KWIF: The Invite (+1)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. A quieter week.

This Week:
The Invite (2026, d. Olivia Wilde - in theatre)
The Samurai and the Prisoner (2026, d. Kiyoshi Kurosawa - in theatre)

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Late in the week a whole slew of new releases dropped that I want to check out in theatre. Early in the week, I had nothing I was itching to see. So I saw The Invite.

I've enjoyed Olivia Wilde's films in the past (Booksmart was fantastic and Don't Worry Darling was a mess, yes, but an interesting one). The Invite really intrigued me until I started hearing critical feedback (almost universally positive and/or glowing) that talked about the premise of the film. Like The Drama earlier this year, another critically well-received movie (and very successful one at that, grossing over 100mil at the box office), I was intrigued but upon hearing that premise but my aversion to discomfort steered me away.

The Invite's simple premise conjured little but cringe comedy in my mind, and I just don't have the stomach for such comedic affairs anymore. Here Angela (Wilde) and her husband Joe (Seth Rogen) are hosting their upstairs neighbours Pina (Penelope Cruz) and Hawk (Ed Norton) for a getting-to-know you dinner. They get to know their upstairs neighbours alright, they get to know that they are swingers and the titular invite is not for dinner, but to have group sex. (Uh, spoiler, I guess)

You can already start to see the many, many opportunities to have one's hackles raised just in such a simple description. But it seems so much worse...potentially... when you learn, within the first ten minutes of the film, that Angela and Joe are both miserable in their relationship, do little other than argue, and Joe is totally not on board with the short-notice event Angela has arranged.  You can just picture the cringe-inducing moments as Joe and Angela put on their game faces and try to hid their bitterness towards each other for the benefit of the guests.

But that's not this film. Mercifully that's not this film.

Not to say that The Invite is a comforting watch by any means, but it is not interested in being cringe comedy in the slightest.

With a savvy script from Rashida Jones and Will McCormack (based of a 2021 Spanish film The People Upstairs), The Invite immediately cuts out the pretense the moment Pina and Hawk walk in the door. Joe is not hiding in the slightest his displeasure about this dinner date, while Pina and Hawk immediately fess up that they heard their hosts arguing through the door when they arrived.

The smart play in all this is that Angela and Joe are emotionally repressed, while Pina and Hawk are emotionally intuitive. Pina is also a therapist so she, in particular, has a way of approaching a hostile environment and cutting through the tension. Hawk has such an easy going, friendly demeanour that he not only seems open to talking about anything, he kind of draws things out of people.

And so the evening, set for disaster, is...well... a disaster, but a disaster that ebbs and flows in waves. Joe and Angela are unable to contain their hostility but Pina and Hawk are continually able to disarm them, to a point.  Joe wants nothing more than to confront their upstairs neighbours about their loud, middle-of-the-night sex noises, but Angela is committed to saying nothing and wanting to make friends (which are in short supply).

When the truth about Pina and Hawk's sexual proclivities come to light, suddenly you see Angela and Joe in a whole new light. Their elation and excitement and curiosity becomes a shared moment where they seem like a loving couple and best friends... for a little bit.  And then the ebb and flow begins again.

The Invite is a comedy-drama. It lives squarely between those two worlds. There are some pretty good laughs, but there's also dramatic intensity as the core of this film is not a goofy sex comedy but a break-up story. To paraphrase a review on Letterboxed, this may be the film that launches a thousand divorces. 

It's a pretty exceptional production featuring a cast of only four actors that carry pretty the entire hour and forty minutes with remarkable performances. Rogen provides a reminder that, yes, he may be a very specific type, but within that type he's got exceptional range and is undervalued as a dramatic performer. Wiled is a perfect bundle of tension looking for release.  Cruz is effortlessly alluring that you have to wonder if it's a put on and Norton is at his best in a very long time being affable, enticing but also a little weird and sad. 

It's a film that is part TV bottle episode, part stage play, but only feels at home structured as a movie. Wilde's direction is exceptional and intriguing that follows the appropriate action to accentuate the comedy or the drama (and sometimes cleverly elides over details for comedic or dramatic effect). The opening credits are an editing smorgasbord of repeating frames and or split screens that doesn't necessarily prepare you for the film to come based on the content of the images presented, but gives the feeling of a 70's relationship comedy and/or drama, which should tell you what you're in for. 

My immediate impulse was to compare it to Woody Allen's work of the 70's and 80's, sans-neuroses, and I only hesitate because Allen's reputation has been tainted so greatly by, well, you know (and if you don't, look it up), that it seems wrong to compare anything to his work. And yet, I can't think of much else other than Allen's work looking at relationships and sex and mixing it with awkward comedy and emotionally impactful drama that seems to have all but disappeared in the wake of, well, Allen's irrelevance (as if the whole realm or style storytelling was verboten). There's been few films that really trigger that sense of "oh, here's what we've been missing from our cinematic diet" so specifically.

I was indeed surprised to find not a cringe comedy, but a thoughtful, thought-provoking, funny, fascinating, mature and entertaining film that challenges the audience who may cross their arms with discomfort, but asks them to uncross them and open up.

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I am by no means an expert of samurai fare...though I have dabbled in it infrequently over my many decades. It's a subgenre of historical storytelling that fascinates me every time I watch (or read) it. While I have watched a decent amount (and read a not so decent amount), I have only the remotest of understandings of the many eras in which samurai culture was predominant, the tides of Japanese culture across those eras, the topography in which the samurai traverse, and meaningful understanding the social, political and economic structures as well as the deeper workings of the religious and samurai cultures of these stories tend to elude me time after time. It's not my history, it's not my culture, but it is something I'm almost always satisfied with spending time exploring.

This is all to say I'm going to have a tremendously difficult time really talking about The Samurai and the Prisoner, a new drama set in the late 1500's where much of Japan is in the midst of war. On one side is Lord Oda, who is barely seen in the picture at all, but his presence is felt almost constantly. He is a man to be feared, and his desire is nothing less than ruling the world.  On the other side is Lord Araki (Masahiro Motoki), who has banded a small collection of lords together to oppose Oda, with tenuous allegiances making a war council inside the impregnable walls of Arioka Castle (which Araki presides over having himself taken it with force as an ally of Oda).

Oda sends an envoy to Arioka Castle, Kanbei (Masaki Suda), who Araki tries to turn to his side, but he is rebuffed. Rather than let Kanbei return with a message, or killing him (which itself is a message), Araki imprisons Kanbei. Soon after there's a murder within the castle walls, a seemingly impossible mystery which Araki's closes advisors can't seem to make sense of.

At this early stage in the film, with this sweeping drama of politics and war in play, it seemed like the story was going to swing completely into a sort of police procedural/CSI-Samurai and I got pretty excited. So it was to my own minor disappointment that Araki turned to Kanbei's wisdom to tease out the solution, and suddenly there was an answer...sort of. In the next season there comes another mystery, and again the season after that, and so establishes a pattern within Arioka Castle between phenomenal events and its Lord seeking the counsel of the only man in his cells.

Running at almost 150 minutes, Kurosawa's incredibly patient-but-eventful film never ceases being interesting though it's hard at times to truly understand where it is going or why until well past the half-way point.

Eventually we come to understand that the protagonist of our film, Lord Araki, may be a merciful man, but his mercy is still a calculation, it's still strategy. He wishes for a world free of conflict, war and murder, but he's also a brilliant military tactician who can't stop thinking about the ways of war. He's haunted by senseless death, though well aware that sometimes one death can prevent many more.  His prisoner's life is spared, but Kanbei has no life in a prison cell except to serve Araki's requests, and the fate of his son, held by Oda to keep his loyalty in check, remains a torturous mystery for him.

The curious structure of the film told over the approximate span of a year, presents big events which lead to smaller events which lead to ripples barely noticed, but still felt by Araki. Every gambit or ploy Araki makes against Oda, or defends against, seems to result in just a little more chaos within Castle Arioka. Big waves to Araki are ripples to others, while little ripples eventually form into waves that cannot be ignored.  It's all connected in some way, but it feels both organized and chaotic...who can say. Kanbei? Maybe.

The world within Castle Arioka is so well realized and so intricately understood by its director that you feel like you could turn to practically anyone who passes by on screen and follow them as a fully fleshed out individual. Meanwhile, the world outside the walls feels vast and unknowable. All the reports we hear of Oda's machinations and manoeuvres, and the bending to his whims of other Lords, seem questionable...but there's no other choice except to trust it.

It's a well-composed film that only falters when it tries to go big. A battle scene seems lit by floodlights in an abandoned field with sneaker prints all over it, and feels starkly uncertain as a production compared to the assuredness of the remainder of the film.

It's a production that feels like it could do with some pruning, and perhaps its resolution isn't as satisfying (or unpredictable) as the remainder of the film, but it's time certainly well spent if this genre is at all in one's wheelhouse.

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3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Disclosure Day

2026 Steven Spielberg (War of the Worlds) -- download

Spielberg's career was not built on aliens -- he actually has an incredibly varied catalog -- but a number of his movies do focus on aliens coming to Earth, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind, of which this one may be seen as a spiritual successor.

Google has a 'Disclosure Day' search result animation - a cardinal. Huh.

Not sure I am going to do a play by play recap of this movie. We know its about "disclosing" the existence of what has to be alien life, even if the trailers don't say it out loud. I mean, I spoiled that in the first sentence. But what is the movie really about ??

"You can't HANDLE the truth!!!" yells Colonel Jessep (Jack Nicholson).

We can't handle the truth. In February of this year, President Donald "Cheeto Benito" Trump signed an executive order to release all the files they had on UFO phenomena, or as they are calling them now - UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena).

Do doo de doo doo.

We handled the truth. There was nothing to be "handled". Even if the fucking US Dept of War official website looks like part of an AR game, this news came and went without even a whisper. The "truth" was just as ambiguous as it always had been. But what if something tangible had been revealed? What if the documents had shown incontrovertible proof that there were alien bodies stored in Area 51 and they had, at the very least, parts of downed alien craft? How would the world have reacted?

In the movie, Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth, Young Sherlock) of Wardex (Waived Reporting, Development, and Extraction) vehemently states that if said incontrovertible truth about alien existence, in the form of terabytes of footage & files, was released to the world, they would panic, utterly lose their shit. For the movie's world, which is already teetering on the brink of war, it would mean the End of Things. The movie even postulates that religion would collapse, when we learn we are not alone in the universe.

Daniel Kellner (Josh O'Connor, The Crown), a genius level data scientist in Wardex, believes, and was influenced into believing by Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo, The Electric State), an ex-Wardex employee, that the world deserves to know. Needs to know. He believes vehemently that we can handle it, that it is exactly what the world needs now, as it is about to wipe itself out. He has escaped with a backpack full of said data. And Wardex is after him.

Meanwhile, unconnected to Daniel's whistleblower activities, weather person Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt, The Fall Guy) is having a really weird day. After a Disney Princess encounter with a bright red cardinal, things have been... odd. She's guessing what her boyfriend (Wyatt Russell, Overlord) is going to say, before he opens his mouth, and speaking Russian. In the studio she is unphased by her new ability to understand Korean, but collapses after speaking an alien language on-air, for everyone to hear. Something is very wrong.

But Daniel understands what she is saying, when no one else does. So, the two are connected, and are being influenced by Something Bigger Than Them. So much of the movie hinges on the idea that Something Bigger is Happening. Its the driving factor of the movie. Its what propels us towards a climax of the actual release of the files and videos to the entire world, via the news broadcasting framework.

So much of this movie displays as the product of a Very Good Filmmaker. The production budget allows for so much, so many things and Spielberg is able to masterfully engage us. The train scene, for one, is an exciting spin on a classic -- a classic he really subscribes to, as you can easily see this whole thing happening in an Indiana Jones movie. But its also just the lighting and the way he frames a shot. You can easily envision the mock-buster of this movie; I wouldn't be surprised if the idea "an alien conspiracy whistleblower running from a shadowy government agency" is already the plot of one, or many, Straight To movies in the VHS days. I rather enjoyed watching skilled people do their thing.

But in the end, I was, surprisingly to myself, not satisfied with the actual "disclosure". So, they release all this footage to the news, masterfully convincing a bunch of news TV shows to all connect together and show the footage. So what? Most people will think its fake, even if they accept the idea of world covering "breaking news" doesn't happen for AI Deepfakes. And once the governments, including the US Govt which was unaware of what Wardex was doing, get their shit together, it will just quietly become yesterday's news. 

And, what was the alien agenda here? We are meant to believe they a benevolent alien species that lives by empathy instead of tyranny. But what have they been doing for 50 years? Abducting children and subjecting them to terrifying experimentation we know. And I understand that if human interaction like Wardex showed them to be fearful of humans, I get the hiding, but they are still massively technologically advanced compared to us. Do they have to hide? And now, once revealed, what's next? The movie would rather just have us postulate this on our own, as it literally is only about the "disclosure", but since I did not buy into the almost-religious-experience level of awe this was supposed to inspire, I am again left with "so what?" I need to know the answer of that question. 

Kent.

KWIF: a grab bag of film across decades

 KWIF=Kent's Week In Film. I suppose the big watch of this week is the long-awaited release of Kill Bill as a single feature, but, well, we'll get into it. The best watch this week was certainly The Outfit, but I think I may have been one of very few who were eager to get the new Arrow blu-ray in my grubby little hands.

This Week:

In the Blink of an Eye (2026, d. Andrew Stanton - disney+)
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (2004, d. Quentin Tarantino - blu-ray)

Mars Attacks! (1996, d. Tim Burton - tubi)
Def-Con 4 (1985, d. Paul Donovan, Digby Cook - tubi)

The Outfit (1973, d. John Flynn - blu-ray)

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Director Andrew Stanton's In the Blink of an Eye went direct to streaming on Hulu/Disney+ earlier this with absolutely no fanfare, unlike his other film Toy Story 5 whose marketing campaign was inescapable and has made over a billion dollars at the international box office (it's not quite pulling Spider-Man: Brand New Day numbers, but hey, second place and a billion-plus dollars ain't too shabby). There's no real point in comparing Stanton's two 2026 releases, as they are vastly different films with vastly different styles and intentions.

This film takes place in three different time periods. The first is in 47,000 BC, which follows the life of neanderthal Thorn (Jorge Vargas), his pregnant mate Hera (Tanaya Beatty), and his children Lark (Skywalker Hughes, real name) and Ebb. The second tracks the life of anthropology grad student Claire Robertson (Rashida Jones) and her relationship with stats major Greg (Daveed Diggs) in modern times. The third takes place aboard a space ship in the 2400s with Coakley (Kate McKinnon) making a centuries-long trip to a new planet with the fate of humanity at stake, her only companion the onboard AI Rosco (also Rashida Jones...I think?).

There's not a specific storyline being told across these three eras, but more exploring all the elements of what it means to live, to be human. There family bonds, and romantic bonds, and friendship. There's fear and anxiety, there's pain, physical and emotional.  There's sex and pleasure and awkwarness. There's birth, and death, there's disease and healing, there's community and evolution, support and trade, and so much more.

The film presents this journey through these moments of existence without any specific linear narrative to them as a whole, thought there are arcs for the characters, each whose stories span decades. Stanton and screenwriter Colby Day present parallels across the three different eras such that what one character is going through in one era, another is dealing with something similar in a different era. The point obviously being that these human conditions are eternal and not unique to any specific time or reality.

These jumps across time aren't always the cleanest or clearest (for instance, I didn't pick up on the fact that Claire and Greg were supposed to be students, not professors or researchers or whatever, basically playing about 20 years younger when we first meet them), but even if some of the nuance is lost, it's not hard to track the emotional storytelling Stanton is working towards. 

It's all underpinned by a Thomas Newmann score which is ever present and would be just as suitable for a relaxing massage or a yoga session. It's truly a vibes based movie, there's no heighted drama nor any specific action to raise the blood pressure. It's rapid journey through time across eras is meant to be reflective, not impactful, and at times I was genuinely moved by what I was feeling. That said, I was also bored at times. Both can be true.

It's so specifically constructed that it seems that Stanton achieved exactly what he wanted with this, but it's no WALL-E or Finding Nemo.

In the Blink of an Eye has not been a warmly received movie critically and it's already been buried in the Disney+ streaming catalogue to the point that it seems the only way to find it is to search for it directly. I don't know that it deserves to be so quickly dismissed, but it's also such a specific mood piece that I find it hard to recommend.

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I've been waiting for The Whole Bloody Affair pretty much since Tarantino first mentioned it when Kill Bill Vol. 1 came out in 2004. I understood that the intention of splitting Kill Bill into two volumes was a Weinstein money move, but I always thought Kill Bill would be presented as the whole it was intended to be once it got to home video. I really didn't think it would take over two decades for that to happen. I've never owned Kill Bill on physical media solely because I was waiting, even though, at a certain point, I assumed it was just never going to happen.

And now, after a brief theatrical run (which I missed due to life's poor timing), The Whole Bloody Affair is here on 4k/Blu-ray and...it really doesn't feel that different than watching Kill Bill as two separate movies.

This home video release still breaks the film up across two discs, but instead of there being closing credits after the Bride's wintery duel with O-ren Ishii, it cuts to an intermission title card and song. Unlike back in the laserdisc days where a screen caption would instruct you to flip the disc or insert the next one, here, after the intermission ends the disc cuts back to the menu screen. Sub-optimal. Disc two then autoplays on its own jumping right into the longer portion of the film.

I've always enjoyed the first "volume" of Kill Bill more than the second. The first 110 minutes are so propulsive, energetic and dazzling, with incredible choreographed fight sequences and a flashy anime sequence exploring O-Ren's backstory (what became readily apparent in the recompiling of the two volumes is that this whole bloody affair winds up being a 4-hour-plus movie. None of the other characters get such a detailed back story as O-Ren, not even Beatrix Kiddo, so the whole anime backstory feels utterly extraneous when presented as a single unit).  

The next 140 minutes (credits are 20 minutes of that, including both end credit sequences from Volumes 1 & 2) are much, much slower paced, all leading the the final hour where The Bride finally finds Bill, spends time with the child she didn't know survived, and then, fulfills the title contract.  There are some excellent moments in this. The Bride's flashback to her 1-inch-punch training and her escape from her buried coffin, her fight with Elle Driver in that trailer home, and Thurman's excellent performance upon seeing her child for the first time. But when there's a four-hour run-time Budd's sorry life at the strip club or Bill's extended speechifying (especially his whole "Superman" speech) feels like unnecessary indulgence from the director.

I still really like Kill Bill generally, but somehow, for me, it worked better as two films than one. Two films feels like it has the appropriate room to breathe. As one, I start checking the clock and contemplating what seems unnecessary. 

I have covered Tarantino a fair amount on this blog, including a full rewatch and ranking back in 2019 (just after Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood premiered) where I ranked Vol 1&2 as a whole in second place of Tarantino's works. I'm not sure I would put it in that same position now (probably bumped down to 4th).  

I don't think I've watched a Tarantino movie since I wrote that rewatch and ranking post (though I read his books, and I did listen to his podcast until it went up behind a paywall). Part of it is I've been more focused on new experiences with my film watching this decade, and the other part is, I think, maybe my fandom has tempered in my middle age.  Perhaps Tarantino's shift from filmmaker to film critic/podcaster (aka the Kevin Smith track) lessens the allure. Perhaps his lack of new features lessens my interest to revisit the old ones. Perhaps I was sated with 25 years of fandom and I've moved on.  Perhaps I've seen roughly a thousand movies since I did that rewatch and ranking and I'm more versed in Tarantino's influences and I'm starting to see the seams. We'll see how I feel about the Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood pseudo-sequel Cliff Booth Tarantino wrote and David Fincher directed this fall.

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Celebrating its 30th anniversary (!), Mars Attacks! was seen as both a bomb and a blunder upon release, but has become a cult classic in the intervening years. 

There was only so much story to tell in adapting a series of trading cards into a movie, but Burton's enthusiasm for this production seems to rival his earliest efforts like Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and Beetlejuice.  

I only have a passing familiarity with the trading cards, but it seems evident by the film's lack of direct narrative coherence that Burton was using the imagery from the cards as his guide in constructing the project.

While it flirts with the idea of being a Dr. Strangelove-esque political/social satire, it doesn't commit that hard to the bit. It wants to have too much fun with the "Ack-ack"-ing aliens (watching with the subtitles on and reading along is great!) and their giddy bloodlust for the destruction of the human race, alongside their many institutions and totems.

The digital effects, still pretty new at rapidly evolving the time, have a clumsiness to them that, I'm sure in 1996 and 2006 and probably 2016 seemed kind of atrocious compared to the advances in the technology that would follow, but in 2026 the clumsiness of the digital effects is part of the charm. Just as the film itself was throwing back to the 1950's, now it feels like the effects are a part of the intentional throwback charm.

There's a rich celebrity roster here, with Jack Nicholson taking the forefront in two roles, one as the president of America, the other as a rich Texan looking to get into the casino game in Vegas. Glenn Close plays the wife of the former, while Annette Benning is the partner of the latter. Natalie Portman is the First Daughter, while Michael J Fox and Sarah Jessica Parker play a couple who are also competing news reporters. Lucas Haas is a sweet rural kid who loves his grandma with dementia, while his 'Murica-loving trailer-park parents played by Joe Don Baker and O-Lan Jones disapprove of his sweetness and wish he was more like his jarhead brother, played by very young Jack Black (Christina Applegate plays Jack Black's girlfriend in pretty much an unspeaking role). Legends Jim Brown and Pam Grier play an estranged couple, Rod Steiger is a pro-war military general, Pierce Brosnan is a peace-loving scientist, Danny DeVito, Tom Jones, Martin Short, Salma Hayak and more also appear.  It's just a ridiculously stacked cast playing characters who have no real ark, almost all serving the purpose as being laser-fire fodder for the aliens (voiced by Frank Welker).

The joy of Mars Attacks! is the unfettered glee of the ultra silly aliens joyously destroying humanity (they're proto-Minions in their comically violent antics), and then conversely the icky fun of seeing these nuisance creatures heads get squishe or splattered into a spray of green goo.

It's pure ridiculousness, right up until the notorious finale when it's discovered that Slim Whitman's warble is the alien's surprise weakness (it's a delightful play on War of the Worlds mundane fix for the invasion, and a far better turn than, say, Signs).  Don't think too hard about anything, in fact don't think at all.

This thing should be in the Criterion Collection and I should have it in the binders.

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Back in the days of video stores, many, many movies -  most of them in the sci-fi or horror genre - were sold completely by the cover art of the box on the shelf. So many incredible - usually painted - images that just struck the eye, got stuck in the mind and inspired the brain to go to wild, wild places that, inevitably, the film in the case never actually takes you to.

The box art for Def-Con 4 was a staple in every video store I can remember going to (were Canadian video shops mandated to have this as part of their Canadian Content?) That image of the downed satellite looming large in the background and a space suit with a skeleton inside in the foreground I'm sure was responsible for thousands of thousands of rentals. I never did get to it though. Perhaps the reputation that the movie didn't live up to the box art spread across playground and high school hallways?

Def-Con 4 was brought up recently in an interview with Blackberry/Nirvanna The Band The etc... director Matt Johnson and that image immediately flooded my mind. In my (unfortunately only) recent interest in Canadian film I put it on the to-watch list.

It's a garbage nonsense movie about the end of civilization as we know it. It starts in space as a crew aboard a defence satellite catch word that Libya has hijacked a US ship armed with nuke and are setting them off. Or something. They eventually respond unleashing their payload. Humanity is decaying rapidly under the fallout, or, at least, TV has gone off the air (same thing).

This opening sequence which simultaneously moves too quickly and drags on far too long, seems like its setting up the film's trio of astronaut protagonists, and trying to give us something akin to insight into their motivations for being on this mission in space and hints as to their life back home, but it's so awkwardly written, we're not ever sure what we're supposed to take from all this jumbled info. One of the crew, Commander Cecil Howe, wants to return back to his wife (even though she's been quarantined for some illness and the baby is dead and the radiation is going to kill everyone anyway). But after re-entry they crash land off-course and on a beach. One of them is taken immediately by cannibals, J.J. is left inside unconscious and concussed while Howe looks for help.

Howe is immediately captured by Vinny McKinnon (Maury Chaykin) who threatens to kill him, but he decides to make a trade for supplies on his capsule. Vinny has also kidnapped Alice (Donna King) , and now we have our trio of protagonists who... oh, nevermind. They get kidnapped by a military regime led by a petty, preppy high school student (Kevin King) who is mostly just upset his girlfiend (Alice) left him.  

This post-apocalyptic wasteland is so, so pathetic as to be far more banal than scary.  The rhythms of this are so familiar (it's somehow not all that different than, like, 28 Days Later) and yet it's so underbaked as to basically be raw elements with little to no investment in the characters. The only real drama is the tension between  teenagers Gideon Hayes and Alice and they're like the fourth and fifth leads of this film.

Its Canadianness shines through in, mostly, the worst ways possible, mostly in production value, but also scripting and performance and editing where it feels like multiple takes were just not possible within the budget so they had to deal with what one or two takes got them (I don't know this for sure, but that's sure what it seems like).

The only redeeming quality of this is one absolutely out of place scene where Howe catches some bad guys by surprise and tells them at gunpoint to get off the boat, and then the guys keep reaching for their guns and Howe keeps telling them to stop reaching for the guns. It's a silly farce that seems straight out of The Naked Gun, and I can only imagine how entertaining this would have been had they leaned into this type of humour throughout.  Alas.

That poster, though, remains incredible.

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One of my slow-burn projects on this blog of late has been to watch all the adaptations that have been made of the Parker novels.  The character, written under Donald E. Westlake's pen-name, was a relative unknown commodity to me until I read the incredible comic book adaptations by the late Darwyn Cooke. Reading those lit a Parker fire under me (though, not even close to being enough to actually read the novels.... Reading?  Bleh. Who even reads anymore. Given the stats on this blog, like, a dozen people?).

There are a few adaptations that are just out there, readily available, from the two versions of Payback,  the awful Jason Statham film, to the stone cold classic Lee Marvin joint Point Blank ,to the most recent attempt I can't bring myself to watch (yet). Then there's the ones you have to deep dive for, like Slayground, Made in the USA, Pillaged, The Split and this one, The Outfit.

Robert Duvall isn't exactly the mind's eye perfect Parker (or Parker analog). The character is described as a big, broad beast of a man, shaggy and expressionless. The only actor who has portrayed him that really fits the description is Lee Marvin, but even then, he's maybe not as dangerous looking as Westlake described him. I'm not exceptionally experienced with Duvall's filmography, but everything I have seen him in, he's been incredible. I don't think he could take a wrong step if he tried. He's a true character actor, disappearing into a role. There's no specific type for Duvall, as such, despite lacking height or width or the big block fists described on the page, Duvall's Eddie Macklin kind of makes for the most screen accurate Parker in every other context.

Macklin is so, so cold in this film, but for the briefest moments of fleeting humanity, where an errant emotion flashes on his face but then disappears.  We meet Macklin coming out of jail, being picked up by a former lover, Bett (Karen Black), who informs him that his brother's been murdered. She was responsible for giving him up after being tortured. The Outfit, it turns out, was not happy with the fact that Macklin, his brother and their accomplice Cody (Joe Don Baker) hit one of their crooked banks. They're sending a message to everyone.

But Macklin has his own sense of propriety and justice. After getting the jump on some outfit goons he sends a message back. Either they pay up 250K for murdering his brother, or else he keeps hitting them, and hitting them hard, doing what no right-minded thief would do. A joint is a joint, and they all can be hit up. All's fair as far as Macklin's concerned. The heat bears down on him, Cody and Bett, but if he feels it he doesn't let on, and while Bett wants to get out, Cody is ride-or-die. It's not that he's a tactical genius or that shrewd in his calculating. He's just determined to get what he wants, his drive and motivation trump anything else.

While not the most elegantly directed movie, nor the prettiest, Duvall leads a pretty exceptional cast on a an uncommon journey. Knowing that Macklin doesn't have a plan gives the story an anything-can-happen vibe and you're never quite sure what's next on the agenda, or at times, exactly how Macklin is going to get out of a situation.  Whatever the code is that he operates by has an internal logic in the film, and it creates ample surprises and unique moments.

I've been searching for The Outfit for some time, and the new Arrow Video release, full of special features diving into Westlake's history as well as the film's history makes for a very welcome release. It's maybe not a "classic" in the strictest sense but it's certainly a forgotten gem worthy of rediscovery.

T&K Go Loopty Loo: River

2023, d. Junta Yamaguchi - Tubi

As always, we're spoiling the whole thing.

Preamble:
[Kent] Most time loop stories take place over the span of one day. The time loop in River takes place over the span of two minutes. As such the movie plays out in real time, but in two-minute segments.

How did the Loop Begin?
[Kent] Kibune Fujiya is a rustic inn located just outside of Kyoto, situated along the Kibune River. At the time the story starts, the winter season is giving way to spring, and most of the inn's guests have departed. The dining staff prepare for the mid-day turnover, some are meant to be cleaning, while others are going to take a nap. Mikoto (Riko Fujitani, Beautiful Dreamer) takes a moment to look upon the babbling waters of the river before heading up to clean a room. She's in mid conversation with head waiter Kohachi (Munenori Nagano, Tatami Time Machine Blues) when, suddenly, she's back, looking at the Kibune.

[Toast] Just started the movie, but OMG this is so fun! Its all so small and intimate, as we poke around all these lives, very briefly, very quickly, jumping from customer to staff to customer and then focusing on Mikoto as she stares into the waters, just before...

What was the main character's first reaction to the Loop?
[Kent] Mikoto is surprised, and finds herself rehashing the movements she made just minutes before, only to find that Kohachi is just as surprised to find himself doing the same thing again. It's not just deja vu. They've had a conversation already, aware of details unknown two minutes prior, and both are keenly aware they've  cleaned this room before.

On the third loop, once Mikoto and Kohachi and their manager, and most of the rest of the staff are aware something's going on, their immediate priority is to the guests, including a stressed out serial novelist on a deadline, his editor (?) who takes a bath, and two old friends getting reacquainted over a meal. The friends are a bit concerned they will get bored of their meal over time, the writer is elated to have the pressure of a deadline removed, and the bather is freaked out because he can't get the lather out of his hair (while the staff are scandalized by his lack of clothing).

[Toast] Is this a first for time-loop movies? Is this the first large group all doing the loop together? The speed in which everyone catches on, and acknowledges in fear & confusion is just dazzling! The way Kohachi immediately shouts, "Time warp!" means this guy is well immersed in science fiction tropes.

Well, catches-on minus the customers. Man, having to maintain Customer Service while dealing with temporal mechanics is a pain. All of them yelling at the staff as if Time is something that comes with the amenities of the inn. 

WHY did the main character get put into the Loop? Can someone else be brought into the Loop?
[Kent] That would be telling...which of course is exactly what we're here to do. At first, Mikoto thinks she caused the loop because she wised to the river gods that the day might never end (her boyfriend, chef Taku has decided to move to France to learn French cuisine).  But the big reveal, mid-way through the third-act is we learn that the well-dressed woman in the wool raincoat (the one who we see in the temple at the start of the movie, and in one loop asks if anyone can help with her frozen engine), well, she's a time traveler, part of time patrol, like in the movies. She stayed in one place too long and the safety measures of her time machine, to prevent a paradox, caused the loop. Now it's seized and she needs help in getting it started. 

[Toast] Time Patrol?!? What movies?!?! Did this movie just name-drop a pop culture reference that is only applicable to their world? I mean its not too difficult to transpose the whole idea to Doctor Who and assume the TARDIS broke down for whatever reason, but the way they just throw this into the final act in a "oh, so that explains EVERYTHING !!" makes me think the writers of this one are just messing around... with time.

Now, can someone be brought into the loop. At one point early on, The Chef confirms its not happening just outside the confines of the Kibune area, so... isn't it possible someone could enter the area and end up caught in the never ending 2 minutes?

How long is this time Loop? What resets it? Can you force the reset?
[Kent] Two minutes exactly, running from 1:56:20 pm to 1:58:20 pm. 

[Toast] Yes, as Mr. I Am Just a Chef works out with his notes and his map and his little coloured stickers. He could have just stared at a watch.

How long does the main character stay in the Loop? Does it have any affect on them, their personality, their outlook?
[Kent] There are around 30 loops altogether, so they're really only trapped in at time loop for 60 minutes, but it does wind up having an effect. At one point one of the staff of a nearby establishment snaps and starts attacking the other staff, while the two friends start coming to blows, and the writer throws himself out a window. But, Mikoto and Taku use the time to be together, running off on quick two-minute adventure dates, getting chased by the others as Mikoto accidentally reveals she thinks her wish caused the loop. It gives everyone time, time they need to resolve their issues, talk through their feelings, work through the problems they're encountering, and feel the sense of tranquility that the inn and river provide the guests but rarely are afforded to the busy staff.

[Toast] Two Minute Adventure Dates. Snort. Every couple needs Adventure Dates, and likely someone benefit from the condensed time frame. 

Their use of the "learn something important" trope of loopties is hilariously heavy handed here. Things get dark, really dark, really quickly. Come on people, pull yourself together! Its been less than an hour! And just the idea that they only needed about 20 minutes to put their lives back together is just .... shake head and grin.

What about the other people in the Loop? Are they aware? Can they become aware?  Does anything happen if they become aware?
[Kent] One of the chefs is a science major and spends all his time studying the phenomenon. He learns that the effect of the loop is limited only to a certain area, and that everyone within it is affected. What never happens is anyone is able to traverse into or outside of the sphere of the loop. It's too broad to travel in two minutes.

[Toast] Maybe that's why the car keeps crashing off camera -- they are trying to escape?

What does the main character think about the other people in the Loop? Are they real? Do they matter?
[Kent] For the most part, they all act like they're in this situation together. The confrontations aren't about the situation, but about recessed personal issues that they eventually work through.

[Toast] Yes, they do still maintain their humanity but at the very least, the Writer plays with the idea that if they can just keep on looping, then they can play with their own reality. He realizes death is not instantaneous. Eek.

Most memorable event in a Loop? Most surprising event during a Loop?
[Kent] I really enjoyed the romantic part of the loop, as Mikoto and Taku kept trying to elude the others and just get a few peaceful moments to themselves. There's not far you can run in two minutes but their efforts are adorable.

The most surprising thing was that the weather both does and doesn't seem to be affected by the loop. A snow storm does come, as predicted, but your young lovers still race about it in, as it comes down heavier and heavier with each successive loop, until finally a loop resets everything and it's lush and green out again, with maybe only a hint of white. It's the most perplexing part of the movie (which I assume has everything to do with budget and shooting time in the location and not plot or continuity).

[Toast] Now that ! That is the most perplexing thing about all this... Its Winter but then ... its Spring? There are most definitely buds on the trees at the end and the characters do notice but... are they all going to find out that the entire season passed them by while they experienced the totality of an hour? Timey Wimey messed up shit? If so, the Writer totally missed his deadline and that guy's business likely went under in his absence. 

Or... maybe... even years?

How does this stack up in the subgenre?
[Kent] It's always fascinating to see the time loop utilized in new and unique ways, and I had never even contemplated a loop of this duration before, nor one where everyone is in on the loop. Done as a sort of French-style comedic farce, full of frantic energy and constant movement about the limited environment (we really get a nice map of the place after a while...seems very beautiful there). I enjoyed this very, very much.  It's not a deep movie, but it is sweet, fun, and quite amusing.

[Toast] This might be one of my favourite examples of the sub-genre ever. "If this was a scifi movie then...." Turns out they were in a scifi movie. BOOP.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Supergirl

2026, Craig Gillespie (Fright Night) -- download

I can immediately say that I came out of this movie thinking, "I liked it." No exclamation mark. I liked it, it was alright, which is just this side of "meh" unfortunately. But, I am also the guy who liked Kraven the Hunter so, so what do I know. 

Now that I had said this so many times, I am recalling a time when "it was OK" was more than OK. I enjoyed the whole "experience" of film watching, small and big screens, and that experience was mine that I was happy, as long as it wasn't a total piece of frustrating crap. Am I now more discerning? Or am I just older and less satisfied with Just OK.

I immediately bump over to Kent's post, and then I am suddenly hand-waving, "This! THIS !" I suddenly have my exclamation marks.

"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)."

I am only familiar with the source comic material in passing. I started reading a digital copy when this movie was announced, but ... never finished? But I recall it being a popular alt take on the Supergirl character, a romp in space, which I assumed was supposed to be in the tone of "Superman Man of Tomorrow" but I was actually thinking of "All-Star Superman". But, I know that the Supergirl comic was a stand-alone series, which I am not sure would allow for a good introduction to the character. I should let Kent comment on comics, as I don't really read them anymore.

And the editor says you should delete that paragraph....

But, as a good introduction to the character cinematically? If we are being setup for there being a "strongly into irreverence & binge drinking" Supergirl (Milly Alcock, House of the Dragon) in the Gunn DC-verse, then we got that. Its not  like the world at large would be widely aware of how Supergirl should be depicted, and really, that's beside the point. We do get that she is historically Kal-El's cousin, and she came from a city that escaped the destruction of Krypton and due to temporal mechanics, she arrived not much older than when she left Krypton / Argo City. Her city may have escaped the planet exploding, but it did not escape its fate. Kara also escapes the dying city, and is probably left pretty emotionally scarred; thus the binge drinking. Also, all this happens in a mid-story recollection.

Meanwhile, in the actual story, she's drinking on a planet with a Red Sun, which allows her to actually get drunk, when Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley, The Witcher), whose family was killed by Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts, The Old Guard) and his space brigands called The Brigands. Comics can elicit a lot from names and depictions in just a few short panels, setting tone and style. Strangely enough, it takes more in movies, and so the bar, the aliens/villains within, all end up feeling pretty generic, and most viewers will not be able to escape comparisons to Guardians of the Galaxy. Anywayz, Roothy comes in demanding someone help her avenge her family, is grabbed by a thug who wants to sell her, but Supergirl, despite being "powerless", intercedes. Apparently she's got mad fighting skills, super powered or not.

What proceeds is a series of "nope, not gonna help. nope, not gonna help" until "FINE, I'm helping!" inspired mostly by the fact that Krem poisons Krypto, who turns out to be Kara's dog, not Superman's -- explains the lack of discipline shown by the pup. Supergirl has only a few days to find The Brigands and steal back their antidote. And allow Ruthye to avenge her dead family. And... maybe free some captives?

As Kent said, the Superman movie had "spirit and humour", this one just seems to be trying to tailor itself for the doom-scrolling generations. There is a "human (girl) trafficking" sub-plot and its implied that Space is a lawless and dangerous, yet it has "bus" routes. And where are the Green Lanterns in all of this? Aren't they supposed to be Space Cops? At the very least, shouldn't there be some down-on-their-luck task force members trying to take down these slave traders and failing miserably? 

And yet, I began this write-up with a "I Liked It". I did, I guess I just don't like where it sits in Gunn's new DC-verse. I am blatant about my love for how the man makes a movie, and I shouldn't expect all the movies coming out of his stable to replicate that skill, but at the very least, I would hope he would take a Kevin Feige approach to making sure the movies are polished before they are released?

In the very end, I mostly liked Milly's depiction of the character; at the very least, I applaud the sincerity with which she played the role. The character of Ruthye is just pure supporting cast, with no definition and nothing memorable uttered. And the movie shoe-horning in Lobo (Jason Momoa, Aquaman) was superfluous and just an extended cameo. 

Maybe you need a rewatch and rewrite just so you can say something you actually liked?

We Agree: Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

2026, Jon Favreau (Chef) -- download

Kent.

OK, here I go back into blockbuster land, as they begin popping up on my pirate sites. Oh, did I say that out loud?

In 2019 Favreau did what no one was truly expecting -- got a live-action "Star Wars" TV show off the ground, and made it good. Actually, great. It came out at the end of a series of very divisive theatrical movies, and I include The Rise of Skywalker. This is the first proper movie since that series of, arguably failures, ended. And it was a box-office flop. I never saw it in the cinema, but my forays into those dark abodes are no longer an indicator of anything.

Kent says it well.

I enjoyed the movie... but... I enjoyed the movie like I would enjoy binge watching a season of The Mandalorian, and that's kind of the experience the film brings. It doesn’t feel right.

I watched this for the first time, at home, on the TV, and yet I feel that somewhat of a let-down feeling. As I am wont to say, it's fine. But in only saying that, I am once again kind of pissed off. While I understood I never held the spin-off movies to the same level, what I wanted from this was for Favreau and Filoni to translate their special love of "Star Wars" from the small-screen to the Big Screen experience. I didn't get that; I just got a ... longer episode with more budget?

My mind was a bit muddled coming into this movie. Having just come off some relatively recent rewatches of Ahsoka and Obi-Wan, as well currently ongoing rewatches of Ep. VII and VIII, my brain is lost in the time stream. As I understand it, we are coming into this story post-Ep. VI, just after the events in Ahsoka and Skeleton Crew. So, the New Republic is still in control, the First Order hasn't visibly risen yet, and yet remnants of the Empire are still everywhere. And so, the New Republic has tasked The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal, Wonder Woman 1984; Brendan Wayne, Lateef Crowder), and his side-kick Grogu, with hunting down these remnants. 

The movie opened with a bounty. Its a snow planet, or at the very least, the place on the planet in the mountains, with snow. Imperial walkers, snow troopers, colluding Imperial warlord and toadies. Its all fun and exciting, but then we swing to the opening credits and .... huh. Sure, I like Ludwig Göransson as much as the next person, and his score is probably most exciting "Star Wars" music since the original movie, but this overly bombastic version, meant for a cinema with big speakers, does not fit well with the "American base in the Vietnam war" style opening. By itself, the scene is wonderful, but they should have saved the big sounds score for... the end? I am thinking the score should have been a more sly version, low key and anticipatory.

Why are planets in "Star Wars" always a single biome?

Bounty Hunters are always "bring em in alive, or bring em in dead, I still get paid" and that is pissing off Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver, Alien), who needs the intel a living "Imp" can provide. And yet, despite her annoyance, she coaxes Mando into another job, offering him a newly refurbed Razor Crest, since his last one was blown to smithereens. The problem is that he will have to work with the Hutts, particularly The Twins, who took over Jabba's demesne after his death, and while Boba still rules on Tatooine as Daimyo. The Twins want Mando to rescue Rotta (Jeremy Allen White, The Bear), Jabba's son, from a crime boss named Coin. You might recall that Rotta was known to Ahsoka as "Stinky".

This was my first hint that maybe my super duo might not translate well to the Big Screen, even if I am watching on the Small Screen. The mismatched score, the smaller stakes. Sure, other (cinematic) movies do small stakes all the time, but this is "Star Wars" and following a successful stint on TV, I wanted Big Stakes, not just the rescue of a previously referenced side character, with some complications in tow. Maybe I wanted a gateway into the next (previous) trilogy? Grumblings of the First Order? Shadowy foreshadowing? Some big success for The Rebels-turned-New-Republic-Policing?

But again, what I did get was fine and all. 

Fun things. The transposition of the original movie's holochess into "real life" was smirk inducing, but also... weird? Are these monsters/beasts or are they people? I mean, one was wearing a vest, but some were pretty horrific looking. Also, that whole town was really really well designed, visually. Can't wait for a food influencer to recreate the sandwich Mando was about to be served. 

And the practical effects / stop motion segment as Grogu and the Anzellans (once again, all voiced by Shirley Henderson, Okja) band together to rescue Mando. I swear, I could see the strings on their tiny ship. And the fight between Mando and mega-droids was very very Ray Harryhausen. A whole lot of fun, but also.... jarring and out of place.

Less enthused. The Grogu sitting around in his mud hut (not Hutt) waiting for Mando to heal. Its like they needed to fill a required allotment of Grogu being cute. Also, by now, Mando knows he's not a pet, knows he's not a "child" so.... what's with all the pet / toddler references? The time that had to pass for Mando to get better should have had more impact.

If I had seen this in the cinema, I am no longer convinced if I would have been less annoyed, having had a Big Screen Experience, no matter the film's satisfaction level (remember, we "enjoyed" watching Madam Webb and The Flash), or more annoyed, given expectations vs reality. I am much more annoyed by the box office turnout, and the impact it will have on future Favreau / Filoni projects.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Landscape with Invisible Hand

2023, Cory Finley (Bad Education) -- Amazon 

Amazon has this weird pattern, where they will add movies to their roster, then after an undetermined amount of time, shunt it off to one of their subscription-services, or more accurately, remove access from Prime Video subscribers in favour of the consumer paying more for the additional subscription. Eventually they come back. I get the model with blockbusters -- convince people to join with "free" access to the recently released movie, such as Project Hail Mary, and then drop it for the other licensors to take over. But I don't understand how it works with long-released movies but I am sure there is an algorithm at play, a terribly designed, badly implemented algorithm. This one came and went, came and went, came again and I watched it.

Speaking of Project Hail Mary I cannot help but compare the aliens in that movie to the aliens in this movie. In Landscape with Invisible Hand the Vuvv have come to Earth from another galaxy and while the pretense is that the governments welcomed them due to the technological and economical advancements they offered. And yet its definitely an occupation ... or, maybe more accurately, a Colonization. In the Ryan Gosling movie, the aliens are not really any more advanced than Earthlings, but are entirely alien -- they would not do well in Earth cultures. When the Vuvv come to Earth, they don't give a hoot about the impact they have on the planet and its cultures; they just implement their changes, reap whatever benefits they can and ignore the negative effects. They do not have any empathy for the "lesser species". My comparison between Rocky's species and the Vuvv is more about descriptors (small weirdly shaped, live in dark rocky abodes), as we well know Rocky was very empathetic with his friend Grace but I cannot help but wonder whether a species with more technological advancements might lose that empathy... you know, like we do.

Our humans are Adam (Asante Blackk, This Is Us), a highschooler with a talent for outsider art, and his crush, Chloe (Kylie Rogers, Home Before Dark), whose family has just moved to town. Moved is too strong a term as they, being herself, her brother and her dad, are living out of the family car: homeless, jobless. Adam's own mother, a lawyer, is also without work and seeking a job, any job, but they still have the family home... for now. Adam tries to win favour with Chloe by offering her family the family basement, which does not go over well.

This opening has quickly established that while the Vuvv have offered Earth some offscreen benefits, the average person is not benefiting... at all. Unemployment and homelessness are the norm now. Vuvv efficiency comes with the cost of having to do things their way. But the Vuvv are partial to human melodrama and as Chloe and Adam begin to get close, she suggests they broadcast their "courting ritual". The Vuvv have provided a technology that allows a human mind to connect to a network, visually experience what is transmitted to them, but also return the transmission. Yes, Vuvv TV is just watching humans do human stuff and they really like "love".

At first it goes well. Adam is falling in love and the two are getting to know each other. They make money, a LOT of money, enough to keep the house payments going and eat real food, as opposed to the cheaply extruded blocks of essential proteins that the Vuvv provide to all humans. Except Chloe begins "producing" their relationship, and it begins feeling less real to Adam. And, it becomes pretty obvious to the Vuvv viewers. The two are dragged before a Vuvv executive and sued for faking their relationship. By then, it mostly was. Pay back all the money, or lose everything.

Shit gets weirder. Adam's mom Beth (Tiffany Haddish, Boosters LA), uses her lawyer powers to propose an alternative arrangement to the Vuvv executive. While they are asexual beings that bud instead of give birth, they still have an attachment to their .. offspring. Beth proposes a marriage between her and the offspring, who ends up taking the name Father. They get to experience the human family structure instead of just viewing it. Of course, they are oblivious to the hypocrisy about being upset at humans faking it while having no issue pretending this is all real; it just confirms their lack of understanding of everything human. But, why should they care? They are at the top of the food chain, societally speaking.

Adam doesn't do well with this, angry with his mother, with Chloe, with the state of the world. Chloe's dad, utterly emasculated by his homelessness and joblessness, still tortured by his own toxic masculinity, offers to become the "housewife" to Father's family unit, allowing Beth to keep the job she got at a local fast food joint. Adam and Chloe aren't on speaking terms, when the school is closed down. Everyone will now just "learn" (Vuvv indoctrination) via the mind-view technology. Adam is at wit's end and paints a massive mural of life since the Vuvv came to Earth, on the side of the school.

Our final act has Adam recognized by a Vuvv art critic as a power voice in outsider art, and is offered a residency and a galactic tour worth millions. Except, they need him to alter the art so as to depict the Vuvv as benevolent overseers, come to Earth to make everything better. Whereas everyone else has been making hard choices either to just get by, or to have a better life, Adam just says No. He abandons the money, the recognition, and in turn, the Vuvv just rip the side off the school and take it away.

The End.

This isn't a movie of grand changes, world altering realizations, or anything else so grand, usually found in alien movies. Adam doesn't "save the Earth", he doesn't even do much to help his family. There isn't a resistance against the alien dominators, just people who are impotently angry. This movie is a vignette into lives of some people under Vuvv rule. Exploration of the Human Condition is a phrase bandied about with broad gestures, but like Adam's art which is often primitive and would challenge many people on the idea of what "real art" is, or is not, this movie does have the things it needs to say, but also, in many ways, its just a weird alien movie.

1-1-1-KsMIRT: odds on endings

KsMIRT=Kent's month in reviewing television. This month, the definite end of one series, the probable end of another, the first seasons of two others, and one show I've been waiting some time to get eyes on.

This Month:
The Bear Season 5 - 2026, disney+ [8/8 episodes watched]
Deli Boys Season 2 - 2026, disney+[6/6 episodes watched]
Spider-Noir Season 1 - 2026, amazonprime [ /8 episodes watched] 
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed Season 1 - 2026, appletv [10 /10 episodes watched]
Year of the Rabbit Series 1 - 2019, tubi [6/6 episodes watched]

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The Bear Season 5
[created by Christopher Storer]
Seasons 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

The What 100: Carmy has told Sid he's quitting The Bear, she's now head chef, so it's time for a change. But uncle Jimmy's made some bad investments and has no money left to prop the Bear up, and is looking to sell the property. The credit cards are cut off, the cupboards are practically empty, and a heavy duty storm is wreaking havoc in Chicago. This could be the Bear's last night, but nobody wants it to end, and they're all going to fight for it's survival.

[1 Great] There is a moment in the penultimate episode that had both Lady Kent and I sit up and say "holy shit!" A literal magic trick that blew our minds.  I don't know if this particular feat is something that's famous in the fine dining world, or if it's an invention of Storer (or someone on staff), but wow. If you're not immediately aware of what I'm talking about, well, Marcus (Lionel Boyce) totally big-times his estranged father, whom he invited to the Bear (as he said, because he couldn't invite his mom, who passed away last season), but also to show off his talent, to show up his father, and possibly even reconnect (but that seems far down the list) and with the Bear's impending doom hovering overhead, he doesn't have much opportunity. A pretty great arc for Marcus this season.

[1 Good] Last season had a literal ticking clock over its head, a countdown to profitability issue by Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), though his reasons weren't as clear as they are within moments of this season's start. In this season of eight episodes, seven of the eight episodes take place on the same day as the staff need to battle their own insecurities, their anger and disappointments, the weather, other failures in the building, and fight not just to make it through the day but to hold their family together. While Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) quitting was supposed to remain a secret through to the end of the day, it gets blurted out in the heat of the moment, and it just raises awareness to the fact that Carmen wouldn't be a bonding agent, but one of division. He's immensely creative, and assuredly talented, but the job brings out the worst in him too, and he recognizes that his heart isn't in it, not like the rest of them. "I can't stay", he says to Sugar (Abby Elliott). "Nobody's asking you to," she replies in the way only a sibling can. It's not to injure him, but it's a double edged sword that is both supporting his decision, and cutting down his egocentricness. This season is propulsive (as many of the seasons have been) but the "all in one day" motif really, really makes it feel like a necessary binge. It could have been a four hour movie, but I think it works well with chapter breaks, as each episode still has a distinct and defined segment of the day.

[1 Bad] There's a lot of great things happening in this final season of The Bear. Every main character gets their spotlight, but the secondary characters don't quite get the same spotlight. Uncle Jimmy becomes the comic relief as he and his investment manager/best friend Computer (Brian Koppelman) and Computer's business savvy niece Cheese (Elsie Fisher) try to sort out how Jimmy can get some money, any money, out of the only asset he has left (the Bear). Last season Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) had a subplot working with a mentor (the late Rob Reiner unable to return this season) to develop a plan to franchise out The Original Beef of Chicagoland, and this season Ebra spends his time fretting over presenting his pitch to Carmy and looking for a spoon thief. The scenes of him practising his pitch are great (the running gag about him being bewitched by Carmy's blue eyes was fantastic), and the resolution to this plot is satisfying, but it's Cheese who finds Ebra's proposal and then it cuts past what should have been a great scene of Ebra and Cheese talking, leading to Ebra and Jimmy and Computer meeting. Ebra gets so shortchanged, the only bad thing about this otherwise terrific season.

META: Finales are hard, but this one nails it. I don't usually like it when a series spends the whole final season acting as if each episode is a finale, giving each character a specific spotlight to go out on. I much prefer it to be business as usual with a big final episode, but season 5 of The Bear has it both ways, and it works. It mostly works because it's not trying to close out individual character plots one by one, it's teeing up each character arc in the first episode or two, working through it through the single day, and winding it down by the end of the day. It's all about pacing and it is so very well paced.  The finale then give us moments that follow. We know that pretty much everyone in the cast is still working at the restaurant, making it work, but it's Carmen's story that we need resolution on and we see what's next for him. But we also see hints at where everyone else is going, and showing them still progressing, and reinforcing the found-family dynamic of the Bear.  It's an uplifting, hopeful, and celebratory ending that actually satisfies. I wish I had written this out as a fine dining metaphor.

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Deli Boys Season 2
created by Abdullah Saeed
(Season 1)

The What 100: Brothers Mir and Raj Dar have successfully taken over their deceased father's business and are now the cocaine kingpins of Philadelphia. District Attorney and mayoral hopeful Andrew Chadwater seems all too aware that the impact the Dar family is having and, more than for the social good, just wants the good press of taking them down. The only problem the Dars have is they are making too much money and can't launder it fast enough. They approach mobster/casino owner Max Sugar, who hits it off with Lucky. And then Uncle Ahmad - who the boys discovered was responsible for their father's murder - winds up dead and Raj is arrested, and becomes the internet viral sensation, the "Fuck Me Felon". Mir wants to buy a golf course for some semblance of legitimacy.

[1 Great] Deli Boys is a farce. It's not taking the world of drug dealing, money laundering, corruption and murder seriously in the slightest. In fact it's perception is that it's all very silly. The trick is to have the characters take it seriously, even if some of them are buffoons, or hyper-serious to the point of ridiculousness. Mir (Asif Ali) and Raj (Saagar Shaikh) are incredibly entertaining characters, with Mir being the more nebbish but also educated but also still out of his element, while Raj is very of-the-moment and, well, often high...and charming, but usually not charming enough. The show is not a joke machine like 30 Rock and its ilk, but instead is a character and situational based comedy, and the characters, pretty universally are wildly entertaining, and the situations are constantly surprising. It's an incredibly funny show which many might be put off simply by the premise (which requires us two root for two outsiders succeeding in doing everything illegal, including murder).

[1 Good]  I don't know that this write-up is much different than the season 1 write-up, just saying the same things in a different way. Of course Poorna Jagannathan is the show's superpower. She's a commanding screen presence, a gifted actress, and an absolutely stunning woman. It's almost unfair to put her in a relationship with Fred Armisen (playing Max Silver) because, at least in attractiveness, she's so far above him (she was paired up briefly with Common in Never Have I Ever and that felt more appropriate), but Armisen is a wizard of comedic characters and so she has to go toe to toe with him in these comedic situations and holds her own. I'm excited to see she's appearing in Lanterns this month.

[1 Bad] This second season of Deli Boys had a reduced episode count...and a significant one at that. Whereas season 1 had 10 episodes, this season only had a 6-episode order. Yeah, that's not good, but the real bad is that the first three episodes of the season feel like they're condensing five or six episodes worth of plot into three episodes and so the events of the show move so incredibly quickly. Raj is barely in jail for a full episode and so they don't get a lot of time to really build upon the scenarios that presents (plus we could have had more of Kumail Nanjiani guest starring as Raj's lawyer and Lucky's ex).  There feels like there was more story, more comedy to be had this season, but whatever plotlines were constructed between seasons weren't reworked but just compressed.

META: The reduced episode count in itself felt like a token gesture from Hulu, and less that they had any faith in the show growing their audience. Unless the series suddenly multiplied its viewership, I don't think it'll be back, which is a bummer because it's a super-talented cast and crew and a hilarious show which could really do with more room to breath and expand (there's so many wild characters they haven't had the time to build out or explore).

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Spider-Noir

[created by Oren Uziel] 

The What 100: In an alternate reality 1930's, Ben Reilly used to be a superhero called the Spider but is now a washed-up private dick who scrambles to make ends meet. The trauma of losing his fiancee Ruby still weighs heavy and he finds it hard to care about the world anymore. In the Spider's absence, mob boss Fin "Silvermane" Byrne has taken control of New York City, but the once meek mayor, seeking re-election, is now fighting back, and things are getting ugly. It only gets worse when new super-powered beings emerge. Reilly somehow winds up in the mix of it all after taking a case from lounge singer Cat Hardy.

[1 Great] Without resorting to heavy-handed exposition, the creatives involved in this series manage to build a world of the 1930s NYC that is recognizable from history but distinctly its own vibe. It doesn't shy away from the ugly nature of segregation and racism of the era, but also never makes it "a very special episode" material. It is just part of the underpinning of the world that these people live in. The sets, costuming, hair, and special effects are all constructed and displayed in a manner to evoke classic noir, all aided by the decision to let the audience choose their own viewing adventure: colour, or black and white. (The series was shot with b&w in mind, so this was the option I went with, and it looks fabulous.)  The aesthetics extend to the sometimes ham-fisted or melodramatic acting which feel very much of the classic noir genre, and the injection of superpowers into the whole thing may be much more advanced than what had been done in the serials of the '30's and '40's but at the same time, there's a baked-in bit of clunkiness to the make-up, the fights, the digital powers to give it a tangible charm even when it might not be so real (the b&w really helps to cover its tracks).

[1 Good] Spider-Noir is not a show meant for kids. It's got a bit of swearing, drinking and smoking, and some violence that goes just beyond the typical MCU cartoonishness. It feels very much like the superhero shows of the 2000s, where a character is either divorced from the greater universe he or she would normally exist in, or is made up from whole cloth. In this case, Spider-Noir has always been an alt-universe character who exists outside the normal "616" and the Spider also has a very minimal history in publication so there's really not much for the series to be beholden to. They pretty much had a blank slate to start with.  We basically know what a spider-man is, what his powers are, so we get a series that begins without necessitating an origin story (but we get that eventually anyway). That frees up exposition for world building. And like the superhero shows of the 2000s, it's able to employ the names and/or power sets of other characters onto pretty much wholly new figures, while still capturing the essence and giving the audience the charge of seeing an "Electro" or "Sandman" or "Black Cat" on screen without requiring fealty to source material. This felt both fresh and retro at the same time.

[1 Bad] Without Nic Cage, I don't think this show was getting made, and given that the actor voiced the character in Into the Spider-Verse and is a lifelong comics nerd (he named his son Kal-El) who really wants to be in comic book properties (eg. Ghost Rider, his ill-fated turn as Superman) it's clear he was putting everything his 60-something-year-old body could into this. It wouldn't be the same without him, and it's a role, once again, without much lore or history to it, that he can own outright and make it his. He sure does. In all honesty, he does a really great job 90% of the time.  He gets to be a smartass with a bit of a mouth, he gets to be a drunk, he gets to have trauma, he gets to act aloof or detached from repercussions (until they hit home)... and he delivers on everything...almost. There is a romantic sub-plot between himself and Cat Hardy that flows in and out of amenable chemistry. Sometimes there's a real flame cooking, and other times Cage seems in his own goofy world of amour. But the hardest part to accept in the series is that Ben Reilly seems like he should be in his late-'40's, not early '60's so no matter how good Cage is, there's always a bit of a disconnect when watching him in the role.  The show does do an excellent job, however, of making Ben Reilly a bit of a broken down veteran. He takes his damn lumps, over and over.

META: I really wasn't expecting to like this show, but honestly I was pretty hooked from the first episode. I watched it in two concentrated viewings, the first four episodes over a two day span and then all the remaining episodes in one sitting a few weeks later. It's a show that seems like it has very little fat on it, but that's just how good it is at hiding it. The flashbacks, and some of the side-quests aren't altogether essential to the story so much as understanding the Spider and where he came from, and yet, the way the show bakes in the origin story is as much about the supervillains the Spider is facing this season as it is about him. There's not much backtracking in this show, it maintains forward momentum excellently and it winds up in the end right where it should. It's quite satisfying in a way that, say, Daredevil was not. The pastiche really helps.  I hear a second season has been ordered. It doesn't need it, but it's not unwelcome.

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Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed
[created by David J. Rosen]

The What 100: Paula Saunders is an ace fact checker at a New York-based magazine. She's a divorced, friendless mother who puts all her energies into her job and her daughter, Hazel. With what little time she has left, she finds relief with a cam boy, Trevor, with whom she's intimate with both visually and emotionally. And then Trevor is assaulted on camera and Paula is called for Trevor's ransom. The police say it's a scam. Paula puts her researching skills to the test and tracks down Trevor, only to find him dead. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

[1 Great] Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is a very modern series, both in subject matter and in storytelling style. It's an exceptionally taut thriller, bristling with intensity, but also it has a wicked comedic streak that helps balance out its heavier impulses. And it's very well balanced. It's obviously a product of the streaming era where episode lengths can be whatever, but most of MPG clock in at around a half-hour. These shorter episode lengths make for a propulsive series that, more often than not, feature an final shot or sequence at each episode's end that just kind of slaps you in the face and makes you want to know what happens next. I honestly can't think of anyone other than Tatiana Maslany who can negotiate the tonal shifts of this show so effortlessly, and manage the many, many demands on her character to be an isolationist, to be snarky, to be an emotionally devoted mother, to convey the stress of the situations thrust upon her, but also find the resolve to quite literally work her way through them. Maslany doesn't make a single false step in the entire series. She's riveting, and the show, while, excellent, is twice as good because of her.

[1 Good] The end of episode 6. I jumped out of my seat and applauded.

[1 Bad] The series spends 9 episodes putting Paula deeper and deeper into trouble and in the end she manages to work her way out of it, and never manages to feel like cheating (well, save for that one cliched moment in the penultimate episode). In the process she uncovers a whole other world of trouble that it seems like she manages to side step, but in the closing moment of the season, Paula receives an alarming text that indicates she's falling right back into the intensity. Hey, it makes sense for Paula to have found her way out of the hole she dug for herself, but not completely escaped it. The layers are many and we've only seen a few without full context. I don't have any issue with this. Really what bothers me is the video Paula was sent. It is confounding in its origin. Where did it come from? Why was it not unveiled before? We know exactly what trouble it spells for Paula and I'm keen for her to once again use her research skills and tenacity to keep her head above water and eventually find the shore.

META: I've watched a bunch of giallo films recently, and some commentary on the subgenre of Italian cinema. Giallos are horror-tinged murder-mysteries where there's a killer on the loose and a non-professional everyman (or woman) either gets thrust into the position of figuring out what's happening or thrusts themselves into the position of investigating. In some respects, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is a sort of Giallo, only the killer is a professional cleaner and not a crazed murderer. MPG has much in common with The Flight Attendant, a show with a magnificent season one and a middling season two, but had its title character launched into a Hitchcockian murder mystery but with a heavy side of humour. I genuinely hope MPG is able to avoid the second season curse and find its way into a stellar second chapter.

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Year of the Rabbit series 1
created by Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley

The What 100: In 1887 London, Rabbit is a police detective whose violent and self destructive impulses get in the way of his sometimes astute sleuthing skills. He's saddled with a new partner, the keen and upbeat new recruit Wilbur Strauss, as well as receiving the unsolicited aide of the Chief Inspector's adopted daughter Mabel, who wants to be a copper (but, you know, 1887+sexism+racism). Rabbit has a nemesis on the force in Tanner, makes enemies with public officials, and is only starting to see the signs of a secret society of puppet masters pulling strings around London.

[1 Great] It's always going to be Matt Berry. The man just has an incredibly distinctive way of delivering lines and the characters he inhabits are always a very Matt Berry type. Here Rabbit is boorish and dismissing and self-aggrandizing and hyper-sexual but also on the right side of gender and social issues (well, kinda) and ignorant of the advancements in technology and politics and the social contract around him. His ability to sleuth and deduce are sometimes very Get Smart/Inspector Gadget where he gets it so wrong based on assumption but the people around him direct him the right way. He's a delight to watch, even in the fithy surrounding of grimy 19th-century London.

[1 Good] For a sub-30-minute comedy series, the production values are pretty great at making a particular corner of Londing circa the 1880s look like an absolute shit hole (not to mention the amount of times over six episodes they drop into the sewers or meet filth merchants). But it's the setting that makes everything turn in this show. Playing with the realities of the era in juxtaposition against modern sensibilities is a great source of humour (there's a particularly incisive takedown of the anti-immigrants, the Brexiters and Nigel Farage joke throughout the series). 

[1 Bad] I don't know if making the "big bad" of the series a secret society of women seeking equality with violence and manipulation is really the message that we need today. But hey, Keeley Hawes makes for a great nefarious master manipulator and we get Sally Phillips adopting a deliciously ridiculous accent as a Bulgarian Princess.  Plus this main storyline gives Susan Wokoma's Mabel her narrative thrust and Wokoma is an excellent second lead, and Mabel the show's most interesting and well developed character ...in other words, not all bad.

META: I'm not sure why Year of the Rabbit didn't get a subsequent series. Perhaps it was scheduling with Barry in Canada working on What We Do In The Shadows for years. Maybe it was budget, as period pieces always cost more. Or maybe it was COVID related given the timing of the series 1 release. The show works, though, and it could do with another two or three. I've been wanting to watch the show since its initial release but as far as I know Tubi's the first North American streamer to pick it up. Happy to have finally seen it.