KWIF: Better Man (+3)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. "Week" with a ten-day break in between watching films. There were no films watched in the 10 days in the UK. There were British panel shows and game shows to delight in or be puzzled by in the later evenings. 

This Week:

Better Man (2024, d. Michael Gracey - on plane)
Relay (2025, d. David Mackenzie - amazonprime with ads)
Mother (2009, d. Bong Joon Ho - on plane)
Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller ("Tales for All #7" - 1988, d. Michael Rubbo - crave)

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I haven't really given two thoughts to Robbie Williams in the past 30 years. Even when his bigger hits were exploding on the charts in the UK and here in Canada ("Millennium", "Angels") it was not.at.all the kind of music I was remotely close to being interested in listening to.

The idea of a film about the story of Robbie Williams' rise to fame as part of manufactured boy band Take That, and then his own solo career was of little interest, because I just had nothing invested in the man or his career or his music.

But why was he being played by a cgi ape-man?
That's... a choice.
It's a choice that had me at least mildly intrigued, but not enough to actually watch it.

And then film essayist Patrick Willems wouldn't shut up about Better Man for much of his 2025 output, most centrally in his essay on "Are biopics good now?" It was that latter essay that sold me on seeing the film. And now I get what he was talking about..

If Better Man were fiction, it would be an A+ achievement.It really is only the fact that Williams himself is directly involved in the telling of his own story that tarnishes the film's lustre, if only a little. Surprisingly, Williams, a man of much braggadocio, is also one of incredible self-awareness and the crooner's candour about his life, his demons, his mental health struggles, his substance abuses, his abrasive personality and his daddy issues all make for a remarkable story of success and self-destruction.

It's not a unique story, particularly in the musician biopic game, but as Ursula K. Leguin said,  the story is not in the plot but in the telling, and Better Man is remarkably told.

Williams narrates and provides singing vocals for the character of himself (otherwise performed by Jonno Davies in mocap), who, yes is an anthropomorphised chimpanzee. The reason for this is because of his own self loathing, his perception of himself as something of a wild animal, as something other. His physical appearance is not something any other character in the film comments upon, but from moment one it sets the stage for metaphor being very important to this film. He's not literally an ape, and he doesn't literally think himself an ape, but from his pov he's not properly human.

From a very young age, Williams tells us, he's had a knack for showmanship, and becoming *someone* in the world of entertainment was his only dream, until that dream came true, and then it wasn't enough. He needed the spotlight, he needed the credit, he needed to express himself, but didn't think he had the support.

His dad, Peter (Steve Pemberton), left him and his family when he was a child to become a stand-up comedian, a performer, changing his name from Williams to Conway, who really knows for what reason, but he didn't see his son again for many, many years.

Williams finds himself in the next big thing, the boy band Take That, and it's, again, part of the metaphor. He becomes a singing and dancing monkey. And it's here the self-loathing really takes hold, and doesn't let go. He sees reflections of himself in the audience, taunting him, lambasting him, and he turns to drugs and alcohol to shake them, but these crutches seem to only make the demons stronger.

His father returns to his life, but only because he's successful, and after being booted from Take That for his "bad boy behaviour" he finds solace in a chance meeting with girl group singer Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno) of All Saints.  The film is exceptionally careful not to make too much out of the other members of Take That or Nicole (or even, really, Willams' rivalry with Noel Gallagher), leaving the spotlight on himself, yes as the center of the film, but also as the person at fault in how things went sour in all those relationships.

The film's musical set-pieces are exceptional, and, as Patrick Willems pointed out in the aforementioned essay, they aren't just music for music's sake, not just getting Robbie Williams hits in the film, they actually have purpose and intention, and as far as I understand each track was re-recorded to emphasize the dramatic intent of the narrative. "Rock DJ" is arguably a song with terrible lyrics, but it's got banger energy and the resulting song-and-dance number is epic in scale meant to emphasize Take That's meteoric rise in the UK pop charts, and a bit of Robbie's stumbling along the way. It's full of humour and some crazy moments that make for a stunner of a sequence (that I'm sure would have played much better on the big screen than on an airplane seatback monitor). "She's The One" really hits home how important Nicole Appleton's arrival into Robbie's life was, but not enough to overcome his demons, as he hid them from her. "Something Beautiful" is structured as Williams heartache over Appleton being forced into an abortion by her manager if she wanted to stay in her band, something it seems Williams has never recovered from. And "Angels" is the powerful ballad about the loss of Williams' beloved Nan, and his regrets that his career, ego and substance abuses kept him apart from his family when they should have been his grounding rod.

The story is a rich (if only a snippet) of William's life, but manages to delve into his psyche effectively. I was not expecting to be anything but superficially entertained by Better Man but was astonished at how rich its text truly is. The culminating scene, as Williams belts out "Let Me Entertain You" finds him battling the record-setting crowd at Knebworth Stadium who have all turned into the doppelgangers of himself, all who have nothing nice to say to him. It's a ruthless battle that Williams has to win if he wants to live (and that is a question itself he wrestles with). It's an incredible scene and potent metaphor for what Williams was struggling with despite being rich and famous and talented.

Better Man was a film that got the better of me. I found myself weeping on the plane more than once (three times in fact) wiping my tears on my sleep hoping nobody was looking.  It was a seriously affecting journey that is a magic trick, because I still don't really care about Williams as a performer, nor do I particularly like his music, and his personality is as abrasive as yoga pants made of steel wool, but I really did love this movie. When it was over I immediately wanted to watch it again.

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Relay is an intense thriller that starts our at a seven on the anxiety level an just sits in that simmering tension right until its finale. It's percolating drone of a soundtrack by Tony Doogan feels like getting needles pricked into your skin while tweezing hairs out...it's not exactly intolerable, but the discomfort level and sensory overstimulation is high.

The plot of the film finds Riz Ahmed's Ash helping Lily James' Sarah negotiate the return of some highly sensitive, highly classified documents that could cost a massive agri-corp's a tremendous amount of money as well as be exposed as responsible for deaths and illenesses globally. Sarah's conscience was initially to expose them for their callous capitalism, but the threats and intimidation got the better of her and she's reached out for services to help her return the documents for a cash payout.

This is Ash's business, the negotiation between both parties. As he says, both sides are his clients and he's looking to resolve the situation amicably. But in the meantime he's using every bit of leverage he can to squeeze the corporation into cooperating, when it's evident they've sent the dogs after Sarah, a very savvy and sophisticated mercenary team let by Dawson (Sam Worthington). 

The trick or it all is Ash never meets anyone in person, never talks to anyone directly. He uses the government-run teletype relay service for the deaf to communicate, a service which provides a person to interface between the disabled and non disabled parties. It doesn't retain any data on its callers and everything is strictly confidential. (My favourite parts of the film are the reactions of the different TTY agents as they work through the tense negotiations they are relaying, some acting cool, casual and professional, others looking decidedly uncomfortable or freaked out).

Dawson and company try to flush out Ash, while Ash tries to resist being enamoured with Sarah, who starts being a little flirtatious with her protector. For much of the film's runtime Relay feels like a classic 80's or 90's thriller that used to dominate the box office and it's a real cracker of one (although, given Relay's almost non-existent presence at the box office, it's not likely to revive the trend).

So it's just such a shame that the film, which accomplishes everything first-time screenplay writer Justin Piasecki and director David Mackenzie (of the excellent Hell or High Water) set out to do falls apart when one considers the details of the film after it's over.

I won't spoil that here, but read Toasty's post on Relay if you want those details and the comments section there for my feelings on them.

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Mother's opening shot is of an expansive field of dry, tall grasses. Into the frame walks Kim Hye-Ja in her matronly garb, where she stops, stares down the camera lens for a beat or two, and then starts dancing. It's a tentative, reserved dance that also feels liberated somehow. It's mysterious, confusing, and delightful. It's hard not to think of it as a Lynchian moment, especially for how disconnected this "prologue" (or, maybe, overture?) feels from the film that starts immediately thereafter. What it does tell you is you're in a Bong Joon Ho film, that is for sure.

The next scene we see is Kim's "Mother" (she doesn't otherwise have a name) working in her herbal remedy shop chopping up some long stalks. Out the front door and across the street is her adult son Do-joon (Won Bin) who is holding up a dog on its hind legs and waving its front paws at his mother. A car whips down the street, striking Do-joon and Mother, distracted, slices her finger. Ignoring her own injury she races out to her son, who seems physically fine, but she's panicked over his bleeding (which is just her own blood on him). Do-joon's friend, Jin-tae (Jin Goo), grabs Do-joon and they run in pursuit of the Mercedes that ran him over. They go to the golf club to find the assailant responsible. In the process we learn that Do-joon is intellectually disabled and that Jin-tae is rough around the edges. Their mischief winds up in a brawl with golfing lawyers, and they all get arrested.

Mother dotes and coddles Do-joon (one scene finds Do-joon urinating against a wall and mother walking over and feeding him a broth while he urinates), and Do-joon has trouble remembering things, and is easily manipulated (it would appear that Jin-tae uses Do-joon to get himself out of trouble on a regular basis). 

A 15-year-old girl winds up dead, and Do-joon is implicated in the murder. The police railroad a confession out of him, which isn't all that hard, given his diminished capacity. The case is quickly closed and Mother is convinced of his innocence. He wouldn't hurt a fly, that is, unless you call him the "R" word, which will send him ballistic.

The film then is a dark comedy masking as a neo-noir (or a neo-noir masking as a dark comedy) as Mother attempts to conduct her own investigation. Mother clearly has traditional medicinal knowledge and social skills but otherwise does not seem well educated or savvy, and so her investigations are mostly blunders. But after she falsely accuses Jin-tae, she winds up enlisting his help to strong-arm information out of people, and he starts to fancy himself an ace detective.

The revelations around the case, as well as Mother's history with Do-joon, can get pretty shocking, as Do-joon's meditations and injuries in jail start to trigger memories, not just of the night the girl was murdered but also of memories from his childhood. It's all very dark, and sometimes very funny.

I used the term Lynchian before, and there's definitely some of that in Mother, as well as a sprinkle of Hitchcock as well, without a doubt, but overall this is inescapably a Bong Joon Ho production, his sense of humour and that slightly warped way of storytelling that is uniquely his own are prominently on display. There are ways stories are supposed to go, and then there are the ways a Bong Joon Ho story goes, and you can't often predict that. Class issues aren't at the core of the story, but the topic seems inescapable in Director Bong's work, and status does affect Mother's ability to investigate (and is also responsible for people underestimating her).

With the exception of his first feature, Barking Dogs Never Bite, I have now seen all of Director Bong's filmography and I adore him as a filmmaker. Everything he's made is a distinct pleasure, but I think Mother may be my favourite of his many exceptional works. I guess I'm just going to have to do a whole filmography rewatch to decide.

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In my hazy recollection of the the CBC airings of the "Tales for all" series of films in the late 1980's and early 1990s, it was the English language productions that ran the most often and Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller seemed to be on all the time. Truth be told, I don't know that I ever watched the movie in full, but the idea of being able to magically put one's self onto a stamp and be able to travel to a new destination on that stamp, being returned to human upon arrival at the letter's intended destination...well, that's pure 1980's kid fantasy fuel right there.

So it's a cardinal sin for the film to take 45 minutes of it's 100 minute runtime to even bring up the idea of stamp-travelling, never mind putting it into action.

But that's not the only flaw of this film. The titular Tommy Tricker, for the first act of the film, is our protagonist. We watch as pre-teen Tommy hustles his fellow students into buying stamps he claims will be so valuable in the future, and as such should pay a premium for it today. He finds a more dedicated mark in Ralph James, an anxious, stuttering, toe-headed boy who shares the passion for stamp collecting with his father. Tommy pays his house a visit and tempts him with a rare set of stamps, but Ralph doesn't have much to offer him in return. In looking through Ralph's father's collection, they find a loose "Bluenose" stamp that Tommy manages to swindle Ralph out of. It was a bait and switch, Tommy showed him one set of stamps then gave Ralph another. Ralph's dad is going to be so pissed.

We see Tommy go to the stamp shop where he manages to cash out his newly acquired Bluenose for 300$ which he spends of groceries to feed his mother's vast brood of children. She asks where the money came from to which he replies "ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies".  

Tommy seems like a desperate young lad who makes opportunities where otherwise none would be. He's a troublemaker, a trickster, a hustler, a swindler, but it's evident why...it's survival for him. I'm not sure what lessons he needs to learn here, when you're dealing with class struggles, sometimes an upper-class kid like Ralph needs to be swindled by a lower-class kid like Tommy because some have too much and some have too few. It's not "right" but the systems are built for the rich to get rich off the backs of the poor, so sometimes the poor need to take back by any means necessary. 

But this isn't a class struggle film, this isn't a film that truly cares about understanding Tommy Tricker, because after all this early drudgery about stamps and stamp collecting (this is a reality where stamp collecting is seemingly everyone's biggest passion, the world over) the focus shifts suddenly to Ralph, and the absolute shitstorm he's in when his father finds out he got hustled. Through a truly convoluted and nonsensical series of events, Ralph's sister Nancy winds up with a seemingly worthless book of stamps from a deceased collector. Ralph, in a rage, tears the book apart, and they discover a secret message that, eventually leads them to discover the secrets of stamp travelling and puts them on a quest to recover a book of precious stamps.

Eventually Tommy returns to the story but only in the peripherals, and solely as an interloper in Ralph's adventure. Or rather, misadventure, as Ralph wind up in China as a result of Tommy's intervention where he needs the help of Nancy's penpal to get sent onward to Australia where he can hopefully track down the secret location of the stamp treasure. 

The second half of the film, filled with magic and stamp travelling and adventure is pretty inspired if not exceptionally well executed. The first half of the film is exhausting in its pacing and the ineptitude in which it reveals its characters and its scenarios. Everything that happens in the first 45 minutes could have, and should have been conveyed in under 20 minutes.

It also doesn't help that all of the kid actors, every single one of them, delivers every line stiltedly. It's frequently painful to watch as these young wanna-be thespians attempt to put inflection and meaning behind the words they're saying. They're taking the direction, surely, given the gestures they make and the physical interactions they have, but they aren't able to perform any of it convincingly, and often takes seem like they had to do, because the production's limited budget meant they had to move on.

At it's core, there's a tremendously fun story and adventure to be had, and I'm sure a modern remake in live action or animation would certainly improve on the many faults of this original.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Drop

2025, Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day) -- download/Amazon

Not so long ago, I got my first iPhone for work. We had been a Blackberry shop, and then an Android shop, but never approved iPhones. Then a new CEO came in, and we suddenly had iPhones. I was assigned one, but hadn't used one since they first came out. I did not know about "drops" (more specifically, on iOS, AirDrops), or the ability to send files, wirelessly of course, from one iPhone to another, within a short distance. One afternoon, while sitting on the train, someone kept on sending them to me. I denied, assuming it was a mistake, but they were persistent. I eventually turned off the functionality, once I had a moment to Google it, but a bit of further research said that it was probably teenagers who were just fucking with whatever stranger's iPhone was within distance. 

But that's it, that's my whole exposure to "drops". They are not really in the pop culture representation of mobile technology; well not widely. I know Android has a similar feature, which was originally sold as a feature to share photos and contact info, but its not a Big Thing in movies or TV. This movie implies pretty much the same experience as I had, that you would not know the feature is on, and someone could, anonymously send you messages, memes, whatever. I mean, the movie has a toss-away line "we cloned your phone" but she doesn't seem surprised she is getting these messages, so in her world, its a Thing.

She is Violet (Meghann Fahy, The White Lotus), a therapist on her first date since she got away from her abusive husband. She is meeting Henry (Brandon Sklenar, It Ends with Us) at a ultra fancy resto, while her little sister baby-sits her son Toby. The night starts with a Random Stranger mistaking her for his blind date, and gets weirder from there. She connects with a few people, including a bartender and someone she bumps into, literally. The movie is just setting the playing field, giving us a few players who will become part of the dance to come.

Her date is Henry, a nice, handsome guy she met on an app. They have the typical "not really familiar with these apps" connection between two actually lovely people which is instantly interrupted by a message sent to her. In most movies this would be an anonymous TXT message, but these "drops" are displayed more like threatening memes. At first, they are innocuous, just weird, allowing the two to chat about the distance restriction on drops. This sets the conceit of the movie -- that her adversary has to be within the confines of the resto. Once the "dropper" knows he has her attention, the true motive comes out -- they are in her home and are holding her family hostage unless she does exactly what they want.

Cat & Mouse. She needs to protect her family, and needs to find out who is doing this to her, but she also needs to keep off her adversary's radar. There are in-restaurant cameras, her phone is cloned and who knows who else in the resto is in on it. Oh, and they want Henry's camera sabotaged and him dead. Yeah, Violet's not into that.

Landon obviously has a fondness for classic mystery-thrillers as he uses a lot of visual techniques to capture the viewer's focus, for example, spot lighting a particular character she is suspicious of, by freeze-framing them in shadows. It adds a little "fun" to a very tense situation, and I have to admit, with my current life being almost over-shadowed by constant anxiety from many different simultaneous directions, I had to turn off the movie a few times. If that is happening to me, then I see Landon as successful in displaying Violet's anxieties. 

Unfortunately, the movie eventually drops the coy game between the players and devolves into beat-the-clock violence. I know these things always have to come to a head, but I do prefer when a movie uses the "outsmart the villain" trope for these kinds of movies, instead of a "oh fuck, now I just have to KILL them for threatening my family." That said, as I already know from Happy Death Day I do like the way Landon plays games, the movie was more than competent (competence is a weird bar to hold movies up against) and I guess, after looking back at my write-ups of all the other Landon movies I have watched, I do like him as a working-man of movie making, not doing anything super exciting (beyond HDD) but always putting out something solid.

KWIT: The Devil Wears Prada

KWIT=Kent's Week in ...Theatre?? What the...?

The Dominion Theatre, London - Wednesday, January 28

I'm not a theatre guy. I've never quite caught the bug. Plays are, to me, conceptually boring - people standing on stage talking with limited room to move, limited scenery to traverse? And musicals, well, that's not music that I like to listen to.

And yet, I do get a bit exhilarated whenever I go to the theatre, particularly musicals. Even if it's terrible, I come out a little amped up and want to experience more, right away.

Lady Kent loves really only Shakespeare on stage. In our trip to London last week she managed to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in an afternoon show while I was at a work event. Shakespeare tends to make me sleepy but the experience of candlelit theatre sounded neat. She was all good for theatrical experiences but we were in London and I needed mine. I had her look at the extremely long list of productions (so many of them either adaptations of movies or turning a musical artist's catalogue into some sort of singing-and-dancing narrative) and she decided to go with what's familiar... The Devil Wears Prada. (Also 2006 marks both the film's 20th anniversary and our 20th anniversary since we started dating, and The Devil Wears Prada was our second movie we saw together, so a bit of a sentimental connection there).

It's off season in London travel so tickets were dirt cheap and when we got to the Dominion, the theatre was not so lively. it was maybe a 2/3 crowd on the main floor.

The big name draw of the show is Vanessa Williams playing the Miranda Priestley role originated by Meryl Streep. The rest of the cast is comprised of primarily British actors, including Stevie Doc as Andy, James Darch as Christian, and Matt Henry as Nigel. Canadian actor Keelan McAuley plays Andy's boyfriend Nate, who is just as aggravating a whiny and needy character as he is in the film, if not moreso.  I bring up the nationality of these actors because, with the exception of Emily (played by Talia Halford), these main characters are all American. And only Henry comes close to pulling off a convincing American accent.  The end result is, any song involving Andy, Christian, Nate (or the sexy nurse that Emily sings a duet with) all sound horrendously flat.

I don't know theatre well, so I'm not sure where the dividing line is with music by/lyrics by/book by credits, but the "music by" credit is to Elton John, and maybe you can hear it a little in one or two songs (ok, "Dress Your Way Up" is absolutely an EJ banger) but for the most part the music sounds like derivative musical theatre pap. I suppose like Hallmarkies or sitcoms or crime podcasts, there comes a sense of comfort with familiarity, so when a musical tune sounds like a musical tune, I suspect there's a segment of the musical theatre-going crowd that just eats that shit up. I point to the hilarious "Rogers: The Musical" from Marvel's Hawkeye TV series which apes the cliched musical tune to the extent that it acts equally as parody and loving homage. The opening number of The Devil Wears Prada, "I Mean Business" sounds almost exactly like the "I Could Do This All Day" number from "Rogers: The Musical", and I'm sure a thousand other musical theatre songs.

There are a few songs, "The House of Miranda", "In or Out" and "Dress Your Way Up" which have a disco feel, and the energy whenever that disco vibe is in play the music the whole show comes to life where much of the rest of it falls flat.

Henry gets a powerful solo in "Seen", the highlight song of the show, which, for the fourth lead of the show to have the biggest show stopper is pretty wild. But it's about growing up and hiding one's identity only to move through the world, shedding the layers of protection and masking to be seen as one's true self, and it's the only tune in the whole show that seems to have any real resonance for the character singing it.

If you know the movie, you know this story, and it's the same, just with song and dance numbers in it. Except that Andy seems very much a passenger in this story and not the protagonist. Everything sort of revolves around her, but musical interludes interjecting into the thoughts and emotions of the other characters really steal Andy's thunder, and frequently overshadow her. By the ending number, when Doc is belting out Andy's tune of independence, "What's Right for Me", the rest of the cast falls away and it's just Doc on stage giving it her all, and I'm not buying a moment of it. The solo spotlight still didn't feel earned for that character, and the emotion of the song felt inauthentic.

As for Williams... on paper, she seems like perfect casting for the role. In reality, I'm not sure what that role actually is and what is requested of it. I don't think I realized it from watching the film a few times, where Miranda seems like such a massive role, but she's actually barely in the story at all. She is the phantom, the spectre that looms large over everything, has her hand in everything, bends everything to her whim, but she's not present. And so when Williams first appears, lifted up from below stage by a rising platform, she's obviously getting that rousing, show-stopping applause, but then she proceeds to sing-talk her way through the opening number she's participating in.  "Stay On Top" is Miranda's big number, but what it unfortunately does is expose Williams' limitations as a singer.  She's a tiny lady with big stage presence, but doesn't really have that big stage voice. If you think of her big hit "Save the Best for Last", you're not thinking of powerful vocals in that track. She has a way of hushed singing, and when it comes time for power, it never fully materializes.

The worst number of the show is easily "I Only Love You For Your Body", where Andy and Nate are supposed to be playful and sexy and funny, and at best accomplishing playful. There's no chemistry between the two performers and the choreography gives Nate some very feminizing movements which makes you question whether Nate would be attracted to any woman.

The show is not great overall but also far from a disaster.  It has its highlights in its numbers, some of its sets, and most specifically its costume design. Everyone, with the exception of Nate and Andy early on, looks incredible. The wardrobe all naturally needs to be functional in song-and-dance routines, but they all look like extremely high end fashion, tailored to all the performers perfectly. It's the saving grace of the show that it looks so damn good. I was never bored with gawking at good looking, fit, exquisitely dressed people. 

I came out of the experience truly aware that I enjoyed myself with a heavy pinch of the ironic salt. I couldn't get Lady Kent to commit to another, but I'm thinking 2026 might be a theatre year for me.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Ballerina

2025, Len Wiseman (Underworld) -- download

I have recently been watching a lot of movies in chunks of viewing time, often with gaps of days in between. I have also been dealing with a winter bug for more than a week which has left my brain with a permanent low-battery alarm. Both of these have contributed to plots escaping my memory almost as soon as I hit the Stop button on the remote. I don't take notes, leaving that for Hallmarkie Days, so end up struggling as what to say when it comes times to write about it. Back in the old days, that is where "I Saw This!!" emerged, but my newer stub-based posts method generally precludes that. Generally.

Meta meta meta...

So, we all know that this is a spin-off of the John Wick franchise, one that (checks Googles) takes place between 3 and 4. So, this is after John (Keanu Reeves, Keanu) was thrown off the roof, with a thud, but before he's gallivanting all over the world trying to kill the head of The High Table. It specifically involves a tribe (were they always called tribes? I don't recall that word being used for all the ritualistic crime organizations) John used to be part of, the Ruska Roma and a new tribe, that all the others dismiss as just a cult, one to be very cautious when dealing with. In particular it involves Eve MaCarro (Ana de Armas, No Time to Die), who escapes the latter tribe, at the cost of her father, is found by Winston (Ian McShane, Deadwood), and handed to the Ruska Roma for training and family. She ends up not appreciating any of it, and her father stands in for John's puppy.

This is also a Len Wiseman movie, so from the movie perspective, that means his template was a woman (vampire) in a rubber/leather jumpsuit wielding dual pistols while fighting vampires & werewolves in a shadowy European city. That lends itself well, as an adult Eve heads off to find the cult that killed her family, garnering the ire of The Director, as John himself did once. Against orders, she seeks out advice from Winston and is directed to Prague to a member of the cult, a man named Pine.

Pine (Norman Reedus, The Walking Dead) is also "defecting" and also with his daughter, a blatant mirror of Eve's history. Its on Continental ground, but the cult doesn't care for the rules and attacks Pine, and in turn, Eve. They almost make it out, but Pine is shot, and Eve left unconscious. She is forgiven his indiscretions in that Continental, because she didn't kill anyone, and heads off to arm-up, only to have the Prague sommelier (I believe that is what they called the first example of John Wick-ian arms dealer?) attacked by The Cult. The arms dealer sends her to Hallstat, Austria, a small ski village high in the mountains.

And that is where All Hell breaks out, a typical (oh JW movies) "kill every fucking person" fight between the residents of the village, which is made up entirely of The Cult, and Eve. And briefly, John Wick, who is asked by The Director (Anjelica Huston, 50/50) to take down Eve, for fear of increasing the friction between The Cult and the Ruska Roma. We learn the origins of The Cult, in that the village was setup as a refuge for all killers from the other tribes, when they want to leave that life and have a family, but still be protected. It honestly doesn't sound like such a bad ideal, but I guess they evolved into something more cultish, seeking the same level of power & control of its membership as the rest of the tribes. No one really ever escapes this world, except for, much later, John. Eve survives but pretty much ends the entire Cult, leaving behind plenty of children who will probably make it their life's goal to kill her. Tit for tat, I say. And John uses a loophole to avoid having to kill her. Its not like he can piss of his leaders even more than he has in three previous movies.

This movie was competent enough, but it left very little in the way of emotional / visual impact as the "proper" John Wick movies. And no, I am not talking the "you killed his dog?!?!" emotional impetus, but more the connection between us, the viewer, and Eve. This is not Ana de Armas' first OK Corral role, but it just didn't work entirely for me. I couldn't even go so far as to say "popcorn movie" as, with those, I am usually expectant to watch it again some time. I mean, I have even rewatched Sisu lately. Maybe I can blame it on the chunky viewing habit I mentioned above, but this is just not staying with me.

P.S. Its not that movie Ballerina, and yet... it is?

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Running Man

2025, Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim vs the World) -- download

If ever you were going to do a cliche remake of a 1987 movie based on a Richard Bachman (Stephen King) novel written in the 70s, then doing it in the year the novel was actually set (2025) is very on point. Also, adhering almost canonically to the actual story is pretty bad-ass, especially when compared to the rife-with-production-issues comedy action movie starring Arnie.

In a Near Dark Future, the divide against Have's and Have-Not's has become gargantuan. You are either poor and suffering or rich and thriving. In between everyone is The Network, a mega-corp that controls the government and feeds the hungry masses with violent and/or humiliating games shows, and reality TV. Ben Richards (Glen Powell, Chad Powers), a skilled labourer in Co-op City, has a history of standing up against management for the betterment of his fellow worker, and losing his temper. It has left him black listed and unable to find work. His daughter is sick, they cannot afford medicine, so he goes down for Network game show try-outs, and while assuring his wife he won't participate in The Running Man, he ends up being perfectly suited for it.

The Running Man is a rigged game show where three participants must stay on the run for 30 days while five Hunters, and their masked leader, chase after them. The general populace can make money by turning a Runner in. For each day a runner survives, they make money, and if they survive the month, they make One Billion Dollars. No one has ever won the game, of course. Beyond that, there are very few rules, one being that they have to send in a video of themselves in every day.

This is an Edgar Wright movie, so in the tone set all the way back in Shaun of the Dead, its darkly funny and uses a lot of stylized motifs that fit perfectly into the game show environment. It has budget and a decent cast, and as said, follows the book pretty closely. And it is keenly aware it is a retro-style remake of a laughable blockbuster movie from another era. 

The problem is that I couldn't tell if Wright was trying to go for ironic-remake or sincere adaptation of a popular King book with a metric ton of political overtones that very much reflect our own issues now, even if you ignore the date. But the movie is not over-the-top enough or biting enough to be a fun, corny romp. Neither is it dark & grim enough to reflect the Dark Urban Future it wants to rail against. So, all I am left with is that Wright was intentionally doing a 90s style remake, generally meant to go Straight To Video, a kind of movie that has little meaning these days considering almost everything is rushed to Streaming.

Objectively, its not a terrible movie but its also not enough of anything to make it memorable.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Dust Bunny

2025, Bryan Fuller (writer of Hannibal) -- download

Wait, what? This is his feature film directorial debut? OK, I knew he was primarily a show-runner and writer for TV, but ... OK, I guess so. Your alternate reality is weird.

Also, pre-amblish in saying, its only mid-January but I predict this will be one of my favourite films for the entire year. As Kent said, "What a fucking delight."

Also, as Kent said,  "What if Leon: The Professional was made by Jean-Pierre Jeunet [sic] instead of Luc Besson".

We Agree.

Tempted to just point at Kent's post and say, "Yeah what he said," and that wouldn't be the first time I have thought that in the 10+ years of this blog, but its still cheating.

I am [mostly] not going to recap. But this movie is about a little girl ("Erora" ... "Aurora" ... "Uhrora" ... "AURORA" ... "That's what I said.") who fears the monster under her bed, the one which will eat you if you walk on the floor. It arrives one night, as a mote of dust through an open window -- I was thinking how unclean is this city that finger sized balls of fluff float through windows -- and evolves into a coot wittle fuzzy wuzzy bunny-kin, i.e. a dust bunny. After the thing evolves even further, into a magic-powered (how could it not be) eating machine, and devours her parents, she knows she has to do something.

Living across the hall is the impeccably dressed... OK, maybe not impeccable, he is not Hannibal, but more eclectically dressed Intriguing Neighbour (Mads Mikkelsen, Polar) -- nicely patterned track suits meet silk pyjamas. How does she know he can help her? She doesn't but after following him one night to China Town, she sees him in action against a dragon. Well, a bunch of China Town villains underneath a dragon-dance costume, but her imagination sees what she needs to see.

Aurora (Sophie Sloan, Chemistry of Death) procures his services by robbing the collection plate of a church. He questions how she knows a word like "procure". And thus begins a battle of wills & wits as she gives him no choice but to be involved in slaying her monster.

In case you need the warning, hereafter are Spoilers. 

The monster is quite real. She wished him up, ages ago. This is not the first foster family it has eaten. And some of those foster families were nice. But, in little girl logic, she also wished up her Intriguing Neighbour, to deal with it. Meanwhile he is ... an assassin? Its never explicitly said but he does violence, has enemies and a handler. The handler (Sigourney Weaver, The Gorge) is presented as many have been in such movies -- you approach her in a funky restaurant, where she sits at a table that affords a view of all who come and go. She is mysterious, callous and thinks Aurora should die for having witnessed what he does for a living. Except, when they enter her apartment under the cover of nighttime, they are in the monster's domain, and they step on the floor. Gobble gobble.

Migawd this movie is lovely to look at. Sure, as we know (and love), Fuller is known for his shows having a particular look & feel. Hannibal was his most straight-laced show but the costuming and set decorating was out of this world. Dust Bunny is set in a uber-stylized New York City that I had to build towards believing it was actually NYC. At times, I thought it was an unnamed Eastern European city, at times, it was a London where Aurora might run into Paddington. But eventually, enough set pieces appear to establish it well as NYC, but one unlike any reality we live in. And the apartment building they live puts the Arconia to shame, such wild aesthetics! I swear the wallpaper in the entry hallway of Aurora's apartment changed depending on the mood of the scene.

This is a movie that wears its whimsy on its brocade sleeve. But that's to be expected in a movie about a monster from under the bed, but also in the Fuller oeuvre, its grim. The monster basically eats almost everyone by the end of the movie, but there is also a bonding scene through body dismemberment. It is so much like a proper faery tale in that it is colourful, magical and entirely violent. And delightful!

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Play Dirty

2025, Shane Black (The Predator) -- Amazon

Oh. I didn't know that this was a Richard Stark / Donald Westlake Parker adaptation. Hmm. I guess this will eventually end up in Kent's project?

Anyhoo, this is a somewhat complicated, somewhat over-stuffed crime/heist movie where things just never go as planned, but that ends up being sort of the point of the movie, definitely part of the fun. I expect people to have been very confused by the plot, despite me following along rather easily, but that may be because not long after watching it, the A to B to C to D has now all escaped my memory. But I was still rather delighted by it, as I am with all Black movies.

Shane Black movies, not "Black movies". Also, is over-stuffed and somewhat overly-complicated the Black style? I think back to "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" and wonder if I would have described it as such when I initially saw it. I really should do a rewatch post.

It starts with the intro heist. Parker (Mark Wahlberg, Spenser Confidential), who is Not Supposed to Be in NYC, has a small crew robbing the count room of a racetrack, interrupted by an employee going back after his shift. That gets one of the gang killed, someone Parker did not like but who was someone's cousin, so he protected the stupid kid until he was dead. Aaaand just as they are hiding out in the safe house, the new girl on the gang kills the rest, shooting Parker a few times and he falls into a deep ravine with a raging river.

This whole opener was a quick bite, meant to establish Parker as a quick & tactical thinker, not adverse to killing, and a tenacious survivor. Also, there aren't any deep ravines with raging rivers near NYC but this was all shot in Australia so we can pretend nobody knows that.

So, normally, the movie would be about Parker returning, recovered but still hurting, taking the long painful route to finding her, exacting his revenge, while finding out why she betrayed them all. Instead, in a quick jump & a quip, he does find her, but just as she is about to eat a bullet, she offers him a better deal, which is the reason she killed the crew and stole their money -- to fund a BIGGER heist, in the billions, and the why is ... well, oddly political. And again, she is going to rob the robbers, but this time she wants Parker in on it, and since the robbers they will rob are his Arch-Nemeses, the crime gang that decided he should Not Be in NYC, he is in. Oh, and because its a lot of money.

You can see already why its starting to sound complicated, all layered and challenging. I am sure the "Explained" videos are in the multitude.

So, she is Zen (Rosa Salazar, Alita: Battle Angel), and in her "home country" (unnamed South American country) she was a member of a death-squad, but recently a literal treasure was lifted from the sea off the shores of their country and her corrupt leader intends on stealing that treasure and absconding with it, effectively bankrupting his own country and leaving it to rot. The gang he has hired, called The Outfit, is a gang that Parker betrayed and who still want his head. Zen is working with the military leaders to steal the treasure and set themselves up as leaders of the country.

Nothing about Zen and her compatriots says "revolutionary heroes" -- while she claims she is doing it for her country, the fact that she was a member of a death-squad meant she's part of a political system that only cares for their ideal of the country, and not the people itself. Sound familiar? And yet, Zen is played as charismatic, and yes, Sexy as Hell, setting up a pseudo sexual tension between Parker and her.

But nothing goes as planned, nothing goes as expected. The heists continually go awry forcing Parker to constantly pivot and adjust his plans. Given he is constantly in danger from The Outfit, who are also their adversaries, his only accomplices are Old Friends, people from his old life whom he trusts and who trust him. They include Grofield (LaKeith Stanfield, Knives Out), a thief who sinks his money into a failing theatre, which he seems quite happy with running absolutely terribly. And married couple Ed (Keegan-Michael Key, The Predator) & Brenda Mackey (Claire Lovering, Gold Diggers) who are all about the con & the costumes. They bring driver Stan (Chai Hansen, The New Legends of Monkey) along with them; a young but capable wheel man. 

So, as I was saying, Things Go Awry. They actually lose the bulk of the treasure when The Outfit outsmarts them, actually stealing the treasure from The UN before Parker and his team can initiate their own outrageous plan, which involves stealing a MTA "trash train". This plan derails, figuratively and literally, causing untold amount of collateral damage -- this Parker really has no qualms about who he hurts. BUT he has one last ace card up his sleeve -- the figurehead to the legendary treasure ship, which is probably one of the biggest MacGuffins in movies of late, is being purchased illicitly by an Asshole Billionaire (Chukwudi Iwuji, Peacemaker). The final act of the movie is about them conning it out of him. Almost.

Annoyingly, like most of these movies, they Don't Get the Treasure, but Parker gets enough of it to make his team happy if not "live on a beach for the rest of your life" rich, as was originally intended. And Not Like Most of These Movies, just when we think Zen and Parker might hook-up, Black reminds us he doesn't care for typical. Remember, she killed Parker's original crew, including his old friend Phily (Thomas Jane, The Expanse) and, for that, there is only one punishment.

Yup, loved the movie.

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.