KWIF The Secret Agent (+2)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. It's Olympics week, full of figure skating controversies, ski jumping controversies, and yes, even curling controversies. All it really left time for was a Saturday double feature at the movies.

This Week:
The Secret Agent (aka "O Agente Secreto" - 2025, d. Kleber Mendonça Filho - in theatre)
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2026, d. Gore Verbinski - in theatre)
Summer of the Colt ("Tales for all #8", 1989, d. André Melançon - Crave)

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The Secret Agent is the latest of unlikely critical darlings to transcend the festival circuit into both audience attention and awards acclaim. The Brazilian film debuted at Cannes where it won best actor for Wagner Moura and best director for Filho and has now achieved the rare double nomination at the Oscars for Best Foreign Feature and Best Feature, along with other nods its way. 

I've been keen on seeing the film since it's Cannes triumph, intrigued by the title and its 1977 setting because I'm sort of an espionage guy. I knew little else going in, other than many critics casually described it as "weird", and "not really a spy movie". I hadn't even seen a trailer.

And, indeed, it is a weird film, but not weird for weirdness sake. It makes highly unusual storytelling decisions which are, in its own way, disarming without being shocking.. You cannot anticipate the moves this film makes, not without prior awareness, and even then, it would be really hard to see how the pieces fit without experiencing how they actually play out in concert with each other.

The Academy Awards have really embraced the atypical in recent years, starting with The Shape of Water, and continuing with Everything, Everywhere All At Once and Poor Things among others in recent years. Given how outre the storytelling is here, I would say this is maybe its most unusual best picture nomination thus far. And yet, all that uncommon narrative is in service of something. I'll come back to that.

When we meet Wagner Moura's Marcelo, he's pulled into a gas station in his yellow Volkswagen Beetle. Before he's even stopped the car he spies a dead body in the adjacent dusty field, covered by a sheet of cardboard. His gut instinct is to keep going, even as the portly station attendant comes out. It's a bad scene but it's evident there's more on Marcelo's mind than just the dead body. The title of the film crafts in the viewer's mind all sorts of paranoid thoughts on behalf of Marcelo. There's an incredible tension to the scene that the charismatic station attendant slowly disarms, finally easing when the attendant shoos a pack of wild dogs away from the body as if he's had to do it dozens of times by now. But then a police car shows up and the tension's right back up again as they're not there for the body, but to pay attention to the yellow VW they had passed (once again, the tension is only disarmed by comedy, as a family-filled car is about to pull into the station, only to spy the body and rethink their decision, the young children catch sight and scream). 

It's an incredible sequence, waves of tension and levity, masterfully crafted and beautifully composed. At the same time it's an aside but also sets the tables for the film. Carnival is happening and apparently crime and deaths are rampant while it goes on. Marcelo is anxious about something, police especially, but it will be some time before we find out what it is he's so nervous about. There's corruption aplenty, and Marcelo's is  tense but also a nimble thinker.

The first scene is prefaced by a series of pictures, pictures that look like legit photos of the era and not manufactured for the film. It's easy enough to intone that director Filho is setting the scene for the time, place and attitude of the film (as is the caption, "Brazil 1977, a time of great mischief" which seems to be an understatement). I do not have any context for Brazil of this time period, it's political turmoil of the time is not something I've ever delved into. The fact that there is political upheaval is not lost on the viewer, but what is actually happening is not explained. This is not a film interested in educating an exterior audience, and I'm sure Brazilians are very in tune with the the imagery, captions, billboards, and intonations made in the film that would float past or at least not fully register with an outside audience.

It is then credit to the film's writer/director that this film so readily resonates outside its home country. At first it may be his stylistic choices, but any examination of what the stylistic choices are about all lead back to the themes of the film, which are about corruption, class structures, money, power and justice, as well as the unusual bonds of families. There's also too much to unpack after only one viewing.

Marcelo finds himself in Recife - a northeastern coastal city in Brazil - hosted in a, for lack of better term, refugee hostel with others who we learn are fleeing persecution of some sort or another. Also in Recife is Marcelo's son and his in-laws. Marcelo's has to remind his son that the boy's mother died of cancer, but it seems unspoken that she was perhaps assassinated. Marcelo's intent is to get his son and flee the country, but obstacles are in the way. In the meantime, he's been posted at a documents bureau, where he searches for some form of identification of his mother, a seeming lifelong quest he's had to just prove her existence (the story, explained late in the film, is a troubling one, and seems to have specific cultural resonance to the country that I don't fully understand).

Meanwhile, a shark is found with a human leg inside it. The police chief and his two thug sons seem very intent on handling this discovery themselves. In the wake of Jaws' success, the film's reputation living large in the minds of kids too young to see it, the story of the leg takes on a life of its own in the newspapers. Urban legends are built up around the leg, the phantom limb starts taking on a life of its own. 

Marcelo is also being hunted by two hitmen, a father/stepson team. The repeating pattern of fathers and sons and parents and children seems very deliberate, yet I struggle to understand fully the significance. Again, this is a film that will need repeat viewings and probably some extracurricular reading for full dissection. And these seemingly disparate threads - Marcelo, the police chief and the hitmen - all become rather woven into the same thatch. 

Outside all of this is a piece of the film set in the relative modern day, where a young woman is listening and digitizing audiocassettes featuring the voices of some of the players in the film. The abrupt jumps to the modern day are just that, abrupt, and yet, there's a sort of comfort in the fact that this character is discovering the events along with us. She seems to know more than we do, but with less exacting detail. The bigger surprise of these segments is they progress without ever using them as opportunity for exposition, which could have easily been the case. The purpose of these scenes, though they interrupt only a few times in the film, is only made clear in the final sequence of the movie, and it's kind of the lynchpin to the whole thing.

The Secret Agent is not at all what I expected given the title, and it's a far more unique film than I could ever have anticipated. It's not far afield from the works of a Bong Joon Ho or Yorgos Lanthamos, and yet director Filho is also not aping other directors work either. If ever he was in the past, in this his fourth feature, he's operating with his own voice (I'll need to dig up his three prior productions).  Moura, who has been quietly proficient in supporting (and even lead) roles in North American productions, shines here as both a charming and adept protagonist. Expect Moura to get a few big chances to shine in the next few years. 

I predict The Secret Agent won't win any Academy Awards in its nominated categories except perhaps Best Foreign, but given how it penetrated this year's ballot, I expect Filho will be a prominent awards contender and higher profile filmmaker in the coming years. The film, however, will live on beyond this year. It's just too deep and too unique to get lost in the sea of generic movies.

[Poster talk... many of the Secret Agent posters adopt the aesthetic of 70's spy or paranoia thriller posters, whether it's using a painted style of the era, or establishing the feel of a hand-cropped photograph. I love so many of the posters for this film. The most common theme across the posters is the image of Moura holding a telephone, looking anxious...such a 70's vibe recalling the image of Gene Hackman with the headphones on in The Conversation or Robert Redford at the telephone in 3 Days of the Condor.]

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Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is a time loop movie that doesn't show you start and end of the time loop, it takes place completely within the span of one loop. Loop number 118, if we're to believe Sam Rockwell's unnamed man from the future. 

The film opens with a rapid sequence of up close shots of aspects of a Los Angeles diner setting. Focusing more on the patrons than objects, but giving us little hints as to character or dynamics without showing us their faces. We get a sense that there's life here. And then there's a rattle, a barely noticeable skip in the image and a tell-tale "fwump" sound effect that tells us savvy audience members that something metaphysical, even temporal, has happened.

Into a busy diner walks Rockwell, sporting massive scraggly reddish-gray beard, a wild look in his eye, a manic trash-bin wardrobe, and complete disregard for any sort of social formalities. He interrupt the scene, starts spouting some end-of-the-world gibberish, touches upon his time-travel shenanigans and starts looking for recruits to help save the world. He's convinced the right combination of people in this diner will save humanity from a dystopian future ruled by artificial intelligence, but he just keeps finding disaster. Nobody is interested, which, he seems prepared for. 

But this time, he gets a volunteer from Susan (Juno Temple) who we learn in flashback, lost her son in a school shooting. No worries about that though, as she finds out her son can be cloned and because he died in a school shooting, the government will pay for most of it, and what they don't cover can be paid for by her son-clone having a sponsored ads setting.

The man from the future conscripts the rest of his crew, including troubled couple Mark (Michael Peña) and Janet (Zazie Beetz), teachers who we learn accidentally awakened the teenage social media hive mind and are now on the run.

The final team member was hesitantly accepted by the man from the future. At first Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), in her princess party dress and smudged makeup, was deemed too weird, but a trick of a fateful bottle of hot sauce convinces the man to bring her along.  We learn that Ingrid was born with an allergy to phones and wifi. The signals give her headaches and trigger nose bleeds. She kind of hates the technological world, as it's a bit of a hellscape for her to navigate.

The film jumps between the perilous journey the rag tag group needs to make from the diner to a 9-year-old's house where the child is busy inventing the AI that will disrupt the world and the flashbacks that fill in the blanks on the most prominent members of the group. (Asim Choudhry's Scott doesn't get such treatment, alas). 

The story in general, but flashbacks especially, feel like truncated, lighthearted episodes of Black Mirror, just technology accepted into society but making everything slightly worse when promising to make things better. It's hard not to call this "Black Mirror Lite" but it kinda is.

The third act makes some big moves and in doing so undercuts its own reality. The logic of the film seems to get tossed aside unless I'm missing a clear explanation/revelation somewhere.  It doesn't stop being entertaining, but it doesn't hold together conceptually.

The performances are fun, by and large, and there's a good sense of humour around the idea of technology destroying our lives but also being impossible to live without. It's really in how it's applied, awareness of the impact it has, and how we react to it that the film is concerned with, but...not that concerned. It's a satire, but it's also just silly. It's making statements but it's not committing to them. Things that would normally get a GenZ eyeroll would likely slip past them because it's not really old-man-yelling-at-clouds.  

Director Verbinski is known for being a visual stylist on The Ring and Pirates of the Carribean movies, and there's no doubt this is a film that looks a lot better than its twenty million dollar budget. But whatever style Verbinski brings is top loaded in a way, with some exceptionally interesting and well composed shots calling attention to themselves in the film's opening sequence and then seemingly falling away for the rest of the film (perhaps intricate compositions take time which costs money?).

I like both the main story and the flashbacks and they do all connect, but they almost feel like they should be separate pieces. There's probably a whole 90-minute "one crazy night" story in just the team getting from point A to point B, but the flashbacks interrupt that flow (and the lack of Rockwell in them is to their greatest detriment). Each of these microstories could have possibly supported their own feature, or maybe this could have been a multi-part anthology rather than a movie. 

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is solidly entertaining, but I imagine I'll have largely forgotten about it in a few months.

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As I prepared to do my Saturday double-feature this week, the intent was to finally knock The Secret Agent off my list (success) but the second feature was more up in the air. A few intriguing-but-still-February releases had just come out, but there were also a few Oscar contenders I could pick off. The biggest of them is Sentimental Value, a family drama centered around filmmaking (oh, the Oscars love films about films and filmmaking). I realized/remembered, in this decision-making moment, that I am never excited to see a dramatic movie. Nothing about watching characters deal (or not deal) with their emotions or confronting the challenges or difficulties they face in their lives has any appeal to me...that is unless there's some sort of genre twist to it. It doesn't sound like there's a genre twist to Sentimental Value, and I suspect I will never see that film in my lifetime, unless I wind up doing some stupid boy project where it slots into (I can't even fathom what that one would be).

So imagine my surprise when I get to the next "Tales for all"* film on the list, Summer of the Colt, which turns out to be a horse-centric family drama. I think what appeals to me even less than a dramatic film is a dramatic film centered around horses. Black Beauty or The Black Stallion, no thank you.

(*"Tales for all" being the series of family films made by Quebec producer Rock Demers, the earliest of its installments which were mainstays on Canadian weekend afternoon television through much of the 1980's and 1990's)

So it's no surprise to me that I found the first half of this film to be nearly interminable. The set-up finds Laura, Daniel and Felipe visiting their Grandfather's horse ranch in Argentina. They're met by their young friend Martin, whose family lives and works on the ranch.  But Laura is a young woman now, and not as interested in playing as the boys. There's horse riding aplenty and kids being kids and it's all so tranquil and kind of pointless for what seems like forever. 

It should also be mentioned that this is an Argentinian co-production with Demers, and it was most likely filmed in Spanish as both the English and French dubs do not sync with the performers' mouths. It's an obstacle. Also an obstacle, as we find with most of the "Tales for all" is the child actors are not the most seasoned performers and a lot of their performances can be very stilted and/or conveying incorrect emotion. The English dub voice performers are pretty solid though, but all this is barriers to enjoyment. It's important to establish all this film had going against it, because, in the end, I actually quite liked it overall.

What builds slowly in the film is Laura's sensing hostility from her Grandfather. He loved her just last year and now he's suddenly standoffish, cold, and even mean towards her. She sees it as sexism, that now that she's blossoming into womanhood, she's not such a tomboy, and he can't relate to her. But he's also not trying. So she takes drastic measures to try and fit in with the boys, by cutting off her long locks into a choppy bob. Her Grandfather can only retort snidely "Well, I hope you're proud".  The film sometimes presents Laura from Grandfather's point of view, and he sometimes catches sight of her and he sees an entirely different person. We can infer, based on comments made, that he's seeing in her the children's grandmother, who left for Paris and never came back, and it's too much for him to bear. It would seem  one tainted experience with a woman nearly 50 years ago just turned him into an old misogynist and a control freak.

Meanwhile summer pals Daniel and Martin are having a great time chumming around, doing horse sports and such, but when Martin points out a golden colt to Daniel, Daniel falls in love with the horse and asks his Grandfather if he can have it. His Grandfather agrees, but only if he can break the horse in... neither Daniel or Grandfather realizing that Martin has already bonded with the horse and has been slowly breaking the horse in for weeks already. 

It's a juvenile love triangle, but instead of a girl, it's a horse. Daniel becomes obsessed with the horse... some choice Daniel quotes:

D. "I've never seen a horse like that.... He's the one I want... Yeah, I want him for myself. He's beautiful!"
D. "Be quiet, Martin, he belongs to me!"
D. "you and me will do a lot together you'll see. You and me will go everywhere together...you're mine now."
D. "you had no right to let anyone else mount you! You're mine!"

Don't read these as gentle cooing, no read them as a steely-eyed psychopath, because that's how they come across (at least in the dub).

When Daniel catches Martin riding "his" horse, their friendship becomes a bitter rivalry. That is, until the horse bucks Daniel off and nearly kills him (for a second there, I thought it did, which I wouldn't put past one of these "Tales for all" to do), and then it's all bros before ho(rs)es. Well, not really, but the boys do talk it out.

The second half of the film spurts to life in full blown telenovela style. Just meaty melodrama with intense looks and leers, and heightened emotions which could lead anywhere. At one point Daniel pulls back his bed covers to find his grandfather has left him a silver-sheathed knife... a real Chekhovian play where we have to legitimately worry if this obsessed, nearly-psychopathic kid is going to stab another kid over a horse.

Laura's journey into young adulthood starts off as a real non-entity in the film, as Laura spends much of her time either alone or with her Great Aunt. But her delight in becoming a woman starts to sour because her relationship with her Grandfather calls into question how these changes in her body affect how others see her, it's a real mind fuck, and she doesn't understand it. She tries to get clarity and only gets pushed away. So the only way for her to process is through drastic measures and even those don't work. As coming of age stories go, it's pretty powerful at times. 

Likewise Grandfather is not just this nasty figure, he's actually pretty kind, but also myopic and out of touch with his own emotional core. His relationship with his grandchildren is based on a foundation of control, and suddenly with Laura and Daniel he's finding his control challenged. They are children, not horses, as Laura reminds him, they should not have to be broken in.

The film's second half shows the character developing emotional intelligence, realizing that the feelings they have inside don't need to stay there. Talking about things is the only way to make a situation better, even if it's uncomfortable.

Visually, Summer of the Colt is perfunctory, it does the job it needs to do. It captures the horses nicely and gets those emotive looks from the performers right center of the frame in full melodramatic fashion. There's little fancy here, but it all works. 

Next to Bach and Broccoli it's the most cohesive and resonant of the "Tales for all" but without a real genre hook, it's not quite as fun.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Greenland 2: Migration

2026, Ric Roman Waugh (Greenland) -- download

The original Greenland came out in 2020, during The Pandemic which I was calling The Pause at the time. Disaster Movie seemed an entirely appropriate response for a world that kind of felt like it was ending, but nobody really believed it was. We believed we would end up exactly where we did end up -- barely remembering that things were really different then and only shadows of the traumatic time haunting us. But in this first movie, the world did end -- the comet Clarke did hit the Earth, and the only survivors were those that made it to the bunker in Greenland. 

Except it didn't. Only a large chunk of Clarke hit the planet, likely many large chunks, but the world did not truly end. Civilized life did, but we persisted. Five years later, life in the Greenland bunker has become challenging and tenuous. Outside is radiation and toxic storms. Inside is boredom, tension and trauma. They have minimal contact with other bunkers and groups of survivors, as well as a rumour about a supposed paradise tucked inside the crater of the largest Clarke chunk, in southern France. Apparently the crater walls protect all within from radiation storms and other terrible stuff. 

The movie hand-waves this ridiculous idea away without so much as a quick argument around a bunker council table. I mean, the usual stuff of post-apocalyptic movies hasn't even happened. What about the atomic winter? Isn't it a mainstay of asteroid strikes that large amounts of material are tossed into the atmosphere bringing on endless winter? Maybe that happened in the first couple of years, but outside doesn't reflect it. Things are wrecked, but ... its all still there. And there are survivors in other bunkers and elsewhere.

And then a catastrophic earthquake strikes, tearing open the bunker and a tsunami wipes out pretty much all of the inhabitants. All but a handful are killed, and in that handful are our main characters John Garrity (Gerard Butler, Plane), his wife Allison (Morena Baccarin, Deadpool) and their now teenage son Nathan (Roman Griffin Davis, The Long Walk). They escape in a beached lifeboat before the wave kills everyone else. Everyone. Fuck you, Disaster Movie -- these people survived the comet strike and five years inside a bunker, only to be killed en masse so this movie can have an imposed road trip to a mythical New Eden. I just didn't like that premise. But it gave a reason to recreate the A to B trip of the first movie, like all great/terrible sequels do. 

So, Road Trip! The lifeboat makes it to the coast of England, Liverpool to be precise, where... well, things aren't wiped out, they are just rather typical examples of po-ap life. The military has its own bunker, which they keep survivors out of, but at least there are Outside Survivors. Five years on they have food, water and refuge from the tsunamis and radiation storms! Until the Garrity-s show up and a storm scatters them to all corners. Again, fuck you Disaster Movie. OBVIOUSLY these Outside Survivors have been surviving these storms, so then why does panic ensue. They must have safer refuges nearby but instead they all try to outrun the thing. Most don't. John trades his watch for a spot in a camper van for him and his family. 

And the movie continues the trip, interrupted by a series of violent spectacles that keep the focus on this little family, and only the family. They escape the sea, in that little lifeboat, with a few from the bunker. One dies at the gates in Liverpool, another is killed by raiders as they drive south. In fact, the driver of the camper van is killed when everyone stops for a respite and Clarke reminds us it still has quite a few chunks left to throw at the planet. 

That is the sequel-itis formula that just irritates the fuck out of me. Sequels often have to follow the beats and moods that made the first popular and memorable. The first Greenland had only the main characters traveling, each with some additional cast, who dies or move on without the others, until its only the little family left heading to Greenland. The first movie also had occasional bouts of rocks falling from the sky at precise angles, destroying cars and survivors. Sure, evocative scenes. And economy of cast is easier to manage. But...

Anywayz, from England, they cross the channel, which is, well, drained like a leaky bath tub. Apparently a great crack formed and all the water drained away. Exceeeept, there are lots of oceans & seas to either side of the English Channel -- the water should be still flowing. But no, they have to evoke scenes of po-ap wastelands so cross a desert between England and France, and cross over rickety ladders across the big crack, which then shakes & rattles dumping any other visible survivors into said crack, leaving our family again, alone, to head into France.

This is where they learn that the Clarke Crater is indeed a real thing and that there is a war being fought over it. Yes, there are enough out-of-bunker survivors in France, where the biggest chunk of the comet smashed into the planet to have armies fighting over entrance into this mythical paradise. A war that has a front-line and trenches and lots of bullets. While, again, very evocative in its depiction, it was so very very silly. The movie feels very much like it spit-balled a story & script in order to fulfill an agreement. 

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Fackham Hall

2025, Jim O'Hanlon (Your Christmas or Mine?) -- download

OK, a British absurdist comedic parody of other classic British movies about the divide between upper-class and lower-class in the 1930s; think Merchant Ivory or Downton Abbey, but with Jimmy Carr's humour, albeit tamed down significantly. Apparently its based on an idea he and his brother Patrick put together.

The Davenports are the lords of Fackham Hall but that is in jeopardy because Lord Davenport (Damian Lewis, Billions) has had no male heirs. His daughter Poppy (Emma Laird, 28 Years Later) is set to marry her first cousin Archibald (insert, "Eww, David."; Tom Felton, Rise of the Planet of the Apes), while his other daughter Rose (Thomasin McKensie, Last Night in Soho) is the weird one, who reads books and wears glasses ! Except on the day of the wedding Poppy runs off with a local manure hawker, for love, leaving the family in disarray. Meanwhile Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe, The Witcher), low-class pick pocket and orphan, has found his way into the home whilst delivering a message. He was also run down earlier, by Rose, when their eyes met and sparks flew.

Oh, and they toss in some Agatha Christie by killing someone off, requiring a detective to show up and solve a mystery.

Its not like the plot really matters. What really matters is the non-stop silliness and crass humour. But again, rather tamed down considering its from the mind of Jimmy Carr. The movie maintains the play on language common to the genre they are spoofing, as well as a heavy dose of Cockney mockery, but never really gets as crass as he can in his own stand-up. I think I might have been disappointed by that timidity. Jimmy himself has a bigger-than-cameo role as the minister who constantly pauses his sermons in the wrong spots (insert shocked titters), and who looks like Hitler.

It was alright, I chuckled a lot and enjoyed myself. Admittedly, I am not a big fan of the parody comedy movie genre (yes, that includes The Naked Gun) but I was hoping this could be just a bit sharper in its wit. I prefer my comedy without giant floating turds, and no, not metaphorical ones. 

KWIF: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and Send Help

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. A Horror, Not Horror double feature at the movie theatre.

This Week:
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026, d. Nia DaCosta - in theatre)
Sent Help (2026, d. Sam Raimi - in theatre)

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The 28 X Later franchise could have so very easily been franchised all to hell into a series of bog-standard direct-to-streaming films, like 29 Weeks Later or 2.8 Years Later or whatever, just shitty no-concept movies about boring-ass idiots getting killing -and getting killed by rage-virus zombies.  As direly awful as our world is now, at least we can say that never happened.

Instead, the creators of perhaps the only zombie film to measure up to George Romero's still-vital classics seemed to retain some ability to control the fate of the series, and reunited 20 years later to bring a new saga to life within the reality that they created.  

In last year's Danny Boyle-directed, Alex Garland-scripted 28 Years Later we met young Spike (Alfie Williams) who was mollycoddled by his ailing mother and as such didn't have the resolute toughness needed to venture into the rage-zombie infested wilds and survive. But when the only hope for his mother was the mad doctor Ian Kelson (Ralph Feinnes), Spike sets out on an adventure to seek his help. When we finally meet Kelson, we learn he's spent the intervening 28 years studying and surviving among the infected, and building epic shrines out of the remains (bone temples, one might call them) out of the many dead and departed.  We also learned of the concept of Alphas, a sort of leader to the rage-infected that have swollen to gargantuan proportions and are seemingly unstoppable.

When we last left Spike, he had ventured off from his community on his own journey of self-discovery, meeting in the prior film's final frame, the Jimmys, a group of blonde wig and tracksuit-wearing roughnecks who knows parkour and dispense the rage zombies without any apprehension. As much as Spike was saved by the Jimmys, it was clear he was not safe.

This film picks up showing us exactly how not-safe Spike truly is. He's been put up against another Jimmy in a fight to the death. The winner gets to be one leader Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell)'s seven fingers, the loser gets to be free of this hellish reality. Spike triumphs because in spite of his timidity, his instincts serve him well, but it's clear that just because he won his place in the Jimmys, bestowed his own wig and tracksuit, it doesn't mean he's been accepted as one of them nor does he actually want to be one of them.  

Sir Jimmy, you see, is a Satanist of his own devising. He teaches his seven fingers the word of his father, Old Nick, who whispers in his head what his wishes are: dispense "charity" and sacrifice on the land. Sir Jimmy was the child of a preacher but was still quite young when the virus spread across the land, and his understanding of the world is shaped by his lack of understanding of the religion that was taught to him, and his own psychopathic sense of self-importance means he desires to learn less about the world, as it's easier to help it burn than to do anything else.

Meanwhile Dr. Kelson befriends an Alpha named Samson. Samson seems addicted to Kelson's morphine-laced darts, and keeps returning to Kelson for another hit.  The morphine seems to calm the rage virus within the Alpha, Kelson notes, and in the beast's haze, Kelson sees a semblance of humanity in Samson's eyes. Kelson continues to experiment with Samson, yielding highly unexpected results, and a breakthrough on the nature of the rage virus. What he learns would, in the old society, be the key to combating, maybe even curing the virus, but the machines of mass production and distribution have long since passed, so the reality of this discovery is tantamount to nothing much at all. But with Samson, Kelson has found an odd friendship, and a new purpose as he engages his scientific brain once again.

The two worlds, however, are bound to collide, and when it does, it's not the Grand Guignal I think we come to expect from horror films. Instead it's something far more dramatic and theatrical. One of the Jimmys spies Kelson cavorting with an Alpha and thinks the red-skinned man (as a result of Kelson's iodine bathing) is Old Nick. Jimmy himself, approaches the man he thinks to be his father, but is quickly assured otherwise, and the two engage in a most unexpected exchange.

I expect there will be a big contingent of horror fans, the kind who watch said films because they get a charge out of the gore and violence, who will be utterly confounded by the direction of this series, who will pretty much hate the majority of this film. It is a movie, and now a series, that is not at all interested in the threats of zombies and viruses, and unlike 28 Days Later it's also not reiterating its case that man is still the most dangerous threat to other men.

No, instead, Garland, here with director Nia DaCosta, are much more interested in exploring how people retain their humanity, their hope and optimism in a world where imperative number one is survival.  In this story, Sir Jimmy isn't the same character as Major West in 28 Years Later. Both are convinced that in this new world that all the power to control society that remains is theirs for the taking, but where Major West approached it as a military strategy with knowing sacrifices to be made, Jimmy approaches the world from a stunted idea of the lessons he learned as a child, and has developed really no further, except for being more cruel and complacent. The suspense of the film is largely in the worry for Spike, and whether the Jimmys will corrupt his innocence. 

With Dr. Kelson, he's finding hope in science and humanity in monsters. The worry is that there's a Grizzly Man situation in play, with Dr. Kelson getting too comfortable around the beast he thinks he's befriended. This is not a conventional horror movie set up by any means anyway, so we have to abandon convention horror movie thinking that things will go horribly, terribly awry for Kelson. It's not just Kelson that humanizes Samson, but the film does as well, quite remarkably. Chi Lewis-Parry's physical and emotional portrayal of Samson is remarkable, so much of it necessitating subtle changes in posture or facial tension or just softness in the eyes.  There is a verbal component as well, one that goes beyond just rage virus screaming.

It's hard to recommend The Bone Temple as a stand-alone film, as it does need the setup of 28 Years Later for some of our understanding of Kelson and Spike and to a lesser degree Samson and Sir Jimmy. But at the same time, The Bone Temple is a very different film than everything else in this series and I found it exceptional and fascinating. Along with backing off of zombie attacks (they're still here, just not the focus), DaCosta also steps away from shooting with Boyle's grittier sensibilities (he shot 28 Years Later largely on an iPhone) and instead focuses heavily on composition and lighting, rendering a surprisingly beautiful movie to look at. The shadows are heavy and dark, while the film's most prominent light, fire, is rendered in vibrant reds, oranges and yellows. 

For some The Bone Temple may suffer from middle-film-itis, where much of the weight is in the set-up film and the concluding film rendering this feeling but an interlude or stop-gap, but this is such a soulful, considerate and contemplative movie, that I find it impossible to dismiss. Quite the opposite, this lives so much larger in my mind than anything from the series that came prior.

But is it horror? Close...let's say horror-adjacent.

---

If you've seen the trailer for Send Help, the premise is evident. An underappreciated female employee and her dickhole boss are stranded on an island after a plane crash. He's injured and suddenly she's in charge, and it looks like she's gone a little gonzo.

And yeah, that's sort of it, with maybe just a little more nuance. Rachel McAdams plays Linda Liddle, a meek, homely member of the Planning and Strategy team at a Fortune 500 company. She is the unsung rockstar of that company, an absolute wizard with numbers and planning, but also an absolute doormat. The company's founder has recently passed and his son, Bradley Peston (Dylan O'Brien) is taking over, and appointing his college buddy into the VP position promised to Linda. She tries to ingratiate herself to Bradley but succeeds at the opposite, and Bradley, the tried-and-true child-of-money, full of self-importance, entitlement and unearned status, is frankly disgusted by her. He's been told that she's basically the glue holding the company together, but Bradley seems to want her gone, and puts her on the plane to Thailand where they're brokering an acquisition, looking for her to fail.

The private jet doesn't make it and, as we saw in the trailer, Linda (who studies survival techniques as her chief hobby) takes charge. Injured Bradley cannot concede that he is Linda's superior, her better, that she shouldn't be deferential to him, to listen to his barking commands and his plans and strategies. As much as he needs Linda for everything, he cannot admit such. Even when he ventures off on his own and comes crawling back to her, it's not with any sense of concession... he's admitting defeat, his own ineptitude for survival, but if she's in charge he can only resent her for it.  

This is a really sly and devilish two-hander that refuses to go to expected places. It's a fantasy but it's grounded in a single idea that someone like Bradley will always view someone like Linda as inferior in every situation. And so all the moments and all the opportunities Linda gives Bradley to see her as something other than an object of derision fail over and over again. Bradley can never let go, and always looks for an edge, a leg up on Linda, some way to take control of the situation he is completely and totally incapable of actually competently being in charge of.

In similar films in the past, Linda would be in the right, up until she was in the wrong. Here, she has an early opportunity for rescue, but she says "not yet" (Bradley is ignorant of this moment). It's a savvy way to undermine Linda as the hero of our picture. Where we're with her 100% in the beginning as a trod-upon underdog, with the sudden turn of tables post-crash, we're maybe only 75% with her on her decision not to be rescued. As the film progresses, it becomes harder and harder to stay on Linda's side. Has she become unhinged?  In some films, we would then have our allegiances and sympathies turn to the only other character on screen, but Bradley never earns our trust or allegiance as an audience, and so by default Linda stays our protagonist, even as her actions become more and more extreme.

Sam Raimi has had a very varied career, starting in horror and comedy-horror and adventure-horror, before turning to suspense and westerns and superhero and fantasy movies. Raimi is more than capable of fantastic drama and epic adventure but this is where fans always want him to be. Like Drag Me To Hell or Evil Dead 2, the purest Raimi delivers an unserious thriller full of gross-out gags meant to put a big smile on the audience's face and squeal with equal parts laughter and revulsion.  If he wants to do another Spider-Man or Doctor Strange, fine, I'll take it happily, but this type of production is the director's sweet spot. What Raimi does to McAdams in that boar-hunting scene is as glee-inducing as anything he ever did to Bruce Campbell, and there should be a line-up of A-list actors wanting to get that same treatment at the master's hands.

A damn fun time at the movies.

But is it horror? Nah, it's not really ever scary, it's too much fun. There is one jump-scare though, but otherwise there's no real intent to scare the audience.

KWIF: Better Man (+3)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. "Week" with a ten-day break in between watching films. There were no films watched in the 10 days in the UK. There were British panel shows and game shows to delight in or be puzzled by in the later evenings. 

This Week:

Better Man (2024, d. Michael Gracey - on plane)
Relay (2025, d. David Mackenzie - amazonprime with ads)
Mother (2009, d. Bong Joon Ho - on plane)
Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller ("Tales for All #7" - 1988, d. Michael Rubbo - crave)

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I haven't really given two thoughts to Robbie Williams in the past 30 years. Even when his bigger hits were exploding on the charts in the UK and here in Canada ("Millennium", "Angels") it was not.at.all the kind of music I was remotely close to being interested in listening to.

The idea of a film about the story of Robbie Williams' rise to fame as part of manufactured boy band Take That, and then his own solo career was of little interest, because I just had nothing invested in the man or his career or his music.

But why was he being played by a cgi ape-man?
That's... a choice.
It's a choice that had me at least mildly intrigued, but not enough to actually watch it.

And then film essayist Patrick Willems wouldn't shut up about Better Man for much of his 2025 output, most centrally in his essay on "Are biopics good now?" It was that latter essay that sold me on seeing the film. And now I get what he was talking about..

If Better Man were fiction, it would be an A+ achievement.It really is only the fact that Williams himself is directly involved in the telling of his own story that tarnishes the film's lustre, if only a little. Surprisingly, Williams, a man of much braggadocio, is also one of incredible self-awareness and the crooner's candour about his life, his demons, his mental health struggles, his substance abuses, his abrasive personality and his daddy issues all make for a remarkable story of success and self-destruction.

It's not a unique story, particularly in the musician biopic game, but as Ursula K. Leguin said,  the story is not in the plot but in the telling, and Better Man is remarkably told.

Williams narrates and provides singing vocals for the character of himself (otherwise performed by Jonno Davies in mocap), who, yes is an anthropomorphised chimpanzee. The reason for this is because of his own self loathing, his perception of himself as something of a wild animal, as something other. His physical appearance is not something any other character in the film comments upon, but from moment one it sets the stage for metaphor being very important to this film. He's not literally an ape, and he doesn't literally think himself an ape, but from his pov he's not properly human.

From a very young age, Williams tells us, he's had a knack for showmanship, and becoming *someone* in the world of entertainment was his only dream, until that dream came true, and then it wasn't enough. He needed the spotlight, he needed the credit, he needed to express himself, but didn't think he had the support.

His dad, Peter (Steve Pemberton), left him and his family when he was a child to become a stand-up comedian, a performer, changing his name from Williams to Conway, who really knows for what reason, but he didn't see his son again for many, many years.

Williams finds himself in the next big thing, the boy band Take That, and it's, again, part of the metaphor. He becomes a singing and dancing monkey. And it's here the self-loathing really takes hold, and doesn't let go. He sees reflections of himself in the audience, taunting him, lambasting him, and he turns to drugs and alcohol to shake them, but these crutches seem to only make the demons stronger.

His father returns to his life, but only because he's successful, and after being booted from Take That for his "bad boy behaviour" he finds solace in a chance meeting with girl group singer Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno) of All Saints.  The film is exceptionally careful not to make too much out of the other members of Take That or Nicole (or even, really, Willams' rivalry with Noel Gallagher), leaving the spotlight on himself, yes as the center of the film, but also as the person at fault in how things went sour in all those relationships.

The film's musical set-pieces are exceptional, and, as Patrick Willems pointed out in the aforementioned essay, they aren't just music for music's sake, not just getting Robbie Williams hits in the film, they actually have purpose and intention, and as far as I understand each track was re-recorded to emphasize the dramatic intent of the narrative. "Rock DJ" is arguably a song with terrible lyrics, but it's got banger energy and the resulting song-and-dance number is epic in scale meant to emphasize Take That's meteoric rise in the UK pop charts, and a bit of Robbie's stumbling along the way. It's full of humour and some crazy moments that make for a stunner of a sequence (that I'm sure would have played much better on the big screen than on an airplane seatback monitor). "She's The One" really hits home how important Nicole Appleton's arrival into Robbie's life was, but not enough to overcome his demons, as he hid them from her. "Something Beautiful" is structured as Williams heartache over Appleton being forced into an abortion by her manager if she wanted to stay in her band, something it seems Williams has never recovered from. And "Angels" is the powerful ballad about the loss of Williams' beloved Nan, and his regrets that his career, ego and substance abuses kept him apart from his family when they should have been his grounding rod.

The story is a rich (if only a snippet) of William's life, but manages to delve into his psyche effectively. I was not expecting to be anything but superficially entertained by Better Man but was astonished at how rich its text truly is. The culminating scene, as Williams belts out "Let Me Entertain You" finds him battling the record-setting crowd at Knebworth Stadium who have all turned into the doppelgangers of himself, all who have nothing nice to say to him. It's a ruthless battle that Williams has to win if he wants to live (and that is a question itself he wrestles with). It's an incredible scene and potent metaphor for what Williams was struggling with despite being rich and famous and talented.

Better Man was a film that got the better of me. I found myself weeping on the plane more than once (three times in fact) wiping my tears on my sleep hoping nobody was looking.  It was a seriously affecting journey that is a magic trick, because I still don't really care about Williams as a performer, nor do I particularly like his music, and his personality is as abrasive as yoga pants made of steel wool, but I really did love this movie. When it was over I immediately wanted to watch it again.

---

Relay is an intense thriller that starts our at a seven on the anxiety level an just sits in that simmering tension right until its finale. It's percolating drone of a soundtrack by Tony Doogan feels like getting needles pricked into your skin while tweezing hairs out...it's not exactly intolerable, but the discomfort level and sensory overstimulation is high.

The plot of the film finds Riz Ahmed's Ash helping Lily James' Sarah negotiate the return of some highly sensitive, highly classified documents that could cost a massive agri-corp's a tremendous amount of money as well as be exposed as responsible for deaths and illenesses globally. Sarah's conscience was initially to expose them for their callous capitalism, but the threats and intimidation got the better of her and she's reached out for services to help her return the documents for a cash payout.

This is Ash's business, the negotiation between both parties. As he says, both sides are his clients and he's looking to resolve the situation amicably. But in the meantime he's using every bit of leverage he can to squeeze the corporation into cooperating, when it's evident they've sent the dogs after Sarah, a very savvy and sophisticated mercenary team let by Dawson (Sam Worthington). 

The trick or it all is Ash never meets anyone in person, never talks to anyone directly. He uses the government-run teletype relay service for the deaf to communicate, a service which provides a person to interface between the disabled and non disabled parties. It doesn't retain any data on its callers and everything is strictly confidential. (My favourite parts of the film are the reactions of the different TTY agents as they work through the tense negotiations they are relaying, some acting cool, casual and professional, others looking decidedly uncomfortable or freaked out).

Dawson and company try to flush out Ash, while Ash tries to resist being enamoured with Sarah, who starts being a little flirtatious with her protector. For much of the film's runtime Relay feels like a classic 80's or 90's thriller that used to dominate the box office and it's a real cracker of one (although, given Relay's almost non-existent presence at the box office, it's not likely to revive the trend).

So it's just such a shame that the film, which accomplishes everything first-time screenplay writer Justin Piasecki and director David Mackenzie (of the excellent Hell or High Water) set out to do falls apart when one considers the details of the film after it's over.

I won't spoil that here, but read Toasty's post on Relay if you want those details and the comments section there for my feelings on them.

---

Mother's opening shot is of an expansive field of dry, tall grasses. Into the frame walks Kim Hye-Ja in her matronly garb, where she stops, stares down the camera lens for a beat or two, and then starts dancing. It's a tentative, reserved dance that also feels liberated somehow. It's mysterious, confusing, and delightful. It's hard not to think of it as a Lynchian moment, especially for how disconnected this "prologue" (or, maybe, overture?) feels from the film that starts immediately thereafter. What it does tell you is you're in a Bong Joon Ho film, that is for sure.

The next scene we see is Kim's "Mother" (she doesn't otherwise have a name) working in her herbal remedy shop chopping up some long stalks. Out the front door and across the street is her adult son Do-joon (Won Bin) who is holding up a dog on its hind legs and waving its front paws at his mother. A car whips down the street, striking Do-joon and Mother, distracted, slices her finger. Ignoring her own injury she races out to her son, who seems physically fine, but she's panicked over his bleeding (which is just her own blood on him). Do-joon's friend, Jin-tae (Jin Goo), grabs Do-joon and they run in pursuit of the Mercedes that ran him over. They go to the golf club to find the assailant responsible. In the process we learn that Do-joon is intellectually disabled and that Jin-tae is rough around the edges. Their mischief winds up in a brawl with golfing lawyers, and they all get arrested.

Mother dotes and coddles Do-joon (one scene finds Do-joon urinating against a wall and mother walking over and feeding him a broth while he urinates), and Do-joon has trouble remembering things, and is easily manipulated (it would appear that Jin-tae uses Do-joon to get himself out of trouble on a regular basis). 

A 15-year-old girl winds up dead, and Do-joon is implicated in the murder. The police railroad a confession out of him, which isn't all that hard, given his diminished capacity. The case is quickly closed and Mother is convinced of his innocence. He wouldn't hurt a fly, that is, unless you call him the "R" word, which will send him ballistic.

The film then is a dark comedy masking as a neo-noir (or a neo-noir masking as a dark comedy) as Mother attempts to conduct her own investigation. Mother clearly has traditional medicinal knowledge and social skills but otherwise does not seem well educated or savvy, and so her investigations are mostly blunders. But after she falsely accuses Jin-tae, she winds up enlisting his help to strong-arm information out of people, and he starts to fancy himself an ace detective.

The revelations around the case, as well as Mother's history with Do-joon, can get pretty shocking, as Do-joon's meditations and injuries in jail start to trigger memories, not just of the night the girl was murdered but also of memories from his childhood. It's all very dark, and sometimes very funny.

I used the term Lynchian before, and there's definitely some of that in Mother, as well as a sprinkle of Hitchcock as well, without a doubt, but overall this is inescapably a Bong Joon Ho production, his sense of humour and that slightly warped way of storytelling that is uniquely his own are prominently on display. There are ways stories are supposed to go, and then there are the ways a Bong Joon Ho story goes, and you can't often predict that. Class issues aren't at the core of the story, but the topic seems inescapable in Director Bong's work, and status does affect Mother's ability to investigate (and is also responsible for people underestimating her).

With the exception of his first feature, Barking Dogs Never Bite, I have now seen all of Director Bong's filmography and I adore him as a filmmaker. Everything he's made is a distinct pleasure, but I think Mother may be my favourite of his many exceptional works. I guess I'm just going to have to do a whole filmography rewatch to decide.

---

In my hazy recollection of the the CBC airings of the "Tales for all" series of films in the late 1980's and early 1990s, it was the English language productions that ran the most often and Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller seemed to be on all the time. Truth be told, I don't know that I ever watched the movie in full, but the idea of being able to magically put one's self onto a stamp and be able to travel to a new destination on that stamp, being returned to human upon arrival at the letter's intended destination...well, that's pure 1980's kid fantasy fuel right there.

So it's a cardinal sin for the film to take 45 minutes of it's 100 minute runtime to even bring up the idea of stamp-travelling, never mind putting it into action.

But that's not the only flaw of this film. The titular Tommy Tricker, for the first act of the film, is our protagonist. We watch as pre-teen Tommy hustles his fellow students into buying stamps he claims will be so valuable in the future, and as such should pay a premium for it today. He finds a more dedicated mark in Ralph James, an anxious, stuttering, toe-headed boy who shares the passion for stamp collecting with his father. Tommy pays his house a visit and tempts him with a rare set of stamps, but Ralph doesn't have much to offer him in return. In looking through Ralph's father's collection, they find a loose "Bluenose" stamp that Tommy manages to swindle Ralph out of. It was a bait and switch, Tommy showed him one set of stamps then gave Ralph another. Ralph's dad is going to be so pissed.

We see Tommy go to the stamp shop where he manages to cash out his newly acquired Bluenose for 300$ which he spends of groceries to feed his mother's vast brood of children. She asks where the money came from to which he replies "ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies".  

Tommy seems like a desperate young lad who makes opportunities where otherwise none would be. He's a troublemaker, a trickster, a hustler, a swindler, but it's evident why...it's survival for him. I'm not sure what lessons he needs to learn here, when you're dealing with class struggles, sometimes an upper-class kid like Ralph needs to be swindled by a lower-class kid like Tommy because some have too much and some have too few. It's not "right" but the systems are built for the rich to get rich off the backs of the poor, so sometimes the poor need to take back by any means necessary. 

But this isn't a class struggle film, this isn't a film that truly cares about understanding Tommy Tricker, because after all this early drudgery about stamps and stamp collecting (this is a reality where stamp collecting is seemingly everyone's biggest passion, the world over) the focus shifts suddenly to Ralph, and the absolute shitstorm he's in when his father finds out he got hustled. Through a truly convoluted and nonsensical series of events, Ralph's sister Nancy winds up with a seemingly worthless book of stamps from a deceased collector. Ralph, in a rage, tears the book apart, and they discover a secret message that, eventually leads them to discover the secrets of stamp travelling and puts them on a quest to recover a book of precious stamps.

Eventually Tommy returns to the story but only in the peripherals, and solely as an interloper in Ralph's adventure. Or rather, misadventure, as Ralph wind up in China as a result of Tommy's intervention where he needs the help of Nancy's penpal to get sent onward to Australia where he can hopefully track down the secret location of the stamp treasure. 

The second half of the film, filled with magic and stamp travelling and adventure is pretty inspired if not exceptionally well executed. The first half of the film is exhausting in its pacing and the ineptitude in which it reveals its characters and its scenarios. Everything that happens in the first 45 minutes could have, and should have been conveyed in under 20 minutes.

It also doesn't help that all of the kid actors, every single one of them, delivers every line stiltedly. It's frequently painful to watch as these young wanna-be thespians attempt to put inflection and meaning behind the words they're saying. They're taking the direction, surely, given the gestures they make and the physical interactions they have, but they aren't able to perform any of it convincingly, and often takes seem like they had to do, because the production's limited budget meant they had to move on.

At it's core, there's a tremendously fun story and adventure to be had, and I'm sure a modern remake in live action or animation would certainly improve on the many faults of this original.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Drop

2025, Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day) -- download/Amazon

Not so long ago, I got my first iPhone for work. We had been a Blackberry shop, and then an Android shop, but never approved iPhones. Then a new CEO came in, and we suddenly had iPhones. I was assigned one, but hadn't used one since they first came out. I did not know about "drops" (more specifically, on iOS, AirDrops), or the ability to send files, wirelessly of course, from one iPhone to another, within a short distance. One afternoon, while sitting on the train, someone kept on sending them to me. I denied, assuming it was a mistake, but they were persistent. I eventually turned off the functionality, once I had a moment to Google it, but a bit of further research said that it was probably teenagers who were just fucking with whatever stranger's iPhone was within distance. 

But that's it, that's my whole exposure to "drops". They are not really in the pop culture representation of mobile technology; well not widely. I know Android has a similar feature, which was originally sold as a feature to share photos and contact info, but its not a Big Thing in movies or TV. This movie implies pretty much the same experience as I had, that you would not know the feature is on, and someone could, anonymously send you messages, memes, whatever. I mean, the movie has a toss-away line "we cloned your phone" but she doesn't seem surprised she is getting these messages, so in her world, its a Thing.

She is Violet (Meghann Fahy, The White Lotus), a therapist on her first date since she got away from her abusive husband. She is meeting Henry (Brandon Sklenar, It Ends with Us) at a ultra fancy resto, while her little sister baby-sits her son Toby. The night starts with a Random Stranger mistaking her for his blind date, and gets weirder from there. She connects with a few people, including a bartender and someone she bumps into, literally. The movie is just setting the playing field, giving us a few players who will become part of the dance to come.

Her date is Henry, a nice, handsome guy she met on an app. They have the typical "not really familiar with these apps" connection between two actually lovely people which is instantly interrupted by a message sent to her. In most movies this would be an anonymous TXT message, but these "drops" are displayed more like threatening memes. At first, they are innocuous, just weird, allowing the two to chat about the distance restriction on drops. This sets the conceit of the movie -- that her adversary has to be within the confines of the resto. Once the "dropper" knows he has her attention, the true motive comes out -- they are in her home and are holding her family hostage unless she does exactly what they want.

Cat & Mouse. She needs to protect her family, and needs to find out who is doing this to her, but she also needs to keep off her adversary's radar. There are in-restaurant cameras, her phone is cloned and who knows who else in the resto is in on it. Oh, and they want Henry's camera sabotaged and him dead. Yeah, Violet's not into that.

Landon obviously has a fondness for classic mystery-thrillers as he uses a lot of visual techniques to capture the viewer's focus, for example, spot lighting a particular character she is suspicious of, by freeze-framing them in shadows. It adds a little "fun" to a very tense situation, and I have to admit, with my current life being almost over-shadowed by constant anxiety from many different simultaneous directions, I had to turn off the movie a few times. If that is happening to me, then I see Landon as successful in displaying Violet's anxieties. 

Unfortunately, the movie eventually drops the coy game between the players and devolves into beat-the-clock violence. I know these things always have to come to a head, but I do prefer when a movie uses the "outsmart the villain" trope for these kinds of movies, instead of a "oh fuck, now I just have to KILL them for threatening my family." That said, as I already know from Happy Death Day I do like the way Landon plays games, the movie was more than competent (competence is a weird bar to hold movies up against) and I guess, after looking back at my write-ups of all the other Landon movies I have watched, I do like him as a working-man of movie making, not doing anything super exciting (beyond HDD) but always putting out something solid.

KWIT: The Devil Wears Prada

KWIT=Kent's Week in ...Theatre?? What the...?

The Dominion Theatre, London - Wednesday, January 28

I'm not a theatre guy. I've never quite caught the bug. Plays are, to me, conceptually boring - people standing on stage talking with limited room to move, limited scenery to traverse? And musicals, well, that's not music that I like to listen to.

And yet, I do get a bit exhilarated whenever I go to the theatre, particularly musicals. Even if it's terrible, I come out a little amped up and want to experience more, right away.

Lady Kent loves really only Shakespeare on stage. In our trip to London last week she managed to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in an afternoon show while I was at a work event. Shakespeare tends to make me sleepy but the experience of candlelit theatre sounded neat. She was all good for theatrical experiences but we were in London and I needed mine. I had her look at the extremely long list of productions (so many of them either adaptations of movies or turning a musical artist's catalogue into some sort of singing-and-dancing narrative) and she decided to go with what's familiar... The Devil Wears Prada. (Also 2006 marks both the film's 20th anniversary and our 20th anniversary since we started dating, and The Devil Wears Prada was our second movie we saw together, so a bit of a sentimental connection there).

It's off season in London travel so tickets were dirt cheap and when we got to the Dominion, the theatre was not so lively. it was maybe a 2/3 crowd on the main floor.

The big name draw of the show is Vanessa Williams playing the Miranda Priestley role originated by Meryl Streep. The rest of the cast is comprised of primarily British actors, including Stevie Doc as Andy, James Darch as Christian, and Matt Henry as Nigel. Canadian actor Keelan McAuley plays Andy's boyfriend Nate, who is just as aggravating a whiny and needy character as he is in the film, if not moreso.  I bring up the nationality of these actors because, with the exception of Emily (played by Talia Halford), these main characters are all American. And only Henry comes close to pulling off a convincing American accent.  The end result is, any song involving Andy, Christian, Nate (or the sexy nurse that Emily sings a duet with) all sound horrendously flat.

I don't know theatre well, so I'm not sure where the dividing line is with music by/lyrics by/book by credits, but the "music by" credit is to Elton John, and maybe you can hear it a little in one or two songs (ok, "Dress Your Way Up" is absolutely an EJ banger) but for the most part the music sounds like derivative musical theatre pap. I suppose like Hallmarkies or sitcoms or crime podcasts, there comes a sense of comfort with familiarity, so when a musical tune sounds like a musical tune, I suspect there's a segment of the musical theatre-going crowd that just eats that shit up. I point to the hilarious "Rogers: The Musical" from Marvel's Hawkeye TV series which apes the cliched musical tune to the extent that it acts equally as parody and loving homage. The opening number of The Devil Wears Prada, "I Mean Business" sounds almost exactly like the "I Could Do This All Day" number from "Rogers: The Musical", and I'm sure a thousand other musical theatre songs.

There are a few songs, "The House of Miranda", "In or Out" and "Dress Your Way Up" which have a disco feel, and the energy whenever that disco vibe is in play the music the whole show comes to life where much of the rest of it falls flat.

Henry gets a powerful solo in "Seen", the highlight song of the show, which, for the fourth lead of the show to have the biggest show stopper is pretty wild. But it's about growing up and hiding one's identity only to move through the world, shedding the layers of protection and masking to be seen as one's true self, and it's the only tune in the whole show that seems to have any real resonance for the character singing it.

If you know the movie, you know this story, and it's the same, just with song and dance numbers in it. Except that Andy seems very much a passenger in this story and not the protagonist. Everything sort of revolves around her, but musical interludes interjecting into the thoughts and emotions of the other characters really steal Andy's thunder, and frequently overshadow her. By the ending number, when Doc is belting out Andy's tune of independence, "What's Right for Me", the rest of the cast falls away and it's just Doc on stage giving it her all, and I'm not buying a moment of it. The solo spotlight still didn't feel earned for that character, and the emotion of the song felt inauthentic.

As for Williams... on paper, she seems like perfect casting for the role. In reality, I'm not sure what that role actually is and what is requested of it. I don't think I realized it from watching the film a few times, where Miranda seems like such a massive role, but she's actually barely in the story at all. She is the phantom, the spectre that looms large over everything, has her hand in everything, bends everything to her whim, but she's not present. And so when Williams first appears, lifted up from below stage by a rising platform, she's obviously getting that rousing, show-stopping applause, but then she proceeds to sing-talk her way through the opening number she's participating in.  "Stay On Top" is Miranda's big number, but what it unfortunately does is expose Williams' limitations as a singer.  She's a tiny lady with big stage presence, but doesn't really have that big stage voice. If you think of her big hit "Save the Best for Last", you're not thinking of powerful vocals in that track. She has a way of hushed singing, and when it comes time for power, it never fully materializes.

The worst number of the show is easily "I Only Love You For Your Body", where Andy and Nate are supposed to be playful and sexy and funny, and at best accomplishing playful. There's no chemistry between the two performers and the choreography gives Nate some very feminizing movements which makes you question whether Nate would be attracted to any woman.

The show is not great overall but also far from a disaster.  It has its highlights in its numbers, some of its sets, and most specifically its costume design. Everyone, with the exception of Nate and Andy early on, looks incredible. The wardrobe all naturally needs to be functional in song-and-dance routines, but they all look like extremely high end fashion, tailored to all the performers perfectly. It's the saving grace of the show that it looks so damn good. I was never bored with gawking at good looking, fit, exquisitely dressed people. 

I came out of the experience truly aware that I enjoyed myself with a heavy pinch of the ironic salt. I couldn't get Lady Kent to commit to another, but I'm thinking 2026 might be a theatre year for me.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Ballerina

2025, Len Wiseman (Underworld) -- download

I have recently been watching a lot of movies in chunks of viewing time, often with gaps of days in between. I have also been dealing with a winter bug for more than a week which has left my brain with a permanent low-battery alarm. Both of these have contributed to plots escaping my memory almost as soon as I hit the Stop button on the remote. I don't take notes, leaving that for Hallmarkie Days, so end up struggling as what to say when it comes times to write about it. Back in the old days, that is where "I Saw This!!" emerged, but my newer stub-based posts method generally precludes that. Generally.

Meta meta meta...

So, we all know that this is a spin-off of the John Wick franchise, one that (checks Googles) takes place between 3 and 4. So, this is after John (Keanu Reeves, Keanu) was thrown off the roof, with a thud, but before he's gallivanting all over the world trying to kill the head of The High Table. It specifically involves a tribe (were they always called tribes? I don't recall that word being used for all the ritualistic crime organizations) John used to be part of, the Ruska Roma and a new tribe, that all the others dismiss as just a cult, one to be very cautious when dealing with. In particular it involves Eve MaCarro (Ana de Armas, No Time to Die), who escapes the latter tribe, at the cost of her father, is found by Winston (Ian McShane, Deadwood), and handed to the Ruska Roma for training and family. She ends up not appreciating any of it, and her father stands in for John's puppy.

This is also a Len Wiseman movie, so from the movie perspective, that means his template was a woman (vampire) in a rubber/leather jumpsuit wielding dual pistols while fighting vampires & werewolves in a shadowy European city. That lends itself well, as an adult Eve heads off to find the cult that killed her family, garnering the ire of The Director, as John himself did once. Against orders, she seeks out advice from Winston and is directed to Prague to a member of the cult, a man named Pine.

Pine (Norman Reedus, The Walking Dead) is also "defecting" and also with his daughter, a blatant mirror of Eve's history. Its on Continental ground, but the cult doesn't care for the rules and attacks Pine, and in turn, Eve. They almost make it out, but Pine is shot, and Eve left unconscious. She is forgiven his indiscretions in that Continental, because she didn't kill anyone, and heads off to arm-up, only to have the Prague sommelier (I believe that is what they called the first example of John Wick-ian arms dealer?) attacked by The Cult. The arms dealer sends her to Hallstat, Austria, a small ski village high in the mountains.

And that is where All Hell breaks out, a typical (oh JW movies) "kill every fucking person" fight between the residents of the village, which is made up entirely of The Cult, and Eve. And briefly, John Wick, who is asked by The Director (Anjelica Huston, 50/50) to take down Eve, for fear of increasing the friction between The Cult and the Ruska Roma. We learn the origins of The Cult, in that the village was setup as a refuge for all killers from the other tribes, when they want to leave that life and have a family, but still be protected. It honestly doesn't sound like such a bad ideal, but I guess they evolved into something more cultish, seeking the same level of power & control of its membership as the rest of the tribes. No one really ever escapes this world, except for, much later, John. Eve survives but pretty much ends the entire Cult, leaving behind plenty of children who will probably make it their life's goal to kill her. Tit for tat, I say. And John uses a loophole to avoid having to kill her. Its not like he can piss of his leaders even more than he has in three previous movies.

This movie was competent enough, but it left very little in the way of emotional / visual impact as the "proper" John Wick movies. And no, I am not talking the "you killed his dog?!?!" emotional impetus, but more the connection between us, the viewer, and Eve. This is not Ana de Armas' first OK Corral role, but it just didn't work entirely for me. I couldn't even go so far as to say "popcorn movie" as, with those, I am usually expectant to watch it again some time. I mean, I have even rewatched Sisu lately. Maybe I can blame it on the chunky viewing habit I mentioned above, but this is just not staying with me.

P.S. Its not that movie Ballerina, and yet... it is?

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Running Man

2025, Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim vs the World) -- download

If ever you were going to do a cliche remake of a 1987 movie based on a Richard Bachman (Stephen King) novel written in the 70s, then doing it in the year the novel was actually set (2025) is very on point. Also, adhering almost canonically to the actual story is pretty bad-ass, especially when compared to the rife-with-production-issues comedy action movie starring Arnie.

In a Near Dark Future, the divide against Have's and Have-Not's has become gargantuan. You are either poor and suffering or rich and thriving. In between everyone is The Network, a mega-corp that controls the government and feeds the hungry masses with violent and/or humiliating games shows, and reality TV. Ben Richards (Glen Powell, Chad Powers), a skilled labourer in Co-op City, has a history of standing up against management for the betterment of his fellow worker, and losing his temper. It has left him black listed and unable to find work. His daughter is sick, they cannot afford medicine, so he goes down for Network game show try-outs, and while assuring his wife he won't participate in The Running Man, he ends up being perfectly suited for it.

The Running Man is a rigged game show where three participants must stay on the run for 30 days while five Hunters, and their masked leader, chase after them. The general populace can make money by turning a Runner in. For each day a runner survives, they make money, and if they survive the month, they make One Billion Dollars. No one has ever won the game, of course. Beyond that, there are very few rules, one being that they have to send in a video of themselves in every day.

This is an Edgar Wright movie, so in the tone set all the way back in Shaun of the Dead, its darkly funny and uses a lot of stylized motifs that fit perfectly into the game show environment. It has budget and a decent cast, and as said, follows the book pretty closely. And it is keenly aware it is a retro-style remake of a laughable blockbuster movie from another era. 

The problem is that I couldn't tell if Wright was trying to go for ironic-remake or sincere adaptation of a popular King book with a metric ton of political overtones that very much reflect our own issues now, even if you ignore the date. But the movie is not over-the-top enough or biting enough to be a fun, corny romp. Neither is it dark & grim enough to reflect the Dark Urban Future it wants to rail against. So, all I am left with is that Wright was intentionally doing a 90s style remake, generally meant to go Straight To Video, a kind of movie that has little meaning these days considering almost everything is rushed to Streaming.

Objectively, its not a terrible movie but its also not enough of anything to make it memorable.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Dust Bunny

2025, Bryan Fuller (writer of Hannibal) -- download

Wait, what? This is his feature film directorial debut? OK, I knew he was primarily a show-runner and writer for TV, but ... OK, I guess so. Your alternate reality is weird.

Also, pre-amblish in saying, its only mid-January but I predict this will be one of my favourite films for the entire year. As Kent said, "What a fucking delight."

Also, as Kent said,  "What if Leon: The Professional was made by Jean-Pierre Jeunet [sic] instead of Luc Besson".

We Agree.

Tempted to just point at Kent's post and say, "Yeah what he said," and that wouldn't be the first time I have thought that in the 10+ years of this blog, but its still cheating.

I am [mostly] not going to recap. But this movie is about a little girl ("Erora" ... "Aurora" ... "Uhrora" ... "AURORA" ... "That's what I said.") who fears the monster under her bed, the one which will eat you if you walk on the floor. It arrives one night, as a mote of dust through an open window -- I was thinking how unclean is this city that finger sized balls of fluff float through windows -- and evolves into a coot wittle fuzzy wuzzy bunny-kin, i.e. a dust bunny. After the thing evolves even further, into a magic-powered (how could it not be) eating machine, and devours her parents, she knows she has to do something.

Living across the hall is the impeccably dressed... OK, maybe not impeccable, he is not Hannibal, but more eclectically dressed Intriguing Neighbour (Mads Mikkelsen, Polar) -- nicely patterned track suits meet silk pyjamas. How does she know he can help her? She doesn't but after following him one night to China Town, she sees him in action against a dragon. Well, a bunch of China Town villains underneath a dragon-dance costume, but her imagination sees what she needs to see.

Aurora (Sophie Sloan, Chemistry of Death) procures his services by robbing the collection plate of a church. He questions how she knows a word like "procure". And thus begins a battle of wills & wits as she gives him no choice but to be involved in slaying her monster.

In case you need the warning, hereafter are Spoilers. 

The monster is quite real. She wished him up, ages ago. This is not the first foster family it has eaten. And some of those foster families were nice. But, in little girl logic, she also wished up her Intriguing Neighbour, to deal with it. Meanwhile he is ... an assassin? Its never explicitly said but he does violence, has enemies and a handler. The handler (Sigourney Weaver, The Gorge) is presented as many have been in such movies -- you approach her in a funky restaurant, where she sits at a table that affords a view of all who come and go. She is mysterious, callous and thinks Aurora should die for having witnessed what he does for a living. Except, when they enter her apartment under the cover of nighttime, they are in the monster's domain, and they step on the floor. Gobble gobble.

Migawd this movie is lovely to look at. Sure, as we know (and love), Fuller is known for his shows having a particular look & feel. Hannibal was his most straight-laced show but the costuming and set decorating was out of this world. Dust Bunny is set in a uber-stylized New York City that I had to build towards believing it was actually NYC. At times, I thought it was an unnamed Eastern European city, at times, it was a London where Aurora might run into Paddington. But eventually, enough set pieces appear to establish it well as NYC, but one unlike any reality we live in. And the apartment building they live puts the Arconia to shame, such wild aesthetics! I swear the wallpaper in the entry hallway of Aurora's apartment changed depending on the mood of the scene.

This is a movie that wears its whimsy on its brocade sleeve. But that's to be expected in a movie about a monster from under the bed, but also in the Fuller oeuvre, its grim. The monster basically eats almost everyone by the end of the movie, but there is also a bonding scene through body dismemberment. It is so much like a proper faery tale in that it is colourful, magical and entirely violent. And delightful!

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Play Dirty

2025, Shane Black (The Predator) -- Amazon

Oh. I didn't know that this was a Richard Stark / Donald Westlake Parker adaptation. Hmm. I guess this will eventually end up in Kent's project?

Anyhoo, this is a somewhat complicated, somewhat over-stuffed crime/heist movie where things just never go as planned, but that ends up being sort of the point of the movie, definitely part of the fun. I expect people to have been very confused by the plot, despite me following along rather easily, but that may be because not long after watching it, the A to B to C to D has now all escaped my memory. But I was still rather delighted by it, as I am with all Black movies.

Shane Black movies, not "Black movies". Also, is over-stuffed and somewhat overly-complicated the Black style? I think back to "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" and wonder if I would have described it as such when I initially saw it. I really should do a rewatch post.

It starts with the intro heist. Parker (Mark Wahlberg, Spenser Confidential), who is Not Supposed to Be in NYC, has a small crew robbing the count room of a racetrack, interrupted by an employee going back after his shift. That gets one of the gang killed, someone Parker did not like but who was someone's cousin, so he protected the stupid kid until he was dead. Aaaand just as they are hiding out in the safe house, the new girl on the gang kills the rest, shooting Parker a few times and he falls into a deep ravine with a raging river.

This whole opener was a quick bite, meant to establish Parker as a quick & tactical thinker, not adverse to killing, and a tenacious survivor. Also, there aren't any deep ravines with raging rivers near NYC but this was all shot in Australia so we can pretend nobody knows that.

So, normally, the movie would be about Parker returning, recovered but still hurting, taking the long painful route to finding her, exacting his revenge, while finding out why she betrayed them all. Instead, in a quick jump & a quip, he does find her, but just as she is about to eat a bullet, she offers him a better deal, which is the reason she killed the crew and stole their money -- to fund a BIGGER heist, in the billions, and the why is ... well, oddly political. And again, she is going to rob the robbers, but this time she wants Parker in on it, and since the robbers they will rob are his Arch-Nemeses, the crime gang that decided he should Not Be in NYC, he is in. Oh, and because its a lot of money.

You can see already why its starting to sound complicated, all layered and challenging. I am sure the "Explained" videos are in the multitude.

So, she is Zen (Rosa Salazar, Alita: Battle Angel), and in her "home country" (unnamed South American country) she was a member of a death-squad, but recently a literal treasure was lifted from the sea off the shores of their country and her corrupt leader intends on stealing that treasure and absconding with it, effectively bankrupting his own country and leaving it to rot. The gang he has hired, called The Outfit, is a gang that Parker betrayed and who still want his head. Zen is working with the military leaders to steal the treasure and set themselves up as leaders of the country.

Nothing about Zen and her compatriots says "revolutionary heroes" -- while she claims she is doing it for her country, the fact that she was a member of a death-squad meant she's part of a political system that only cares for their ideal of the country, and not the people itself. Sound familiar? And yet, Zen is played as charismatic, and yes, Sexy as Hell, setting up a pseudo sexual tension between Parker and her.

But nothing goes as planned, nothing goes as expected. The heists continually go awry forcing Parker to constantly pivot and adjust his plans. Given he is constantly in danger from The Outfit, who are also their adversaries, his only accomplices are Old Friends, people from his old life whom he trusts and who trust him. They include Grofield (LaKeith Stanfield, Knives Out), a thief who sinks his money into a failing theatre, which he seems quite happy with running absolutely terribly. And married couple Ed (Keegan-Michael Key, The Predator) & Brenda Mackey (Claire Lovering, Gold Diggers) who are all about the con & the costumes. They bring driver Stan (Chai Hansen, The New Legends of Monkey) along with them; a young but capable wheel man. 

So, as I was saying, Things Go Awry. They actually lose the bulk of the treasure when The Outfit outsmarts them, actually stealing the treasure from The UN before Parker and his team can initiate their own outrageous plan, which involves stealing a MTA "trash train". This plan derails, figuratively and literally, causing untold amount of collateral damage -- this Parker really has no qualms about who he hurts. BUT he has one last ace card up his sleeve -- the figurehead to the legendary treasure ship, which is probably one of the biggest MacGuffins in movies of late, is being purchased illicitly by an Asshole Billionaire (Chukwudi Iwuji, Peacemaker). The final act of the movie is about them conning it out of him. Almost.

Annoyingly, like most of these movies, they Don't Get the Treasure, but Parker gets enough of it to make his team happy if not "live on a beach for the rest of your life" rich, as was originally intended. And Not Like Most of These Movies, just when we think Zen and Parker might hook-up, Black reminds us he doesn't care for typical. Remember, she killed Parker's original crew, including his old friend Phily (Thomas Jane, The Expanse) and, for that, there is only one punishment.

Yup, loved the movie.