3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Absolution

2024, Hans Petter Moland (Cold Pursuit) -- download

I went into this to see another "Liam Neeson as aging ______" (no tag) and, yes, it is that, but it was also something .... more. Not perfectly so, but it at least had the conceit of trying to be more than just its premise, which is, "said aging thug discovers he has ill and will see his memory & functionality drastically fade in less than three years." This is not the first time Neeson has played a version of this character (not literally, but a man of violence with memory issues), but this time, its not as slick, which lent itself to credibility for me. 

Neeson's "Thug" (Liam Neeson, Derry Girls) doesn't even get a name, and he is called just that in the credits, and apparently that was also the original name for the movie. He works for the Conners, one of those low rent gangsters that eke out an existence doing work for other more connected criminal organizations. As we see them, there is just Charlie (Ron Perlman, Poker Face), his son Kyle (Daniel Diemer, Under the Bridge), and Thug, who spends most of his days walking around collecting protection money from business owners who treat him as much as one of the neighbourhood, as anything. He's tough but you can see that he's losing it, forgetting basic things like his boss's name and where he lives. And after seeing specialist, where he learns he has CTE for years of head injuries, he decides to reconnect with his estranged daughter.

Thug is not a good man. He knows he comes from a legacy of angry, abusive men and while he regrets what he let himself become, he also doesn't really try to change it. But his clock is ticking so he takes the gun out of his mouth and does the work to reestablish a relationship with Daisy (Frankie Shaw, SMILF), his daughter, and his grandson. Her life hasn't been much better than his, but everyone seems to be looking for connection no matter how tenuous. This isn't a movie of grand gestures and emotional awareness, but it gets the job done.

Memory loss is all around me these days, as I age, as parents age even more. I see myself going from the guy who could remember the face and name, instantly, of someone he met 20 years ago to doing the "you know, that guy in that movie that came out last year...". Sure, the stress of the past decade has lent itself to that, and its expected to diminish somewhat as you age, but .... it frightens me. I have never been the most lucid guy to begin with, prone to letting my brain go down rabbit holes, staring into space, losing time, but the idea of losing entireties of myself is ... terrifying.

There is now one more "aging hit man" movie to watch, "Knox Goes Away", on Amazon, with Michael Keaton.

Rewatch: 28 Days Later & 28 Weeks Later

2002, Danny Boyle (Shallow Grave) -- download
2007, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Damsel) -- download

Its been more than a decade since I last rewatched either of these movies. But the new one is coming out, and I wanted to remind myself. And also see how I felt about the groundbreaking first one. 

28 Days Later opens with a naked Jim (Cillian Murphy, Peaky Blinders) on the operating table in a hospital. Given he is not aware of any virus, I would imagine he's been hooked up to enough fluids to ride out the entire 28 days? Speculative Fiction always requires a certain amount of forgiveness as to how he would still be alive. But this opening, cribbed only a year later by The Walking Dead ("don't dead, open inside") comic, provides the opportunity to be exposed to an empty London. Well, mostly empty.

Technically it opens with the stupid eco kids ignoring the scientist warning them to not release the monkeys that they have infected with RAGE !!

The "reprieve" in this movie is terribly short. He gets to slurp a few cans of pop and is immediately introduced to a church full of dead bodies, and an infected priest, after which he is rescued and gets an explainer from a couple of crafty survivors -- Mark (Noah Huntley, Snow White and the Huntsman) and Selena (Naomie Harris, Skyfall). Mark dies not long after, cut into bits by a remorseless Selena, after getting bitten.

While fast zombies were not entirely new, nor were "not zombies at all" infected, this movie pulled them out of the B and Z grades into (almost?) mainstream movie focus. The existential dread of the hordes of shambling dead, never stopping, never falling down, was replaced by "OH SHIT RUN RUN RUN RUUUUUN !!" sheer terror. You would exhaust yourself, you would make mistakes, you were so easily infected, while they just came in numbers, not tiring, not easily hurt, a fallen one replaced by three more.

The movie flits from the terror of running to moments of safety and contemplation, even some levity. Despite all of England having fallen, the low budget lends itself to only the occasional crowd of the infected wandering the countryside. The survivors, who eventually include Frank (Brendan Gleeson, In Bruges) and his daughter Hannah, in Frank's trusty (and well stocked) cab, are given a destination, a goal, a light at the end of the tunnel, which no matter how tenuous, they have no choice but to cling to.

Of course, also cribbed by The Walking Dead, but nothing really new, the real challenge turns out to be other humans infected by nothing more than barbarism. They, soldiers camped out in a posh mansion, are thinking about more than just the next meal or surviving the incursions of the infected, but how they choose to deal with the future is far less than savoury. 

Did I find it as "ground breaking" as I did when I saw it in the cinema? No, not at all. It looks like a bad pirate copy. But its a solid story, a journey from A to B, from waking in fear, to finally sleeping with comfort and safety.

28 Weeks Later comes (initially) as a geeky contemplation of the backstory after the rage virus destroys the UK. They are just infected people and people have to eat, and despite us seeing the infected chomping down on necks, we never actually see them eating the people they attack. They either kill them and leave them lying, or infect them. Its more about the virus propagating itself, than nourishment. So then, the infected people will eventually starve, and die. After six months you can assume even the domino effect has burned itself out (a near dead infected bites a well-fed human creating a new cycle) combined with the severely reduced number of living people to actually infect, means ... they are all dead? 

The Americans assume as much, and having survived their own plague (the first movie mentions the virus appearing in NYC), they have come to London to setup a safe zone, and help repatriate British survivors who fled to the mainland. They still have to deal with the city full of dead bodies and the fear of someone being infected always looms, so the entire "safe zone" is one big armed camp full of check points, safety doors, rooftop snipers, patrolling helicopters, etc.

Our main characters come from a refugee camp in Spain, to the Isle of Dogs in London, isolated from the rest of the city by water and guarded bridges. There are homes, beds, food, clothing, water and electricity. They are Tammy (Imogen Poots, Green Room) and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton [now THAT is a name], Salem Witch Doll), the children of Don (Robert Carlyle, Ravenous), a facilities manager in this area. The movie opened with Don hiding out with his wife and other survivors in a countryside house, until it falls, and a cowardly Don runs, instead of defending his wife. He carries the guilt of what he did, but does not admit to his children on how their mother died.

Buuuuut, if all the infected are dead, how can this be a sequel? We need the running and chasing! Oh, we have possibilities, like Dr. Scarlet (Rose Byrne, Insidious), an American doctor studying the disease and the measures the US army is putting in place. Don't they always have vials of infected blood stored badly for accidental exposure? No matter, what happens is more insidious. Don's wife Alice (Catherine McCormack, Braveheart) did not die; she was bitten but had natural immunity, and is now a carrier -- a half-mad, starving carrier when they find her. And when her husband comes to see her, barely believing what he is seeing, desperate for forgiveness, she gives him the kiss he wants. We think she knows exactly what she is doing, as seconds later he turns and tears her throat out. Patient 0+1.

What follows is action thriller lunacy. The Americans have measures in place to deal with this, and they activate them. But the doors don't stay closed, the infected spread quickly, and Don seems to have preternatural intent, unlike the infected that came before him. To be honest, I was very annoyed how easily the American security measures fell. They herd all the survivors, some 15000 of them, into ... rooms. They would have probably done better letting them shelter in place while securing the doors to the towers the residents lived in. Or at least started by making stronger doors protected by more soldiers. No matter, all Hell breaks loose and not long after The General (Idris Elba, Luther) issues "code red", i.e. fuck it, kill em all -- infected, survivors, anyone on the ground. Oh, that didn't work either. Fuck it, just firebomb the entire fucking island. Oh, and gas the surrounding city, just to make sure.

Meanwhile, Don's wife is dead, Don is a monster, and his kids are being protected by Dr. Scarlett who has realized the kids might carry the same natural immunity as their mother. And Random Soldier Doyle (Jeremy Renner, Hawkeye) has decided the "kill em all" order is bad, and protects the small group as they escape the city. I know that Robert Carlyle was the Named Name for this movie, and they need him on camera as much as possible, but his Lone Infected act is just ... odd, and never explained. Eventually he catches up to his kids, reasons unknown, probably just Angry Dad Syndrome, and that weeds the survivors down to just the kids... who do escape, much to the detriment of the rest of the world.

Don't get me wrong, the action lunacy is well done. Its non-stop tension and terrible and tragic. But I would have preferred if they had double-down-ed on the geeky backstory contemplation. They could have maintained the "investigate the immunity" concept, highlighted how even the best security measures could be bypassed by foolish behaviour, had The General have emotional reactions to seeing his best laid plans fail, give hints as to why Don was an entirely new breed of raging monster, dealt more with the conflict between "protect the world" vs "save the innocent". Instead, they just all ran in terror and tore everything down.

Obviously, in that we are getting a 28 Years Later movie, the "wait out the starvation effect" factor becomes less reliable. And while it could be just a "the UK was abandoned entirely while the rest of the world recovered", I suspect the movie will be true post-apocalypse, the virus having finally reached everywhere and all measures failing and now.... a few struggling pockets of "civilization". But we know how people treat each other when things are at their worst, don't we?

Kent's recent post about it.

KsMIRT: Why you gotta go and make things so animated

 K'sMIRT is Kent's Month in Reviewing Television, where each month Kent steps through the TV series he completed watching each month in the 1 Great-1 Good-1 Bad format.  Although December was dominated by watching Hallmarkies, the work schedule winding down meant more time to catch up ...on cartoons? Superhero cartoons, to be explicit.

This Month:
Young Justice Season 4: Phantoms (2021/2022, Teletoon, 26/26 episodes)
What If Season 3 (2024, Disney+, 8/8 episodes)
The Venture Bros Season 7  (2018, Adult Swim, 10/10 episodes)
The Venture Bros.: Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart (2023, d. Jackson Publick - bluray)
Kite Man:Hell Yeah Season 1 (2018, Adult Swim, 5/10 episodes)
Creature Commandos Season 1 (2024, Adult Swim, 7/7 episodes)

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The What 100: Superboy and Miss Martian travel to Mars to get married and get embroiled in the contentious politics and race/class war that is consuming the planet. Superboy apparently dies in the conflict, traumatizing many of his teammates. Meanwhile as the Lords of Chaos accelerate their agenda against the Lords of Order, Orm has a new ploy to become king of Atlantis, and on New Genesis, Rocket attends a summit with the New Gods and Green Lanterns to petition for support against an unseen enemy. General Zod becomes Superboy's saviour in the Phantom Zone and plots his escape.

(1 Great) Of the various story arcs this season, my favourite by far was the Zatanna-led segment. Here she is acting as mentor to a trio of young mages, including Mary Bromfield (who, offscreen, has foregone being Mary Marvel due to being addicted to the power), Khalid Nassur (who in the comics is the current Doctor Fate, but not yet at the start of the show) and Traci Thirteen. They face agents of Chaos, first Klarion, and later face the far more powerful Flaw and Child. They are outmatched and need the help of The Demon and Doctor Fate. It's just rife with deep-cut characters from the DC pantheon, which is some of my favourite things.  I generally don't love magic and/or fantasy unless there are rules to apply and here YJ explores the concepts of the Lords of Order and Chaos in a manner that's both nebulous and still quite clear the way things work. 

(1 Good) I love the Milestone Universe. It was a BIPOC-created superhero universe published by DC in the 1990s, featuring characters of colour as heroes, villains, sidekicks, supporting characters...just generally elevating the prominence of people of colour in comics, as well as creators of colour. Once Milestone ceased publishing, it took over a decade for the characters to return, and when they did, they did so integrated into the DCU. So when Young Justice started expanding its roster in season 2, there was some low-key placement of Milestone heroes like Static, Icon and Rocket in the peripherals of the show. I've been waiting a long time for any Milestone character to get featured play, and Rocket gets a 5-episode arc as the Justice League's emissary to the New Genesis summit, except the arc starts weaving itself tightly into the Connors-in-the-Phantom-Zone story and Racquel gets a bit lost. I wish we had spent even more time with her and Orion, as he teaches her how to embrace her autistic son.

(1 Bad) I'll rant in the meta section, but my least favourite part of season 3 continued to be my least favourite part of season 4. I generally like Beast Boy as a character but the character as presented in this show is constantly aggravating. In the opening episodes on Mars, he was behaving like a totally ignorant Ugly American, and after Connor's "death" he spirals into a sleeping pill addiction and becomes a total asshole to everyone, which is very hard to watch (largely because I can't stand the vocal performance). I miss the happy-go-lucky Beast Boy of the Teen Titans animated series, and I can only hazard that since it's the same voice actor they really tried to push the character on a radically different path.

META: I was frustrated by season 3 because it hyperfocused on a singular storyline I didn't really care too much about, when we knew there was a larger story percolating underneath. I went into season 4 thinking that the larger story, that's been basically teased since season 1, would finally reveal itself and lead to an epic DC-style event story. 

But no, instead we are once again presented with 26(!) episodes that only hint at the major conflict to come while it treads water on a half dozen stories that themselves seem utterly decompressed and at times quite tedious. Four of these story arcs take place on other worlds - Mars, Atlantis, New Genesis, and the Phantom Zone - and the Weisman/Vietti tendency to wallow in the world building made for frustrating viewing. 

This is a show with a cast of dozens, maybe even exceeding 100 active characters, but, just like last season, it spends most of its time developing only a few of these characters. Superboy, Miss Martian, Aqualad, Halo, Forager, Rocket, Beast Boy, Zatanna... and it seems like they should be able to do so much more.  The fact that the end of the season reveals that Mary Marvel has now gone evil and is a new Female Fury should have happened on screen.

Knowing that YJ was cancelled (or "not renewed") I was hoping that we would have some closure. Alas....

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The What 100: Uatu, the Watcher (Jeffrey Wright, Westworld), is an ancient celestial being tasked with observing and recording the events of the Multiverse. He is our guide through the MCU Multiverse as we explore the weird and divergent worlds.

(1 Great) Where the comics version of "What If?" was generally focused on tweaking one plot, story or character element to manufacture an intriguing alternate reality for the Marvel Maniacs out there, this animated series has instead taken great delight in just creating bizarre scenarios that use existing (and newly created) MCU characters in different, darker, or outrageous scenarios. For me, my greatest delight of season 3 was the weird and wild pairings, such as Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) and Kingu (Kumail Nanjiani) as 1930's Hollywood icons,  or Howard the Duck (Seth Green) and Darcy (Kat Dennings) hooking up and the resulting baby egg being the most sought object in the universe.

(1 Good) The voice talent in this series is off the freaking charts. Each episode is a stacked cast of voice talent that's just one mind-blowing name after another.  Like in "What if... the Hulk fought the Mech Avengers", you've got Wright, Anthony Mackie, Mark Ruffalo, Teyonah Parris, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Simu Liu, and Oscar Isaac. Or in "What if...Howard the Duck got hitched", it's Wright, Dennigs, Green, Samuel L. Jackson, Christ Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Clark Gregg, Michael Rooker, Rachel House, and Josh Brolin. Insanity. You just kind of forget that all these people have played Marvel characters. 

(1 Bad) Like the comics version, what might appeal to one person may not appeal to the next. I wouldn't say any of these stories are bad, but some of them feel a bit under baked compared to others. I wish "What if...the Emergence destroyed the Earth" had more time to play in the very bizarre sci-fi reality it exists in, as I was less interested in the Riri Williams vs. Quentin Beck conflict than I was about the strange reality of life on an exploded planet.

META: What If...? was always a series for the die-hards, the fans. It's fun to play and explore other ideas with these characters, but ultimately it doesn't mean anything to the larger face of the MCU. It was the same with the comics....they're a lark. There is continuity in What If...? as each season has ended with a two-part wrap up that ties some of the previous episodes and characters into a story where Uatu himself gets involved. Here, Uatu's occasional interference in events in various stories puts him on trial, and it's up to Captain Carter and her allies (including Howard and Darcy's child, Byrdie, now grown up and voiced by Natasha Lyonne) to save him from being erased from existence.  Unlike the previous two seasons, where the climax was threatening reality, this climax brings it to very individual stakes of Uatu's life. It might not be the epic conclusion to this series that some were looking for, but Uatu's appeal to his fellow watcher The Emminence (Jason Isaacs) is kind of a really great moment.

I don't know if I'm sad that there's not going to be more What If...? or not.  They're kind of an amuse bouche, but hardly a meal. I enjoy them but they're not exceptionally memorable...and as I said, they're not really important to the canon of things. But that said, I really want to see Byrdie in live action (and Devery Jacobs' Kahhori too).

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The What 100: The Monarch takes his guise as the new Blue Morpho, scourge of the underworld, to the next level if only to stick it to the Guild of Calamitous Intent, now headed by his wife, Dr. Mrs. The Monarch (nee Dr. Girlfriend). Hank gets left behind as both Dean and his girlfriend head off to college, then gets a concussion in a snowstorm. The Venture building in Manhattan takes on a life of its own. Dr. Venture chairs a peace summit between the Guild and O.S.I. and later builds a teleporter which becomes the hottest contested object between factions. Billy Quizboy gets his first nemesis, and a hundred and one other things occur....

And then in the movie... a new villainous agency, ARCH, starts messing up the treaty between the Guild and O.S.I. The heroes and the villains are going to have to find a way to work together against this new mutual threat. Plus the secret connection between Rusty and the Monarch is finally revealed.

(1 Great) Every episode of The Venture Bros. has its own stand-alone arc and yet is also jam packed with world building, character expansion and jokes galore. The absolute commitment that creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer have to ever-propelling things forward means that nothing is stagnant. Publick and Hammer never get comfortable with a scenario or setting.  The early seasons of The Venture Bros. were far more episodic and self-contained, but as the duo got more comfortable with the idea of exploring the in-world reality of the show, and it's labyrinthine, near-incestuous history, it blossomed as one of the most consistently entertaining shows (despite its radically inconsistent schedule, of seven seasons and a movie over the past 20 years).  Each episode leaves me satiated by the resolution of the adventure-at-hand, and yet there's always a slice of "I need to know more" based on the nuggets of info or teases that were dropped. And I can only imagine, based on where the show (followed by the direct-to-video movie, Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart"), that we would actually see Hank and Dean grow as distinct individuals. I get the sense that Hammer and Publick could keep developing this forever, and they would never run out of ideas on how to fuck with the characters, nor run out of new characters to introduce.  

(1 Good) The animation, the voice acting, the swearing, the violence, the nudity, the pop culture references, the exploration of generational trauma and daddy issues, the exploration of relationships (lovers, family, friends, employee/employer etc), the general weirdness, the twisting of expectations, the striking visual designs, the toying with other Warner Brothers properties... pretty much all of it is good. I never go into watching The Venture Brothers with any expectations, and so everything delivered is always a surprise.

(1 Bad) Despite originally being picked up by HBO for a season 8, the show was prematurely cancelled. WB/HBO threw Venture Bros. fans a bone by letting Hammer and Publick take their in-development Season 8 plans and turn it into a direct-to-video movie.  The "movie" does play like a highly compressed season, and the only thing that separates it from a regular episode of VB is its length and the absolutely thumping updated Venture Bros. theme by the incredible J.G. Thurlwell.  The animation is the same great animation, and the story has the unfortunate task of wrapping up some (a mere few) loose threads while also really propelling things forward even more, and ultimately ending up at a place of familiarity which one might find satisfactory if there weren't so much more left to watch these characters do.  A much as I enjoyed the movie, I feel like we were cheated out of a season rather than gifted a movie.

META: The Venture Bros. has never been readily accessible in Canada. If it ever had a home on Canadian cable broadcast as a first-run show, I'm either not aware or I've forgotten (maybe the early seasons?). For me The Venture Bros. has been primarily consumed on physical media, and the DVD or Blu-Ray releases of the show have been erratic at best.  Availability for the later seasons - especially in the 2010s, when physical media was on the rapid decline and streaming was taking over - was sparse. I'm only just learning that there is in fact a season 7 physical media release in 2019, despite checking numerous times over the past few years.

My point is, I have, pretty much since the show's inception, always been behind the curve, which always meant there was more Venture Bros. for me to watch. There was a comfort in knowing that I always had more ahead of me, and now, having gotten to the end, there's only the emptiness of knowing there is no more to be had.  

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The What 100: The run-down hangout club where Kite Man and Golden Glider spend their "off hours" is going to be spitefully purchased and shut down by Lex Luthor, so the pair run a heist to raise the funds and buy the bar themselves. Bane becomes a regular and Darkseid's daughter Malice, in a desperate position becomes a server at the bar.

(1 Great) It's remarkable that Kite-Man, of all characters, has his own TV show. An also-ran of the also-rans, Kite-Man was always a deep, deep cut character that most comic readers had never actually seen in action. He would have probably been popularized on one of those early 2000s-style websites that would have "25 lame supervillains you've never heard of (for good reason)" following Doctor Bong and the Calculator. He was given a little spike of attention in a semi-recent Batman run by Tom King who seeded the character in as a point-of-view character of a lackey caught in the crossfire of the War of Jokes and Riddles. "Hell yeah" became Kite-Man's catchphrase in that storyline. So, really, what's great, is to see this ridiculous character get his flowers in what is surely a done-in-one season of animated television.

(1 Good) I have to be honest, when I had started writing this I had only seen up to episode 5. I had fallen asleep/sugar-crashed early in the second episode and went in and out of consciousness until the fourth episode, so I didn't really absorb all of what Kite-Man had to offer and I wasn't too enthused by what I had seen. But I returned to it and binged episodes 6-through-10 which, I have to say, built up on each other quite well, increasing the stakes for the characters and beyond. In episode 7 or 8, Darkseid turns up looking for the anti-life equation, which is the maguffin of the entire series, and, as voiced by Keith David, he is a freaking delightful dose of entitled surliness. There is a scene where it's David, the late Lance Reddick as Lex Luthor, and Judith Light as Helen Villigan which is just a joyful sequence of voice acting...not to mention Darkseid always has a Greek chorus following him wherever he goes punctuating everything he says, which is an comedic trope that just keeps on giving.

(1 Bad) It took me a while to get into the show, but, as I said, I zonked out for a few of the early episodes, so it's fair to say I didn't give it a fair shake on my first watch.  Coming out of "viewing" the first half,  I was hoping Noonans, the bar that Kite-Man and Golden Glider buy, would be a hotbed of DC's lowest-tier supervillains, and it's just not scratching that itch for me.  After watching the second half, I enjoyed it a lot more, especially when Kite-Man gets powers and becomes Beast Mode, whose superpower is all about being a conceited dickhead. What Beast Mode did, though, is accentuate Kite-Man's bro-energy, to the point that when he returned to being Kite-Man all I could think about was Alex Moffatt's Guy Who Just Bought A Boat (to the point where I thought Moffatt was Kite-Man all this time, not voice actor Matt Oberg). The amount of times Kite-Man and Golden Glider call each other "babe" drives me insane.

META: Reading the recaps I may have to give, at least episode 3 a (re?)watch.  Episodes 4 through 6 served as a connected story, exploring time travel shenanigans and elaborating on Golden Glider's dark history. I applaud the show for thread building and some really clever plotting to lead to some heavyweight character moments, but the show doesn't capitalize on that weight. With The Venture Bros. fresh in mind, I'm really reminded about how a comedy cartoon can both capture emotional moments while still retaining its offbeat tone. I don't think Kite-Man is successful in doing so (and for that matter, neither is Harley Quinn)... the emotionality tends to be undercut here by the comedy.  It's the kind of thing where I don't think the show cares about its characters as people, and that leads to these more sentimental moments falling flat.

I like it?

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The What 100: In the wake of the events of Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, Amanda Waller is no longer able to use human prisoners as an expendable task force. But they said nothing about inhuman prisoners. Led by Rick Flagg Sr., Waller assembles the Creature Commandos, consisting of The Bride (of Frankenstein), G.I. Robot, The Weasel, Nina Mazurski (a fish lady), and Dr. Phosphorous, tasked with stopping the witch Circe and her squadron of right-wing toxic masculinity from assassinating the royal family of the nation of Pokolistan...only to later be tasked with doing exactly the same thing. Meanwhile Eric Frankenstein (Frankenstein's monster) resumes stalking The Bride.

(1 Great) I watched the first five episodes in a binge, and the latter two week-to-week. The first episode is all setup and it's the usual crackerjack rapid fire comedy, hyperviolence and pathos that we come to expect from James Gunn. I was immediately getting those Venture Bros. vibes I was just mentioning I was missing. The subsequent episodes are sort of Lost-style, where the main plot progresses while diving into one character's backstory (origin stories actually).

(1 Good) The music, as to be expected from any Gunn production, is top notch. He crafts scenes to songs, and here he has chosen a soundtrack filled with the Dresden Dolls and Gogol Bordello, with Clint Mansell and Kevin Kiner returning from Peacemaker and The Doom Patrol to be the key orchestrators of sounds for this new television universe arm of DC.

(1 Bad) The show starts losing steam around episode 5, as it begins to feel like its stretching out the main story in order to provide enough episodes to cover each Commando's "flashback". The fact that episode 7 features both a flashback and concludes the story really does highlight how out of steam that main plot was.  By that point in the show the hyperviolence in both main and flashback story begins to get exhausting, especially as the heaviness of the main story increases (and it seems each flashback just gets progressively darker). Plus [spoiler] at some point G.I. Robot gets exploded and he was such a source of levity for the show, but his joke is pretty one-note, and Gunn probably wisely didn't run it into the ground. I'm also quite a fan of Frankenstein and The Bride in the comics, and I'm not sure how I feel about Gunn turning Frankenstein in to a stalker, and then trying to turn his abhorrent lack of self-awareness into comedy.

META: This was a very bold choice to be the very first product released under the Gunn-headed DC Studio's new DC Universe. Clearly his forthcoming Superman film is an all-ages affair, but this is a hard-R cartoon rife with violence, sex, and the foulest of foul mouthed swearing.  It's clearly right in line with Peacemaker, and not too far off from the R-rated The Suicide Squad (both Gunn-written before taking on the the head of the studio) but it does signal that Gunn is not looking to mirror what Marvel is doing (except that Marvel is now very much in the Deadpool game which is not far off from Gunn's sensibilities).

The voice cast is phenomenal, with recognizable names all throughout. Of course, Viola Davis is back as Amanda Waller, Sean Gunn does double duty as G.I. Robot and making the Weasel's weird squeaks, Indira Varma plays The Bride, David Harbour is Frankenstein, Alan Tudyk hops over from voice work as  the boisterous thespian Clayface on Harley Quinn to be the much more sinister Dr. Phosphorous her, Zoe Chao plays Nina Mazursky, and Frank Grillo rounds out the main cast as Rick Flag Sr.  Guest voice actors include Steve Agee, Stephanie Beatriz, Michael Rooker, Peter Serafinowicz, and Linda Cardellini.

 

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Ah-Ah-Argento #2: The Cat O' Nine Tails

1971, d. Dario Argento - dvd

If I were to guess why I didn't watch (or rent or buy on DVD) The Cat O' Nine Tails when I was first getting into Argento back in the early 2000s, it was likely because it was one of Argento's lower-ranked films. Argento himself has said its his least favourite of his movies (he notes that it's too referential to other films and genres and doesn't establish its own uniqueness).

Despite claiming to love Argento, I'm still a relative neophyte. I still have much to watch and learn about the director and his repertoire. That said, from what I know is coming, I would agree that this is his weakest film (at least until we get into his 2000's-era output).

It is very much in keeping with traditional giallo -- being a detective mystery sans detective. Here, James Franciscus (an actor I only know as Brent, the lead from Beyond the Planet of the Apes) plays a newspaper reporter who, with the help of a blind ex-reporter (Carl Malden) and his young ward, starts to connect the pieces to a break-in at a lab and subsequent murders.

The lab was working on identifying the XYY (ex-double-why) chromosome as a signifier of violent tendencies (it was speculation at the time, but since absolutely debunked). It's only natural to suspect the murderer is someone involved in the project, and it's kind of obvious who it might be.  The only thing is, conceit of the XYY chromosome is only introduced about halfway through the film, so the film relies heavily on learning about what the precipitating incident (the break-in) was about, and thus learning about the project.

Also being very much a giallo neophyte, I don't know if it's common in the genre for the police to aid a civilian detective in their investigation(s). It's something that also happened in The Bird With The Crystal Plumage and it's just so odd. There's a phenomenal moment here were Franciscus is socializing with a police acquaintance who is holding out on him, and Franciscus says "You're a real bastard" to which his police friend says "Naturally, cops are all bastards... we beat confessions out of people, we take bribes, we oppress minorities...." This is 1971, remember.

Argento is clearly experimenting with this film, playing with visuals and pacing and styles. His use of point-of-view (POV) camera work is next level, particularly the early sequence where the killer carries the body of a security guard and tosses it back inside his security booth. I just don't recall anything like that before. Her Argento aslo toys with manufacturing suspense a few times, in sequences that drag on longer than they should, really interrupting the pacing of the film. But he does have livelier sequences as well, such as a car chase sequence which I'm sure is an homage to The Italian Job. It's very well executed and big extra points for the driver being the film's femme fatale, while our protagonist sits in the passenger seat trying not to look panicked. 

I didn't mention that The Bird With The Crystal Plumage's score was by Ennio Morricone, since the master delivers a solid, but rather routine work.  Here, Morricone's score is a complete other level, sound wise, like it skipped a couple generations. Experimenting with repetition (Argento describes it as being like a music box), Morricone establishes themes and patterns and remixes them throughout. "Bold, dissonant and traumatic" he calls it, "I wrote themes that were more simple, nearly childish".  Only someone of Morricone's talent and genius would think that a masterful, controlled score like this were "childish".

One final note, I have to give a lot of respect for Argento's gay and trans representation in this film. At one point Franciscus needs to enter a gay lounge which is all trans, drag and gay men. Franciscus clearly feels out of his element, but he his neither repulsed nor harassed (though it is clear he is seen as the outsider). It is a scene that shows people just having an enjoyable evening out, listening to live music and socializing. Later Franciscus learns of a gay love triangle with some hard feelings that could point to murder, but doesn't.  It treats this very much in the same manner as if he uncovered a straight love triangle. There are just hurt feelings of lovers, and there's nothing sensationalistic about it.

It's by no means a bad movie, but it's not a great mystery, and t.  

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End

2024, Carles Torres (Pet) -- Amazon

Despite not having any evidence to such, I want to say this movie was released because of the trailers for 28 Years Later appearing, with such impactful tension. Not because this movie has the same level of tension or gravitas, but merely because in the world of "zombie" sub-genres, these two share a world. Not literally, just that both "plagues" are people infected with a rage virus. To be clear(er), this is not a movie about the dead rising or walking or shambling. This is about a pandemic that quickly infects people and changes them into running, screaming, biting, tearing, eating monsters.

Oh, and its set just before Xmas, so if I had felt so compelled, I might have included it in the Xmas Leftovers.

So, just before Xmas in Spain, Manel (Francisco Ortiz, Amar es para siempre) is driving home from his sister's place, with his GF, and crashes his car -- she dies. One year later he is a mess, so much so that he just ignores all the news going on about the emerging pandemic. Via said news in the background, and over video call arguments with his sister, we see the pandemic go from "its in Russia" to Spain closing its borders to "shit, its here too". His sister and family, with ties to the government, are evacuated the the Canary Islands and she makes her brother promise to not be sent to any quarantine zones -- "shelter in place" is his best option. Not long after, he and his cat Lúculo are the only ones in his neighbourhood.

My favourite zombie survival movies give me this brief period of reprieve where the survivor can hide away in their home. As long as the water continues to flow, the automated power plants provide some electricity and you have plenty of food stored away, you can go ... for a while. Survival is counted in days, weeks and rarely looks to the future, nor to the reasons as to why you are fighting to survive. I guess, no matter how bleak it is, we always expect things to just "blow over" eventually. Manel has all this, and an additional boon of a side-gig in the solar power business. Even when the power goes down, he can still charge his phone.

Eventually he starts running out of the essentials and has to go outside. And eventually he realizes he has to leave the whole area. Via an elderly neighbour he finds, he learns of boats leaving the coast, bound for the Canaries. While he hasn't heard from his sister, as even with power, cell towers have died, he believes her to be safe. But now he has to find his way to the coast, with his cat.

Zombie flicks are almost always road movies. There are always obstacles and ever present danger, but the point is to get from A to B where maybe there is something better. We know that the 'maybe' is always tenuous. Zombie plagues tell us that, really, there is no where safe. Manel tries to escape by water, but his boat breaks down. He is picked up by Russian sailors, but learns they are more dangerous than the zombies and escapes with one of the less-evil sailors when Manel tells him he knows where a helicopter will be, and the Russian Ukrainian knows how to fly it. I am not sure why Manel thinks the helicopter will just be there, unused, just waiting for them to find it, but sure.... a lot of the movie has Manel acting on faith, an automated belief that safety is around the next corner.

Of course, there are more people at the hospital, and LOTS of zombies (hospital = infected people) and the Russians have followed them... for revenge? They have to make their way quietly through the maze of an abandoned hospital, to the miraculously still-there helicopter, through the hordes, and avoid the Russians. It felt like the end-scenario for a video game, the final chapter in a game where getting onto the chopper precedes the closing credits. And, actually, my favourite zombie game, Left 4 Dead from 2008, had this exact scenario --- get through a hospital, to the roof, to be picked up by a helicopter.

Unfortunately, as the chopper flies over open water, packed with kids, Manel's phone finally connects and.... "DON'T COME TO THE CANARIES !!" The End.

They likely won't get their sequel, but for a generic zombie flick, it was pretty solid. Like in 28 Days Later, they find the balance between survival and the journey and the tension-terror of fighting off the zombies. Most of the thrilling escapades feel plausible, and there is just enough background behind Manel to actually root for him. But it's no Danny Boyle movie. We rewatched that last night and it feels so much like the template for movies, and video games, to come. Obviously this one. Boyle stripped his movie down to the bones, especially with the camera work. The movies that follow will always be bigger, brighter and attempting more, but I hope that this one stands out, in the world of Spanish zombie movies.

Ah-Ah-Argento, #1 - The Bird With The Crystal Plumage

1970, d. Dario Argento - blu-ray

My memory of how I discovered Dario Argento is extremely hazy. I suspect it was in the late 90's when I was helping a local shop with their mail-order cult video rental business by writing synopses and reviews of the films. I'm pretty sure this is where I saw The Bird With The Crystal Plumage for the first time. It put Argento on my radar, but it would be a couple more years, when Anchor Bay was releasing them on DVD that I would see any further Argento films. 

Phenomena would have been the first, a blind buy (as was my disposition at the time, following early websites that would provide details on upcoming releases and hitting up The Future Shop in Thunder Bay on a near-weekly basis to peruse the new releases), and it remains my favourite, but Deep Red, Tenebre, and Suspiria would follow in subsequent years, and I really, really liked them all (I don't know why I never got Inferno). I'm a horror dabbler in recent years, much more comfortable with the genre than I ever was, but 25-ish years ago and I certainly was still a wuss about it. But Argento's style, and the giallo subgenre in general, wasn't full of the gore and jump scares I was trying to avoid.

The Bird With The Crystal Plumage is very much a traditional giallo, but an early version of the more horror-laden subgenre it would become. It leans more into the mystery/discovery element and less into the acts of violence. It has, since my first viewing, held a real soft spot in my film-loving heart. To be honest, I think I've been nervous to rewatch for the first time in probably two decades because I'm worried it wouldn't hold up.

But it does hold up, in its own way. Not perfectly, but it's still full of the charms that originally endeared me to Argento, and has its own little surprises.  There are, of course, aspects that are outright absurd, such as the police basically encouraging a civilian to conduct their own investigation into a string of serial murders and even providing assistance. And there are also terribly outdated sexist tropes, like how the women just crumble into hysterics when faced with any sort of threat, that this feels like it should be smarter about.

Beyond that it's a somewhat jaunty mystery, where an American writer comes across the scene of a woman being stabbed in an art gallery, which is then correlated to a string of murders over the prior weeks. The writer cannot seem to resist carrying out his own investigation, even when threatened by the killer and had a couple attempts on his, and his girlfriend's life.

What one has to be mindful of is that The Bird With The Crystal Plumage is not a horror movie. It's leaning more into Hitchcock suspense terrain, but it also has a playfully subversive sense of humor that I found charming.  Since this was made in 1970, there have been countless hours of "procedural" television that show us how an investigation works, and there have been countless hours of forensic television that we have a sense of how that works as well. This film takes stabs at procedural investigation and forensics and it's almost tongue in cheek with how ... off... it all is. I delighted in it.

But the bones of The Bird With The Crystal Plumage are a solid mystery, one which is actually quite compelling to watch as it weaves an veers in unexpected directions from the typical mystery (in one sequence our protagonist is dodging bullets from an assassin, only to escape into public, and then immediately turn around and follow his attacker...I still don't think I've seen that anywhere else). I went from being worried about whether the film was actually any good to being completely sucked in by minute 20.  It's flawed, but super fun.

I had lent out my modest Argento collection to a friend of a girlfriend, only to lose touch with the lendee following the break-up. It was a write-off. I've lamented the loss of my Argento Anchor Bay DVDs for two decades now, and just last year started re-acquiring them and filling in some of the other Argento gaps I had. I'm excited to explore these films again, and some for the first time.  I've heard that by the 1990s Argento had lost his touch (and giallo, as a subgenre had definitely gone dormant in the wake of 80's slasher movies) so I may bow out of covering his entire portfolio at some point, but I know I'll be covering the 70's and 80's fully.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Venom: The Last Dance

2024, Kelly Marcel (directorial debut) -- download

Not sure why I watched this movie given my loathing for the previous, as well as the first movie, but I was curious as to how they were going to handle the whole interaction with the MCU, which was quickly followed the dissolution of any such plans. In fact, with the utterly disastrous flopping of Kraven the Hunter, I understand the whole "spider-verse" is over with? But I have a train-wreck fascination with this whole "franchise" and cannot help but watch them, like I cannot help but click those car crash Reels on FB (yeah yeah, allusions to living a train-wreck life?) and to be honest, I was actually tempted to go see Kraven in the cinema.... well maybe, once this three-month cough goes away.

ANYWAYZ.

They do answer my MCU question immediately, having this movie begin with Brock at a bar in Mexico, in the MCU after his multi-verse bloop for reasons I cannot remember, and then immediately having him bloop back into whatever you wanna call this other universe he is from... is it the spider-verse? He traumatizes the bartender Dani Rojas (Cristo Fernández, Ted Lasso) in both universes.

Brock (Tom Hardy, Inception) is once again aimless for reasons I cannot remember, and my lack of memory, supported by my "nodded off" comments in the last movie's post, explains why I have no idea who this police man (Stephen Graham, Snatch) Eddie is accused of killing is. Either way, they cannot return to San Fran and instead, decide to do a road trip to NYC to see the grand green lady. Well, technically, an air trip where Venom (Tom Hardy, The Dark Knight Rises) attaches himself and Eddy, to the side of a plane. Until the monster shows up.

Oh yeah, previous interlude -- Venom is being tracked by some sort of government agency based out of a being-shut-down Area 51 and they have lots of symbiotes (colours of the rainbow!), including the cop Eddie supposedly killed. And Keeley Jones (Juno Temple, Ted Lasso) works there as an alien obsessed scientist with an arm ruined by lightning. 

Anywayz, the monster fight dumps them in the Nevada desert where Venom tells Eddie his character backstory. Apparently the symbiotes were created by an ancient evil that calls itself Knull, who is an "as old as the universe", Elric of Melnibone, guy on a throne, Big Bad. The symbiotes rebelled and trapped Knull on his home planet, but eventually he created new monsters, called Xenophages, and sent them out into the universe to collect a particular symbiote who happens to have a key thingy inside it, called a Codex. Guess who has this Codex? But it really doesn't matter at all, all you have to care about is that there are monsters that even scare Venom the Chicken / Human Head eater.

They never really make it to NYC. They are interrupted by the government agency and captured, who in turn are interrupted by the monsters portal-ing there way to Area 51 for the Big Battle. This is where the movie decides the symbiotes are not all that bad -- "the enemy of my enemy...." and all that, and the soldiers from the government agency have to fight along side their symbiote-suited compadres against the monsters, which is not as successful as you would hope, as the monsters have a wood chipper in their mouth which makes quick work of the colour coded symbiotes + human. Things are dire.

And then Venom saves the day by ending the franchise / sacrificing himself. Oh, there are implications that now Knull knows where the Codex is, so we could continue the story, but we all know better. I guess the script was written with optimism & miracles could happen. But....

In general, I was less annoyed by this than the previous two. I still find the interaction between Venom and Brock irritating but there was enough interesting stuff happening elsewhere for me to find fun. The Vegas segment is worth a chuckle as is the insert of Eddie hitching a ride with Rhys Ifans (Knotting Hill) & hippie family, though it would have been funnier if Venom just lost whatever "humanity" he was learning, and ate the lot of them. Like everyone: the entire government agency, the other symbiotes, the xenophages and finally.... Eddie. The End. Now, THAT would be a movie I would probably like.

Also, I wished they had doubled-down on having "Ted Lasso" cast members in the movie. Why go for two when you could have Brendan Hunt (Beard) as a random American General assigned with shutting down Area 51 ! And Brett Goldstein (Kent!) as a black suited commando that only grunts, and Nick Mohammed (Nate) as a rando he bumps into while in Vegas... so many options!

KWIF: The Brutalist (+2)

KWIF = Kent's Week in Film. I've got the week off, so I've been doing more of what I like to do... consume! I am but a product of our capitalistic society.

This Week:
The Brutalist - 2024, d. Brady Corbet - in theatre
My Old Ass - 2024, d. Megan Park - amazonprime
Longlegs  - 2024, d. Osgood Perkins - amazonprime

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The Brutalist had, without a doubt, the most striking trailer of 2024. It's striking imagery, bold score and alluring typeface had a visceral impact on me as an audience member. Oh it was absolutely unclear to me, at all, what this movie was about, I just new it was something I must see. Leaving nothing about Gladiator II made even close to the impression that The Brutalist trailer did before it. 

Learning of its 3 hour and 35 minute runtime did not deter me (much...but any reservations I had abated once I noticed at the theatre earlier in the week that there was a sign posting about an intermission...bless the intermission!), and having no other agenda I set aside the better part of an afternoon to the film. 

There's something exciting about this process of discovery. Information is so readily at hand, our age of social media, podcasts, and other online discourse, it can be so simple to find out everything about an experience without ever having the experience, just as it can also be hard to avoid information at time. I knew The Brutalist was making top 10 lists (but not universally), but I still managed to avoid descriptions and even knowing what the film was about. I didn't even watch the trailer again, because I just wanted to experience it...thinking it would be an experience. At 215 minutes, one expects to be taken on a journey.

So, even knowing nothing about the film's story, I had expectations of what the film would be, and I have to say, dear reader, those expectations were not met. The Brutalist is an accomplished film, of which there's no doubt, and those key elements from the trailer (Daniel Blumberg's incredible score, the utterly unique credits, the myriad of gorgeous tracking shots) were indeed present in the film, and kept me present in the film.  Alongside stylistic details such as old film reel inserts (whether it's inforeels on Pennsylvania where the film is primarily set, or even the curiosity of vintage celluloid pornography) Lol Crawley's cinematography contributes to the exceptional style of the film that engaged me at times when the story seemed to lull.

I don't mean to say that the story is, in any way, badly executed or performed. I don't recall the last time I've seen Adrien Brody (Golden Globe winner for this role, for whatever that's worth) so invested in a role. He plays László Tóth, a Jewish Hungarian architect displaced by World War II, separated from his wife as they were filtered to different concentration camps, whom he's not even sure is alive when we first meet him upon his arrival in New York in 1947. It is a Jewish immigrant story, and broad strokes of assimilating in the polite hostility and microagressions of American culture, and the overwhelm of a society already in the thrall of capitalism are definitely felt. But László's story seems highly individualistic, that of someone who is already accomplished in his field given the opportunity to return to his chosen profession by an appreciative benefactor and struggling to complete his vision without compromise.

The first hundred minutes are very effective in establishing László's character, who he is as a person. He feels deep love and connection to his family, coming to America to work with his cousin at his Philadelphia-base furniture shop, but he doesn't feel the same need or desire to assimilate that his cousin does. László's experiences have only solidified his identity in a world cruelly intolerant towards it. He had an incident where his face was bashed in and to deal with the pain, he was given heroin on the transport overseas. He's now addicted. And he is recognized as a womanizer, at least by his cousin, and the way Corbet frames every meaningful female character on screen from László's point of view (from his cousin's American wife to his benefactor's 20-year-old daughter), center screen, gives the impression of attraction and danger. 

The film makes plain these weaknesses, alongside his pride and ego, and decades of similar stories have them feeling like a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. We're so familiar with the dramatic conflict between womanizing artist and their spouses, we've seen the story of the creator who loses everything to drugs, we've seen the story of the visionary whose ego inhibits their success. Every moment one of László's weaknesses presents itself, I would groan, just a little. I was predicting how it would contribute to László's inevitable failure.  As someone who is constantly getting in his own way, I have little patience for stories of people whose character flaws impede their success. Ironic, I know.

So it is much to Corbet's credit that his story never does explode these bombs that are set. I'm much more impressed with it in hindsight than I was in the moment.  I can't say, without a rewatch, whether these act as effective character colour, or if it's just Corbet subverting tropes (I go back to his framing of women in the first act as objects of desire, to the impression that it's definitely the latter).  But the setup of the pride/drugs/womanizing take up such space when Erzsébet (Felicity Jones, Rogue One) and his niece join him in the second half of the film (following the intermission) and she is forgiving of his past infidelity, and turns the moment of her forgiveness into a surprisingly sensual and intimate scene.

Erzsébet is a charming, cultured character who surprises everyone, including the audience. She is a gentle force to be reckoned with, to be sure. She's a devoted wife who adores her husband (as he adores her) but she's also got her own life, ambitions, and issues outside of László's concerns. She is rich enough to support her own story.

The thrust of the film, what most of it is centered around, is the build that László is leading for the Van Burens. His benefactor, Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pierce, Lockout) takes a deep liking to László despite their first contentious encounter, and the community center he wants László to build is in part a memorial to his mother but also a means of (quite literally) cementing his presence in this rural Pennsylvanian community.  It constantly seems a folly. László is at odds with seemingly everyone except Harrison about the build. The barrage of microagressions he receives from the foreman Harrison hires, Harrison's son who is managing the project's finances, the local townsfolk wary of this non-Christian foreigner all threaten his work. It is clear, from both László and Erzsébet's perspective of the project that there will be no compromise of his vision, even if it means he doesn't get paid.

For me, the film's most impactful moment was Harrison and László's trip to the marble quarry in Carrara, Italy. László had a pre-war relationship with one of the miners whom they meet up with and he takes them up the mountainside to show them the marbles. I have never seen a marble quarry before, and, looking at it from a macro scale, I was at once one is taken aback by the marrying of the terrain, but what is exposed underneath and the erratic design of the carving is visually fascinating.  Up in the mines themselves, there are corridors of marble, that László's friend explains, they miners used to resist (and literally crush) Mussolini's forces. There's the blood of resistance and freedom on those stones (it marries with László's artistic vision for his project nicely). 

An incident between Harrison and László on that trip to Italy wrecks László, and the sequences following the trip are the most difficult to process, as they end the story of our main characters with unexpected uncertainty, and the epilogue then jumps two decades into the future. The epilogue is a complete shift in tone stylistically that doesn't fit at all with what came before. It feels much like the end of a long-running TV show that jumps to the future to give you a sense of where things end up, only here, it doesn't feel like we've gotten a resolution to the story at hand. The epilogue serves up the specific intent and meaning of the build, which László never specifically mentions at any time to any one during the build process. In hindsight it does make events of the earlier film more resonant, but it's a really, truly weird mechanism to convey it.

It's this epilogue that I think left me so cold to the film. It doesn't fit.  And as much as I loved the design of the closing credits (although it is to read the stylized font as it scrolls horizontally upwards across the screen in multiple columns), Blumberg's accompanying electro-pop closing track, "Epilogue (Venice)" is just so anachronistic (despite otherwise being right up my alley) that it doesn't close out the film on a note that feels representative of the film.  The whole epilogue is just bizarre.

Going back to the trailer, it features such experimental boldness, but feels so assured, I was expecting a similar film that would stimulate, maybe even overstimulate with style. But it's not that. The Brutalist is much more subdued, maintaining a consistent mood throughout that makes it easy enough to lean back into, but didn't give me the capital e "Experience" I was thinking it would be.  It's good, not great.

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I've been meaning to catch up on Aubrey Plaza's filmography. There are a half-dozen or so well regarded smaller-budget films (eg. Emily the Criminal, Ingrid Goes West) that Plaza stars in that live on Netflix and Amazon that I keep popping up but I never actually watch. My Old Ass is just the latest of these.

The conceit of My Old Ass is that a young woman, Elliott (Maisy Stella), living on a cranberry farm in the Muskokas of Ontario is getting ready to leave for university, when she encounters her future self during a shroom trip. Even following the encounter, they, through magical realism, continue to maintain long distance contact, as Elliott spends her last summer at home.

The "time travel" conceit threatens to overwhelms story of this film, which is a lightly dramatic but breezy and comforting coming-of-age story of this turning point in Elliott's life, but it can only overwhelm conceptually. It is not the focus of the film.

Future Elliott warns herself to stay away from anyone named Chad (not sure if this was meant as a meta joke, or not, given the place "Chad" takes alongside "Karen" in our current lexicon), but when she inevitably meets Chad, he is sweet, funny, and they seem to click with disarming ease. She knows she should stay away from him, but she cannot help but be drawn to him.  This flies in the face of her identity as she's known it, a proud and out lesbian. This reexamining of her sense of self, and sexual fluidity seems like such modern, and necessary, exploration in cinema.

On top of romantic encounters, future Elliott provokes her with the initiative to connect more with her family during the summer, to get to know her younger brothers in a way she's failed to do so as she's explored her independence in her teenage years. She is changing, just as everything is changing around her.

It's an exceptionally sweet, charming, and lightly emotional film. It's wonderfully scripted by Park, and Stella, who cut her teeth on the TV series Nashville, carries this film ably and sublimely, like a Canadian Florence Pugh. She's a talent to watch. Plaza is only featured physically in the early and late stages of the film, but her very specific and well-known on-screen persona acts as a useful shorthand for us to understand Elliott (both now and in the future). She is a welcome presence and despite literally phoning in her role for much of the movie, invests a tremendous amount into the character that we only really see in the emotional closing minutes of the film.

I adored this movie.

[As I was writing this, I learned that Plaza's husband had died by suicide this week. Jeff Baena was a director, three of his films I had seen -- Joshy, The Little Hours and Horse Girl -- and he was still and emerging talent with a large support network, at least creatively. I am saddened by this loss. To my Toronto friends, if you or anyone you know is in need of mental health support, call 211.  Other Canadian resources can be found here. ]

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There is definitely a divide in the reaction to Longlegs, at least from what I've seen. Critics have been praising it and planning it, audiences have been reacting much the same, with a plethora of 5* reviews, but even more 1* reviews. One thing for sure is the division has been profitable for the film's distributor, Neon, to the tune of over $125 million at the box office.

I avoided Longlegs when it was in theatres because it was already a zeitgeisty thing, and I tend to recoil when things get too popular. If it's already become a meme, I'm less willing to engage with it. Plus, I knew Longlegs came from The Blackcoat's Daughter director Osgood Perkins, and I hated that film. A friend petitioned me to watch Longlegs as he was curious my reaction to it, and a recent podcast episode of Comedy Bang Bang where Taran Killam played "Longlegs" in a sort of Emo Phillips-esque affectation spurred on my curiosity.

I hated this film.

As I watched it, I wondered if how I was reacting was just my preconceived dislike for Perkins, because visually, this is a striking movie. Perkins' stylizing of flashbacks as, like, super8 film, or his title cards, or throughout his framing in sequences are all so striking, I should be drawn to it. But his stylizing doesn't make up for the faults in his storytelling.

Like The Blackcoat's Daughter, Perkins' story works its way backwards and forwards to a semi-twist ending, but so much of his storytelling is the obvious and frustrating omission of information as to leave the twist to the finale.  These both are stories told where it's not so much the protagonist - in this case FBI rookie Lee Harker (Maika Monroe, in a performance which I'm not thrilled with, but is clearly what the director was asking for) - unfurling a mystery, but the story being a mystery to be unfurled for the audience through the storytelling of cinema(!). Oh, there are discoveries for Harker to make in the process, but we as the audience are intentionally having key things withheld from us that Harker already knows (as opposed to the common tension-raising device where we as the audience learn things ahead of the story's protagonist). It doesn't work for me, at all.

On top of that, the film presents Harker has having some low level telepathic or extrasensory ability, and just drops that nugget following a visually appealing but contextually confounding testing sequence, and then doesn't follow up on nor explore it. We're just supposed to accept it. Perkins wants this to be a reality where the paranormal exists, but also wants it to be real-world grounded, and he doesn't marry the two effectively. This feels like it is trying to be Silence of the Lambs married with some early Hollywood Cronenberg psychodrama vibes, but it doesn't come close. It doesn't help that its astoundingly clear Perkins has zero concept of how the FBI (or any investigative agency, for that matter) actually function. The investigation is a bigger fantasy than any of the metaphysical aspects of the film. 

Nic Cage plays Longlegs, the serial killer of the film, and does so in heavy falseface makeup that makes him look like Teddy Perkins in that great Atlanta episode. Cage is allowed to do his Cage thing and it is what it is. A lot of the divisiveness in audiences seems to stem from whether this performance is good or terrible. It's neither, it is just Cage and it didn't excite me one way or the other.

The film's ultimate reveal, for me, was simply unsatisfying. I had two or three other scenarios playing in my head as the film was withholding so much, all of which I would have found superior to what resulted, and yet would not have changed my opinion of the film.  I just didn't buy into anything this film was selling at any point. 

To Oz Perkins: you're an incredible stylist, please let someone else write for you. Until then, you're on my shit list.

But Is It Horror? Maybe to some, but I found it more frustrating than scary. I don't think Perkins ever really settled on whether it was suspense or horror, and that indecision is tangible.

[Toastypost - we disagree, vehemently]

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Long Distance

2024, Josh Gordon, Will Speck (The Switch) -- Amazon

Also called Distant. Also written about by Kent.

Random space-movie time during the Xmas Break, this one doing a typical riff on Pitch Black as in "crash on planet, survive ugly monsters, in the dark". And yet, despite being a "borrow most everything" kind of movie, it did have some interesting details.

OK, so Andy (Anthony Ramos, She's Gotta Have It) is a space miner on a sub-light starship, which means everyone is cryo sleeping, when the ship veers too close to an asteroid belt, catches some rock, and begins to break up. Andy is tossed into his escape pod which is installed with an AI assistant called LEONARD (its a long acronym for something) which is ... the value model. As his pod jets off, we see most others are destroyed upon launch or upon atmo entry -- they are just not very good "escape" pods, I guess. Also the value models?

After extracting himself from the wreckage, and constantly arguing with LEONARD (Zachary Quinto, Heroes), he comes across another survivor Dwayne (Kristofer Hivju, Cocaine Bear), a cockroach of a man -- this is not his first flirtation with disaster. Dwayne lets loose some details about the company only caring about the bottom line, which seems contradictory to his attempts to send a signal to The Company so they can be rescued. If The Company didn't care enough to give them fully functional escape pods, why would they send out a likely VERY expensive rescue ship? Also, if starship travel is generally in years, then why does Dwayne think it will only be about 18 months? Whatever, one of the charms of low budget space movies is all the logical fallacies and screenwriters who don't care they don't know much about space. No matter, Dwayne gets snatched by a Giant Monster as soon as Andy turns his back. Andy just assumes Dwayne dumped him and continues on his way.

Andy ends up making communications contact with Naomi (Naomi Scott, Charlie's Angels) who is trapped in her pod, but has plenty of air and supplies, enough for the both of them. Her pod was not the value model -- depending on your rank in The Company, the more likely you are to have actually serviceable gear. Maybe the rescue ship is only for them? Also, Andy's air is running out cuz value model space suits tear easily. LEONARD thinks Andy should just head to the remains of the ship, but Andy feels beholden to finding Naomi, even after he discovers that Giant Monsters are stalking him. 

Much of the movie focuses on the quippy, almost flirty conversations between Naomi and Andy. She knows she needs him and he knows she is so very much more capable than he is. And considering the entire walk is at night, the movie is able to keep its budget down, so that which it does give us is pretty decent. Its a good looking space movie. 

Eventually Andy does rescue Naomi and they do get to the remains to the crashed ship and they do survive being eaten by the Giant Monsters and find a safe place and enough supplies to await the company, which is completely only coming because Naomi is in the right social strata, to come pick them up.

Given, there is very little original about it, it still kept my attention with minimal annoyance beyond seeing Dwayne used as cannon fodder --- Kristofer Hivju deserves more work. Also, Anthony as Andy, and Naomi as Naomi... is there a phrase for when characters are provided the name of the actors playing them?

Nosferatu(s)

 ...or... Nosferathree?

Nosferatu - 2024, d. Robert Eggers - in theatre
Nosferatu the Vampyr - 1979, d. Werner Herzog - tubi
Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie Des Grauens - 1922, d. F.W. Murnau - youtube

The theatre I watched a midday screening of Robert Eggers' adaptation/iteration of Nosferatu was brutally cold. I had taken my winter wear off and placed it beside me when I sat down, but over the opening 20 minutes of the film, I started putting them back on, first draping my 3/4-length wool coat over my lap and legs, then wrapping my scarf around my neck, followed by pulling up the hood of my sweater and tossing my gloves back on. Eventually I had my coat in reverse draped over my shoulder and my hands clasped together underneath.

This was unintentional experiential cinema. Eggers' film is a chilly damn film as is. It is so desaturated and bereft of colour at times as to be completely black and white (the rhyme and reasoning of the actual black and white footage within the film I could not completely grok). Shadows, as well as the cold, have an equally heavy part to play in conveying the vibes of the film to the audience. The dark of the the theatre, especially a cold theatre, welcomes the light of the screen, and psychosomatically one can seemingly feel the heat emanating off the flames of a fireplace or candle that offer the only salvation from the frigid blackness.

Needless to say, I was kind of swept up in it all. While not outright scary, there's a simmering intensity that always threatens to erupt into a roiling boil if it can ever get up to temperature. There may be a startle or two in the film, but mostly it's just raising one's blood pressure (makes it all the faster to extract from one's veins).  It was my heartbeat shaking my whole body not shivers.

Nosferatu originated as a German bastardization of Dracula, a German production featuring German characters in a German setting for a German audience. Like a monster from a classic movie, F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu was targeted for its evil (copyright infringement against Bram Stoker's estate) and ordered destroyed...but still it survives.  What's more, Murnau's story is considered perhaps the superior of the early cinematic vampire tales. Much like Bram Stoker's Dracula by Coppola revitalized that classic tale in the 90's for modern audiences, restoring the character's menace after years of being reduced to a camp figure, I think Eggers' masterful expansion of Murnau's film into a gorgeous gothic epic will cement the Nosferatu as the superior cinematic vampire, even if Dracula remains the most widely recognized name.

What Eggers does with Murnau and Henrick Galeen's Dracula riff is quite remarkable. The allure of vampires has, for generations, been a sexual one, at least subtextually. The idea that the victim of a Count Dracula or Orlok is helpless before them, perhaps even drawn to them, and then, in some regards, excited or aroused by the act of bloodsucking has been made text before, but here it's the whole backdrop.

Ellen (played by Lily-Rose Depp, a long way away from Yoga Hosers) is the first face we see, a flashback to her younger years. If not immediately clear, the brief prologue finds Ellen in her burgeoning womanhood, lonely and longing for some form of connection. This draws Orlok to her, and a connection is formed through her desire, broken only upon meeting and wedding Thomas (Nicholas Hoult, About A Boy). Following their nuptuals, Thomas returns to work, eager to climb the ranks and provide for his wife, and is immediately assigned by Herr Knock to Count Orlok's affairs, as Orlok (a completely unrecognizable Bill Skarsgård, Barbarian) wishes to emigrate from his Transylvanian estate to a local Wisborg manor. Thomas is tasked with the extensive trek to Orlok's home to finalize the paperwork. What Thomas doesn't know is that Knock is Orlok's servant in darkness, and this all seems to be a set-up. 

Upon Thomas' arrival and, in a manner of speaking, subjugation at Orlok's castle, Ellen's connection to Orlok returns, and her troubles worry her friends to whom her care was entrusted. They seek the help of a doctor who, after long bouts of sedation, speculates that her disposition may be supernatural in nature, and turns to an blackballed professor Von Franz (Willem Dafoe).

In Eggers' telling, it's not just that Orlok is enamoured with Ellen, but he's metaphysically drawn to her. Von Franz discerns that Ellen is possessed, and the incoporeal being inside her is what has enthralled the Count, but it was her primal urges that let it in (Depp's physical performance in expressing the possession is incredible and unsettling). The metaphor here of women's sexual awakening, and demonization at the hands of the patriarchy, is pretty exposed, but necessary in its bluntless.

I had not seen Nosferatu in any of its iterations before (I may have read a comic adaptation once...maybe), and yet its story was not unfamiliar to me (as it is such a spin on the Dracula tale). But the spin I love is how Orlok's travels from Transylvania to Wisborg brings with him plague, first on the ship he and his caskets are transported upon, and then upon arriving to the town's shores.  The rats that spill out from the ship then become an ever-present backdrop within the film. (Seriously, if you have musophobia, avoid this or any of the Nosferatu films). 

Where the first act is largely Thomas' story, and the second act is squarely Ellen's, the third is devoted to the shadow of the vampire.  It's not Orlok's character that gets explored, but his impact upon everyone and everything as his plague spreads.

Having immediately turned to watching, in reverse order, the Herzog version and the Murnau version, I had thought Ellen's bravery at facing Orlok on her own to be Eggers' invention, as she is the clear hero of the story, but no, this is an element present in each of the tales. If anything, in the prior versions, it's Ellen's own initiative that she does this, whereas in Eggers it is partly by Von Franz's suggestion.  It doesn't rob her explicitly of any agency, and it is a more logical solution that this man who studies the occult does have the answer, but I think Ellen finding the answer on her own is just that much more resonant.

The production of Eggers' Nosferatu is gorgeous and massive and so particular and detailed. It is a feast in its own right. But what Eggers does, which neither Murnau nor Herzog do in their versions, is tell a story that is character-centric. Eggers invests in Ellen and Thomas and the Hardings in a way that neither previous films does. Eggers shrouds Orlok in shadows for much of the film, he's a towering, intimidating figure with an affected, slow, rolling, gravelly Balkan accent that forces your attention upon him, but you never see him clearly, not until the final moments of the film.  It's a stark juxtaposition to the Max Schreck and Klaus Kinski versions who are thin, sallow, and intimidating more in their eeriness than any physical threat. They are presented in stark light, casting shadows darkly behind them, instead of living among them. It's a pointed difference.

The Herzog version, now 45 years old, is a tough watch. Herzog has his ways about him, some good, some not-so-good, and those ways are quite present in his adaptation. For some odd reason, Herzog decided to revert the characters to the Bram Stoker-originated names. Huller becomes Harker once more, Ellen is Mina, Orlok is Dracula, and Knock is Renfield.  It didn't seem right, Nosferatu having taken on its own distinct life, to marry it so boldly back to its source (it would be like turning the 50 Shades of Grey characters back into Twilight figures).

Herzog casts his best frenemy Kinski as Dracula, the stunning Isabelle Adjani as Mina, and Bruno Ganz (looking distractingly like Noel Fielding here) as Jonathan Harker. It seems the majority of the other roles were just people pulled into production, and not professional actors. There's a real fly-by-night, no-rehearsal atmosphere to this. The actors all seem all be at odds with the material, and there's no tangible connection between the ADR line readings and the material. If Eggars' version was a cold production because of the atmosphere of the film, Herzog's version is a cold one by the sheer detachment everyone seems to have with the material.

If anything, Herzog's desire is to capture the imagery of the original but in his own manner. There's clearly reverence to Murnau's film, but also deference. Herzog retains or directly translates scenes from Murnau's film that should have been modernized for a "talkie" or adapted into his own sensibilities.

The edits in Herzog's films lack fluidity. It's a staccato production that doesn't seem to possess an inner logic of its own, the events that happen seem to happen as reference to the classic film, not as its own story progression.

As much as I found this 1979 production of Nosferatu to be stiff and very, very awkward, it does feature some affectionately captured imagery of the Czech countryside and the city sequences in Delft, Netherlands (standing in for Wisborg).  The film also features an immensely powerful score with music by the collective called Popol Vuh -- and including some classical tracks and folk songs -- but it's never more potent than in the opening moments as Herzog-the-documentarian lingers on imagery of real Mexican mummies (the Mummies of Guanajuato) which become more unsettling the more you stare at them... the expectation that they will move, or are moving is hard to escape.

Kinski's Orlok is, as to be expected from the performer, quite an odd presence. There's no outright threat that Orlok presents, but there is an inferred menace. Kinski's vocal performance is pinched, quite, a bit whiny, and his demure physicality (borrowed from Schreck but even further receded into itself) has a certain self-consciousness to it. In none of the films do we see anyone else present at Orlok's estate (he notes that the staff has been dismissed for the evening upon Thomas/Jonathan/Hutter's arrival, but it's later clear there is no one, just Orlok) but it's only in Herzog's film to we feel that absurd loneliness, and the realization that the elaborate feasts prepared for Jonathan were made by Orlok. Just the image of him in a kitchen slaving away all night (and then for Jonathan to only eat the grapes!) is absurd and hilarious.  We find Orlok doing his own physical labour, many times, and he comes off as a sad, lonely old vampire, a weaselly wimp who would not be worth paying any attention to if not for his control over the plague he's brought.

Herzog did unleash his own plague of rats on the location of this film, and while it's much more staged than the presumably cgi-accentuate rats of Eggar's version, the ever-presence of rats in the third act is just as squick-inducing.  There were allegations that Herzog's treatment of the rats and other animals were exceptionally inhumane, which makes this already disappointing film that much harder to like.

Stepping back to Murnau's original silent black-and-white, I first had to find a version that didn't seem too modern. The iterations that first pop up on Tubi or YouTube have a score that seems far too modern. The version I wound up watching had a vibrant orchestral score, but  Hans Erdmann's original orchestral score for the film is mostly lost to time with only partial elements preserved. I believe score for this 2005/2006 restoration was by Berndt Heller, and serves the film well by and large.

The cards in this restoration are said to be the original German cards (with new English subtitles), and what's interesting is much of the tale is being told to the audience by a narrator.  I'm not sure if the narrator is intended to be a character in the film... I suspect it could be Harding, the shipowner, but it's not conclusive.  Unlike later "talkies" which have a narration which intones the telling of a tale, this narration doesn't at all take away the immediacy of the story. It's the magic of silent films.

I was worried after watching Herzog's film that Murnau's original would be similarly stilted in its storytelling, but it is an absolutely fluid tale, with Murnau at times getting lost in the minutiae of it all (especially in the plague scenes). The transitional moments is clearly what was missing from Herzog's film, but they rarely feel labored here, instead providing necessary context and an overall natural sense to the world.

Like I mentioned with Herzog's version, Murnau's story is straight story, not incredibly focused on character or motivation. In a radical departure from what would come in the later adaptations, Huller here (played by Gustav von Wangenheim) is an exceptionally happy-go-lucky fellow. He seems overjoyed by the opportunity presented to him by Herr Knock, and every step of the way, up until the moment he reaches the castle, he approaches with the dopiest smile on his face. At one point a Romani woman gives him a book about vampyrs, witchcraft and the like and he looks at it briefly before tossing it carelessly over his shoulders and falling off to a troubleless sleep. In the morning he picks it up again, has a good laugh, and throws it to the ground mockingly.  This performance reminded me of much of Billy Magnussen's repertoire of playing conceited idiots too ignorant to see the trouble before them. 

This tone to Huller, of being just a generally jovial fellow, is so starkly different than what either Ganz or Hoult did with the character, that it doesn't convey nearly the same foreboding sense of doom before him. And yet, being so upbeat, it kind of accentuates the threat to the shadows that will fall upon him. The score finds a middle ground between foreshadowing and Huller's mirthful attitude, but the moment he encounters Orlok, in the guise as his own coachman, it goes to full symphonic intensity.

Murnau's version is never scary, because it never truly invests us in the figures at play, but it is exceptionally accomplished in its storytelling and its clarity of intent. The first act here is mirrored very similarly by its successors, but the second act is largely transitional. The events on the boat, which heavily foreshadow the plague to come, continue to build the menace that comes to full fruition in the third act, but there's no characters carrying us there.  

The spread of plague is and the city's reaction to it is, as in Herzog's version, my favourite part, but for very different reasons. Here it's the details, the specificity, the measures the town goes through to try and alert people to the plague and to halt its progression. It's all for naught as it's not a common plague.

After consuming all three films in a 24 span, I can safely say that Eggers' version is my clear favourite. It's the only one of the three that held me rapt in attention. It seemingly embraces both Herzog and Murnau's versions, and takes many steps beyond what both of them even attempted to accomplish with the story.  It's not a perfect film (held back only by some puzzlingly abrupt cuts and perhaps too theatrical of a performance from Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Harding) but it is so very strikingly visual and takes the story and characters to a whole other level. Murnau's version is a classic, and retains some vitality over 100 years later, if now completely overshadowed by Eggers' revision (the only thing that won't be bettered is the visual of Count Orlok, which is a permanent fixture in pop culture). Herzog's version can just fade into the background as irrelevant.