings like the cyclops, Circe, and the sirens, and the temptation of the sacred cattle, among others misadventures. But I've never seen all these stories assembled as one full tale before. Some have said it was impossible to successfully adapt, but impossible is usually just not having the courage or confidence to try (and, when it comes to making movies, it's not the filmmakers, but the studios and money people behind them that chicken out).

After 20 years it seems like Christopher Nolan has earned the trust of his backers, and they have the confidence (if not courage) to feed him whatever he needs to make whatever he wants. $250-million dollar budgeted, R-rated adaptations of a 2000-year-old Greek poems aren't what's in vogue at the movie theatres these days, but Nolan is one of the very few, maybe even the only director who is given ostensibly free reign with each film, and it's paid off every time (the only asterisk is Tenet -- time-warping superspy adventure which is absolutely my favourite Nolan movie but a great many find utterly impenetrable -- which came out during covid and never got a proper test at the box office). I thought that, maybe, The Odyssey might break Nolan's incredible streak, that it might not click with today's audiences, but, just like with Oppenheimer and Dunkirk and pretty much every non-Batman related film he's made, it's a triumph and a spectacle and people want in.

My reservations were many, and a lot of it stemmed from my ignorance of Homer's poem. What relevance does something so old have for today? Will this just be spectacle without substance? And the cast speaking without affectation (you know, the usually British affectation actors tend put on for anything historical, foreign or needing gravitas) could prove disastrous.  Well before the ten-minute mark of the film, such concerns had left my mind completely. It's hard not to be mesmerized by the sheer scale of the production.

Nolan doesn't like to tell stories in a linear fashion, and The Odyssey is no exception, but rather than being an exercise in form or a stylistic choice, it seems a necessary mechanic in order to present the stories of Odysseus' journey without making the journey the narrative.  Instead, the tales of the lost king of Ithaca are told, either from the memories of others who were there, or from Odysseus (Matt Damon) himself as he tries to recapture memories from the void of his lotus-addled mind.  He tells his stories to Calypso (Charlize Theron), who may, or may not, be his captor. 

Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, Odysseus' long absence, and lack of word of his post-Troy adventures, have cast doubt upon his continued claim to the throne. His wife, the queen Penelope (Anne Hathaway), has spent years fending off a gaggle of suitors who gather in her hall, consuming the state's food and wine in lavish feasts, all in mind of claiming her and the throne. The Prince Telemachus (Tom Holland) is small and doesn't have his father's physical strength or cunning, but he has heart, still inviting beggars and travelers into the feast, as Zeus' will demands.  Telemachus lives in the shadow of his father, and while he doesn't desire the throne, he sees the suitors as boors and louts and not a one suitable to lead under the laws of the gods they worship.  Penelope, though, hasn't given up hope of Odysseus' return, and herself doesn't see any need for a man to claim the throne where she currently sits.  The suitors try to bait Telemachus into fights so that his claim to the throne can be "rightfully" disregarded if he's killed in an act of self defence.  Telemachus leaves Ithaca to seek answers, but that just puts him in even more danger.

We see the fateful climax to the Trojan War from at least three different perspectives throughout the film. The first is the legend, the tale of the glorious victors and Odysseus' strategic genius in the ploy of the Trojan horse. The second is the harrowing tale of the warriors' time inside of said horse, the unglamorous reality of it all. The third is from Odysseus' own recollections, using Zeus' law of providing hospitality, of welcoming offerings of peace as a gateway for their own violent ambitions.  Odysseus' men get the gates of Troy open, the waiting army of Agamemnon enter and slaughter the sleeping town with no discretion.

In leaving Troy, Odysseus opts to take the long route home, rather than follow Agamemnon, and this one ill decision leads to a series of misadventures which continue to cost him the lives of his men. The meeting of the cyclops is a horror show, but in managing their escape, Odysseus take a spiteful shot at the creature, a child of Poseidon. The men start to believe their journey is cursed as a result, the god of the seas taking his vengeance upon them.  They are assailed by giants, turned into pigs, eaten by sea creatures, and their only way to get back on track, to finding their way home is to visit the dead. There, Odysseus has to face the men he left behind, the men whose bodies he didn't honour, and the predictions of the future, the choices he will have to make. Odysseus has defied the gods over and over again, and is punished for it. 

The Odyssey is weirdly a pro-religion film, one that talks about obeying the laws of gods, and shows the punishments that happen if you don't. Odysseus' point for so long was that his will, his strength, and his intellect were all that mattered. In the belly of war for ten years, he lost his heart, his compassion, his humanity, and in doing so lost almost everything. If the film is telling us anything, it's not that religion is good or that obeying the gods is good, but respecting your fellow man is good. That charity is good. That contrition and compassion is good. At the center of pretty much every major religion is these ideas of being of service to gods is to be of service to your community and fellow man. But rather than look at this as a film telling you to go to church, or synagogue or mosque or whatever, it's telling you to respect and empathize, and look outside your own needs and ambitions, to use your status for something greater, not for self.

As well, the tale of Odysseus is about the traumas of war. History like to create heroes and epic tales out of battle, but such history ignores the humanity behind it.  By the time he returns home, Odysseus does not see himself as a great warrior, a hero or a legends, but a man with the burden of honouring those whose lives he cost. Accompanying him throughout the film is a spectre (Zendaya), a being that both haunts and guides him, setting him on a more righteous path, if slowly. In the end, when Odysseus says he needs to honour the dead, I don't think he's just talking about his men.  What we never actually see in the film are the gods themselves, but there's enough fantastical elements to makes us feel their presence.

The production of The Odyssey is incredible. The lighting feels so natural, in a Barry Lyndon  sort of way where all the indoor light seems to be coming from either torches, candles or windows, and the natural light outdoors is highlighting everything. I loved that there's minimal make-up in the film as well. The lines and freckles on Anne Hathaway's face weren't present in The Devil Wears Prada 2 but they make her stunning and captivating here. You want to study all the faces on screen, in a way glossier productions don't.

While most assuredly there's digital effects in the film, it seems largely a practical production. The ships look real, as does the beautiful wide shots and overhead views of them on the waters from ace cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema. I don't really want the mystique of it all spoiled, but I also want to know how far asea  they took those boats.

Back once again with Nolan is composer Ludwig Göransson. I'm a big fan of Göransson, his compositions usually are a highlight, often attention grabbing in their uniqueness while complementing the visuals. Here, for the most part, Göransson steps back, letting his compositions rest in the shadows, rarely calling attention to themselves, but nonetheless being fantastic and exactly what the film needs.

It's the first feature length film to be completely shot on IMAX cameras, but getting into one of the few proper IMAX theatres to see it is a challenge all its own at the moment, and given how in-demand the format is, there may not be enough time and enough seats to satisfy demand before (I assume) the latest Spider-man film takes them over.

I was rapt for the entire two hours and fifty-two minute runtime of the film. While the spectacle is what would normally entice me, my favourite moments were all two-handers, scenes between two characters. These moments of intimacy or intrigue are the film's greatest strength and what will have me returning to the film many more times.  Try to tell my younger geek self that I'd be more drawn to people talking than fighting giants or men getting turned into pigs or massive battles, and he wouldn't believe you.

---

I listen to more than a few movie and comedy podcasts, and one of the recurring conversations is the sorry state of comedy in cinema. There just aren't many comedies released in cinemas anymore, and when they are they're certainly not reaching the surprise blockbuster status that they were in Jim Carrey/Ben Stiller/Steve Carrell/Will Ferrell/Kevin Hart heyday of the 2000s. There's many reasons for this, not the least of which the business model shifted from being American box-office centric to international box-office centric, and comedy doesn't tend to translate well into other languages, and some comedic sensibilities don't cross borders well.  As well, Marvel's success in all ages and all regions brought humour to action franchises, which meant that "funny films" had to also be spectacles.

The "Marvel Age" of cinema is over. We're in a new transitional state right now where all different types of films are hitting big, from horrors to epics to chick flicks to video game adaptations, but there hasn't been a blockbuster comedy in a long, long time. I can't think of one from this decade that jumps out to me, in spite of there being at least a few great comedies that didn't get a lot of attention or explode the box office (maybe the relaunches of The Naked Gun last year and this year's Scary Movie come close to blockbuster status?).

For comedies to be big they tend to need either an authorial voice (like a Judd Apatow or Taika Waititi) behind the camera, or a commanding comedic presence in front of the camera. The industry hasn't let either of these truly build over the past 15 years. Most of our former big names have receded to TV or their stand-up careers, and the good comedy filmmakers have moved into making more serious productions.

David Wain is a comedy writer-director who emerged out of the expansive comedy troupe The State in the late 90's, and director of the cult comedy Wet Hot American Summer. That film was released in 2001 but seemed to take a decade or longer to grow in popularity. His biggest hit, Role Models, was in 2006, but it didn't share the same sensibilities of Wain's State/Wet Hot/Stella/We Came Together work. It seemed more a work-for-hire film that succeeded on the back of Paul Rudd's plentiful charms. 

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, co-written with Wain's The State mate Ken Marino, feels very much like a Wain work, but the difference here is that Wain and Marino and their State colleagues have spread out among Hollywood in the intervening years, establishing connections and embedding themselves into the industry.  It doesn't mean their comedy style has been accepted and their films are any easier to get made though.

So many of my podcasts (both film and comedy podcasts) are celebrating the release of Wain's latest, and trumpeting its comedic delights. There's a real desire from the film nerds and comedy geeks to try and make original comedies successful in cinemas again, and it seems they want Wain's latest to be a part of that. The only trouble is, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass isn't good, and it's certainly not great. It's fine at at best.

The story of the film is narrated by Frank the mailman (Fred Melamed), a casual acquaintance of the titular Gail Daughtry, and sort of the outside observer of the events of this film (which makes no sense since he's in Gail's midwestern hometown and not in L.A. where the majority of the film takes place). He regails us with the brief history of Gail (Zoey Deutch), a super-upbeat, congenial, likeable, kind and slightly naive hairdresser who is keen to get married to her childhood sweetheart Tom Soursap McNoodleman (Michael Cassidy, putting in every effort to channel as much Paul Rudd-ness as he can). A salon conversation about "celebrity sex passes" spills out into Gail and Tom's evening out where Tom immediately answers "Tilda Swinton". But after attending a bookreading from Jennifer Aniston (who is doing a reading of her new cookbook, a solid joke), Tom muses that he might change his answer from Swinton to Aniston.  Next thing you know Gail's catching him boning Jennifer Aniston. 

A fortune teller tells her the only way to save her upcoming marriage is to balance things out. So Gail decides to join her salon-buddy Otto (Miles Guttierez-Riley) on a trip to a hairdressing convention in Los Angeles, with the intention of find Jon Hamm, her celebrity sex pass, and getting dirty with him.

Upon landing in the airport, two mob-coded goons (Jo Lo Truglio and Matthew Jason Cwern) come across Henry Winkler and ask for a photograph (the joke here is they think he's John Travolta from Welcome Back Kotter). Gail offers to take the photo and puts down her suitcase, which is, of course, the exact same type that the goons just put down, and of course the cases get mixed up.

At this stage I thought the film was going to fully dovetail into Gail and Otto on the run from the mob to the point that we forget about the sex pass until a late third-act intervention of one Jon Hamm, leading to the reminder of the film's title, because that would be a good joke. But no, the majority of the film is about Gail and Otto collecting people on their quest to get Gail laid by the star of Mad Men while largely unbeknownst to them, the mob is after them.

They're joined by junior talent agent Caleb (Ben Wang) who gets fired for helping them, Hamm's down-on-his-luck Mad Men co-star John Slattery (John Slattery), and hard-up nice-guy paparazzo Vincent (Marino).  Their adventure starts with looking for Hamm, finding Hamm, getting turned away by security, but with the promise of a meeting if they pitch him a great movie. They find the mixed-up suitcase with all the nefarious mob plans and it spells out a big-time spy movie plot, only then the mafia get in their way, and the third-act becomes a silly, hyperviolent escape scenario before the inevitable climax (pun intended) and coda. 

Like I said, The State crew have proliferated in the industry, made some friends and contacts, and so there's a lot of resting on the mere appearance of a Jennifer Aniston or Jon Hamm or other celebrity cameos in this film to sell a joke. That would be fine if the film didn't transport the story into L.A. where so much of the humour rests upon inside Hollywood or L.A. jokes. Of course the movie podcasts I listen to love this, they're obsessed with Hollywood, and the comedy podcasts from L.A. types love jokes about their city. Put them together and this film has its head up its own ass for most of the production.

It seems like the product of people who don't have any other frame of reference to devise comedy from. It's not that there's not funny ideas, performances, or even good jokes, it's that the majority of them rest in this very narrow realm of interest, and rely so heavily on the audience to be invested in that very narrow realm of interest.  

It might just be that I was not in the mood for this movie when I watched it, but a good comedy -- a good movie -- should transport you out of whatever you're feeling and into the world of the film, and so much of what I was thinking about was how insular and annoying Hollywood and Hollywood types seem from the outside.  Perhaps in a few years this will unveil itself in a Wet Hot... secret success kind of way, but Wet Hot... had a pretty transcendent conceit (an 80's-style summer camp sex comedy where full grown adults are playing the teens). I don't see such a conceit here.

In a more robust comedy ecology, this would be just another satisfactory offering among many. Since there's not really any other comedies dropping, there's almost too much pressure for this little niche comedy to succeed. Also, not for nothing, the title is an unruly mess.

---

Speaking of comedies, writer-director Matt Johnson's Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie has become the cult hit comedy of the year (not a blockbuster, but well reviewed and admired). I really enjoyed it, as well as Johnson's previous film Blackberry, enough that I've been extremely curious to watch Nirvanna The Band The Show (now available on Hulu in the U.S. and coming to Disney+ on August 7) and Johnson's first film Operation: Avalanche.

While Blackberry is a very different film than Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie, Johnson's style is very specific. He has a preference for handheld cameras, he's seemingly disinterested in precise framing or  lighting and he likes things to feel in vérité style, as if it were a documentary.  In Blackberry Johnson didn't attempt the conceit of a documentary film crew, but in Nirvanna the yadda yadda, Johnson who acts and co-stars with Jay McCarroll, is keenly aware and often mugging directly to the camera. The cameraman is indeed a third-party in the film.  

I knew Operation Avalache had something to do about faking the moon landing, but I had no other expectations from the film. I was surprised to find that, much like Nirvanna the etcetera, Matt Johnson is playing Matt Johnson, and working with a documentary crew, only in this case this alt-reality Matt Johnson works for the CIA in the 1960's and is posing as a filmmaker in NASA trying to root out a Russian spy.  In the process Johnson and his crew discover that NASA can't actually land their lunar module on the moon, putting the U.S.'s success in the space race in jeopardy. 

So, Johnson decides to pivot, at first without the knowledge of his superiors, and then with the aide of, to fake the moon landing. The launch and orbit will be real, but the landing will be pre-recorded and transmitted from the spacecraft. The ploy is known as, naturally, Operation Avalanche.

It's a fun movie, but a bizarre one, especially in the metatext. The angle of Matt Johnson playing a character with the his own name, and Matt Johnson behaving in a not-too-dissimilar fashion to how the Matt Johnson character in Nirvanna the blah blah behaves, camera mugging included, it has a weird effect in confusing the audience about how they're supposed to feel about the tone at any given moment.

For the most part, the first two acts of this film are comedic, and so when it tries to frame a serious and/or meaningful conversation between Johnson and his CIA colleague Owen Williams (played by Owen Williams) it's hard to really settle into the drama of it. The third act takes a semi-logical pivot into conspiracy thriller, but it is a pretty wild tonal shift that doesn't fully hang together when Johnson can't stop mugging for the camera even when he's not really trying to. 

There's an immense amount of creativity and wonderful visual trickery in this film.  In the film itself the characters are trying to perform, ostensibly, a magic trick with their production, and the film we're watching is doing the same thing. It's never not entertaining even if it doesn't all hang together smoothly.  I do have to wonder what the fully comedic version of this would look like, just as I wonder what the fully conspiracy thriller version of this story would look like. The film itself doesn't satisfy either of these curiosities, but does largely satisfy on its own terms.

---

Something I don't do enough is see old movies at the theatre, and by "old" I mean anything that isn't a current release. Beyond my favouritest movies, or older films I haven't seen that are kind of "event" movies when they're being screened, I don't see a reason for going out of my way when I can just watch it at home. I guess I love seeing new movies at the theatre, less enthused by anything else.

The Truman Show is not one of my favouritest movies... far from it. I watched it once in theatres back when it was released and I don't think ever again. It further cemented the fact that Peter Weir movies AND Jim Carrey movies just really weren't my thing. My favourite podcast, Blank Check, just finished going through the Wier filmography and they were pretty vocal about their admiration for their film. I mean, it was nearly 30 years ago, and I view films much a lot fairly a bit differently now than I did back then. I'm certainly a more experienced film-goer at the very least.  Perhaps, just maybe, there's some secret sauce to The Truman Show I didn't appreciate before.  Maybe the Blank Check crew taking me through Wier's films in such depth will have me appreciating his work in a way I certainly didn't before.

The answer to these hypothetical is "nope". Didn't happen. 

The lingering impression of The Truman Show was primarily how Carrey -- at the time attempting his first transition out of rubber-faced physical comedian persona -- was all wrong for the part.  With fresh eyes I know I was wrong on that assessment... he was mostly wrong for the part. If the Jim Carrey of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Man on the Moon were in the role, then I think it would have played for me much better. Instead, the Carrey of 1998 was still in extreme mugging and overly gesticulating mode. Yes, he reigned it it for The Truman Show, but it's also evident that he didn't know how to perform without it. He seems like he's fighting his true goofy nature every minute on screen and, much like watching Matt Johnson in Operation Avalanche above try to not mug for the camera while in conspiracy thriller mode, Carrey can't help himself even though the titular Truman is a really dramatic part.  Truman was a role he needed to break him out of the mold he put himself in, but I don't know that it served the film the best with him in the part.

Weir, I've probably mentioned before, is not a director whose work I have much affection for. I struggle to find the specific film of his that resonates with me, mainly because the ones I have seen (most of those multiple times and involuntarily) don't engender me to watch any others. Even the Blank Check recap didn't entice me to follow along, week-by-week, film-by-film. (I rewatched Picnic at Hanging Rock and that's it... I would like to reassess Fearless). Here, I find a solidly made, solidly executed film, but a real lack of style.  

If ever there was a film that needed style, it's The Truman Show.

Here we have a fantastical future reality where the TV and social landscape has been transformed by 24-hours-a-day coverage of Truman's life, all of it a manufactured reality around him, built inside the only other man-made structure to be seen from outer space other than the Great Wall of China (which you can't even, but nevermind... it's all flights of fancy anyway, so why fact check anything). The world Truman lives in is sort of a retro-50's/early-60's aesthetic which never evolved, but the production had the capacity to go really weird alt-history future in Truman's world and it's so sad they didn't.

Beyond just boring choices in costuming and sets, Weir doesn't effectively use the pov shot nor experiment enough with different aspect ratios or camera formats to most effectively tell the story. So very often in the movie it is absolutely unclear whether we're watching Truman as a viewer would watch from home in the world within the world (or perhaps the editing booth) or if it's the meta view from Weir's actual lens. There was such opportunity to do something really different there (I had just watched Backrooms again, and We're All Going To The World's Fair in the days before, both films which use different lenses to view the protagonist, as if we watching through different screens, and then, at times watching people watching screens... these films really get how to use media in a way Weir was only kind of thinking about, but didn't seem to put his full effort into it (unless the studio shut down the idea for being to "out there").

The Truman Show came out just when reality TV was taking off in North America. It certainly hadn't taken over most of the networks and account for the majority of TV programming like it does today, and the internet certainly wasn't a think for videos like it is today. The point is, there's a case to be made for rebooting The Truman Show and examining the attention and fame economy as a result.

The film is moderately enjoyable, but I found myself more frustrated than entertained. I'm sure others might find it charming or conceptually intriguing, and I can't deny that it has its charms and that the concept isn't strong. It's just not executed to my desired tastes.

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I remember hearing the title Irma Vep around the time it came out, possibly because it was playing at my local film fest, or maybe it was reviewed in my student newspaper at the time. However I heard about it, it's a name that's stuck fast in my brain for decades, even if nothing else about it was retained.

Smash cut to the pandemic times when director Olivier Assayas decided to remake Irma Vep into a TV miniseries starring Alicia Vikander. It was only at this time, over 25 years later, that I really knew what the plot was about. In the 1996 film, the great Maggie Cheung plays a fictional version of herself. She's come to France to appear in a remake of the classic silent film Les vampires, playing the lead role of Irma Vep.

Not really speaking or understanding French, Maggie is a bit lost amidst the conversations around her, and can only intone the chaos that's taking place around her on the set. The director (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is having a meltdown, a crisis of confidence, and wants Maggie to be his muse for the project, which she just kind of rolls with. Meanwhile Zoé (Nathalie Richard) in makeup befriends Maggie and is really smitten. Things get a little awkward at a dinner party Zoé brings her to.  Maggie one night dons her character's cat suit and heads out into the night on her own adventure, sneaking around the rooftops and through hallways, thieving like Catwoman. And there's much fighting on set, the production seems troubled, and every reporter just wants to talk to Maggie about how awful and pretentious French films are compared to American films.

The film is Assayas trying to resolve where French cinema was in the 1990s. The new wave was far enough in the rear view mirror to not even be relevant anymore, and, at least in the film, nothing meaningful had taken place in the country since. There's a crisis afoot, about whether French film should be populist, or expand its appeal beyond its borders, or stay deeply and truly artistic and extremely French. It never really resolves these questions it asks.

It is in the cinema vérité stile, but really keeping with the single camera, and minimizing edits. It's not documentary style, it really gets intimate with its cast, getting right in their faces at times. It's a brief-ish movie at 99 minutes, but at times is a little naval gaze-y. It seems loosely plotted and perhaps unscripted (minimal research says it was loosely scripted and shot with only one take per shot) and it feels very run-and-gun. The performers are all charming, but the general idea of the film, to fall back on my critique of Gail Daughtry..., is up it own ass. It's a filmmaker making a film about how hard filmmaking is, and most of the film's commentary is about how hard it is to make a film. Hardly earth-shaking stuff...but maybe a little more unique in 1996? If this had been truly about viewing things from Maggie's perspective, then it would have been a pretty fascinating film, but she's only occasionally our central figure and the lens never really settles on her like it does for director Rene or Zoe.

My intent was to go straight from the film to the HBO miniseries, but the film was such a nothingburger of  a story that I couldn't be bothered. One's mileage may vary.

ReWatch: The Magnificent Seven

 2016, Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer) - Amazon

Ten years ago I wrote about my first watching. A decade used to seem like such a long time ago, but I have been in Toronto for over twenty years and I had what I considered an incredibly long and diverse life before that. I remember feeling middling about this adaptation of the 1970s western which was already an adaptation of the 1954 Kurosawa movie, Seven Samurai. I guess a decade has changed me, because this felt, this time, like exactly what I would want from this remake.

In one of the many alternate realities that I come from, Fuqua started his career with The Book of Eli and not The Replacement Killers. Westerns and PoAp have always had much in common and that Hughes Brothers movie was a pure PoAp western. And it starred Denzel, who came into contact with Fuqua for Training Day, and continued their relationship for many movies after. So, alternate reality or faulty memory -- you know what I will go with.

From the very beginning of this rewatch, I was settling into the things I like about westerns, especially the nods to the classics. The framing, often from low on the ground and behind a gunfighter, so we see his opponent ahead of him. The majestic landscapes as America in its youth was beautiful. A Lone Hero, dusty and weathered, good at his job but with a moral code, but still haunted by his past. I stated in my original writing that this was "just" a capable western, but for the rewatch that was exactly was I was looking for.

I was again disappointed in the lack of character given to Haley Bennett with her Emma Cullen character, the revenge drive impetus for the gathering of capable, violent men willing to kill & die for the point, and not exactly the money. She's no longer the alt-Bryce Dallas Howard in my mind, I having seen her in many things hence, but I didn't recall exactly how little agency she has here; we never learn anything about her and the only saving of grace is not having her immediately hookup with one of the horny gunfighters, despite Faraday's leering. 

Like the original, four of the men are killed in defense of the town, and honoured as heroes. Of the gathering of killers, only Chisolm strikes me as the properly "good" character -- he fought for the North and works as a bounty hunter, not a virtuous man, but chooses the side of Law. The rest are killers through and through, with maybe only Red Harvest being so lacking in background, we don't know if he is a killer or not. 

Properly great original movies get remakes and reboots. The Seven Samurai never got a "proper" remake, as in a Japanese ronin movie, but probably has more nods than just these two westerns and ... cough... Rebel Moon. I mean, there is the "Heart of Gold" episode of Firefly but that show being a space-western, you could say, once again its a nod to the original Magnificent Seven ? Now, has the original movie passed on so much so as to become a trope? There are plenty of raid movies where a group of specialists go on a suicidal but important mission, but that's not quite the same. Violent Men Defend Defenseless Villagers... I guess I should poke around on TV Tropes and see what their listing for "The Magnificent Seven Samurai" gives me.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Bob Trevino Likes It

2024, Tracie Laymon (feature debut) -- download

This... this is an ugly cry movie. There is a scene in the trailer, from early in the movie, where Lily Trevino (Barbie Ferreira, Mile End Kicks) goes to see a free therapist and tells them about her life; the therapist breaks down crying, ugly crying. As part of the trailer, it set our expectations of this movie pretty well. As part of the plot, it had more weight as the therapist is a free therapist, at a local clinic, and she is new at her job -- her unprofessional reaction is understandable, as Lily sits before her, telling her story matter-of-factly, bluntly, seemingly not understanding the weight of such a life that up to now, has been, frankly, horrible. Her mom, an addict, left early in Lily's life. She was raised by her horrible father and just broke up with a guy who texted Lily as if she was his other girlfriend. And yet, Lily apologized to him. And comforts the therapist. Lily seemingly accepts her terrible place in life, but the fact she is seeing a therapist suggests she knows... something is wrong.

Bob Trevino (John Leguizamo, The Happening) is unrelated to Lily. He's the construction manager in a small contracting company and he is a push-over. He is friendless, meek and disconnected from his wife, as she lives her life in scrapbooking, involving him little. They lost a child early in their marriage, and never recovered. 

Bob Trevino (French Stewart, Girls! Girls! Girls!) is Lily's father, the horrible man who blames all his woes on Lily. He's a pensioner, constantly seeking a replacement for Lily's mother, dragging her along as a sort of demented idea of a wingman, and blaming her when his own personality torpedoes any chance he has with the ladies. 

After one particular encounter, where Lily mixes up some of his recent (ex) girlfriends with the new one, he cuts her off, stops answering her calls, doesn't answer the door and literally has security called on her. He is such a horrible person, and yet he appears to be Lily's only connection. Oh, she is friends with Daphne (Lolo Spencer, The Sex Lives of College Girls), the disabled woman she is a live-in caretaker for, but Lily doesn't acknowledge that to herself nor Daphne. Unable to get hold of her father, she looks him up on Facebook and bumps into the other Bob Trevino, sending him a friend request -- I am assuming her father has already unfriended her, and she is trying to reconnect their accounts, after all FB was where he shared all the details about his latest GF with Lily. Other Bob Trevino is unfamiliar with FB but needs connection in his life as well; so he clicks Accept almost immediately followed by a Like on one of her posts. Lily is thrilled despite understanding this is an entirely different Bob Trevino.

What follows is a vignette commentary on Social Media. Lily fills up her feed with fond recollections of her life and inane daily statements ("just had the greatest lunch!"), and Bob Likes or replies on each and every one. She loves the validation, and he likes (pun intended) the interaction with someone. He also knows she appears to need something.  Eventually they begin DMing and we observe, with more than a little cringe factor, but also ... how sweet. Bob tells his wife, explains its not like that and promises he won't give Lily any money, because its just online. Then Lily's toilet explodes and ... well, she calls him. He comes over, fixes her toilet and comments, "Shit happens...." That goes up on Facebook. 

Lily and Bob become friends, and more than a little surrogate father & daughter situation. It enables both of them to open up about their feelings about life and connection. Lily is still trying to reconnect with her real father, which when he learns on Other Bob, he tries to get something out of it -- literally asks her to ask him for money. He supports his asking by giving her an itemized list of all the spending he did to raise her. He is so horrible, but with Other Bob in the picture, she is starting to see  this, for real. Sometimes you don't know how bad a situation is until you get a whiff of a better one, or more likely, you don't acknowledge its possible until you see it in front of you.

Should I make a spoiler warning? In a movie like this, things either progress to a happy level, lessons are learned and we smile at the new path laid out before us. Or, things go horribly Late Second Act wrong.

Other Bob dies. His work has always been stressful to him and the elation he feels when he quits it, gives him a heart attack. He doesn't pass immediately, he gets a few weeks with his wife, but then a second one does him in. During this period, his phone is off, and Lily is desperate. No Likes, no contact. She goes to his house, tries to break in and is caught. Lily is losing it. But eventually she tries to move on, actually tries to improve her life, to be a person without either Bob Trevino.

One day she opens FB and sees the post on his page regarding his death from the second heart attack. Lily drives to Indiana, with Daphne whom she is now acknowledging as a proper friend, for the funeral and meets Bob's wife. They embrace, Lily is gifted a scrapbook of her and Bob's entire online history together. Jeannie (Rachel Bay Jones, George & Mandy's First Marriage), Bob's wife, could have freaked out about this weird relationship he had with this messed up stranger, but she saw it all, and saw how it changed her husband. The scrapbook is her gift to him, and to Lily. Begin ugly crying.

The movie is not the sort of thing I normally watch, but it would have been during the heavy days of That Guy, when I was moved more by stories being told, by lives being capture, than by Big Drama and Amazing Situations. This is most definitely melodramatic sentimentality, with more than a little cringe, but its told heartfully. Its the expansion of a premise, and a vignette of a period in a person's life, which quite frankly, are what all movies are -- just moments in long lives. 

Unless you are watching a biopic or a historical drama over a longer period.