KWIF: Dust Bunny (+1)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Since I posted last week's KWIF a little later into this week, this is a slighter week, but also a lot of re-watches, like Star Wars and Empire (bootleg versions of the original releases transferred direct from film stock, including all the magnificent film grain and burn marks) and getting sucked into the last half of films like Batman Returns and Spider-Man:No Way Home. Sometimes you just need a little comfort food.

This Week:
Dust Bunny (2025, d. Bryan Fuller - rental)
La grenouille et la baliene aka Tadpole and the Whale ("Tales for all #6"; 1987, d. Jean-Claude Lord - crave)

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I see that Toasty has a stump file for his viewing of Dust Bunny and I'm extremely curious as to his thoughts on the film because it was Toasty who introduced me to director Bryan Fuller's TV work (Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls, Hannibal) and made me a big, big fan. But I'm not going to sneak a peek, because I don't want it to impact my thoughts here at all.

My thoughts are simple.

What a fucking delight.

For Fuller's first cinematic outing he's chosen to create a twee horror action comedy drama about an orphan girl with a monster under her bed who hires a hitman to kill it.

It's an absurd premise, so it takes the absolute right touch in order to make such a wild tale work, and, naturally, Fuller has the perfect touch.

Fuller's work has always been a mish-mash of darkness and whimsy, of beauty and chaos, often with a morbid and playful fascination with death. So the story of Aurora (the marvelous Sophie Sloan) is of course one of a child who has had to grow up too quickly, who sees the world for the dark and dangerous place it is but knows she needs to navigate it anyway, and yet is still a child who doesn't fully understand the world, and so she has to interpret things with her young mind's knowledge. She has been party to a lot of death, so death is just as intriguing as it is frightening.

When, inevitably, her new foster parents are eaten, she looks to her roughneck neighbour (in the subtitles he's called "Intriguing Neighbour") to be not her protector, but her contract killer (how she obtains the money to hire him is hilarious). Intriguing Neighbour (Mads Mikkelson, Hannibal) is, well, fascinated by this little girl (whose name he can barely pronounce right, so he winds up calling "Little Girl" half the time) who is so bold, so independents, so tough, but also naive and childish.

Intriguing Neighbour investigates Aurora's apartment, and finds that a struggle had taken place, but he believes that it was enemies, or bounty hunters, coming to get him who accidentally stumbled on her place. In talking with his handler (Sigourney Weaver, Working Girl), she says that Aurora knows too much and she is a liability. So the handler sends someone to dispose of her.  

So Intriguing Neighbour has assassins coming to get him, while having to protect Aurora from assassins coming for her, and also dealing with the social worker coming around to check on Aurora... and of course, the eventual realization that there is indeed a monster under Aurora's bed.

While the story of Dust Bunny takes place in, in theory, New York maybe, it was shot in Hungary and the feel of the environments (the apartments, the hallways, the alleys, the streets, the rooftops, the restaurants) all seem so European. So it's jarring when Intriguing Neighbour mentions the FBI...I was like "they're way out of their jurisdiction!" 

That said, this is a Bryan Fuller joint and the man's sense of style and design is impeccable. He and his team of art directors, set designers, costumer, and hair and make-up decorate the hell out of every shot of this movie and it's all gorgeous. Fuller's cinematographer, Nicole Hirsch Whitaker, makes every frame so alluring to the eye. The culminating effect of the story and the style make it basically "what if Leon: The Professional was made by Jean-Pierre Jeuenet instead of Luc Besson". It really feels like Amelie but with monsters and killers.

The tone will not be for everyone. It's not a serious movie, and yet it cares for its characters deeply, which is the Fuller way. For all the style and flights of fancy he likes to have in his productions, Fuller always has a grounding point in his characters. Here it is the relationship building between Aurora and Intriguing Neighbour, which, again, is not unlike The Professional but mercifully minus that film's ...undertones. This is really the bond of a girl in need of a parent in her life, someone she can trust to protect her, and for Intriguing Neighbour it's finding something in his life that is actually worth fighting for, and feeling for.

It's a violent film, but a bloodless one. It's got some grim moments (such as Aurora watching, and helping, Intriguing Neighbour dispose of a body) but it's still pretty light even in those moments. It's a fantasy horror in the way kids movies sometimes were in the 1980's but this one is in the vein of Burton or Del Toro, being a fairy tale for adults.

I adored this movie, and if I had to go back to my "best of 2025" list, this would certainly make my top ten. 

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Continuing my viewings of the Quebecois produced "Tales for all" series of films that were prevalent on Canadian television during my youth, we step into a French-Canadian stab at the Flipper/Free Willy style a-kid-and-their-sea-mammal story, one which really, really did not work for me as much as I tried to get into the spirit of what was intended.

Daphné (Fanny Lauzier) is a precocious, independent pre-teen in Mingan, Quebec. In the film, the small community set in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is based around a cozy tourist resort and the attraction of whale watching. Not only are there tourists, but researchers and film crews who come to document the sea life and island birds.

Daphné has a best friend name Elvar, a dolphin who journeys up from Florida every summer. They seemingly can communicate with one another, and Daphné also seems to understand whale songs. When she's tested, it's discovered she can hear frequencies four times higher than the average person (I'm not sure how that translates into understanding what the sounds mean...but the film asks you to just go with it.)

We meet and experience Daphné's specialness via two visitors to Mignan, young couple Marcel (called "Michael" in English subtitles, played by Denis Forest) and his pregnant wife Julie (Marina Orsini). They are gateway characters who serve little purpose other than to immediately fall in love with this precious child and provide us an "in" into her unique experience.

The film is largely conflict free throughout the first two acts, save for Daphné and her other similarly-aged friend causing trouble for the touring guide and camera crews by playing pranks on them and having zero consequences for doing so. But then Daphné learns that the resort is being sold and she aspires to stage a protest but is interrupted by having to rescue a whale, followed by rescuing Marcel and Julie after they become stranded, and then herself be rescued after she's knocked unconscious and falls into the water without a lifejacket on.

There's two distinct parts to the film, which is the Mignan setting and the scenes in the bay with Elvar, the latter of which were shot in Floridia (if I'm interpreting the end credits correctly). It's well constructed filmmaking to make these two locations feel at least geographically together, as the characters enter and leave interacting with the dolphin (and not just the main 3 cast, but a few others as well) almost seamlessly.

The "Tales for all" series has had some very surprising aspects to its stories, often with the child protagonists having to contend with real-world ramifications, or just being youth and having to experience things that are outside of their control. I was really expecting more of the same out of Tadpole and the Whale but at every turn, it's a film that just wants Daphné to be unchallenged by the harsh realities of the world. A whale getting caught in a fishing net is treated as adventure to which Daphné is up for the challenge, and yet the sale of the resort, which would mean her parents likely losing their jobs, and Elvar being driven away from his annual summer home. These would be harsh realities that seem in keeping with what the young protagonists of prior "Tales for all" would have to face ... but not Daphné.

No, Daphné gets to run free and wild and just be a special little flower and the world will bend to her every desire, which is nice fantasy, but feels so antithetical to this series. She should experience crushing disappointment, especially when it comes to her having to face of choice of going off to rescue her friends or staging a (probably ineffectual) protest. Where's the assaulting reality ala Bach et Bottine? 

Besides some wonderfully fun dolphin times and lots of great whale footage, La grenouille et la baliene is a fairly dull movie with almost all characters but Daphné being relatively unexplored. Any personal tidbits (like the conflict between the two Grand-papas or Julie's pregnancy) have little weight on the characters or the story overall.  

Chiplog: Doritos Ultimate Garlic Parm

Auto-immune issues have turned my diet into a minefield, treacherous to navigate lest I risk upset stomach, inflammatory skin disorders and migraines. The main adversaries are gluten, onion and alcohol. The latter is easily avoidable, the former are not. And one of the biggest sacrifices as a result has been my snack game. Almost every flavoured chip has onion powder in it, so when I find one without...it goes in the log.

Pre-chip: One of my favourite all-time chips is Zesty Doritos. Just an absolute blast of, well, zesty, cheesy flavour. Even now, with my systemic issues, I still will sneak a few Zestys into my body...just enough that it won't trigger the worst of the side effects. (The rest of the Doritos line I really don't care at all for, except the regular old Nacho flavour which has always just been...fine). 

I can still eat tortilla chips until my heart is content, but I don't usually go for tortilla chips as a snack, but instead as a meal with delicious toppings and dips, so not having Doritos in my life hasn't been much of a loss.  

Still, here's a brand new flavour of Doritos... and I have to wonder... is this riffing on the Miss Vickie's Cacio E Pepe?

Ingredients: Corn, Veg Oil, Seasoning (16 components), Calcium Hydroxide

First smell: The very first think I smell is that familiar corn-and-oil waft, and for a second I get a hint of the traditional Doritos smell, but that is soon overpowered by, I guess, the garlic?  There's definitely a garlic component to the smell, but it's not just that, and it's not necessarily cheese.  Maybe it's the sour cream and the undisclosed "spices and herbs"? 

Just to be clear, it's not the most pleasant smell. Not enticing in the slightest. It's actually kind of putting me off.

First taste: The good thing is the taste is better than the smell. The sour cream has an immediate punch, which is then joined by a complexity of other flavours stinging all areas of the tongue. On first taste, these flavours are not working in unison.

Aftertaste: Honestly, the sides of my tongue feel a little electrified...like when you put your tongue on both polarities of a 9-volt battery (we've all done it, don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about) or if you have fillings and you've chewed on tinfoil (we've all done it, don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about).  The odd thing is you would think the garlic would linger the most but it's just the corn-and-oil taste lingering.

Mass consumption: Eating a half dozen or so in quick succession and, for sure, it's those patented Doritos mixture of undisclosed "spices and herbs" that announce themselves the most and remind you that you are indeed eating a Dorito. It's sort of a mix of Cool Ranch, Nacho and Zesty, but subdued comparatively to any of them. You're still definitely getting more tortilla flavour than any other Dorito I've ever had before. 

Final thoughts: Ultimate Garlic Parm is a more subdued Dorito, but this is Doritos we're talking about here and even a subdued Dorito is popping with flavour. This isn't like the Bret's Chip version of Dorito where it's going for all-natural minimal, sophisticated hint of flavouring, this is still smacking you on the tongue like a bad boy but it's taking a more round-about way than your average Dorito. As a guy who really can't eat the other Doritos, this would do in a pinch if I had a Doritos hankering (which is rare anyway), but it's not going to incite a Doritos hankering. As a new flavour to the Doritos line I don't see it exciting the Doritos fan so I'm betting this will last on shelves for the season never to be seen from again.

Oh, and it's absolutely nothing like Miss Vickie's Cacio E Pepe.

[Slight update... even genuinely not loving the flavour, I am finding it hard to stop eating them. There is the right addictive combination of salt, cheese, sweet, tang and grease to make it highly consumable.]

[Double slight update... I did not feel wonderful the rest of the day/evening after eating a half a bag of these things. Not sick to my stomach or anything, just heavy with that lingering charge in my mouth. Knocking another full point off the rating]

Rating: 6.7 5.7

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Predator: Badlands

2025, Dan Trachtenberg (Prey) -- download

Kent's view. We heartily agree.

He is Dek of the Yautja. Well, not yet. Yautja was a term for the "predators" from novel adaptations in 90s, amusingly to explore the "Alien vs Predator" landscape. This movie does, kind of, follow in that assumption, but referencing the Weyland-Yutani corporation, and its most famous invention -- the synth. But again, I am getting ahead of myself.

He is Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, Far North), a young (not yet) yautja and a "runt". He believes he can prove himself to his father and clan (??), and become yautja proper, by going to the planet of Genna (I imagine its supposed to sound like Gehenna, a Biblical name for Hell) and kill the legendary Kalisk beast, something that has killed all predators who have tried before. But his father has other things in mind -- Dek's brother is supposed to kill Dek and when he refuses, violently, dad kills the brother instead. Dek barely escapes on his brother' ship, crash landing on the very very VERY dangerous planet, where pretty much every living thing is trying to kill every other living thing.

Even the use of that idea -- "every living thing is trying to kill you," is such a classic adventure trope, that I knew I was in for a fun, violent romp.

After, immediately, almost dying a handful of times he finds a very chirpy girl in a creature's nest -- well, half a girl. Well, half a SYNTH girl, named Thia (Elle Fanning, Maleficent). She knows Yautja ("we hunt alone") but also knows she needs his help if she is going to get the other half of her body, and get back to her sister synth (electronic/dark wave 80s cover band) Tessa (Elle Fanning, The Neon Demon). And while on the road, the buddies pick up a tough-hided monkey-thing for comedy value -- actually, a lot of the movie is very successfully, and intentionally, funny. As Kent said, this is an escapist throwback adventure movie, something so unlike any other Predator movie.

This is not as ground breaking as Prey, and oddly enough, I kind of see it as a mirror reflection of it. Both star young unappreciated members of their tribes going forth against a more than formidable enemy. The former movie courted controversy with its loudest, most toxic fan-base, this one almost courts them, but I am sure they complained about it anyway -- fortunately (??), the loudest and most toxic have been having a field day in our part of the world, so I doubt that this was much more than a blip on their radar.

We are in a weird time for film making, wherein the pivot from cinema to other platforms is no longer the greatest threat to movies -- the political climate is. Sure, Hollywood is and always has been the Toxic Right's boogeyman, it doesn't take long to see how the corporations that run it are being altered in favour of the dominant political machine down there. Movies like this one, a-political scifi adventure romps might actually excel, as long as they cater to the straight, white, male lead viewers, which is a shame considering scifi in general was always a commentary of social climates, and I hope they stay that way.

1-1-1: For All Mankind S1

I haven't been writing about TV. The last time I wrote about TV was back in May of 2025. But I still watch a lot of TV, but most, but not all, of late, has been what I consider toss-away, mindless fluff or murder-adjacent shows that I spend as much time watching my phone, as I do what's on the screen. This is an attempt to watch something with more texture, and write about it, using Kent's useful TV format.

Kent wrote about this season back in... 2023.

The What 100. NASAPunk is a term coined for video game Starfield, promoting a love of the 60s and 70s NASA aesthetic -- the computers and buttons and fish bowl helmets, the daring & machismo. This alt-history NASAPunk series starts diverging with the Soviets landing on the moon first and goes from there, imagining a world where the US never stops trying to one-up Russia. We begin with Apollo 11, rush women into the space program and actually land a habitat on the moon, all the while focusing on the lives and troubles of the astronauts & their families, through triumph, failure and loss.

(1 Great) The alt in the history, of course. While adhering to the social challenges at the time, its not afraid to make great leaps forward. Sure, the whole Nixon's Women stunt is sexist and flagrant, but it does advance sexual equality in leaps & low-g bounds. The key story about beautiful, blonde Tracy Stevens surpassing everyone's expectations, including fellow female astronauts and her (also astronaut) husband is worth cheering about. That the show actually returns to the moon is incredible, because IRL, Americans have only walked on the moon six times, and we barely acknowledge it.

Also, of course, the NASAPunk -- I spent an inordinate amount of time looking away from the main characters, and the story, at all the practical designed "stuff".

(1 Good) The soap opera. Usually I tire quickly of the social drama in these shows, just looking at my phone until the next exciting launch into space, but I found myself very very wrapped up in the lives, which is the Ronald D Moore way. Astronaut Molly Cobb's (Sonya Walger, Lost) utterly supportive hippie husband Wayne (Lenny Jacobson, Nurse Jackie), the so very tormented alpha astro-wife Karen Baldwin (Shantel VanSanten, The Boyz) who is equally detestable as she is sympathetic.

(1 Bad) Not sure if I found anything in particular bad but for the reality that no matter how much the show wanted to diverge from the sexism, racism and homophobia, it was a part of the era and had to be depicted. This show so much wants to embrace the ideals that were on the TV at that time in the real world, in that NASA and its endeavours represented an embracing of a brighter future.

KWIF: Zootopia 2 (+3)

 KWIF=Kent's Week In Film. Normally at the start of each year I take a week off work with the intention of doing little else but watching and writing about movies. This year, I have a different break coming up, so the usual week off wasn't in the cards.  

This Week:
Zootopia 2 (2025, d. - in theatre)
Caught Stealing (2025, d. Darren Aronofsky - crave)
The Great Land of Small ("Tales for all #5" - 1987, d. Vojtěch Jasný - crave)
Skinamarink (2023, d. Kyle Edward Ball - Tubi)

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I liked Zootopia just fine (apparently, like everyone else, I loved Flash the Sloth), and I like Detectives Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Wilde (Jason Bateman) just fine too. It's nice to see them again. But I looove the city of Zootopia, this wonderfully ridiculous and improbably realm where all the anthropomorphic beasts cohabitate in an attempt at harmony. I love all the knick-knacks and tchotchkes, all the bells and whistles, all the details big, very big, small and very small. More that watching the story, I love looking around on screen at all the details that make up this exciting and ridiculous world. And I like the bizarre logistics and near Brazil-esque bureaucracy of it all much more than any conspiratorial detective story. Just give me a virtual map on a 1999 dvd-rom to while away the hours in, or make a 2-hour virtual tour and I'll keep coming back.

But I haven't gone back to Zootopia since watching Zootopia 8+ years ago, at least not until now. And I was just as enamoured with the world and all its nuggets of details in this tour as I was back then. My interest in this story...about the same.

Picking up shortly after Hopps and Wilde's success in busting a mayoral conspiracy, they're looking for validation from their fellow detectives, trying to break the next big case, which they do, but in disastrous fashion. They're pushed into group therapy with other mis-matched detective pairings rather than getting assigned another case, but Hopps can't let go of certain clues she found and certain signs of something bigger coming up. She ropes Wilde into infiltrating a high society dinner, and her hunches were right, and they descale another conspiracy involving the reptiles who have been banished from Zootopia for decades, but are also framed by the evil, rich, powerful architects of Zootopia, the Lynxley family, as co-conspirators in the disruption of the nights events by a snake named Gary (Ke Huy Kwan).

Can Hopps and Wilde find Gary before the Lynxleys do? Can they uncover the evidence they need to reveal the conspiracy that doesn't just get them out of trouble, but allow the reptiles to have a home in Zootopia once again? And can a hyperactive altruistic rabbit and an easy-sleazy, lemon-squeezy sarcastic loner fox really be good partners?

Yes. Yes. and Yes. Spoiler alert for a children's film.

The key points the film is trying to drive home are:
1) society is better when it's diverse. They're right, but it's hardly the film's thesis. It's kind of the conclusion to the whole affair, the tidy bow at the end. The porkchop sandwiches of the piece.
2) doing something about a problem is better than doing nothing, even if it seem insurmountable, and the odds are stacked against you. It's a message I fully believe in but also one I have a very hard time living up to.
3) just because you are doing something about a problem, it doesn't mean it all rests on your shoulders. Which is an important thing to remember, that there's still life to live on top of dealing with problems.
and
4) Sometimes you just need to tell someone how you feel about them (whether romantically or platonically) instead of, you know, pushing them away. Aww, yeah.

Anyway. It's a charming picture with a weird Shakira/Ed Sheerhan co-production as interlude that just wasn't for me. But Patrick Warburton doing a thing that's so very Patrick Warburton...that's so for me.

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After a perplexing half-minute of the title card on a subway motif jumping to a junior league baseball game and back again, there's a hard cut to the New York skyline and the screen caption "1998". The pan across the skyline is among the most thrilling visuals I've seen from a 2025 film, maybe just below visuals from Sinners, F1, Frankenstein and Weapons. I don't know anything about camera lenses and the depth of field they create, but as that camera pans across the skyline and neighbourhood buildings interfere with the vista of skyscrapers, I felt tingles. It seemed like New York had never been shot this way before. It felt less like city streets than an elaborate diorama, expertly crafted. I am reminded why Aronofsky became one of my go-to directors, even if I can't really say I love any of his films.

We meet Hank (Austin Butler) working behind a bar, closing time at 4 AM. We see he's very personable with the barflies, and handles the drunks well, as well as manages to de-escalate any conflict threatening to arise. These are not skills that will serve him well in the story to come. We see him drop the night's take into the slot of a steel door in the basement before meeting up with his girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz). As they arrive hot and heavy at Hank's place, Hank's punk neighbour Russ (Matt Smith) is frantic. His father had a stroke and he needs to go to London. Hank needs to watch the cat, Bud.

The next morning, after Yvonne has gone to work and Bud has moved in, two Russian skinheads (whether they're just bald or actual skinheads is besides the point) are beating down Russ' door. Hank intercepts and for his troubles has the living shit kicked out of him. As he's laying on the ground he pisses himself, and blood starts running with the pee. "That's not good," he utters before passing out. 

It's at this point that I realize the movie the trailer was selling is not the movie Aronofsky has made. The trailer presents it as a Coen Brothers-esque crime romp, where the protagonist is in over his head dealing with all manner of unusual wacky characters as he gets sucked further into a plot he desires nothing less than to escape. But Aronofsky isn't the Coen Brothers, and his tendencies are either to stay utterly grounded, or go operatic. Lightness of tone and satire isn't really his strong suit. Where the bad guys of a Coen Brothers film would usually be inept in their own right, here they are quite intense and really threatening.

Hank's hospitalized, losing two days and a kidney, returning home he narrowly avoids the return of the Russians as they bust into Russ' place. The cops arrive and Hank is treated with suspicion as an accomplice to Russ' suspected drug running by Detective Roman (Regina King). She eventually leaves him with a warning about a particularly nasty duo, the Drucker Brothers (Liev Schrieber and Vincent D'Onofrio) whose Hasidic aesthetic betray their violent nature.

Hank finds himself deeper and deeper in trouble, the severity of which gets greater and greater, and he is a beaten, hunted and haunted man. He's effectively fighting for his life and the safety of people in his life, but he has no clue what it is the people after him are really after (except the trailer pretty much spoiled the reveal). It's not until Russ' return at the end of the second act that this flips its tone into a near-buddy comedy and finds levity in Hank's engagement with the Drucker Brothers and their Bubbe (Carol Kane).  It's an attempt at tone shift that feels too little too late, and the missed opportunity of being a much more fun production looms large.

Despite an exceptional cast, all delivering exactly what is requested of them, the film was not successful at the box office which is unfortunate given that these sort of mid-budget adult films are few and far between at the theatres these days, instead being relegated to streaming. The audience (myself included) aren't going to the theatre as much for the type of content we're used to watching at home. But Aronofsky is a big movie maker, there are shots and sequences in here that are ambitious and exciting that direct-to-streaming movies don't bother attempting. Aronofsky more than once uses depth of field and forced perspective to make New York feel like an alien place. Long ago Aronofsky was tapped to make a Batman film that obviously never materialized. This really tweaked my interest as to what the director's Gotham City would have looked like.

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As I step through the "Tales for all" series of low-budget Canadian all-ages films from Quebec producer Rock Demers, it really does seem like he's working through genres: war, horror, drama, superhero and, with The Great Land of Small, fantasy. 

With The Dog Who Won The War, it cleverly uses the setting of snowball fights as it artillery and a snow fort as the prize. It was effective at melding the tropes of war with the perspective of children. Horror movies have long been made on the cheap anyway, but even still The Peanut Butter Solution was ambitious and upsettingly weird. Dramas like Bach and Broccoli don't need much budget to be effective for its drama about an orphan trying to connect with her distant guardian, while the Polish co-production of The Young Magician seemed to have budget for its superpowered tale but an unadventurous character arc and a lack of clear intention. 

What all these movies have is central characters who are children, children on a journey. Here David and Jenny have left "New York" with their mom (a trapeze artist) to visit their grandparents in small town Quebec. David doesn't want to go, certainly not without his dog.

Meanwhile Fritz (Michael J Anderson of Twin Peaks fame) is visiting this realm from the Great Land of Small because...he wants to...test(?) whether... mankind(?)... is ready to... accept(?)... the gift of gold dust which... grants wishes(?).  He is invisible except to those who believe in magic, but he runs afowl of hunters, and the local mob(?) boss, Flannagan, finds Fritz's bag of gold dust. He's obsessed that there's more gold dust in the forest and gets his gang of goons out searching, until the local police officer tells him to stop.

David and Jenny roam into the forest and find Fritz. They make friends despite Fritz being a bit of an annoying Pee-Wee Herman type. He misses his return trip home on a rainbow, so they bring him home and feed him peanut butter sandwiches and Pepsi in the horse stables which make him gassy. They look for help from the local crazy hermit, Mimmic, but they hunters catch up to them and they have to escape on the river in a canoe, which somehow transports them to The Great Land of Small.

The Great Land of Small is pretty much just the grounds of the Olympic Stadium in Montreal populated by a bunch of neon-coloured spandex-wearing Cirque de Soliel performers. It's direly unimpressive or fantastical. The production is so confined by their limitations that there's really only two areas of the grounds they use, and one of them is a horrid concrete interior where the kids meet a big hairy man and his even hairier dog man who is never not disturbing to look at. Oh yeah, and the queen of the Great Land of Small looks exactly like their mom, and the king is Fritz's brother. (This dual-role conceit may be a Wizard of Oz-like reference, but is more likely a sign of budget restrictions).

The kids are told they can never go home and they're to be adopted by the king and queen, but first they're going to be "Slimeo'd", dropped into a pit where a big orb-shaped troll-like creature will ingest them and spit them out as butterfly people. Fritz asks the big hairy man to use one of his wishes to return the kids home (meanwhile, the kids have been missing for some time, and their mom and grandparents are distraught and the town has set up a massive search party for them). They are found by Flannagan's daughter, who learns that her dad has been doing bad stuff for the first time?  (He has henchmen, honey, get a clue). She spies him power-tripping with the gold dust. And then the race is on to stop Flannagan from capturing the folk from The Great Land of Small before they can return home. Except Fritz can never go back. Except he can. What?

This is pure low-budget fantasy nonsense. There's no rules to the fantastical elements of this film and as such anything can happen at any time because the script needs it to. Rules are set up and then immediately broken at least three times. What the "gold dust" actually can do is never really clear, but certainly it has some power of some sort, the kind that drives men mad. Flannagan runs a bar with his daughter, but it's never clear what his side business is and why he has so many lackeys. The grandfather tells the kids a bedtime story about elves and faerie and whatnot and how you can only ever see them if you believe in magic, and it seems inferred that the grandfather believes in magic, but when they bring Fritz home, he doesn't see the guy at all.

The entire production feels so shoestring. It's clear the dialogue was all performed in English, and yet it's all been recreated in studio, as has all the sound. And often it seems like the voice work has been tweaked to add exposition that doesn't actually help to clarify anything. It also seems like so many scenes are just ad libbed, as if they weren't properly scripted and the actors being told what to do off camera. So much of the performances here are real awkward.

It's a direly boring film up until the emergence of Slimeo, which is so utterly bizarre that it can't help but liven things up, but it's a fleeting moment with the big ogre ball, and once we're "back" in Quebec, things get pretty dull once more. 

I'm not sure what could save this film, as it has so little going for it (Michael J Anderson excepted, clearly a charismatic performer with a good sense of whimsy), but unlike most "Tales for all" here our central character is not a child.  It is meant to be David, but it turns out it's Fritz, and yet it doesn't give anyone a character arc of any sort. It just shows how haphazardly executed this whole production is.

C'est mal. 

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Horror, Not Horror

Some movies aren't meant to be watched at home. In homes with big, attention seeking dogs. Or in homes with gaming teenagers shouting profanities at their friends loud enough to hear through the vents two floors away. Or in houses with neighbours who can't seem to go a week without screaming at each other. Or in houses in the winter where the sound of the furnace creates a distracting ambiance for a quiet film. Or in an old house that creeks after the furnace shuts off as the wood rafters start cooling again.

Some movies aren't meant to be watched in the daytime, in a house where the light creeps in from almost all sides, even with the blinds shut, even in a basement. Some movies aren't meant to be watched in a house where the dryer has been home-repaired a number of times and the rattle of ... something gets a little worse every time. 

Some movies aren't meant to be watched when you are sick. Some movies aren't meant to be watched when you've not slept properly. Some movies aren't meant to be watched when you've taken medication. Some movies aren't meant to be watched when you're sick, haven't slept well and just taken medication.

Skinamarink is one of those "some movies". It is a low-budget independently produced (on a shoestring budget) Canadian (yay) film that is all about sinking into its atmosphere, settling into its vibe, partaking in little else audible but its sound design. Any distraction, including heavy, fluttering eyelids as one's eyeballs fight not to roll into the back of one's head, is working against the film's intended effect.

The final nail in Skinamarink's coffin... if the sleepy, sickly head, big happy dog, shouting through walls, ambient noises and unavoidable light sources weren't enough to seal its fate...is watching it on Tubi, where you are going to get ads, big, bright, noisy, annoying ads, anywhere from one to four of them at a time.

Skinamarink is not really about a story, it's an experience. It's experimental art-house horror, as much out of budgetary necessity as design. The at home experience presents in a very narrow widescreen format (I don't know my aspect ratios). It feels, generally like the top, or the bottom, of the screen is cut off. The point of view is often from a low, but sometimes high angle, evoking sometimes (if not always?) the perspective of a child. The film is dark. Digital grain has been added to make it very gritty and noisy (I found the digital grain a little distracting at first as I started focusing on whether I was sensing a repeating pattern or not...but that went away).  The imagery is largely present of a darkened household, with only the odd ambient light source, whether from a distant room, or a television, or a flashlight, lighting the way.

At home are little Kevin and his slightly older sister Kaylee. At one point we see Kevin's dad, on the phone with someone, talking about Kevin's fall down the stairs. The kids don't interact much with each other, and mostly are on the receiving end of a forceful, hushed, but hoarse voice. "I want to play." "Pick up the knife." That sort of thing. It's it creepy? Depends...depends on your surroundings at home.

The windows and doors start disappearing on Kevin and Kaylee, so too their access to their parents. Attempts to call 911 fail, until they succeed, and Kevin says "I hurt" and "I feel sick". 

Even with all my distractions, it's an evocative movie. There's clearly a malevolent spirit at play, but it could have very easily been a metaphorical film about an abusive parent if not for the supernatural interjections. The early moment with Kevin's father, and the conversation with the 911 operator nod towards this reading, if only so slightly.

I was quite taken with the film's aesthetic, minimalist though it is. The shot compositions, just keeping most relevant details out of frame, as if Kevin or Kaylee were too scared to look at things head on. At one point the spirit warps reality and suddenly are POV is moving across the ceiling, instead of the floor. The sound design as well keeps things so, so hushed and muted. Yes, there will be noise scares, real basic route 1 horror startles, but there's no score outside of the music of public domain cartoons playing on the TV.

I'm pretty much convinced Skinamarink can only work in theatres, and it's experimental, low-key nature will turn away as many viewers as it will enthuse. I think it could have shaved 20 minutes off it's 100 minute experience without really missing anything (there's not really a story or plot per se), but I think I'm keen to actually see it in a theatrical screening, just to see if there's anything *really* there...or if I'm just gon' get sleepy again.

BUT...is it horror? Undecided.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Warfare

2025, Alex Garland, Ray Mendoza (Civil War & directorial debut) -- Amazon

As Kent said, the most impactful and very intentional thing about this movie is the cry of, "WHY?!?!" But before we get to that...

Warfare is actually what I would normally call a "small movie", i.e. a very condensed plot focused on a single event during the Iraq War in the early 2000s. A group of SEALs is tasked with providing "overwatch" for a joint operation with the Marines. This involves taking over a two-story house, which is occupied, and setting themselves up to monitor activities at a nearby market square. It is never clear as to why that house, nor whether any of the other houses in the neighbourhood are also occupied. Its not important to the movie, but you have to assume... yes? But no matter, they come in, strong-arm all the civilians together, setup defenses and radio in. And wait. And watch.

These are a bunch of young guys, likely not having seen any action before, all fresh faced, unwounded. They all have their assigned duties and work together like a well-oiled machine. I know its a cliche, and I am prone to using idioms, but the way the movie presents the team working together is very machine like -- lots of well-rehearsed activities supported by almost indecipherable radio jargon. They work well together, and support each other.

And then, almost immediately, someone throws a wrench into the machine, or more precisely, a grenade. The people they have been observing are also observing them, and begin a coordinated attack. They call it in, ask for support, as danger is very real and imminent, and things just go from bad to worse. The grenade injured their sniper, mildly but enough to request his evac. The Bradley tank that shows up to pick him up positions itself right over an IED and ... BOOM. The soldiers go from commands and coordinated actions to screaming panic, blood and chaos.

When it is over, and all the surviving soldiers are away in Bradleys, the locals emerge, both the home owners and the adversaries. They have driven away the Americans. They have hurt the Americans, who have come, accomplished little, to nothing, and they have run away. And one of the home occupants looks around at the devastation, the wreckage left after countless bullets, IEDs, tank rounds, and explosives, and the cry is uttered. Its not hard to understand this small action was a metaphor for the war.

The movie ends with the "usual" credit rolls, where we see the real soldiers compared to the actors that played them. Except all but one of the soldiers have their faces blurred. A comment on a lack of support from the very real soldiers they portrayed? The detritus of making an "anti-war" movie? There are no easy answers to that but this movie wasn't anymore anti-anything than a flag-waver. But for that one utterance, and the loud cries from wounded soldiers, this was an exciting, nerve-wracking portrayal of combat actions with tight performances, well-crafted scenes and an incredible sound landscape.

The movie stars a handful of recognizable faces including: Will Poulter (The Bear), D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Reservation Dogs), Cosmo Jarvis (Shōgun), and Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things), well, and many more who are nigh unrecognizable under the grime, sand and gear of war.

I Saw This!! What I have been watching - 2025 edition (Part C)

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our [retired?] feature wherein Kent(!) or Toasty attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me (usually Toast, but Kent this time) spending too much time in front of the TV and not writing about it. Bad Kent! Bad! But it's in part because Kent is tired and busy can't review everything.

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Murderbot Season 1 - 2025, AppleTV (10/10 episodes watched)
created by Paul and Chris Weitz

We went most of the year without AppleTV this year and so Murderbot sat on an idle list of *maybe* titles titles to watch. 

A friend of mine was very, very highly anticipating Murderbot's debut on AppleTV. She had read the book(s?) and absolutely loved them. I didn't have the heart then to tell her that loving a book is all but guaranteed to lead do disappointment with the adaptation. Sure enough, after it started airing (???what do we call it when a show is released week to week on a streaming service...it's not going over airwaves anymore...) I didn't hear anything more from her about it. 

It was a show that certainly in my regular TV reviewing circle of reading didn't come up a heck of a lot, so my excitement for it was low... also I knew nothing about it, and based on title alone I conjured up all sorts of '90's Image Comics-style "extreme" sci-fi for manchildren ideas of what it could be about. I was not excited in the least.

When we finally reacquired AppleTV, I added Murderbot to my "to watch" list, but there were other shows (The Studio, Slow Horses, Down Cemetary Road, Stick, Platonic) that I intended to watch first... and then I noticed that Murderbot was not a drama, but a sci-fi comedy, with only half hour episodes, and suddenly it shot to the top of my list. It was like my expectations of having wade through 10 hours of meathead sci-fi suddenly came at a limited-time-only discount of 4 1/2 hours of mid-budget science fiction comedy. I was all in on a binge.

The show is set in a distant future in a galaxy where the government is primarily run by mega-corporations (if it were licensed by Disney/Fox they could have set this in the Weyland-Yutani of the Alien universe). An independent socialist commune has petitioned the people in charge to do research work on a remote planet, and in being granted access, they've been given a Security Unit (SecUnit) to protect them against their objections (these future hippies see SecUnits as a form of slavery). What they don't know is their SecUnit has overridden its security protocols and has achieved full sentience and named itself Murderbot (not because it has murdered so many, but it just kind of fantasizes about it).

Murderbot is our point of view character in the series. Played by Alexander Skarsgård, Murderbot is our narrator in this real. He is often narrating directly to the audience, and sometimes we as the audience are just privy to his inner thoughts. Murderbot is familiar enough with the nature of humans to know to disguise his sentience from them, so he plays the role of SecUnit to his new charges, but with spite and insolence in his fluid-pumping veins. He would rather just be watching his favourite sci-fi soap opera (which is what he's often doing when he's supposed to be on task). He's always spying on what they're up to and he's, well, disgusted by every ounce of them.

And yet he can't help but protect them as danger arises (for if he doesn't, he's bound to be seen as defective and turned to scrap). In his efforts to serve this absurd group of characters he invariably performs too far afield from the norms of his standard functions, and they pick up on it. But instead of finding vicious humans ready to turn on him, he finds a group of people mostly willing to accept him as one of them. Except he's not one of them, and he doesn't particularly desire to be one of them. He just desires to be free, to be himself, to do as he pleases in the confines of the society he exists in.

Murderbot is quite a funny show, largely centred around Murderbot's distaste for the people he's with, but also the absurdity of the people he's with (which includes a newly formed throuple that is never not awkward, and the senior member of the crew who treats Murderbot kindly even before he's revealed as a sentient). But Murderbot's greatest strength is in its representation of neurodivergence. Murderbot is almost entirely autism-coded (outside of the origins of and physiology as a SecUnit of course), and the level of which his autism is explored, how he engaged and disengages with others, how he can't make eye contact and disassociates when conversations get boring, and how he masks himself...presenting in a way that is expected of him rather than how he actually desires to be. I can't recall ever seeing an autistic character presented with this level of detail and care, certainly not as the protagonist of a series, not without making their autism a superpower, anyway.  Here, Murderbot's neurodivergence is in no way a superpower, despite Murderbot being superpowerful.

David Dastmalchian's member of the crew has cybernetic enhancements, and he clashes with Murderbot a lot. His character is also spectrum-coded, and it's the genius of the story (not sure if it's something the Weitz brothers have crafted or if it is in the source material) but it really shows that being on the spectrum is not the same for everyone. There are varying ways that neurodivergence presents itself in this series, and it's amazing how adeptly it presents it in the form of a sci-fi comedy.  I definitely was not expecting that.

I was talking with my friend again recently about the show, the one who had anticipated its debut. She found it disappointing, and relayed how fan reaction to the show was pretty muted because it wasn't like the book exactly (which I'm told is fully first person narrative). But she also hadn't picked up on the autism coding of the character, and that really made me wonder whether that was in the source material, and how many people just didn't pick up on that. To me it's the center of the show, the story is about a neurodivergent character being able to come out, to stop masking, to be who they are and find acceptance and life outside of expectations. Perhaps my being a member of a neurodivergent household has me hyperaware of this aspect but it's something the show should be lauded for.

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Stranger Things 5 - 2025, Netflix (7/8 episodes watched)
created by the Duffer Brother
ST 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Stranger Things debuted in 2016, the second series in 2017, and the third in 2019. And then three years until Stranger Things 4, and now, another three years later, the final series, released in three parts.

I was tremendously excited for the drop of each preceding series on Netflix, anticipating the start of a binge watch day and date of its release. Even as series four came under criticism for bloated, overlong episodes, I found myself mostly entertained, mostly excited, mostly happy to be within the realm of Stranger Things again.

This time has felt very, very different. After the end of series four I felt mostly satiated, even as there were cliffhangers and dangling threads, it was the first time I felt done and not in immediate want of more (perhaps it was the bloated runtimes, it was too big of a meal?). Rather than set an alarm for the drop of series five, I let the show just linger in my Netflix queue. The streamer would loudly proclaim to me every time I would open it up that STRANGER THINGS 5 IS HERE! Yeah Netflix, I know... I'll get to it.

Seriously, where's the apathy coming from? This I don't know.

But upon entering the world of Hawkins and the Upside Down again, I was hoping to be whisked away like I had been four times before, just fully transported into an 80's-inspired horror-scifi-fantasy realm, but I wasn't, at least not to the same effect.

When that still exceptional open theme kicks in and the "camera" tracks around the font of the Stranger Things logo, I remember the tingling sensation I got the first time I saw it, I remember the goosebumps and arm hairs standing on end, I remember how exhilarated I was by it. I remember it, but I don't feel it anymore.

We get into the world of Hawkins and I see Mike and Will and Lucas and Dustin and Eleven and Max and... these children are now adults. They've aged 10 years since we first saw them, and yet in story time, they've aged maybe 4 or 5 years, and there's a huge discrepancy there, huge hurdles to get over in one's mind. Not to mention the fact that we've seen some of these young performers now expand well beyond their roles in this series, and they're not quite the same kids that we'd last left. But is just it that they have  physically grown, or do they not actually feel like high school seniors? Do they now seem like adults play acting as kids? Is it a Pen15 situation?

Beyond that, we're back to the big bad Vecna being the big bad once again. Our heroes defeated him already and now they have to do it again? I'm not a big D&D player, so I don't know how often one faces the same main adversary back-to-back, but it doesn't quite seem like an escalation. Vecna's plan is now world-ending, so I guess the stakes have been raised. We actually do get an escalation, but it's only in the finale that the escalation is learned by our heroes and we see the heart of the matter. It's way too late a reveal, and should have been presented in the first or second episode of the season.

If the plot is maybe not holding up its end of the bargain, the character work has stepped up to become the centerpiece of the show this season. There's tensions and unions within friendships and relationship, there's traumas to unpack and revelations to make, and these are the best moments in the series. Will Byers, who has experienced so much trauma, and felt very much like the fifth wheel of the series is given the spotlight this season, and his coming out moment, while grinding the momentum of the plot to a halt, is really a beautiful thing, as is Robin gay-mentoring him. Likewise Dustin and Steve persist at being the best duo in the show for years, acting like a bickering married couple who eventually find their love for each other again. And then there's Nancy and Jonathan who... well, lets just say the show finally gets that relationship right by the end.

Stranger Things has, each season, seen fit to expand its cast and to uplift members of its cast who maybe haven't had the time to shine before. This season digs into to the youngest member of the Wheeler clan, Nancy and Mike's younger sister Holly, and her classmates (especially Dipshit/Delightful Derek), and even giving mother Wheeler Karen some big moments.  This season highlights what an ensemble the show has become, and there are whole scenes with a dozen or more cast members, and frankly that's pretty heartwarming occasion seeing all these people in a room together. The show remembers the big players and the small players, and, really, it seems the only character it hasn't done justice to is Barb... unless Barb is the deus ex machina of the final episode...[spoiler...she's not].

When I watch Stranger Things now, I feel a sense of comfort being there, but I'm not excited by it like I once was. Series five looks big and epic and expensive (Frank Darabont directing a lot of the season bringing his extensive Stephen King adaptation experience to it) and it certainly holds my interest plus it had a couple surprises up its sleeve, but watching it felt a lot like going through the motions. A lot of scenes felt overlong for the message they were trying to get across, and often the messages are repeated too many times (I exclaimed out loud "we get it" at least twice this season). As I've been waiting between mini-drops for the next episodes, I've kind of forgotten what's happened in the preceding.

If Stranger Things had run its course over the span of five or six years instead of nine or ten, it would feel very different than it does now. With the permission of time that Netflix has granted their cash cow, series four and five have gotten indulgent, glossy and it's lost the scrappy feel it had when it started (see also franchise bloat like the Mission:Impossible or Fast & Furious series). Had it plowed through like old style TV would have 2 decades ago, it would be an epic five seasons of 40-minute episodes that would be highly enticing rewatching. As it stands, after finishing the final episode, I have no immediate plans to return.

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Only Murders in the Building Season 5 (10/10 episodes watched)
created by Steve Martin and John Hoffman

Unlike Stranger Things, Only Murders... is a series that has released one season per year, year over year, with episodes consistent in length at under a half hour, and little self indulgent bloat from its creatives. But, despite what I said above for Stranger Things, that doesn't on its own make for a coherent ongoing narrative or a satisfying overall series. But then, that's not really what Only Murders... is going for.

It is a series that really didn't need to exist beyond its first season, and the more it goes on, the more it exists anything approximating reality, instead existing within its own pocket dimension. The joke is now, each season, somehow death comes to the Arconia, that gorgeous city block of condos that feels like its own world within New York City.

The part of the conceit of the show that has never worked continues to burden the show, with Mabel, Charles and Oliver having a true crime podcast that the show runners clearly have little to no experience with and/or don't care about the characters having a believable show. I mean, the trio effectively interfere with police investigations and illegally mess with crime scenes and in theory admit to it on their show. They should have been fined and/or arrested and/or shut down years ago (of course, the best recurring character on the show is their exasperated detective acquaintance Detective Williams played by Da'Vine Joy Randolph who seems to shield them from any scrutiny beyond her own).

This season the crew investigate the murder of their beloved concierge Lester, only to discover that this season's big guest stars (Renee Zellweger, Christoph Waltz, and Logan Lerman), a trio of billionaires, are involved somehow, and then the other guest stars (Bobby Cannavale, Tea Leone, and Dianne Wiest) are perhaps involved in some sort of mafioso and a hidden casino.

The formulae remains the same, each episode the trio try to pin the deed on someone and we get their story so as to eliminate them as a suspect, wash and repeat. In the background this season is Oliver's potential moving away to be with new bride Loretta (Meryl Streep) and the billionaires buying out the building and evacuating them all. Frankly, unlike Stranger Things the character-focussed aspects of the show feel shoehorned in quite frequently and conflict between them never feels natural. It's at its best when it has a good, twisty mystery, big guest stars, and Steve Martin and Martin Short get to be goofballs and  Selena Gomez gets to be sarcastic. This season's highlight was Tea Leoni's quintet of meathead sons and how they seem to operate as a single disfunctional, dimwitted unit.

It's never been a particularly sharp series, and it just gets more blunted with each season. This season's jabs at billionaires (in the impending eat the rich culture war) are total weak lil love taps, plus the plight the characters face in this season seems like problems of the privileged, and the introduction of a robot doorman never fully manifested into any meaningful contemplation of AI replacing blue collar workers, not much original comedy. The mystery of the season was all over the place, and frankly not all that engrossing, and yet, all that said, it's hard not to be charmed by all the talent and charisma on screen.  I'll be back for season six.

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Some other things I watched late last year but didn't complete or don't have a whole heck of a lot to say about:

Eyes of Wakanda (Disney+, 3/4 episodes watched) is meant to expand upon the world of Wakanda from the two Black Panther movies. Each episode is set in a different time period, and there's no connective tissues between them. They're not bad, per se, but their 20-ish minute run times give them little opportunity to meaningfully develop characters, relationships, and a story necessitating a big action setpieces. The big "wow" of this all for the Marvel nerds is the third episode which brings in Iron Fist lore without needing any familiarity with the abysmal Netflix series. A hearty "it's fine, but forgettable".

 

I really enjoyed getting to know Canadian-by-way-of-UK comedian Mae Martin on the Canadian version of Amazon's Last One Laughing, and then the fifteenth season of Taskmaster, and then their Netflix comedy special SAP and even a few episodes of The Handsome Podcast they co-host with comedians Tig Notaro and Fortune Feimster. I didn't manage to get to their Channel 4 series Feel Good, which they created, but I was very intrigued that they were branching out into thriller territory with Wayward (2025, Netflix, 2/8 episodes watched). In Wayward Martin plays a non-binary masculine cop who moves back to a small-but-progressive community where his wife (Sarah Gadon) grew up. The town seems to be under the sway of Toni Collette, who has run a local correctional facility for wayward teens for decades. Things are weird. There's a definitely unsettling vibe to the whole proceedings, but the show kind of lost me from the get-go when an errant Toronto teen was shipped across the border to this facility. I really shouldn't hold that against it, but it severely broke my investment in the story (and the second episode in which the teen's friend makes a pilgrimage to rescue her once again calls attention to it). Martin is a fascinating presence with a very distinct energy, and I'm not sure if the role fits that energy or not, but I'm having a hard time getting myself back to the series to find out. I think I was also expecting something leaning harder into horror than it does, as it's so close to being there.

Though completely unaffiliated, It's Florida, Man (Season 1 - HBO, 6/6 episodes watched) seems to be the heir apparent to the hilariously consumable Drunk History, but instead of drunk comedians trying to recount historical events which are simultaneously re-enacted by actors and comedians, here it's ripped-from-the-Florida-headlines stories, told by the people involved, re-enacted by actors and comedians. It's not quite as funny as Drunk History but it's far more absurd. It's a rubbernecker of a TV show, one that at once tries to sympathize with the participants telling their stories, but also can't help but wildly exaggerate (sometimes not so wildly) their personas for comedic effect that sometimes can feel a touch mean spirited. Because of Florida's Sunshine Laws, criminal arrests are made a matter of public record (unlike most places) and this is the reason why "Florida Man" stories are so prevalent. A show like this seems inevitable...it's a comedy show, highlighting the absurd stories of the state, but also, like, fits into true crime. It's frivolous and fun, with sometimes a weird bit of insight and/or humanizing of the weirdos it spotlights.

2025 in film: Kent's Five Faves (plus two old ones)

I'm not a professional film reviewer. If you're here, reading this, you're keenly aware of that fact. I don't have any responsibility to anyone but myself to review and/or critique films. I do it because my brain doesn't work well at storing information, so if I want to remember what I thought of a film, or how it affected me, or trigger the memory of the film, I need to have it written down somewhere. If anyone outside of me wants to read it, or likes to read it, well, that's kind of nice.

Since I'm not a professional film reviewer, I don't see a lot of films. I mean I think I watch more films than the average person does, but I'm not in the theatre multiple times a week watching screenings of soon-to-be-released or newly-released movies. I'd like to, but I have a day job. If I get to the theatre to watch a film, it's because something drew me there, whether it's writer, director, star, theme, genre, property, word-of-mouth...and also I'm not the most adventurous film goer, so I only branch outside of my comfort zone a little bit.  Like, I've heard about the films of Jafar Panahi for years, but I've yet to see one, despite 2025's It Was Just An Accident being highly praised from the get go, and making many, many, many top ten lists. I'd like to see it, sometime, but there's no telling once we get outside of this review and awards season whether I will (once the conversation dies down, so does my interest).

I don't recall having done a "best of" list on this site before, primarily because I have never seen enough of a year's films to ever feel legitimate in saying "these are the year's best films".  Friend and reader Shawn asked me about a month back what my favourite film of the year was, and I didn't have an answer for him. I've been pondering it ever since. This is the result of that pondering.

This is not a "best of 2025" list. These are just the films that came out in 2025 that I have seen that excited me the most or had me thinking the most about them afterwards (it looks like it might be alphabetical order, but it's not). 

1. Bugonia - I can't even explain why this made the top of my list. It's a weird film that plays with all expectations and feels like a forgotten 70's sci-fi thriller mixed with experimental cinema that also doubles as an environmental crisis warning and anticapitalism screed. It feels old and very now.
2. Materialists - or how I learned to stop worrying and love Dakota Johnson. Probably making no one else's top ten list but mine... this one could have been something so superficial and yet it wormed its way deep into my brain.
3. Sinners - an incredible cast delivers incredible performances in a film from an incredible director with music by an incredible composer. Just a rich text that blends action, horror, music and historical critique at once. Plus it has the single best scene in cinema this year.
4. Superman - The new movie that I've rewatched the most this year because I can't believe there's a Superman movie that feels like the Superman I've been reading in comics for forever. Vying for top spot of my favourite superhero movies ever.
5. Splitsville - The surprise of the year for me, and ... another Dakota Johnson movie? It's no secret that comedies in cinema are scarce these days, and if they do pop up they're usually of the action-comedy variety (re: Anaconda) but here we have just a straight up comedy for adults that isn't centred on making the audience uncomfortable. What a ribald gift of a film.

Nearly made it (this is in alphabetical order): Frankenstein (pretty), Honey Don't! (I suspect I'm its only defender), One of Them Days (funny), One Battle After Another (theres...a lot going on), Train Dreams (mundanely dreamy), Wake Up Dead Man (Josh O'Connor is everything), Weapons (goddamn fun)

70% of the films I watched last year were not released in 2025, and less than 15% of what I watched last year were re-watches (mostly Coen Brothers movies). Of all the new-to-me older films I watched, two took up more of my brain space than any others: 

1. Purple Rain - Prince's origin story told in the guise of fiction. A bizarre movie that is either a full-on calamity or a masterpiece. Why not both?
2. The Swimmer - Burt Lancaster's story of a seemingly effervescent charmer who decides to pool-hop his way home slowly reveals he's in full-on crisis. Has a day gone by that I haven't thought about this film since seeing it? Well, yes, but not many.

KWIF: No Other Choice (+3)

KWIF=Kent's Week In Film. January's here. It's real movie time. 

This Week: 
No Other Choice (2025, d. Park Chan-wook - in theatre)
Train Dreams (2025, d. Clint Bentley  - netflix)
F1 (aka F1: The Movie - 2025, d. Joseph Kosinski - appletv)
The Young Magician ("Tales for All #4") (1987, d.  - crave)

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With No Other Choice, director Park Chan-wook is in full control of his craft as he presents a viewing experience that is so emotionally twisting that for pretty much the entire runtime (just shy of 140 minutes) the audience is proactively and continuously meant to ponder their allegiance to and affinity for the film's protagonist. 

Adapting Donald Westlake's 1997 novel "The Ax" with co-writers Don McKellar (with whom Park worked with on HBO's *The Sympathizer*), Jahye Lee (with whom Park worked on Netflix's *Uprising*) and Lee Kyung-mi, No Other Choice is a tale of corporate downsizing and the satirically desperate extremes people will push themselves to in order to perpetuate their status in the toxic and uncaring reality of capitalism.

Lee Byung-hun stars as Man-su, who, as the film opens, manages a specialty paper factory. The factory has just come under new American ownership and he's been told that staff needs to be cut by twenty percent. He's preparing to rally and fight for the men he's been working with for years, only to find that he is among the twenty percent. He has invested a tremendous deal into his role, sacrificing time with his wife (who also give up her career), his stepson and his daughter to educate himself to be a leader in his field. But finding work in the field of paper, when demand is down, automation is up, mergers shrink the number of available employers, and competition from similarly out of work people is fierce, it all means Man-su is lost and, from his vantage point, out of options. 

His beautiful house, his upscale cars, his dance lessons, his Netflix...even his dogs are all on the list of potential cuts if he can't find work before his severance package runs dry. His loving wife Miri (Son Ye-jin) is ready to make sacrifices but Man-su is not. After 18 months of desperate hunting, Man-su lands on the idea of killing the man in really the only position he is suitable for, but stops himself... and not because he cannot bring himself to murder another man, but because he can't guarantee that there aren't more qualified men who would get the available position before he does.

Thus ensues a pitch-black comedy of errors that runs concurrently with a grim, distressing existential journey where Man-su's whole sense of self and where he fits in his own life falls out of step with his ambition and self-determined necessity. It's a masterful exercise in defying expectations and audience manipulation. The Man-su we meet at the start of this journey is a very different man than the one we see at the end, as is Miri who is about as devoted a wife as we ever see in secular, modern stories without ever undercutting her agency or intelligence.

But for spoilers, this is a film I would really like to deep dive into writing about, because it is rich and complicated in theme and subtext, a lot of which is masked by its wicked sense of humour and the nastier, distasteful side of humanity it takes us through. It's a long movie, but we're always allied with Man-su on his journey even when we've stopped sympathizing with him (it's a film that warps the audience greatly in that "he really shouldn't get away with this, but we want him to get away with this" fashion).

Director Park's visual acumen is incontestable, with his cinematographer Kim Woo-hyung, this is as good as any of his films have looked, and they pretty much all look fantastic. Here, he stays on the warm side of the spectrum, even as our affinity for Man-su cools. The director wants us to know that no matter what twisted extremes Man-su has gone to, the film is still showing him in a favourable light (if not always positive). The film never wants us to fully disengage from Man-su. The refrain of "no other choice" goes from a laughable excuse for corporate greed to the aching plight of a desperate man to the words of a selfish and myopic person. The title of the film itself has its own journey.

I honestly cannot tell you if I liked this film, or if I enjoyed it. I am impressed by it. I was fully engaged with it, and in unpacking it, even just this little bit, I see much more of its depth that I was too emotionally distracted to fully take in during my first viewing. I have a feeling it will play much better upon rewatch.

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Without specifically spoiling the end of No Other Choice, it's final images are sights inside a fully automated paper factory, which juxtapose sharply against the busy, populated factory we see at the start of the film. In the last images we see, we are taken to a forest where we observe as a logging crane (excuse my lack of knowledge of the technical term) as it picks up a felled tree and relieves it of its branches in seconds. The scale of the machinery, its power and efficiency, and its dominance over nature was a surprisingly visceral visual, one I was surprised to have such an uncomfortable reaction to. Much like the factory scene that precedes it, there is not another person in sight and the message of consumerism and capitalism and its increasing disconnect from humanity is a potent one.

Train Dreams is the life story of a logger, Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) working on clearing the way for railways in the summer months. At the film's start, logging is a fully manual profession, one man on either side of a massive hand saw cranking back and forth through a tree, their sweat moistening the ground beneath them. On a felled tree, men take their axes and hack away at the branches in just as demanding a physical effort. And then they need to section the tree. It's a labor intensive process that pays four dollars a day (minus expenses). It's extremely physical and dangerous work, but the need to expand the rails, and then the demand for paper during the second world war was great, so the job was dependable and the work steady. Robert would toil summer months, missing his beloved wife and later his young daughter and their remote cabin by a creek, but the money was good enough to keep them stable through the winter. Options, otherwise, were limited, as Robert would find out.

The film, through narration by Will Patton, is largely gentle and meditative, but personal and investing. It takes us through Robert's life, from his earliest memories as an orphan shipped out on a train, to his final year, without being at all pedantic about it. The narration helps step us back and forth through his life, with brief capsules of interest, some relevant to the moment on screen, some not. Robert's journey could have just been centered around tragedy - his earliest days on the logging crew he was confronted with the horrors of anti-Asian racism, as a Shanghai-born crewman is grabbed suddenly by a trio of men who drag him kicking and screaming before tossing him off a train bridge. Robert's brief motion to intervene is fruitless and he can do little but stand by, and then return to work with a seemingly disaffected crew. Robert is haunted by the man for the remains of his days... not perpetually, but the spectre never leaves him. The ghosts, in a manner of speaking, begin to pile up. 

Tragedy would befall Robert, and he would not return to logging for some time. His grief and misery would take a long time for him to come to terms with. When he returns to the work he did for so long, he's met with the future. A steam-driven truck roams the terrain, and the crew is stocked with chainsaws which Robert finds foreign and difficult to manage. The young crew treat him like a relic, but he wonders if he was the same in his younger years. Time marches on.

We spend most of Train Dreams in nature in various forms. There's not a lot of what you might call civilization in Robert's story because it seems like he avoided it. In Edgerton's portrayal, he's not the stoic, silent type, and he's not the cordial over-sharer, he's unremarkably average and he's so aware of the fact that nothing that happens in his life makes him any more special than anyone else. He's not a deep thinker, but he does contemplate existence, and meaning. His elder colleague in his early years (a remarkable William H. Macy) imparts on him the idea of nature and humanity's connection to nature and how our interference in nature has unknown consequences, ripple effects. Our understanding of the connectivity is still so very primitive, we evolved bipeds with our big brains think nature something to dominate, to control, to use and abuse without giving back. Robert fears nature also takes, and it's taken from him.

The end of Robert's journey takes him to civilization, and when we encounter a big city it's a shock to the system. It's the 1950s already (otherwise we have few guideposts as to the actual time periods within the film), there are cars and televisions and everything seems electric. Robert is a man out of time who just stepped into the future, but he's curious rather than frightened by it all. 

Reflecting upon capitalism and its effect on our conceptualization of standard of living is the centerpiece of No Other Choice, in Train Dreams it's more the byproduct of the story being told, but there's a curious sympatico between the two films. Robert does not want to be logging, but there are no other real choices for him. Similarly, the ending of No Other Choice informs the theme of Train Dreams unexpectedly. Where No Other Choice's ending visualization of logging specifically points to the lack of people involved in the largely mechanized process, Train Dreams makes us consider whether we should be logging at all, at least on the industrial scale we do.  No Other Choice bemoans the loss of jobs, while Train Dreams contemplates the impact of a whole many other kinds of losses.
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Earlier this year Toasty reviewed Joseph Kosinski's 2017 wildfire fighters biopic Only the Brave, with some commentary around whether he was going to be a Kosinski completist or not.  Spoiler, despite being somewhat affected by the film, he's opted out.

Kosinski's Tron: Legacy and Oblivion were visually captivating projects that boldly announced an exciting new director, one who is very design-centric and has an aptitude with kinetic movement and special effects. But, after Oblivion's less than stellar performance, Kosinski seemed to either abandon sci-fi, or he never wanted to be working in that genre in the first place. From Toasty's description it doesn't sound like there was much opportunity for design or kinetic action in Only the Brave, and his pandemic film, Spiderhead, didn't offer anything near to the scale of Tron or Oblivion.

He worked with Tom Cruise in Oblivion, and if Cruise likes you and works with you well enough on his terms, you become one of his guys. So he was tapped for Top Gun:Maverick, which, despite being held back by Cruise for two years until the pandemic lockdown was lifted, was a massive success, one of the highest earning films of the year. Largely because of Kosinski's camerawork on the flying scenes, he was widely praised as a key part of the film's success.  The status that Tron and Oblivion should have given him was now bestowed upon him. He's a premiere filmmaker. But before he's handed the reins to anything completely, he had to prove himself, thus F1, to show that it wasn't just the name brand of Top Gun and the starpower of Tom Cruise, that he brought something to the table as well. 

For the record, I love Tron:Legacy. It is one of my comfort films. There are a lot of elements to it that I love, but Kosinski's visual adeptness is a key part. I really disliked Top Gun: Maverick, but didn't blame Kosinski for its script, which was all about inflating Tom Cruise's ego, and appealing to boomer dads and grandads by having an old guy strut into a room, ignore everyone else's opinions and abilities, and let the praise heap upon him as the smartest, most talented, wisest and most skilled person alive.  It was a wish fulfillment power trip for an aging generation and it suuuucked. I guess the flying sequences were good, but they didn't do enough to pull me out of the ego boost/pander porn that was the film's story.

From the trailers for F1, it looked to be pretty much the exact same plot. Brad Pitt plays an aging driver who is brought in to help a struggling F1 team, only to steamroll everyone without consequence because he's the smartest, most talented, wisest and most skilled driver alive. Same plot, but race cars not planes, and race courses not military strikes. Why would I watch this? I really do not care for racing as a sport, and those Maverick vibes are very off putting.

When I loaded AppleTV, well, call it a moment of weakness. I saw it's 2h35 min runtime and nearly spat out my kombucha. I said I would give it 20 minutes and dip out. Then I watched the whole thing sitting on the edge of the couch, never bored, never intentionally doing a time check to see how long until it was over.

There are a few differences here between Maverick and F1, the first being Brad Pitt is not Tom Cruise. Without getting into Pitt's abusive alcoholic private life, the man has remained a pretty terrific actor, capable of letting go of ego and disappearing into a role. Tom Cruise, for the past decade (or more), just seems to be playing Tom Cruise, and the ego is inescapable. Pitt does not need his characters to be humanity's apex, so when he steps into a role like Sonny Hayes, an aging phenom who the script needs to walk into a room and take charge despite being the "new guy", well, Pitt doesn't play him with bully and bluster, but rather a sort of glib zen-ness. 

Sonny hasn't driven F1 in 30 years. In the meantime he's been a driver-for-hire across various motorsports. This movie postulates that anyone can just step into an F1 car and race and drive it without extensive time behind the wheel and qualifying trials, but we let it go, because the gist is Sonny is just that good at feeling things out. All the sensors and cameras and algorithms just can't tell you what gut instinct can.

But in Pitt's hands Sonny isn't perfect, he isn't flawless, he isn't so good his skills can defy all logic...just most logic. He makes mistakes that hurt others and hurt himself. Yet, it is a script that does pop in and out of making him magical sexagenarian but it's only eye rolling juuuust a little bit.

The film's plot is colour by numbers, there's pretty much no surprises in what happens here, and yet, Kosinski is not precious with it. He built a story that services the action in a way that builds tension for the characters, their relationships, the team and the race their in all at once. The stakes are presented, they're evident, and they just help lubricate the whole thing to move it forward without any resistance.  Hans Zimmer's score is symbiotically propulsive and, not unexpectedly, bombastic in Zimmer fashion, but he never gets cloying in his score around the drama, which I think may save the film.

It's all about the racing, and Kosinski levels up not just what he accomplished with the flying sequences in Maverick but also takes car racing cinematography to another level. It's maybe not quite as zany as Speed Racer, but there's a visceral and tangible nature to it that is undeniable. It made me a bit sad I didn't see this in theatres. As I said, I don't care about cars or racing, and the racing sequences in this are thrilling. Turns out, car races are fun when they edit down 60+ laps of a race to a 10-minute action sequence.

In some respects, both Top Gun:Maverick and F1 are like extensions of Tron:Legacy and Oblivion. Legacy had various racing and flying (and competition) sequences, while Oblivion had some great flying sequences. The former two and the latter two are otherwise quite unalike styilistically, but the DNA of propulsive filmmaking is there.  I half expect Kosinski's next project to be a Waterworld legasequel just to bring it all back around.

I think Kosinski is an exceptional technical director, another guy who can produce big screen-worthy, widely appealing productions. The aesthetic flavour that initially drew me to him is not a constant in his work, but it's clear he is very skilled at providing wow-inducing action sequences. I think the disappointment both Toast and I are feeling is we thought Kosinski would be one of us, a guy who liked nerdy shit and would be capable of getting big budgets and big names to make them. Instead he's like the nerdy teenager who started hitting the gym during the summer and now hangs around more with the meatheads and tries to hide his geekier tendencies.

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The fourth entry in Quebec producer Rock Demers' "Tales for all" is the highly bizarre Poland-Canada co-production of The Young Magician ("Cudowne dziecko" in Polish).  I mean, so far all of the "Tales for all" have had some aspect of "highly bizarre" to them (and The Peanut Butter Solution is straight up bonkers), but they all have an internal logic to them, no matter how weird they get.

Writer-director Waldermar Dziki was clearly inspired by American kids adventure cinema of the mid-1980s as this feels like a funhouse mirror reflection of its glossier across-the-sea counterparts. 13-year-old Peter (Rusty Jedwab) is having a challenging time...he's quit the hockey team because the captain won't play him, the girl he likes seems to like the hockey captain better than him, and, well, his parents take him to a magic show where he's pulled up on stage to help out with a trick (he "helps" by doing nothing).

After the magic show Peter becomes convinced that he should have telekinetic powers, so he keeps practicing until, eventually, he develops telekinetic powers. Only thing is, his telekinesis tends to make things go haywire. Being a teenager, he of course uses his newly developed superpower to show off, and then it gets him in trouble and then the military comes and takes him away for testing. They can't figure out at all how his powers manifested, so they want to drill into his head. Peter escapes and meets Alexander (Edward Garson), a young orphan cello prodigy who shows Peter the way to harness his power: practice.

Peter gets absolutely no practice in before they're off on another adventure, and then contacted by the police to help deal with a deadly canister of highly volatile material. Yup, let's get the kid with uncontrollable telekinesis who makes things explode all the time try to move the canister of highly explosive stuff. Genius. Turns out, it was genius. Peter removes it safe and suddenly the military doesn't want him anymore and he's a town hero. He helps Alexander get a philharmonic gig, the end.

What?

Yeah. This movie feels like it was made by taking a pile of note cards with plot points and character markers on them, shuffling them, cutting the deck in half and then tossing the deck in the air so that they land in a random order. Nothing about this story makes logical sense, beyond Peter being a teenager and using his power to do petty things. 

This is a dumb movie that introduces its secondary lead (Alexander) at the end of the second act. It probably had three times the budget of any of the previous "Tales for all" productions. I mean, there are so many helicopers in this film, and not always the same helicoper, and not stock footage.

It's clear this was made in Poland (even before seeing the credits, where most of the participants outside of the Canadian leads have Polish last names) but pretends to be Canada despite not looking Canadian at all.  There's no Polish audio track and I spent the first 20 minutes switching between the English and French dubs trying to see if either would synch up, and at times the English would mimic the movements of a character's mouth, but I suspect that there's not a version of this film with the original on-set dialogue.