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

2025, Ethan Coen (True Grit) -- download

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

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

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

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

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

KsMIRT: all groaned up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[SPOILERS WITHIN]

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

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

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

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

Fun show. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chiplog: President's Choice World Of Flavours Poutine flavour

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating: 7.0

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

 2026, Andrew Bernstein (Jack Ryan) - Amazon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Lost Bus

2025, Paul Greengrass (Jason Bourne) -- download

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chiplog: Cheetos Crunchy Flamin' Hot Dill Pickle flavour

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating: 3.6/10

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

 2026, d. Jon Favreau - in theatre

Has there ever been a TV show that had a theatrical movie continuing its character's journeys where the movie was effectively self-contained and new-audience accessible, plus felt like a proper movie and also did very well at the box office? (Like, I know the Sex and the City films and the Downton Abbey films were pretty big commercial hits, but were they accessible for new audiences? And the Firefly continuation Serenity was perhaps the most accessible, but it failed to draw much of a new audience).

I bring this up, because coming out of The Mandalorian and Grogu, the first Star Wars movie to hit theatres in 7 years, my brain was wracked with thoughts trying to figure out what was the dividing line between a TV show and a movie. With this film, the line is so blurry as to be almost imperceptible as a line.

In 2019, when The Mandalorian hit tv screens, and the first notes of (3-time Oscar winner) Ludwig Göransson's Morricone-inspired score whistled out, shivers went up my spine. We were finally getting live action Star Wars on our TV, and money was being spent so as to make it cinematic quality. The line was already starting to blur. And between three seasons of The Mandalorian, and other shows like The Book of Boba Fett, The Acolyte, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, and Skeleton Crew, within 7 years live-action Star Wars on our TV screens had eclipsed the runtime of all the theatrical Star Wars feature films released over almost 50 years.

Disney needed Star Wars and Marvel to launch and hook subscribers to its Disney+ service, and it worked, but at the same time, the rapid expansion of the franchise(s) diluted both of them, fatiguing the audience on the MCU, and also losing their nerve when it came to making new Star Wars for the big screen. So many Star Wars movie projects were announced that never materialized - a new trilogy from Rian Johnson, a trilogy from the Game of Thrones guys, a Kathryn Bigelow Top Gun-but-with-X-Wings movie, a Boba Fett film, an Obi-Wan film, something from Taika Waititi and so many more.

That a cinematic sequel to The Mandalorian would be the first return to the big screen for Star Wars (with billion-dollar filmmaker and creator of the titular Mandalorian Jon Favreau at the helm) seemed like such a safe bet, that it made sense why Disney would choose that path. The only problem is it's too safe of a bet that it's not all that exciting.

Leading up to The Mandalorian and Grogu's release I failed to muster any real energy for the film. The trailers were fine but revealed nothing about the plot, and, frankly, looked like more of the same from the TV show...a show I loved, need I remind you. 

If you're of a certain age, you will know what it's like to sit in a theatre, have that 20th Century Fox fanfare blast at you, the screen go dark, and the title card "A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Far, Far Away..." hit your eyes, and the jarring horn blast of John Williams' legendary score punch you so hard in the gut that you uncontrollably yelp with surprise and excitement. Any time you watch a Star Wars film, that horn blast will transport you back to the theatre and raise that uncontrollable sense of excitement.

Unfortunately Göransson's The Mandalorian and Grogu theme, as amazing as it is, when the pulsating duh-dunn kicks in, well...it transports me back to sitting in front of my TV screen in 2019 (and, even more unfortunately, the pandemic-era seasons of the show). This is not something you want out of the theatrical experience, to be reminded of sitting in front of your TV. And I coudn't shake that feeling through The Mandalorian and Grogu's 2 hour and 14 minute run-time.

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.

It's a very segmented movie, one that feels episodic not cinematic, even though it is telling one complete story.

The film opens with a big action sequence prologue, sort of James Bond-style (credit to critic Alonso Duralde for pointing out the somewhat Bond-ian nature of this film), that finds Din Djarin and his baby-Yoda adopted (50-year-old) son Grogu hunting down an Imperial warlord on an ice planet. It starts out like scenes that we've seen in The Mandalorian before, Mando moving through the shadows, exterminating Stormtroopers with ruthless efficiency, but it escalates into something fairly big, with Mando taking on a trio of AT-ATs.

And throughout the fim, yes, there are elements that felt intimately familiar, and not too dissimilar to what we saw on TV, but there were also the flourishes that announced itself as a big-screen motion feature, such as the Mandalorian entering the head of the Imperial Walker and navigating his way into the back of it, eliminating all the imperials within in heated gunplay and fighting, and then retreating back out through the head, all in a one-shot. For a Star Wars nerd like me, moving through the interior of an AT-AT is just something I've been wanting to see most of my life. Things like that make the galaxy of Star Wars feel that much more tangible.

Mando is now an contracted agent for the New Republic, with Sigourney Weaver as handler of his assignments. His new assignment is to meet with the siblings of deceased crime lord Jabba the Hutt. They alone seem to hold the whereabouts of a specific Imperial warlord that fallen off the radar. We get to see swampy Nal Hutta, the home planet of the Hutts, as well as the structures they live in and the gross living conditions they have.  the tour into the belly of the Hutt twins' "palace" borders on stomach-churning...all that writhing ("mommy, what are the slug-people doing?" "They're just eating dear.")l. One longs for the arid dryness of Tattoine. At least the sand looked clean.

The Hutts will give Mando the information he seeks, but first he must rescue their nephew, Jabba's son, Rotta the Hutt. He "fell into a bad crowd" and has been taken captive on a remote planet outside the New Republic's jurisdicion. There he finds Rotta is a champion pit-fighter, and if you've ever wondered what a jacked-up Hutt looks like, well wonder no more. Rotta, I'm guessing by design, looks like a beefcaked version of Jabba from the Star Wars: A New Hope Special Edition, where the CGI Jabba looked nothing like the Jabba from Return of the Jedi.

I won't step through all the beats of the film but lest to say, Mando frees Rotta, gets the Targeted imperial warlord, and returns home with his little green boy to relax. And that's the half-way point. But he's crossed the Hutts and they want their revenge. This time Mando gets kidnapped by a bounty hunter, and it's up to Grogu and some tiny friends (the Anzellans, a diminutive race that were the only good thing to come out of The Rise of Skywalker) to rescue him.

There's surprisingly, a long quiet stretch in this third act that is far from boring, but also far from feeling like a big Star Wars feature film. This kind of quiet interlude isn't necessarily unwelcome or by default un-cinematic, but it feels like a moment The Mandalorian TV show would permit itself in an 8-episode season versus slowing the pace of a feature film down to a crawl for 20 minutes.  Once this sequence resolves, it's a propulsive escalation back into Star Wars feature film territory, and despite my glee at many moments of this it just never quite felt big enough.

Star Wars films are space opera. There's "fate of the galaxy" at stake in every one of them, even Solo to some degree. But The Mandalorian and Grogu is contained, constrained. There's only "the job" and while "the job" gets complicated, and then backfires on our hero, there's little more else to it. This isn't a personal quest for Din Djarin or Grogu, and so there's no real arc for these characters. Where our heroes are at the beginning is where our heroes are at the end, except Grogu, I guess, has proven himself a bit more resourceful than we thought (they definitely leveled up the Grogu puppetry here, to an impressive extent)

It's an incredibly small cast for a Star Wars film, with Mando and Grogu, Mando's mission buddy Zeb Orrelios, Sigourney Weaver's Ward, the Hutt twins, Embo the bounty hunter, the Blofeld-esque warlord (Jonny Coyne), the Anzellans (all voiced magnificently by Shirley Henderson), a food vendor capably voiced by Martin Scorsese, and a kindly catfish-man Grogu meets in the swamp. 

My muted anticipation for The Mandalorian and Grogu had me hoping it would find some space operatic reason to exist. Something large and consequential in the lore of the Galaxy to make for a worthy big screen entry. At the same time I worried that the logic of a bounty hunter being part some sweeping space opera would put the character out of place. I also worried that a Mandalorian movie would get too lost in Star Wars lore, especially given that Zeb is a main character from the Star Wars: Rebels cartoon, Embo is a featured character from The Clone Wars series, the Hutt Twins first appeared in The Book of Boba Fett (a cold shiver went up my spine a the thought of Boba Fett cropping up in this movie, which he mercifully does not), and Rotta the Hutt's first appearance was in The Clone Wars animated movie that kicked off the series.  Thankfully, none of these characters requires any prior familiarity to enjoy their appearance here, there is that.

Overall The Mandalorian and Grogu looks pretty good. It looks big budget, certainly bigger budget than the TV show, for which the Volume digital backdrop was created and used heavily. Having just watched Mortal Kombat II, a very Volume-dependent film, I couldn't detect any obvious volume usage here.  The limits to Volume use on the various Star Wars TV shows seems lifted here, and it's nice to see characters move through much larger spaces (or even confined spaces that seem like sets, not digital backdrops).

Göransson is one of my favourite film and television score composers working today. He typically brings a lot of creativity and innovation to his scores, experimenting with sounds but to the benefit of whats on screen. His scoring for The Mandalorian tv show was integral to that show's success, to the point that I feel the third season of the series, though it has its faults in story structure, is mainly let down by Göransson's absence. His return here, then, is very welcome, and yet, unfortunately, it doesn't feel like trademark Göransson . It's rehashing the themes from the show and he doesn't seem to have escalated the sounds to something grander, although there are stadout segments where Göransson does shine, mostly when he deviates from the style of music he's otherwise been working with.

In the end I think that there was no winning with this film. Despite being quite entertaining, it doesn't go big enough to feel like the Star Wars cinematic experience we know, and therefore can't do much but disappoint. I can't help but think that, perhaps, the decision to bring the series to the big screen was the wrong choice for Star Wars' return to cinemas.

KWIF: The Sheep Detectives (+2)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. I originally had a snarky comment closing out last week's review of Mortal Kombat II where I was lamenting having seen the video game adaptation instead of seeing the one about investigative ewes. I deleted the comment because I had already heard that The Sheep Detectives was actually, surprisingly, a pretty decent film, and that neuters the joke a little bit. Plus, I was going to see The Sheep Detectives anyway, so there never really was an either/or decision in the first place.

This Week:
The Sheep Detectives (2026, d. Kyle Balda - in theatre)
Mile End Kicks (2025, d. Chandler Levack - in theatre)
Dark City (1998, d. Alexander Proyas - DVD)

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I must have seen the trailer for The Sheep Detectives about a dozen times, most of them in the form of a preview before the screening of one film or another. Every time the trailer would start, I would balk at the very concept of a live-action movie about cgi sheep attempting to solve the murder of their shepherd. And yet, by the end of the trailer, every time, I was completely sold. Well, I guess not completely since the very same cycle would start anew the next time I would see the trailer.

It is, without a doubt, an absurd concept, but absurdity doesn't innately make for a film bad, and often the very absurd nature of a story's conceit is what makes it stand out, what makes it good, different and exciting.

I've been hearing a lot of comparisons to Paddington bandied about, but The Sheep Detectives really takes a greater nod from Babe, in that it's set in the real world, but when the humans aren't around the animals are speaking to each other. Yes, there are plenty of jokes where we watch the sheep talk in English and then cut to a human POV just to see them bleating at each other...and it's never. not. funny! (Director Balda is kind of restrained in his use of this gag to be honest, maximizing it's efficacy.)

Based on a 2005 German novel, this is "cozy mystery" at its coziest... I mean, we're talking wool coats for days, right? But the real surprise is that the mystery is not the most captivating part of the film. The reason The Sheep Detectives works so well is it establishes characters and it establishes a community (mainly with the sheep, but also with the humans) and it establishes a tangible world for them to inhabit. In this world, sheep are intelligent creatures. They sit and listen to farmer George (Hugh Jackman, X-Men: Origins: Wolverine) read mystery novels in the evening, and Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jack the Bear), George's favourite sheep, always solves the mystery before the end. George has a reputation about town of being a prickly bastard, but he's a kind and gentle loner who adores his sheep above all. He opens our story by narrating the letter he's writing to, it turns out, his daughter whom he gave up for adoption three decades ago (Molly Gordon, The Bear).

The sheep, we quickly learn, have the ability to force themselves to forget, which they do as a collective. Only Mopple (Chris O'Dowd, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children) can remember the past. The sheep believe that they don't die but turn into clouds. Mopple knows the truth, but lets them have their comforts. Otherwise their understanding of death is restricted only to the stories George tells them, so when George turns up dead, the sheep community is rocked.

So too is the human community of the English town of Denbrook. The kind of hapless town constable Officer Derry (Nicholas Braun, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot) is completely incapable of handling any sort of death, nevermind a murder. A wayward aspiring reporter (Nicholas Galitzine, Handsome Devil) seems intent on helping him break the case for his own reasons. The suspects are all in George's will, including the town butcher, a rival shepherd, the lovelorn innkeeper, and George's estranged daughter who just happened into town the day of his death.

In a conventional story, there would be much mileage about the sheep working through each of the suspects and eliminating them as the possible murderer. Instead, The Sheep Detectives is far more interested in the sheep community, and expanding their horizons. There is the whole concept in this community of a "winter sheep". Most sheep, they say, are born in the spring, but the occasional sheep is born in the winter, and they are shunned by the herd. And so a tiny, unnamed lamb George loves dearly, but is rejected by all. Part of the story is the herd confronting their prejudices, but in a roundabout way.  Even upon learning that their greatest ram, Sebastian (Bryan Cranston, Kung Fu Panda 3), is a winter sheep, it takes a lot before the herd truly understands the harm of their prejudice.

But that's just one facet of what these sheep need to learn. They have to leave the familiar safety of their farm and venture out into the world, where they are exposed to the realities they've otherwise chosen to forget. It's a potent moment when Lily realizes that Mopple has had to live with everything they've forgotten, but Mopple presents it as something beautiful, not horrible.

I'm not doing the best job of selling The Sheep Detectives but, to be blunt, I absolutely adored it. Funny, charming, sweet, sincere with a, yes, cozy mystery at its core to keep things moving, but just a delightful cast of characters and some of the most rewarding emotional stringpulls in some time... I cried at least three times and it earned every one of those tears. I never resented the film for them.

There is no reason The Sheep Detectives should be as good as it is, but we're so lucky that it is. A large contingent of my early-evening Wednesday screening applauded at the end of the film. I joined in. There was no one there to receive the applause, but it felt like the right way of mutually socially acknowledging that we all had a genuine emotional reaction to this film, and that we appreciated it. I do not recall the last time that happened.

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Love the pseudo-American Apparel-
style poster for this film. Perfection

Mile End Kicks first shot is inside Toronto's legendary Horseshoe tavern. The band Islands is playing a gig. I am transported back in time.

Despite the caption "2011", I am transported to 2005, to seeing Islands in their earliest incarnation, possibly at the Horseshoe, but maybe at the Rivoli or Lee's Palace or some other joint and perhaps during the North By Northeast festival. Anyway, I'm there. I'm in. It has me. It took the film all of 9 seconds to completely reel me in.

By 2011 I was out of regular "gigging", going to shows around town, and certainly out of the pretense that my photographing and reviewing of such shows (sometimes for online media outlets, most often just for personal blogging) was a career path. Grace (Barbie Ferreira, Euphoria) is 22 years old and already has a foothold in journalism.  She has four hundred articles in the local newspaper she's been writing for, including investigative journalism, interviews, and writing a sex column, as well as music reviews. She ponders the idea of writing a "33 1/3" volume on Alanis Morissette's album "Jagged Little Pill". Her boss at the paper (Jay Baruchel) thinks it's a great idea, and hooks her up with the "33 1/3" publisher who likes her take and gives her a small advance to write the book, but it needs to be done quickly.

The next we see of Grace, she's on a bus to Montreal for the summer, giving the middle finger to T.dot on her way out. Her mom doesn't understand why she has this sudden impulse to move elsewhere, and her dad...well, just seems depressed. Grace has a top 5 list of what she wants her summer in Montreal to be: write her book on Alanis, have real sex, climb Mount Royal, learn French and fall in love, probably not in that order.

She's renting a room in Montreal's Mile End from Madeline (Juliette Gariépy, Red Rooms) a hot DJ whose boyfriend Hugo (Robert Naylor) plays in a rock band called Bone Patrol. Madeline is super friendly and wants to be pals, while Grace is a bit reserved and really wants to focus on her writing. But Madeline insists she come to a loft party where she is DJing and Bone Patrol is playing. At the party, unfamiliar with the Montreal scene, Grace retreats to an outdoor space where she meets Archie (Devon Bostick, Diary of a Wimpy Kid) the bassist for Bone Patrol, and they form an immediate kinship... but when the band finally plays, Grace has a rather visceral reaction to Chevy (Stanley Simons, The Iron Claw), Bone Patrol's frontman. She chats him up and he's the most up-his-own-ass pretentious, faux-ambivalent, self-involved shitheel, but Grace can't see past his stage mystique.

Mile End Kicks is about Grace's epic summer in Montreal, becoming part of it's 2010's hipster scene and getting waaay too invested in a guy who can only ever think about himself (and even then not that deeply). There's an obvious love triangle happening between Grace, Archie and Chevy, but the will-they/won't-they isn't really the thrust of the movie. It's more of a "what the fuck, Grace?" as her logic just cannot find a way to overrule her libido when it comes to Chevy, and Archie pre-emptively takes himself out of the equation.

Mile End Kicks is about Grace building up her life, but also feeling completely helpless as it starts to crash down around her. A lesser film would have spent more time and energy on making more direct connections between Grace's life and the songs of "Jagged Little Pill", but the film doesn't need to link them firmly at all. Grace's fall from grace happens for many, many reasons, (almost all her own) and her only way out of the pit she's fallen into is to find self respect and confidence, to engage the world on her own terms rather than feel like she has to be deferential to the men she finds in the circles she's in.

There's an excellent, fundamental moment early in the movie where some of the men of the paper she's working at are having a debate over a couple of bands. It's clear she's not invited to this conversation and when she interjects her own input, she is dismissed immediately and, to put a finer point on it, laughed at. Late it the film (when she's back on her upswing) she reads an insightful and incisive text at a poetry slam about not just this explicit experience but all the general outside-the-circle-of-men experiences women have everywhere. It's a terrific 1-2-3 execution (especially when Grace returns to the bullpen late in the film).  I have witnessed these types of situations so many time (even well into adulthood) and have probably been a party to them more often than I've been cognizant of or care to admit. It's institutionalized sexism that often we (meaning men) are not even aware of. I mean I was aware of it before this film, but praise it for actually making it a part of the conversation.

The film contains three (or perhaps even four) of the most awkward make-out scenes I think I've ever seen on film. Given that Grace is our POV character, she's mostly not the one being awkward so our cringe isn't a sympathetic one but more of an "oh gods, what the eff" type of cringe. It's almost all Chevy and that boy, wow, is a fucking mess.  Either Levack dated a guy just like this or knew someone who had. The hyper-specificity here is too crazy to be made up.

The film effectively uses its setting as a real "Montreal is a main character" film, and it definitely captures what the Canadian hipster "scene" was like at the time (Toronto, a few years earlier, wasn't that much different, nor likely was Vancouver a few years before that, or Halifax a few years before that...the "it" scene sort of cycles through the major Canadian centers in five-ish-year spans). It effectively seeds in the tension in Montreal's art scene that's so distinct to it (the outsiders that come in and the French-English divide between them, as well as the Toronto resentment)

Mile End Kicks is a film about being in your 20's and fucking up, but also about learning from your mistakes and growing as a person, and understanding that you'll continue to make mistakes (just hopefully new ones, and not repeating them). It's also about empowerment, and while not being so aggressively Alanis about it, it's still a pretty bold awakening.

 ---

I had not watched Dark City for a very, very long time, though I had carried the DVD of it with me to at least a dozen different residences over the years. It would have been one of the first DVDs I bought, but I have no recollection if I ever actually put it in a DVD player and watched the film it contained.

A friend recently brought up the film, noting that clips of it had been popping up in one of his feeds ... somewhere. I recall that I liked the film way back when, and it has maintained a decent if not stellar reputation in the meantime... but would it hold up? Would I still even like it? Does the disc even work or has it succumbed to disc rot?

Turns out, mostly, mostly and yes, the disc still works wonderfully.

The most unfortunate thing about Dark City is that it opens with a narration from Kiefer Sutherland's Dr. Daniel Schreiber. Schreiber exposits about an advanced alien civilization late in its decline looking for some hope of salvation, and that hope is human. Schreiber is helping them in their experiments on humanity, and this film, then, in theory, unpacks just what that experiment is.

The second most unfortunate thing about Dark City is the affectation that Sutherland imbues Schreiber with. He gives the character an out-of-breath speech pattern, speaking in short bursts (not unlike Malcolm's asthmatic friend Stevie on Malcolm in the Middle). It's really a hat-on-a-hat as Schreiber also has a scarred lazy eye and a severe limp as well. Sutherland was making choices.

A few minutes in the proper film starts as Rufus Sewell's John Murdock awakens in the bathtub of a grimy hotel, completely unaware of where or who he is. He receives a phone call from Schreiber warning him some men will be after him, and he needs to leave immediately...it's then that he notices the dead sex worker on the ground with spirals and other sigils carved into her skin.  He moves with haste, just as a quartet of creepy, pale, bald motherfuckers show up and check out his freshly abandoned place.

The streets of Dark City are just that, dark, dimly lit. Every light seems like a spotlight only illuminating in a cone shape exactly what it's pointing at. Also at midnight, the society of creepy, pale, bald motherfuckers use their psionic abilities (called "tuning") to cause the entire city to grind to a halt, and it's denizens to go inert and unconscious. They also reconfigure the entire city, buildings twist up out of the ground forcing other buildings to shrink or retreat without causing any true damage to speak of. Reality bends to their whims...almost.  But these creepy, pale, bald motherfuckers need Dr. Schreiber to concoct new memories for the citizens of this dark city which most citizens have had done a few times over.

But it's John Murdock who has somehow repelled the new personality application and also developed the same tuning powers as the creepy overlords. He poses a genuine threat to the order of things.

As we learn all this, there's also a mystery... is John a murderer. His estranged wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) can't conceive of it, and even John himself has to test whether indeed the impulses are there or if he's truly capable of being a psychopathic killer. The detective on the case, Inspector Frank Bumstead (William Hurt) can't see any other options, because to do so would be to admit that reality is not all that it seems.  While Sewell's efforts as Murdock are genuinely quite good, there's a case to be made that this works better if Bumstead is it's main figure trying to solve a murder and unraveling the case of John Murdock, which then leads to the revelation of where they actually are and who is actually in charge and why.

Dark City is a really decent sci-fi neo-noir that doesn't always tease its mystery in an efficient or effective manner (especially since the opening voice over gives up so much of the surprise), but the exceptional special effects (for the most part) and shadow-laden atmosphere of the picture do so much of the heavy lifting to keep things engaging when the story may falter. Even 28 years later, on one of the oldest DVD pressings in my collection, the film still looks really good, the copious practical effects, sets and miniatures and the well-masked digital effects standing up very very well.

The third most unfortunate thing about Dark City then is the climax is such utter nonsense. Murdock goes tete-a-tete with "tuning" powers against the...leader? (of a hive mind?) I guess of the creepy, pale, bald motherfuckers... and there's nothing more boring that two characters trapped in a mental battle just leering at each other while crazy cgi bullshit swirls all around them.  It's such a let down given some of the film's strengths prior to that point.

The fourth most unfortunate thing is how sleepy Jennifer Connelly is in the role of Emma Murdoch. I can hazard a guess that she's been told to play the character as if she's just had a lifetime of memories slammed into her brain only the night before, so she's effectively a new, but confused person...but for some reason that gets relayed as sedate, with most every line delivered in an unaffected monotone. She's a much better actress than this performance.

But a few unfortunates aside, Dark City holds up as a solid watch. Perhaps it's not the monumental sci-fi story of it's generation (hard to be when The Matrix comes along 13 months later) but it's got very little to be embarassed about, and despite not hiding what could have been some great surprises, still has a surprise or two under its belt.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Hoppers

2026,  Daniel Chong (We Bare Bears: The Movie) - download

Kent mentioned in a recent post that he has to be "in the right mood or zone to watch something." If that is Kent's problem, make mine doubly or triply so. I have been unable to watch... anything. I click, and I click and I start, and I stop and I am just not able to invest time. And yet, I am very VERY good at wasting said time. As usual, this onset of hiatus-s is being caused by something I should be doing and procrastination, this time it being extra-curricular training. I am over 50 and the idea of doing school sends me all the way back to junior high for those few years where stress & depression just had me entirely checked out. And self-led schooling? Oh gawds, kill me now. So, while I am able to waste hours on re-run TV and video games, if I begin to invest some 1.5 hours into something else, I suddenly suffer from the guilt.

Dude, yer a mess.

But a cartoon that is sufficiently distracting and unhinged enough to drive all the maniacal thoughts away? That should work, no? Yes. It did.

Daniel Chong comes to Pixar by way of a popular cartoon series based on a popular, wtf-unhinged webcomic about three bears in San Francisco. I am not sure how A led to B but I guess he showed people he could helm something. I mean he brought it from comic to series to movie, so I guess that's something? It also enthralls me that until I Googled him, I had never heard of any of the three said properties. Even without trying, I am pretty well exposed to a lot of pop culture, and being entirely unaware of something that was skilled and known enough to follow this train is a joy, suggesting there is so much more out there I may be unaware of, things that could raise me above meh.

Its the town of Beaverton, and yes, I head-canoned to assume this is where the Beaverton Times comes from. Mabel (Piper Curda, I Didn't Do It) is a kid with anger issues mixed up with leftist ideas like protecting wildlife and (rolls eyes) saving the world. Her grandmother gives her an outlet in the form of an idyllic glade where she can sit on a rock and just watch life be lived in all nature's glory. Then gramma dies and Mabel grows up and the world goes to shit, as it does IRL. Jerry (Jon Hamm, Baby Driver) the mayor of Beaverton is gonna pave the glade to make way for the final loop in his mega-highway. Jerry claims he has the right to bulldoze the glade because all the animals have left. Mabel needs to stop him. 

The best gag in the movie is the highway itself, which is literally just a big ring surrounding the city. It doesn't even appear to have on-ramps or off-ramps, just a big concrete and asphalt ring high above the ground. Jerry's project is just completing the last portion of the circle.

Then Mabel discovers that her professor, Dr. Sam (Kathy Najimi, Hocus Pocus), her biology teacher, is actually a mad scientist who developed robot animals and a way to "hop" into those robots, so as to peacefully observe animals in the wild without disturbing them. She claims, very loudly, that its not Avatar -- its Avatar. Mabel "steals" a beaver bot and hopes to find the animals of the glade, so as to convince them to come back, which will stop Jerry's construction/destruction.

Sam, as a robotic beaver indiscernible from a real beaver, now has the ability to talk to animals and is horrified to find out they live by "pond rules", or a low-conflict acceptance that "people gotta eat". The animals of the glade have all collected in a distant section of the forest as they were driven out by a white noise generator devised by Jerry, something only animals can hear. These animals live together in harmony under the protective embrace of The Mammal King, George the Beaver (Bobby Moynihan, Nature Cat). Mabel befriends George hoping to convince him, and the others, to return to the glade, as long as she destroys Jerry's tech.

The movie is a bit of an unhinged romp, full of action and heartfelt connection, and Pixar is always at its best when it does weird shit. Yes, animals get eaten by their friendly neighbourhood predators in this kids' cartoon. And a butterfly gets squashed -- squishing is the animal equivalent of murder. In its individual bits, this is a great movie. As a contiguous whole, maybe not so much. Don't get me wrong, its fun to watch and has lots to engage with, but unlike classics like The Incredibles or WALL-E this one is not going to live in my brain forever. 

The second best gag was that when we observed animals from only a human perspective, they had cute button eyes and cute little squeaks and squawks. But from their own perspectives, they had full cartoon eyes and spoke English.

Enter the Lexxicon: Eating Pattern

aka Lexx: 3.0

1997, d. Rainer Matsutani - tubi 

in trying to defy the Trek-method of sci-fi adventure show by relying upon irreverence, sexuality, and unheroic leads to carry it, the second entry of Lexx missed the mark on actually being engaging entertainment. Thankfully for this the third episode/movie the creators of Lexx seemed to consider that maybe the best way to make a show that's disinterested in sci-fi conventions is to use and abuse them in their own way.

A standard trope of Space Journey stories is receiving the automated cry for help. The last episode started similarly with a cry for help which resolved unceremoniously in less than a minute, and in this one the Lexx crew actually receive the message, but the cowardly captain of the ship, Stanley Tweedle is too paranoid of strangers to dare to venture there. Unfortunately the Lexx, a living technology, is running low on fuel and needs to feed. It makes a decision on its own to venture towards the signal and eat whatever the planet can provide (for this show, this should be a lot more interesting a process than it is, you know something gross and/or terrorizing... instead it's just like mandibles shovelling dirt into its maw).

Meanwhile, Stan and Zev's attempt to awaken Kai from cryosleep are unsuccessful. It seems his protoblood has run out and that he's now dead-dead, no longer un-dead. Zev wants to bury him on the literal garbage planet Lexx is feeding on.  After burying Kai, they spy what looks like an inhabited station and Zev wants to explore for food. Stan is, of course, opposed, but in this case he's right to worry.

What they discover is no less than fourth sci-fi tropes mashed into one. First there's a post-apocalyptic civilization of scavengers, second they are cannibals (of a sort) and third they are all infected with an alien parasite, and fourth the parasites are controlled by a hive queen.

But this civilzation, with their weird songs, and their silly games, aren't simple drones of an alien queen, the victims are still at least somewhat present in their bodies, if very much controlled by the worm things inside them. The worms are addicted to a substance called "pattern", and pattern is made from people (it's basically Soylent Green but liquid). Pattern is made from meat culled from the hosts during their games (where winners get pattern and losers lose limbs. for making pattern..if they're lucky). 

Stan encounters one of the key people in this group. Wisp (Doreen Jacobi) is an attractive, if dirty young woman in a Witchblade-like jumpsuit. At first she seems like a naif, and the worry is that she's a born-sexy-yesterday trope ("Do you like me" she asks in a creepily seductive manner), but nope...once again subverting tropes, she is a host to the queen's babies and she's responsible for infecting any new, clean meat. And so Stan is turned.

He then meets Bog (Rutger Hauer), who is sort of the de-facto leader of all the remaining people. If he leads it's because he's the only one who knows how to make pattern. Hauer delivers a thoroughly delightful and entertaining performance, and seems to informs the rest of the cast how being infected with the worm, and the delirium it causes, should be portrayed. Of course, he's the best and most delirious of the performances.

For this third installment, the creatives seem to have forgotten (or just ignored) that Zev is part cluster lizard that not only would give her enhanced strength and probably a resistance to being knocked out with a simple conk on the head, but also that would be a reasonable explanation as to why the worms wouldn't want to infect her. Instead she's basically just bound up for most of the episode. She's still exceptionally feisty and not docile, but this feels like some Golden Age Wonder Woman bullshit.

Kai, of course, saves the day at first (having been resurrected with some sort of amino acids spewed by the worms attempting to see if he could be a host), but there's not a whole lot he can do when the queen becomes a Titan-sized Wisp who gloms onto the Lexx and tries infecting it. The Lexx needs to learn to defend itself.

What lets it down is the special effects. You can see the intent, but it all seems rushed and short-handed. Like I said, if there were more budget, Lexx's eating of the planet would have for sure been a spectacle rather than the muted close-up it is. almost every digital shot is unrefined, like the budget ran out during the second pass. I don't know if the effects of the previous two instalments were as visually awful because I was watching it in bed, on my phone, through the haze of illness and this one I was watching on the big screen tv. 

Despite the janky sfx, Eating Pattern is an enjoyable Lexx episode in large part because it leans into the genre tropes and cliches, but mashes them thoroughly together and pushes them to, like, grindhouse levels of absurdity with some minor gore and more than a little humour. Also, unlike the last episode, there's more for the crew to interact with than just one or two guest stars. Quite fun, this one.