KWIF: The Odyssey (+4)

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

This Week:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ReWatch: The Magnificent Seven

 2016, Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer) - Amazon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2024, Tracie Laymon (feature debut) -- download

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rewatch: The Adjustment Bureau

2011, George Nolfi (Elevation) -- Amazon

I originally saw, and wrote about, this movie waaaay back in the early days of this blog, some 15 years ago. I am just going to "wow" that, and not psychoanalyse myself over "10,000 hours makes you an expert." 

Technically, based on how often you write, you are barely half-way there, so maybe in another 20 years, you should be objectively "good at writing". Or dead.

I have not rewatched this movie many times, if ever (memory escapes me), and it is not on The Shelf. But I have a nostalgic place for it in my mind's eye, as I do with many of the PK Dick adaptations. It is My Kind of Movie, or "Toasty coded" as Kent has said. Its romantic, plays with the idea of destiny, and it messes with religious paradigms without being offensive or dismissive. When I first saw it, and likely this was because it was a reveal, I wasn't fond of the whole Angels Messing with Us thing -- I was hoping for a more spec-fic explanation for the Bureau -- but I have definitely softened on that. I realize my original desire for it to be less-religious more-scifi was in connecting the hat & suited angels to the more nefarious figures from Dark City.

In case you don't recall, the writings in ReWatches are generally less than "reviews", unless that particular rewatch is the first post about the movie. So, they end up being just a general collection of thoughts I had during and after the movie.

In 2011, Anthony Mackie was probably just a face I recognized (from The Hurt Locker and maybe Million Dollar Baby) but he wasn't a household name. This role did put him forward more than the others in an already decade long career, and not long after this, he became Sam Wilson. Its nice he came back to a couple of Nolfi's later flicks including Elevation.

Also, we are rewatching Fringe (again) and I cannot help but do the comparison against the Angels against the similar attired Observers; I am surprised I never mentioned that in the original writing, considering it was about the same time Fringe was airing. 

My romantic notions have tempered, maybe gone so far as soured, with age. The original black-mark against David (Matt Damon, Oppenheimer) and Elise (Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer) was that their relationship was destined to derail both their lives. Instead of being utterly focused on their own lives, he as a politically ambitious senator destined for the White House, and she an emerging talent in the ballet & modern dance world, they would become subsumed with each other, with their relationship, which would degrade both paths. While I still do frown at the cultural requirements for everyone to have Peak Accomplishment, instead of just living satisfying lives, part of what the Angels were saying is that eventually at least Elise would sour on the idea that she had given up a life of greatness, for David. When the movie ends with The Director re-writing "the plan" I still wonder how much of Free Will will come into play, or was the movie just about abandoning all future potential for the jubilation of The Now. My soured romantic notions have me pondering the idea that even if their lives are not worsened for Choosing Each Other, romance eventually can simmer down, and would they both end up wondering What If in their old age.

I still rather like the way the movie is structured, the World Building and the idea that there are more people who went through this situation beyond David and Elise. They may be the Main Characters in this story, but there are many stories. It was still a satisfying movie to rewatch, but what had me stay away from it originally, stands. 

Series Minded: Three Colours Trilogy

Three Colours: Blue (1993)
Three Colours: White (1994)
Three Colours: Red (1994)
d. Krzysztof Kieślowski - DVD

I first encountered noted Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colours Trilogy at a film festival in my hometown of Thunder Bay back in the mid-1990s. My extremely hazy recollection is of seeing two of the three films, and having my burgeoning film buff's mind completely tantalized by the very narrow connectedness of the films, and being keen to see how the third of the trilogy fit.  At this stage, I don't even remember which two of the three films I had seen. I want to say Red for sure, because there's an image from that film, used on the poster and the DVD cover, that I used as an art exercise, and so it lives larger in my mind than the others. But it's also very possible that Red was the one I hadn't seen, just the one I was looking forward to seeing.

When the trilogy was released on DVD (according to some bot, it was in March 2003) I snapped it up... and never bothered to sit down and watch the films. 23 years later, the impulse finally hit me while looking through my physical media binders and contemplating the DVDs I have acquired yet never watched. What is the deal with the Three Colours Trilogy? I watched all three over two days and I had to wonder if I had ever seen any of them. There was barely a spark of recognition, but it was tantamount to watching them all anew.

It turns out Blue is a tragedy, White a comedy, and Red a romance... sort of. Each evokes the idea of their core genre, but refuses to play into the tropes of them. 

In Blue, the hauntingly beautiful Juliette Binoche is Julie, who, in the opening moments of the film, is in a car accident as a result of brake failure, and she loses her child and her husband. She is understandably devastated, and attempts to take her own life in the hospital but is apologetic for not being able to follow through. Her husband was an exceptionally famous composer, and was supposed to be writing the theme for the reunification of Europe when he died. Julie, it's been hinted, was perhaps the secret to his success. But Julie wants nothing more than to burn her old life to the ground and live a new life as a ghost, just invisible to the world. One's past, though, is not so easily escaped, and trying to avoid human connection is such an unnatural state that it somehow only draws certain people closer to you.

The magnificence of Blue, my favourite of the trio, is how Kieślowski provides you information visually long before he tells you via character or dialogue. In the opening scene, his very Frankenheimer-esque camerawork on Julie's family car gives us one particular shot of something leaking fluid, and given the position on the car, the break line is the only reasonable conclusion. It's not presented with any foreboding, it is but an image among many.  Similarly, given the thoughts of strings and horns and percussions that seem to plague Julie, it's evident early on that her mind is working through composing. Long before it's suggested by a reporter that rumours are she's the real talent behind her dead husband's success, we understand that she's absolutely a key part of it (though it's more complicated than him taking credit for her work).

Unlike some of the dead child misery porn films that came before and after Blue, Kieślowski isn't interested in wallowing in Julie's grief. It is her guide wire for sure, seemingly all she's hanging onto, but Kieślowski teases out the life Julie left behind like it's a great mystery, and he's fascinated by the idea of attempting to completely disassociate from one's past, and how genuinely impossible that challenge seems. 

I thought that Blue, being the first of the trilogy to be released, would be a tone-setter, but it's not. White opens up in a French courtroom proceeding that finds Polish national Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) pleading for his French bride Dominique (Julie Delpy) not to divorce him, but everything is completely lost in translation (this courtroom scene is heard from behind closed doors in Blue when Julie tries to enter and is rebuffed, a moment viewed here from a different perspective). Dominique is hot-tempered and, apparently, pretty horny (as Karol spies her with another man the very next night in her home). She takes everything away from Karol (including his passport) and leaves him stranded in Paris with nothing but his suitcase which contains scant few clothes and his hairdressing tools. Down on his luck, begging for change, Karol meets Mikolaj, a fellow Pole, who offers to help him smuggle him out of the country back home.

After a few shenanigans, Karol is back home, living and working at his eponymous salon with his brother and sharing the apartment upstairs, but Karol is unsatisfied. He wants more. He starts working as a lookout for a black market money man, then catches on to a real estate scheme which he horns in on. From there he builds up a shipping empire for himself, all, it turns out, so he can fake his death and get Dominique to come to his funeral and admit she still has feelings for him... and then frame her for his murder.

I really couldn't tell if White was supposed to be a comedy or merely comedic. It's conceptually quite droll, but Zamachowski and Kieślowski keep the whole scenario pretty subdued when it could so easily be quite broad and farcical. I'm not sure I would have preferred it more were it punching up, but it's also so rare for a comedy like this, which finds a man so down on his luck turn it all around with, really, no ill repercussions. And then for the punchline to be that Karol had done everything, this whole time, years basically, to ostensibly one-up Dominique. The masculine quest for money and power always seems rooted in insecurity, and here it's Karol's inability to satisfy the woman of his dreams, and he can never let that go. The film tries to present Karol's grand gesture as something ridiculous but romantic, instead though in a modern lens it's just a bright spotlight of toxic masculinity and at least a smidge of misogyny. Karol's fragile ego needs to not only conquer Dominique sexually, but to depower her, cage her and contain her.  

But Kieślowski doesn't let Karol off the hook. The final moments of the film find Karol, still officially dead, bribing his way into the penitentiary to look up at Dominique in her cell. She spies him and smiles, before quickly dropping the smile making a series of gestures that are left for the audience to interpret (as good a final moment as the whisper at the end of Lost in Translation for leaving the view much to ponder). My take is that Dominique is telling him that they could be together now, except that for them to be together, he has to reveal he faked his death for her to be free, and he would then be charged and imprisoned.  So who is the prisoner? White definitely has its moments, but it's my least favourite of the trilogy, because it falls flat as a comedy and Karol's turn into a rich prick isn't satisfying in the slightest.

Red, the film I was most eager to watch (revisit??) finds part-time model (and student, apparently, even though she's never seen at school) Valentine (Irène Jacob) gaining a new perspective on the world after she runs over a lost dog. The dog is injured but okay, and Valentine seeks out its owner, only to find a lonely, miserable old man, an ex-judge named Joseph (Jean-Louis Trintignant) with little interest in the dog. He tells her to keep it, which she does. But a few days later the dog runs away from her and heads back home, where she discovers the old man (who, let's be fair, seems like he's in his mid-to-late 50's, but is presented as "old man") has a rig set up to listen to his neighbours phone calls. Her disgust at his invasion of privacy winds up leading to an unexpected friendship between them, as Joseph softens with a paternal affection for the young woman who reminds him of a lost love.

Concurrently, we keep checking in on Auguste (Jean-Pierre Lorit) a young man around Valentine's age that lives in her neighbourhood and was dating one of Joseph's neighbours whom he was spying on. Auguste also has a dog, and is studying for his law degree, and is completely unaware that his girlfriend is cheating on him (Joseph) however, is quite aware. As we learn more about Joseph's past, it presents parallels to Auguste's present. In a film where the bond that Valentine and Joseph start to establish would typically be a romantic one, instead the intonation is that Auguste is Valentine's destined beau. He would be everything that draws her to Joseph, only young and handsome and not so jaded by the world.  The serendipity of their relationship never actually happens on screen. Red is a romance that is all build-up, all implied, but much like in Blue how Kieślowski manages to give us all the information we need visually, here he use the visual orchestration of a scene, the constant near misses of Valentine and Auguste passing each other by, and the parallels in storytelling, one a verbal recounting of one's past, the other the immediate present tense of one's life, to connect everything together.

It's then too bad that Valentine is just kind of a passenger in all this fate weaving. Where Juliette Binoche was front and center in practically every frame of Blue, and Julie Delpy was kind of an object of desire and not a character, here Irène Jacob is sort of trapped between these two extremes. She's the gravitational point of the film, but her character is underdeveloped and somewhat underserved by the forces of fate swirling around her. Like with Karol in White, Valentine's journey isn't a straightforward one. Karol's objective isn't revealed until late in the film (though in hindsight it's evident it's his motivating factor all along), for Valentine, she just doesn't seem to know her path, what she wants to do (modeling does not seem to be a passion, and we never learn what she's going to school for), what her life should be, until deep into the last act when she decides to take a trip and to tell her emotionally manipulative boyfriend (only ever heard on the phone or answering machine) to get lost.  Her meeting with Auguste takes place just after the final frame of the film. Both of them (along with Karol and Dominique and Julie and a few others) are the only survivors of a tragic ferry accident crossing from France to England.  The message here is that 1400 people had to die in order for Valentine and Auguste to finally meet.  Pretty warped stuff.

My expectation for the Three Colours Trilogy was that there would be a consistency in them, that they would be tonally similar, or playing in the same genre, or there would be visual cues connecting them. There is a recurring theme about the how we approach our pasts and how the past circles back upon us that I think might take repeat viewings or additional concentrated analysis to fully grasp. 

The sense of colour usage, while clearly thought out, didn't elicit a very strong reaction from me. Red seemed to use its colour theory the most broadly. The use of red was, in a way, the connecting points between Valentine and Auguste, foreshadowing romance... kind of. White was mainly used in White in Karol's recollections of Dominique, mostly on their wedding day. In Blue, the only object Julie kept from her past life was a blue crystal chandelier from her child's room, and it illuminates the moments when the unfinished symphony haunts her.  The colour of the Three Colours Trilogy was a lot more subtle than I anticipated.  

As a comics geek, what I was looking forward to most was the idea of a shared universe between these three films, them all taking place in the same space and time. They do, but not to any satisfying degree. The thread of connection between Blue and White of that one extremely brief crossover means absolutely nothing of relevance to either story, and the way Red brings all three together through a ferry accident verges on ludicrous and a total deus ex machina. The main other connected thread in each movie is the bent lady. In each film, the main character witness a little old lady with a deep hunch doing a slow shuffle step towards the massive centralized bottle recycling bin. In each scene the woman, unable to lift her head up, strains to reach up and put the empty wine bottle in the bin (it always gets stuck half in, half out). It's a different moment in each movie (not the same moment from a different perspective) but it's only Valentine who comes to her aide, and it speaks to each character who they are in that moment.  It's better connective tissue, but still completely disconnected from the plot or themes. It's just shared space.

Blue is excellent, Red is quite good, White is frustrating but kind of good, and together, as a trilogy, it makes the weaknesses of each worthwhile. The DVDs are loaded with commentary, critical analysis, and Kieślowski retrospectives. I've barely scratched the surface on them (don't scratch the discs!) but there's plenty of material I'm keen to dive into. These were Kieślowski's last directorial efforts (he would complete another script before passing away in 1996), and next to The Dekalog this is considered his great triumph in what I've heard is a pretty stellar carreer. More to explore.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Sheep Detectives

2026, Kyle Balda (Despicable Me 3) -- Amazon

Cozy murder mysteries are our thing -- Marmy and mine, not Kent; I have probably said that before. Stealing / mis-quoting Kent's quip, which must have been used on more than half the reviews of the movie (right? right?) how can you get cozier than a wool sweater? But to be fair to the genre, it is set in the English countryside (but is it? as many people as not speak with an American accent) full of quirky characters (and sheep) and has a murder being investigated by an amateur -- you cannot get more amateur at detecting than a sheep.

Kent said coat and I said sweater -- the "cozy" is the wearing of the wool.

So, on a lovely green hillside, that could have a pie maker living nearby, lives a man named George Hardy (Hugh Jackman, The Wolverine), and his sheep. He's an irascible old coot who refuses to work with the nearby other shepherd, and has most of the people in the nearby village disliking him. Dispensing with the usual Scottish or Welsh joke, Hardy prefers sheep to people, so much so that each of his sheep are named and each night he settles them down with a reading, often from his own collection of murder mysteries. Its a good life for all involved; until he dies.

The local authorities-y think it must have been a heart attack, but it doesn't explain why one hand is painted blue, one is painted green. A small time reporter (Nicholas Galitzine, Masters of the Universe) who has come to town to do a story on the disappointing cultural festival (three booths setup by the same person) convinces the constabulary that it was murder, and soon after it is discovered George was indeed poisoned. The sheep, led by smartest ewe Lily, who would normally will themselves into forgetting anything painful, decide they have to investigate themselves -- after all, how different can a real murder be from the books George would read to them.

Its different, of course, and yet it is not, because, after all, this is actually a cozy murder mystery based on a murder-mystery German novel. But atypical because, well, not many have talking self-aware sheep.

The movie is just delightful. The sheep world building fills us in on what we need to know, but doesn't become overly expositional. There is the forgetting, there are "winter lambs" [not "winter sheep"] instead of just black sheep which is exactly what Sebastian [not Stan] is, the shunned members of their society. Death is "turning into clouds" and as expected, they are utterly terrified of the world outside the meadow they live in. Each sheep depicted is of a different breed, for reasons only George knew, and they each have widely different personalities. 

Of course, Marmy / the Peanut Gallery, figgered out who the murderer was right off the top, so the movie left us on the how's and the why's and the misdirections; and the who's. We have George's long lost daughter Rebecca (Molly Gordon, The Bear), executor of George's will Lydia Harbottle (Emma Thompson, Dead Again), town butcher Ham Gilyard (Conleth Hill, Game of Thrones), rival shepherd Caleb Merrow (Tosin Cole, Supacell), quaint hotelier Beth Pennock (Hong Chau, Asteroid City) who was secretly in love with George, Reverend Hillcoate (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Paddington 2) and the idiot single (in both ways you're thinking) police officer Tim (Nicholas Braun, Succession) as our familiar cast of quirky locals. And in the meadow we get Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Onward), Mopple (Chris O'Dowd, Monsters vs Aliens) who remembers everything, Reggie (Brett Goldstein, The Garfield Movie) and Ronnie (Brett Goldstein, Fraggle Rock) the rams, Sir Richfield (Sir Patrick Stewart, American Dad!) who has Orf, Cloud (Regina Hall, The Spongebob Movie: Search for SquarePants), Zora (Bella Ramsey, Hilda), Wool-Eyes (Rhys Darby, Badjelly), and Sebastian (Bryan Cranston, Isle of Dogs). The motive is all tied up in the little known knowledge that George was rich from his development of a salve for the sheep ailment Orf. The how was poison from a berry which initially implicates Rebecca, but it is the green hand that reveals her innocence... by way of sheep detecting, of course.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Hold the Dark

2018, Jeremy Saulnier (Rebel Ridge) -- Netflix

No, this wasn't swallowed by the hiatus of 2018, I just never got around to watching it, and it came out in October which was dedicated to horror movies. Kent did, exploring it as Horror Not Horror. And just recently, I decided to poke a pin in my Watchlist and pressed Start. 

Saulnier doesn't have a large body of work. It started with the very indie Murder Party almost 20 years ago but got noticed with Blue Ruin. I have only seen Green Room and the recent Netflix dear, Rebel Ridge. Even with this minimal exposure, its clear the man makes movies about violence and violent people. 

Alaska. Medora Slone (Riley Keough, Logan Lucky) has asked writer & wolf-expert Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright, Westworld) to come and deal with the wolves that have taken her son, and two other children, from the remote village of Keelut. Medora is a shadowed figure, all trauma, who unnerves Core with her talk about the Alaskan long nights, the cold and her wolf-mask... the spontaneous nudity doesn't help. She tells him this needs to be settled before her husband comes back from war. Core does set out, but doesn't have many hours of daylight to work with, and he is not convinced this is wolf behaviour. He witnesses them eating their own young, but does not shoot when given the chance. When he returns, Medora is gone, and her son's body is in the basement. No wolf took him; she strangled him with her own hands.

The not so local authorities are involved, including Detective Marium (James Bade Dale, World War Z; I assume he is a detective, but in this environment, he just appears as a high ranking member of the state police) who inform Core that Medora's husband will be returning imminently, having been wounded. We get a brief scene where we see Vernon Slone (Alexander Skarsgård, Mute), overseas, murder a fellow soldier after finding him raping a local; he is wounded immediately after. After his arrival back in Alaska, there is discomfort between Slone and the police, with Core caught in the middle, which explodes in surprising violence -- Vernon shoots two police officers, takes his son's body and disappears into the wilderness. He will find his wife on his own terms and apparently doesn't want anyone else involved.

This act of violence is followed by an even greater one, as Marium and the authorities descend on Keelut to detain Vernon's best friend, who they know was involved. His response is to open up with automatic weapons on the arriving police, cutting most of them down horribly, while Core can do nothing but hide and witness. He is not a cowardly man, and tries to intervene, given a chance to rise above the impotence he feels from the recent events. But Marium eventually takes down Vernon's friend.

We are Core. We are witness to extreme violence, isolation and the darkness that Medora spoke of. Night comes early and everyone seems battered down by it.

The remainder of the movie has Core and Marium tracking the Slones to a hot spring cave deep in the wilderness, the one place Medora claimed to have felt warmth. But before that, we get a moment where Vernon tracks her to a closed-mine-turned-quaint-roadside-inn where another small piece of the puzzle of violence falls into place. 

Chilling spoilers hereafter.

Long ago Vernon's own father brought him here, to be treated by a shaman who lives on the premises. Something about wolves-oil. The thing is that, in the movie, I don't believe the puzzle is clear. We know a few things. Vernon and Medora have known each other their whole lives -- a picture of the two as children, very happy, very blonde. We get flashbacks of Vernon teaching his emotionless son how to hunt deer. They talk about killing, killing people. We get a bit of the darkness Medora spoke of. But what we don't get, or at least I didn't, was that Vernon and Medora were brother and sister. You'd think the village would be a bit more adverse to that, that such a history would come up as the police talked about her murder of her own son. Its possible they don't know, that the small village of Keelut kept its dark secrets to themselves. What we are also left to postulate was that the children of the village were not taken by wolves, but by Medora's own son. She strangled him to end the cycle there, likely hoping her husband would kill her as well.

He doesn't. Core and Marium do track the couple to the caves, where Vernon surprises them, killing Marium silently with a compound bow, as Core rushes to warn Medora, before taking an arrow himself. His final vision before unconsciousness is the two kissing and leaving together. Vernon leaves Core alive, barely, before he is rescued by some locals. But just before Core is rescued, he is surrounded by the wolves he did not shoot earlier in the movie. They do not tear him apart.

The movie ends with Core recovering in hospital, his estranged daughter at his bedside.

Violence, tragedy, horrible acts, the bone chilling cold. Movies like this are not supposed to have a point but have us experience something, and have us react to it. So many people in the movie temper their emotional reactions to everything, but as we watch Core watch this unfold, we can feel it creeping up within in him, a scream desperate to get out. He lets it fuel his need to reconnect with his lost daughter, a final act of life amidst all that witnessed death and loss.

Wright is always watchable. He carries darkness well. Saulnier is able to give us a chilling movie, but to be honest, I don't think the Long Night was as impactful here as I have seen it in other stories, such as True Detective: Night Country. I guess the idea is that people can be colder than weather.

KWIF: Supergirl (+2)

KWIF=Kent's Week in Film.

This Week:
Supergirl (2026, d. Craig Gillespie - in theatre)
They Will Kill You (2026, d. Kirill Sokolov - crave)
We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021, d. Jane Schoenbrun - blu-ray)

When it comes to a superhero movie my longtime habit has been to go in feeling totally optimistic, hopeful, and rooting for its success. I want to be entertained, I want to see the comics characters I know brought to life, and I want other's to feel inspired.  I love comics. I love movies. I want this marriage to work.

I even felt this way going into the dregs of the 1990s like the Shaquille O'Neal-starring Steel and batnippled Batman and Robin all the way to modern lumps like Vin Diesel's Bloodshot or the Rock's superhero vanity project, Black Adam, and virtually everything in-between (and outside of)...  I just want the movie to do justice in bringing these things I like (or love, or even have no emotional connection to) to the cinema. Even if a comic book movie is not financially successful, then I'm happy to take the moral victory if it's a valiant adaptation of the character or story.

This is all to say that I went into Supergirl absolutely ready to champion it, to stand behind it and prop it up, even as critical feedback at large called it middling and muddy. I'm rooting for the James Gunn-led DC universe to succeed, and absolutely loved his Superman last year, so I was ready for another surprise triumph (especially having read the source material Supergirl was being adapted from...more on that later). 

It was once true that a nerd's tolerance for nerd shit tends to be much higher than your average film critic, but these days so many film critics have their nerd bona fides to back their opinions up that it's harder to just outright dismiss their commentary. Even without external critical voices, I have my own internal critical voice now, one that I have a hard time shutting off.

Supergirl opens with a montage of a girl and her dog. Kara Zor-El (Millie Alcock) and her pup Krypto are planet-hopping and bar-hopping for Kara's 23rd birthday. Getting wasted, making messes, just whooping it up to numb the traumatic memories that haunt her. Cousin Clark calls, wishing her the best, but can't hide his concern. Meanwhile Ruthye (Eve Ridley) witnesses the senseless death of her family at the hands of ruthless (no pun intended) brigands. Ruthye picks herself up, dusts herself off, and goes looking for someone who will help her avenge the death of her family. Kara's plastered in a bar on Ruthye's red-sun-baked planet (meaning her powers are waning), dancing to Wet Leg's "Catch These Fists" (piped into the space jukebox via a vintage ipod) when Ruthye announces herself and her intentions, only to be bowled over by some unsavoury dudes, and Kara needing to step in. Ruthye starts following Kara, imploring her to help her, but it's only after Krypto is poisoned by the Brigands as they steal Kara's ship (where did she get a spaceship from anyway?) that Kara and Ruthye's objectives align and adventure awaits them.

The first act of Supergirl, for the most part, is pretty solid. There are a fair amount of needledrops, some superb alien make-up work and special effects, and a largely agreeable and unique sequence aboard a space coach bus. There's life and vitality to this first act that ebbs slowly away as the film progresses past it. It's not a James Gunn film, so it doesn't have his sensibilities, but it almost feels like Craig Gillespie wanted the first act to parrot the James Gunn thing. It's moderately successful, but it's absolutely clear from the first two fight sequences that Gillespie is not comfortable or confident with such sequences and they are neither clean nor easy to follow, and both are quite poorly lit (it's also quite possible that the theatre I was in was dimming their projector, the whole film seemed overly dark). The quality of the action sequences only diminish from there.

The story in Supergirl comes from Tom King and Bilquis Evely's comic-book mini-series Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which was King's sci-fi/superhero take on True Grit, but in a episodic format. This film, then, is a copy of a copy, translated from one medium to another and back again, and the degradation in fidelity is palpable. Having watched the Coen Bros. take on True Grit recently, it's a virtual masterpiece that even a dimmed copy should still wind up being somewhat good, possibly even great. While Supergirl isn't outright bad, I struggle to call it good. It's fine. It's a movie.

What last year's Superman had was spirit and humour -- as does True Grit -- but Supergirl lacks these, abandoning much of its humour quickly into the film and never quite finding its spirit. True Grit's tale, especially in the Coens' hands, relies completely on how the characters engage one another. Kara is Rooster Cogburn here, while Ruthye is Mattie, and even though Alcock does the work to make Kara seem like she's been through the wringer and having a tough time coming out the other side, the bond between these two characters doesn't ever get satisfactorily forged, at least not on screen. In True Grit the Coens got a lot of mileage out of Hailee Steinfeld's Mattie, for her primness and eloquence and impression of maturity, that is highlighted against Rooster's inebriated brusqueness ... something that is attempted here with Ridley's Ruthie against Alcock's Kara, but, it's not the focus of the script, so many meaningful things get lost along the way. The lightness of the contrast is lost.

The third member of the True Grit team dynamic was the virtuous lawman La Bouef, and I get the in-name-only joke of substituting bounty hunter Lobo (Jason Momoa) in here, but those are two very different archetypes, and, frankly, Lobo feels kind of shoehorned in here. There's not really any meaningful engagement between Lobo and Kara, and the relationship between Lobo and Ruthye happens largely off screen. The need for set pieces (kind of ugly and muddy setpieces at that) takes the place of having these three characters sit and talk and drink and get to know each other around a (space) campfire. (Momoa's Lobo feels like Momoa doing a Beetlejuice impression... it's fine, but there's no character definition in the script).

The film also falls into repetitive patterns that become quite tiring by the third crest and fall. Kara tells Ruthye to stay behind and be safe only for her not to listen and for Kara (or someone) to have to help her as she gets in over her head.  Or Supergirl loses her powers (instantly) only to gain them back instantly, time and time again. I get it, the Supers are so over-powered that they need such mechanisms to make them vunlerable, but it's the abruptness and repetitiveness that both bother me. The powers should diminish slowly over time, a ticking clock mechanism, while a hail mary recharge may not bring them back full throttle it should always be enough. It's the writings of someone who hasn't spent enough time with the Super-family to understand this.

The main villain is head brigand Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts), and he's kind of what everyone's chasing, the maguffin of the comic book, but here they half-heartedly try to develop him into a vile killer who does so for pleasure, and Schoenaerts tries to inject life into the character, but this character, really, should be largely unseen. The less of him, the better. And then the script adds in the fact that the brigands are a men-only club, who kidnap young (it should be noted, human) women to bear them children. It's a play right out of Mad Max:Fury Road but without consulting someone like Eve Ensler to tell them whether they should or not.

As a result, the young girl slave trade casts a pretty bleak pall over an already strapped-for-joy movie. It wallows in the trauma of Kara having lost her family (conveyed in a series of flashbacks that grind the film to a dead halt -- flashbacks are in the comics but handled very differently) and Ruthye's same-but-not experience (in spite of them both having these traumas, the film still isn't able to bond them very well on screen...there's, like, one moment where Kara, silently, realizes this).  Had the film not sidelined Krypto, there would have a been a comic relief chaos agent to make this whole pill easier to swallow. I realize he's also sidelined in the comic and his sidelining is the impetus for Kara to go on this journey in the first place, but comic books have years of character history to draw on and an established universe to traverse, while this film needs to create it all from whole cloth. They could have found something else to trigger Kara and keep Krypto in the picture. 

I wanted to love Supergirl.  As is, I don't really even like it. I do really like this iteration of the character, the attitude that Alcock portrays very well, but the film doesn't serve her too well. I came out of Supergirl feeling like I barely understand this character after spending two hours with her. At the end of the film, Kara returns to Earth, to Metropolis, uncertain of her place in the universe, but ready to find out. Yeah, that's a starting point, not an ending.

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[Warning: spoilers within]

They Will Kill You starts with Asia Reaves (Zazie Beetz) and her little sister fleeing from an abusive stepfather. He catches up to them quickly, and Asia shoots him. The cops arrive, Asia runs, leaving her sister behind. Conceptually it's a pretty heavy, if quite brief, opening sequence that doesn't make the audience wait long to get to the point.

Asia got caught and served 10 years in prison for the attempted murder of her father, but has felt nothing but guilt over leaving her sister behind. Asia's hired a private investigator to track her sister down, he points her to the Virgil, a New York 9-storey high rise for the wealthy, where her sister was hired as a cleaner, but it has a reputation as being a place where people disappear. There is definitely insinuations of class and race disparities, and the rich being raised up on the the backs of the poor, which all sounds rather heady as subject matter.

And yet, this is just the place setting. This film really doesn't waste its time. It's only about 15 minutes before the first fight sequence happens, and it doesn't let up from there. Whatever inference of social commentary the opening few minutes might have suggested, for the most part they are pushed aside so that we can have a rollicking good time as Asia navigates the Victor's many hallways, passageways, tunnels and shafts, fending off it's blood-hungry elites.

Asia take a job with a fake ID to get into the Virgil, and instantly meets some of the fake-smile bearing residents, the head of services Mrs. Woodhouse (Patricia Arquette), and getting a very short tour of the servants quarters on the first floor. She senses she's being watched, so she secures her door. A masked behemoth finds his way into her room regardless and attempts to attack her... only Asia is prepare to fight back. Four more assailants find their way in and Asia defends herself, armed with a sawed off shotgun and a sword. 

When Asia lops off Tom Felton's head, the arterial spray is like a lawn sprinkler, just all directions everywhere. The fight with the remaining assailants is heated and brutal and bloody and very creative. Asia's taking her lumps, but she's surprisingly a warrior, and ready to take everyone on.

There are definite shades of Kill Bill here, not just in the fighting, but in the style, the edits, the pastiche, the title cards and flashbacks. And yet, it's not Tarantino-esque, because this plays as an even greater ode to Sam Raimi. 

The elite of the Victor are immortal devil worshippers who can't truly be killed. They will resurrect and reform if even a flake of skin remains. In one of the film's many incredible sequences, Asia is crawling through a between-floor tunnel system and encounters Sharon (Heather Graham) whose head she lopped off earlier in the film. After a scuffle, Asia blows Sharon's head off, and, moments later the headless body starts charging towards her (just grasping, but unable to see, hear or properly sense Asia's whereabouts). Eventually Asia finds her way to an upward shaft, but doesn't notice Sharon's eyeball, using the optic nerve like a flagella to propel itself through the tunnels to track her. Somehow Sharon's headless body is still receiving the intel, and attempts to charades the information back to the other elites. It's absolutely ridiculous and obscenely delightful. Just as the whole film is.

Much like a Bruce Campbell in an Evil Dead, Zazie Beetz keeps taking her lumps, but also keeps fighting back. She fights for herself, and she fights for her sister, but mostly, she's fighting for our entertainment. The film culminates with Asia fighting Mrs. Woodhouse with a devil-possessed giant boar's head Voltron-ed her own. Just insane, but delirously entertaining.

There's not a tremendous amount of story or character development here, there's no need for it. This is just a wicked fight movie that's having a good time going to comedic extremes, and I'm here for it.

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It would be easy to mistake We're All Going to the World's Fair, which was released in 2021, as a COVID-era production. It's a small film that follows its protagonist, 16-year-old Casey, as she lives her life online, participating in "the World's Fair Challenge".  It's a social media trend that, according to other (in-world, off-brand youtube) streamers, changes you in unexpected ways. Casey films herself strolling around her town, talking to the camera about the changes she's feeling, the disconnecting from herself, the violent and or self-harmful impulses she's feeling. We see Casey dancing alone, or playing baseball by herself. We see her exploring the barn late at night, looking at her father's gun (we're talking an assault weapon here, not a hunting rifle or handgun), and eventually settling on the barn couch, watching not-youtube on the big screen, when a video autoplays a message that is directly for her. It features a still of Casey's face, distorted and melty, alternating with a hastily scribble warning that she is in trouble, and she needs to reach out. 

Jane Shoenbrun's I Saw The TV Glow was my favourite film of 2024, an exploration of how media can impact one's sense of identity, and an powerful closeted trans-allegory disguised as a horror film. This, their first feature shows they definitely have a grasp, and maybe even a penchant for media-identity related storytelling (their third film, this year's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma looks to be yet another, different and provocative take on this dynamic).  We see Casey not just through her videos, but also as she's making her videos, and when she's not making her videos she's engaging with other "World's Fair" content.

Schenbrun has fun building out the online world of "the World's Fair Challenge", some disturbing content from creators describing (or showing) how the Challenge has changed them. It's almost like an infection, but the symptoms differ from person to person.

The aforementioned warning comes from "JLB", and Casey decides to Skype with this stranger. JLB expresses that they're concerned about them, and asks Casey to just keep making more videos. The film's greatest move comes following this call that ends the first act, switching us over to JLB's perspective for a period of time. He is a thin, bald middle-aged man with a very hang-dog expression, and we just don't know what his deal is. He lives in a very big house, so he's obviously successful at whatever he does, or did, but he primarily hangs out and sleeps in what looks like a teenager's bedroom. There are pictures in the house but we never clearly see them. We don't know if JLB lost a kid to this "Challenge" or if he's just an online creeper, or if he's just a lonely guy looking to platonically connect with someone who also appears lonely, or if he's a psycho who has murdered the family in this home and is now operating out of it. He does spend a lot of time disseminating Casey's content though.

Beyond Casey's video in which we see her wander through a crowd at a New Year's celebration, we never see her with people. Her father, we're only aware of him because he yelled at her once (for listening to something loudly at 3am), but there's a half insinuation that she's scared of him...or avoiding him...or both. But there's so much Schoenbrun doesn't show us here that everything is up for interpretation, right through to the finale where the rug isn't so much as pulled out from under us but the fog is lifted.  

The events of the movie are recontextualized, but the question is...does it make a difference? However we view Casey, isn't the end result that she's lonely, sad, and perhaps depressed? 

"The World's Fair Challenge" is Schoenbrun interpreting the Creepypasta realm of online horror storytelling through collaboration, the realm that bore such fruits as Backrooms and The Slender Man and Channel Zero, but through a very grounded, human, individualistic lens. It very much feels like Schoenbrun is asking "is this how I would be if this type of communal storytelling was available to me when I was a sad, awkward, lonely teenager", and I feel very much the same way, that the whole Creepypasta thing would have been totally for me had I grown up in a different time.

It's eerie how much ...World's Fair is in sync with what pandemic living felt like (according to Schonebrun, it finished filming March 1, 2020) but it's not an intentional pandemic allegory. It's message is not bound by time, as a result, it is a story of loneliness, and the horror here (if you can call it that...it's more just a slow, simmering dread), is equally grounded in sadness and the truly unknowable strangers of the internet.