KWIF: Masters of the Universe (+1)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. The "birthday week" now comes to a close, ending with my most anticipated movie of the year, but also accompanied by so much apprehension. I came here to review movies and eat cake, and I'm all out of cake.

This Week:
Masters of the Universe (2026, d. Travis Knight - in theatre)
Backrooms (2026, d. Kane Parsons - in theatre)    

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Masters of the Universe, the toy line, debuted in 1982. I was 6 years old. My introduction to He-Man and company was probably the TV commercials, but my obsession most likely started with issue 47 of DC Comics Presents in which Superman and He-Man teamed up against Skeletor on Eternia, the homeworld of the Masters of the Universe. I was immediately obsessed. I was as obsessed with "MOTU" (as it's known in the fan community) as I was with Star Wars and DC superheroes.

The toy line would receive more comics series from both DC and Marvel in the next few years, there would also be a fan magazine, and yes, billions of dollars in toy sales of ridiculously over-muscled broad-and-squat characters with ridiculous names like Stinkor (he stinks of patchouli), Extendar (his limbs extend), and Buzz-off (he's a wasp-man). There was an immensely popular cartoon that had two seasons with over 60 episodes each, as well as a holiday special and a spin-off series with He-Man's sister, She-Ra. 

In 1987, infamous schlock purveyors Cannon Films produced a Masters of the Universe live action movie, which, it's absolutely fair to say, was a disappointment to everyone at the time. Cannon sunk over $20 million into the film -- a sizable budget for them, but not nearly big enough to do the property justice -- and so most of the film takes place on Earth with a paltry few characters form MOTU's vast lore appearing, and the majority of the film focusing on Courtney Cox's teenage orphan and her boyfriend. It was a huge slap in every child's face that we had a He-Man movie that did not center on He-Man and felt nothing like what we knew about the property.  As well, the cartoon had ceased making new episodes almost two years prior, and public attention to the property was flagging something fierce. Toys were not selling like they used to. By 1988 the line was basically dead.

MOTU has been rebooted a bunch of times since, and the fan community is immensely supportive of the property, it's just not a huge community.  Likely in the tens of thousands, rather than millions like, say, Transformers or Star Wars.  Even the 1987 film has since become kind of a camp classic, and I personally enjoy it far more as an adult than I ever did as a kid. Still, I've always wished for a proper He-Man movie, and for the past 20 years (at least) there have been teases, over and over again, with false starts at nearly every major studio. It felt like it was never going to happen...and now it has... and... for the most part, it seemed to be what I had been waiting for, a big-budget ($200 million dollar) production that understands both how ridiculous the property is while also understanding why it's so beloved to the die hards.

Director Travis Knight came from the world of animation (as head of Laika and director of Kubo and the Two-Strings) and directed the best Transformers movie of the lot in Bumblebee, an impeccable 1980's-styled adventure in an Amblin pastiche. I had the utmost confidence that he could make a good He-Man movie. The ideal was that it would be as good as Bumblebee, or share the tone of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and that it would be a good introduction to MOTU to a whole new generation, and not just a movie for 50 year olds who can't let go of their childhood.

It genuinely pains me to say that Masters of the Universe is a highly flawed movie. It delivers on being a live-action He-Man movie in ways my inner man-child cannot deny... I had warm fuzzies in my belly often, and squealed in glee more than a few times throughout, but it's still not he MOTU movie of my dreams, and that makes me sad.

The film opens with operatic voices in harmony, "AH-AH"-ing to pulsating synths that made me think a vintage ABBA song was about to play... and the guitars kick in, and I got goosebumps. Composer Daniel Pemberton mixes in his score these elements of 70's Euro-disco with 80's guitar-rock and enlisted Queen's Brian May to provide the guitar riffs. It is most suitably epic and triumphant. If you reach back to the epic rock soundtracks of the 1980s - Queen's Highlander, Toto's Dune, Tangerine Dream's Legend - this is reaching, achieving, and in some cases surpassing those grandiose scores, while also paying homage to them (it borrows at least one track from Highlander - "Princes of the Universe"). It has a few needledrops, which are kind of on the nose in-the-moment, and yet also tone-perfect for the type of film this is, and The Darkness provides the title song "Masters of the Universe".  I was not expecting this acoustic assault, but it was so incredibly welcome, and helped elevate the film where it otherwise would fall a little further down.

The film has an extended prologue, where we meet Adam, Prince of Eternia, as a child. He's forced by his father to partake in battle training, but he's not much of a fighter. The other children in training pick on him, and Duncan (Idris Elba, Luther), the king's Man-At-Arms, is a heavy-handed trainer, though he does find ways to encourage and inspire the hapless young prince. The King, however, wants toughness, strength and determination out of his son, and is willing to traumatically embarrass him to do so. It's a tough prologue when so much of it talks about "being a man" and what that entails, and all of it has to do with strength and being a fighter. This had me perplexed as to what the messaging of the film was to be...(Pemberton plays a piano riff of "Boys Don't Cry" over one scene). It almost seemed to be promoting toxic masculinity.  

The palace is attacked by the forces of Skeletor (Jared Leto, The Little Things) and Adam is sent through a portal off to Earth, his mother's homeworld, alone, with only the fabled "Sword of Power" (there's an even earlier prologue attempting to explain just what power this sword has) to accompany him, which he promptly loses. We smash cut to 15 years later and Adam (Nicholas Galatzine, The Sheep Detectives) is an awkward, soft-spoken dork who works in HR, and has been obsessed with his past life on Eternia. He knows the Sword is his way back, and has been searching for it for a long time. When he finally finds it, it alerts his home world and a literal Beast-Man comes after him, but so too does his old friend Teela (Camila Mendes, Riverdale)

These two stretches of film account for about 40 minutes at the top of the film, and while both are called back to and play a part later in the film, they are each waaay too long. The stretch on Earth feels particularly tedious, especially as there's a nonsensical gym sequence where Adam has a nonsensical conversation with another guy working out who just happens to be Dolph Lundgren, the portrayer of He-Man in 1987. I'm not against fan-service. I'm a fan, I like to be serviced, but subtly. This scene stops the movie dead in its tracks for about 2 minutes, as Lundgren gives the young man advice, which ONLY makes sense in a Meta context, and then what little weight was had in the delivery is undercut by a dumb joke.

And that's a major flaw of this film, it's incessant need to undercut itself with dumb jokes. It's the "Marvel-model" of filmmaking that had played itself out by the time the pandemic hit, so there's no excuse as to why the script is resurrecting it here. Cut out half of these moments where the script undercuts itself with humour and you have a much better, tighter film.

This is, of course, the product of multiple screenwriters contributing to many, many drafts over the years. Four screenwriters are credited here, and it's hard not to blame all the film's weaknesses on the script.  Because, Knight's direction is pretty rock solid. The action sequences all play out quite well, with the super-powers of these characters, or the fighting skills of others all being utilized in really fun ways and not feeling super generic, or, in that sometimes Marvel way of it just being CGI characters blasting each other with laser beams. 

The film really starts moving when Beast-Man and Teela show up. The energy just starts to crackle and these characters are really well translated from toy/animation/comics-to-screen. Mendes' reveal on screen is particularly captivating, as she exudes strength, confidence and charm that I never would have expected from her CW background. She looks and feels like a movie star, and I hadn't expected that from her or this film. 

Teela brings Adam back to Eternia, but not one he remembers. It's been under Skeletor's thrall for 15 years and things have not gone well. Adam's return with the Sword has exposed the Eternian resistance and Skeletor's forces attack, but in the process, Adam turns into He-Man and a new hope for the people of the land raises... except that even with all that power, Adam is still Adam, and his first avenue is hope and optimism and looking for the best in people... but the lesson he needs is that sometimes fighting is necessary to protect the people you care for. Diplomacy is always Adam's first choice (he was always pretty good at human resources) but now he has the power (and, honestly, "the power" basically represents confidence here) to stand up and fight, and to get back up when knocked down.

Knight's path to becoming an accomplished director was not a hard one. His dad is Phil Knight, the billionaire founder of Nike. The animation studio Travis heads was bought for him by his father. But to his credit, Knight worked at his craft, and clearly has both an aptitude and a talent for directing and storytelling. One can look at him as being perfect for telling the story of Adam, of a young man (of privilege) who doesn't necessarily live up to his father's (or anyone's) expectations, and feels lost, only to find his true calling and, while not without its hurdles, excel at it.  It's not fully the story we need, but Knight found a way to make this story personal to him, and it does elevate it slightly.

It keeps coming back to the script, though. It fumbles its exploration of masculinity pretty badly. It takes a shot at it, but it doesn't just miss the target, it doesn't even know where the target is. With all the writers involved, it's like nobody thought to consult an expert, to get it right.  

But what it does get right... and it's so weird to say this... is Skeletor. Jared Leto, buried under a blue-skinned body suit, and a CGI skull with beady-red lazer-pointer eyes, is mercifully unrecognizable, and nails the assignment. Leto as a performer is sometimes insufferable, and allegations made about his off-screen behaviour makes one like him even less, but this... he got this. Skeletor is an evil, cackling villain of no redeeming virtue, and unapologetic about it. He's also freaking funny, as funny as he is intimidating, which serves to simultaneously make him more and less intimidating if that makes any sense. It's a camp performance, but one that works perfectly for both the character and the film. Alison Brie (Freelance), who plays Evil-Lyn, Skeletor's mistress and aide, and shares the most screentime with him, is a gifted comedic actress, but even she has a difficult time keeping up with Leto. It's clear she's attempting to match his tone, but only is able to get there half the time.

There are many characters from the toys and cartoons and lore that pop up in this film, and it's a bevvy of delights. It tickles me to see Fisto, Ram-Man, Mekanek, Spikor, Tri-Clops, Trap-Jaw. Roboto, Battle Cat, and so many more, alongside vehicles like the Sky-Sled, Roton, Talon Fighter and more in this picture, not to mention playsets like Castle Greyskull and Snake Mountain. What a damn treat. I was giddy in seeing it all and only wanted more. 

As there were delights, there were also let-downs, but Nicholas Galatzine was not one of them. His squeaky-voiced Adam, with posture seemingly learned from studying Christopher Reeve's Clark Kent, does exactly the job it needs to do, and when he transforms into He-Man, he still effectively conveys being Adam inside a muscle-bound barbarian's body, but also shows the character levelling up emotionally. Really, really solid job.

I could go on about the ups and downs of this movie and the wild roller-coaster of emotions I went on watching it. In the end, it's fine, but sadly, fine isn't what the property needed if it were going to be resuscitated for a new generation.  That was my greatest hope for it, that this would a super strong movie enjoyable by kids and adults alike and so exciting and entertaining and undeniable that there would be millions of children clamouring for action figures instead of phone screens. I guess we'll have to wait for Toy Story 5 to do that.

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Kane Parsons' 9-minute Backrooms (sometimes The Backrooms) short film from 2022 currently sits with an astonishing 83 million views on Youtube. Backrooms is not just a single short, but a series of them made in the years , but none of the follow-up twenty or so videos come close to that number, and yet most of them have between 3 and 18 million views, which are still quite impressive numbers. What's not so astonishing is that a studio was willing to gamble on a modestly-budgeted feature derived from the Backrooms series given the impressive numbers it's pulled...no, the astonishing thing is that the studio, in this case A24, was willing to take a chance on the feature with Parsons at the helm.

The video series itself was not the original invention of Parsons, but a product of message board groupthink in the creepypasta subgenre, and the idea of "backrooms" itself became its own subgenre.

I wasn't familiar with any of this until very recently. But, to watch Parsons' original short, which is somewhat recreated in the prologue to the film, it owes as much to first-person shooter video games as it does to whatever developed out of message board forum. It's visceralness comes from being in an unfamiliar, relatively barren indoor space that is just an expanse of seemingly limitless corridors. There are objects in the corridors that could best be described as "random", while the hallways themselves lack any sense of logic, as the attaching corridors might be through a crevice or a hole in the floor, or a tunnel in the wall accessible only by ladder or a doorway in the ceiling.  And the lighting is spotty, with most corridors being difficult to see fully... you never know what awaits you as you pass through a doorway, or turn a corner, or step into the shadows. (The fantastic TV series Severance was partially inspired by the conceit of "backrooms", and the spinoff subgenre of "liminal spaces" inspired the video game and subsequent film Exit 8 which I reviewed last week.)

The Blair Witch style shaky cam intro to the film is as effective as it is discombobulating.  I never have a good physiological reaction to this kind of footage, so mercifully it was an in-universe video cassette of camcorder footage being watched by someone, and didn't last past the first 10 mintues.

Following this sequence we meet Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Serentity). He runs a failing furniture store and is seeing a therapist, Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person in the World) following his separation from his wife. What is clear from their sessions is that Clark is full of entitlement and rage, and isn't very interested in truly exploring the source of his emotional discontent.

Clark has been living in his sparsely-stocked furniture store since the separation and experiencing eerie and strange issues with the electricity in the store. The lights will flicker and blink, turning off or on all on their own, while the television will shut off or randomly show video from inside the backrooms that we saw in the opening sequence.  When checking the breaker panel one night, Clark discovers a soft spot in fabric of reality... he touches the wall and his hand passes through. He steps into the wall and comes out in a dingy yellow carpeted and wallpapered environment that seemingly doesn't end. He later describes to Mary this reality as being like a drawing of a dog, but as if someone who had never seen a dog were told what a dog looks like, and then drew their conceptualization of a dog. Everything is off.

Clark spends days exploring the space, even though there seem to be dangers present. Perhaps because he's a (failed) architect, or perhaps because there are things familiar to him in this space, he is quite obsessed with this topsy turvy alt-reality that defies any logic.  He recruits his young assistant manager (Lukita Maxwell, Shrinking) and her videographer boyfriend (Finn Bennett, True Detective: Night Country) to help him with research, and, naturally things go awry.

Outside of it all, Clark has triggered a video camera within the space, and it's being monitored by Phil (Mark Duplass, Safety Not Guaranteed) who wonders who the hell this guy is. Clark's description of this space triggers memories, traumas and nightmares in Mary of her childhood. Are they connected?

Backrooms is a horror movie, but it's also a science fiction and pscyhological thriller. It's not always scary, but it is tonally pretty intense. What is most effective about the film, and baked into the "backrooms" and "liminal spaces" subgenre, is the surreal perversion of reality. Things that look almost familiar, almost like something we should recognize, but aren't quite there. Exploring a space like this is like venturing through a nightmare, there's nothing grounding this experience and it could take you literally anywhere one's mind can conceive.

Eventually the film reaches a point where it starts offering some answers, and the worst thing you can do in horror is demystify the threat, to explain it all away. It's frustrating not having answers, but it's less scary when you do.  Backrooms' answers, well, they aren't truly answers. There's more going one than what we know at first, but as one veil is pulled back, there are only more questions.

The audience is left to find their own answers in the information provided to them, and the information is as much there to confound as it is to illuminate. My take is that this endless reality is subconscious memory made manifest, but not of any individual. The more time you spend within, the more the realm taps into your subconscious memory, particularly the darkness you trap away, your fears, anxieties, regrets and repressed impulses. It's a theory, anyway.

I liked this movie a whole damn lot, and it's part of this year's horror explosion of fresh talent that is redefining the box office and what audiences want, what excites them, what they're looking to escape to. Twisted reflections of reality, apparently. Parsons, a teenager when he created Backrooms, is now 22 and has directed one of the biggest movies of the year, and capably so. He'd been refining this story for four years, so it's no wonder he was so capable and assured in shooting this, but time will tell if he has the capacity for telling any stories beyond Backrooms.  I'm keen to find out.

KWIF: I Love Boosters (+3)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Ol' Kent here celebrated the end of his 50th year with some epic boardgaming, epic toy and collectibles hunting, epic medical diagnostic imaging, and not so much epic movie watching (or reviewing)...just a little.

This Week:
I Love Boosters (2026, d. Boots Riley - in theatre)
Tuner (2025, d. Daniel Roher - in theatre)
Exit 8 (2025, d. Genki Kawamura - rental)
Made of Honor (2008, d. Paul Welland - hollywoodsuite)

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I think this will wind up being my
 favourite movie poster of the year.
I want this as a puzzle.

As the credits were rolling on our sparsely attended early Saturday matinee of I Love Boosters, one white male millennial audience member stood up and stretched, turned around and engaged the other millenial couple behind him. The part my wife overheard him say was "I mean, I liked it, but can you tell me why you thought it was funny?"

Humour is subjective. I get that. But I Love Boosters is undoubtedly a comedy. It's part farce, part Looney Tunes (by way of Stephen Chow), part social satire, part absurdism, and so many other little parts of things that congeal to make a wildly appealing, chaotic, inventive whole.

Kiki Palmer (Nope) - one of the most charismatic performers of her generation - leads this film as Corvette, a wanna-be fashion designer who just can't seem to find her way into the industry. She lives in an abandoned fried chicken restaurant and steals clothes for a living to resell at steep discounts on the black market to the less rich. She's aided in the "Velvet Gang" by her best friend Sade (Naomi Ackie, Mickey 17) who is obsessed with a multi-level marketing scheme, and Mariah (Taylour Paige, Zola) who thinks her boosting is a revolutionary act.

They don't steal from just anywhere, or just anyone, but instead focus on the chain of Metro Designers stores which are owned by fashion mogul and certified genius Christie Smith (Demi Moore, The Substance). Corvette is obsessed with Smith, idolizes her, and in her own way sees her boosting of Smith's clothes as a form of flattery, but Smith, who calls the Velvet Gang "low class, urban bitches" is increasingly perturbed by them.  Corvette learns of a delivery of $100,000 suits and sets her sights on that being the ultimate target (especially after discovering that Smith has stolen a design Corvette submitted to a fashion contest earlier in the year, it becomes about revenge). To make a boost this big, they need to work on the inside.

So they get a job working at Metro Designers under Grayson (Will Poulter, Warfare), who has totally drunk the Christie Smith corporate kool-aid, and meet Violeta (Eiza Gonzalez, Bloodshot) who is trying to organize a union within Metro Designers.  And then they are robbed..the entire store gone in seconds.  

I could go on for paragraphs breaking down the larger strokes of this film. It is very busy, but earns its busyness.  Boots Riley cut his teeth with the incredible satire Sorry To Bother You, and takes the social satire and ambition of that film to a whole other level here. The picture is vibrant, with bold monochromes at each of the Metro Designers sets, while the wardrobe is off the charts with all the leads looking ridiculous or stylish or ridiculously stylish. It'd be the most fashionable movie of the year, if not for The Devil Wears Prada 2. There are extended sequences involving stop motion animation (that recall John Carpenter's They Live) an extended chase sequence done in minature (some shades of Wes Anderson there), a building on a canted angle leaving a set sloped at 20 degrees which all but Christie Smith seem to have difficulty navigating, and a gigantic ball of stress made up of bills and all the other things haunting Corvette, stalking her at random times.

I Love Boosters is unfettered creativity from a director who doesn't see limits on what can be done in storytelling. It's the first mass-released film since Everything Everywhere All At Once that feels like there are no restrictions in how a story can be told. Even if I Love Boosters is only nominally less successful at coherently conveying its central message than that Oscar-winner, it's still an exceptionally entertaining and provocative ride.  [I haven't even mentioned the soul-eating demon/love interest played by Lakieth Stanfield (Atlanta), but he's an intriguing distraction for both the picture and Corvette that pops up at both the most opportune and inopportune times. He's a total aside, but a deliciously amusing one.]

While its employment of magical realism and surrealist fantasy is wickedly enjoyable and compliments its anti-capitalism message in unusual but agreeable ways, I Love Boosters' use of a science fiction technology alongside abstract concepts of "situational acceleration and deconstructionism", as well as teleportation is a tad less concrete. There is a device introduced in the second act which then becomes the inciting agent for the rest of the film, and the employment of these speculative conceits become the hardest part of the film to wrap one's head around, particularly at the accelerated pace the film moves at.  It leads to a lot of fun and clever sequences in the film, and effectively incites the film's ultimate, pro-union, power-in-numbers message, but it does so with an asterisk.

What I Love Boosters ultimate goal is to promote a character who realizes that sometimes there's a greater goal, a greater purpose to one's actions than fulfilling their own desires. That perhaps too many of us are concerned more with individual achievement than collective growth is the realization Corvette needs to have on her journey, even if it isn't the most personally satisfying, it does seem the most rewarding. 

[As an aside, as a person who is basically deaf in one ear, I had a very difficult time with the sound mix on this film. As a musician himself, Riley loves music, and there's always music playing in the background of any scene, whether it's diegetic or the fantastic score from TuneYards, along with layers of ambient noise or sometimes background dialogue and/or TV footage.  In person, I have a hard time in cacophonous situations picking out what people are saying, and turns out it's the same with on screen situations. I can't wait for Blu-Ray, which I will absolutely be getting, so I can watch this with the closed captioning on and pick up on so much of what I missed].

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Speaking of my hearing disorder, it was fascinating for me to watch a film about someone on the other end of the aural spectrum than I am. In Tuner, Niki (Leo Woodall, Cherry) has hyperacusis, an affliction in which he is exceptionally hypersensitive to sound to a debilitating degree. For the majority of the picture he is wearing custom ear plugs, and often with noise cancelling headset over that. Even then particularly sharp or loud noises can send him into disarray, even proving so painful as to render him unconscious.

Niki also has perfect pitch and starts the film working as protege piano tuner to family friend Harry Horowicz (Dustin Hoffman, Tootsie), a beloved figure in the music community. Harry is losing his hearing and starting to be a bit forgetful, but he's a delight to be around (I'm normally not a big Hoffman fan, but he is very likeable in the role). Niki is sweetly devoted to Harry and his wife Marla, like family. When Harry falls ill, Niki agrees to help out with the medical bills by buying Harry's truck and taking over his business. While on a job he meets Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu, AfrAId), and over a few encounters their attraction becomes undeniable, but while on a different job, Niki meets Uri (Lior Raz, Gladiator II) and his boys as they attempt to drill into the safe of the house they are both working at. Niki learned his hearing disorder actually was a boon for safecracking and gets into the safe for the boys. Uri, who works in private security for elite individuals, offers Niki a job if he wants to make "real money". To pay Harry's bills, Niki has no choice, and he helps them steal from Uri's client's safes "things they wouldn't notice are missing".  Of course, getting involved with criminals is never going to end well for Niki and it threatens to destroy what comfort he has in life and maybe take everyone else he loves down with him.

Woodall is very unassuming as Niki, at first, with Hoffman dominating each scene they're in together early on. But eventually Woodall is handed control and Niki becomes quite captivating in his quiet temperament, and the reality of his affliction (handled with superb sound design) is clearly conveyed to the audience at all times. Canadian director Daniel Roher, who won an Oscar for his documentary on Alexei Navalni in 2022, proves he has an incredibly steady hand for directing a modestly budgeted dramatic thriller like this. In his debut narrative feature, Roher utilizes montages to perfect effect (time will tell if this is a signature move or just something stylistic for this feature, metering up with the film's soft jazzy piano score, and symphonic bits).

Tuner works very well as a character study but its crime element is unfortunately quite predictable, lacking a lot of real surprises. Thankfully Roher is more interested in the character than he is in the jobs Niki is assisting on, and so the segments of safecracking, for the most part, are pretty brisk and don't employ the tension of the risk of getting caught too heavily. There is one particular Chechov-ian item that presents itself early on, and the manner in which it goes off is such a deus ex machina that it borders on unforgivable...but just sits on that border.

Otherwise, this is an agreeable throwback to the kind of thriller we saw plenty of through the 70's, 80's and 90's, but have largely disappeared in the past two decades. We could do with more.

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I knew nothing about Exit 8 except the concept: a man gets lost in a maze of subway hallways searching for Exit 8, finding horrors along the way. I was in. I love subway tiles, and hallways and escape rooms, so this movie was beckoning me like a siren of the sea. 

In the film, our "lost man" is played by Kazunari Ninomiya, a seemingly hapless and perhaps depressed young man who doesn't seem ready for the world. We first meet him on a subway train during rush hour as he witnesses a man in a suit berate a young mother for bringing her crying baby on the train. Everyone's looking at their phones, and, after he puts his earbuds back in, so does he. When he gets off the train he receives a phone call from his ex. She's at the hospital and tells him she's pregnant. She doesn't know whether she wants to keep it or terminate the pregnancy, and is asking for his input. He doesn't know either. Not paying attention, he finds himself in an Z-shaped hallway that seems to repeat without end...the same man walking past him, the same adverts on the wall, the same lockers and photobooth....

And then he spies a sign, telling him that he needs to leave through Exit 8. If he spies an anomaly, turn back, and if there are no anomalies, keep going.

I didn't know Exit 8 was based off an indie video game sensation, but really it didn't take me long to discern such a thing, especially when the "rules" were introduced. What could have just been cheap horror, though, is so much more from director/writer Genki Kawamura (co-written with Kentaro Hirase). It's not just an endless maze of repeating tunnels, but a metaphor for repetitive cycles in life, of fearing change and indecision., alerting us to look for the differences, and that we need to embrace those differences to make it out the other end.

If it were just our "lost man" encountering terrifying anomalies, it would have been a fine movie, but it's not just that. There is a delicious surprise (SPOILER) in act 2, where the film completely pivots away from our "lost man" and instead follows the man he's passed dozens of times at this point, and we learn the "walking man's" story. Both men, however, encounter a young boy who they each think is a facet of this purgatory they're in, but come to learn (if not embrace) that the child is as trapped as they are and, maybe, has better instincts for getting out.

Though slight on story, and maybe light on horrors, I absolutely loved this movie. It was completely my thing.  The repetition encourages audience engagement, looking at the same hallway walls and wondering what's different...if anything, and knowing it could come down to something so easily overlooked as the fine text on one of the posters, or a tile placed askew (although, mercifully it's never that).

The sound design is as crucial as the visual design, and as integral to the repetition. It's obviously largely borrowed from the video game, but it's brought into "reality" so effectively. Ninomiya has such a soulful face that your empathy is immediately with him, and he conveys his emotions so blatantly and effectively. The "walking man" played by Yamato Kochi is intensely terrifying in his early scenes where the lost man turns around the find the walking man immediately in his face with a grin that'll make your skin crawl, but then it only takes Kochi seconds with the second act pivot to bring you over to sympathizing with his plight in the corridors.

The film creates a text that the video game never had, a reason for why our protagonist(s) are in this purgatory, and letting the audience know that they need to have a reason to get out. I feel like we can apply this to life somehow....

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I've made no secret out of enjoying cheesy romance movies and romantic comedies, but that's not universal approval of all of them. In fact, there are scant few romcoms I would consider good or worth watching again, and even fewer I actually want to watch in the first place. To some extent most romcoms I just tend to avoid because, in execution (if not conceptually), they're so cloying as to be repulsive.

In concept, Made of Honor should not be such a film. The story of a tomcat of a man who is best friends with a woman whom he learns after years and years that he's actually in love with her, only for her to turn up engaged before he can say anything...well, that sounds like a serviceable, if predictable romcom format, and not egregiously offensive. But show me that trailer, or even just the poster, and I'm steering clear like it's plague-bearing.

I never needed to see Made of Honor, there was nothing compelling me to watch it, but it was a lazy Sunday afternoon, and after I finished watching a film on dvd, it turned up on cable when the player shut off. I spied Patrick Dempsey and his basketball-playing bro-pals (including Kadeem Hardison and Chris Messina) attempting to help the man navigate his emotions over his best friend Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) being away on a work trip and missing her so much he couldn't enjoy his many many dates with hot women in her absence.  It's a particular turning point in pop culture when men were allowed to support other men emotionally but only if it was in a really really butch situation, with like sports and/or alcohol, but points for letting them get there. But it treats these scenes as if they were comedy, not as if there's real emotional stakes at play which gets to what's so wrong with this film.... 

Made of Honor makes the biggest cardinal sin of the romantic comedy genre: it's not funny. It tries to be funny and fails pretty much every time. There's two possible reasons, and it's an and/or situation: casting and/or the director. 

Dempsey is cute, handsome and charming, but he's not innately funny. Ditto for Monaghan. Hardison and Messina both have comedic acting experience, and Monaghan's coterie of bridesmaids includes Busy Philipps and Whitney Cummings, but none of them squeeze out any real guffaws despite trying. 

Monaghan returns from her trip engaged to rugged Scotsman Kevin McKidd, who threatens Dempsey's masculinity in every way. Any attempt to one-up him ends in failure. Just as any attempt for either to be funny falls entirely flat.

There is a scene where Dempsey is going to meet Monaghan for the first time since her return home, only to be surprised by her new beau, and he smashes into a waiter and they topple to the floor, his bouquet of flowers everywhere (which he lies were never his). It's close to being a good pratfall. Later in the scene, after an awkward dinner, Dempsey gets up from his chair at an awkward moment and tumbles into the same waiter again. The whole sequence should be full of humour around the discomfort, complete with the pratfall starter and capper, but it doesn't take, like, at all. And that's direction. Director Welland seems to be too lost in finding an emotional center to really let the humour of the scene play, and its stars aren't gifted enough comedically to innately play up the humour and the emotion. 

But boy do they look good not being funny. Dempsey is real fit, and kinda dashing, while Monaghan is just so effortlessly pretty (with a team of make-up and wardrobe people putting great effort into that effortlessness).

Without the humour, this movie feels tedious, rehashing the same points over and over again. I don't know that Dempsey and Monaghan ever found the "friendship" dynamic this film needed to sell that part of it. They're just too good looking together and they play into the attraction even when it's not fully supposed to be there yet. This needed two decent-to-good looking comedic performers to pull this off. (Like Jason Segel and Mila Kunis in Forgetting Sarah Marshall...a far superior film, and one which I would definitely not sacrifice to put those leads into Made of Honor. What's a pairing that didn't happen... maybe like, Paul Rudd and Isla Fisher?)

There's both a good romance and good comedy waiting to happen in this script. It's been 20 years, maybe a remake is in order with a director and starring pair that can get it right.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Honey Don't

2025, Ethan Coen (True Grit) -- download

Yes, I love complaining about movies. I love complaining, in general. Maybe "love" is not the right word, but its my default setting. And to be entirely honest, its not a pleasant way to live. So much about so much just bothers me and I have to let others know. To them, I apologize. To you, dear readers, I guess I don't, as you already know that I am challenged about saying nice things about stuff I like.

But, I liked this movie. Maybe so far as a lot. It just felt, from the opening titles, that it was a movie meant to be enjoyed by movie people. So, for the briefest in moments, That Guy returned. I probably liked it a bit more than Kent, and I suggest that may just be because he was so immersed in Coen-ish creations that this did not stand out, at the time. 

OK, neo-noir. That means we get a private detective, one Honey O'Donahue (Margaret Qualley, Drive-Away Dolls); I so much want to call her a "private dick" but I won't - it would be inappropriate. What we don't get are harsh shadows punctuated by flickering neon lights. This is Bakersfield, California and any shadows there are, are blasted away by never ending sunlight. This is a depiction of a place I would love to disappear into with a camera, all faded, worn pastels, all low structures and dusty flat roofs. The movie begins with car crash, where a mysterious Tarantino-ish character steals a ring from a dead woman. That woman was Honey's prospective client and the rest of the movie is about Honey trying to find out why the woman wanted to hire her, and what happened.

Except its not. As Kent pointed out, its a "shaggy dog story", a story telling technique, oft used in comedy, where a sprawling, disconnected, over-descriptive story is told only to end by entirely not getting to the point. Almost all the plot points setup in this movie are, well, not satisfyingly summed up. There is the crime that starts it, and while we find out why, its not the climax you would have expected. There is a corrupted church cum crime syndicate but... oh, that's done with. There is a sexy love story but... oh wow, was not expecting it to end that way. 

The only thing that centers the film is Honey herself, a raunchy entirely self-actualized lesbian. Margaret Qualley just envelopes the role here, sexy as hell, confident and motivated, whether she's giving unsolicited advice to her teenage niece or fending off the advances of a (mostly) harmless police detective. Honey has to put up with a lot of shit, and she knows it. Those clicky-clack heels tell a hell of a character story.

KsMIRT: all groaned up

 KsMIRT=Kent's month in reviewing television. I haven't reviewed television in a while. Truth be told, I find reviewing television frustrating, as I don't have the capacity to review episode by episode, nor do I have the capacity to really, really dive into a full season. So why bother with these half-assed reviews? I mean, how can I not? Can I not? 

This Month:
The Rise and Fall of Reggie Dinkins Season 1 (2026, NBC - 10/10 episodes)
Deadloch Season 2 (2026, AmazonPrime - 6/6 episodes)
Last One Laughing UK Season 2 (2026, AmazonPrime - 6/6 episodes)
Star Wars: Maul: Shadow Lord (2026, Disney+ - 10/10 episodes)

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One of the things I hate the most about my brain is how deplorably poor it is at remembering clever one-liners or turns of phrases from the media I watch. I'm so direly envious of those who can, like, the next day after watching a new show or movie, perfectly use a quote or reference in correct situational context. I mean, I would rather be funny on my own, but part of being funny is remembering one's own bits and I have a real hard time remembering to commit to a bit. (Toasty has a running gag on this blog of citing an obscure or absurd reference point when bringing up an actor in his entries, and when I try to do it, I can commit about 12% to the bit, often forgetting mid-post about the bit.... We could really do with an editor ... if we were striving for any sense of professionalism... which I gave up on long ago).

I say this because shows from the Tina Fey and Robert Carlock school of situational comedianity (30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Girls 5Eva) are so, so amazing at one liners and ridiculous turns of phrase that I want desperately to remember so, so many of them, but it's a futile want...my brain just ain't wired that way.  The Rise and Fall of Reggie Dinkins is another Carlock production, co-created with Sam Means (who wrote on all three of the aforementioned Fey/Carlock specials) and serves as a spotlight piece for Tracey Morgan (Cop Out).

Morgan plays the titular Reggie Dinkins, an ex-NFL pro who was the hottest draft pick one year and an instant icon, until a gambling scandal drove him out of the sport and into a reclusive lifestyle for two decades. Daniel Radcliffe (Swiss Army Man) plays Arthur Tobin, a certain-award-winning documentary filmmaker who has convinced Reggie to let him film him as he prepares to mount a comeback into the public spotlight. Tobin himself is trying to mount a comeback after an epic (and viral) meltdown on the set of a Marvel movie he was hired for, and then fired from. 

Reggie's ex-wife Monica (Erica Alexander, Wu-Tang: An American Saga) is still his manager and they have a very friendly and familiar relationship, but whatever was between them romantically is long since dead. Monica is likewise venturing out into new terrain as she explores taking on other clients, but is constantly interfered with by a rival organization run by Barry Hu (Ronnie Chang, The Devil Wears Prada 2).

Reggie and Monica's son Carmelo (Jalyn Hall, Space Jam: A New Legacy) is kid of privilege but seems to really love and admire his dad, but harbours secrets that he fears would shame his father...really, geeky secrets. Reggie's much younger fiancee, Brina (Precious Way), is much more than a gold digger, for her social media influencer empire is on the rise and she's making her own serious money. She actually loves Reggie, and somehow the show makes it work.  And then there's Reggie's best friend and former teammate Rusty (Bobby Moynahan,Hoppers), who lives in the basement but is utterly committed and loyal to Reggie.

The gags are, as should be expected, a rapid fire, just an incredible barrage of ridiculous things often said ridiculous ways. There's some fantastic physical comedy (the peak, for me, was Rusty chasing a hard boiled egg he left in a pocket of his laundry and dives into the top-loader washing machine only to get stuck in the machine, vertically upright...and then it starts agitating) and a strong roster of recurring characters such as Reggie's sports rival (Craig Robinson) and Arthur Tobin's hook-up with a postal worker played by Megan Thee Stallion (just seeing the two of them in the same frame is wild...and kinda hot, the size difference and sexual tension is palpable).

Of course the show lives only at the whims of Tracey Morgan who is quite in the pocket on this one. While it may be hard to imagine Morgan as a genuine physical threat on the football field, his physicality is one of the greatest gifts to comedy especially when they "age down" Morgan for flashback sequences that barely try at all. But Morgan also delivers his one-liners with his trademark inflection and gusto, and the writers sharply swivel back and forth between making Reggie surprisingly astute, educated and pop-culture savvy and ridiculously lacking self-awareness and being a goof. The treat is how these two sides of the character don't really contradict one another.

Even among all the riches of gags there's still a heart to this show, a desire to see these down-but-not-out characters actually succeed (although there's a definite Lucy Van Pelt to the whole thing where just as success seems to come, the football is pulled away). Excited to hear Season 2 is coming.

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I quite loved Deadloch's first season, so I was super bummed when Season 2 came out and I no longer had a subscription to AmazonPrime to watch it, and there were no viewing alternatives.  Eventually I would have to feed the Bezos machine my daily quarters to get access, but I wasn't going to like it. Would it sour my experience of watching things on the Amazon platform? Turns out, no, not so much.

Season 1 ended with a nice pat ending for the mystery/ies at hand but did as so many series do and attaches a coda to the end that teases where a second season might be heading. In this case it was having detectives Eddie Radcliffe (Madeline Sami) and her/their partner Dulcie Collins (Kate Box) investigate the death of Eddie's former partner, Bushy, with Dulcie's exhuberant wife Cath in tow.

It's kind of amusing then that within minutes of the first episode of season 2 we find Eddie's quest for justice being pretty decisively slammed down by the copious evidence that all but confirms Bushy's death was a suicide...a dated suicide note in his handwriting perhaps the most damning piece in a trove of them.

So if Bushy's death isn't going to be the thrust of this season, what is? Well, Eddie's gone completely mental about the verdict on Bushy's case that she's/they're reluctant to go along with Dulcie on the new case in which a dead crocodile near Barra Creek on the north shore of the continent was found with a severed arm in its mouth. Whose arm is it? Does it connect with the mystery of two missing Swedish backpackers? And what's with all the dead and missing crocs? 

It turns out Barra Creek is Eddie's hometown, and most of the people there know her/them, and with few positive associations. Eddie's father was recently released from prison and it turns out Eddie was the one that put him there, convicted of killing crocs, which are a protected species.

But there's so many other mysteries afoot that it's hard to connect them all, or to see if they're even all connected. Eddie is too close to the situation to see anything clearly and is even more unhinged than she/they were last season, while Dulcie is getting lost in process and procedure, being swallowed by the job, which starts interfering in her relationships with Eddie and Cath.

This season of Deadloch builds an insane community around Barra Creek that is only a pile of mysteries heavier than an Australian riff on Letterkenny. There's the animosity towards city folk, and all the cultural conflict between the indigenous population and the redneck hicks in town, as well as the competing croc tourism business which finds the small-potatoes Darrell family (whose patriarch may or may not be the owner of the dismembered arm) competing with the aggressively bro-polished attractions of Jason Wade's (Luke Hemsworth) croc park. It's a rich, and very specific world that's a bit of a romp to visit but, woof, would be so much rougher to experience for reals.

This season is densely packed with both mysteries to unravel (concurrently) and hilarious line readings, many of which I would never have caught without the subtitles on. So often characters are talking/yelling over each other or muttering under their breath that it's pretty astounding how absolutely razor sharp the dialogue and the portrayals are here.

Dulce and Eddie get a new assistant in Leo (Jean Tong), a low-level journalist who is so low-key people barely register that they're even in the room with them. Of course when perky, ultra-polite forensics expert Abby (Nina Oyama) happens on the scene - ecstatic to be reunited with her work moms - she's uncontrollably jealous of Leo, and acts out in hilariously rude (for her, yet still quite tame) ways.

As with last season, I found it amusing how much the showrunners/creators (Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan...no Kate McHarrison or Kate McStarr?) love to reveal that so many of the female characters in this show are lesbians (or queer-coded) and the jokes about lesbians (by lesbians for lesbians) as well as feminism (by feminists for feminists) are a salve for an entertainment reality that's starved for this kind of representation.

That Deadloch had two less episodes this season was a sure sign that the first season was strong enough for Amazon to give the series a second shot but that they didn't have much confidence in it growing its numbers the second time around. McCartney and McClennan close out the series in its final episode, and we find both Dulce and Eddie in quite different places by the end of this season from where they started, and the ending is a happy one, though sad if this is the last we'll ever see of these genuinely fantastic characters.

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If I write about a reality TV show or a competition show or a panel show, I will usually do one season but not usually any more than that. I feel they're the type of show that if I'm not talking about the format then I really only have what happens to discuss, and usually there's too much to remember and write through (or too much of nothing, so nothing much to write about). Plus, quality can warble dramatically, and it can all be too much.

 That said, I feel particularly inspired to write about the second series of Last One Laughing UK, the show that got me to subscribe to AmazonPrime again (dammit).  

I discussed LOL Canada and LOL Australia back when LOL first cropped up and Amazon proliferated the format across the globe. It's interesting that the only (English language) one to have a second season is LOL UK, and I think that has to do with the fact that the UK is sooooo panel show/game/reality show intensive in a way I don't think any other country is. There's something fundamentally British about comedians faffing about in a loosely structured format that hasn't really transferred to other countries in quite the same way. The UK is a densely populated island, but it's also pretty small, which results in the comedy scene being relatively close knit in a way we don't see in Canada (due to its vastness) or in the US (due to its size and capitalistic competitiveness).  

The format of the show hasn't really changed... 10 comedians get in a room and they can't laugh or even smile broadly... if they do they get a yellow card, and if they do it again they get a red card. Monitoring them are Jimmy Carr and Roisin Conaty, which Jimmy acting as the sort of ringleader/emcee/Jigsaw of the piece. Though the pretense is that Carr and Conaty are eagle-eyed watching and then triggering the alarm if there's a laugh or a smile, the facade is less strict this season and there's an awareness the producers are feeding them the possibilities.  I wish there was even more transparency actually.  We are only seeing about 3 hours of what is probably an 8-10 hour shoot (the clock is set at 6 hours for them to be in the room, but I suspect with stopping and starting and various set-ups that it last a lot longer) and even then it's only what we're seeing of the edit (and it's clear there's at least one camera for every couple of performers tracking their movements and face). At times we the audience are seeing things that it seems Jimmy and Roisin are not... but it's always hard to know in what order things actually happened as opposed to the edit.

This second series of contestants is a great bunch and the reason I wanted to write up this series is because I had thoughts on their performance and the way the show may or may not have favoured them:

[SPOILERS WITHIN]

The majority of the contestants this season I know from watching Taskmaster, with a few exceptions. It just goes to show how great a show Taskmaster is at exposing the world to the UK comedy talents. Each contestant had to prepare a "joker", or a one-person performance of approximately 5 minutes in length.

• Romesh Ranganathan - an exceptionally prominent competitor, like, probably the most involved in everything throughout the show. His standup persona is very snarly, so he seemed like he would be a tough act, but he was always on the verge of breaking. Ramesh's joker was hammering on his lazy eye and then having prepared bits for the crowd to read which, honestly, needed to be more discomforting in most cases...but he did get one person to break.
• Diane Morgan - I haven't spent much time with Morgan's Philomina Cunk character, but Morgan seemed like an early frontronner because she should be used to being funny with a straight face as she often does this with the public as Cunk. Her joker was reading Dylan Thomas with fart breaks. Incredible. While not the most vicious player, she was definitely in the mix in the room.
• Gbemisola Ikumelo - a 2 time BAFTA award winning comedy actor/writer/showrunner, but never been on Taskmaster, so I have no idea who she is. She will go down in infamy on this show for her attempt to not react to Morgan's farts. Ikumelo was holding in the laughs to the point of pain and tears, until finally letting out a gutteral wail of a sob laugh at the end of Morgan's performance. Once eliminated she didn't hang around the green room long, having fallen ill. If I had to guess, a migraine, because surely that would happen to me too.  She was a great presence but didn't go on the offensive much. We didn't get to see her joker.
• Maisie Adam - a delight on Taskmaster season 20 doesn't seem to get much room to stretch here, at least until she goes face to face with Ramesh and the two of them start to basically roast one another. We don't get to see Maisie's joker, which is a shame. She's pretty involved in the room, but not heavy on offense.
• Amy Gledhill - a contestant on the current season of Taskmaster, where she's a very lively, vibrant presence. She was pretty recessed in the room. I have to suspect being a younger comic in the mix and the other contestants not being as familiar with her, that she wasn't as comfortable inserting herself into the more seasoned group engagements and perhaps wasn't as included or targeted in them. I think she was taken out on a cheap call though (maybe as likely because she wasn't as active a participant)
• Bob Mortimer - a legend, apparently, in the UK comedy scene, and the winner of season 1 of LOL (meh, I think Richard Ayoade gave him the win out of some sort of reverential deference), as well as a former Taskmaster contestant. I don't find his schtick very funny, I don't vibe with it, but clearly a whole generation of comedians find his shit uncontrollably hysterical. I was ready to riot if he were to be crowned winner again. His songs are dumb and his jokes seem to amuse himself more than anyone (though for some reason they are very amused). He was very involved in the whole thing and seemed comfortable in the environment being the reigning champ. His joker was abysmal, but again, the crowd seemed to love it. I dunno.
• Alan Carr - another comedy legend whom I've maybe heard of... but don't remember. He was all over the place in this one, and generally pretty funny throughout, although his joker was a bit... vintage... being a somewhat hastily constructed game show. He was giggling throughout the introduction so I thought he was an easy goner, but he stuck through well into the second half of the show.
• Mel Giedroyc - the host of the Great British Bake Off and a former Taskmaster contestant. She seemed to be an easy get, a real laugher before the show started, but she figured out her "game face" early on (sticking her lower jaw out any time she was about to laugh) and she went deeeep in this one. She was probably the most aggressive player and the one who was looking for opportunity. Her joker was a really bold physical performance which... was... very... interesting (according to David Mitchell).
• David Mitchell - a big time sketch and comedy series performer and actor who I'm quite familiar with. He was as in the mix as Mel, Ramesh, Alan, and Bob, and was seemingly perplexed the whole time.  Did he want to be there, or was that the persona he was playing, of someone who didn't want to be there, to distract him from laughing? He seemed to be acting the whole time. His joker was a terrific really bad first-time stand-up comic routine which was very droll. The only problem is the show clearly shows him smiling a number of times (at least two) and doesn't call him on it.
• Sam Campbell - the odds on favourite for the win because Sam is unflappable. Whenever someone seems to have a comedic edge on him he can completely undercut their bit in surprising and hilarious ways that seem like absolutely no big deal to him ("that's a serious issue" he says to Mitchell during a particularly funny "edgy" run in his bad-stand-up bit). Sam's joker was patentedly absurd, but he let the comedic glory be not himself, but the Tim and Eric-quality community theatre performers he had tag along in his ridiculous set piece. Sam didn't attack enough, though whenever he did chime in it was usually quite sharp. I vibe with Sam Campbell in a way I don't Bob Mortimer.

The winner of the Series was David Mitchell, and almost well earned, except for the fact of the show letting him off the hook for his various smiles. Neither he nor Sam got a yellow card, and so the final tiebreaker came down to who made the most other people laugh, and David won 2-to-one.  I think one of those smiles/yellow cards would have been the tiebreaker otherwise.  

It was a fun series, but the one thing I noticed was how weak the attacking was. On other series we would see competitors smell blood, seeing a comedian on the verge and they would just hammer on them until they broke, and nobody did that here. Mel was the closest, as was Diane Morgan at times. I also noticed that, unlike other LOL series the prize here was just a trophy, and no big charitable donation or prize money.  Also, this series didn't have much in the way of guest interjections. A notable British TV interviewer stepped in with a pretty funny series of interviews with the contestants, and Natasha Demetriou (of What We Do In The Shadows) and Ellie White came out of a cubby as "intimacy coordinators" and made everyone hilariously uncomfortable. Put them both in the next series.

Fun show. 

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In the wake of The Mandalorian and Grogu's middling box office and middling critical reception, there's a lot of angsty blogging, youtubing, tiktokking and podcasting around the state of Star Wars today (present company not excluded), and what the future might bring under Dave Filoni's guiding hand as co-president of Lucasfilm. 

Filoni was brought aboard the Star Wars train by George Lucas himself, to assist Lucas in overseeing The Clone Wars, animation being Filoni's forte. The Clone Wars got off to a rocky start, with a middling theatrical release of the first four episodes as a film (that The Mandalorian and Grogu feels like four episodes of The Mandalorian is not lost on me), but by the second season of the series the kinks had sort of been ironed out, and the series wound up being the glue that holds the Prequel Trilogy together, rather than vice versa.

Filoni went on to create the animated series Star Wars: Rebels, definitely in my top 5 Star Wars projects ever, but that too was a series that took time to build, being enjoyable enough the first season but making itself epic and its characters involving in its second season, increasing in scope for its subsequent two seasons. 

Filoni's works since then have been more in the live action space but not ignoring animation. A revival seventh season of The Clone Wars was an epic capper to the series as well as dovetailing into Revenge of the Sith, while The Bad Batch explored the fallout of the Clone Wars through a new cast of characters and featured the trademark Filoni touch of being a bit rough around the edges the first season, but gelling quite firmly and endearingly the second. What Filoni brought to these projects were incredible character-building, expansive galaxy-building, and a commitment to not forgetting what came before.

While The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett and particularly Asoka had Filoni-esque highlights, there's a large contingent of the Star Wars fan base that want live action to be treated differently than the animation, as more accessible, less addled by Star Wars lore.  They're probably right. And the worry is that under his hand the future of Star Wars is going to be an ouroboros.

So when you get a nothingburger like The Mandalorian and Grogu, that worry is justified, but then you also get Maul: Shadow Lord, which expels the issues with previous Filoni-created series and manages to get up and running in a matter of a couple short episodes, rather than an entire season. 

Sure, Maul is a legacy character who has been seemingly killed on screen at least twice already, and it may be a little confusing for any casual fan to understand in what time the series takes place, but it's a show that doesn't get bogged down with the past, and it's also not overly concerned (at least with this first season) with extensively tying itself to everything else Star Wars.

Maul, here (played once again impeccably by Sam Witwer), is our anti-hero, a man who has been wronged by his former master, Darth Sidious, now the Emperor Palpatine, and also full of loathing towards the Jedi, who have gotten in his way more than once. He had, previously, attempted to create a criminal empire to take on his former dark lord, and was not just squashed like a bug, but his brother was killed in the process. He is a traumatized figure whose powers and abilities are both fueled and crippled by that trauma.

His goal, then, is to re-establish a criminal empire, as well as find himself an apprentice to help him take on his former master. The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive goals, but also focusing on both detracts from focus on the other.

On a remote planet, Janix, Maul operates in the shadows, but not deeply enough. His criminal doings have raised the attention of Brander Lawson, an inspector of the local police force played brilliantly by Wagner Maura. Lawson begins investigating Maul's operation and eventually confronts the villain, but is given a proposition, one which a good cop like him cannot accept.

Also entering the picture are Jedi master Eeko-Dio Daki (voiced by Dennis Haysbert) and his padewan Devon Izara (Gideon Adlon). They too are living in the shadows of Janix, scrounging for whatever they can get on the streets, when they confront the former Sith. 

But soon, enemies must be allies on all fronts, as the Empire becomes alerted to Maul's presence and a pair of Inquisitors begin hunting the Jedi and Sith down. As well there's a Star Destroyer full of Imperial troops and bureaucrats locking the planet down, and while it's not quite as invested in highlighting the grip of totalitarianism as Andor was, it's still unsettling and effective in showing how these types of agencies operate in tearing down existing structures of order and imposing their own.

Maul: Shadow Lord surprises at building a cast of characters worth caring about, investing us as equally in Lawson, his son, and his robot partner Two-Boots (Richard Ayoade) as we are with Master Daki and Devon as we are with Maul and his coterie.  We just know that at some point Maul has to turn on Daki and get Devon on his side. That could be a horribly clunky moment if done wrong, and at a certain point we wonder if it's going to happen at all, the show lulling us into a false sense of allyship between the parties. It's honestly surprisingly brilliant in how its story unfolds.

And then there's an epic clash that we thought would be reserved for a second season, but this show is wasting no time. It's not Filoni-pfaffing-about in its first season. It's kinetic and propulsive and easily consumable...too consumable. It is the Pringles of Star Wars, just salt, starch and grease making you crave more, and once it's over, the craving doesn't go away, only becoming stronger in its absence.

If the future isn't so bright for Star Wars live action, at least we know animation is going to be more than okay.

Chiplog: President's Choice World Of Flavours Poutine flavour

If you're somehow reading this and you're not from Canada, President's Choice is the house brand of the major grocery/pharmacy chain Loblaws Inc. They are greedy capitalists who have taken advantage of every situation as well as their ubiquity to gauge their customer base with every possible excuse. They also, through their President's Choice brand, come up with some very interesting and experimental food products which delight and confound with equal measure.

Pre-chip: I'm not a poutine guy. Even before I couldn't eat most gravies because of onion and/or wheat content, I still didn't like the idea of soggy french fries. And as far as cheeses go, the "curd" variety isn't exactly my favourie. So, despite it being one of Canada's "delicacies" I can count on one hand the number of times I've eaten poutine. Am I looking forward to tasting this? Nope, mostly because the "gravy" flavour is going to make or break whether it's even palatable or not.

Ingredients: Potatoes, oil of some type, seasoning (x 1000)

First smell: Strangely I'm not getting much of anything beyond potatoes and oil... a hint of the familiar smell of cheesy chips, but sans onion powder, it's not very potent.

First taste: The PC rippled chip is a good base for any flavour. They're always a thicker cut crinkle so they have a nice sturdy starch profile and a satisfying crunch. The Poutine flavour is shockingly subtle, where I'm getting a smack of the cheese (like a sour creme and cheddar chip) but with a hint of that gravy just teasing the tongue.  

Aftertaste: The cheese and the gravy both linger a little but compete for dominance in the aftertaste. The taste doesn't outstay its welcome though. Picking the chips out of my molars, the starch and oils are mostly what remain.

Mass consumption: I've already been back for more. I can't say that PC has hit an absolute winner here, but it's not a total dog either. The familiarity of the cheesey chip goes a long way in selling this one as a binge eat but as I keep going, the gravy is constantly threatening to be a deterrent, though, again, it's not potent enough to put me right off.

Final thoughts: This is advertised on the bag as "Limited Edition - The Canadian Series" (which is also accompanied by the onion-heavy Cesar flavour and Peameal Bacon Sandwich flavour so I won't be getting into those)... I don't see it sticking around. I could see it popping back up from time to time though. I have to wonder, with the World Cup popping into Canadian cities this year, and with Lays making World Cup-partnered flavours, is this "Canadian Series" something to dare the tourists with? 

Rating: 7.0

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Ghost War

 2026, Andrew Bernstein (Jack Ryan) - Amazon

Jack Ryan (John Krasinski, The Office) is back. Apparently I only wrote about one season of the Amazon show, the second season, but I have seen all four. I don't remember them; at all. At the heart of the show is the idea that Jack Ryan, the CIA analyst with bulging muscles that easily shoulder an assault rifle, is never entirely happy with what his country is doing, via the CIA. It is common in American espionage movies to not entirely trust your own country's agenda. But Jack has an unflappable moral compass and eventually people come around to seeing things his way. But they still shoot-to-kill a lot of people.

This movie begins in Dubai, with two operators sneaking into a half-constructed skyscraper. I was confused about this whole set piece, and doubly so when it returned later. Its a building under construction, so much so that half the floors don't even have walls. But the two men sneak through what must be a snazzy display centre on a lower floor, but not the bottom floor as it has glass floors showing the ground waaaay below. At first I was wondering why there would be a completed condo in an otherwise empty skeletal building but then I saw the flyer stands. Anywayz, the men find their way to the server room that is the object of their hunt. Its also unfinished -- plastic sheeting, drywall unpainted, entire walls are just frameworks. Yet there are constructed cubicles with computer monitors. Either Dubai's project management skills are shite, or this movie has checklists to fulfill that defy common logic. Its likely the latter, as those monitors are just dressing there to be shot. And this attribute defines the entire movie! Everything; every action, every scene, is just setup like they were checking boxes as to what an espionage action-thriller movie requires. And it ended up making the movie itself just a frustrating hollow shell of the genre, even dropping lower than the other seasons of the show, and myriad other depictions of Tom Clancy's main character.

Checkbox - Jack has retired from the CIA and become a private risk analyst for a big company, but something happens (the aforementioned operation in Dubai) that requires his old buddy James Greer (Wendell Piece, Superman), who is now Deputy Director of the CIA, to ask Jack to play courier. But its never just a pick-up. They spend a lot of time with playful banter about how Greer's jobs are never as easy as he says they are. 

Of course, its not just a pickup. He is there to meet an old friend of Greer, an MI6 operative, who gets himself killed before he can Exposition Dump to Ryan. That forces Ryan to give chase, on boat, shoot people, get shot at, etc. Dubai has a strict anti-shooting-people policy so that doesn't ingratiate himself with the locals. Also, he doesn't make his civilian job meeting, so I am guessing he's ... fired? But what is he chasing, what was he trying to Pick Up?

Checkbox - this is all instigated by Something Dark from Greer's Past. In the show, Greer has always been the one more ready to play fast & loose with the rules and the choices between right & wrong. Its not surprising, to us, that he had played part in developing a Top Secret black-ops team with MI6, to take down villains before they became a problem. This time it was Project Starling. Eventually they Went Too Far and were shut-down, but Greer's British counterpart, Crown (groan; Max Beesley, Survivors) kept on doing it. And the MacGuffin being sought in the half-finished server room was his .. I don't know... list? It was stuff; valuable info. Now he wants it back.

Checkbox - Crown tells them about a terrorist plot on UK soil. But he doesn't  tell them everything outright, masking it with the idea that if his team didn't prepare to stop it, the Good Guys would have never known. It gives Ryan and his begrudgingly new MI6 friends (Sienna Miller, 21 Bridges) some sleuthing and counter-terrorism stuff to do. 

Checkbox - its all a ploy! Crown drew the counter-terrorism forces in one direction, so he could blow up something/someone in the other direction. This time its the current Director of the CIA, a character from the previous series, Elizabeth Wright (Betty Gabriel, Counterpart). She is considered the proper leader that Greer can follow, which means she won't bring back Project Starling. So, Crown blows her up. I guess that is why? The problem with checkbox plot points is that the story never really cares about the why more that it is checking the box.

Checkbox - revenge. The real reason the movie killed her off.

But we still have a MacGuffin to attain. To bring Crown's organization down, they have to complete the failed mission from the opening act. But wait, wasn't Ryan sent to Dubai to get the fruits of that mission? Fake-out ! There was nothing. Greer's buddy died before he could tell Ryan what his opening crew was trying to do, let alone pass along the (not) attained info. So, Ryan and crew have to sleuth it out, discover the half-assembled building and go back to Dubai to ... checkbox the shit out of things with henchmen in black suits & automatic weapons and near deaths and... yawn. They get the info, kill Crown and can now disassemble his operation.

Except... so what? In the series the stakes always seemed higher. Remember, this is the character series that had them actually ignite a dirty bomb on American soil (The Sum of All Fears with Ben Affleck as Ryan) so it all seems like a major let down that the Big Bad is just about having a working organization still doing black-ops despite the US and British governments disavowing it? I get that the centre of the show, and the movie, was that Jack Ryan is the moral compass and if he doesn't like something, its Really Bad, but that hasn't stopped him from constant use of deadly force throughout it all. The only thing that sets him apart from Crown is that his actions are responsive instead of proactive, and he apparently cares about collateral damage.

And yet, Ryan is still charming, still bearing buckets of charisma and the banter is on-point. Personally, I prefer his side-kick, the more motivated by Doing a Job private contractor Mike November (Michael Kelly, Person of Interest). Greer is Greer but now he's the actual Director of the CIA which means... well, absolutely nothing, but maybe the chance to make him the Bad Guy in whatever comes next. I will probably watch it, but ... yawn.

Which leaves me wondering why I invest time and energy and emotions in things that bore the crap out of me. At some point, while doing the write up for one of these movies, I will let my attention drift and focus on the aforementioned black suited henchmen. I always wonder why they are doing what they are doing? Only for money? They rarely get names, but do they have families? Friends? Histories? But that is for another movie, another boredom.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Lost Bus

2025, Paul Greengrass (Jason Bourne) -- download

Apparently I like movies about brush fires? But where as Only the Brave was about the brave men fighting the fires, this focused on a bus driver who chooses to save some elementary school kids, when he could have just escaped with his own family. Unlike the former, he actually lives, and this is less biopic and more just a dramatization of a very heroic act. 

Maybe, fire-fighting in the forest adjacent movies, like "Those Who Wish Me Dead"?

Also, apparently Greengrass is the accessible drama-meets-action director that can stir me from hiatus-is. As I am wont to do, after stepping away from films for a little while, settling back into it with a clear Hollywood production, I cannot help but see the trappings of the Purple Suits, but in this case, its not so much the annoyance at interference, but just the recognition of how a modern movie has to be made. 

OK, Paradise, California. One of those northern California towns in the wooded hills that is pretty much the middle of nowhere. The movie begins with high winds and waving, sparking power lines that lead to a grass fire at the base of the tower -- apparently IRL the power company was sued for causing this fire; and they lost. We also meet Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey, Mud), a down-on-his-luck sad-sack driving a school bus, pissing off his ex-wife and his boss constantly, trying to reconnect with an irascible teenage son, and not having much luck. He recently moved back to Paradise to help with his ailing mother, after his dad's passing. We get the idea he wasn't leaving much behind. These are all trappings of the clear Hollywood movie I mentioned. 

McConaughey does this kind of role so well -- he always seems to be a bit down-on-his-luck, but to be fair to mid-range Hollywood accessibility, he isn't given much range in this character -- drive the bus, play a fuck-up who obviously redeems himself, BUT given the man's talent, he plays it entirely believably.

Speaking of down-on-his-luck fuck-ups, I wonder if he has ever played a grimy PI ? I mean, yes, "True Detective", but what about gritty, never-shaved, back-alley or strip-mall detective?

The fire spreads, the trucks try to roll in, but the fire is in such an isolated place in the hills, they cannot reach. Fire fighting Chief Martinez (Yul Vazquez, Midnight, Texas) quickly coordinates response but there are challenges everywhere: high winds make aerial bombardment ineffective, the aforementioned accessibility issue, and the high winds cause it to move VERY quickly into populated communities. Evacuations are called for, but even the emergency coordination is chaotic & confused leading to 23 elementary students left at a school in the fire's path. Meanwhile Kevin is having a rough day -- his boss is angry at him (again), his kid is ill and his ex is yelling at him on the phone, and his mother is barely capable of taking care of herself. But when forced to make a choice, he swings his bus around and heads for the kids.

That's what the movie is about -- that fevered, hampered effort to get the kids away from the danger to a safe place. The thing about this movie is that it is well-backed, even for mid-range drama. Thus, the depiction is well sorted out, and the cinematography and lighting is on-point. The mid-morning bright sunlight quickly gives way to dusk's gloom, and then full on moonless-sky-night, as the town is enveloped by the clouds of black smoke. Everyone is evacuating, cell towers have collapsed and even the emergency management system has broken down. Its full on panic and the roads are snarled. What should be a quick 10 minute drive to safety ends up being a scramble to find an expedient path before the fire overruns them.

At Kevin's side is teacher Mary Ludwig (America Ferrera, Barbie) and their journey together is not idyllic. Crying children, flames and smoke, cut-off paths, and fire-engulphed neighbourhoods crush even her steely will to protect those kids. I repeat, the typical trappings are there -- the pep talks, the sharing of personal stuff between the two adults, the bonding between Kevin and one boy from a divorced family. At least Greengrass handles it all well, so my eye-rolling is at a minimum, and all that was easily supplanted by the colour and the lighting of it all. They are literally passing through the Fires of Hell, and you feel it.

I mean, we know they survive. They bust through the wall of flames to the almost surreal calm beyond. But the movie is kind enough to not just end there, giving Kevin a chance be acknowledged for his bravery, before he slinks off to check on his family and feel the relief he has needed all day. Kevin's problems aren't fixed, he is still who he is, and now he has lost his family home. But he survived, and he performed an admirable act. Maybe that one act can make up for many things; but he has to make it matter.

Chiplog: Cheetos Crunchy Flamin' Hot Dill Pickle flavour

It's been a while since the last chiplog, because I completely forgot about the chiplog...plus, new flavours of bagged (or tubed) snackables that are onion-free don't come along too often. But when it rains, things get wet, as the saying goes, and I have three new snacky comestibles to present (although one of them will be a total cheat since I've already eaten two bags of them and forgot all about Chiplogging them...yes, I've verbed Chiplog...and verb).

Pre-chip: I like Cheetos just fine, but if we're ranking, Hawkins takes top spot all day every day. But Hawkins, bless them, has stuck to their guns and only ever made one kind of cheesie, whereas Cheetos is constantly experimenting, for good or for ill. (I mean, Cheetos macaroni?)  I can't eat regular Cheetos Crunchy Flamin' Hot cheesies because onion powder, so imagine my surprise when the new Cheetos Crunchy Flamin' Hot Dill Pickle flavour came out and ...no onion powder. I guess onion and dill aren't the most complimentary?

Ingredients: Enriched dornmeal, vegetable oil, seasoning (so much seasoning), vinegar

First smell: That smell...it's definitely the dill and vinegar smell we're all familiar with from dill pickle chips of time immemorial...but there is that little pinch of paprika coming through as well. I can tell, even before my first bite, this isn't going to go well. I always expect cheesey flavour when it comes to the cornmeal based snacks (well, not corn chips, but I digress), and yeah, there is cheddar, monterey jack and swiss within, but I'm smelling no cheese. Dill isn't ever a flavour I've associated with cheese, or cheesies.

First taste: Woah, as a novice to the Flamin' Hot genre of cheesie, I wasn't actually expecting any kind of real punch out of this. Typically popular "spicy" things are dumbed down for the bland white person palate. But this hits immediately...the front, side and back of the tongue. It's a sting for sure.

Aftertaste: Just as the burning settles, the vinegar kicks in. If your mouth and throat are irritated by spice, that vinegar is just going to dial it up another 2-3 notches. And then the dill just kind of lingers, more as a scent than a taste. My tongue feels supercharged.

Mass consumption: Not gonna happen. I get about ten sticks in and I call it. 

Final thoughts: If you like spice, if you like dill, if you like a challenge out of your snack instead of pleasure, then this limited edition Cheeto is for you. It sort of reminds me of Blue Cheese and Buffalo Chicken Wing chips, only substitute the aromatic blue cheese for dill pickle and the texture profile of a rippled chip for extruded cornmeal twiglets and you're kind of getting the idea. Dill is not a flavour I'm intrinsically drawn towards, though I have come to enjoy it (somewhat) over the years. I've also some to appreciate heat and spice in my aging years. As my taste buds get duller and diet more limited, such flavour profiles add a bit of something new and exciting in my culinary journey. But this Cheeto dials the heat and the dill and especially the vinegar up to about an 8 collectively and it's just overwhelming. It's not enjoyable snacking.

Rating: 3.6/10