Ad Astra

2019, James Gray (The Lost City of Z) -- download

I understood what Gray was trying to give us, a movie of emotion held back and emotion released, one that explored the relationship between a  not-young man and the father he never felt truly connected to, yet not able to truly let go of. It wanted to attach this core to a scifi story that spoke of the near future, of attainable space travel, and of what we as humans want from our next stage in space exploration. It was understanding that, in that I gave the movie a pass even before seeing it, after hearing all the mixed reviews and the words "boring" tossed out.

I am OK with boring, as long as I am given some awe of the production values or the setting or the performances. I am not OK with being bored while in the midst of a sloppy story full of nonsensical, barely scifi elements that are trying to be grounded in real science. The movie opens with Roy McBride (Brad Pitt, Twelve Monkeys) working on a giant space structure in low orbit. McBride's work is interrupted by bright flash in the collective sky which causes overloads to the space station cum giant antenna cum space elevator. Things explode and McBride parachutes back to Earth, from orbit. Thus begins the lead-head-to-side-and-say-really grasp on science the movie maintains.

The flash has come from somewhere deep in space, likely related to McBride's father who was lost on a mission 16 years earlier. He is asked by Space Command (established by Trump?) to head to Mars where a very very strong communications array exists -- it can send a message from Young(ish) McBride to Old McBride, to find out what the fuck he is doing. Apparently these surges, generated by a man-made machine could lead to the end of all life on Earth. Somehow. Getting to Mars involves moon pirates and angry baboons.

As we experience the world Young McBride lives in, we are exposed to him, his mental state, one that is tightly connected to his memories of his father and his extreme desire to keep all emotions in check. He is known for always keeping his heart rate low. We are supposed to see him as completely in control, but I only saw him as always on the delicate edge, always able to fake the computer moderated psyche evals, and always just about to crack. This is supposed to strike us, emotionally, but forgive me for just sighing and not being moved by his daddy issues.

As for the rest, the science fiction was not fantastical enough to be overlooked nor strict enough to be marveled at. And there were just so many moments I shook my head as to why. Sure, the moon buggy chase scene looked good out of context, but the context they provided was so thin it seemed added so there would be some action, i.e. Space Pirates!! As well, the baboons. I can accept the Mars flight being diverted to a random space station sending out a mayday -- there cannot be that many safe flight paths from the Moon to Mars, but once McBride loses a man to a mad monkey, he just runs away, back to the ship and onto Mars, one man down. Again, why even show the scene? Why?!?!

McBride is led to his inevitable confrontation with his father (Tommy Lee Jones, Volcano) on the never-really-lost deep space expedition. Yes, their technology is sending out the flashes that move very fast and are causing lots of damage on Earth. Why does this exist? Why can't it be turned off? Why can't he just tell people "oops" and get assistance? All because he has lost it emotionally, having the crux of his journey into deep space (find evidence of alien life) failed and thus lost his will to accept human reality. Dude, space is big, REALLY big. Just because you cannot find it doesn't mean its not out there. Young McBride finally has to really, truly let go of his father and this emotional catharsis is also supposed to save the human race. But, by this time, I really didn't care.

The whole movie seemed to be about the emotional indulgence of aging men. Maybe that was the point, to show what a creator could get so wrapped up in. That his own reflections and extravagances of the movie could really amount to nothing but .... nothing.

Clue

Twenty-for-Seven #16 (Day6)
1985, d. Jonathan Lynn (My Cousin Vinny)

Clue was weirdly a very popular movie among people my age back in the 1980s.  It seemed to smack that 10-13 year-old group right in the face with its cheekiness, it's morbid humour and its overtly comedic sensibilities.  I know I watched it a few times in my youth, and likely on video with each of the alternate endings tacked on.  That alone was quite the marvel, providing a bit of outre-ness to a very mainstream, very commercial, very capitalistic offering.

I haven't watched Clue in likely 30 years, yet it was still remarkably familiar.  I didn't remember everything, but certain jokes I could tell were coming, certain scenes I was anticipating, and some quotes and happenings I was recalling as they happened.  It was a nostalgia trip rewatching it, to be sure.

The film has its devotees, a little cult of like-aged people to myself who hold it with very weird esteem.  And honestly, I get it.  By today's standards, it's a bit light on comedy, effects, set dressing, and such (it has very much the tellings of a debut picture), but even still it's a very entertaining movie (if honestly still a little bit confusing with it's rapid, running-around pacing) with a delightfully goofball cast.

I remember Entertainment Tonight segments marveling at the audacity of a film to be based on a board game in 1985.  It seemed an impossible thing to make a workable film out of something that had no pre-existing narrative.  How to make those names like Col. Mustard and Prof. Plum work in any believable way...?  How to incorporate all the aspects of the game and yet actually make a coherent story...?

The answer was quite simple in making it a comedy as well as a murder mystery.  Revel in the deaths, with each murder more hilarious than the last, and wrap it all up with one of the greatest gimmicks in cinema history (three different endings, dispersed to different theatres during its initial run).  It didn't make for the most successful film, as I think the general populace was still dubious (we didn't wind up seeing  slew of other board games immediately) but it struck a chord with a certain population of youth and comedy lovers.

As a murder mystery, it's pretty dodgy (being open ended enough to have multiple murderers revealed will do that) and as a comedy it's a bit slow, but mixed together and it's an entirely unique thing, a grand farce that's part Agatha Christie and part Benny Hill.

The cast is a great who's who of comedic acting talent from the era: Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Brennan, Tim Curry, Martin Mull, Michael McKean, Leslie Ann Warren, and Madeline Kahn all putting in exceptionally game performances.  It holds up surprisingly well.  It's certainly an artifact of its time, but I think it would still delight youger viewers today.

Funeral In Berlin

Twenty-for-Seven #15 (Day6)
1966, d. Guy Hamilton (many James Bond pictures) - AmazonPrime

I like a good espionage story, especially a retro one.  The James Bond movies aren't really espionage, they're more action built on the trappings of spy stories.  I like those too, but I dig things like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (and others in the Le Carre oeuvre) or The Sandbaggers tv show, real nitty gritty, no frills espionage.

Len Deighton wrote a series of spy novels about an unnamed spy in the 1960s, sort of as a counterpoint to the flash-bang James Bond mania, and it was these novels that became the "Harry Palmer" trilogy starring Michael Caine.  It's been almost three years since I watched the first in the series, The Ipcress File, which I loved, apparently, but barely remember at this point.

Like most spy stories, there's no continuing narrative, just new missions.  Harry Palmer is a workaday spy.  He's committed to a job that pays very little and supports him even less.  He's often being tempted by foreign agents but never wavers in his commitment.  In Funeral In Berlin, at least, we get no real explanation as to what Palmer's motivations are, other than severe commitment to service, and some sort of moral high ground.

In this second of the series (which could easily be watched on its own) Palmer is tasked to go to Berlin and support the defection of a high ranking Russian official.  Berlin, still cleft in twain, East and West, is a more and more fascinating setting the further we get from the 1990 reunification.  It's otherworldly at this point, a very distinct world.  Even at this stage of the mid-'60's the prosperity of the western side stands stark in comparison to the communist-run East.

Palmer needs to vet the Russian offical (despite already being cleared to support his extraction) and then he's tasked with finding a very explicit resource to do the extraction.  All of this of course is in addition to a "chance" encounter with a sandy blonde model by the name of Sam Steele who woos him and beds him.  Palmer, of course, realizes something's up when a beautiful woman is this quickly taken with him, and it's not long before he learns her secret.  The different threads start weaving together before becoming inextricably entangled, leading to a tense, yet largely action free finale.

Director Hamilton was fresh off of Goldfinger, the quintessential Bond, when he took up this one, so it's remarkable how little of that Bond feel spilled over.  Where the 007 lifestyle feels glamorous, Harry Palmer's life feels dirty, lowly, pauperish.  He doesn't get along with the boss, and is routinely trying to stick it to the man. Bond humour is more pithy, Palmer's barbs are cutting.

Caine is a remarkable leading man and handles this role like he's living in the skin of the character, feeling the cold chill in Berlin's damp air and the warmth of the whiskey he's sipping with a woman beyond his reach.  He effectively undersells his intuitiveness at every turn to disarm both the audience, his allies and the enemy when his competence rears its head.

It's methodically paced, but not at all boring.  I'm keen for round three, Billion Dollar Brain

Life (2017)

Twenty-for-Seven #14 (Day6)
2017, d. Daniel Espinosa - Netflix

I had zero interest in seeing Life in 2017.  I was tired of the "trapped in space" genre at that time and wasn't sure if I could tolerate more Ryan Reynolds.  Plus, there weren't so many raves and it kind of tanked at the box office.

Two years later I started hearing on podcasts and other sources (like Toast's review) that perhaps Life was underappreciated, that perhaps it was actually a pretty good modern-day Alien riff, that perhaps I might like to check it out if I'm into such things.

It's most definitely a modern-day Alien riff.  But it's also a film that is way too pleased with itself and its technical capabilities.  It spends its first few minutes following floating people around and then lovingly continues to follow floating people around for the remainder of the film, the camera very in love with the technique they're using to get people floating around.  The way the camera tracks the floating people does give us a 360 degrees of workable space, and I'm sure technically there's something very innovative going on here, but as a viewer trying to engage with the characters and story, I found it very, very wanting.

A Mars probe returns to a space station orbiting Earth with samples of the red planet's land.  Within the samples, a dormant micro-organism is found.  The organism is resuscitated and starts to grow.  It begins to exhibit signs of intelligent behaviour, and it's not too long before it becomes aggressive and wants to break free of its captive state and start feeding off the cooling systems and people on the space station.  It breaks free and does what it intends to do.

Nicknamed "Calvin", the martian entity is a neat and formidable foe for the crew, who not only have to deal with the immediate personal threat the entity poses but also the residual threat from all the damage it's accidentally causing to the station's systems.

The problem this film has, almost entirely, is in its characters.  There are great performers here in Ryan Reynolds, Rebecca Ferguson, Jake Gyllenhaal, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Ariyon Bakare, but knowing the set-up in advance, none of their characters ever feel like anything more than fodder for the creature to kill.  Gyllenhaal's pilot character, most especially, feels like a non-presence in the film.  Even though he's part of the main finale sequence, it feels like it could be anyone and it wouldn't make a difference.

It's true, the effects are very well done here, and the film looks pretty great, I just had a real problem connecting with it.  I think the film wanted to feel as scientific as possible perhaps in an attempt to ground it for the audience, but in giving us a fantastical killing machine, it actually had latitude to be able to push the limits of its sci-fi setup.

I liked it's dire finale tremendously, but I don't think it did well enough to present a sequel. 

The Little Hours

Twenty-for-Seven #13 (Day 6)
2017, d. Jeff Baena (Joshy) - Netflix

I don't get it.

I don't get how writer/director Jeff Baena managed to get this cast together for a film this underwhelming.  Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Kate Micucci, Dave Franco, John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon, Nick Offerman, Fred Armisen, Paul Reiser, Adam Pally, Lauren Weedman and more.  This is a seriously stacked-full-of-comedic-talent film...so why is it so... lacking?  But then again, I thought much the same about Baena's Joshy, so should I be that surprised?

Backdrop of this film is it's comprised of tales taken from the 14th Century story collection The Decameron by Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio, but unscripted and left to the gifted cast of performers to improvise their way through.  As such it's a tale set largely in period-appropriate convent but with performers acting with very modern language and sensibilities.

The film finds the young nuns of the convent (Brie, Plaza, Micucci) feeling a bit of cabin fever with hormonal urges.  An attractive young man (Franco), fleeing from his lord after having an adulterous affair with his wife, finds refuge at the convent, pretending to be a deaf-mute, where he attracts the eyes and urges of the nuns.

The film's attempt to play the farce are undercut by the improvised nature, and the improvised nature is undercut by the demands of the farce.  There are definitely some laughs and bold performances (Micucci does some audacious, ridiculous and hysterical work in the nude in the third act), but I can't help but wonder if it needed a more assured directorial hand or a script with more of a foundation for the actors to riff off of. 

Some of the editing and pacing is strange and seems to impact the comedic timing of certain scenes as well as any character or relationship development, which is a shame as there's a lot of good set-up in the mix (Shannon is particularly underutilized).  It feels like this was done quickly and cheaply, that there wasn't time to hone any given scene comedically or visually.  It's by no means unwatchable, but  I want so much better out of this film than I got, and given the performers involved, there should be so much more amusement.

3 Short Paragraphs: Code 8

2019, Jeff Chan (Grace: The Possession) -- download

Are we in the post-superhero phase of cinema yet? After more than ten years of the successful Marvel Cinematic Universe and a few years of the lopsided DC Universe, are we over superheroes? Do we want to be? Or do we, and by we I mean those of us that read superhero comics, want to see something else from the genre we so love? I am OK if the mainstream audience fade away, back into the corners of bio-pics and tragic small town life. Leave us to explore what is like to have superpowers.

Connor (Robbie Amell, Arq) is a Level 5 Electric, where 5s are the top of the metre. His world is one where people with powers are considered dangerous (true) and are registered and kept from using their powers. They live on the fringes of life, feared by "normal" humans and are often below the poverty line. I am sure Trump would have them in camps, or at least behind walls. But Connor's mother is dying from an unknown condition, one that leaves her without control of her powers, brief moments where she freezes anything she touches. Its likely fatal, not that they could afford health care. So, what is Connor left with but the wrong side of the law?

Garret (Stephen Amell, Arrow) is a mid-level thug working for a mid-level drug dealer, with a gang of powered cohorts. They have a big score in the works and need an Electric; thus comes Connor. Code 8 is another built on a well done, well cast short, but like Kin is one that doesn't live up to the source material. Don't get me wrong; its a solid, decently done indie flick with some flair and great performances. But it doesn't rise above its electric or telekinetic flares. The short set up a premise, and gave us the beginning of a chase movie. I think this would have served the genre better instead of the low-level crime thriller we got.

Dolemite Is My Name

Twenty-for-Seven #12 (Day 5)
2019, d. Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow) - Netflix

The Tarantino effect on my movie watching was rather huge.  My obsession with Pulp Fiction in the mid-90s drove me to seek out all sorts of different genres of music and movies I hadn't previously been exposed to, including blacksploitation.  I watched most of the big name pictures - Shaft, Truck Turner, Cleopatra Jones, Black Belt Jones, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and more of the smaller ones - and was explicitly aware of both Rudy Ray Moore and Dolemite by name but I completely mistook what I heard about it as a celebration, rather than satire, of pimp culture.  It's so nice to be re-educated.

Dolemite Is My Name is half biopic on Rudy Ray Moore and half behind-the-scenes on the production of Dolemite.  It's also a very, very strong reminder of what a charismatic performer Eddie Murphy can be, and makes one wish he chose his projects more judiciously to be in higher standard efforts like this.

Rudy Ray Moore had tried it all, with unsuccessful records and comedy albums behind him.  In his mid-40's working at a record store  he desperately wanted to be an entertainer and showman of note, but by the 1970s the type of singing/dancing/comedy performers Moore was emulating had started to vanish.  Comedy clubs has started forming and performers like Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor started working blue, and Moore's outdated stylings were gaining him no traction.  Around this time he caught on to the local legend of "Dolemite", a figure of tall tales the homeless and addicted would tell each other for amusement.  Moore started refining the stories with dirtier, more comedic punchlines and then started inhabiting the character on stage.  After very successfully self-printing and selling records, he joined up with a label to greater success.

But there was still more opportunity he foresaw, especially at the movies.  He self financed (including a series of loans) production of a movie based around the Dolemite character.  It's not something that should have worked, really but his intuition served him well, finding the right crew of people to work with, and the right motivation for making it all happen.

The film serves Moore very well, presenting him as an up-front, honest, and decent man whose desires were to entertain and to make a name for himself doing so.  He shrewdly saw a need in a market and filled the void, multiple times.  The act of doing Dolemite may not have been his preferred way to becoming a star, but he was dedicated to performing, whatever it took.

Murphy is downright excellent in the role, disappearing into a personality that obviously means a lot to him.  There's a real sense of love and affection to the portrayal of Moore, almost as if Murphy is trying to say "this is how I'd like to be remembered some day".

The cast is excellent, with Wesley Snipes delivering an unflattering but hilarious performance as coked out, vainglorious actor/director D'Urville Martin (Martin in real life would have been 35 at the time of shooting Dolemite, and died at age 45 in 1984... Snipes is now 57).  Da'vine Joy Randolph is incredible as Lady Reed, who has a very close friendship with Moore, one that the film treasures without ever insinuating is leading towards a romantic one.  It's rather beautiful aspect of the film. Other supporting cast are rounded out by comedy stalwarts Keegan Michael Key, Craig Robinson, Titus Burgess, Mike Epps with some guest shots from Chris Rock, Bob Odenkirk, Snoop Dogg, and Ron Cephas Jones.

Dolemite Is My Name is a fun time and clearly made with an affinity towards the source and what it meant in its time.  It certainly made me curious about this overlooked blacksploitation parody on my part.  Black Dynamite is one of my favourite all-time movies and Dolemite seems to have been a clear influence on it.

Logan Lucky

Twenty-for-Seven #11 (Day 5)
2017, d. Steven Soderbergh - Netflix

I wish I had seen Logan Lucky before I saw the season 4 Rick and Morty episode ""One Crew over the Crewcoo's Morty", wherein Rick get out all his frustrations with (or really, vehement hatred of) the heist genre of films.  The episode takes a very satirical look at the overused cliches of the genre, and then drums them into the ground so effectively that one may wish to never see them again.

I didn't really know that's what Logan Lucky was about when I chose to watch it.  I remembered the advertising from back when it came out and it had an almost Coen Bros. vibe to it.  With some star players putting on a thick southern drawl, I was perhaps hoping for a Carolina's-based Fargo-type story.  Alas, it's another heist movie.  Soderbergh loves his heist movies.

Logan Lucky walks a fine line between mocking and sympathizing the North Carolinians in his picture. He at once upholds dumb southerner stereotypes while also allowing for the fact that the accent can undersell one's intelligence, even perhaps manipulating the audience into thinking all the characters are rubes or idiots, when it may well be that Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) is somewhat of a genius, and a few of his accomplices have their own deep competencies.

His crew consists of his hairdresser sister Millie (Riley Keough), his one-armed veteran brother Clyde (Adam Driver), explosives expert Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) and Joe's cousins Sam and Fish Bang (Brian Gleeson and Jack Quaid), with the latter two really inhabiting the bumpkin cliche.  The plan is to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway in a crime of opportunity.  Jimmy has devised a plan based on some inside knowledge he gained while working construction to repair sinkholes.  The one catch is there's a particular safe style that they need a particular skill set to bust open, that being Joe Bang, who, unfortunately, is currently incarcerated and the window to getting things done is fast closing.  Thus the plan also entails Clyde getting arrested and then busting Joe Bang out of prison, and returning him after the job, without anyone being the wiser.

There's the usual fake-outs and deceits along the way but the job goes off with complications, and then the feds get involved.

There's some side-plotting featuring Seth McFarlane as a rich energy drink mogul and Sebastian Stan as a NASCAR driver sponsored by said energy drink, as well as dealing with Jimmy's custody issues surrounding his daughter with his ex-wife (Katie Holmes).  The daughter stuff seems important to Jimmy's character but the NASCAR side story is tangential, until it isn't.

By the end we get the "look how clever" montage and perhaps the hint of a not so happy ending afterall.  It's light and fun, but it's saying next to nothing.  It has no real cultural statement, no commentary on racing, or southern culture, or American culture or crime.  It seems to revel intentionally in drinking and fighting and children's pageantry and racing and crime... as if Soderbergh truly wanted an Oceans 13 for the redneck set.

I had never really thought about how repetitious heist films are until Rick and Morty and while I don't have quite the fervent disdain for them as Rick does, I certainly understand the apathy towards them now.

The Oath

Twenty-for-Seven #10 (Day 4)
2018, d. Ike Barinholtz - Netflix

The world is not a great place right now.  Insidious agents Russian, American and otherwise have managed to create such an extreme level of divisiveness that people are continually angry at everyone about everything.  Everything is the result of an agenda causing people to be on one side or the other...there's no longer a concept of "common ground".  This brewing pot of division has been a decades long process, one that's been permitted to happen and has culminated in political contrasts that have allowed some truly horrendous people to rise to the upper reaches of power.  One of those is a certain toe-headed, orange-faced, totalitarian blowhard to the south who feels he is flawless, above the law and demands respect and fealty with no reciprocation.

About 150 scandals ago, the orange tyrant was heard to have requested loyalty oaths from the people working for him in the government, promising to serve his best interests, not the people of the country.  This film, from comedian/writer/actor/director Ike Barinholtz, takes it one step further and has the fictional president of the United States asking its people to sign a loyalty oath, noting that it's "completely voluntary" except that it's increasingly clear through news reports that there are repercussions for not signing it.

The deadline for signing the Oath is Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, so the film leads into this time, as families start to gather and prepare food and argue over differences in political opinion.  Barinholtz play Chris, a stern opposer to the Oath and a bit of a cable news junkie.  Tiffany Haddish plays Kai, his wife, who suffers through Chris' rants and outrage and new obsession, agreeing halfheartedly, but mostly just hoping for it to end.  They have a great relationship otherwise, but it's clear Chris' news fixation is a problem.

At this stage all Chris can talk about is The Oath, but he's promised to let go of it for Thanksgiving, since his right-leaning parents are coming (Nora Dunn and Chris Ellis), as is his far right-wing brother (Barinholtz's actual brother, Jon) and his new, alt-right propaganda-spewing girlfriend (Meredith Hagner).  Chris' sister (Carrie Brownstein) seems to be the only other bastion of liberalism in the family so he's elated when she finally shows up (her husband [Jay Duplass] in tow, but down and out with the flu).

The Oath keeps simmering to the surface, no matter how hard everyone tries to surpress it, and even when it's not a topic, Chris can't help but clash with the more extreme right-wing members of his family.  After a particularly tragic Thanksgiving, the family is visited by a pair of, essentially, Oath enforcers, one very reasonable (John Cho), the other a clearly unstable, aggressive zealot (Billy Magnusson).

Up to this stage in the film it's a very tense, sporadically funny, mostly uncomfortable and perhaps upsetting film that earnestly looks at people's inability to find middle ground or common sense.  Regurgitation of talking points and an utter inability to see any other viewpoint but one's own (regardless of what side you're on) shows how rigidly divided people have become, even (or perhaps especially) families.

But once the government agents turn up, the proceedings turn from political satire to outright farce.  If things were uncomfortable before, wait until things get hilariously violent, and more that a few mistakes are made, including a bit of light assault and kidnapping.

The film is an effectively dark comedy for its first hour, the performances all quite excellent, but it excels far more in its farcical final act.  It just takes too long to get there.  The film doesn't necessarily villainize the right wing as much as I think it would like to, but it certainly highlights the fact that there are extremes that the right wing falls into that make them utterly impossible to connect with, particularly when challenging them so vehemently.

The first two acts are good but uneasy watching, and the subject matter is too depressing to really enjoy it in any way, but the third act is gold.  Barinholtz ratchets up the comedic tension expertly and doesn't over-extend the moment beyond the audience's breaking point (certainly well past the characters' breaking points however).  It's a very assured first directorial feature from him.  The film ends with a major deus ex machina, but it's also quite satisfying in its resolution, a little promise that cooler heads will prevail.

Difficult, but likeable.

You Were Never Really Here

Twenty-for-Seven #9 (Day 4)
2017, d. Lynne Ramsay - AmazonPrime

I've been putting off watching this as I had heard this was difficult and ultraviolent.  I think my brain concocts far worse imagery with such a suggestion than with what actually appears on film.  But then I'm pretty desensitized to violence at this point.  You Were Never Really Here is quite violent to be sure, as our protagonist's preferred weapon is a ball peen hammer and his deep seeded rage.

Jaoquin Phoenix stars as Joe, who spends his time caring for his mother, contemplating suicide and finding missing children.  Though it's never explicitly stated it's inferred through background images that Joe has both history in the military and FBI, and that his mental health is likely what sidelined him.  Flashbacks reveal he was abused as a child by his father (who also used a ball peen hammer), and now he takes care of his elderly mother in the same home he grew up in.  He also clearly has a mission to save abused children, but through black market/under-the-table means, and uses this path to get out his anger.

The title is the only real reference to how Joe operates, despite the trail of destruction he leaves he seems to disappear from any real consequences, until his latest mission, rescuing a senator's aide's daughter from a child sex ring, which has connections much higher than anyone suspected.  The blowback on Joe and his very small circle of family and acquaintances, is brutal.

While film is crisp, brisk and action heavy (but in a very minimal way) it's also very subtle in its portrayal of Joe and Ramsay has a very deliberate hand in how and when she reveals information about him.  Are some acts that would appear suicidal just comforting to him?  It's hard to know what is what with Joe.

Phoenix is always an actor who invests in the roles he performs, and here he's living the part of a grizzled, traumatized veteran who knows his purpose but still has to fight himself to carry on.  It's wholly believable, and a little upsetting.  He seems relatively nice but you can tell there's something very dark living underneath.

Johnny Greenwood provides an ominous soundtrack to the picture which reinforces it's art-house action movie vibe, certainly elevating it as well.  After watching uber-stylized ultra-violence with two John Wick movies back-to-back, it's surprising to see something much simpler in composition be just as effective, if not even more impactful.

Enemy

Twenty-for-Seven #8 (Day 4)
2013, d. Denis Villeneuve - AmazonPrime

(I was hoping to do a trilogy of doppleganger movie reviews, but 2013's The Double, directed by Richard Ayoade, is unavailable on the streaming services I have, so for now it's just a duo, which is more thematic anyway)

Jakey G has Toronto and spiders on his mind

In the Letterboxd app's decade in review, Denis Villeneuve topped the list of top 100 directors.  Now, I admit, I'm very late to the game on appreciating Villeneuve.  There are many of his films I've wanted to see over the years, and very few I have actually seen.  I was years behind on Arrival and certainly many months behind on Blade Runner 2049.  Both of these films impressed me greatly yet I spent no effort to review his back catalog, so I became quite surprised to recently find that Incendies, Prisoners, Sicario and Enemy (all films on my "to watch" list) were all Villeneuve films.  I see the connective tissue between Arrival, Blade Runner and (forthcoming) Dune, but none of these seem to fit together as a "type".  But then I haven't watched all of them yet.

Enemy I was curious about years ago, mainly because I like the idea of discovering a doppleganger and then tracking them down.  I had forgotten that the film is set in Toronto... and not "Toronto posing as X" as it so often does.  It's exciting to see Jake Gyllenhaal jump on the 504 King Streetcar or to look up an address in Mississauga and actually go out to Mississauga (and see those salt and pepper shaker apartment complexes in the background).  Toronto never plays Toronto, so this is an added thrill.

Beyond that, the film is very curious in the way the lead character Adam gets so worked up over discovering his visual double, Anthony, after seeing him as a background performer while watching a video.  It becomes obsessive for him, and once they finally meet, Anthony is absurdly angry about the whole situation.

What we learn is Anthony is quite an asshole.  He's a member of some weird sex club, he cheats on his pregnant wife and seems completely self-involved.  Adam meanwhile is demure and reticent.  He has a fuck buddy but they don't seem very intimate or close.  Gyllenhaal does remarkable work differentiating these two in both demeanor and physicality.

The accompanying soundtrack by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans infers something very sinister, while the heavy shadows and yellowish hue Villeneuve applies provides and overbearing gloominess and weight to the world Adam lives in.  There's a repeating motif of arachnids, which seem to be weighing on both Adam and Anthony's minds, a web of deceit spun that they both get caught in.

The end of the film is a puzzle, one that I had to look up other reviews to make sense of.  This is a film about duplicity and deception, the lies we create and then fall victim to ourselves.  Adam and Anthony, you see, are the same person, and with this understanding the film becomes much less literal and far more metaphorical.  There isn't a twist ending, that reveals this, it's all still undercover and inferred.  I'm not sure if it helps going into the film knowing this, or if it's better to discover it after, but I think the film works in either situation.   In effect, Anthony has created a whole other life in order to conduct his extramarital affairs, so segregated that he's effectively bifurcated his personality into two distinct characters.

It's quite brilliant in its execution, but I needed that extra outside nudge to get the message.  I've been thinking and parsing out the film a lot since watching it, and I'll defintely need to watch it again. I see how Villeneuve went from Enemy to Arrival from here, if only in style.

(Toast's take circa 2014)

Us

Twenty-for-Seven #7 (Day 3)
2019, d. Jordan Peele - Crave

Jordan Peele returns with another retro-styled creep fest, about a family terrorized by, seemingly, other-dimensional doppelgangers.

We begin in the mid-80's at a Californian boardwalk carnival.  A young girl, Adelaide, wanders off from her arguing parents into an isolated fun house.  In the room of mirrors she encounters herself and is traumatized for a very long time.

In present day Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o) and her family have come to California to that same carnival, only for Adelaide to experience a creeping unease upon being in the area.  Later that night at the vacation cottage, they spy quartet standing at the end of their driveway.  Peele teases out nothing, and in no time this family of red jumpsuits have descended upon the house and overtaken their prey.   These people are visually identical, but mostly mute, except for Adelaide's double who speaks with a pained rasp.

But the family, bruised and battered, manage to escape, only to find the world has started to become overrun by red jumpsuits.  The immediate world has descended into chaos, with each doppleganger's mission seeming to be to murder their opposite then join a "Hands Across America"-like lineup.  Escape seems impossible.

Eventually Adelaide winds up in the Fun House again, discovering a deep dark tunnel which reveals the truth about the reality of the dopplegangers, and the entire film falls apart.  Peele reaches for a grounded, science-gone-wrong explanation which makes the conceit so much harder to believe than had it been an alternate reality/mirror universe that these people came from.  It's tonally only a soundtrack spin and a few punch ups away from being an extended Key and Peele comedy sketch.

The performances in this are delightful, with Clark Duke, Elizabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker and all the younger actors putting in entertaining turns as both the normal character and their oddball doubles.  But it's not enough to save the film from a very nonsensical reveal.  Peele seemed to lose his touch for tension-building in this one, as I didn't find it frightening, creepy, or intense.  I found it more silly and amusing, lacking any cultural narrative or bite like Get Out had.

(Toast's take)

Marriage Story

Twenty-for-Seven #6 (Day 2)
2019, d. Noah Baumbach - Netflix


At this stage in life I'm not much of a drama guy. I'm too aware of drama in the world (it's ever-present), at work, and of course all the drama family life can bring with it.  I want as little drama as possible, so when I want to watch TV or a movie, something classified as "drama", especially something approximating real life, is the last thing I want. 

Baumbach's early work traded in heightened drama, punching up the dramatic elements to the point that it's so awkward and uncomfortable that it borders on satirical, comedic even.  But looking closer, especially at the past 10 years of his work, he seems to be settling into a Woody Allen-esque light/comedy-drama phase.  There's more character-based comedy rather than social awkwardness, and the drama seems to be tempered so that the characters, less so the audience, bear the brunt of it. 

The writer-director seems to have found an effective way to draw the audience, and invest in the character but in an outside observer, 3rd person narrative kind of way, not in a first-person, this-is-me way.  This slight sense of detachment allows the comedy to filter through much easier, and the more dramatic elements to slide off. 

With Marriage Story, I was expecting more of a return to the The Squid and the Whale type discomfort, but was pleased to find it was a lot more forgiving than that. 

In reality, Marriage Story is "Divorce Story" as we meet theatre director Charlie (Adam Driver) and actress Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) at couples counseling as they navigate the first stage of their separation.  This counseling starts in the form of a montage with each character narrating what they like or love about the other character.  It sets the tone immediately that these two were clearly in love with each other at one time and still retain a great deal of respect and admiration. 

Nicole is moving to L.A. with their son, Henry -- an adaptable, whip-smart kid who isn't afraid to speak his own mind -- while Charlie brings his play to broadway.  The divorce proceedings start out civil until the lawyers become involved and the film presents a definitely satirical look at how the legal side of things has become an industry, and not necessarily anything to benefit any party in the relationship.

The film decides to focus more on Charlie's experience with this, rather than Nicole's, which shows Baumbach's bias in the script (as it was inspired by his own divorce from Jennifer Jason Leigh).  But it mercifully doesn't portray Nicole in a bad light in any way, more just the family law's bias against the fathers in custody battles.   The larger satire mainly falls in the fact that Charlie and Nicole want to come to a reasonable understanding with their divorce, but it's the lawyers who, so used to having to engage combative participants, spur on this kind of challenging, mud-slinging atmosphere that gets things dirty.  Once out of reach of the lawyers, Charlie and Nicole still have very healthy communication, but with percolating resentment that wasn't there before.

Marriage Story is quite wry, and not as nerve-racking as I was expecting.  I found all the characters very entertaining (Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Mickey Sumner, Julie Hagerty, Ray Liotta all in great supporting roles) and their dynamics with each other was impeccable.  The film so rarely ratchets up any tension, that when Charlie and Nicole finally explode on each other, it's more a result of frustration at the process than any real disdain for each other.  It's cathartic, but immediately regretted, and thing become uneasy for a while.  But the film wants both characters to find comfort, and the audience as well.  It makes it through okay, but also makes you wish for a better path.

If anything, Marriage Story, wants to let you know that communication is key to relationships if they're to work, but it takes work, and clarity.  Nicole and Charlie communicated well, but not well enough for their relationship to survive, and not well enough to make their divorce a smooth one.  And still it seems to have worked out so much better than most divorces tend to.

This is the type of drama I can handle any day.  Two people who may have conflict but are still able to find the civility in it, and the observant third party who can find the humour amidst all of it. 

The Aeronauts

Twenty-for-Seven #5 (Day 2)

2019, d. Tom Harper - AmazonPrime

Here's that origin story of the science of weather forecasting that absolutely nobody was asking for.

Seriously, that's ultimately what this tale is, the remarkable, probably-not-even-close-to-accurate adventure partaken by a female balloonist and a male scientist as they ventured into the upper atmosphere of the earth.

Real-life scientist James Glaisher (Eddie Redmayne) is laughed at by one of those big assemblies of old white men ("royal society of whatever") about his thoughts on meteorological studies, that there was any science at all to predicting the weather.  He set out to hire a balloonist to take him up high in the sky to advance his studies but nobody would take him on, at least in this story.

Enter Amelia Wren (Felicity Jones), a fictional construct still pained and traumatized by the loss of her husband in a ballooning accident the year or so previous.  It takes much convincing on Glaisher's part but he manages to secure the funding and gets her to agree to pilot him. 

After some crown appeasement they take to the sky and venture up, up, up.  In their 80 minute journey they face storm clouds, butterflies, freezing cold, thinning air, and much worse on the way down.

The film is told inter-cutting the voyage with the history of how the adventure came to be, and the odd (likely to pad out the run-time) look at people on the ground waiting in anticipation for news of the journey (or looking through spyglasses). 

There are some real and CGI vistas which are both quite gorgeous but it's not enough to sustain the film.  Moments of action and excitement seem largely manufactured, and are more eye-rolling than thrilling.

In real life, Glaisher was much older than Redmayne when he made his first of many trips into the sky, and he was accompanied by a male pilot, not a female one.  I find that "based on a true story" is the biggest burden to any film as it then sets the viewer on a mental path to validating the events as portrayed in the film, and much of what happens here seems unlikely.  One or two lesser intense mishaps perhaps, but so much going wrong in one short flight seems unlikely.

Redmayne and Jones have worked together before, thus they have an easy, established chemistry.  The film takes admirable pains not to put them into any sort of romantic entanglements (that would have been unbearable).  They seem like professional colleagues who don't necessarily trust each other at first but have to come to rely upon each other for survival. 

It's passable entertainment but I needed to be doing something else (a puzzle, actually) while watching it.

John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum

Twenty-for-Seven #4 (Day 2):

2019, d. Chad Stahelski - AmazonPrime

Man, they do great poster designs for these films

When we left John Wick at the end of Chapter 2, he had just killed a dude inside the Continental.  One of the main rules of this universe is there is no "business" to be conducted on Continental grounds.  John has a preexisting relationship with the manager (Ian McShane) so he was given one hour to get his shit together before he was to be pronounced "excommunicated" and a $14million bounty is put on his head.  You can't kill a member of the High Table without repercussions.

Let's pause here:
Parabellum, as defined by the Free Dictionary, means :  

Latin for "prepare for war," from the phrase, Si vis pacem, para bellum, meaning "If you want peace, prepare for war"

It also has various intonations around firearm rounds or cartridges, which obviously tie into John Wick's motif.

Excommunicated, again as defined by the Free Dictionary, means:

To exclude by or as if by decree from membership or participation in a group.

Just so we're clear.

The opening of John Wick Chapter 3 is a bloody mess... in that it is both bloody, and messy.  John is running in the rain, still battered and wounded from all the fighting in Chapter 2.  His unnamed dog is running by his side.  He's being tracked by every hitmanperson and gang in town.  The administrative bureau of this whole underworld (consisting entirely of Hot Topic aficionados -- so many tattoos, piercings, angular haircuts and dye jobs) is counting down the hour before John is considered excommunicated, announcing it over their loudspeaker.  The first ten minutes or so jump between John on the run and these announcements of how much time is left, and it's really, really, really stupid, as if the film thinks we'd be unaware of the time pressure John is facing unless we're constantly reminded.  John is very wounded and needs some patching up.  He finds friendly support in his waning minutes before excommunication... but time runs out and he has to patch himself up.  The doc is worried he will be found out as helping someone excommunicado and forces John to shoot him, twice to infer he was pressured into service.

John retrieves some personal items from a library and then uses a family totum to call in a favour with the Belarus mafia in NY (led by Angelica Huston), since he is a child of their clan...or whatever the deal is there, it wasn't very clear.  He is reluctantly provided with passage to Casablanca where he uses he connections to get into the Continental there, and uses a blood oath coin to get Halle Berry to reluctantly put him in contact with the head of the underworld mint.  There John learns of the Elder of the High Table who can, possibly, absolve John of his sins, but he needs to wander the desert to do so.  Of course, a high body count is collected along this whole route.

Meanwhile, an Adjudicator for the High Table is running through New York with a gang of ninjas in tow advising that everyone who helped John in any way, including the Bowery King (Lawrence Fishbourne), Angelica Huston, and Ian McShane.  They broke the rules and must be punished.  But New Yorkers have an attitude and they don't take kindly to the High Table inflicting their unmediated judgement upon them.

John meets with the Elder, who asks why John wants to live so badly.  He states it's to remember his wife.  He's asked for a sacrifice, and John slices off his ring finger.  Then he asks John to kill the Manager of the New York Continental, since he's proving to be difficult in the Adjudication process.

John agree, but chooses to side with his friend, and he, the Manager and the Concierge stave off an attack from the Adjudicator's ninjas and the High Table's barrage of armored enforcers.  The film ends with the Manager seemingly turning on John and killing him (but his body being collected by the Bowery King's legion) and staving off being a target of the high council but also having his Continental being deconsecrated, and everyone in NYC preparing to war against the high table.

I know I'm just reiterating the plot above, but it's necessary to highlight the point I wanted to make... the team kind of shit the bed on this one.  The first two chapters of John Wick set up a world of organized rules and policies that everyone's to operate in or they face consequences.  But in this third chapter, the consequences, and enforcement thereof, seem entirely arbitrary.  The film acts as if John Wick were the first to ever break the rules and they have no precedent, which seems kind of silly, to think that this one man is just *that* special.

The point is, John calls in all sorts of favours, which people like Angelica Huston and Halle Berry seem honour-bound to obey (just as John was in Chapter 2 when his blood oath was called in).  But if you're forced to obey a blood oath, how can you be punished for obeying it? And yet people are punished severely for it (including John).  But if you're not supposed to fulfil your honour-bound oaths and whatnot for someone who is excommunicated then why on earth would Angelica or Halle actually help him.  This world, their rules, no longer makes sense.

I found some enjoyment in Chapter 3; it's a good-looking film with some amazing stunt choreography, yet, for the most part I found it frustrating to watch.  The inner logic of this world fell totally apart.  Plus it seems like half the population of the globe is part of this underworld, which seems insane to me.

I've noticed along the way John has not killed certain people outright, like Common in Chapter 2 or the Minter and a couple of the ninja goons who were fanboying out when fighting him.  It's a "professional courtesy" he seems to be extending to them, so my assumption is that he will be receiving some sort of reciprocation down the line... as was the case with the Bowery King in Chapter 2.  I'll still be in for Chapters 4 & 5 (and maybe that crossover with Atomic Blonde that was hinted at), but they need to work harder to solidify their world and how it operates.

(Toast's take on Parabellum)

Late Night

twenty-for-seven: #3 (Day1)

2019, d. Nisha Ganatra - AmazonPrime

I was a fan of The Mindy Project, the Mindy Kaling-created, starring, and show-run rom-com sitcom.  I likewise found Kaling's humour collections and early sitcom very funny.  I'm a fan, I think she's pretty great.  So I had high hopes for Late Night, her first major screenplay, about a female late night talk show host facing obsolescence.

This is an intriguing premise because, in the world of late night tv, we have never had a female host at a major network, at least not of any duration. Chelsea Handler had a late night show on E!, which was as close as it's been.  There's such potential to explore the reality of this situation, the sexism within the industry and the struggles that maybe such a position would face.

But the film seems disinterested in such a topic.  Emma Thompson plays the lead role, a celebrated television icon, winner of dozens of awards over a 27 year run.  There's no actual question about her place in the comedy sphere or on late night television.  So rather than any institutionalized conflict around gender biases, she is instead facing something different, declining ratings and cultural irrelevance.

Her writing staff, comprised entirely of middle-aged white males, is phoning it in, and its here where the institutionalized sexism (and racism) is flagged as a problem.  The show's producer is tasked with finding a diversity hire, which brings Kaling into the fold.  She has minimal standup experience, few writing samples and no history in the business.  But she makes the producer laugh with a sharply observed joke in their interview and gets hired, much to the suspicion of the hegemony in the writers room.

Kaling shakes things up, in good and bad ways and the film alternates between her trials by fire and Thompson's struggles at finding new relevance, and their mutual impact on each other. 

The structure and story progression is so predictable that I found myself screaming for something original to happen.  It would be more forgivable if the film were funnier, but it's actually more of a light drama than comedy.

It's remarkable that Amazon paid such a large sum (14million) on this expecting a massive breakthrough hit.  This is a small film with a solid, charming cast (Thompson, Kaling, John Lithgow, Hugh Dancy), but it doesn't make any daring choices, and seems to avoid higher stakes commentary.

Overall, disappointing. 

High Life

Twenty-for-Seven: #2 (day 1)

2018, d. Claire Denis - AmazonPrime

The film opens on Monte (Robert Pattinson) making repairs on the exterior of a spacecraft while he talks with the baby inside, contained in a makeshift pen, with monitors displaying a variety of old earth programming.  They are alone, but we don't know why.  As the first act progresses, we get flashes of, presumably, Monte's youth on Earth...walking in the woods, a dog, a friend, the friend standing over the dog's body in a stream, the friend dead herself.  The flashes are so brief as to tease a puzzle. Two concurrent puzzles. 

We catch Monte's life and routine on the space ship, caring for an infant, working through his own depression, inputting reports into an automated system every 24 hours to sustain the life support systems. and disposing of bodies out of the air vent (but with delicate care).

Act two jumps back in time, revealing that this started out as ship full of convicts, sent out into deep space in an experiment to reach a black hole and "capture its rotation" (a "class 1 suicide ride" they describe it as).  The group of prisoners includes a doctor obsessed with reproduction, and is performing insemination experiments on the prisoners, but the radiation is killing the babies.  The crew is an uneasy mix, and a lot of weird shit happens on this ship, leading to murders and suicides.

The third act moves forward about 15 years in the future, to find Monte and his daughter Willow working the rounds on the ship.  They have been long out of communication from earth and isolated with only each other's company.  They encounter another experimental transport, only to discover things went even more wrong there, before reaching the black hole and venturing into it together.

High Life is a fascinating and meditative science fiction tale.  I'm not certain the moral or message after this initial viewing.  I had assumed initially it was an exploration of depression, but the second act toils so much in the dire circumstances of the crew, reveling in its ugly primalness and desperation, that it seems the point.  The third act finds its own level of solace, comfort and resignation, rather than the earlier depression and despair.  It leaves an impression regardless.

There's a retro cheapness to the production, giving it a 70's aesthetic with some more modern touches, and yet there's almost too many modern touches that will, in the future, date this film as part of its time.  It all seems intentional, as if Denis was looking at 70's sci-fi films and wanting to replicate their outdated timelessness.  The cheapness, perhaps of the set or ship (the ship exterior looks like a wood-paneled cargo container, strangely boxy) or costume design is masqued by effective direction and editing, the performances and mood leading the film.

This fits in the Silent Running/Solaris mold of pensive spacefaring that we don't get enough of, or at least rarely do modern versions of this type of story manage to do it so effectively. 

John Wick 2

Twenty-for-Seven: #1(day1)

It's still the holiday season and I still have time off.  Not a lot of time off, but time off none the less.  There are things I *could* be doing, and likely things I *should* be doing, but dang it, when do I ever allow myself the time to just kick my heels up and watch a pile of movies?  Not that often.  So with a week left to go in vacation time (from December 26 until Jan 1), I plan to cram in 20 movies in seven days.  I'm not sure I'll be able to write about them all as I go, as that would certainly interfere in my movie watching/dog walking/puzzle building/game playing time, but, well, gotta give it the ol' angler fish try.

---
(2017, d. Chad Stahelski - AmazonPrime)

I liked John Wick enough, but what I liked most about it was the cool, unusual world we're introduced to via the Continental, a hotel that's intended to be a safe haven from all the gangland and hired assassin killing.  John Wick, is such a nothing as a character, that he's literally a killing machine still in deep mourning for the loss of his wife (and the dog she gave him).  Why does he keep killing people?  Because he has to in order to live?  Why does he even want to live? What does he have to live for?  Well, we don't find that out until Parabellum.

The opening of JWch2 is kind of ass.  Picking up almost directly where the last chapter left off (John avenged the death of his dog but there was still the dangling plot thread of retrieving  his car) we're thrust in the middle of a a dodgy car chase that's almost more demolition derby.  It's a sequence that has some rather silly (many of them entertainingly silly) edits, stunts and effects, but the energy of it seems off.  What are the stakes here?  I forget where JWch1 left off.  This sequence only takes off once Keanu exits the car (in kind of hilarious fashion) and starts into the hand to hand.  Even then, the sequence goes on too long, and the intercutting between Keanu and Peter Stormare delivering heaps of clunky exposition that catches the audience up on the meager plot of the first one, and closes up the last dangling thread, being the recovery of John Wick's car.

After more action, followed by John Wick finally getting to take a breath and return home with his rescued dog-with-no-name, the film starts diving back into world building, which is more of what I came to see than the action.  We're treated to the concept of blood oaths as a particularly nasty man from John's old life comes calling asking for his blood oath to be honored.  Things go bad before they get better.  He's tasked with a mission to kill the man's sister, as she took their father's place at the Table (the people who run the underworld), and now he wants it.

After consulting with Ian McShane over at the Continental he's off to Rome, to do his necessary deed. He is asked by the Roman Continental manager if he's there to kill the pope, which I thought was amusing.  His mission is successful, but now he has the dead donna's goons hunting him for revenge, and the brother has turned traitor and is "avenging his sister" sicking his forces on him, and after escaping Rome, he's placed with a 7 million dollar bounty which puts every merc on his trail.  How will the old Baba Yaga get out of this one.

Well, I'll tell you that he only does so by making things much, much worse for himself.  It's actually quite thrilling to see him find himself in a hole, climb out of that hole only to find it's a hole at the bottom of an even bigger hole.

The film crackles with energy, running at a frenetic pace, and knocking John Wick around to the point that he should either have internal injuries, concussions, or both.  But he's not exactly a superhero, the wear and tear on him are tangible, and for what Keanu lacks in emoting ability, he makes up for in physical performance (which is what the role demands most).

The film (and the series, I can say in hindsight) is at its best in Rome, when it slows down enough to explore the weird world of international organized crime, governed under one code.  John Wick's visit to the continental there, plus his evening-out preparations with the sommelier (Peter Serafinawicz), the tailor, and the blueprints office all really flesh out some of the merits of this over-arching world of crime.  I love John's bulletproof suit, and the explanation of the soft fibre that protects him... that it will stop any bullet, but he'll still feel the impact.

Oddly, there are a lot of foreign languages being spoken in this film but without translation (and sign language too), but when I turned on the closed captioning, I saw that AmazonPrime actually does the translations there.  Neat.

There's an amazing sequence towards the end taking place in a updated house of mirrors.  It's a modern art installation that spans room after room, level after level, with mirrors, monitors and glass.  I don't know if this museum setting was fully constructed or if it was tear down of an existing piece, but it was gorgeous.  I always love a good chase through a house of mirrors scenario and this one, with the addition of technology to the bit, tops them all.

The film ends with John Wick having gotten out of one pickle but fallen right into the pickle jar.  It's a rather exciting crucible he's seemingly putting himself through, and it really begs the question "how's he going to get himself out of this one"?

(Toast's take)

Xmas Leftovers

Sometimes we only wind up catching parts of Hallmark(esque) films, either because we joined late, left early, or just had better things to watch. Sometimes we watch the whole thing but get too drunk to write big long things about them.

Here are some of those partial/impaired viewings:

Christmas Perfection (2018, Lifetime): Darcy's parents had a rocky marriage and she used to fantasize about the perfect Irish Christmas as a child.  As an adult she's got these Irish village Christmas decorations, and after a fraught Christmas dinner, she winds up in the village, her toy village come to life, where everyday is the perfect Christmas.  There's a kind of Groundhog's Day loop happening, but everyone knows that yesterday was Christmas and tomorrow is Christmas.  I stopped watching when her best friend found his way into town, the best friend whom she's been avoiding having any romantic feelings about for years.  Honestly, this should have been far more entertaining and intriguing than it wound up.  The "Irish village" was populated by mostly non-Irish actors crafting very bad accents (only the actress playing the mom had a genuine accent).  The "perfect boyfriend" character in the village seemed to model his lilt off of one very specific Colin Ferrell moment in Daredevil or something.  He delivered EVERY LINE the exact same way.  Nails on a chalkboard.  This should have been a horror movie.  It felt very insidious, and yet we were supposed to take Christmas feels away from it.  Made in 2018, looks like 2002. Bleh, turned off after 40 minutes.  No thank you.

The Christmas Train (2017, Hallmark): the one wherein Hallmark tries to make a real movie.  A writer/journalist (Dermot Mulroney) is taking the Christmas Train from New York to LA as a means of delaying his purpose of breaking up with his part-time girlfriend.  He's using the trip to craft an article, and starts connecting with the other train passengers (well, not really, Mulroney is sleepwalking through this whole damn thing).  Turns out one of his passengers is a famous director, played by a strangely committed Danny Glover, and his assistant who just happens to be Mulroney's lost love.  They rekindle their passion while engaging with the other train passengers and having romantic outings in the cities where they stopover.  Turns out someone on the train is stealing stuff, and there's some other weird things afoot. Complication, the on-again-off-again girlfriend shows up on the train anticipating a proposal! How can that be? Then when moving past Colorado, an avalanche snows the train in just out of communication with headquarters. They're going to freeze if they don't figure something.  They do. And Mulroney lets the part-time gf down easy, and promises his undying love and slow dancing to the other one.  And then we learn it's all been a big set-up that Danny Glover produced...most of it, minus the avalanche.  It's so dumb.  So dumb.  And wastes Joan Cusack something fierce.

Christmas at the Plaza (2019, Hallmark): By the time December rolled around Hallmark had been airing its new slate of movies for just over a month.  At that stage, the Deck the Hallmark (a delightful podcast where three South Carolinian goofballs cover every new Hallmark movie each season) boys had ranked Christmas at the Plaza as their tops (or near the tops) for the year.  They were effusively gushing about this thing.  Even the hater, Dan, seemed to like this one.  I had no interest until I heard the podcast episode and suddenly it became required watching.
I'm not quite sure what it was they saw in this (I mean, they said on their podcast what it was), but I certainly didn't see it, and I did not connect with this movie. At. All. Well ok, maybe just a little.
Elizabeth Henstridge (Simmons from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) makes her Hallmark debut as Jessica, a historian, specializing in Christmas decorations.  She gets commissioned by the famed New York Plaza Hotel to set up a historical retrospective Christmas display, working with Nick (Ryan Paevey), a contractor who runs a Christmas decorating service (that's got to be a solid year-round gig, no?).  Jessica locks in on the subject of the Plaza's tradition of having a unique, custom-made tree topper (or finial d'arbre, as they so poshly call it) each year.  The film gets its plusses by focusing as much, if not more on the mystery of a missing tree-topper, as it does on the wooing Nick does of Jessica.  The mystery is decent, but a little easy.  The relationship on the other hand, doesn't seem like much of a match.  It seems like nick sees wooing Jessica as a bit of a challenge, given that she's already got a erudite boyfriend who has no genuine interest in her.  For a Hallmark, this one looks good and avoids most of the usual cliches, so it's one notch above the common HM riff-raff, but I didn't feel any connection between Henstridge an Paevey at all and I didn't get the connection the story was trying to sell.  And I was distracted by Henstridge's American accent throughout (perhaps she was too).  This one's really just mediocre, you guys.
P.S. Also not enough Nelson Wong as Kenny Kwan, a bit character he's played in over a dozen movies now (including The Christmas Train and Angel of Christmas...basically anything Ron Oliver is directing). 

Merry & Bright (2019, Hallmark): Because one former Full House child star wasn't enough, we have to get...umm... the middle one who wasn't DJ or Michelle... you know, the forgettable one... anyway, her... we have to get her starring in Hallmarks now?  I guess they had to replace Aunt Becky with someone else from that show?  Blerg.  Anyway.  This one is so conventional.  Whatsherface inherited the Merry & Bright Candy Cane Company from someone in her family and is trying to turn its dwindling fates around.  The board of directors, lacking faith in their new CEO, hires a big-town corporate recovery big wig who comes to town in the form of Hallmark hunk of the decade Andrew Walker, you know, the guy who is CW superhero good looking.  There's some merry mix ups at first, and some misunderstandings and s ome stupid plan to make chocolates (making chocolate and making hard candy are not even close to being the same thing).  It's the usual PST that these things take place in, one where Christmas is celebrated to the nth degree.  Walker's business bro is the child of a chilly family and not full of the festive spirit, so while it's up to him to help turn business around, it's up to her to turn him around.  A trip to NYC provides insight into the handsome man's less than perfect life and whatshername learns to trust her instincts.  This one is utterly bad.  There's no chemistry between him and her, and the relationship/attraction never makes any sense (also, I don't want to be *that* guy, but she's just not in his league).  And mom gets some bullshit B-plot about taking care of a puppy.  This one is just ridiculously bad.  Which means it's great fun to get drunk to and make fun of.

Holiday Date (2019, Hallmark) - only caught the second half, but wasn't as downright awful as I think people were bracing for, given the pre-controvercy around the suspected anti-semitism... it's just "not great".  So I missed the set-up where Brooke is dumped before Christmas and enlists Joel to pretend to be her ex-boyfriend, Ethan.  Since I missed the set-up, I'm not entirely sure what the pressure on Brooke was to have a boyfriend/bring one home for the holidays, but regardless, any pressure or expectation in this matter is bullshit, whether it stems from her family or Brooke herself.  You don't need a man to feel fulfilled Brooke.  Anyway, where we stepped in, the family had already unveiled that "Ethan" is Jewish and, Mom (Hallmark-esque mainstay and Stargate SG-1 lead Teryl Rothery) makes a decided effort to add Hanukkah traditions to their family.  Whether it's a little over-compensating or not...well...it is.  Things get complicated when someone posts a Tweeters of "Ethan" and Brooke and real Ethan shows up.  Two Ethans! Crazy pants.  Also I guess Brooke told her family they were engaged and Mom hunted down called real Ethan's family who were very confused by the news (Mom's a real excitable go-getter).  Then the family finds out Ethan is just a very good actor named Joel, just as he's about to come clean to them... but he and Brook are now really in love or something, and Joel now loves Christmas which is all any parents want for a partner for their child, right?  Joel performs in a local Christmas pageant and steals the show... from children.  It's not great, this one, but I guess points for trying?  The fact that the family (well, Mom) adopts Hanukkah as much as Joel adopts Christmas is ... something? Hallmark is very insistent that Christmas be for everyone, and so I think that all their films, for the foreseeable future, that feature Jewish characters (see also The Christmas Club) will have them embracing Christmas.  As far as Hallmark leads go, though, Matt Cohen is really charming and one of the better male leads this year, Brittany Bristow much less so (perhaps it's because we get zero sense of who Brooke is or her motivation in the second half...she's just totally devoid of character).  Bruce Boxleitner sleepily cashes his paycheck as Brooke's dad.

Hope at Christmas (2018, Hallmark) - Joined this one halfway through to find the most banal and rote Hallmark story.  Scottie Thompson (not the Kids in the Hall one) plays Sydney... wait a minute... she's NOT named HOPE? Dropped the ball on this one Hallmark.  Anyway, where we come in we find Ray, her daughter sad that Mac, a school teacher, didn't show up for some thing he was supposed to show up to.  Sydney is pissed, but, you know, "Hallmark pissed" which means "mostly sad and self-conscious".  Mac manages to smooth things over, for it's a little known fact that Mac plays the town Santa and Ray has been feeding Santa all sorts of dirt on her mom, which Mac then uses to woo this apparently fresh-on-the-market cougar.  It's a rare case where the single parent is a single parent as a result of divorce and not a dead spouse.  Having a dead spouse makes things so much less complicated story-wise.  However, at least in the second half, the ex has zero impact on the story, except to say that Ray is maybe supposed to go to her dad's for Christmas but wants to stay in (checks notes) Hopewell (I guess *this* is the "hope" at Christmas?).  There's some bullshit about a beloved bookstore that's getting sold and turned into condos which we all know Sydney is going to buy right at the last minute, and of course she's going to choose this small-town meager life over the big city executive position she's been offered, because the subtext of Hallmark movies is that small town women who have never had a real career shouldn't feel bad about themselves, moreover big city women with big-time jobs are doing it all wrong.  Shame your neighbor, it's the American way.  And then there's that scene where a Christmas tree exploded in the book store and Mac is all out of fresh trees, so Sydney enlists child labor to build a tree out of books.  The book-tree display is actually pretty nice, but I'm not sure what kind of hate crime or act of sabotage happened to the tree earlier (they said the stand broke, but I don't buy it).  Anyway, since Sydney isn't taking the New York job and buying the bookstore, she can now be with schoolteacher/santa/tree farmer Mac, and Ray has a new daddy and old daddy can go suck lemons with Sam Page.  Oh, and special appearance from Kenny Kwan (which must mean this is a Ron Oliver joint)!

Christmas Under the Stars (2019, Hallmark) - Nick who was the boy toy poolboy from Desperate Housewives is a big time account manager at an investment firm however his gains (ferda!) haven't been good this year and he's fired, at Christmas.  He stumbles onto a Christmas Tree lot to gain sage advice and a seasonal job offer from Clarke fucking Peters (The Wire and, currently, His Dark Materials). Nick rejects it initially but reconsiders after meeting single mom Julie (an astronomy teacher, you know, like there is everywhere...they really needed to shoehorn in the "stars" connection) and her son (adopted) Matt.  Nick is supposed to be a self-centered Wall Street douche, but these HM movies rarely commit to making their leads unlikeable at the start, and as such, their big transformation into altruistic Christmas-and-family-loving people never really feels like much of a big deal.  The tree lot, which has been there for decades, is under threat from a developer, but Nick using his investment bankering know-how saves the day by finding himself a job at a socially conscious investment firm. And, in doing so, he made his dad proud of him mending their strained relationship (which only seemed strained based on misconceptions Nick had about his dad's expectations).  This one was a rare HM that was mostly focused on the dude's journey... not that that made it any better.  No, what made it better was Clarke fucking Peters. He was gold in almost every scene, in an otherwise rote, lower-middle-of-the-road Christmas romance.  I want a Hallmark film that features a seniors, mixed-race romance between Clarke Peters and the husky-voiced mom from The Christmas Club next year. Break some ground Hallmark!

Two Turtle Doves (2019, Hallmark) - This one was getting a lot of raves from Hallmark aficionados, since it "deals" with grief. Nikki DeLoach stars as Dr Sharon Hayes, a big time neurosurgeon who is looking for a research grant to make some big gains (ferda) in neuroscience.  She returns home to deal with her parents estate after their death (but it's been almost a year and she's been too busy to do anything until now), to find her mother's list of 12 Christmas traditions which she sets out to do in her honor. Her parents estate attorney and next door neighbor Michael Rady is Sam, a recent widower and single father.  His daughter becomes enamored with Dr Sharon's Christmas traditions and all three start spending time together becoming a defacto family for the holidays.  Apparently they heal their grief through the magic of Christmas but for all the lofty talk about it dealing with death and sadness, it doesn't really, except in that condensed, not-get-too-heavy-and-distract-from-Christmas kind of way. Maybe I would be more charitable if Rady played Sam with any semblance of emotion. Watching DeLoach's sweet charm but against Rady's Data-from-Star Trek impersonation was, frankly, annoying to watch. The girl playing the daughter was great, though, and her and DeLoach had chemistry for miles.  But I hate the trope if these movies where the real connection is between the adult and the kid and the romantic connection between the adult leads is underexplored or non-existent. Dr. Sharon gets her research grant, by the way and decided to stay at her parents place while working on her research so she can explore the relationship with the little wooden boy next door.

Snow (2004, ABC Family) - Nick (Tom Cavanaugh - Ed, The Flash) is the latest in his family lineage to take on the persona of Santa Claus.  There's a whole curse-turns-to-joyous-redemption backstory that Is explained mid-way through the film which I quite like (unfortunately, due to budget limitations it's a tell-don't-show situation). One of Nick's reindeer, Buddy, wanders off and gets poached and then sold to the San Ernesto zoo where Sandy (Hallmark princess Ashley Williams) works.  The poacher, Buck, is a real DB (douchebag) who wants to be Sandy's DB (Dick Boyfriend) and she has to constantly rebuff his advances ("Ew" as she likes to say).  It's totally gross pre-Me Too shit where she rebuffs him but still has to be nice about it for some reason.  Anyway, Nick winds up at the zoo looking for Buddy, immediately falls for Sandy, and starts weaseling his way into her life unintentionally. He's a total weirdo but he's sweet and friendly and polite and non-agressive. It's weird that she would find Nick attractive at all, but then again, next to Buck, he's a gold star.  There's a whole boarding house living situation that I didn't quite understand, but it was a sweet environment that brought people together in the film and made for a rather great ensemble of Canadian character actors. I won't work my way through the rest of the plot, suffice it to say that it plays out as so many family adventure/minor-fantasy movies do.  It's certainly not without it's charms, as rote as it is.  The cast is uniformly great, which elevates it from the usual cheap made-for-TV family movie fare.  It was made in 2004 but looks like it was made a decade earlier, such that the sequel, made 4 years later, looks like it was made 20 years later.  In the second film, only a year has passed, but everything looks so much better.

In Snow 2:Brain Freeze Sandy is finding life at the North Pole at Christmas less than ideal.  She's spending the holidays mostly by herself as Nick's preparations for Christmas keep him too busy to relax.  A year later is the magic in their relationship gone already? Does she regret giving up her life to be Mrs. Claus (well, Snowden, actually, is the family name)? No, she just wants Nick to take a little breather and enjoy himself at Christmas too.  Nick unfortunately has to learn list lesson the hard way, when he gets conked on the head and loses his memory in the real world with only a few days left before Christmas.  Sandy needs to learn some of Santa's magic in order to find Nick, while Nick receives help from a street urchin and an old man who seems to have some connection to him.  Buck also returns, having seen Nick on the news, and plots his revenge.  This takes a lot of big swings at trying to have grander adventure and mystery, with a whole secret society angle but it doesn't quite stick the landing.  Things happen mostly in a low-budget made-for-TV family movie kind of way which is disappointing, as there were certainly openings for some bigger things to happen.  Ashley Williams is delightful, which probably means I'm going to have to backtrack on her entry in this year's Hallmark Countdown to Christmas Holiday Hearts.

And so a few days later I found Holiday Hearts (2019, Hallmark) back on the tele, entering in at the exact same point I did in my previous viewing.  Here we have Ashley Williams and Paul Campbell who are, for some reason which I still have not discovered (since I keep missing the set-up), looking after young Lily, whose mother died (but, like, not too recently) and whose father is going in for knee surgery (which from what I've heard is typically an out-patient or next-day release, but seems to take a week or longer here).  Anyway, I'm not sure why the two of them have to co-babysit this 7-year-old leading into Christmas, but townie Peyton (Williams) and returning townie Ben (Campbell) start to develop (rekindle?) an attraction to each other and their faux domestic situation.  Peyton, meanwhile, is attempting to leave behind the dull world of accounting and tries her hand at party planning/interior decoration (eg. "the Hallmark dream job") her family business' big Christmas Gala (they run an inn, named after their family name, "Canaday".  So when they say the Canaday Christmas Gala it sounds to my Canadian ears like "Canada Day Christmas Gala...Canada Day being our fair country's birthday on July 1, nowhere near Christmas).  It doesn't go well, until it does.  Ben, meanwhile, has been lying about going to Honduras for vacation (you know that totally happening vacation spot, Honduras), and instead is actually going on a 3-year sojourn with off-brand Doctors Without Borders, "Doctor's Care International".  Anyway, of course they figure it out and share a kiss at the party.  The verdict: I don't get it.  The whole set-up, the whole execution, it doesn't make any sense.  I'm obviously missing the context of the set-up. Oh and there's that one scene where Williams is wearing a v-neck sweater backwards for some reason, probably because it was showing too much skin for Hallmark and they just made her turn it around. In the past two months I've watched so many movies with Williams and I absolutely adore her, but this one is no good.

The wife and I rang in Christmas with A Dream of Christmas, (after our traditional viewing of the Community Christmas episodes) the Hallmark where Nikki DeLoach is having doubts about her marriage and a Christmas Witch overhears and makes her wish of having never gotten married come true.  Waking up in a completely different life Penny (DeLoach) and her sister Nikki (not DeLoach) are both single, and upwardly mobile people.  Penny is called "the Barracuda" in her role as VP of Marketing at an advertising firm, because she's such a badass bitch, but the alternate reality Penny is more of a guppy than a big bad fish.  She starts to get the hang of her new boss life, but can't shake the fact that she misses her sappy photographer husband Stu (Andrew Walker).  She starts to consider a life without him and starts making moon faces with her new client Andrew (not Walker) only to learn he's a total corporate d-bag.  So for the first half of the film Penny tries to adjust to her new life (and ignore the fact that not only did she completely write out of existence her relationship, her sister's relationship, but also her niece and nephew), and the second half is all about her trying to woo Stu while dodging Andrew's gross advances/threats.  I swear Andrew wants to hunt Stu for sport.  He seems like that kind of guy.  Anyway, with ten minutes left in the picture there's a big party where Penny makes her last big play to see if Stu is into here, when we learn Stu has a fiancee (she seems nice, except that she doesn't support Stu's dreams like Penny did in her other, more miserable life, and she just wishes he would buckle down and be a corporate stooge).  Nikki tries one more time, 5 minutes later, at a Christmas tree lot on Christmas Eve, to see if Stu will fall in love with her, but no, he's too good a guy to just ditch his fiancee, and in another life they maybe would have found each other.  Great ending, except, it was all a "dream", or rather, a concussion induced hallucination that Penny was having after falling off that stool.  This should be titled Christmas in Emerg.  Oh, and also, Penny's whole angle for Andrew's company was a complete rebranding of his department store franchise, introducing the new smash hit concept of "Christmas in a Box" WITH 12 FUCKING DAYS LEFT TO GO BEFORE CHRISTMAS!!!  If it wasn't for the Christmas Witch popping up over and over again, that would be the other sign this was a big ol' fantasy.  This movie tried to do something different, but it's like an Olympic speed walker trying his hand at the 200 meter hurdles, it's just not their forte.