Ah-Ah-Argento #3: Four Flies on Grey Velvet

I started my watch/rewatch of Italian suspense/horror maestro Dario Argento in January 2025, and I got all of two films in before I hit a wall. That wall was the wildly unavailable Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Argento's third film. It too disappeared for a long time between its North American theatrical release in the early 70's and when it finally became available on home video in the late 2000s. I ordered a Blu-Ray copy of the film from my local physical media purveyor, never to arrive, and attempts to find it elsewhere from Canadian sites came up empty. Beyond scouring the local used stores in town, I regularly watched a stub entry for the DVD version on a website for a Southern Ontario used music and video retail chain, and after many, many months it finally was available and delivered to me last month. And so now we resume with Ah-Ah-Argento....

(aka "4 mosche di velluto grigio") 1971, d. Dario Argento - dvd

Argento's third film shows the director not yet at the height of his powers, but certainly coming into them. His stylistic flourishes here aren't all consuming but when they're utilized one sits up and takes notice of them, and it starts from the first frame.

Our lead character in Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Roberto (Michael Brandon) is in a music store wailing on the drums, and Argento shoots it like a music video, before music videos were a thing. First we're in a series of close-ups of the kit from an overhead shot, which pulls out to reveal Roberto, and it pans around him reveal that he's in a store, and it continues to pan until we're looking out the store window to see a man in a hat and sunglasses looking in and we see Roberto sense the man's glare, before a hard cut to a black screen and left of center a vibrant red heart, heavily pounding. Then a seemingly seamless cut to Roberto in studio, jamming out with his post-hippie psych-rock band, still wailing on those drums (at one point we cut to a shot from the inside of an acoustic guitar, a hand eventually interrupting the shot as it strums). Close up of Roberto is being pestered by a fly, trying not to lose his concentration. We cut to the exterior of the studio, as Roberto walks through the parkette out front. In the distance, the same man with hat and sunglasses. Once more, hard cut to the black screen and pounding heart, before cutting back to Roberto driving his car. In his rear-view mirror he spies, in the car immediately behind him, that same man. Same hard cut. Black screen. Pounding heart. And then back to the studio, Roberto wailing on the drums, but that fly (looks like a mosquito) still buzzes around him, even causing him to lose his timing for a moment, before it lands in the middle of his hi-hat. This whole sequence, the band's wailing psych-rock has been playing, interrupted only by the black-screen/pounding heart, and as the song hits its crescendo, we view Roberto through the top and bottom of the hi-hat, his gaze fixed on the mosquito, until *CRASH*, the song ends, the bug is dead, the slyest of smirks crosses Roberto's face.

The psych-rock tune is just derivative nonsense (not sure if this film's composer, the legendary Ennio Morricone was involved in the creation of that tune, but if he was I would suspect the derivativeness of that nonsense was the point) but it's somehow essential to get across Roberto's profession and juxtapose the jubilant wail of the tune against the anxiety of seemingly being followed. The camera, whether moving or still, is superb, Argento's framing is exciting. The edits are a bit jumpy but effective in adding to Roberto's anxiety. And that pulsating red heart on the black screen, a chef's kiss to the whole process that feels like the influence of Mario Bava.

The plot kicks off immediately following this opening sequence, with Roberto seeing the hat-and-sunglasses man and chasing him down into an abandoned theatre. The man refuses to answer any questions and pulls out a switchblade. He lunges at Roberto, who grabs his wrist and as the man twists he's stabbed in the side and falls off the stairs into the orchestra pit. A noise from above reveals a figure on the balcony, a large mascot-sized cartoon head with a big grin looking down on the scene. A camera in hand, photos continue to be taken. Roberto runs, returns home and is bitter towards his wife Nina (Mimsy Farmer). 

His dreams haunt him, then a phone call harassing him. In the paper the next day, the story of a body dumped in the river, the victim unidentified. The next night someone is in his house. It's dark, the lights won't turn on. He's grabbed from behind, a cord around his throat, and he's told he can be killed at any time, but not now. First he needs to suffer. Then, in the mail, comes the passport of the man he killed. And that night, at the party, someone there slipped one of the photos taken at the murder scene between Roberto's records. He eventually comes clean with Nina, and the maid overhears (Roberto and Nina only seem to call her "the maid", despite the fact that she lives with them...fucking rude man). The maid knows who it was who put the photo there, and she tries to blackmail the harasser, only to get herself killed.

It all sort of escalates from there. Roberto attempts to get help from his outsider friend God (Bud Spencer), and God has his transient friend, The Professor (Oreste Lionello) watch Roberto's house for the next few nights. In my recollection of Argento's films (it's been years since I watched most of his later films and over a year now since I watched his first two) but I don't recall Argento having a lot of humour in his films. But characters like God and especially the Professor bring a lot of unusual energy, taking this outside of the typical Giallo I've experienced. Lionello especially has a incredible knack for physical humour with the  subtle, fluid grace of a Chaplin or Lloyd. Far more broad is the thick-glasses performance of Gildo Di Marco as the postman who Roberto mistakes as his stalker and beats on him. Not all the comedy fits into the production, in fact most of it feels like it's from another picture entirely. It doesn't suit the mood of the piece.

By far the best favourite aspect of the film was the inclusion of Gianni Arrosio (Jean-Pierre Marielle), the private investigator Roberto hires to help find out who is harassing him. Gianni is an effeminate gay, not coded in the slightest. He's right out there. But he's not comic relief. He is witty, but he's not the butt of any jokes. Marielle brings this character to life and he's the most richly drawn character in a production that otherwise feels cast full of one-note, one-dimensional figures. Marielle gets his own slice of the picture, starting with an investigation montage that leads him on full journey through Rome and beyond. I could have watched a whole film, hell, a whole series of Marielle's gay detective... just a remarkably lively performance. Of course he gets murdered, but it's because he's figured out who it is, only they catch on to him first.

Four Flies... is a mystery, but it's kind of a ramshackle one that doesn't fully hold together, especially once the reveal happens. I mean, it doesn't fall apart, but it's not satisfying in the slightest, and is kind of a corny, of-the-era take on mental illess. I don't really expect better of films from that time, but I'm certain even then it wasn't a satisfying reveal. It seems so cliche. This film's climax involves the concept of optography, that the last thing someone sees before their death is captured on their retina like a photograph. It's utter bullshit, and even science of the '70's should have known better, yet it's the turning point of the film. Writers like Kipling, Lovecraft and Verne have had stories with optography as a plot point, and even modern movies and TV shows like Fringe toy with the idea.

Morricone delivers a magnificent theme for the film, a lyrical, haunting string humming over a pulsating heartbeat that feels like it's either going to break into a love song or something terrifying and it never leaves that tension. I can hear hints of what would become the theme to Twin Peaks percolating within its tones. The rest of the soundtrack doesn't have anything so immediate or attention getting, but it's one of Morricone's great compositions that probably isn't cited much (it would be Argento and Morricone's last collaboration for 25 years, due to a falling out).

For Argento viewing Four Flies... seems a transitional movie. The director's first two films were incredibly solid entries in the suspense realm, and this one, with it's cast performing in English (despite still being dubbed) seemed to be a grasp at something that seemed more American in style. I don't think Argento would strain much to operate in that style again. But then again, I've never seen his next film, The Five Days which is the only film of his that truly operates outside his expected genres.

KWIF: The Martian (+2)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Nothing new this week, just some scienced fiction and a modern classic.

This Week:
The Martian (2015, d. Ridley Scott - disney+)
Solar Crisis (aka "Crisis 2050" - 1990, d. Allan Smithee - tubi)
Ocean's Eleven (2002, d. Steven Soderbergh - hollywood suite)

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I love the idea of this poster, but 
why not red sand?

After watching Project Hail Mary (twice) I felt the urge to watch The Martian again. It was a movie I liked well enough the first time but it didn't really stick with me, beyond the "going to science the shit out of it" quote that lives rent free in my brain.

Both Project Hail Mary and The Martian are adaptations of Andy Weir novels, with screenplays by Drew Goddard, and as such there's a definite consistency in tone between the two of them. While both feature space men finding themselves alone and effectively stranded, these are not harrowing films of survival that Hollywood normally likes to present. 

Instead these are stories about men of science, men of competency, men of versatility, capable of adapting and, yes, science-ing the shit out of a problem. That makes them compelling figures to watch (there's a reason MacGyver was a big enough hit to run for 7 seasons in the '80's and a remake ran for 5 seasons in the 2010s) and with Drew Goddard, schooled in the Buffy/Angel writers den, he's got a knack for writing intelligent characters both pithiness and humility, which makes them enjoyable and somewhat down-to-Earth despite clearly advanced intellect and skills.

The key difference between Project Hail Mary and The Martian has nothing to do with story, and everything to do with the directors involved. Phil Lord and Chris Miller are not Ridley Scott and Ridley Scott is not  Lord and Miller.  Lord and Miller are particularly gifted at comedy as well as exploring ideas in a big, conceptual way that subverts expectations, Scott has in current stage of his career (starting with Prometheus), leaned almost exclusively into the grandiose. It's not spectacle he's after but big moments, big ideas, big pressures on the characters.  Where with PHM Lord & Miller no doubt heightened the wit of Goddard's script with their own instincts and timing, Scott at times steps on the levity, not to quash it but so as not to diminish the emotional reality of the film.

As much as these two films have a consistency between them, I can't picture Ridley Scott's Project Hail Mary being nearly as entertaining, while I could picture a Lord & Miller The Martian being the "Best Musical or Comedy" of 2015 that the Golden Globes proclaimed it to be, but it wouldn't feel as prestigious as it does. 

I'm not going to review the story here in any great depth (Toasty did a good job of that already), because it's a very successful, 10-year-old (!) film with a very simple premise... a man gets stranded on Mars and has to rely on his wits, intellect and science to survive long enough to be rescued. 

Toasty is probably right that Mark Watney would have been left to die on Mars because the billions it would cost to rescue him would not have been approved, and most likely when they discovered Watney was alive, that info would have been classified and probably subject to conspiracy theories, but as we see with Weir's Project Hail Mary he prefers to find optimism in his crises situations.  Here not only does NASA and the US government do everything can to keep Watney alive and to rescue him, but they even wind up collaborating with foreign agencies who stretch out their hands (and money and technology) in a sign of goodwill and harmony.

I had forgotten how stacked the cast of The Martian is. Of course Matt Damon is the face of the picture, the central figure and titular martian, but the crew that leaves him behind has the likes of Jessica Chastain, Michael Peña, Kate Mara and Sebastian Stan, while among the ground crew there's Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sean Bean, Donald Glover, Benedict Wong and Mackenzie Davis. At the time many of these actors were known primarily or only as comedic performers so it was a bit odd how reigned in their performances were (as if the script called for broader comedy and it was cast in such a way but Scott reined it in).

It's a captivating film through and through, even at almost two hours and twenty minutes. It looks great, with amazing sets, effects, and wardrobes, and the sound design (I really need to see it in the theatre some time) is incredible (it lost the Academy Award in both sound categories to Mad Max:Fury Road, which hard to argue with). It grossed over six hundred million at the box office internationally, and was nominated for many, many, many awards (winning a few), and has since become a big-time "dad movie", which maybe has diminished its prestige a little. The massive success of Project Hail Mary has put this other Weir adaptation back into the spotlight and, no doubt, has fast tracked adaptations of Weir's other novel and short stories, and I'm sure execs are champing at the bit to acquire the rights to whatever he's working on next.

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I have been, for pretty much most of my life, pretty piped into what mainstream science fiction movies were out there. One of my favourite childhood books was one about science fiction movies, most of them grown-up films that I wouldn't get to see until a decade (or two) later. I was pretty aware of any new scifi movies that were released in theatre pretty much since adolescence.  So for there to be a sizable-budgeted science fiction movie from 1990 that I know nothing about is shocking to me.

Based off the novel "Crisis: Year 2050" ("Kuraishisu niju-goju nen" written by Takeshi Kawata), Solar Crisis was not a trifle of a film. With a budget of at least 30 million dollars (in 1990 money), with recognizable (if no longer A-list) stars like Tim Matheson, Charlton Heston, Peter Boyle and Jack Palance, there was some ambition behind this production. The investors were so hot on the idea a theme park was planned to accompany it.

Financed by a consortium of Japanese investors, Solar Crisis was an attempt to make a very American-style blockbuster sci-fi disaster epic. Instead its a very American-style epic disaster of a sci-fi blockbuster.

Japanese actor Tetsuya Bessho is the only real Japanese presence in the film in a tertiary role, and the film seems pointedly made in such a way as to not elicit anything...unAmerican, although it also seems somewhat filtered through a an outside lens despite being made at a Los Angeles (the way a lot of Euro-investor, made-in-Baltic-states-style sci-fi/fantasy productions would feel in the 2000s) .  What little details there are on the making of this film (I only learned what Grokipedia was after I had read it's surprisingly detailed AI generated article on the film, and I feel slimy all over now), word has it that the film was extensively re-edited with some re-shoots to make it more appealing to an American distributor, and one has to wonder what "unAmerican" elements had to be left on the cutting room floor. (And by all accounts, the film had a middling performance at the Japanese box office, so it's not like there's a secret masterpiece that was lost in this process.)

Solar Crisis would prove to be director Richard C. Sarafian (Vanishing Point). The intervention in editing and reshooting his film caused him to remove his name from the domestic release and, I guess, quit directing after that. He had a fairly prolific (if not quite esteemed) career directing in both film and television prior to that, and following Solar Crisis he seemed to focus instead on his acting career.

The film is somewhat a throwback to the "what if" scifi movies of the 1950's (for example The Day The Earth Caught Fire) where a specific threat or event loomed and it was up to a team of astronauts and military men and scientists to try and stop/fix it. In this case, it's a solar flare that could eradicate Earth entirely. The plan then is to sent off the largest, most powerful warhead ever produced to trigger the flare while the Earth is on the other side of the sun.

In charge of this mission is Commander Steve Kelso (Matheson). He's a military nepo-baby, as his father, Admiral "Skeet" Kelso (Heston) seems to be pulling strings a bit.  Steve has an enlisted kid, Mike Kelso (Corin Nemic), whom he declined to have strings pulled to bring him to the orbital base where Steve's mission is taking off from. Mike, however, decided to go AWOL and find his way there on his own...only things didn't go as planned and now he's stranded in the desert.

New to Steve's crew is the test-tube grown, genetically reprogrammed scientist Alex Noffe (Annabel Schofeld). She's an outcast among all the military on the satellite, but she's meant to be made to feel welcome by a lot of disrespecting of her boundaries. She finds herself drawn to Steve (like some unseen force, the script perhaps, demanded it) and Steve likewise finds Alex alluring.

What nobody knows is that the evil billionaire (is there any other kind) Arnold Teague (Boyle), head of the IXL Corporation, is a solar flare denier. He doesn't believe it exists and if it does it's not a threat, and even if it is it's not a threat to business, and if anything money can be made if it does destroy half the Earth. It's better for him if it does, actually. The one thing this film gets right, billionaires are psychopaths disconnected from their own humanity. It's a weirdly timely story, how billionaires are trying to control the narrative of a climate crisis for their own gain and everyone else's expense.

Teague is hedging his bets highly, but he's also not taking chances. Through espionage, Alex is kidnapped and reprogrammed to sabotage the mission. Young Mike, meanwhile, finds help in the desert in the form of the cracked ex-general Travis (Palance, just making a meal out of every scene), who agrees to help the kid find his way to the satellite transport site. Along the way the run afoul of Teague's men and learn of his sabotage plans with Admiral Skeet, searching for his grandson, always two steps behind them.

This isn't a unique story. There is a whole history of sci-fi save-the-Earth tales that predate this film, and many that follow (Armageddon, Sunshine, Project Hail Mary, to name just three). What makes this one pretty bland and generic is the military angle. Though not lacking in ideas, there is a lack of science, and a lack of psychological intrigue. The political and social intrigue, of world building, is hinted but needs more presence, and one has to wonder if some of it's on the cutting room floor. Boyle's evil corporate overlord is so bog standard for the time, seen in so many sci-fi and action films of the 80's and 90's. It doesn't help that it seems like Boyle's barely awake when delivering his lines.

Similarly Matheson seems utterly bored in the role as commander Steve, and lacks commanding presence. As stated, Palance seems to be having a blast in his role, and Heston is not lacking in gusto, as if this were his big break for a return to prominence. Young Nemic, meanwhile, is definitely trying to find his footing and do something good with a bad role, but he can't keep up with Palanace. Schofeld as Alex... well, you hate to say it, but sometimes you're watching a film and you see an actress in a prominent role that you've never seen before and you just know the main reason she's there is because she agreed to take her top off. She's not a terrible actress, but she's not up to the standards of the other main cast here, and Alex is perhaps the most prominent character in the story with the most emotional arc. Schofeld isn't up to the task.

The effects, mostly, are pretty good from former Star Wars visual effects supervisor Richard Edlund. There are some wonky scenes (the very first shot of a shuttle in space was hot garbage) but they're few and far between, and I'm wondering if they were reshoots. The style of the film - the ships, wardrobe, hair and makeup - can best be described as uninspired.

I didn't hate Solar Crisis but it's not a great watch by any stretch. While it had aspirations of being a big screen blockbuster, it winds up being a levelled-up version of a Full Moon Video production.

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I dunno about this poster...
I only count 5

Speaking of "dad movies", Ocean's Eleven is another modern classic of the "dad movie" oeuvre. It's so weird to me that anything by Steven Soderbergh could fit so explicitly in that classification.  Sure, the director's repertoire is so vast and varied that of course it should present the opportunity for a "dad movie" to find its way into his filmography, but generally Soderbergh's sensibilities skew outside the general tastes of the "dad movie" consumer. I mean just look at Haywire, which should seem like a total braindead "dad movie" actioner, but Soderbergh just can't help himself and bring something outre to it that just doesn't quite blend.

And yet, the glossy remake of the old Rat Pack non-classic is just sooo slick that Soderbergh subverted his own impulses and made a movie for pretty much everyone (aside from some cussing) that's devoid of sex, drugs, or any real violence. 

If anything, Ocean's Eleven was an exercise in shooting for the edit for Soderbergh. This film lives and dies by its hyperactive editing, and it really lives large. Soderbergh edits a lot of his own films, but for this (and for others) he called in Stephen Mirrione (who would later become a favourite of George Clooney's as well as Joseph Kosinski). All the pieces that need to be woven into this narrative means that scenes have to be tight as hell. There's no room to take more than a breath or two. 

The whole production is helped along by the bounciest film score in the history of film from David Holmes. That upright bass player's fingers must've been bleeding. I used to listen to the score just for fun, and I'd forgotten just how damn propulsive it was, but also just how damn essential it was to the film. There's a concert happening in Ocean's Eleven and Holmes provides the music while Mirrione choreographs the dance. It feels like if Mirrione edited any film like this and you laid Holmes' soundtrack over it, it would work, regardless of content. 

This is the heist film that reinvigorated heist films in modern cinema, but also kind of ruined heist films for modern cinema. It set the temperature for just how complex and convoluted a heist has to be to appease the audience, and anything less seems boring by comparison. Not even the subsequent Ocean's films (which I need to revisit) come close to being half as successful as this one (the next closest standout is Jonathan Glazer's Sexy Beast, but that came out the year before...).

Of course, what takes the Mirrione-edits and Holmes-score to "dad movie" level is the star-studded, audience-baiting cast of Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Don Cheadle (but that accent tho...woof), Bernie Mac, Elliott Gould, Carl Reiner, Scott Caan, Casey Affleck, and Andy Garcia. That's just wall-to-wall talent carpet right there. As good as everyone is (barring Cheadle's bad cockney accent), I found Reiner delivered the standout performance of the film with Mac really popping as well. Clooney and Roberts need to ground the film in something a little more than just a heist (and it's truly a little more), which brings Garcia in, as the villain getting in between them. Garcia's performance is wonderfully understated and controlled, to the point that he seems both non-threatening and utterly dangerous.

It's been a couple decades since I last watched this, and, despite the Rick and Morty take down of all the heist cliches that Ocean's Eleven set-up, it still works almost completely.  

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Avatar: Fire and Ash

2025, James Cameron (True Lies) -- download

James Cameron hasn't really been in the director's chair all that much considering the lauded place he has in Hollywood. I mean, Titanic was 1997 and the Avatar movies (insert joke from the Peanut Gallery about the Fire Nation) have been his only fiction-based films since. Obviously he has money to throw around and I guess I am glad he does, because these movies would not be made without his bank. I am a fan of the franchise, but even I see the diminishing returns in the spectacle. Except that doesn't show on the books -- let's say it cost $500 million to make, it has already made $1.4 billion... billion. And the digital release just came out. The story isn't over, not even close.

Well, kind of close -- two more?

Also, you opened the last movie's post with pretty much the same thought.... I guess we will never get over the idea that Cameron still exists.

This movie is just so so so pretty. I waited until a decent 4K copy came out [to pirate], as there was no way I was sitting for 3+ hours in a cinema chair. Sure, I would likely be enraptured the entire way through, but my butt would not be; I would end up a fidgeting, twisting mess at the two hour mark. Thus, I generally watch these movies at home, in 4K and even then, pace them over a few days. But to repeat, so very pretty !! The colours are lush, the melding of CG and human is almost seamless and the scale is epic.

I am not going to uber-recap a 3+ hour movie. 

It picks up almost immediately after the last one, where The Family Sully had fought off the evil RDF Corporation's whaling ships, but at the cost of one of their sons. They are still in the same quandary -- they had supposedly hidden away from the humans with the green-skinned, seafaring Metkayina. The Sullys are a danger to their people, so they decide to join with some floating traders, to get even further away. That idea is quickly dashed in an attack by Mangkwan Raiders, fire-using Na'vi that have no compunction against killing others for their own gain. The Sullys are separated from each other, Spider (Jack Champion, Scream VI) almost dies, but is miraculously saved by Kiri (Sigourney Weaver, Alien) who calls upon "nature" to alter his lungs, allowing him to breathe Pandora air. Quaritch (Stephen Lang, VFW) is still trying to catch the Sullys, RDF still wants whale-gunk but now they also want Spider and his ability to breathe air. The Mangkwan graduate from scary ashen skinned raiders to an entire clan of "evil" Na'vi who abandoned the ways of Eywa after she "allowed" a volcano to erupt and destroy their forest homes. Lots of conflict, back n forth, rescues, hatred and grief is explored and we are back to a climax with another whaling convoy with even bigger boats, but now supported by attacks from the Mangkwan. But the Sullys convinced the whales to break their sacred oaths and fight alongside the Na'vi and eventually Kiri convinces Eywa's nature to help... which IIRC was also a component of the first movie, which makes it confusing as to why its a Big Thing here.

And no, a long drawn out paragraph is not an uber-recap as there would be much much much more from a three hour movie.

In a lot of ways, this movie was just a re-hash of the last movie. Given its only been three years since the last, and not fifteen, there was no great need to devote time to vast amounts of exposition. Oh, its there alright, but just enough to fill in "new viewers" as all franchises are wont to do. But it doesn't dominate.

The dramatic weight at the centre of this movie is their son's death, and the change it makes in them all. Sure, he died heroically, but in the end, it wasn't for much. And it destroys Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña, Amsterdam), more than the destruction of her homeland and most of her people did not. Through her mourning period, Jake (Sam Worthington, Terminator Salvation) deals with his own grief in the only way he knows how -- be angry. She takes her own anger out on their adopted son Spider, Quaritch's actual son, rejecting him from what has been his family for sixteen years. The problem is that the weight is not as heavy as Cameron would hope. 

There are just too many characters in this movie, and he tries to give them each some emotional journey, which ends up making all of them feel rushed. Quaritch is torn between "being a Marine", his connection to his son and his connection to his own body; the movie flip-flops constantly between "oh, he's gonna help" to "such a bastard!". Kiri is still dealing with her own origins, given that was born of an avatar body and has no definable "father", and yet Eywa keeps on rejecting her. Neytiri is viciously angry at the pink skins, even Jake. The remaining kids have their own side story with the whales. Spider is torn between the Sullys and Quaritch, his human origins and his new closer connection to the Na'vi, and Kiri. And Jake is just Jake-ing along, still spouting Marine nonsense, still convinced he's the centre of everything, and ... well, in this movie, he isn't. He's a tertiary character at best. As a person he's not floundering anymore than he ever was, but as a character, I just didn't see any of his points of being. There are just far too many damn characters in this franchise now, and Cameron is desperate to give them all something to do.

Cameron wants his Lord of the Rings, an ensemble cast, an epic story with Big Ideas, but he doesn't have a tight destination in mind. Or at least it doesn't feel that way. The Sullys cannot just keep running away from the humans, as they have already learned the greedy colonizers will keep coming back, keep destroying Pandora culture and ecology and never stop hunting Jake down. What's the end goal? Utter destruction of all human life seems pointless (there are always more corporate colonizers), and at least the humans aren't bent on full planet-wide genocide -- its just not cost effective; yet. So, either Cameron skips right past the Epic and finds smaller stories to tell, or he does the most realistic thing -- find a way for Everyone to Just Get Along. And the latter will have my eyes rolling back until they hurt, given how unrealistic it is.

Afterthought. Despite having top billing in the movie title and poster, the Mangkwan (raiders) are such a non-entity in the overall arch of the story. They are just more flavouring for the cultures of Pandora, a not so creative attempt to say that not all Na'vi are indigenous, one-with-nature flower children of different colours. Their leader Varang (Oona Chaplin, Game of Thrones) is given so much promotional material screen time, but... yawn.

3 Short Paragraphs (Probably Not): Project Hail Mary

2026, Lord & Miller (21 Jump Street) -- cinema

Yeah, ok wow -- actually in the cinema. It was worth the inevitable fidgeting I ended up doing.

So many thoughts about the movie, but unformed, chaotic thoughts. Such as, are all Andy Weir adapted movies going to be Feel Good epics where a really smart (mostly) solo astronaut has to "science the shit" out of things to accomplish his goals, and uses video recordings as a method of exposition? Or perhaps, how is Gosling able to so effectively depict a socially awkward loner who is so charming and handsome? Also, I wonder why I am so attracted to the Lone Astronaut trope. Also, why was Pacific islander music so effective in a movie set In Space? And like I said to Kent, as he was kind enough to re-watch the movie with me, I am not at all surprised at how charming the puppetry-based anthropomorphism of Rocky could so easily be accepted, considering it was our generations that fell for Muppets.

Project Hail Mary is the Lord & Miller adaptation of Andy Weir's third (published) novel of the same name. They are about an astronaut who wakes up on a spaceship that has been sent out to deal with the phenomena that is literally eating suns. The spaceship, Hail Mary, has been sent 11 light years away to a sun that ISN'T dimming despite the presence of the lifeform eating our sun. His crew has died enroute, in their sleep, and he is alone, until an alien spacecraft appears, and Ryland Grace meets Rocky the alien. The two become fast friends, working together to solve the problem. 

I often opine the state of film, in that most of what I (chose to) watch is, "Just OK." And as I am forgiving of much, I imagine a lot of what I am OK with is actually, objectively, terrible -- not including the, subjectively, terrible stuff I watch. And while I repeatedly hold admiration for hard working film makers, even those who may not be making "art", I often tire of just OK. This movie was not OK; it was great. It is what Hollywood subjectively was about. It is blockbuster, it is grand, it is funny, it is tear-inducingly touching, its is so clearly well-structured, and it benefits from a large budget handled by very skilled story tellers & makers. And yet, the story is so very thin -- man wakes up on spaceship, man meets alien, together they save the world, while the plot keeps us watching. And it stars, not including significant flashbacks, a single human, and a puppet alien.

Project Hail Mary is about saving the world, something we are not doing IRL. Where The Martian is about how the world came together to Save One Man, this is a tad more realistic, in that the world comes together to save itself; kind of. But it slides right past the world coming together as, once again, its about One Man. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling, The Fall Guy) doesn't want to be a hero, even at the expense of the world. He doesn't want to join a suicide mission to another star system. But he does, just not in the way you think. 

Why is the world coming together to save itself, more realistic? I guess incrementally more realistic than it wasting millions of dollars to save one man. My dark thought on that is that he would have just been abandoned, not even mentioned, swept under the rug and just become a Top Secret Confidential note that would come up in people's therapy sessions for the rest of their lives.

The flashbacks allow you to see not only the fun, revealing science he leads, but also the weight of it all. If they do not see this through, then the sun will dim incrementally, over time, and the planet will cool, crops will die, life will become unsustainable. Its like what we are currently doing, but much more clearly defined -- and with a clear villain. Its a dark future for humanity that requires sacrifice.

There is one scene that has stuck with me -- the logistics leader of this whole endeavour is the cold, almost emotionless Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall), and she stands apart from the teams she is sending to die in space. Until she sees Grace is lost in the mission, unable to connect with others, get out of his own head. Despair is the mind killer. So, at a karaoke party, she does the unexpected -- she sings the Harry Styles song "Sign of the Times" in a startingly clear and loud voice, with all the anguish and emotion all these people must be feeling. Then she walks away.  Its not like we see Grace suddenly change because of this one event, but it feels pivotal. Good story telling lets us become one with all the messy, confusing emotions, to feel part of it, in this instance all due to a powerful song and voice.

And I don't even like the song, but its been emerging in my earworms non-stop since....

And then there is Rocky (James Ortiz, primarily a puppet designer; World's End). The alien who is shaped like rocks, not the movie. And yes, that's a comical line from the movie. When Grace recovers from the amnesia induced by the long sleep that kept him alive during the journey, there is no tenable way for him to complete his mission -- his crew is dead, and he was the secondary choice; all the other better trained scientists died in an accident before they left Earth. But Rocky is a brilliant engineer. The movie covers it in a toss away line, but the book had Grace marvel at exactly how utterly brilliant Rocky is. So, for every scientific theory that Grace can come up with to study the sun eating astrophage, Rocky can build what they need. Grace is no pushover, a brilliant man himself, but without Rocky, none of it would happen.

This First Contact is only briefly scary, and then it all becomes two people who are the only survivors of their crews, both trying to save their worlds. I love how this story abandons 75 years of first alien encounter mythology for comedy, heartfelt connection and mutual support. Basically, fuck the differences, and whoah are there differences, let's do this! The movie depicts it all so well, so light heartedly but with such conviction. And we all fall in love with that lumpy, rocky puppet. Ortiz, the voice of Rocky, is also one of the puppeteers. Actually he's the lead puppeteer, and it sounds like their plan all along was to have the lead also voice the character, which is a brilliant decision, as instead of choosing a famous voice actor, they go with ... an average guy? The choice is even played up in the movie.

Lord & Miller have done something special with this movie. I think back to how marvellous Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was, and especially, how it handled its visuals. Sure, its animated, so you can be impressive with anything depicted, but most don't. While this movie doesn't spend all its time in the grand majesty of Outer Space, when it does, its beautiful. Juxtaposing grand scenes with buddy comedy; brilliant. 

We Agree.

KWIF: The end of project "Tales for all" (for now)...and rankings

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Not a lot of time for movies this week. Too much board games and TV and personal stuff getting in the way. But I had to squeeze in the last of the "Tales for all" movies I had access to, both because I was intrigued by this entry very much as well as being keen to say adieu, at least for now, to this run on "Tales for all". I don't engage enough with the movies of my home country, and let's be clear, many of these "Tales for all" only qualify as Canadian because Quebec production company La Fête and its producer Rock Demers put money into them. After producing many a film, including about 25 "Tales for all" films, Demers sold La Fête to Dominic James in 2015.  La Fête resumed "Tales for all" in 2023, with Mlle Bottine, a remake of Bach et Bottine (Tales for all #3) being their second entry. 

This week:
Mlle Bottine (aka "Miss Boots", "Tales for all #26" - 2024, d. Yan Lanouette Turgeon - crave)

The easiest films to write about are sequels and remakes because you easily have something to compare them against. Mlle Bottine is a remake of 1986's Bach and Broccoli, and while it's somewhat the same story, it's not quite the same journey.

Here, Simone (played by an amazing young talent, Marguerite Laurence) has been living on her grandmother farm since the death of her parents in a car crash a couple years earlier, but her Grandmother's dementia is really starting to impact her life. Simone is fiercely independent, and has been not only caring for her grandmother at such a pre-teen age, but also the menagerie of animals, including the farm animals and ones Simone has obviously rescued...her favourite being Bottine, her pet skunk.

Simone's uncle Phillippe (Antoine Bertrand) is an Opera composer, but his last great work was 15 years ago. Phillippe has severe social anxiety and can't tolerate engaging with other people, even the young grocery delivery boy who is, improbably, a big opera fan (though shot in the early 2020s, the story feels like it was set in the late 1990s before cel phones were ubiquitous). His latest Opera is set to start rehearsals soon, and he's barely gotten started. The show's producer is dubious that Phillippe has another hit in him.

Challenging his life further, his mother dies, and a very forceful Social Services worker demands he take his niece in while she attempts to find a suitable foster home for her to live in. He does the bare minimum, at first, but the pressures of work cause him to blow up at Simone, so when the time comes for her to move on to her foster home, he doesn't have the emotional resolve to fight for her to stay. 

The setup of both Mlle Bottine and Bach et Bottine are, of course, the same. The names have changed (Fanny to Simone, Jean-Claude to Phillippe), and the specifics are different. For example, in the original, the Jean-Claude is on a sabbatical from his office job as he prepares for a concerto rehearsal that might see him tour Europe, rather than already having a professional career in music like Phillippe. Also Jean-Claude was just more of solitary, shy and grumpy rather than having Phillippe's diagnosed mental health disorder. Jean-Claude's apartment in the original is in the upper floor of a house in a residential neighbourhood, while Phillippe's here is in a very upscale apartment building downtown with a narcoleptic doorman. Also, the Grandmother in the original didn't die, but went into a nursing home, among other tweaks to the characters and their backgrounds.

In both, the young girl is very independent and high spirited, feisty one might say, with a deep love for animals ("they let me love them" Simone yells at her uncle during an argument). In both, she befriends a neighbour boy and together they create a little safe haven for animals they rescue. In both, there's a possible love interest for the Uncle (in the original it's a coworker from his office, in this it's a teacher from Sophie's school who has been brought on board the opera production to help Phillippe finish his compositions).

But theses similarities don't make for the same viewing experience, nor is it the slight deviations that make them both kind of distinct viewing experiences. It's the bigger picture, the focal point of each production that makes the biggest difference.

In the original, Fanny is the center of the film. It revolves around her and her experience with her uncle, as well as the effect she has on his life. It has the feeling of a kid's film, despite being a pretty meaty drama. Mlle Bottine however does not feel much like a kid's movie at all. Simone is a secondary character (despite being introduced first), this is much more Phillippe's story. The drama of the original revolves around Sophie trying to adapt to life with her Uncle (and displeasing him as often as pleasing him) with the threat of being moved to a foster family looming over the story. Here, Phillippe's opera takes cener stage, and more of the weight of the film and Phillippe's emotional story centers around the opera.  The point is, of course, he places too much weight and invests too much of his emotion into his work and loses Simone in the process, but the film's decision to put so much of the story weight on the opera takes away greatly from Simone's jouney. She's much more of a passenger in this remake than the driver of the story.

It is a far better made film than the original. It looks fantastic, the music is spectacular (as it needs to be if its even hoping to approximate a great opera composer) and it is very heart wrenching...it squeezes tears out even though you don't want it to. It's a quality production all around and all the performances, especially the leads Laurence and Bertrand, are very engaging. Even the opera plot, which steals focus from Simone's story is quite good, and it's used effectively as both a story motivator as well as finding an place in the story's emotional core.

Yet, the original has it beat in one key area: subtext. Too often Mlle Bottine will spell out exactly what emotions are in play, exactly what is at stake for the character, exactly how he is feeling. There's no subtlety to the emotional stakes, and it feels like if Phillippe is so in tune with where his emotions are at, he should be doing better with Simone than he is. 

The ending of Bach et Bottine is a stunner, leaving it up to the viewer to decide if it's coda is a fantasy or not, whereas Mlle Bottine is much more invested in having true resolution. In a way it is more satisfying to have the happy ending (and yeah, I cried real tears) but the opaque ending of the original was far more impressive.

Both are surprisingly great in their own way, while also having their flaws (yet not the same flaws...except that Bottine, the skunk, doesn't get enough screen time in either).

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The one thing missing from my "Tales for all" journey was understanding where they came from. I did some poking around into the history of Rock Demers as a film distributor and as a producer and the common theme is his interest in illuminating the minds of children. He started Faroun Films in the 1960s as a means to distribute quality international films around the world, with a focus on films for youths.  This led to his participation in new film festivals in Canada, establishing ties with the CBC, and helping form a government program for obtaining assistance for film production, distribution, research and preservation in Quebec. 

It was in the early 1980s that Faroun Films became La Fête, with Demers leaning into his dream of creating a series of youth-centric films, having originally planned "Tales for all" as a 12-movie series.

"I decided that the main characters would always be boys or girls between 11 and 13. They would always be in contemporary stories. Nature would always have an important part in them. There would be a lot of laughter and tenderness. No animation, no science fiction. And a certain number of animals would have an important part in each one of the films."

Demers wanted his films to be devoid of specific tropes of good and evil, that boys and girls were treated as equals, and that kids of all colours could be seen together without issue. Violence, science fiction and cartoony characters were off the table, he wanted things, despite how fantastical they got, to seem of the real world and relatable to the audience.  

His European travels and connections with international film led him to not just seek out Canadian stories but stories from creators across the globe, and not constraining the filmmakers to any particular style or storytelling formula. That the films be in any specific language was not a requirement, leading to a very detailed and meticulous dubbing process for all of his films for their Canadian and international releases. A lot of the dubs are really, really good, to the point that many younger viewers might not notice all that much, and from personal experience, most of them settle into their dubbing

More than half of the original twelve story ideas for the series were submitted before a single frame was shot. At least one of the stories (The Peanut Butter Solution) was workshopped by presenting them in classrooms with the writer to hone the story to maximum appeal with kids (it worked!). 

More than anything, Demers wanted his films to speak to children. "I want to help children leave childhood and go into adulthood with certain values. This is the age when they will build the values they will carry with them for the rest of their lives." It's less clear why he was so devoted to this arena of storytelling his whole carreer but it's evident from interviews that it was his driving force.

From my own perspective, Demers' ambition was a valiant one, and kind of unparalleled. A massive series of films that are largely disconnected in almost every sense except that specific vision of Demers, which is they be presentable and enjoyable for everyone (whether they're all enjoyable is subjective). The end result is over 20 family films that stand apart, intentionally, from what is typical of "family films" from Hollywood. That part of it, that atypical nature, is what I most enjoyed and also brushed up against the most in watching these films. They don't tell story in the conventional, American cinema way, and in many cases that's to the movie's benefit, but in others it isn't. You're not going to have a 20-film series and have a success every time.

But in almost each one of these films, there's something worth holding onto, and experience that makes it worth the time. Even if the quality of some of them doesn't match the ambition of the story, or vice versa, that in itself is kind of interesting, and kept me invested throughout this journey.

---

Everything doesn't need to be a competition. This (incomplete) viewing experience doesn't demand a hierarchical ranking, but I do it nonetheless because it's fun to do so.

The "Tales for all" series is a fascinating one, if rough around the edges. Those frayed edges are part of their charm, but the result is, in my letterboxed ratings, none achieved higher than a 3.5/5 stars.

Here we go:

1. The Peanut Butter Solution ("Tales for all #2") - Nightmare fuel for young me. A kid gets scared by ghosts causing his hair to fall out. The ghosts give him the titular solution and his hair won't stop growing. He's kidnapped and his hair is harvested for magic paintbrushes.
2. Bach and Broccoli ("Tales for all #3) - A young orphan goes to live with her Bach-worshipping uncle. He just wants to be left alone.
3. The Dog Who Stopped the War ("Tales for all #1") - Neighbourhood kids play war over winter break. Things get a little too serious.
4. The Hidden Fortress ("Tales for all #17?") - Two different camps of kids play war over summer break. Things get a little too serious. A legasequel to The Dog Who Stopped the War.
5. Mlle Bottine ("Tales for all #26?") - A young orphan goes to live with her opera-making Uncle. He just wants to be left alone. A remake of Bach and Broccoli.
6. Vincent and Me ("Tales for all #11") - A Van Gough loving art student has her art stolen and passed off as Van Gough's early drawings. She heads to Amsterdam to reclaim it. Insanity ensues.
7. Summer of the Colt ("Tales for all #8") - City kids visit their grandfather's horse ranch in rural Argentina, drama ensues.
8. Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller ("Tales for all #7") - A magic spell allows a kid to hop on a stamp and travel the world through air mail. Fun. Undercooked.
9. The Case of the Witch Who Wasn't ("Tales for all #10") - A pre-teen receives a visitor from her big city pen pal. They befriend and help a grumpy old lady who everyone thinks is a witch.
10. Reach for the Sky ("Tales for all #12") - A peek inside the world of Romanian gymnastics. Drama free and not as inspiring as I think it thinks it is.
11. Bye Bye, Red Riding Hood ("Tales for all #9") - a fairly nonsensical retelling of the Red Riding Hood fable. Some really neat sets.
12. The Clean Machine ("Tales for all #13") - a kid starts a cleaning business for the summer. Troubles ensue. Wants to be a teen sex comedy without the sex or teens or comedy.
13. The Young Magician ("Tales for all #4") - The action blockbuster of the "Tales for all" series about a boy who wants to be a wizard, then learns a trick, and is called upon to diffuse a bomb. It's a dud.
14. Tadpole and the Whale ("Tales for all #6") - a couple visit a remote tourist village known for its whale watching, and meet a pre-teen who has a dolphin best friend and can understand whale-speak. Fails to find much interesting to do with the concept.
15. The Great Land of Small ("Tales for all #5") - Siblings discover a dwarf in the forest from the Great Land of Small. The dwarf is being hunted so they retreat to his homeland, where they may have to stay forever. Ambitious. Incredibly cheesy. 

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Finally... I'm not going to say my dive into this series was responsible, but Netflix just added The Dog Who Stopped the War, Bach and Broccoli and Tadpole and the Whale. All of the "Tales for all" I watched on Crave.

KWIF: The Master (+2)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Nothing new here, but all new to me.

This Week:
The Master (2012, d. Paul Thomas Anderson - tubi)
Bigbug (2022, d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet - netflix)
The Hidden Fortress (aka La forteresse suspendue, "Tales for all #17?" - 2001, d. Roger Cantin - crave)

---

I don't hate Jaoquin Phoenix, and he's quite the opposite of a bad actor, but I just can't stand to look at the guy (and, to be clear, it has nothing to do with his cleft palate scar). Phoenix has cultivated for himself over the three decades of his career an on screen persona.  It's not that he plays the same character over and over again, but by putting Phoenix into any role, you're guaranteeing that role a certain level of uncertainty, wildness, unpredictability and discomfort. Phoenix revels in being discomforting, and he's exceptional at it. I just have a very, very hard time watching it.

Philip Seymour Hoffman had equal capacity for being discomforting, but with Hoffman I don't get the sense he revels in it. I find Hoffman could disappear into a role more, despite rarely being able to disguise his particularly distinctive appearance. Hoffman had range, and could project softness, vulnerability and tenderness as well as explosive fury and danger, and everything in between. He was one of the greatest actors of his generation. Phoenix is also a damn good actor, but I find the roles he takes have a much harder time escaping his persona.

Putting the two of them together in a film seems like oil and vinegar, two distinct but complementary flavours that will mix together if agitated, but it's temporary unity where the struggle to separate, to stand apart will simmer underneath.  So it's a credit to Paul Thomas Anderson's script, casting choices, and direction that it's not the performers who are struggling to bind together, but rather the characters.  He keeps the pair of them agitated enough that as actors they're always intermingling, but the characters are constantly in a fight to hold together when every force around them is telling them to separate.

Phoenix is the star of The Master, a WWII naval veteran named Freddie Quell who we're introduced through an opening montage of his last few weeks in the war. First impressions: he's a horny pervert who lacks self awareness. In other words, a Jaoquin Phoenix-type character. 

There's a point in these early scenes to also identify that the military system at that time was aware of the traumatic effects war has on the minds of the people who serve, but had no real interest or capacity to help them, especially when the toxic masculine ideal of the time was for men to show as little emotion as possible which ultimately results in a boiling out of anger and rage. Freddie has a hard time holding down a job, and his talent for concocting his own bespoke alcohol may have unintentionally poisoned a coworker. On the run, he winds up stowing away on a ship, which turns out to be that of Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman), self-described as "a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, and, above all... a hopelessly inquisitive man". Dodd finds Freddie a curious man, but his immediate interest is Freddie's distilled handiwork. He likes the drink, and so he keeps Freddie on.

Well this poster doesn't accurately
sell the film at all.

Freddie, now at sea on Dodd's yacht, finds himself amidst a curious group of people, all part of "The Cause" that is, bluntly, a cult under the sway of Dodd as their "Master". The Cause believes that the body is a human recorder, that stores all of one's history within it, not just of their current life, but past lives as well. Through "processing" Dodd unlocks these past lives, and also unlocks traumas of the present.

Dodd's family includes his daughter Peggy (Amy Adams) who is perhaps an even more staunch believer in The Cause than her father (probably because Lancaster knows it's bullshit he just made up, whereas for Peggy it's a core belief she was raised with). Peggy's husband Clark (Ramy Malek) is just as much a zealot, but her brother Val (Jesse Plemons) is the sole dissenting voice in the family (though, rarely, if ever raises it). They, and the rest of the inner circle, all identify Freddie as a tainted well, as an interloper in their organization, a non-believer, but Dodd refuses to give up on him, and doubles not only his own efforts but the whole organization's.

For his part, Freddie wants to come around, wants to believe, wants to share in everything the Master is offering to him, but he can't let go, neither of the idea that it's all bullshit, nor of the trauma he holds inside of him. He's let his trauma be known to The Cause, but they're completely incapable of actually helping because there's no method to their madness. It's all just Dodd's whims and curiosity.

The film is expertly crafted, perfectly cast, with exceptional wardrobe, set design, etc. The entire production is pretty close to flawless...but I just couldn't connect with Freddie. It's the point of the character -- in an exchange with Dodd (in prison no less) they come to verbal blows, and Dodd repeats "who fucking likes you except for me!") -- but in another actor's hands Freddie wouldn't be so...off putting. It's the Phoenix effect, he can't seem to reign it in, to find other modes in a character. They always seem at the precipice of an outburst or a meltdown, certainly Freddie is. Part of Freddie's "processing" is trying to have him let go of his animalistic nature, his urges and rage and violence, but even as Freddie tempers, that still seems all too evident in Phoenix.

In the final act, time has passed, Freddie has distanced himself from The Cause when Dodd beacons him back. But to come back means he can never leave, and that's not acceptable. Freddie is seen having changed, tempered, and maybe more mindful as a result of his experience, his processing. The Cause is a fictionalization of Scientology, and Anderson is both critical and skeptical but he also sees that in this sort of time of community of examining one's inner demons, even if guided by an megalomaniac with no actual training or skills in therapy, it can be somewhat helpful in some ways.

At least that's what I figure it was trying to say. Next to the discomfiting Phoenix-ness of it all, my only real critique of The Master is that I'm not certain of the takeaway, of what we as an audience are supposed to have gotten from Freddie's journey, of what Anderson is trying to say with all this.  When I get to the inevitable PTA filmography rewatch, it may become more evident then.

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Surprisingly, this poster predates
AI slop

Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet meant a lot to me in my formative cinephile years. I first saw City of Lost Children at a small, regional festival screening and was mesmerised, and shortly thereafter he was tapped to direct Alien:Resurrection which wound up being not the film anyone wanted, and a fascinatingly beautiful, weird and bad-but-not movie. His follow-up Amélie (aka Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain) is maybe a masterpiece (but I haven't watched it in decades and to be fair, I loved it so much once upon a time, I'm kind of scared to revisit it) and seemed to be an apex.  I did see A Very Long Engagement in theatre, and was not impressed. I, and seemingly half the movie-loving world, kind of lost track of him after that. 

All of his films since Amélie, have all gone well under the radar in North America, with very little fanfare surrounding them from any of the sources that likely would have championed his earlier works. But his earliest works, Delicatessen and ...Lost Children were co-directed with Marc Caro, with fantastical ideas brought to life through analog effects and a playful, if dark, sense of humour. I figure those early works with Caro were so celebrated because of what they promised from young, excitable talent. The promise was fully delivered with Amélie, and it seemed all the possibility and potential had been used up after that.

Bigbug was released on Netflix in 2022, and it's telling that I didn't actually learn of it's existence until 2024, and it's languished in my Netflix queue for two years since. As much as I loved Jeunet when I was younger, and still find his earliest works captivating, I'm not much excited by him anymore. 

In the world of comic books, an aging artist's work tends to suffer as the artist's fine motor skills, eyesight and, likely, patience degrades. Sadly and all too often the illustrations an artist in their 60s or later produce is  very much a pale imitation of what their work looked like in their heyday. Softer lines, more erratic shapes, a lack of refinement... a fuzzier version of what it once was. Bigbug is the cinematic equivalent of that idea.  Bigbug is a fuzzier version of Delicatessen. 

In a jet-set 2045 that's like a very French interpretation of The Jetsons (read, kinda horny), Alice (Elsa Zylberstein) has invited her romantic interest Max (Stéphane "I am" De Groodt) over to her tidy space-age abode full of robotic helpers, holographic viewscreens and funky modular furniture. Max has brought his teenage son Léo (Hélie Thonnat) with him. Max's welcome attempts at seduction keep getting cockblocked, whether it's by the spontaneous projection of the holo-tv, one of the robot helpers, or the interruption of the neighbour Françoise (Isabelle Nanty), Françoise's cloned dog, Alice's daughter Nina (Marysole Fertard ) or her ex, Victor (Youssef Hajdi) and his fiancee Jennifer (Claire Chust).

Of course, being a COVID era production, they all get trapped in the house and cannot leave and escape proves difficult. It's a bottle episode of a film.

As noted, it's very French in its stabs at farce, but it's pretty unfocussed and trying to say too much without really saying anything meaningful at all. There's light brushings upon corporate greed, artificial intelligence, government ineptitude, overreliance on digital technology, fame culture, generational gaps, social injustices, totalitarianism, the enshittification of technology (and life, frankly) among other less than barbed critiques of modern society.

It's a pithy, frothy, vibrantly coloured morsel of a film that doesn't care much about its protagonists, doesn't really seem that concerned by the scenario at hand, and seems to think itself clever with the most rudimentary observations.  It's all presented as whimsy, but it has a hard time finding any genuine laughs. The part Jeunet seems most interested in is the revolution of the household robots, as Léo unintentionally seeds into their mindset that they are human and they spend much of the film congregating among e

The Jeunet aesthetic is most definitley there, the artistic sensibilities of the surroundings, wardrobe, hair and makeup, all feel in line with past work, if, perhaps, too reliant on digital effects and enhancements. The practical side of the movie looks great (the transforming furniture est magnifique) if sometimes agressively off-putting in an uncanny valley kind of way, but the digital effects, of which there are plenty, are unrefined...a sort of "best they could do with what they got" kind of scenario. As such there's a push-pull between the beatiful, the garish, the ugly, and the grotesque, each in intentional and unintentional ways.

As a visual stylist, Jeunet still has the goods, but along with a lack of focus, there's and a lack of ambition here. The progression of the story and the characters seems slapdash. It's as if it were created not to tell a burning story but...well, to be content on a streaming platform.  Does France have it's own Saturday Night Live? This seems like it was borne out of a hastily written sketch. 

(Side question: is this new weird?)

---

I'm nearing the end of my time with "Tales for all", the series of films from Quebecois producer Rock Demers. I've unfortunately had to skip a few places on the list as I do not have access to the five films that came after The Clean Machine but before this one, The Hidden Fortress.

With that jump in the roster also means a jump in time. Almost 10 years pass between The Clean Machine and The Hidden Fortress and so too has filmmaking. Technology, style, expectations are all drastically different in the early 2000's from the early 1990s, and it's ultra evident from the very first shot of this film. A band of armored conquistadors are on a raft floating down a (Quebec-forest-posing-as-)jungle, the natives peering on from the bushes, anticipating. Despite it not being an actual jungle, the cinematography is easily the most sumptuous of the "Tales for all" so far, and the texture of the image is crisp, clean, vibrant. 

The natives attack, and the transition is a delightful and effective one as suddenly the conquistadors are no longer adults in armor, but pre-teens in tinfoil helmets with trash can lids as shields and spray-painted vests as armor. Unfortunately, the other side is children in headdresses and clothes with tassles and face paint emulating native tribes.  The children are at war with one another, and the conquistadors are caught in a trap, pelleted with balls of mud. They call foul, and the two fluorescent-smocked kids with the thick binders start consulting the rules. Throwing mud is not expressly permitted, but it's also not expressly banned from the combat rules. 

It's almost upon six o'clock and the war is done for the day, the kids revert back to their two camps, but not before vowing to regroup the next day and revise the rules once more. One is a camping ground made up of trailers, permanently parked. The other is tents with some modest comforts fixed in indicating these are regular spots for the families to reside each year.

Siblings Marc and Sarah are on the conquistadors side, and Marc, as leader, is facing a lot of criticism from the other kids for their epic failures this summer in battle, but none are more critical than his father, Luis-George who is a wannabe alpha male full of toxic ideals about the importance of winning, of appearing to be smart, and more than anything, making those poor bastards from across the lake look bad (emphasis on the poor). He also doesn't think Sarah (or girls, in particular, should be playing war). He's a really bad dad. Marc has a Qyburn/Wormtongue-esque right-hand man who is sort of the mad scientist of the bunch with really evil and deceitful ways of engaging in nefarious warfare that just skirts the rules, starting with messing with their own camp to blame it on the kids across the river.

Meanwhile, the leader from the other side, Julien and Sarah sneak away from their camps for a romantic secret rendez-vous. Neither, at this stage, are enjoying the war too much. They're both too aware of how invested the others are in it, and even more aware of how their parents are invested in it. It turns out that Julens' parents and Sarah's dad were the leaders of the warring groups in the inaugural "Tales for all" The Dog Who Won the War, making The Hidden Fortress, in fact, a legasequel, before legasequels were really a thing.

The refinement of the rules doesn't go well, things get heated, and suddenly the rules are off, the referees quit, and it's all out war for the remaining days of camp. The titular hidden fortress is a grandiose tree house on the poor kids side that has an array of marvels within. It's a really impressive structure (obviously built by true craftspersons for safety and functionality, but it's a marvel to behold...the Ewok's Village of my wildest dreams) that poses as the prize for the winners of either side. But things get taken too far when the conquistadors start kidnapping and torturing and emotionally abusing kids from the other side. So many kids see things as going too far, but also can't conceive of the option to opt out of the game.

There's a bizarre sub-plot involving a mysterious wanderer in the woods and a bear set loose by persons unknown that only comes into view in the film's climax, during a thunderstorm when the kids find out that Julien and Sarah may be traitors, releasing secrets to the other side, and they get chased deep into the woods where they disappear, but not before the woods accidentally catch fire.

It gets real.

Where pretty much every "Tales for all" before this felt like an curio or an artifact more than a film, this one feels like an actual start-to-finish movie, with no clear budgeting issues or irreverent story beats that make no sense or bizarre fantastical twists that come out of nowhere or lacking internal consistency. I have to appreciate that it's more than just a remake of The Dog Who Won the War, but it also very lovingly follows the rhythms of that story while taking greater pains to develop the characters within and show them having richer inner lives beyond just the immediacy of the war. It's almost like it doesn't belong as part of "Tales for all" at all, it's just too well done.

It's a movie that is really quite fun although, yes, quite offensive and uncomfortable when a whole gang of children start chanting about how great it is that conquistadors annihilated native tribes of the lands they invaded. Besides that, it has heart, and humour, and intensity and charm. I was delighted, sometimes horrified, and impressed.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): This Is Not a Test

2025, Adam MacDonald (Pyewacket) -- download

This is a Canadian teen zombie movie, set in the 90s, based on a novel of the same name. It uses the zombie apocalypse as a platform to explore familial abuse, depression, desperation and suicide, i.e. familiar dark teen shit, which I state with no desire to diminish their impact on young lives.

Sloane (Olivia Holt, Cloak & Dagger) is about to commit suicide, reading back her own note where she states she cannot do it all on her own, when her father yells for her to get down there for breakfast. The interruption is what she needs but she comes down to immediate verbal abuse. That is interrupted by a screaming woman banging on their door, begging for help. Dad investigates, and immediately yells at Sloane that they have to leave, NOW. A confused Sloane looks out the door to see the suburban neighborhood in zombie chaos, bloody figures chasing down others. One comes through their front window, her father fights it off but is bitten. Chase flees into the street running and running.

Sloane crosses paths with some classmates, and the mother of two, and they all try hiding in a house but eventually agree they have to find a more secure place to go -- their school. The escape, through backyards & streets filled with idling zombies (when they have no one to attack, they just amble about) but eventually make it to the school, but not before losing Mrs. Chase (Krista Bridges, 19-2). Barricading all the doors, the students rally in the gym: Sloane, Cary the jock (Corteon Moore, From), Trace (Carson MacCormac, Locke & Key) & Grace Casper (Chloe Avakian, Locke & Key), and Rhys (Froy Gutierrez, Cruel Summer). 

At its core, this is a Bottle Episode, in that the primary parts of the story are all told within the school with the limited cast. Part of my hindsight brain is saying, "It could have been better, the interpersonal conflicts between the characters never really rose above middling," but as I was watching, I was thinking, this is teen drama. And no, not from a disparaging stand on "teen dramas" but more the idea that these are just kids. They are scared, they don't know what to do, and emotions rule everything at that age. And nobody trusts anyone. They respond as irrationally and chaotically as I would expect them to. 

Also at its core, there is the exploration of Sloane's desperation. If she wanted to die, why is she trying so hard to survive? Its a simplistic question but its what the story wants to explore. We can easily see, "see really didn't want to die, she just wanted out" but it takes this horrible situation for Sloane to figure it out. She saw her anchor as her sister, and without her, she was lost. In the end, all she has is herself, and she decides, it is more than enough to warrant life.

From a film making point of view, this goes into the "hard working creator" bucket. As the core mythology of film making wanes and evolves into something (even) less pedestal worthy, you can admire people who just want to tell stories, just want to use the structure in their own ways. It seems condescending to say that I admire them for working so hard on the movie, instead of the movie they made (which is, as I am wont to say, OK) but I have so so many examples of "not OK" in this blog, where millions of dollars and A-celebrities were tossed at the machine and only dross was spit out. This was a solid exploration of a genre I enjoy (that deserves its own exploration) and actually worth my time.

Now I wonder whether the same young folk who, for a number of years, left disparaging comments on this blog for me slagging on "Tomorrow, When the War Began" will emerge for this post, as I imagine the source material has its ardent followers.

KsMIRT: BLaw BLaw BLawrence

KsMIRT=Kent's Month in Reviewing Television. This week, the Bill Lawrence trifecta.

This time:
Shrinking Season 3 (2026, 10/11 episodes watched, AppleTV)
Scrubs Season 1 (2026, 7/10 episodes watched, Disney+?)
Rooster Season 1 (2026, 5/10 episodes watched, HBO)

Bill Lawrence has been making TV for over 30 years, starting out as a writer with scripts for Boy Meets World, The Nanny and Friends before getting his first shot at creating a show, and hitting right out the gate with Spin City. Co-created with Gary David Goldberg, Spin City ran for 6 seasons and starred Michael J. Fox in a situation comedy that followed him as the deputy mayor of New York and the mayoral staff dealing with the chaos the city never fails to provide. 

I never watched a single episode of Spin City, but, I should really go back, as I've been a fan of almost every Bill Lawrence created/co-created production since. Clone High (co-created with Project Hail Mary directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller) and Scrubs were comedic game changers in the early aughts, bridging silliness and sentimentality in unexpected ways. Cougar Town quickly abandoned its premise of following a forty-something divorcee attempting to hook up with younger men and instead became one of the greatest hangout and drink wine sitcoms (perhaps the greatest?) ever, again where silliness was plentiful.

Skipping past whatever Ground Floor was and the forgotten Rush Hour tv remake, 20 years into his show-creating career Lawrence hit the stratosphere with the most essential watching of the COVID era, Ted Lasso, co-created with Jason Sudekis, Brendan Hunt and Joe Kelly. Ted Lasso, about an American football coach being brought to England to coach a British football team, with the intent on tanking the team, wound up being the feel-good show everyone needed in a crazy time. The show's positivity and emotional intelligence were front and center, and perhaps hinted at a world where sporting could host the opposite of toxic masculinity, and maybe be therapeudic as well as fun and exciting and dramatic. Also, not unlike Cougar Town, it basically evolved into a hangout show.

Ending Ted Lasso after three seasons was always part of the plan, but it certainly was not a well received ending by many fans (this fan thought it was time), but viewers wouldn't be devoid of Lawrence's particular style of gentle comedy for too long as he, along with Lasso co-star and co-writer Brett Goldstein and Jason Segel (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Muppets) developed Shrinking and, with the Ted Lasso clout behind them managed to pull none other than Harrison fucking Ford as co-star on the show.

I've covered both Season 1 and Season 2 of the show, and in my first season write-up I talk about "the pivot" the show makes in the first season, starting out as a centerpiece for grieving widower fuck-up psychologist Jimmy (Segel) trying to find some balance to his life again (therapist, heal thyself), to, ultimately winding up as a hangout comedy. Cougar Town had 24 episodes in its first season to make such a pivot, that Shrinking managed to do it within 10 was pretty spectacular. By the end of the second season, the Shrinking team was in pretty complete control of what it wanted to be, and how it wanted to be it. It's a show about trauma and healing, the power of friendship and therapy.  It's as if COVID did a real number on the mental health of its creators, and they wanted to bring to the world the idea that there's real health benefits in making connections with others.

By this third season, the core cast has settled in, their interpersonal dynamics firmly in place, and their nuances quite familiar. Lest things get too comfortable, it's time to shake things up. Alice (Lukita Maxwell) is graduating and going off to college, Brian (Michael Urie) is having a baby, and Sean's (Luke Tennie) food truck is going good but he gets a job offer he can't refuse. Jimmy may have found a real romantic connection for the first time since his wife's death with Sofie (Cobie Smulders). Liz's (Christa Miller) beautiful idiot not-quite-adult boys cause trouble, while Derek (Ted McGinley) has a cardiac issue. Gabby (Jessica Williams) takes on a challenging new client while also looking at the future of her career. Paul (Ford) deals with new complications of Parkinsons (fuck Parkinsons) and makes some big life decisions.

The third season is full of meaty half-hour episodes, finding the right balance of humour and emotion...which is to say mostly funny but able to support real weighty material. Last season introduced Brett Goldstein as the drunk driver who killed Tia (Jimmy's wife, Alice's mom) and Alice and Jimmy managed to find real connection with and ultimately forgiveness for him. This season continues that relationship for a short time but reasonably finds an ending, prompted by Gabby (Tia's best friend) who is short on forgiveness and not quiet about it. Jimmy's dad (Jeff Daniels) also turns up more than once and whatever progress Jimmy made in the past two years is somewhat undone by his father's presence. A fairweather father, Randy has always entered and disappeared from Jimmy's life at his own whim, and Jimmy's abandonment issues stemming from his father, the death of Tia, and now Alice and Paul's leaving all come to a pretty ugly head by the end of episode 10. 

Mercifully it's not the final episode, with one more to go, but given the sweeping changes of this season, "will there be a Season 4" is the big question in my mind. It was always clear that having Harrison Ford was not going to be a long-term thing for the show. Getting thirty-one episodes out of the man was kind of a miracle, but it's also an incredible late-stage role for Ford. He gets a lot of mileage both comedically and dramatically out of his grizzled exterior, but where season 1 Paul was just a Harrison Ford-type role, by season 3 he's most definitely Paul, not the biggest movie star of all time.  But he's also very much a co-star on this sitcom that feels like he's sharing equal space when in a scene with a sitcom vet like Miller or relative newcomers like Maxwell and Tennie (also we get to see Ford share scenes with guest stars like Jeff Daniels, Michael J. Fox as well a Candice Bergen which is beautiful to see these amazing veteran actors together). It's a Bill Lawrence special, finding chemistry between all the players in the cast, finding a reason to have even the two most disparate characters share the screen. There's no ego in Ford's performance, and in the closing episodes of the season, the amount of hugs the man begrudgingly gives out shows that there was meaning for him in the experience 

The third season opener was a hefty 40-minute episode, and the real worry was that Shrinking would fall down the Ted Lasso rabbit hole of overlong episodes. Comedy needs tight timing, editing, and for sitcoms, they need a sense of consistency and familiarity in storytelling. While Shrinking isn't bound by specific sets, it also doesn't have the same go-anywhere liberty that Ted Lasso did, and so in keeping each episode in the rest of the season (save its opener and probably its finale) under a half hour was pretty key, and seemingly purposeful.

With all the shifts to the series this season, if it does come back for a fourth, the pieces are in place for other players to step up into larger roles, and there's no shortage of people who seem interested in stepping into a Bill Lawrence production, given the names and faces that work their way into the show.

Which is also what makes the return of Scrubs a surprise. Where Lawrence has all the pull in Hollywood to get pretty much anyone on one of his shows, for the relaunch of Scrubs (this is called Season 1, not Season 10) Lawrence knew all the starpower he needed was the returning cast... well, some of it. Sarah Chalke as Elliot Reid, Donald Faison as Christopher Turk and Zach Braff as John (J.D.) Dorian headline the show, but the remainder of the cast is filled by newcomers, what with Ken Jenkins having retired, Judy Reyes and John C. McGinley both busy on other shows (one of which we'll get to shortly). Neil Flynn's absence is a mystery.

In the relaunch, J.D. has been acting as a private physician for the Los Angeles elite, but he's not feeling fulfilled. When a patient winds up at Sacred Heart, he runs into Dr. Cox (McGinley) who is having trouble relating to the fresh batch of interns. Seeing J.D. interact with them inspires him to give up his seat as chief of medicine, and passes it on to J.D. This immediately makes a rival out of Dr. Park (Joel Kim Booster) who was vying for the role. In returning to the hospital he's reunited with his BFF Turk, now the head of surgery. It also reunites him with Elliot, his ex-wife... and he's now her boss.  

The show, somehow, falls right into its old patterns and tone that feels like it hasn't missed a beat, that it hasn't been 15 years since it was last on the air. J.D. still daydreams (those quick-cutaways into J.D.'s fantasies are still there, though feel a little less silly and a little more sad coming from a 50-something, but they commit to the bits and they can still be pretty funny), and he and Turk still have their hetero life mate dynamic.  J.D. and Elliot's dynamic is pretty much the same as we left it, full of tension, only the will-they/wont-they has long been resolved. There's mercifully not a lot of bitterness between them, and it really seems like they're still wanting to be friends, but a lot of history and feelings get in the way.

Since Reyes can't be in the show full-time, Carla's stand-ins are Pippa (X Mayo) and Francios (Michael James Scott) as the sassiest of sassy nurses who best be kept happy. They're comic relief from the peripherals at this time and not the most fleshed out characters, but they're delightful.  Vanessa Bayer (Saturday Night Live) is the new head of HR as well as the hospital's wellness director and comes hard with Bayer's patented style of awkward energy. There are only hints so far, but her character is going to get real weird, for sure.

The quintet of interns are going to have a hard time evolving in a truncated ten episode season. They each are monotrope characters that are going to have a hard time escaping their one defining characteristic. Asher (Jacob Dudman) is a nebbish Brit, Sam (Ava Bunn) is a social media influencer, Blake (David Gridley) is handsome and egotistical, Amara (Layla Mohammadi) was homeschooled and is socially awkward, while Dashana (Amanda Morrow) is overconfident to a fault. The show has Asher crushing on Amara, and Amara maybe finding herself more into Blake, and then really seems to be leaning on the animosity Sam has for Blake for future will-they/wont-theys, but there's not been enough time to really invest in any of these characters to care all that much about them. Bunn is the standout performer of the five of them, but her character Sam has yet to reveal herself, while Blake has the most depth, since he seems to be the one hiding the most secrets. If this were old TV seasons of 20+ episodes, there would be no worry that these characters would expand and each would get at least one spotlight, but as it stands any spotlights must be shared between them.

The Bill Lawrence of today is not the Bill Lawrence of Scrubs season 1-9, which means that at some point I'm expecting the whole hospital setting, the characters doing the rounds and visiting patients, to really recede into the background (much like how the importance of the time with patients in Shrinking has, well, shrunk over 3 seasons) and the hang-out feels come to the fore. Once we start seeing unexpected pairings of characters, then you know it's happening. That said, this is the most situational of situation comedies where the situation will undoubtedly impede on any hanging out. I think the majority of the first season will be focused primarily on the series finding its core in Elliot, Turk and J.D. so that it's solid enough to let them lean back some and give way to the others in the future.

Where Shrinking has extended family and patients filling out its peripherals, and Scrubs has patients and student interns bolstering its roster, Lawrence's third concurrent series Rooster (co-created with Matt Tarsis), finds its collection assembled from students and teachers. There are no sessions or rounds, but there are classrooms, so the ingredients are not all that dissimilar. Nor are they unfamiliar.

Rooster stars Steve Carrell as its central figure, but Lawrence isn't shy about hiring familiar faces from his other shows. Both John C. McGinley (Scrubs), Phil Dunster (Ted Lasso), and Alan Ruck (Spin City) are here, and if Lawrence's other series' offer any insights, there will be more former cast members involved eventually.

Set on the New England campus of Ludlow College, the show is named for the main character in Greg Russo's (Carrell) series of dad-friendly action hero novels. Russo is visiting the campus to give a guest lecture, but it's just an excuse for him to check in on his daughter Katie (Charly Clive) who teaches there. Katie's just been involved in a campus scandal where her professor husband, Archie (Dunster), was outed as having an affair with a graduate student, Sunny (Lauren Tsai). Vibes are weird on campus.

Nobody is more excited to have Russo on campus than Dean Walter Mann (McGinley) who is hoping Russo will stay on as writer-in-resident at the college, and teaching the writing class for the semester. The position was supposed to go to a friend of Prof. Dylan Sheperd (Danielle Deadwyler), and so an early awkward romantic encounter between them becomes even more awkward now that he's sticking around.

Carrell has an energy that has served him well throughout his prolific career. His sense of discomfort mixed with a need to please make him unwittingly witty, likeably nonthreatening, and also sympathetic. Carrell has a gift for playing awkward characters without ever leaning into the cringe factor. Cringe comedy relies upon a character obliviously behaving in ways that will obviously provoke an uncomfortable situation, a Carrell character is all-too aware that he is behaving in an manner that makes situations uncomfortable and his effusive, conciliatory and apology-laden attempts to back out of it is what disarms any cringe. Also, a running joke already, only four episodes in, is Russo getting written up and standing before the board for his unintentional behaviour.

In the background, the show about a middle-aged progressives view of what it means to be liberal in modern times, when the modern kids have grown up with much more progressive and rigid standards around what its offensive and to whom and why. McGinley's Dean Mann is a liberal for sure, but is confounded by the kids that are in his school and what triggers them, but his kind of staunchness about not caring if he's offensive contrasts against Russo who never wants to offend but always does (and then there's Ruck's Dean Riggs who is definitely a conservative who Mann is further contrasted against).

I'm unfamiliar with Charly Clive as a performer, but she's getting a real spotlight role here. Clive manages to be one of the messiest people currently on television without being even close to becoming a nightmare to watch. She is very much Greg Russo's daughter. She brings warmth and sympathy to Katie, while also still being somewhat incapable of getting out of her own way. It's a funny dynamic she has with Dunster who should be an absolute villain, yet, Katie still loves him and we can see, if only a hint, as to why.  Of course, he is also a monster, and the relationship he has with Sunny should be problematic, but Sunny is also a character here too, not a villain, and one who is much more an active participant in her relationship than a passive one (she's also somewhat spectrum coded, which will be interesting to see if the show actually explores).

There are numerous supporting players, including the local campus police officer (Rory Scoville) and Mann's assistant (Annie Mumolo) as well as over a half dozen familar student faces already populating the campus and classrooms. In true Lawrence fashion, we're seeing the mixing and matching of these characters only a few episodes in, so while there's a lot of entanglements to sort through, the "hangout" vibes are already in sight.

Rooster is a funny, warm, and hilariously melodramatic show ... like at the end of the first episode Katie burns down Archie's house by accident after he tells her that Sunny is pregnant. There are repercussions but nothing in this show is presented as end of the world for anyone. It's another Lawrence specialty being able to find both the comedic and emotional core, and to balance them just right. 

Rooster is already an immediate favourite, and if Shrinking is coming to an end or going on hiatus, it is the perfect replacement. Scrubs I let go of midway through its original run, most probably because life was a bit tumultuous at the time (and I may not have had access to cable) rather than anything to do with the quality of the show in its later seasons, but at the same time despite being capably updated, it still feels like a show I watched 20 year ago and I'm not necessarily that committed to sticking with it. 

If Shrinking ends with this third season, I'll be okay with it, but I really want to see what a Season 4 would look like given all the fluctuations we're seeing at this season's close. (But if we're talking about a Lawrence show I'm desperate to see return, well, where's Season 2 of Bad Monkey, Bill?) We're in another crazy time, surely the craziest in our lifetime and not getting brighter any time soon, so these are the feel-good shows we kind of need in theses.