Once Upon A Time In... Hollywood

More than reviewing the film, I want to write about it, unpack it, dig into it, so I'm going to first give a one paragraph assessment, and then I'm going to unload, unconcerned with Spoilers.  You were warned.

---Review---

"The 9th Film from Quentin Tarantino", (as it is billed -- QT considers Kill Bill one film, even though his singular cut has never been released) is overlong, frequently distracted and surprisingly languid, until it isn't.  It's denouement certainly fits the "Tarantino-esque" bill but is also way out of step with the rest of the film, in a manner that is upsetting, absurd and unearned, the antithesis of the pensive and exploratory rest of the film.  But then QT doesn't do anything without purpose.  Sometimes that purpose is simply his "just for me" attitude.  The film has a uneasy obsession with driving sequences that will make people squirrelly in their seats, and could desperately use an edit to trim its lengthy 161 minutes down by about half an hour.  Which is all to preface that this is a good movie.  It's not great.  It's not one of QT's best, but it is good  It features spectacular performances from its leads Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate (yes, even with only 12 lines of dialogue she acts the hell out of this film) and it's meandering nature leaves a lot to chew on after its over.

---Spoilery time---

Let's get into it.

This is a long, long movie.  Unnecessarily long (like this write up will be). I checked the time at least 5 times throughout the screening, and I would guess that most of those were during driving sequences.  Those driving sequences are Tarantino's epic love memos to moving through Tinseltown, with the city's neon and blinkybulb lights streaming in the background.  Either modern Hollywood was covered up with amazing CGI or it has remained unchanged for half a century (I latre learned a lot of edifices were constructed), because it looks unfailingly like 1969 in this picture, not a single anachronism stuck out to me (though, no doubt they are there).  As romantic as one can get towards a city, the point is captured the in the first drive (which even then is overlong, giving the opening of Manos: Hands of Fate a run for its longstanding title of most tedious driving sequence) and each subsequent motoring through LA is such a drag.

The film is as much flashbacks and asides as it is a straightforward story.  It feels (and may very well be) that half of the first hour of the film is cutaways to things DiCaprio's aging actor Rick Dalton has starred in.  And they're not 15 second comedic asides like you would see on, say, 30 Rock, but instead long-playing fleshed out excerpts of Dalton's movie and TV performances (I don't know that I needed 2 minutes of hearing DiCaprio sing Jim Lowe's "Green Door", but it's honestly no worse than the original).  This gives Tarantino ample opportunity to flex his stylistic muscles as he can genre jump between film and television styles of the 50's and 60's.  These sequences, as engaging as they can be, are also distracting and divergent from the story at hand, yet I sense these are as much the point of the film.

I suspect QT -- a man who adores film and television, idolizes character actors, and fetishizes the aesthetics of past cinematic eras (not the actuality of that time, the man trades exclusively in artiface) -- uses these to stoke not just his own desire to recreate sets that he was never able to participate in, but also to give the audience a sense of Rick Dalton's journeyman actor's past.  Dalton is a stand-in for the type of actor Tarantino just loves to work with -- a performer who elevates the genre work he's been pigeonholed in, or who has fallen out of Hollywood machine and can't find his way back in.

Dalton's journey is John Travolta's, it's Pam Grier's and Robert Forster's.  It's David Carradine's, it's Kurt Russel's and Mike Meyers'.  Rick Dalton is QT's childhood idol, and, one can sense, there's nothing more the writer-director of the picture wants to see than Rick getting his due.  A sequence mid-way through the second act finds Rick on set, performing his heart out, but slowly losing his focus, then his confidence.  He goes to his trailer and proceeds to berate himself for minutes on end.  The next time we see him, he delivers a performance that has his scene partner (an 8-year-old actress who, earlier, provided him deep inspiration at a time of great weakness and doubt) saying "That was the best acting I have ever seen in my entire life."  Granted, she is only 8, but it's a tremendous thing to hear if you're someone as vulnerable as Rick is at this time.

Careers in the 1960's are not like careers today.  The avenues for one's continued existence as an actor, especially a Hollywood leading man-type, were limited to the dozens of movies and 3-channel network television produced then.  The idea of going to another country, Italy key among them, to act was seen as denigrating, the mere suggestion dispiriting.  DiCaprio, now 45, is likely finding the more desirable roles he would chase a decade ago are now just outside his reach.  He seems to connect with Rick as his potential future, and he gives into that reality and vulnerability.  I have not been much of a fan of DiCaprio over the years, but I think I've just warmed to him with this role.  Of course, modern Hollywood provides ample opportunities for big names, and DiCaprio has money and power to get things done himself in the medium of his choice should he choose. 

But Dalton is only one third of the movie (or one quarter, if you add in the Manson Family to the mix).  His stunt double/valet/personal assistant/best friend Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt, is the other half of a very charming and tidy on screen duo, even though they spend the majority of the film on their own, the connective tissue is felt.  Booth's a man who is completely comfortable with his place in the world.  He's been to war and prison and everything outside of that, especially in his mid-50s (though still a very handsome and svelt mid-50's... at one point we see him with his shirt off --because of course we do-- and he's got a wild array of scars intoning a rough life lived) is all just sweet gravy and biscuits.  He has simple pleasures, like his pit bull, television, Kraft mac and cheese, and the occasional acid dipped cigarette.

I'll say this about Cliff Booth, he's a Quentin Tarantino character for the "#metoo" era.  QT doesn't do anything in his films unintentionally.  So here we have an utterly affable character played by the endlessly charismatic Brad Pitt who we learn, early on, murdered his wife and got away with it.  There's is ever so slight room to dispute this, as the flashback cuts away from a teeteringly drunk Cliff with a harpoon gun in his hand indirectly pointed at his wife who is in the middle of a berating tirade on a boat in the middle of the ocean rocking and knocking heavily back and forth.  There is possibility that the death was accidental, but there's actually never, ever any dispute.  As far as many people in the film are concerned, Cliff killed his wife, and got away with it.  Neither Cliff nor Rick even defend against the accusation.

Cliff also picks up Pussycat, one of the Manson family acolytes, after a few prior failed attempts.  She offers to give him a blow job but he questions her age first.  It's not that he's chivalrous, nor lacking desire, but, as he said, he's avoided jail for some time and he's not going back for her.  When he takes her to the ranch, an old Hollywood Western film lot, and sees that its obviously a cult, he's not as concerned about the teenaged girl he just befriended, or the countless other girls getting taken advantage of at the scene, but instead he's worried about the lot owner, an old acquaintance. 

Then there's his extreme act of violence against one of the Manson family intruders at the film's end.  He bashes her face into object after object, the brutality so relentlessly unreal I flinched and looked away.  Sure, Cliff was on acid at the time, and who knows what his trip was (well, QT does but he fails to provide Cliff's pov) but it's the culminating factor in turning the likeable film star (Pitt) into a questionable woman abuser (Cliff).  

Its as if QT is facing his own criticisms -- his defense of Roman Polanski years ago (which he apologized for), his coaxing Uma Thurman into a dangerous stunt on Kill Bill (they're good, her daughter is in this picture), strangling Diane Kruger on the set of Inglorious Basterds (she said he didn't do anything she didn't allow him to) -- as if to note that the bad things men do hang over them, but does that mean they should be deleted, that there's nothing left for them to contribute?  It's a tough statement to make, for sure.  I don't think QT is giving Cliff  a "pass" on his transgressions as much as challenging the audience with complexity.  I think somewhere in there, QT is thinking about legacies (maybe even looking at Polanski, a bit character in the film as Rick's neighbour), how deeds can define a man, overpowering their art, yet the art does survive, but what will be the legacy, the art or the misdeed?

Sharon Tate is the axis upon which the film spins. The film begins days before the real world murder of Tate and her house guests by Manson family acolytes, the aftermath of which was a turning point for Hollywood, and surely redefined Tate as not an actress but a victim.  In spite of her few lines, Robbie as Tate is a force of nature, a veritable omnipresence, as she smiles and charms and dances.  QT re-contextualizes Tate, as a warm, giving spirit, a brightness that was just starting to make Hollywood shine.  Robbie as Tate is meant to personify QT's perception of the golden age of Hollywood. Acting isn't just about saying words, it's movement, expression and attitude and Robbie delivers it, but not with the megastar wattage of Margot Robbie, but with the humility, energy and excitement of a young Sharon Tate, just starting to break out in Hollywood.

If the film is out of step with anything, it's the expectation that a modern audience would he familiar, nevermind knowledgeable enough  about Tate's murder that they would identify the time period right away.  This film doesn't exclude a younger audience intrinsically but it assumes foreknowledge that I think a millennial crowd just wouldn't have.  Hell, without having read up on the film beforehand I don't think I even would have connected that this film was leading up to the Manson murders, which is a central conceit to QT's thought exercise.  I have very limited knowledge even of those events, and I wonder if they are even on the radar at all of someone younger than me. 

So if you don't know Sharon Tate, or the Manson family, then this film leads you into it. But if, like me, you weren't really aware of the effect Sharon Tate's murder had on Hollywood then the fact that QT pulls another Inglourious Basterds trick and revises history is almost meaningless unless you do the research to is contextualize it.   This is the crux of the film, the thesis QT is after.  The Hollywood machine changes after the Manson family murders, and here, following Rick around for 2 hours, he lays out what that machine looks like and leaves the audience to think about what may have been if it hadn't been shocked out of its complacency.

Here, Rick's house get attacked instead the Polanski residence and is successfully defended by Cliff in an extremely brutal fight sequence.  It's queasy and, honestly, cartoonishly extreme.  As I said, it doesn't fit the film, but it's an intentional breaking point from reality.  It's to say "this is where facts turn to fiction".  The film as a whole, in a meta sense, is where QT can say that cinema has the power to recreate a time, a feeling, and even (or rather, especially) rewrite history and create its own.

The film ends with Rick getting his introduction to his neighbor, Sharon Tate.  She lives, she gets to be a mother, her star continues to rise and shine.  Polanski doesn't go on to be (at least publicly) a total creep, and makes more acclaimed pictures, perhaps with Rick Dalton as star, resuscitating his career like Tarantino has done for others a few times. Hollywood continues to shine and sparkle.

I've read that people interpret this as QT's wishful thinking. That he's saying he would have liked for that golden age of Hollywood to continue this way, unsullied by Dennis Hopper hippie types.  It's a false conclusion though and the film itself tells you why.  The in-movie ads and era-specific pop-culture references QT plays throughout the film are really weird deep cuts.  They're not the popular cinema, but the outliers, the weird stuff.  QT's career has been built on those seeds that live outside the Hollywood limelight.  He's obsessed with the stuff that fizzled and burned by daring to be different, outside the norm.  His venturing into extreme Tarantino-esque violence in the finale is his conclusion about how he wouldn't fit in with the golden age of Hollywood.  He may be wistful for that classic age of filmmaking, but without the death of Sharon Tate, cinema doesn't go to Grindhouse or Blacksploitation or make way for the hippies to turn the craft into art.

I think it all comes together as a very personal reflection for QT...where does he fit if things don't change?  Things are changing today with the golden age of television and streaming poised to kill the cinema.... Does QT, like Rick, wonders if he still has a place?

3 Short Paragraphs: Hellboy

2019, Neil Marshall (The Descent) -- download

OK, while I am not in the "hands off my del Toro" boat across the river Styx, I did present a bit of, "But why?" Does Hellboy need to be rebooted? Does Hellboy even really sit in the all-seeing third eye of pop culture anymore? Was there some Hollywood drama going on that denied GdT the chance to his third while offering it to another director? And if so, why not just do the third? And, what about David Harbour instead of Ron Perlman? What was that about? Now, if I was that movie blogger, I would have trolled all the other movie blog sites and did some research into the backstory behind this movie. Also, if I was that guy I would have actually seen the movie in the cinema. But remember, I am that other guy, the post-movie-fan guy but one who still has a vested interest in who he used to be. And a tenacious desire to not drop everything I hold dear.

So, I watched it. Did I hate it? No, not at all. How can I hate a movie where a snark talking, nigh-invulnerable, gun toting demon warrior fights giants, a grugach and kisses Baba Yaga? Seriously, how the fuck could I hate that? And Milla as the evil Blood Queen, unfortunately more than a little bit of a rip-off of the deathless evil witch from The Last Witch Hunter. And Ian McShane as Broom. So much talent attached to this flick! So then, why was it so bloody hum drum???

First, there was Harbour's Hellboy himself, with his perpetually greasy, stringy hair and petulant teenager mentality. It worked when Perlman added that to the character, but was never really part of the actual Mignola character, so why use it if rebooting? The plot seemed scattered, tossing in the best of the monsters from the comics, and set by themselves, these battles / set-pieces were fantastic, but they didn't really lead us from plot point to plot point. And the ending, which seemed to be from an entirely different movie, in tone and scope, was just ... tired? I think that is what I felt from the entire movie (besides the effects people who did a great job with CGI and props) was a lack of energy and heart.

[we agree] Bad Times at the El Royale

2018, d. Drew Goddard - Crave

For some reason I had it in my head that Drew Goddard's second directorial feature was some kind of unmitigated disaster, a bloated wanna-be epic that was full of ambition and not much else.  I don't know why I thought this.  Perhaps because it's a 2 hour and 20 minute movie with an ensemble cast that didn't do so well at the box office and didn't really cause much of a stir critically.  That's not to say it was maligned critically, but nobody was raving, and word of mouth was pretty much nil (at least in my circles).  Toast wrote a review that mirrors pretty much the entire critical consensus, that there's a great build-up and a tepid finish.  It's that thought, that the film doesn't wholly satisfy, that stuck with me, I think.  And when it's absolutely a rarity to get 2 hours of free time uninterrupted by children or pets, it's hard to consider spending it with a film that doesn't leave you satisfied.

Those reviews, Toast's included, are 100% correct, that the final act doesn't seem to be the ending the first hour and fifty minutes was climbing towards.  But the first 4/5 of the film is really, really quite terrific.  The opening sequence is viewed from a single static shot capturing almost the entire scope of a motel room at the El Royale.  The song on the radio ("26 Miles (Santa Catalina)" by the Four Preps) tips us off to its 1950's setting, and plays over the jump cut (same composition) imagery as the room's occupant rearranges the room, rips up floor board, drops in a bag, restores the room and then answers the door only to be shot dead.  The film jump cuts 10 years to introduce us to a crane shot of the exterior of the El Royal, and leading into the lobby where three guests are waiting to check in.  There's a lounge singer, a priest and a vaccuum cleaner salesman all genially engaging (with an unerring subtext of mistruth) in a very ornate, very mid-century modern style.  The El Royale, it is explained by the clerk, was built on the border of California and Nevada, one half on either side.  On the Nevada side gambling took place, the Calafornia side was for drinking and entertainment.  After the gambling license was pulled the motel went into harder times (but hardly any apparent disarray).

The design aesthetic of the Lounge here is exquisite.  I fell in love with it instantly.  It's a team effort, between the design team, the lighting crew, and Seamus McGarvey's impeccable cinematography.  The shot composition is notable for just how beautifully it captures the setting and the players movements within it.  Lots of wide angles and long interior shots, with speaking or performing characters off in the distance, unrecognizable (except you can tell that's Jon Hamm's voice through a purposefully fakey creole accent).  The looks of each side of the state are radically different, with Nevada dressed in steely, sparkly blues, while California is bathed in golds and ambers, and inside a red line runs down the middle (as does a similar red line run down the center of the parking lot).

Everyone who checks in carries an obvious secret, even the initially unresponsive clerk... suspicion abounds.  The immediate thought is someone, or everyone, is there in search of whatever was buried in the opening sequence.  But the mysteries deepen early, and the El Royale, like its visitors, is not what it seems.

This discovery phase in the first two acts (the film does not actually have a standard 3 act structure, but rather more of a 5-act set with title cards) is scintillating, full of possibility and potential.  At first there's a sense of randomness at play, but also destiny, like the players are all here at this time not of their own free will.  That sort of mystical nature doesn't last, but on the outset it has the same spark of fascination that Goddard's Cabin in the Woods had.  When that ethereal quality ebbs -- basically at the point when the violence starts -- Goddard shifts his cleverness into approaching the same scenes but from different perspectives, so in the middle acts the movie's timeline keeps looping back to different moments to gain a fuller picture from most of the cast's perspective.  It's a rewarding technique that fleshes out the scenario in almost its entirety.

So what happened, then...why the big let down.  Let's just say it doesn't fulfil the promises it set up.  It takes a different turn, which isn't a terrible one, but it feels less organic to the story and somewhat anticlimactic.

It gets lightly SPOILERY in discussing it, so skip past the next paragraph or two if you don't want any of the film's secrets revealed.

---Spoilers---
The poster makes a big deal over Chris Hemsworth, putting him front and center.  He's a bankable star now (as much as anything non-Disney can be called bankable these days)...charming, handsome, funny, so I get why they would want to tie to him.  But his character doesn't really have a role in the film until the final act, and his appearance as a real POS cult leader, is so out of joint with the rest of the film. His involvement is connected to two of the 6 characters at the hotel, so his interacting with the rest is just collateral damage in a way.  The film had been setting up both mysterious owners of the hotel, and a possible FBI involvement, neither of which materialize, which is the biggest let down.  These two aspects are set up at different points in the film, each one relating to a separate character in the film.  By not effectively bridging together all these components in the final act, it just simmers rather than explodes.
---end Spoilers---

Which isn't to say that there isn't closure in the end, but it doesn't feel satisfying, it doesn't feel like the correct ending.  Two threads introduced in the film are just left dangling.

It is a meaty 2 hour and 20 minute movie, and knowing this one wonders if the methodical pacing of the prelude and opening act couldn't be trimmed a bit...and yet those are the best scenes in the movie, delicious set-up.  Some of the flashbacks could have been shaved down, but then they bind us to the small cast even more.  Film now has a very difficult time in competing with television's ability to tell a story or build character in 6/8/10 or many more hours, especially an ensemble piece.  Even with its run time, Goddard does have an economic mindset with the characterization here, getting the most reveal in the shortest timeframe.

Really it is just that last act that falls flat, which is a tremendous shame.  It's not even like it's badly performed or betrays the rest of the film, there are some genuinely good moments (a great one where the amazing Cynthia Errivo calls out Hemsworth's toxic masculinity - and much of society's as well- which is absolutely glorious).  This final sequence just slows things back down again after a frantic couple of acts, which makes the film feel as long as it is.

Is it worth watching?  I would say so, but what lingers the most is not great imagery or delightful curiosities or, really, top notch performances, but the letdown of its potential greatness.

Letterkenny Seasons 2-6 (+holiday specials)

Created by Jared Keeso and Jacob Tierney. Crave/Hulu

In my brief review of Season 1 I was feeling positive, but tentative.  I wasn't quite sure where the show was going, or what its intentions were.  In hindsight I think a few statements in that review are wildly inaccurate.

After writing that review (but before publishing it) I continued on watching Letterkenny with a rather fervent delight.  Any spare moment I could find I would put on an episode (up early with the puppy? let's watch an ep. can't sleep? let's watch an ep. taking transit into work? let's watch an ep. the kids are outside playing? let's watch an ep.)  By the end of season 2 the show had penetrated my brain, hard.  And in the weeks that followed I would find I had to stop myself from saying "How're ya now?" when greeting friends.  The word "ferda" just reverberates around my brain for no reason at all (I have not contextual use for this word, yet it's always there at the ready).  Things are now "fuckin' embarassing" when they don't go right.  I'm constantly telling the kids and pets to "take 'er down 20% there" when they get riled up.  I have to stop myself form saying "I wish you weren't so fucking awkward, bud" to many, many people.  Anyone acting real dumb in public is an "upcountry degen".  The show has entered my lexicon.

Season 2's productions values become more standard television and less cinematic, which feels like a bit of a loss, but then Season 1 felt like it could have been a 6-part movie rather than an ongoing series.  By switching formats, and ditching the specifics of Letterkenny's subcultures (it's opening caption now reads "There are 5000 people in Letterkenny.  These are their problems") it opened up its versatility and diversity.  Rather than just being about skids, hicks, hockey palyers and Christians, it opens up its world to swingers, Natives, upcountry degens, city folk, Quebecois and more.  Following The Simpsons model, Letterkenny keeps building up its peripheral cast, such that there's dozens of supporting players coming in and out, and who we get to see in any given episode is always a surprise (and delight).  With only six episodes per season (seven if you count the holiday specials that tend to bridge seasons) nothing outstays its welcome, and if anything some of these peripheral characters come and go too quickly.

The main cast consists of the hicks, the skids and the hockey players. The hicks are Wayne (who can best be described as a millennial Hank Hill, as played by show creator Jared Keeso), his pansexual sister Katie (Michelle Mylett), his awkward best friend Dary (Nathan Dales), and woke hick Squirrely Dan (K. Trevor Wilson) who speaks with nearly every other word pluralized for some reason.  The show's rapid-fire comedic content largely comes from the conversations the hicks have in front of Wayne and Katie's produce stand (we never do see a customer for the produce but we're assured Wayne is making good money).  These conversations can often be 5 - 10 minutes of straight rapid fire word play, word association, deep innuendo or just a long story (often heavily Canadiana influenced and interrupted by a few wordplay tangents). More than a few of the show's catchier phrases or recurring gags come through these scenes, but what the show excels at is subtly building the characters in these moments.  The way characters react to these conversations are telling, and sometimes defining moments in the show.  This is a series with a long memory and something off handedly mentioned in an early season will continue to pay off as the seasons go on.  These moments also build upon the character dynamics and comraderie in a charming way. 


The skids are led by Stuart (Tyler Johnson) - a drug dealer, taker and (of course) DJ.  For seasons 1 and 2 Devon (Alexander De Jordy) is as much his right hand man as his key antagonist.  Devon exits for season three letting Roald (Evan Stern) step us as Stuart's yes man, the first (but not only) openly gay character on the show.  The skids are wanna-be anarchists but under Stuart's leadership they tend to get sidelined playing video games, dancing, or deterred by Wayne who is kind of the town's de facto sheriff (in the absence of any noticeable police presence).  The skids are perhaps the least appealing part of the show, but I think that's by design, likely Keeso's least appreciated fact of small town life is the drug abuse that afflicts it.  They're more often than not the butt of the joke rather than in on it, and yet they still have their place, and even moments of genuine kinship with others in town, fleeting though they may be.

The dumbass hockey players - Reilly (Dylan Playfair) and Jonesy (Andrew Herr) - are introduced in a polyamorous relationship as Katie's boyfriends, much to Wayne's chagrin, but their relationship with each other is the more important one.  The duo are practically inseparable (one episode highlights the existential ennui they experience when they are separated) but the joke is never that they're secretly gay.  The two basically share one brain and spend a lot of time chirping at other hockey players, or at the "big city slams" they're trying to get with.  There's a lot of cat calling, name calling, and oblique hockey references coming out of their mouth in rapid succession.  They're dim, they're constantly told they're dim, and yet they remain oblivious to their dimness.  Their place in the show teeters on unbearable for the first season but once they are separated from Katie, and then their always enraged coach (Mark Forward) is introduced in Season 2 things turn around. In Season 3 they graduate to playing with the senior league (with a quintet of locker room adversaries who have a very specific but always hilarious schtick) Reilly and Jonesey really take on a life of their own.  They meet their homosexual dopplegangers at the gym in season 4 and take on coaching jobs in Season 5 with a whole different locker room vibe to establish.  Their journey over six seasons sees almost no advancement in their characters, but does nicely elaborate their rather kind and simple nature.



Beyond the main cast, we have recurring characters like Gail (Lisa Codrington) - the always horny owner of the local bar, the McMurrays - the swinging couple who constantly befuddle the hicks, Pastor Glen (Jacob Tierney)- the barely-closeted head of the local Church and man-about-town; Tanis (Tiio Horn) - the tough-as-nails femme fatale, den mother to the ruffians on the reserve, and one of the greatest characters on TV, but there's so many more.  What may seem like one off characters become part of the cadre.  In the first season Wayne has to prove his toughest-man-in-town bona fides against Joint Boy and Tyson and they become part of Wayne's inner circle when things need to go down.  An episode finds the hicks going ice fishing in Quebec only to encounter their French dopplegangers, which leads to a key introduction to both Wayne and Dary's lives in seasons 5 & 6.  Everything has a place in this show, and next to nothing is forgotten.

That aspect is what I love so much about Letterkenny, the comedic build.  As crude as the show can be - and it is heavily focused on sex, with a reverence for fist fights, and some celebration of drug consumption - the show's comedy is extremely smart, and asks the audience to follow along without explaining much along the way.  Inference is key.  The writers also like to play with conventions, and experiment with their comedy, two seasons in a row open with a hyperalliterative alphabetical walk through to catch you up on what happened between seasons.



I can only imagine how much fun this was just as a writing execise...

The show strives to be progressive, which is admirable considering it's representing small town Canadian life (southern Ontario specifically) which are not always the most progressive of communities.  It celebrates hick culture but turns its nose down on "upcountry degens" who are basically the expected racist, sexist, homophobic, uncivilized types you would think this show would be actually about.  It punches down on them but it's a necessary punching down.  As much as they proclaim to dislike the hockey players or skids, the hicks have their backs and vice versa when needed.  Letterkenny is about community, and growing.  To see Wayne be offended by a topic but then pause and change his mind on it, even if he's not necessarily outright accepting, is valuable in today's entertainment, to show someone willing to listen to someone else's point of view is kind of incredible in today's climate.  Even Squirrely Dan, who you would expect to be the hickest of the hicks is taking a women's studies class and often references the teachings of "Professor Karen" (a fantastic recurring joke, but also fantastic character building).

Where the show falls a little flat is in its ability to walk the walk.  It talks the talk on being progressive, but it's utterly male gazey, with all-too frequent slow-mo leering shots of attractive women.  It sends this up hilariously with a similar shot that turns out to be Pastor Glen, and one would think that this was the show responding to and acknowledging its own failing but it continued to ogle women on the regular.  It also doesn't seem to be making a stance on drug consumption or drug abuse with the skids.  Stuart goes to rehab in Season 5, but it's off screen and the fallout in Season 6 finds him still dealing.  The frequent talk about doing drugs ("sneef" and all the variations thereof) doesn't find any stance on it, when the show is representing the types of communities that are getting decimated by opioid addiction.  It's heavier than the show wants to go, sure but I'm sure they could find a way without going all "very special episode" on it (unless they leaned into it).

Letterkenny has become deeply beloved to me.  I think it's short season structure is a definite boon, making it easy to enter even six seasons in.  It's digestible in both small and large chunks (I've watched half an episode and been just as satisfied as watching 5 in a row), and I take something away from it with every watch.  These are densely packed comedic gems that for sure require repeated viewing to fully unpack.  I love the characters, and the show builds some genuinely engaging storylines and relationships while constantly defying expectations and cliches.




The series has been picked up for 40 more episodes, in co-production now with Hulu.  It's a Canadian success story and it's celebratory of that fact (some references are so deep-cut Canadian even I don't get them).

Spider-Man: Far From Home

2019, d. Jon Watts - in theatre (x2)

I've expressed many many many many times now that Spider-Man has never been my guy as far as superheroes go.  I can't even truly express why this is the case, but Peter Parker has rarely ever resonated with me.  That said, I loved Tom Holland as Peter in Captain America: Civil War,  Spider-Man: Homecoming and Avengers: Infinity War (he's just a blip in Endgame, pun intended) so I had reason to think that Far From Home would continue this new love affair.

Alas.

It didn't excite me the way Peter's previous appearances did, and perhaps that's because there's so much more focus on Peter than there has been until now.  This is the first full-blown MCU Spider-Man movie.  Homecoming had Michael Keaton's Vulture and Iron Man propping up the Peter Parker platform, and lots of supporting cast nods to the larger Spider-Man world (nascent versions of Shocker, Prowler, the Tinkerer, Scorpion), plus it got to liberate itself from the origin story and the Osbornes for the first time in 6 movies, so it felt like a fresh new path, a very distinct Peter Parker/Spider-Man from previous iterations.

Far From Home feels more like a traditional Spider-Man story, one where Peter makes a pile of mistakes, messes up his civilian life, and struggles with both his heroism and selfishness.  These are the familiar notes of Spider-Man and part of the reason I never glommed onto the character...he just keeps doing this shit to himself over an over again as if he never learns.  I think they're meant to highlight that Peter is still just a kid and hammer home that  the "with great power..." adage is a hard thing for a hormonal teen to cope with, but I've always had problems with characters who make decisions (not mistakes) when they should know better, and have little sense of self reflection or self-awareness. 

The film first has to deal with the fallout of Endgame where some people blipped out of existence for 5 years only to suddenly reappear.  I should say that it *should* deal with the blip, but it's more a passing mention and it doesn't truly factor into the lives of the characters in this film at all.  I would think that disappearing for five years would have a monumental impact on people's lives but it's almost as if nothing happened at all.  The bigger fallout from Endgame is the death of Tony Stark.

As established in Homecoming (and Infinity War and Endgame) there was sort of a mentor situation happening between Peter and Tony, so just as Peter's dusting affected Tony in Endgame so to does Tony's death affect Peter here.  Yet, the loss doesn't feel personal so much as it feels like there's a void.  The world's lost Iron Man and now it's utterly vulnerable, and it needs a new Iron Man or everything will descend into chaos. Perhaps this is a failing of both Endgame and Far From Home establishing that maybe Tony has done something/many things incredible for the world during the blip and it truly cannot cope without him, or perhaps it's just my disinterest in Iron Man that still sees him as a B-list superhero.

As much as this is an old school Spider-Man story, the shadow of Tony Stark looms far too large.  Even the origin of Mysterio has its roots in Iron Man, and so much of Peter's life as a superhero is now tied to him being Iron Man's benefactor.  Hell, he now has Happy Hogan as support staff, and access to all of Tony's suit-constructing technology... this isn't Peter making it on his own, or becoming his own hero.  The thrust of this film is all about whether Peter can become the next Iron Man, so when he wins, it's kind of like "yeah, sure he can".

That all said, this is still a pretty fun romp of a movie.  The "European Vacation" class trip is a goofy, classic 80's comedy set-up and leads to the requisite amount of shenanigans as Peter tries his hand at courting MJ.  Meanwhile he keeps trying to dodge Nick Fury, but manages to get wrangled into saving the world from alternate-dimensional beings called the Elementals.  He partners with Mysterio, a hero from another world (part Thor, part Iron Man, part Doctor Strange) with a tragic tale, and finds perhaps another mentor, and a more suitable replacement for Iron Man. 

Of course anyone who has read a Spider-Man comic or watched a Spider-Man cartoon knows that Mysterio is a villain, so there's a sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop.  The movie does a great job in getting you to buy into Mysterio as a hero.  Jake Gyllenhaal fills the air with a fine mist of charisma... it's everywhere.  He's very, very charming, and he sells everything he's asked to do here. 

The film takes off in its second act.  There's a spectacularly Ditko-esque Mysterio sequence late in the second act that rivals, perhaps even surpasses the Ditko-esqueness of Doctor Strange and seeing Peter step up to be the hero others believe in him to be is really the money shot we're all looking for (of course it would be Spider-Man if he didn't take his many many lumps along the way). 

But for all the film does, its comedy, action, romance, MCU-building and special effects, it's all overshadowed by two post credits sequences which are more surprising and exciting than anything in the main feature.  But that's the allure of the unknown, to spark the imagination on where this can go.  The first post credits sequence, in my mind, sets up either a Spider-Man vs. the Sinister Six or Kraven's Last Hunt story (or an amalgam of both) while the second post credits sequence is just a larger MCU tease with no set destination (and perhaps retroactively changes things we've already seen).  Often these teases are just that, but I remain more excited by what I just watched, with a very strong desire to see it again (and maybe again and again), but in this case I'm more excited for the future, and my desire to see Far From Home a second time was almost nil. (I did anyway, at the behest of my daughter...it was her birthday...)

I have updated my "all superhero films ranked" list and Far From home ranks just behind "Ant-Man and the Wasp", which still puts it in the upper echelon of superhero movies, but in the bottom third of MCU films.  It's quite enjoyable, but also kind of inessential.

nice try sci-fi -- Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (in 3-D)

1983, d. Lamont Johnson - Amazon Prime (not in 3-D)

These static images of the title card(s)...

...are just as static when the film is playing

I have a fascination with 80's sci-fi movies.  As a kid I thought I'd seen all the ones worth watching, but as an adult I've been (very slowly) going back to the dredges and finding almost all of them are worth a watch, especially in a post-Star Wars context.  What lessons did studios, producers, writers and filmmakers take away from the space opera behemoth?  In the case of Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, beyond "make it dirty", not much.

Spacehunter opens with a brutally hokey title card and theme/credits that are 100% a rip-off of Richard Donner's Superman, only 100% crappier (okay, maybe only 95% crappier, those Superman credits have not aged well).  It's a strange thing, to be a space adventure but rip off a superhero movie as your introduction to the audience.  It immediately starts the film on the wrong foot, and the shoddy quality of the title sequence doesn't inspire much confidence for the rest of the film.

The opening shot of the film reinstills some confidence in the picture (however momentarily).  It's of a swirling galactic cloud, and the perspective is so unusual and surreal, it's quite impressive.  The camera pans into the cloud and that little bit of inspiration is immediately marred by what can only be described as contender for the ugliest space ship design put to screen, but the effects are still quite decent.

The voice over is that of a cruise ship director talking about the scene when suddenly the ship encounters some damage and parts of the ship explode.  From the outside we see glimpses of people scurrying on the massive ship, rushing to the escape pods.  Only one manages to fire off before the whole thing explodes.  The pod makes its way to the nearest Earth-like planet where it reveals a trio of what can only be described as "80's babes" (so much hairspray and thongs) as the only survivors.

Surprise..it's space babes

These "80's babes" are terrible actresses, coached through their emoting, that they clearly cannot be the protagonists of this feature.  They shriek as they encounter a cadre of mutants, the vibe screams Escape From New York, Planet of the Apes, and Mad Max all at once. 

It becomes rapidly evident this film does not want to rip off Star Wars, but it does want to rip off practically everything else.

what a hunk of junk

Our hero is introduced piloting what can only be described as contender for the ugliest space ship design put to screen with a voice over (is that Harold Ramis?) giving Wolff (Peter Strauss) his messages which make this man out to be a real loser of overdue rent and alimony type.  His ship's insides are even uglier that its outsides, a real trash heap of whatever the fuck was laying around the prop shop that week when building the set.  Star Wars decided to buck the Star Trek mold of clean design, and almost every 80's sci-fi movie followed suit.  But where Star Wars designs seemed to have purpose, other film's ships just wanted to look busy, as if garbage made things look futuristic (well the reality is 35 years laters we're drowning in so much garbage so perhaps they were right and the joke's on me).

Wolff is on the job of rescuing the three debutantes with his "80's babe" partner (greased back Annie Lennox hair, no pants), Chalmers (Andrea Marcovicci).  She proves the be the competent one of the duo. She fixes computers, lands the ship, preps the Mad Max inspired rover, and mans the guns.  If the 80's were far less sexist, she would be the protagonist of this film.   As it stands, the awesome Chalmers is unceremoniously killed off, revealed to be a robot sex doll, and melted down to scrap rather than even deign to try and repair her.  This film is unknowingly a pretty brutal cultural commentary on how women are treated.

Wolff gains the help of a local, Niki (Molly Ringwald), an orphaned Earther-turned-local who ingratiates herself on an irritated wolf. At 15, Niki (and Ringwald) still could not escape the film's "80's babe" leer, as Wolff forcibly bathes her, then, after highly inappropriate camera ogling, he proclaims "why you're nothing but a baby".  The dynamic the actors try to instill is of parent and child, but the filmmakers constantly seem to have other ideas.

This desert planet (which could've be a stub for Star Wars' Tattooine but instead is really just Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior) is nothing but a cesspool of natural and human made death traps, and toxic uncivilized cultures.  Ugly as they are, the production design on most of the vehicles is still impressive, given that they appear to actually usefully function.  All the denizens of the planet are grotesque, if they're not slathered in nigh unflattering makeup, they are wearing piles of rags that tend to be so cumbersome they interfere with the actors' ability to perform some in scene manual tasks.  By comparison Wolff's disheveled look is rather pristine.  

Michael Ironside plays Overdog, the big bad guy in this one, under a heavy mask of make-up which gives him the appearance of part vampire, part Skeletor, and he's strapped into a rig that gives him  huge metal pincers and a metallic lower torso that swings around on a crane arm connected to some sort of soul-sucking contraption that gives him an appearance like a insect hive queen (actually predating Cameron's Aliens, so there's something).  For some reason this grotesque being needs the life essences of "80's babes" in order to extend his longevity.  I don't know why the endless parade of mutants and whatnot don't satisfy, don't really care though either.

At one point Niki is thrown into Overdog's sub-par American Ninja Warrior-styled obstacle course.  It's meant to look incredibly dangerous, but likely due to safety concerns for the actors, it's obviously non-threatening (and the director is unable to shoot it in such a way to make it appear so).

Ivan Reitman produced this confounding attempt at a new adventure hero, may explain Ernie Hudson's rather charming appearance as Wolff's rival-turned-ally Washington (and also probably explains that maybe Harold Ramis voice over at the start).  The script, is not great, and Strauss doesn't have the swagger the character needs.  I can't tell if they're striving for Han Solo or Indiana Jones, but Wolff isn't even close to being like either.  Niki, meanwhile, is borderline insufferable.  The decision to play her both as a vulnerable ingenue, as well as a tough-talking, high-pitched, ceaselessly complaining annoyance undermines the character's toughness (like, she's survived on her own for years on this hell planet) and does a disservice to her core vulnerability (her loneliness).  Not sure why I would expect better out of a film like this.

In Spacehunter there's barely any space, barely any hunting, and certainly no hunting in (or for) space.  It is indeed awful, and yet, not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.  If, like me, you're into sci-fi rejects of the era, it's worth a watch.

3 Short Paragraphs: Shazam!

2019, David F. Sandberg (Lights Out) -- download

I knew I would like Captain Mar... ahem, I mean Shazam more than I liked any other DC movie. That's not a stretch though, is it? The reputations of the Superman and Batman led movies soured many to the ... franchise (universe? series?) even if you ignore the relative popularity of Wonder Woman and Aquaman (of which I still need a post for; maybe a re-watch is due). Anywayz, this obviously charming and kid-directed film about a kid who gains super powers from an old wizard is so polar opposite of everything else DC, its not surprising they let someone else do something entirely different from all the others.

So yes, Captain Marvel, has been re-branded as Shazam when DC gave up on re-claiming the name from Marr-Vell, an evil demagogue Kree. But twelve year old me is still screaming, "But his name is NOT Shazam, that's what he yells out to become the superhero!" but in this movie, none of that really matters, as we know him as Captain Sparkle Fingers. I am not sure why my twelve year old self is still so loud on this concept considering that the only comic I remember from then involved Sivana wearing a speaker around his neck that would say something like "wuzzle wuzzle" every time Shazam said SHAZAM, which in four-colour logic meant Billy Batson could not change into his caped alter-ego. Yep, that's pretty much all I remember. That, and the worm.  Hee.

So, they don't really even bother connecting this movie to the Justice Flops but in the most tenuous nipples-up, first season of Super Girl manner. Billy Batson is an orphan who is really pretty much a brat. Shazam, the wizard not the not-named hero, is desperate for someone to take his magical mantle and identifies Billy as the best choice. Not really, but beggars/choosers. Billy is currently living in a group home with the Best Family Ever including a crippled Snark who ends up as Billy's "manager" once he starts transforming into Chuck (Zachary Levi; Thor: The Dark World). The first and third acts of this movie were brilliant, wonderful not-just-origin-story plotting but I found the middle bit a bit strained. You see, Billy is a bit of a dick and he really only wants superpowers to be popular and powerful; and his "manager" doesn't do much other than support him in this endeavour. FB only changes his mind when Billy doesn't pander to his own exploitive requests. But once Billy has to become heroic (third act) he really dives headlong into it, which pulls it all back together again.

Kent says...

Double Dose: b-word graduation comedies

Booksmart - 2019, d. Olivia Wilde - in theatre
Blockers - 2018, d. Kay Cannon - Crave

Since their inception - in a way spinning out of Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 classic(?) The Last Picture Show - the raucous teen comedy have largely been told from a male point of view.  Even those stories starring female leads can often be pretty male-gazey.  Sure there are plenty of great teen, female-led high school comedies - Easy A, Mean Girls, 10 Things I Hate About You - and more recently a lot of great light dramas - Eighth Grade, Lady Bird - but they're hardly what I would call raucous.  That type of female-led high school comedy has been pretty elusive up to now, but within the span of a year we have two comedies with a very similar set-up that finally give us the teen girl equivalent of Superbad or American Pie.

Both Booksmart and Blockers take place in the final days of these young women's grade 12 semester, leading up to Prom night.  In Booksmart, Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) play best friends who have foregone any socialization and partying to focus almost exclusively on academic endeavors and getting into the best colleges.  When they find out that all the popular, partying kids have also been accepted into the best colleges they find themselves in a mad scramble to make big swing memories in their final days as high schoolers.  Blockers meanwhile finds a trio of besties (oof, don't feel good about using that word) who enter into a sex pact, a promise to all lose their virginity on Prom night. When their parents catch wind of the pact, they take extreme measures to try to stop it.  Despite this premise, the film gives the teens and their parents equal time and attention.

While Blockers is definitely more sex-focused than Booksmart, both films wade in playing with, warping, or defying the conventions of the high school comedy.  With Booksmart this entails dispensing with the mean girl collective and avoiding bullying behaviour.  At this point at this upscale Californian high school everyone is tolerant of each other, and, in fact Molly and Amy are only outcasts because of their snobbish attitude towards partying.  Once they decide to let loose, they're very much welcomed in as part of the crowd, unexpected highlights of the evening even.  Meanwhile, Blockers is about defying the stigma of female sexuality, that it's something to be protected and preserved, which is the opposite of male sexuality which should be frivolous and conquering.  Where American Pie and its raunchy predecessors were about the desperate gambits of teen males seeking their first sexual encounter, Blockers dispenses with the desperation.  Julie (Kathryn Newton) is in a longtime relationship already and makes the decision to go all the way.  Sporty, confident Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan) is ready to jump in the mix and seemingly picks out a suitor at random in the lunchroom.  Sam (Gideon Adlon) meanwhile reluctantly agrees to the pact, less because she's unsure of having sex, and more because she's still in the closet.


I had expected the adult leads of Blockers - Leslie Mann playing Julie's mom, John Cena playing Kayla's dad, and Ike Barinholtz playing Sam's dad - to be very single minded and collectively unified in their venture to interrupt their kid's prom night, but Mann's Lisa has very personal reasons for her actions, while Barinholtz's Hunter more just wants to stop his daughter from having sex with a boy, keenly aware of his daughter's homosexuality.  Cena's Mitchell is the knee-jerk reactionary father, his big muscles and sports metaphors are quick shorthand to acknowledging the character's discomfort with his daughter's femininity and sexuality.  Throughout, Blockers constantly reminds you how wrong-headed the adults of the film  are in thought and behaviour, despite their seeming best intentions.  Hunter, despite being the wild card of the group, is the voice of reason for them, but his backstory leads to frequent dismissal.

Amy in Booksmart is also a lesbian, but she has been out for some time, but due to her anti-partying stance she hasn't even ventured to look for a girlfriend or deign for a first kiss.  With their newly liberated partying selves, Amy decides to (awkwardly) chase her long-time crush.  Amy's parents (played by Will Forte and Lisa Kudrow) are religious and have a hard time with her being a lesbian, but love her dearly and make pained efforts towards reluctant acceptance.  I like both films approaches to this, showing different stages of both acceptance of self and familial acceptance of one's sexual identity.

As comedies, both are quite funny.  Blockers feels more Hollywood, where the situations the characters get into and their responses to them are often larger than life, while Booksmart's humour is more grounded in the characters and the gifted comedic delivery of Feldstein and Dever.  Both have a "one wild and crazy night" setup but Booksmart has a razor sharp focus on two of its players (with an incredibly well-established microcosm of characters to surround them) where Blockers has to split its attention six ways (and yet does so remarkably well). 

Both films derive unique and distinct identities for all of their teen players.  There's no hive mind here, and, especially in the case of Booksmart there's a real tendency to lean away from the superficial.  Even some of the way aside characters seem to have a rich inner life we don't get to explore.

Teen comedies like this can age poorly and rapidly so.  In the moment Booksmart is a "must see", an incredibly confident and impressive directorial debut from Wilde.  Blockers is more of a "worth seeing", a movie that can't decide whether it's playing to an adult or teen audience but impressively works for both.

The House

2017, d. Andrew Jay Cohen -- Netflix

If I had maybe taken a film studies class at any point in my life, maybe I would be better able to disseminate what exactly went wrong with The House.  It's not for lack of talent, that's for sure.  Will Ferrell, Amy Poehler and Jason Mantzoukas lead the film, and a deep roster of impressive comedic talent in supporting roles, including Nick Kroll, Allison Tollman, Michaela Watkins, Rob Huebel, Andrea Savage, Cedric Yarbrough, Lennon Parham, Rory Scovel, and brief appearances from Jeremy Renner, Kyle Kinane, Jessica St. Clair, Sam Richardson and Randall Park.  These are all extremely gifted comedic actors, and yet the laughs they generate individually and as an ensemble are few.

The film is the directorial debut from Andrew Jay Cohen, cowritten with Brendan O'Brien.  The pair had previously written the hilarious Neighbours and Neighbours 2: Sorority Rising, and the modestly successful Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, so there is somewhat of a winning track record... and yet The House is utterly bereft of what a comedy needs, humour.

In the film, the Johansen's (Ferrell and Poehler) daughter is accepted to a prestigious fake college, but they are deep in debt and cannot afford it.  Mantzoukas plays Frank their depressed, gambling-addicted, recently separated friend who, after a brief trip to Vegas (literally a 2-3 minute diversion) convinces the couple to start an illegal casino with him.  Very quickly the Casino takes off, it expands into all the usual casino things (massage centers, poolside bar, performance room, betting, underground fight club) and as the house, the trio need to maintain order, which means punishing cheaters.  This all puts them at odds with the local mob and a corrupt city councilor, none of which has any real weight.  All the building tension is put upon the Johansen's unwavering need to fund their daughter's education at any expense, including their own moral code and sense of decency.

If I had to guess, the film got lost in the direction.  Cohen, being a novice feature director, likely had a few nerves working with his very stacked cast.  His script for the film likely became merely a template in the end, and not the core structure.  There seems to be much deference to the improvisational talents of the cast, and in the editing, The House plays like a poorly stitched quilt of little off-the-cuff moments rather than a fully realized story or character study.  What was likely a comedic narrative of good intentions going off the rails becomes a perplexingly choppy series of vignettes and montages of *almost* funny moments that don't cohere to the thrust of the movie.

Farrell and Poehler fail at creating relatable or inviting characters.  The Johansens never feel real, as they never present anything close to a human reaction to their ridiculous scenarios.  At least one of them needed to play the straight man in the situation, but both are constantly flexing their improv muscles scene-by-scene which winds up taking them out of their character.  Other characters in the film are given motivations and personalities, yet they have no real character or arc.  A smarter film would have built up this large cast of supporting characters and let them do more of the comedic heavy lifting and put Ferrel and Poehler both as straight men (but who would dare tell Ferrell and Poehler to rein it in?).  I could see, say, Jason Bateman and Rashida Jones as the Johansens as straight men, generating comedy in reacting to the insanity they're creating around them while also breathing real life and sympathy into the couple.  As is, they become more and more unlikeable as the film goes on.

Mantzoukas is a personal favourite comedic performer, having incredible improv skills, as well as a real gift with unhinged, disreputable, and coarse characters.  As Frank, Mantzoukas plays the pathetic desperation well, at first, but the more room the cast is given to improvise, the more of Mantzoukas' traditional comedic instincts come out, which seem at odds with Frank as a character.  His motivation is to win his wife back.  He does, but it's inexplicable how he actually does that.  It's lost in the edit.  Same with Huebel's Officer Chandler turning on Kroll's corrupt councilor...the reasoning disappears in the edit.

It's an unfortunate mess of a film.  So much wasted talent.  The fact that the film closes with an incredibly short blooper reel (also not particularly funny) is either a sign that Cohen didn't know what to do with the footage he got, or that everyone was sorely off their game, or they were seriously lacking in direction.

10 for 10: these TV things, let them bleed

[10 for 10... that's 10 movies -- or TV shows -- which we give ourselves 10 minutes apiece to write about.  Part of our problem is we don't often have the spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie --or TV show-- we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable?   ]

In this edition:
What We Do In The Shadows Season1 - FX
Doom Patrol Season1 - Space/Crave
Krypton Season1 - Space/Crave
Fleabag Seasons1&2 - Amazon Prime
AP Bio Season2 - NBC
Westworld Season2 - HBO
Review Seasons1-3 - Crave
Letterkenny Season1 - Crave
Barry Seasons1&2 - HBO
3% Season1 - Netflix

...aaand  GO!

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I love Flight of the Conchords, which led me to discover the film Eagle vs Shark which Jemaine Clement had done with Taika Waititi.  I wish I could say I fell in love with Waititi's absurd drollness immediately but it took a couple films to get me there.  The cinematic What We Do In The Shadows takes on a semi-improvised mockumentary format (in the Christopher Guest model) and is such a well crafted piece that should live in growing infamy as one of the funniest movies of the decade.  I worried that a TV translation of the movie would lessen it somehow.  Classic cinematic comedies grow in the zeitgeist over the years, as people start incorporating quotes from it into their regular lives.  With a TV show in the offering would it dilute the film's penetration into the zeitgeist as it divides people's attentions?  And could it even possibly live up to the film's brilliance, without seeming like a pale copy.

What little faith I had and what little I knew of the production.  Clement is credited as the show's creator, also he has written and directed some of the episodes as well as crafted an exceptional ensemble of writers.  He brought semi-legendary (and Kent household favourite) comedic performer Matt Berry into a cast of largely unknown talent, all who very quickly proved themselves exceptional in the first half hour of the show.  Waititi himself was not far away from the proceeding either.   It's a show that transposes the concept to Staten Island (Toronto posing as...) and finds many new angles to vampires in this setting.  There are genuine shocks, surprises, and big belly laughs in every episode.  It's very much the equal of its predecessor film, and rather than reinventing the world, it shares it nicely, sporting with one of the best ever cameo ensembles mid way through its run.

[12:27]

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I honestly had low expectations for Doom Patrol.  I've been an longtime fan of the comics but it's taken many forms over the years, none of which I thought would be at all palatable to a mass audience, nor even adaptable into a live action format of any kind.  Plus, I had heard that Brendan Fraser and Matt Bomer (the show's biggest names, next to Timothy Dalton) would be voicing Robotman and Negative Man, but with other actors doing the physical performance.  I thought, well, talent like that only providing voice work, sounds kind of cheap.  Turns out I was wrong on all fronts, and I'm so pleased to be wrong.

Doom Patrol is one of my favourite shows of the year.  It dispenses with any pretense of superheroism, and instead focuses on the human element of its cast, a menagerie of science-freaks... a former race car driver with his brain in a robot, a woman with 64 split personalities (each with their own superpower), a woman who can shapeshift (but with great strain and, when relaxed or anxious turns into a blob), a man with a possibly alien spirit living within him, and the Chief, who tries to help them all mentally and physically...but is he as altruistic as he seems?

Time is strange in the show, and perhaps its only drawback...the characters seem to have lived long lives in isolation (Rita since the 50's, Larry since the 60's, Jane since the 70's, Cliff being a relative newcomer) but are only now dealing with aspects of themselves (Larry coming to terms with both his sexuality and negative spirit partnership, Rita letting go of her ego and pretense).  Even Chief has been around for over 100 years at this point.  The show barely touches on why time is so askew, as if these great spans of time are barely even that.

The show embraces the weirdness -- there's a vengeful mouse in one episode and a donkey who has an entire subdimension up its ass in another for example -- but the show always centers on the emotional drama of the characters (and likewise understands their absurd reality).  There's real heart to the show, and much of the charm is in the vast unexpectedness.  Fraser and Bomer also surprisingly appear a lot, actual starring roles, but in flashbacks for the characters.  Fraser most notably gives an award-worthy vocal performance as Cliff Steele... the intonations in his reactions are ceaselessly hilarious.  And the show looks great, very cinematic.  Visual effects may be a little cheaper than a big budget movie but for a small platform  like the DC Universe, the show has a very big feel.

[23:54]

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Krypton was a hard pass for me when it first came out.  A show about Superman's grandfather on Krypton?  Yawn.  Who wants that?  Who is asking for it?  Nobody.  The show was in rumoured production for a while...for so long in fact I had thought it had fallen through altogether, but no, the SYFY channel in the states was committed and made the damn thing.  It looked ... not great from the commercials I had seen and I wanted nothing to do with it.

So what changed?  I dunno, perhaps it was the teasing for Season 2 which showed glimpses of Brainiac (who looked really comics-accurate for a change) and Doomsday and Lobo... plus I caught wind that Adam Strange was in this too, which piqued my curiosity.  So I gave the first episode a chance and it was... not that bad, actually.  The show's creators made a real effort to build a unique society in Kandor City on Krypton, highlighting the unfair class and hierarchical structures.  It seemed like there could be some actual meat on these bones, playing towards hard sci-fi rather than loose superheroism.

Alas, the show gets kind of lost in the loose superheroism, and forgets about the harder sci-fi elements.  The intriguing production values of the pilot start to look cheaper and cheaper the more the season runs on and sets are used and reused and budgets start to run out. Story wise, there's a lot of treading water happening, and a lot of melodrama that doesn't really go anywhere, and yet, there's enough momentum and more than a few surprises along the way [Zod] to make things interesting.  And yes, Brainiac, when he finally shows up, is pretty damn cool.  I'm not going to be right on top of Season 2 when it comes out, but I'll give it a watch eventually when time permits.

[31:44]

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Phoebe Waller-Bridge is one of the fastest rising names in Hollywood.  I was completely unaware of her until about a year ago, when Killing Eve hit TV screens.  She was the show's creator and showrunner, but the only reason I even store the name in my brain was that she was also the voice of Lando's robot lover L337 in Solo: A Star Wars Story.  Her voice in Solo was so assured and hilarious, and somehow intimately familar without having ever heard it before.

With this newfound familiarity, I began hearing about how great her British TV programmes were, specifically Fleabag.  I had no idea what it was about, but the first ep lands us in Fleabag's lap (a lot of the characters go unnamed) as she navigates her family, her sexuality, and her lingering grief and depression some time after the accidental death of her best (and only?) friend.  It all sounds very dramatic and intense, but Fleabag's candidness, taking aside glances or breaking fourth wall mid scene addressing the camera, ingratiates you to this troubled character.

It's a character study definitely and she can make any situation uncomfortably funny (I don't know that it ever falls directly into cringe comedy, however, because those asides-at-camera deflate some of the cringe-y tension with Fleabag aware that her behavior was inappropriate, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes intentionally).   Season 1's 6 episodes are a funny, if challenging ride, but Season 2 is where the show explodes into brilliance.  Fleabag meets her match in a sexy Catholic priest played by Andrew Scott.  Their chemistry is incredible.  Plus her character is in a better space at the start of the season and much of the difficulties in the season start to be external to her (Olivia Coleman's beefed up role as her cheerily spiteful artist stepmother is a glorious thing to watch).  I cannot overstate how worth it it is to get through season one in order to have season 2.  It's up there with Leftovers season 3 as one of the great works of television.

[43:26]

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RIP AP Bio.  Your life was cut short way too soon. This was a show that easily could be spun off into 17 different shows, each one following one of the characters within it.  It built such an amazing community in its 25-ish episodes, call it the Simpsons effect where you have a large roster of recurring background characters who occasionally seep into the foreground then recede into the back again. In this case it's a high school in Toledo, Ohio.

The first season found fallen Harvard philosophy prof Jack (Always Sunny In Philadelphia's Glenn Howerton) taking a denigrating job as a high school advanced placement biology teacher, living in his dead mother's house, and having zero interest in being that Welcome Back, Kotter guy.  He wasn't going to do anything that gave any impression he cared.  He wasn't going to dress in anything but sweats and t-shirts and baggy sweaters, he wasn't going to teach the damn class (keep quiet and you get an "A"), and he wasn't going to do anything but get the hell out of his current situation.  He was prickly and sarcastic and even a little bullying towards his students.  But Principal Durbin (Patton Oswalt) was so enamored to have a Harvard prof in his school, he let Jack get away with anything.

The show's tone shifted quickly in that first season, from focusing on Jack's caustic nature to how Jack's caustic nature just makes things worse for Jack.  He was its focal character, but we see him  through the eyes of everyone else, and everyone else sees him for who he is...and kind of accepts him. The class of students is a glorious ensemble of nerd types who very quickly start to defy the usual expectations of nerd types, and Season 2 gives way to even more of their lives and thoughts.

Jack meanwhile softens a tad in season 2, finding a relationship that gets him and sees through him, even though his get-the-hell-out-of-Toledo puts a barrier between them.  Paula Pell, as Durbin's office admin, is the shows secret weapon.  Her relentless positivity, even when she's hopping mad (literally in one occasion) highlights a comedic performer left in the shadows far too long.  She's brilliant.  The entire cast of this thing is top to bottom amazing and I want more and more time with them all.

[54:13]

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I reviewed Westworld back on April 14, 2017.  So it's been over 2 years since I last watched the show.  I was worried launching into Season 2 how much I had forgotten that would be important to proceedings.  Turns out, most of it was recapped subtly in-show or it came back when necessary.

The first season was pretty damn tight with the culminating realization that there's two different timelines at play by the end, but season 2 again plays with timelines but with less fluidity.  A lot of it has to do with Bernard's memories fracturing and putting him in different timelines in his own head, but it makes for messy watching.  As well the show's direction seems to be exploring whether the artificial intelligence of Westworld is still life or if they are just unreal constructs with the facade of emotions and intelligence... programmed responses rather than learned behaviour, programmed memories and dreams, rather than a real subconsciousness.

It's that aspect I keyed into the most, as some characters felt like real, thinking people and others felt like automatons.  It was wholly intentional, as Dolores' actions turn her more and more into a monster, the more human she seems, same with some of the other characters who, despite their programming being changed find their way back to their natural state of mind.  The humans become increasingly callous, and Dolores, leading the revolt, responds in kind. The pile of dead bodies in this show (both hosts and humans) is astonishing, and likely record setting.  Like nudity in the first season, viewers become numb to death this season, and at a certain point death doesn't ever seem like something even possible anymore.

First half of the season struggles to find its feet again, a diversion into Shogunworld is visually fantastic and its parallels to Westworld are delightful, but it's almost unnecessary story-wise.  The latter half pulls itself back together and gains its directive thrust (an episode focusing on one of the native characters is a real high point for the series, a meditative, beautiful and painful hour of television).  Though not nearly as rewarding overall as season 1, it's still a pretty great watch.

[1:06:37]

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For the past 10 years I've come to know Andy Daly as one of the best improv character performers in podcasting.  Daly knows how to inject a richness and depth to his characters that makes them feel like larger than life people rather than just a pliable joke.  There's an inner consistency he brings to them on shows like Comedy Bang Bang, Womp It Up, and his own Andy Daly Pilot Project that spotlight him as a premiere improv performer.

Review [with Forrest MacNeil] put Daly on camera as Forrest MacNeil, host of a program where he reviews any and all life experiences as submitted by viewers of the show.  It may seem like just simple basis for quasi-sketch comedy, but in the process of reviewing things like "Doing a William Tell" or "Being falsely accused" or "Eating 15 pancakes" we find a character study of Forrest MacNeil, a family man who is willing to sacrifice anything and everything for the integrity of his program.  It really kicks into high gear early in the first season when he has to review what it's like to get a divorce, and culminates at its peak when he's asked to review what it's like to kill a man.  The after affects of these scenarios linger as he does things like reviewing what it's like to join the mile high club, or get into a bare knuckle brawl, or start a cult.

Forrest is not insane per se, but his commitment to his reviewing integrity is certainly questionable.  The show has some moments that will surely send shivers up your spine while also making you laugh close to tears.  We learn through Review that Forrest, in trying to be a good reviewer, becomes a pretty terrible person despite his better nature.  Watching Daly do despicable things so reticently, so reluctantly (like blackmailing his girlfriend) is the performer's most shining moments.  And it end so aptly, on such a perfect note that really brings the shows philosophical implications into light.  A real wild ride of a series.

[1:18:57]

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There was a low brow primalness to Trailer Park Boys that utterly repelled me from the show, but one that I respected for giving a Canadian property a rather massive hit outside its borders.  But celebrating trash culture in a scripted or improvised way made it like the Jersey Shore of comedy.  I was under the impression that Letterkenny would be more of this, more dumb humour for the dumb people to celebrate their dumb lives in dumb culture.

But very quickly in the Letterkenny pilot it becomes obvious that this isn't about dumbness as comedy, but an exploration of small town Ontario life, and that the hicks aren't necessarily dumb, but just kind of bored.  Created and starring Jared Keeso (originally started as a youtube series), the show highlight the small town animosity between the farming hick, the drug addled EDM skids kids, the hockey jocks, and the religious freaks.  It's a look at the young life in town, highschool through to early 20s, and it's mile-a-minute dialogue is so regionally colloquial and fast paced that it's really hard to keep up with.

Via the show Keeso has a lot to say about this small town life, both in celebration and in critiquing it.  His character, Wayne, is the toughest guy in town (an early episode declares he's retired from the fighting life, but upon learning about the other jerks claiming to be the toughest guy in town, he takes each of them on in surprisingly organized and civilized fashion) and perhaps the most sensible.  He suffers fools, because he has no other choice.  He's a farmer, living the life he wants to live, but seemingly only ever tolerating the world around him.

It's a hectic show that is looking-down-its-nose at lowbrow comedy while also kind of reveling in it.  It walks a tightrope in this regard and does it better than almost every other effort of this type.  It's also shot incredibly well, with a cinematic quality to its composition and editing.  I will slowly pick at it and see how it changes from season to season as it gets further away from its youtube roots.

[1:32:30]

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Barry has been a bit of a media darling since its debut on HBO last year.  Bill Hader left SNL for other projects but his film work (outside of his great costarring role in Amy Schumer's Trainwreck) never really put him in the spotlight.  His series Documentary Now! with Fred Armisen on IFC is one of the greatest showcases of his character-creation talents but it's a show largely gone unrecognized by the media (as most IFC shows do).  But in Barry he gets his starring role as a discharged veteran with sever PTSD who works as a hitman and decides to try and quit the life when he joins an acting class in L.A.  It's a boffo premise that shouldn't really work, but does because of Hader's committed performance and Henry Winkler's egocentric drama teacher.

In a sense Barry is taking the piss out of the world of Hollywood wanna bes and the people who prey on them, and yet it also understands them very, very well.  It blends this examination of these delusional actor types (and their equally delusional mentors) with the various mafia figures Barry encounters, who have delusions of their own (only theirs often result in extreme violence).  The key player in this is Noho Hank, an absurdly wide-eyed, cheerful character for the mafia, but an utter joy every moment he is on screen.

The first season ends with the understanding that Barry, our protagonist, is outright a bad man.  He's a wolf hiding in sheep's clothing because he desperately wants to be a sheep, but his nature as a wolf is inescapable.  This is the thrust of season 2, finding Barry looking ever more sheepish, but those fangs come out far too often.  There are some solid twists this season, with a dynamite middle act in episode 5 where Barry decides not to do a hit his normal way and it leads into perhaps the wildest, most surreal action movie ever.  It's just a damn golden piece of television that justifies the show's existence from now to eternity.

As much as I love that episode and Noho Hank, I still have problems with Barry most of the time, primarily it's that Dexter effect where this bad man, trying to be a good man, has insinuated himself into regular people's lives.  Decent enough people who now actually care for him and he could wind up getting them killed, or worse, leaving them with the emotional scars when they discover they were friends or lovers with a monster.  I have a difficult time with stories like these.  I like Barry as a bad man trying to do good, but I don't like Barry as a bad man pretending he's a good man and willing to kill to maintain that illusion.

[1:46:04]

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3% has been on Netflix for a few years now but it barely makes a dent in the discussion around what's worth watching.  I recall on seeing a few positive mentions of it on Facebook when it first started but next to nothing since.  Likely because of the lack of attention I never bothered to figure out what it was actually about.  I heard it was a bit dystopian and figured it was probably about class issues in a future world.

Which is what it is exactly about.

In the not too distant future Brazil, things have gotten really bad.  Society has effectively collapsed and it's a struggle to survive on its run-down streets. Everyone is given the promise that, at 20 years old, they can take "the process" and perhaps become one of the 3% to go to the island, a place of refined, luxurious existence, perfection, heaven.  The first season follows a subset of the hundreds of entrants as they take the latest round of the process.  The show gives us plenty of world building, insight into how these structures that govern the 3% work and what the trials are accomplishing.  Each episode focuses on a specific trial, as well as a specific character, providing flashbacks for that character.  It's the Lost model, and it's very effective here.

Also at play is the work of Ezequiel, the trial-runner, who is under audit from the ruling council, and has a secret life that threatens his prestigious role.  As well there's the threat of an underground resistance group who don't believe there should be an elite society, that its riches should be shared with everyone, that the trials are subjective and discriminatory and can take a deadly toll on the participants (sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally).

It's a show with limited budget and limited sets, but it doesn't need more than what it has, and it leans into the drama and intrigue it's set up.  It cares about its characters, and the more time you spend with them, coming to understand them, you learn that they're all desperate in their own way to achieve their goal, and that none of them are intending to be bad, but none are all that good either... except maybe Fernando, a character through which the show examines ableism like no other show or movie I've seen.

There are a few things that don't make sense, such as how the process cant discern if people have fake implants (when scarring is a telltale sign) or if they have smuggled implants on their body.

[1:58:22]
Ran a little long in each of these little reviews but that's because most of them venture on the smarter side of television and I enjoy exploring them.