A Toast To Hallmarkent: Dashing in December

 2020, d. Jake Helgren - (E!, Paramount Network)

The Story:
Wyatt (Peter Porte) is a big time New York guy looking for that promotion to VP of whatever. His job doesn't matter.  What does matter is he just broke up with Lindsey (things were getting too serious) and he's going back home to the family ranch in Colorado for the holidays for the first time in, like, years and years... with the express purpose of telling his mother that it's time to sell the ranch.  He's been footing the mortgage and taxes on the ranch for years and it's just hemorrhaging money. 

Back at the ranch, Mom (if you were wondering what happened to Andie MacDowell, well, here she is) is still lamenting the loss of her husband, Wyatt's dad, 15 YEARS AGO!  Oy.  And she's letting the ranch fall into disrepair a little, without the motivation or the money to do much with it.  Her saviors have been Wyatt's high-school ex-girlfriend, Blake (Caroline Harris) and the ranch hand of three years, Heath (Juan Pablo Di Pace).  Mom and Blake talk about the fact that she hasn't told Wyatt about Heath, nor has she mentioned to Heath that Wyatt is also gay. (Later in the film she explains that she thought the two of them would work well together, but didn't want to force it in any way).

Heath's expectation is that Wyatt is a citdiot, and that he will worry about seeming homophobic while making jokes that are homophobic.  Blake just says that he will be surprised.    Their first meeting is at a distance when Wyatt gets crusty stepping in a horse pie (he also looks at Heath as a hick ranch hand), with their second meeting Wyatt calling him "Hank" and insulting the wine he brought for dinner.  At dinner, Wyatt thinks it an opportune time to introduce to Mom the plan for selling the ranch.  This sets everyone on edge, and Mom leaves while Heath gets sarcastic.

There's scenes of Wyatt and Heath talking about horses and the state of the ranch while really not liking each other.  Then Wyatt accidentally startles Heath while he's pouring water for tea (yes! Tea!) and Heath burns himself.  They actually come to a bit of an understanding when Heath learn that Wyatt's ex Lindsey was a man all along ("with facial hair, like you") and they start to probe each other's back stories (not a euphamism... but if it were, it'd be a good one).  They have tea and talk late into the evening and while they may not agree on the state of the ranch, they certainly find more than enough common ground to start liking one another.

They go out for a horse ride together (some really nice Colorado scenery, and I'm not just talking handsome men on horseback), and then go out with Mom and Blake dancing, where they have drinks and reminisce and line dance.  Here Wyatt notes that he's never actually danced with a man.  Later, Heath sets up homecoming decorations with wine and music in the ranch's gazebo and though Wyatt resists dancing at first, Heath's smooth butt wiggling side-stepping draws him in.  It's pretty sexy AND romantic!  They get close, Heath kisses Wyatt's neck, and his lip notice Wyatt's pulse.  "You're heart's racing".
"That's on you."

Anyway, there's a church service where Mom's neighbour and her dead husband's best friend, lets Mom know that he's done playing games, enough time has passed and that they must move forward.  She rebuffs him even though she wants to be with him. Complication, when Wyatt tells Mom there's a buyer for the ranch already, that his boss has a client interested in turning the property into a racetrack.

This sets everyone back on edge.  It culminates at dinner (with Wyatt's delicious bison chili and probably a better bottle of wine, though it looks the same) when everyone blows up at each other, picking at scabs with more than a little understanding that Wyatt and Heath can't be together if they're in different parts of the country.

SO...rather than apologize, Wyatt stays being a stubborn a-hole and takes off for the airport on Christmas Eve (as people do on a whim).  There he's on the phone with his boss when mercifully inspiration strikes and somehow he saves the ranch?  It doesn't matter. Mom hooks up with that guy, Blake's husband returns home from Doctors Without Borders to get her pregnant, and Wyatt gets the promotion (his company now needs a western US presence and I guess Colorado will do).  He manages to get a marketing blast to promote the ranch's sleigh ride and asks Heath to be a "partner" in the ranch.  They figure shit out and then kiss, big sexy handsome kisses...with a backpack getting in the way kinda.

The Draw:
In my efforts to support the newfound market for gay holiday romances, this seemed like a glaring omission that needed to be corrected.

The Formulae:
A hot single big city dweller (New York) is angling for the big promotion, but must return home for the holidays where his ex is still involved with his family.  Back home, there's a beloved building/institution/ritual that is in jeopardy and must be saved (in this case the family ranch).  The memories of a dead parent make it hard to be home.
The story complication of the promotion and ambition gets in the way of staying home with the new love interest.

Unformulae:
There's an ex-girlfirend "back home" but in this case Wyatt's ex-girlfriend is his BFF who he went out with in high school before he was out.
There's so much drinking real drinks in this movie (not just fucking hot chocolate, cider or eggnog).  At one point Heath is boiling water for...what the fuck... tea?!? People don't drink tea in these things...
They go to a bar, and dance to real music (Shania Twain), not just fucking Christmas carols.  There's a later dance that is also not to Christmas carols.  Hell, there aren't a lot of carols here.  It seems to have a real soundtrack.
Wyatt's distinct personality is that he's a bit brash, and kind of an ass (he *actually* seems like someone who would be a VP of something) but he's also got a good heart.  That brashness, even as he softens to Heath, it's still there. He doesn't become a different person.
There's so brutal truths and conversations these characters have between themselves and it's quite refreshing, not just juvenile pre-teen romance shit.  That third act complication is more about being wounded with words and sensitive to the larger situation, rather than some stupid misunderstanding.  You can actually feel both sides justified in their opinions... and that...maybe, these two can't end up together.
Sexiness. There is a smoldering sexiness to this movie.  The two leads are very handsome and look incredible together.  When Heath is trying to get Wyatt to dance with him, I actually was rooting out loud "Dance with him! Dance with him!" and literally cheered when he did.

True Calling?
Enh. I guess.  There's horses and handsome men, so it does sort of fit, but they could have done something a little more generic.

The Rewind:
Well, hell, I watched the whole thing twice in the same day.  But the running into each other in their underwear scene.  That was good stuff. 

The Regulars:
Porte starred straight in the 2017 Hallmark movie Love at the Shore, 2018's Love, Once and Always and 2019's Rome in Love.  He could easily play Superman.  Just sayin'.

How does it Hallmark?
It takes the Hallmark formulae as its bare bones skeleton and then adds a chiseled, muscular frame on top of it like you don't normally see.  It's more mature, considerate, and looks a hell of a lot better.  Like they actually put some money behind making something a bit more than just channel filler.

How does it movie?
It's not that far off from being a real movie.  If it abandoned the Hallmarkie formulae even more it could have been maybe a DTV feature.  

3 Short Paragraphs: Greyhound

 2020, Aaron Schneider (Get Low) -- download

CS Forester was a novelist known for his Horatio Hornblower Napoleonic era nautical novels. He also did a number of novels set during WW II, including one that was made into Sink the Bismark! where the British navy strives to sink the most powerful German battleship to date. Greyhound is based on The Good Shepherd, about a US Navy commander tasked with escorting a large multi-national convoy across the Atlantic, and the long long few days it takes to cross, while being dogged by numerous U-boats.

Tom Hanks plays Commander Krause, an aging Navy Commander provided his first real wartime command. He's a devout man, stoic and reserved, and determined to prove himself worthy of all the souls under his protection. Soon after the convoy enters the "Black Pit", an area where aerial reconnaissance is not available, they are attacked by a wolf pack. Krause stays awake, never having any opportunity to sleep nor even eat, as he goes from watch to watch, the Germans not relenting. He ignores exhaustion and the doubts of the men under his command, even his own personal doubts, and just soldiers on. 

The movie moves methodically through each watch, letting the actions speak for themselves, rarely playing into melodrama or clichés of war movies. I felt the strain along with Krause, as he watches ships sink, as he issues commands that send crewmen to their deaths, as fate often overtakes all. The movie is grim, caught in the cold mid-Atlantic, and Hanks plays it well, as I knew he would. He surprised us all when he took on the role in Saving Private Ryan and while there is little comparison between these two men, I knew he could handle this small, focused role. The movie not grand, nor does it strive to be, but it is taught story telling.

New Year's Countdown...of Horror: 1 - Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

1
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
 1986, d. John McNaughton - amazonprime

The Story (in 2 paragraphs or less)

Henry is a serial killer.  He lives in an apartment with an ex-con he was in prison with, Otis.  Otis' sister Becky has left her husband after years of abuse and comes to stay in Chicago with Otis for a break.  Otis is a horny man with no boundaries, men, women, boys, his sister... we learn from Becky that he probably got this from his father, who used to abuse her.  Becky learns that Henry killed his mother, and falls in love with him. Poor Becky.

While out with prostitutes, Henry's compulsions overtakes him, and he kills both the one he's with and the one Otis is with.  Otis is scared, but intrigued, and Henry starts to teach him the tricks of the serial killer trade, as it were...until Otis takes it too far and Henry has to clean house.

Why this?
I started the countdown with Rooker, so I guess it made sense to end with Rooker.

What's Good?
Honestly, I don't know what's good about this.  It was effective in its unpleasantness, but it wasn't a good movie. I guess it was good that the film didn't present Henry as any sort of sympathetic anti-hero ala Taxi Driver. He's just a fucked up dude who murders and even when we learn more about him, it certainly doesn't make us like him at all...not like poor Becky who has had a rotten life, and can't help but make bad decisions because she doesn't know what a good one looks like.

Visually it's pretty tame by today's standards...hell, Hannibal was a network tv show that's gorier than this is.  But somehow it's more disturbing in its crudeness.  It caused a pretty big stir at the time, with its X-rating and sensationalized reviews, and while it's not nearly as upsetting today (again production values to blame) it's still effective at being disturbing.

Not so good...
There's an uncomfortable correlation between sex and violence, and documentaries about serial killers do acknowledge that sexual abuse or trauma in childhood is often the gestation of their violent urges.  This film captures some of that, but it also has a grotesque fixation on tracking it.  One of the first images of the film is a slow, lurid pan up of a dead (presumably) prostitute in lingerie with a breast exposed and a bottle sticking out of her head.  There's no necessity to be as lurid as it was which speaks more to the director's interest in mild titillation (as usually happens in conventional horror movies) coupled with violence.  As I said, it's effectively uncomfortable, but it's also gratuitous.

With the exception of Rooker, who carries a very calm demeanor (and his trademark simmering rage just under the surface), the acting is pretty awful.  The role of Becky should be the focal figure here, the one the audience is really trying to understand, but Tracy Arnold doesn't get across any of the emotion she's supposed to (whether it's lingering fear of her husband, or irrational attraction to Henry).  She's so wooden and her line delivery is like she's being reminded of her prompts off screen.  Tom Towles as Otis certainly looks the part of a dirtbag, and he's eminently unlikeable, but, again, his delivery is so stilted and unconvincing. 

It's an ugly movie (visually as well as in theme and story) with a soundtrack to match.  It's heavy into 80's droning synths and tries to mimic Psycho's stabbing strings with jarring, unnatural screeches when someone gets stabbed.  It's pretty corny actually. 

The bad thing:
Well, it's almost all the bad thing.  I think in some ways this film is trying to make a statement that someone like Henry, who has a compulsion to kill, is in some way better than Otis, who just derives pleasure from killing.  They're both awful in their own godawful, special way. 

Franchise Potential:
There is a sequel to this in 1996. There probably shouldn't be.
But like kind of serious exploitation movies which are at least trying to examine something but then become dumb franchises (think, like, First Blood, or Death Wish for example), I'm surprised Henry didn't just continue on Michael Myers style.  I certainly see the seeds of Dexter in this.

Did I like watching this?
No, no I did not.  I don't think you're supposed to.  I think were it better made I might appreciate it a little more (but then I actually do kind of  appreciate what it did accomplish for $110K)

T&K's Xmas (2020) Advent Calendar: Bonus Day 2 - Christmas in Evergreen

OK, Kent mentioned this one last year, and since its supposed to be a the first in a series of movies all set in the same PST, and what the PST it is, I had to go find it, and watch it. Also, its post-Xmas but I was in the mood for some cheer. The days in between Xmas and NYear's are always somewhat bleak to me.

P.S. The Peanut Gallery live-tweeted this, so she gets some embedded guest appearances.

We must begin, as Kent did, with the opening dialogue.

"In Northern Vermont, so far north that on clear days that on clear days you might even be able to see the North Pole..."

So a Hallmark movie called Christmas in Evergreen begins "In northern Vermont, so far north that on a clear day you might see the North Pole"
Unless Vermont has annexed Quebec and this town is located near Ivujivik, that would be a no.

— Marmy (@Marmalade_Girl) December 31, 2020

Seriously, did they just forget Canada exists? Or are they only familiar with Saskatchewan and assumed ALL of Canada would be so flat, that you can see all the way from the border to the Arctic?

ANYWAYZ, the town of Evergreen, which borrowed its "downtown" shots from a pioneer village in BC, so all the little shop fronts look like stalls in a Xmas Fair. Despite that, its rather charming. 

But for the diner. Chris Kringles. CHRIS ?!?!  I will never forgive that.

Anywho, the town vet Allie is packing up, closing down her business and moving to Washington, DC to finally see what life is like in the Big City. Apparently there are Big Vet Opportunities. Also, her slick Business Dude sometimes BF is there, so they can give it a go. Nobody wants her to go, especially when she usually runs the Xmas Event every year. So this year, it falls to Michelle, the token black woman, along with with the annoying, pestering Mayor. Oh wait, there's another black woman! And some Asians in the background. Apparently Evergreen is not as white washed as I expected it to be.

Allie hops into her life sized toy truck, a glistening red vintage pickup that her grampa left her, and drives it to the airport. She's coming back after Xmas, so I guess leaving it there is OK. But before she goes to the airport she goes to her parent's diner, and bumps into Ryan and Zoe. They are also on their way to the airport (in Burlington), so must also be from a small town. Zoe's mom died last Xmas so this year, they are avoiding the season by flying to Florida to board a cruise. Lunch stop in Evergreen first!

Lunch provides a brief moment of meetcute between the two, and a chance for Zoe to wish upon the magic snowglobe that Evergreen claims to retain. For a moment there, I believed that the entire movie was to take place inside the snowglobe. Alas, that is too magical for Hallmarkies. But they bump into each other, and then again at the actual airport, only to find out there is a large snowstorm coming in and all flights are cancelled. And all the Burlington hotels are booked. Back to Evergreen to avail themselves of the PST hospitality! Allie even knows of a brand new B&B that opened, and there will be room in the stable.

We also get a brief interlude where Allie, the only reliable vet in town, has to assist a farmer in birthing a calf.

In the movie, Christmas in Evergreen, a Jersey cow just gave birth to a Holstein calf. A Christmas miracle!

— Marmy (@Marmalade_Girl) December 31, 2020

The snowstorm continues to play havoc, delaying Allie and Ryan & Zoe from leaving Evergreen, playing into the fact that Zoe wished to spend Xmas in the PST. The pair continue to hang out, assist the ever stressing Michelle with the Xmas Event, and doing Xmas-y things like baking cookies and hunting down an Xmas tree for the B&B.

Now they are calling Evergreen "North Pole adjacent" and the suburbs of the North Pole, on the commuter line. I am guessing there is just a blank spot on the map where Canada should be that reads "Here be dragons...and Santa Claus."

— Marmy (@Marmalade_Girl) December 31, 2020

And finally, Mother Nature (or KRIS Kringle) has their way with the town and the road is blocked by a landslide. The SINGLE road in and out of town.

The town of Evergreen only has one road in or out. I am thinking it is encircled by an enormous gorge.

— Marmy (@Marmalade_Girl) December 31, 2020

Allie and Ryan continue to have longing stares into each other's eyes. Allie is really taken with nice guy Ryan, and his rather charming little daughter. And the town needs a doctor! And the more she spends another Xmas in Evergreen, the more she is debating why she ever wanted to leave.

And then Spencer, the Business Dude has flown in via a favour helicopter. Dude, that's a nice gesture! If Allie is to be stuck in Evergreen for Xmas, then he can come stay with her. And if they can leave, they can fly out together. Nice guy Spencer! Despite his slicked back hair, the guy's not a douche but he definitely throws a monkey wrench into Allie's heart, as I think she was already considering call the plans a dud, and staying. That might be supported by the fact that he stays at the same B&B as Ryan and Zoe.

Having the two male love interest engaging in the Hallmark version of a penis measuring contest, set to The Nutcracker Suite, is a choice.

— Marmy (@Marmalade_Girl) December 31, 2020

But Allie's heart is made up and Allie tells him to go home. Poor Spencer. But the roads are clear, and the airport is open so Ryan & Zoe head off to fly to Florida. Ryan has no reason to suddenly to cancel his Xmas plans, uproot his life and accept a doctor's position in Evergreen does he? BUT the decision is made for him by the wishing snowglobe and mysterious Nick Guy who is Totally Not Santa Claus, and the plane has mechanical difficulties cancelling it once again. They are staying in Evergreen and Ryan gets to find out that Allie is as well and... well... KISS !

One last thing of note. Michelle the Xmas Event leader is ever stressed, and supported by the other black woman in Evergreen, Hannah. Hannah gives Michelle the same longing looks as Allie was giving Ryan. Could it be? Could there be Xmas magic for everyone? Could Hannah find out the only other black woman in town is also a lesbian, and they are made for each other? BZZZZZT, no, just an another awkward guy in the same silly Xmas sweater as Hannah. Boo.

The Draw: Cuz Kent watched it and its the beginning of the Hallmark Cinematic Universe!

The Formulae: PST, possibly the most Xmasy PST in all the Hallmarkies! A Red Dress is replaced by a Red Coat and the occasional Red Sweater. Allie looks good in red. Zoe's Recently Dead Mom gives Dad Ryan a reason to bring his daughter to Evergreen. But I do wonder what PST they would be from. Also the Xmas Event is a big center of the story. And cookie baking! And tree decorating!

Unformulae: Both are from PSTs, though Ryan's is mysterious, but it still is definitely not a Big City, as why would be driving to Burlington airport to fly to Florida?

True Calling? Well, duh.

The Rewind: Did you hear that opening? No, you really have to hear this opening. Kent quoted it last year!

The Regulars: See Kent's post.

How does it Hallmark? Pretty classically, but also a bit more Xmasy, give the locale. Also, there really wasn't anyone not to like, but for the annoying Mayor.

How does it movie? Nopers.

NOTE: The poster is actually for a BOOK based on the movie, but I like it better as it highlights the life sized toy truck that she drives around. I like to think it was the truck that engineered all the Xmas snowstorms, and mechanical issues, to keep Allie around.

n Short Paragraphs: Tenet

 2020, Christopher Nolan (The Prestige) -- download

A friend didn't like this movie, stating it was just another example of Nolan showing the world how smarter he is than anyone else, but he also stated that I would probably like it. He was right, on both accounts, for the arrogance and self-importance just drips from the movie, and it is a movie of the twists & turns of time travel, which I love, even when they hurt my head. But I must say, but for some small details in the chaotic mess that is travelling both forwards and backwards in time, this one was pretty straight forward. The temporal mechanics are familiar ones, it was the execution that was new, and I rather like new.

Protagonist (seriously, that is his name?) is an agent, probably CIA, tasked with a duty within an event -- take a captive from an opera that is already in the middle of a hostage taking. In the midst of the police forces storming the opera, Pro (John David Washington, Ballers) notices they are also leaving bombs. Something is up. As he and his crew begin gathering, a strange reverse bullet happens and Pro is saved by a stranger. But he is caught by the Bad Guys, whoever they are, and his final act is to bite on a suicide pill.

Alas, he awakens, "Welcome to the afterlife..." I almost wish he had followed up with, "Nah just fucking with you," as this was a key line in the trailer, so no it does not happen in any sort of post-death. They must have caught him before he bit down. Anywayz, they explain to him about something going on and that they need to let him cool off inside a sea based wind turbine. He's waiting for them to come back and pick him up.

This whole setup is part of the Nolan method, having inexplicable things happen, and we are to just accept them. Pro acts that way as well, as he doesn't argue with the Boss Guy who explained where Pro was now, in terms of the plot, and just goes along with him. He also showed him a cool hand gesture.

Turns out Pro is getting mixed up in a world impacting situation, where someone has learned how to reverse the flow of time on specific objects. They are called inverted, and they have been sent backwards or made inverted by someone from the future. And their purpose is murky, and probably a Bad Thing. But Pro is being recruited into this organization, called Tenet (notice the palindrome?) and his first job is to dig up more on where the bullets come from.

Every reveal in the movie leads to further complications, very Bond-ian espionage twists and turns, and further conspiracies. But they center on a Russian Oligarch (independently wealthy with control of the country) named Sator (Kenneth Branagh, Wallander), who came out of Soviet area city-sized black-sites, and rose inexplicably to power very quickly. Pro can get to Sator through his wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki, The Crown) who is desperate to get out of the marriage, but will not leave without her son. The leverage comes from a small forged art piece, which Pro decides to steal from a very very very secure vault in Oslo.

The heist, which involves crashing a plane loaded with gold into an airport terminal, introduces us to one of the technologies in the movie, strange turnstiles which can not only invert objects but also people. Wee! Weird, backwards choreographed fight scene with mysterious figures with an unknown agenda!

Much of the movie plays out like Nolan was trying to re-capture the golden touch he got from Inception but with much more chaos. These are supposed to be thoughtful action scenes, like Michael Bay on Adderall. But once he gets past the highway scene, and into the two-directions mass combat scene, the entropy of so many things happening at once, we are not expected to understand what is going on in the least. This is entropy for the sake of it, so Nolan can spend the money he has at his disposal with grand effect. If he cannot expect his viewers to understand what he is telling them, then he can at least dazzle them with bombastic effects.

The crux of this movie, and what most people must not be able to decipher, is a mild twist in my books. Its a fun Shyamalan turn of the heart of the movie's plot. If you want spoilers, go Google "Tenet Explained". For me, it was a fun but to an already fun movie that mired itself by trying to be deeper than it had to be. The temporal mechanics are not all that divergent from other examples, but for the fun addition of inverted things and people. The motives of the Bad Guys seem murky given their "closed loop" understanding of time travel, but they seem oblivious to that, and just go with it, much like Neil (Robert Pattinson, Twilight) is once he realizes where his loop is going.

So, I enjoyed the movie? Yes, immensely. Will I watch it again? Definitely, so I can travel the loops again with a certain understanding, just like some of the characters did. Did I understand everything? No, but I am sure a few more loops will assist, and some things are so clouded in obfuscation, Nolan doesn't expect or want us to understand. But he can have that, as I got enough out of it for me.

New Year's Countdown...of Horror: 2 - Rare Exports

I kind of messed up in my math.  I thought I needed to watch 2 films a day from the 26th - 31st to get a 10-point countdown.  Yeah, I get it now.  That's one day too many.  So #2 today, #1 tomorrow.

 2
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
2010, d. Jalmari Helander - tubi

The Story:

A (British?American?) team is drilling in the peaks of Finland's Korvatunturi mountains while two local boys look on.  Young Pietari believes the researchers are looking for the original Santa Claus, and very well may have found it.  Pietari researches the true origins of Santa and discovers that the folklore tells of a mythic figure who (has since been commercialized into Santa Clause) was a monstrous man-goat who would steal children and punish them for their misdeeds. Clearly uneased by this discovery, Pietari tries to warn his friends and father to no avail.

The community survives on their annual reindeer farming, but their herd has been slaughtered, they believe by wolves, let in through a hole in the fence that Pietari and Jusso cut to get a closer look at the drilling.  The town is facing financial ruin, but soon discover, as Pietari had warned, something far more deadly - the naked, bearded old "men", murderous servants of Santa Claus.

Why This?
It was recommended by a friend to watch as a Christmas horror movie. 

What's Good?
Rare Exports is a silly concept played straight, and that makes it rather delightful, even if so much of it doesn't make a lot of sense.
I grew up in a community with a large Finnish population, and one of my dearest friends is Finn, so I liked watching a movie spoken in Finnish and set in the country.  It was interesting both  the jibes at Russians as well as the palpable nervousness being a neighbour to Russia presents.  It's not a plot thread of the film, but I think just a natural part of life in Finland presented very casually here.
The mythos of the film is quite fun as well.

Not so good...
The big climax is a bit of a letdown, as the gigantic man-goat Santa (obviously germinating from the same origin point as the Krampus) is never actually let loose.  I would assume it became a budgetary thing, where the production team just couldn't make it look good (the film otherwise looks really nice) and shifted their story to something more practical.

I found the ending to be very uncomfortable, but it's a satire of sorts so it's kind of the punchline.

The bad thing:
The film sets up the man-goat Santa and creates a very palpable dread of his arrival.  Although he never does arrive, the naked, bearded old men were both hilarious and surprisingly creepy.  They're effectively his helpers, or elves (even though they're regular sized beings) and are quite durable, but violent, bitey, axe throwing creatures.  When all the children disappear and we find them in potato sacks at the feet of a 40-foot Santa encased in ice, it's pretty awesome. 

Franchise Potential: [Spoiler]

While they think they think they blew Santa up, it very well could be such a mystical being could survive the explosion.

Or the "mall Santa" training that they do with the captured "elves" could backfire and turn into a global catastrophe.

Did I like watching this?
Very much so, however I found the ending to be too self-congratulatory in fixing the problems that the town was having... by taking these "elves", training them to be kind to children, then selling them as authentic "Father Christmases" (per the original short film posted below) to places around the globe.

I don't really like seeing humans (even if they aren't really human, it's still uncomfortable) put into forced servitude, and beaten into submission to a certain way of behaving.  It's not very cool  I'm also not sure the business model of selling these "authentic Santas" for 85grand a piece. Who is buying them, and why?  They're basically vicious, mindless old men who don't seem to have any magical skills or anything (like, if they were magical crafters or something I could see their benefit).  The fact that they can be injured quite severly and keep going, really, they cannot die easily, makes me think a lot of these are going to be purchased for underground fighting rings.  Basically the film was trying to shoehorn in ideas from the original short film, and I don't think it quite fits.

It should be noted that this is a horror film, but its a light horror film.  It's not really for kids even though the main protagonist is a child. 



[Toasty's take - we agree]

Rare Exports Inc. (2003) from Woodpecker on Vimeo.

We Agree: Palm Springs

 2020, d. Max Barbakow - amazonprime

I just took another quick glance at Toasty's review and I'm not sure what to write that doesn't ape everything he said.  He put it perfectly and succinctly: "Time loops. Love em."

I guess I like the idea of a timeloop because of the liberties it provides... the ability to do almost anything, to know that whatever you do wrong you'll have a chance to do right.  A time loop affords you the opportunity to forego connections yet also build them.  It gives you chaotic stability, where everything is the same except what you do to change it.  There's comfort in knowing what comes next, if only for the madness of knowing you'll never escape it.

It takes a few minutes, but where we start with Palm Springs, Nyles (Andy Samberg) has already been living in a time loop for an unknown amount of time.  It comes to bear as he drunkenly navigates the wedding party to woo the bride's outcast sister, Sarah (Cristin Milioti).  Next thing they know they're awkwardly making out in the rocky terrain when Nyles is shot with an arrow by Roy (JK Simmons).  They obviously have a history.  They both venture towards a cave entrance, glowing red. Nyles warns Sarah off but she follows them in.

And she gets stuck in the loop to.

Yes! So frequently the time loop is a solitary affair.  I'm trying to remember the last time there were people in it together (the answer is Russian Doll) but it makes a huge difference when people share an experience versus living it alone.  Here it's a man who has been through the loop so many times he's lost a sense of self, or any hope for escaping it.  With Sarah, she has her issues, a loner attitude, and difficult relationships with most people, but with Nyles and the time loop, once she gets past the shock, she's liberated and a real B12 injection into Nyles' malaise. 

They try to play it off as being just buddies, and not complicating it with any ...well...complications.  But of course they can't help but catch feeling.  But is it the lack of alternatives or is this something more meaningful. It falls apart when it gets too real for either of them... and I like how the film regularly gives us Niles perspective then flips over to Sarah's.  It's a good balance, as if making up for the quite lopsided and confounding romance of Groundhog's Day (check out this video which splices that whole movie from Rita's perspective).

The way this film plays with the time loop, the often hilarious misadventures Nyles and Sarah go on together, the way it approaches and thinks philosophically about the time loop are all quite smart, and it gives a super-science explanation as to how to get out of the time loop, but it's got its own peculiar logic rather than the usual more metaphysical "the rude person needs to be a better person or fall in love to get out of the loop" type scenario.  And the apex of the film hits with the decision, take a risk and try and leave to loop, or live forever together within it, and it makes a real case for the latter.  I loved this movie.

Is it my favourite time loop story?  I don't know.  I love a rom com, and this one is fabulous (I like that Nyles is obviously the one who is more needful of Sarah than vice versa, but she certainly likes him too), so a few more rewatches are going to be in order to make that call. 

[P.S. Was it just me or did the mid-credits scene kind of break the movie?  Toasty, we need to talk about this, work it through]

We disagree (slightly): Wonder Woman 1984 (WW'84)

 2020, d. Patty Jenkins - rental

Before COVID hit, superhero films had basically taken over cinema.  Depending on your perspective this may have been a golden age of blockbusters, or the death knell of cinema altogether.  If superhero movies were what allowed movie theaters to hang on by a thread, but were also what was killing what kind of movies studios would fund and theatres support, well COVID has certainly changed that.  It's possible that the major movie theater chains will be bankrupt before COVID is tamped down, and it's also possible that studios will no longer be willing to invest hundreds of millions into any movie anymore.  COVID may just take down BOTH cinema and superhero movies.

The last "big" superhero film to be released was fucking Bloodshot back in February, which was barely watchable.  Since then every blockbuster release, with the exception of Tenet, has been postponed time and again.  Wonder Woman 1984 was a miscalculation on Warner Brother's part.  Originally slated for November 2019, WB decided to postpone the film to summer 2020 expecting bigger profits.  Whoops.

After two postponements, WB decided to no longer sit on the film, pushing it to their newly launched HBO Max platform and to digital rental internationally.  Both moves are gambles, but with Disney announcing a broad slate of animated movies, PIXAR features and shows, Marvel series and Star Wars shows for Disney, WB decided that not only was HBO Max going to have big budget series but their entire slate of 2021 movies (starting with WW'84) would debut on the service (to the rightful consternation of the creators who weren't consulted at all with this decision).  Time will tell if the gamble pays off or sinks WB.

The 2017 Wonder Woman feature took in over a billion gross, and proved that both a female-directed and female-starring superhero movie could match up to even the biggest Marvel movie.  There shouldn't have been any question about it.  But even still there's something to prove, and expectations are still loaded on top of the sequel.  It certainly filled a void, one that shouldn't have taken this long to fill.  Wonder Woman has been a marketable, name property for decades, even before the Lynda Carter series in the late 70's.  Why there wasn't any major motion picture between the end of the series in 1979 and 2017 is straight up injustice.

Which maybe explains the decision to set this picture in 1984.  Once we pass through the cold open flashback - - in which a pre-teen Diana competes in a Themysciran skills race and learns a lesson in losing -- we segue into a vibrant and brassy sequence where a group of stick-up men rob a mall jewelry store (of it's black-market backroom goods) and Wonder Woman intervenes with big-time heroics.   The score from Hans Zimmer turns into a full-on John Williams pastiche, feeling akin to his Superman score... which is funny considering Zimmer has failed to really develop a signature sound for the "Snyderverse" Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman.  The action during this sequence is low-stakes and overblown, just like the Richard Donner's Superman. It's really silly, but enjoyable (and I should note, not Schumacher-level silly, mercifully).  Gal Gadot is alive and seems to be having a blast in the role.

From there the picture returns to the more expected sights and sounds of modern filmmaking.  I don't think the film could have or should have sustained the 80's aesthetic but it would have been a much bolder movie had it tried.

We meet Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) who is an awkward, nerdy, kind, overly chatty, multi-disciplined new colleague of Diana Prince at the Smithsonian.  They become friends (sort of, the film doesn't build the friendship enough, and probably would have been better served had they established they were already friends).  One of the objects from the earlier heist the FBI is having trouble identifying and have asked Barbara to research.  Both her and Diana are stumped, but the Latin on the god ring around the chip zirconium seems to imply that wishes upon it will be granted.  Both Barbara and Diana make their own silly little wishes on it, never considering there to be any possibility they would come true.

Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), a floppy haired TV personality posing as a wealthy business man (sound familiar? At all? No?) is running an infomercial-driven, oil digging ponzi scheme.  He somehow has hedged all his bets on this wishing rock (no real understanding of how he came to learn about it, but it's evident he'd been researching it for some time) and when he tricks Barbara into giving it up he wishes to become the rock itself, able to grant wishes but taking something for himself in return.

Barbara finds herself slowly gaining the strength, speed, confidence and glamour of Diana (her wish), and Diana gets Steve Trevor back (in the hijacked body of another man).  She knows it can't last but for the past 6 decades Steve is all she's ever really wanted for herself, and for a time, at least, she refuses to give him up.  Likewise, Barbara refuses to give up what she's gained, to the point that she stands in Diana's way from stopping Max Lord's schemes.

Max's wish granting keeps getting bigger and bigger in scope, an addiction that he needs to feed.  His wish granting (and what he takes in return) have started to thrust the world into chaos.  The abbreviation of the film's title to "WW'84" could just as much be "World War 1984", and the 80's nuclear arms race accelerates dramatically.

It's up to Wonder Woman to save the day, fight with Barabara (now evolved into a cat-woman) and give up Steve in the process, but it's not her strength and fists that are going to win the day, but her compassion, her inspiration.  

This film is a mess but I found it enjoyable.  The quartet of Gadot, Pine, Wiig and Pascal are endlessly watchable, even if what they've been given isn't perhaps the cleanest or best arcs for their characters.  It's overlong at nearly two and a half hours, and there could definitely have been some trimmings (the opening flashback on Themyscira wasn't really necessary at all).  Even still, I was never bored...sometimes puzzled by the choices made, but never bored.

That Jenkins managed to shoehorn in the throwing-tiara, the invisible jet, Diana's flying (or, wind-riding) and the more recent Golden Armor (and there was some real shoehorning going on) made for more than a few fun fanservice-y moments.  My own fan gripes were more around Max Lord and the fact that they disposed of his mind control power in favor of the wish fulfillment.  In general Max Lord is basically Max Lord in name only, but Pascal does everything asked of him (and a lot is asked of him) and delivers.

While I was hesitant for them to return to bringing Steve Trevor back, Gadot and Pine are just as charming together as they were the first time around.  Wiig is a mercurial actress, so the transitions she's asked to go through in this film are a breeze for her to pull off, but the film doesn't know how to really deal with them, or make much use of her.  If anything, this film decided to go into the stereotypical sequel trap (double down on the villains - Max Lord and Cheetah - and increase the romance).  It feels like a Batman sequel... any of them, where it's just more, more, more.  

In the end though, it does honor the character, even if it loses focus on her from time to time, and that's ultimately what I wanted it to do. I was hoping for maybe more of a neon-lit trip (like the posters intone) but two days later and I'm actually ready to watch it again. 

[toasty's take]

New Year's Countdown...of Horror: 3 - The Blackcoat's Daughter

 3
The Blackcoat's Daugher
2015, d. Osgood Perkins - amazonprime

The Story:

Kat and Rose are at a catholic boarding school together.  When their parents don't pick them up for the break in February, they're stuck together.  Kat has weird visions.  Rose thinks she might be pregnant. 

Meanwhile outside of town, Joan needs a ride and gets picked up by James Remar and his wife. Turns out their daughter died a few years earlier.  They're traumatized, but are they dangerous?  And what's the connection?

Why This?
Because The VVitch was unavailable, and I have these two kind of paired in my mind for some reason.

The Good:
It's effectively moody and atmospheric.  The leads (Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton, Emma Roberts) are all really good.  Shot outside Ottawa?

Not so good:
This movie...it's not so good. This film starts to think itself clever, but it's not hard to catch onto the oh so obvious clues that Shipka and Roberts are (somehow) playing the same character in two different time periods.

The demonic possession doesn't seem well thought out, and I guess in general since I don't believe in that stuff I find it hard to invest in possession stories. 

It also takes almost an hour for the possession to really manifest itself. I liked the moodiness to that point but it just falls off the fucking wagon for the last 40 minutes.

This movie annoyed me.

James Remar, seriously starting to think this guy's not such a good actor.

The Bad Thing:
Some demon of some sort.  It's not specific and has no personality.  And are we to believe that Kat, years later, is trying to get the demon back in her? Or that it never left?  I dunno.  Don't really care either.

Franchise Potential?
Nope.  At least I hope not.

Did I Like Watching This?
To a point I was into it, but when I started to connect the threads, based off the too obvious clues it was dropping, I started getting very very annoyed. In the end, no, I really disliked this movie for it's attempt to be clever and manipulative (I would have been annoyed whether they succeeded or failed in their manipulation).

[Toasty's take - we disagree]

New Year's Countdown...of Horror: 4 - Cargo

 4
Cargo
2017, d. Ben Howling, Yolanda Ramke - netflix

 There's a couple of films called Cargo out there.  One which is a middling German sci-fi/horror is also on netflix.  

The Story:
After his wife dies, and having passed along the infection to him, Martin Freeman roams remote Australian territory with his infant daughter, about to turn zombie-like within 48 hours.  He's trying to find a safe place for his daughter, but does such a thing exist?

It does... with the aboriginal peoples of Australia who have returned deep in land and restored the old ways of living. 

Why This?
Australia.  Hoping for beautiful vistas as seen on The Leftovers and The Crown... as well as the not so beautiful Mad Max-ian vistas. 

What's Good?
I like this film's take on the virus and how it was normalized at first, to the point that the government at somepoint just airdropped plague identifiation/survival/self-disposal kits, which contain a sort of epipen-like spring-loaded giant spike for killing one's self (and I guess ensuring one stays dead... they don't really say the infected here are undead, except to say their spirits have left them).  There's also a fitbit like watch to countdown the 48 hours the infection takes to fully manifest.  Plus a guide to the stages of the infection.

One of the things the infection does is cause massive brain aches, where people will bang their heads on the wall or bury their heads in the sand like cartoon ostriches.  The sight of the buried zombie people is kind of funny, but so off-kilter that it's absolutely terrifying.

I loved the approach that this film took, showing that sticking with modern ways will be our downfall.  Looking to the old ways, communing with nature, returning to community is where humanity's strength lays.  I liked that Martin Freeman was our protagonist, but even more that teenage Toomi was our hero.

I also liked that the film doesn't really go for intense scares or gore, but it's plenty intense and unsettling.  But it has a more purposeful direction.

It also delivers on those gorgeous and dusty Australian vistas quite nicely.

Not so good...
The film acknowledges that there are people who don't want to be community minded, that there are people who don't want to let go of all the modern trappings they know, that there are people who crave power and their own security over others.  I don't like those people, and most films /stories in po-ap like to make those people the larger threat than whatever the existential threat is.  This film has one of those, but he's so on point I have a hard time faulting it for his place in this movie.  What I don't like is the turn-back, that he comes back again (you figure he would, but I had hoped he wouldn't), all vengeance- minded.

I watched this on my phone.  I didn't give those vistas the screen they deserved.  My bad.

The bad thing:
Zombies? I guess they're zombies.  Like The Ravenous, the "zombies" here have some peculiar behaviour, but where as The Ravenous' spires of material posessions were kind of inexplicable, I like that the burying heads in sand or banging heads against walls or rocks was a sign of the infection's effect on the brain.  Like all zombies, they respond to sound... and these are fast zombies, so I'm assuming it's another mutation of the 28 Days Later virus.

Franchise Potential
I don't know if these zombies were distinct enough to demand a franchise.  But certainly the way the pandemic was responded to in this one and the survivors being those who were taught the old ways of life, could make for an interesting prequel or sequel.

Did I like watching this?
Yet another zombie movie? Sigh.  I like that people are now giving spins on the infection that causes zombism, which makes these tired old undead more engaging, but it would have been more interesting to me if it wasn't a cannibalistic plague.  I love the Australian setting and I liked the story overall, so yes, I guess I did enjoy it.

New Year's Countdown...of Horror: 5 - Paperhouse

 5
Paperhouse
1988, d. Bernard Rose (Candyman, Immortal Beloved)- amazonprime

The Story:

Anna is a difficult 11-year-old, acting out, lashing out, talking back, disrespecting authority.  After getting kicked out of class she passes out in the hallway and finds herself in a reality she drew on paper earlier that day.  She comes down with a fever and is sick for a while, falling into unconsciousness frequently.  Whenever she is out, she is in this alternate reality, so when she is awake she starts building upon it.  But in this reality there's a disabled boy that she's never met named Marc.

Anna learns that Marc is also a patient of the doctor (making house visits to her, no less) and that he's been in a rough state, his muscular dystrophy taking a turn. They both find solace in the dream reality, but when Anna lets loose the memory of her alcoholic father into the dream realm it turns nightmarish for the children.

Why This?
Looking through the "horror" categories of the various streaming services I'm subscribed to, it's mostly movies made post-2000.  I'm familiar enough with most of what's on Netflix, Crave doesn't have much at all, you don't find any horror on Disney Plus, there's a thing called Tubi that has mostly post-2000 cheapo horror, and amazonprime has a wealth of MST3K fodder from the 60's and 70's, some of the bigger titles from the 80's and 90's and more post-2000 cheapo horror.  The Paperhouse was one of few projects from the 80's/90's that I had never heard of and was curious.

What's Good?
This film takes some very bold turns.  Based on a 1958 novel  - Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr - it has an etherialness that is sort of a sweet spot for me.  It was rather unpredictable and for a film about two tweens falling in love (not really the main thrust) in a manufactured reality, I was surprised to see it deal with things like the trauma of an alcoholic parent and child mortality.

The soundtrack comes from Stanley Myers and Hans Zimmer, and was Zimmer's last co-score with Myers after a half decade of collaboration (he went on to his first big score in Rain Man after this).  It's what's trying to sell this as a horror movie more that anything else.

There's a big elaborate set piece (very in line with other 80's horror studio sets) early in the third act where a feverish Anna tries to rip her nightmare-father out of the picture she drew, causing a rift to open within the dream world, and it gets unexpectedly, insanely intense.  Visually it doesn't look like reality, but it's not supposed to be reality which works in its favor.

Not so good...
The acting in this is dogshit.  It's just horrendous.  It drags the entire thing down.  There's definitely a mood to this, which the Myers/Zimmer score captures well, but the acting (and the direction given to the actors) doesn't do much other than get the words across.  There's no genuine emotion, and sometimes the attempts at it are laughable.  So very little of what is performed seems convincing and there's no chemistry between any of the actors. 

The bad thing:
The bad thing in this is not exactly this manifested dream world, but the trauma Anna experiences when thinking about her father, a recovering alcoholic who is often absent due to work.  She has some serious issues that cause her to lash out, but are also clearly dangerous remaining unchallenged in her mind.

Franchise Potential?
I could definitely see this as a remake. I could really use a remake, but again with practical effects and a big fake-looking studio-set dream reality rather than some messy CGI construct.  And really delve deep into the psychology.  I would like them to age the characters up so that the love story has some real investment... children at 11-years-old don't really fall in love, they don't understand emotions.
And then they could franchise Anna's dream realities over decades, having a different actress play her at different stages in life with different traumas manifesting in horrifying ways.

Did I like watching this?
The acting was so bad, and the tone seemed so... 70's/80's thriller-for-kids (eg. Watcher in the Woods) but I'm glad I stuck with it to see the levels of intensity it reaches... the ending is confounding though.  So in total, I liked it a little.

3+1 Short Paragraphs: Wonder Woman 1984

 2020, Patty Jenkins (Monster) -- download

Why is it that we do not like the new Wonder Woman 1984. The consensus I am seeing on the Internet, well at least my small social media circle, is that they don't hate it, but it wasn't very good. But why? Lame villain(s) ? Too long? You hate the 80s? All of the above and more?

The movie picks up in the life of Wonder Woman, Diana of Themyscira, some 40 65 years after the events of the first movie - I always have to remind myself it was World War I, not II. Steve Trevor is still dead, and she still mourns his loss. But she still super hero's on, this time saving the shoppers in a mall from some badly dressed, downright incompetent jewelry store robbers. The store was actually a front for an illegal art & relics dealer, and the robbers are stealing something very important to the main Bad Guy of the movie, Max Lord. It was this opening scene, as well as the setup with Lord, that I realized I wouldn't like this movie very much. The 80s clichés are schlock are so prevalent, it was almost as if this movie wanted to be nothing more than a remake of the TV series. Does that mean the new Batman movie is going to be another remake of the 60s Batman series? I mean, it worked for Tim Burton's movie, so it would work again, right? It did not work for this movie.

Max Lord wants the magic McGuffin so he can look competent in the eyes of his son. I don't think that's possible, as Pedro Pascal really sells us on how much of a loser Lord is. Does he actually put on a mild latino accent, to show that Lord is trying to hide his? He did not sound like Pascal to me. The McGuffin also gives Kristen Wiig's schlumpy but lovable Ms Minerva some Wonder Womanish powers. To be honest, I know very little about Wonder Woman mythology, but that she killed Max Lord, and it changed her character forever -- she doesn't kill Max Lord here. I didn't not know that Barbara Minerva was a villain named Cheetah, so to be honest, I thought she was going to somehow embody the goddess Minerva, the Roman version of Athena. She doesn't and only briefly gets all feline. Diana uses the power of Being a Good Person to save the world from Max Lord.

Oh, I should also mention that they bring back Steve Rogers Trevor. The McGuffin grants wishes, and it tosses the soul of Steve into the body of a poor schlub. Seriously? What happens to that poor guy while Trevor is hijacking his body? It was just horrible and that guy, despite terrible clothing in his closet, did not deserve that! Speaking of his closet, can someone in the know explain the puffy scarf outfit to me? It seemed to be an injoke I did not get.

New Year's Countdown...to Horror: 6 - Overlord

 6
Overlord
2018, d. Julius Avery - netflix

The Story (in 2 paragraphs or less)
World War II... Americans are mounting en masse to rescue France from German occupation (this is set just prior to D-day).  The film opens with a harrowing incursion into enemy territory.  By the time the smoke clears, only four of our POV squad remains.  Their goal is to take out a radio jamming tower in a nearby church.  They meet up with a local woman who provides them shelter and insight into what's been happening in the area.

Turns out the Nazi's are performing experiments in the church on the locals, and any soldiers, living or dead, they find.  "The thousand year reich needs thousand year soldiers" as they say.  So our troops need to not only blow up the tower so troops can land on the beach, but also destroy the zombie supersoldier program.

Why This?
Been meaning to watch this since it came out.

What's Good?
That opening sequence is incredible.  The rest of the movie is pretty cracking entertainment as well.  

Not so good...
The film doesn't have any room for a dialogue on race in the military.  With Da 5 Bloods exploring the Black experience in Viet Nam and Lovecraft Country starring a Korean war vet this year, it's glaring that the lead character here (played by Jovan Adepo), in 1944, doesn't have anything specific to say about his experience.  Even what he does say, about being conscripted, doesn't really have anything unique or personal behind it.  2018 seems so archaic.

The bad thing
Nazis fucking suck, you guys. 
I was expecting zombie nazi soldiers and was pleasantly surprised to find more of a super-soldier serum-gone-wrong.

Franchise Potential
Thankfully this feels complete in and of itself. So refreshing.

Did I like watching this?
I did, actually.  Quite a bit.  And it was refreshing to get a big, harrowing opening action sequence which most horror films never have the budget for.  It's not really horror, in the end...as it was sold originally as a horror movie.  It's a biggish-budget action movie, set in WWII, with a light dusting of horror elements.  It's quite the genre mash and I liked it.  

[Toasty's take-Toasty and I agree that this is a really fun movie, and I appreciate that at the time of Toasty's writing that he felt it did subtly intone race and gender inequality. (I also like Toasty's statement of "...movies, which I have always chosen to be my explorative vehicle for race, gender and equality conversations..."... heh, we agree)  I just wish in light of the modern conversation that it had done a little more] 

New Year's Countdown...of Horror: 7 - The Ravenous (Les Affamés)

7
Les Affamés
2017, d. Robin Aubert - netflix

The Story (in 2 paragraphs or less)

The Ravenous, Les Affamés, or
Los Hambrientos. I'm not trying to be
confusing.

Multiple survivors of a zombie apocalypse in rural countryside (I thought it was Franch but turns out it's Quebec) find their way to each other only to be to torn apart. 

Why This?
It was my mistake.  I thought this was "Raw", about the vegetarian who becomes a cannibal.
I was bound to get to a zombie movie at some point.

What's good?
This is a "quiet" zombie film, with people who act as smartly (it's the only way they've survived this long), but the inevitability looms over them.  There are reviewers who have said the zombies represent the invasion on Francophone culture or zombification of culture in general.  Not sure I got that at all.  But I love the weird spires of stuff the zombies create.
The zombies are "fast zombies" so I imagine this to be a mutation of the 28 Days Later virus (totally not canon but could be).
The characters here are pretty great, rare for a zombie film for them to feel so grounded and non-combative with each other.

Not so good...
We don't get a sense of how long this plague has been happening.  It would be good to have a threshhold.  I also don't get how zombies operate biologically...won't they emaciate eventually, just wither away without sustenance?
And also... people are getting zombie blood spattered on them all the time... isn't that a risk for zombie virus transmission.

The bad thing
Zombies. They run fast, they get strong, and if you get bit, you become one eventually (obvs).  It's not well established how long that gestation period is.  Their weird spires (of chairs, toys or random objects) are very curious, but unexplained.

Franchise potential:
Every zombie film has franchise potential...this one would be exploring this strange spire-building behavior of theirs.  It's not like the spires in The Girl With All The Gifts  though, which worked very, very well in that story.

Did I like wtaching this?
Yeah.  As much as I'm bored with zombie movies, I really liked this one.  It seemed quieter, smarter, less interested with gore and more interested in the meticulousness of survival. Yay CanCon.

[Toasty's take- we agree]

New Year's Countdown... of Horror: 8 - 7 from Etheria

  what a fuckin' year.  Is it over yet? Christmas was a nice respite from thinking too hard about it, but it's still just keeps on churning whether we want it to or not. Time to drown out the horror of reality with some...other horror.  Maybe just entrenching myself in dark, disgusting, ugliness, and maybe when 2021 ticks over things will seem that much brighter.

8
7 from Etheria
2017, d. Heidi Lee Douglas, Arantxa Echevarria, Martha Goddard, Anna Elizabeth James, Karen Lam, Barbara Stepansky, Rebecca Thomson  - Tubi

The Story (in 2 paragraphs or less):
Wikipedia defines Etheria Film Night as "an annual Los Angeles-based genre film festival for new short films by women directors."  This is a collection of some of those short films maybe.

(The stories in two sentences or less)
"Substance" - a research scientist's weather balloon returns with some black goopy substance (the Venom symbiote?).  For some reason she's just keeping it around the house in a dropper bottle which her daughter mistakes for melatonin and takes it with her to a wintery EDM festival with minorly evil results.

"The Jelly Wrestler" (Thompson) - a middle aged bartender is getting her shifts cut, because the bar is attempting to draw a younger crowd with jelly wrestling.  Turns out she used to be a champion Jelly Wrestler, so she fights to keep her job.  

"Zone 2" - a woman and her wheelchair bound, vision impaired "son" are in a fallout shelter. There's a  twist.

"De Noche y de Pronto" (Echevarria) - a woman lets an unknown neighbour in distress into her house.  But what is his true motivation?

"Gödel, Incomplete" (Goddard) - a scientist stumbles upon time travel.  She continues to travel back in time, encountering Kurt Gödel and falling in love.

"Little Lamb" - a woman sent to a British women's penal colony in the mid-1800's finds a horrifying new life on the island.

"Stalled" - a man, having a very bad day, has a bad encounter in a parking garage.

Why This?
I normally find anthologies annoying (and this was too) but I was lured in with the promise of a story starring Elizabeth Debicki (I still need to get my Widows review up).  And I wanted to watch something that I could bail on if I needed to.

What's Good?
"De Noche..." is very effective examination of the paranoia and wariness of being a single woman.  She's faced with the dilemma of trusting a strange man, and the short offers no easy answers about whether he's to be trusted or not.

"Little Lamb" in its short run time builds an distressing new reality for Louisa (Georgia Lucy).  It's a grainy, dirty world where it's hard to trust anyone but the animals.  It's very well told.

"The Jelly Wrestler" is a bit of a mess of a story (no pun intended) but there's the core of a message about how people see and treat middle-aged women.

Not So Good...
"The Jelly Wrestler" undermines its core message with a really unnecessary and stupid twist.

"Zone 2" thinks it's more clever than it is.  It doesn't hang around very long, which is good.  If I spent any longer with the set-up just to get to that twist, I would have been really, really mad.

"Substance" doesn't really go anywhere.

"Gödel, Incomplete" actually isn't long enough to effectively tell its story.  I didn't connect with it.

The Bad Thing
In this anthology the bad things are:

• alien goop
• a backstabbing younger coworker
• a mom
• men/paranoia
• time...?
• men
• a bad attitude/language barrier
  

 Franchise Potential
Looking at that wikipedia entry, it looks like there's certainly possibility to collect more shorts into a series of anthologies. 

Did I Like Watching This?
No. I didn't hate it, but, again, anthologies are such a mixed bag, especially when there's no more a cohesive glue than "women directors".  [This was sold to me as a horror (the way the streaming service catagorized it), and there's more than a few that are suspenseful, or tiptoeing towards horror... but I'm not sure if anything here is outright horror]

New Year's Countdown...of Horror: 9 - The Void

  what a fuckin' year.  Is it over yet? Christmas was a nice respite from thinking too hard about it, but it's still just keeps on churning whether we want it to or not. Time to drown out the horror of reality with some...other horror.  Maybe just entrenching myself in dark, disgusting, ugliness, and maybe when 2021 ticks over things will seem that much brighter.

9
The Void
2016, d. Steven Kostanski, Jeremy Gillespie - amazonprime

The Story (in two paragraphs or less)

 

A small-town Deputy Sheriff finds a young crackhead unconscious on the side of the road. His only choice is to take him to the hospital where his estranged wife is working. They separated after their child's stillborn birth, and there's still unresolved issues between them. Also at the hospital is an injured young man, a nurse, a nurse-in-residence. the chief surgeon, a pregnant teen and her grandfather. Very quickly strange things start happening... the nurse stabs the injured young man in the eye and peels her own face off before attacking the sherrif deputy. She eventually mutates into a hulking fleshy beast that they need to fight off. The crackhead slits the surgeon's throat and despite dying he rises again. Meanwhile, outside a coven of murderous, dagger-wielding, white robed cultist are preventing their escape. Deputy Sheriff is getting visions of an unknown world and a triangular shadow in the sky, among other things.

Eventually the horrors start arising fast and furiously, reality is not what it seems. The surgeon is behind it all...he talks about loss and bringing back those who were lost... and the horrors he's gladly performed to do so. A powerhouse like Kenneth Welsh was the right choice to sell this. Everything goes gnarly, and it's all very gross and shadowy with flickering lights and flares and tentacles and such. It's an elder thing awakening, madness striking everyone, and no real rules to play by.

Why this?
A few recognizable Canadian names and faces, plus the director was on a podcast talking about unmade Lovecraft movies and brought this up. I was curious.

What's good? I like that it wasn't a cheap "people held hostage and gripe with each other" movie. It was that but within 20 minutes the first sign of things going horribly awry was already in your face. And within the next 10 minutes the first big gross creature was put on display. It was off from there. Also, the first person we see in this is Evan Stern (Roald from Letterkenny) which put me in a good place.  I was hoping with Ellen Wong (Scott Pilgrim, The Christmas Set Up) that there would be some more humour to this, but it's deadly serious, which isn't a bad thing.  I think it captures Lovecraft very, very well.

Oh, and Kenneth Welsh sells the nefarious doctor speech very well.  I actually bought into his logical madness.

It was also hard to pick a poster to accompany this.  They're all pretty great.

Not so good…
Any sort of action against the physical monter effects doesn't look great...the cues the actors had to take in order to combat the gross creatures obviously needed very precise direction, but it leads to very clunky editing.

The bad thing
The nebulous, ominous, triangular Void of the title, was very very sinister, especially delivered through the visions the Deputy Sheriff was having. It has no origins or personality of its own but the film uses it as iconography very well.

Franchise potential: 
Lovecraft-like stuff doesn't usually lend itself to franchise, except under the umbrella of Lovecraftian horror. This didn't really deliver an adversary of any real note, more just an ominous thing coming.  And none of the protagonists that survived were of any real note either that would make us want to see more.

Did I like watching this?
Not really. Madness is a hard thing for me to get into with horror, because there's no logic behind it (hence, madness), so there are no rules to play by.  Things happen which defy logic, except to say "madness".  And it's so full of gross stuff.  I like a more clean horror.  That said, this was pleasantly well done for low-bud Canadian production, shot in Sault Ste-Marie, with its effects crowd-funded via Indie-go-go... it looked pretty good.

New Year's Countdown...of Horror: 10 - Slither

 what a fuckin' year.  Is it over yet? Christmas was a nice respite from thinking too hard about it, but it's still just keeps on churning whether we want it to or not. Time to drown out the horror of reality with some...other horror.  Maybe just entrenching myself in dark, disgusting, ugliness, and maybe when 2021 ticks over things will seem that much brighter.

10
Slither
2006, d. James Gunn - amazonprime

The Story (in two paragraphs or less)

Rural South Carolina. A thing crashes down from outer space. It embeds itself in Grant Grant (Michael Rooker) and starts changing him. Grant's young wife Starla (Elizabeth Banks) starts to notice the change but not soon enough. Grant starts to steal dogs, cats and other animals in town, and is eating pounds upon pounds of meat. He kidnaps a woman who confessed a crush on him and embeds his eggs within her (rather then put the eggs in his wife). He eventually mutates to disgusting proportions. The police peg the woman's disappearance on Grant and arrive in time to save Starla from Grant.

The eggs eventually hatch and start spreading all over town, with only Police Chief Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion), Starla, and teenager Kylie (Tania Saulnier) remaining uninfected with the parasite. Kylie managed to catch a glimpse of the parasite's memories, learning that he is a singular being, thousands of years old, moving from planet to planet consuming everything until only he remains. And yet Grant's memories and his fixation on Starla prove surprisingly powerful. Bill and Starla deduce that if they kill Grant as the host they may just end this creature forever.

Why this?
I actually wanted to watch this when it originally came out but just never got around to it. Since Guardians of the Galaxy is maybe my favourite Marvel movie (perhaps second favourite) and it has so much to do with James Gunn's sensibilities so I've been curious to see how much of Gunn is in his other movies. I've seen Super, which is an awkward, uncomfortable take on the superhero movie and not nearly the big pop-culture infused, crowd-pleasing, humorous, adventurous ride. I wondered whether Slither would be more on the Super side or the Guardians side.

What's good?
Gunn's humour is there but subdued (I enjoyed all the different "infected" denizens moaning "Starlaaa"). I was expecting it to be funnier than it was actually. The special effects are very gross but more in an amusing way, rather than an off-putting, horrifying way. This movie is a spin on so many 80's alien/monster/horror movie tropes (and a does of Lovecraft), but falls more in line with them rather than being winky and referential like a Scream film.

Not so good…
There's a few shots that utilize CGI that obviously don't hold up anymore (so credit that most of this was done practical). This is a "contagion" movie, so it's kind of rough to watch right know, being all to aware of how hard it is to contain one once it starts.

The bad thing
Oh, the creature is gross in all its stages, but Gunn's very brief backstory and cues to his alien origins in Kylie's visual flashes were really more of what I was hoping he would have in this. I liked that the creature was singular, semi-intelligent mind (more driven by impulse than any deep thinking or strategy) that adopts some of the memories and emotions of his primary host.

Franchise potential:
The post-credit sequence insinuates that the creature is still alive, but Slither did not do that well in theatres...and Gunn has moved on to much bigger things. I would like a sequel that gives the creature a bit more personality. Maybe it trying to find its way off Earth after another defeat... make it the protagonist, fighting for survival.

Did I like watching this?
Sort of, but not really. I liked Gunn's musical cues in the third act, and the "final battle" was quite fun (Chekov's grenade), but I'm not a big fan of gross for gross sake, and that's clearly what Gunn was going for here. Piling on gross thing on top of gross thing (literally at the end).

Toasty's take

T&K's Xmas (2020) Advent Calendar: Bonus Day 1 - Random Acts of Christmas

This is how Hallmarkies are meant to be watched, in my household. It came on while we were re-heating Xmas leftovers, and we just left it on, as we passed in and out of the living room, and when we sat at the table. We never sit at the table, and if we hadn't most likely it would have been flicked away from.

Note: This is directed by Marita Grabiak, whose name rang a bell, and turns out she was a TV show director from the heyday of Buffy and Angel. She's done a TON of genre TV, and more recently, fell into these Hallmarkies.

OK, as my attention faded in Sydney is a reporter covering something happening in their Big City, someone who is doing Random Acts of Xmas, not quite kindness, but grand gestures of Christmas theme decorating that inspire people to get into the holiday spirit. Tagging along side her is competitive journalist Cole, but he quickly just tags along with her, instead of actually covering the story.

By reporter, I mean freelance journalist, I mean vblogger who basically has someone hold up her phone and record her. And she sells those stories to a local station. Is this really a thing? Of course, in today's age of social distancing, and locked down crew, it could happen, but in the "real world" of Hallmarkies? Whatever, its a premise.

The events continue, including one where a truck arrives with cake. Cole just takes it upon himself to open the back of the delivery truck and grab one for himself, and Sydney. They chow down on a cake by themselves, and nobody screams "THIEF!" so I guess it was alright. And then there is the crew lining the streets with poinsettia, which happens to be Sydney's street, and also arranges to cause magical poinsettias to appear in the sky. Sky writers? Holograms? Is Cole an Xmas Angel?

No, just a rich guy. He runs that world's analog for Hallmark, an ornament company, that makes him Richie Rich. He and his dad.... no business partner... no, personal valet? I never really did figure out what Patrick Duffy (The Man from Atlantis) was playing, but he is Cole's (whose real name is Colin, but I will call him Richie Rich) best buddy and always around. When they did the poinsettia setup, I assumed that was the same crew that decorated Sydney's street with all the cotton batting snow, so commonly used in these movies. 

So, while Richie Rich continues to feed story information to Sydney, he is also getting quite attached to her, and her son, who looks like Dewey from Malcom in the Middle. And there is a competing reporter, a real reporter this time, who is catching on that something isn't right with this guy Sydney is hanging out with. By this time, Sydney is as well, and catches Richie Rich in his Mansion! And Evil Reporter captures their interaction, assuming they were colluding to make the great story. His story will be even better, as he Outs the town's Secret Santa.

Instead, Evil Reporter is given a cookie and some free hot chocolate, and his heart grows three sizes bigger. Sydney forgives Richie Rich, puts on a red dress and they make up. They spend Xmas Day at her place, where Not Dad makes moves on Sydney's mom, played by Jaclyn Smith and Richie Rich, now Colin, gives Dewey a gift that is pretty lame, considering he is a billionaire.

The Draw: It was on. I didn't turn the channel.

The Formulae: Missing Dad? Not sure if he was dead or divorced, but Richie Rich also had Dead Parents. Red Dress! I have been missing the red dresses this year, and I was glad to see this one. I blame 2020 for the dearth. Sydney may not be going for a promotion, but I imagine her exclusive on the Secret Santa will upgrade her from using her mobile phone for reporting, after which 2020 will knock her back down.

Unformulae: Not sure where this was set, but it wasn't a PST. Also, there wasn't really any big Xmas Event, unless you consider the whole Secret Santa thing going on, as one long event.

True Calling? They may have started as Richie Rich's desire to play nice nice with his money, but eventually they ended up being solely for Sydney's benefit.

The Rewind: His last gift is a giant sky writing Merry Christmas message in the sky, but it looked more like a really bad photoshop with a Smoke Brush.

The Regulars: Sydney is played by Erin Cahill, who has over a 100 entries in IMDB to her name. She is one of those hard working, single episode actors who just never stops shooting stuff. And she started as Pink Ranger! I respect her a lot. She also does a lot of these. Richie Rich, played by Kevin McGarry was on the next Hallmarkie (Christmas Scavenger Hunt) when I turned the TV channel, so I guess he does a lot of these.

How does it Hallmark? Its very seasonal, very charming and despite not being about an PST and old BF scenario, I rather liked it, so yeah.

How does it movie? Nopers.

T&K's Xmas (2020) Advent Calendar: Day 24 - Christmas Tree Lane

My final official one, but there will likely be a few more before they year is out.

A proper 2020 Hallmark Hallmarkie brings back Alica Witt (woot!) as Meg, the owner of a family run music store in small town... Denver? OK, they split the difference and instead of PST they went for a Picturesque Shopping District in Denver, aptly named Christmas Tree Lane because at some point in its history, it decorated up for Xmas and looked like an Xmas tree. Did they mean "not during the holidays" because I am pretty sure most streets in most cities do that.

Anywayz, she also teaches music and also sings songs, but she never got famous, because (well, because Alica Witt also sings songs and never got famous for them). Also, dead mom. 

 Out of the blue appears Returned to PSD (apologies Adobe), Nate the Business Guy, who was in the Big City but came back to Denver because of Dad. And no, not dead mom. Nor dead dad for that matter. But he loves Xmas, and loves big fancy hot chocolate like coffees, while Meg only likes black coffee. So, she's the Grinchy lead for this movie? No, she just doesn't like Big City Fancy Schmancy Coffees, and Xmas hasn't been the same since Dead Mom. 

Not long after coffee meetcute, flyers are passed out around Xmas Tree Lane, but these flyers are advertising the Eviction Party, because Big City Company is kicking everyone out, and around the holidays because that is the Best Time of the Year for Evictions, because Big City Company is going to demolish the PSD and build a bunch of glass & steel buildings. Because. Of course, we know that Nate is from the Big City Company, but nobody else knows that, not even Nate. No, I am serious, Nate doesn't know he is going to destroy the best thing in Denver, because the report is on the bottom of the pile that Evil Dad wants him to read. I guess all the other hopes & dreams this company has to destroy are even sooner?

Mega (typo, but I am keeping it) and her friends decide that the best way to defeat a Big City Company is via a Xmas Concert, because a bunch of people attending a music event on Xmas Eve will always change the bottom line of a Big City Company just before they demolish your stores.

So, Oblivious Nate has learned that Xmas Street (sorry, Christmas Tree Lane) will be demolished, so instead of reading the pile of reports he is supposed to read, he hangs around with Meg and friends and helps them all drum up business for Xmas Street and name espresso based drinks after her, until he finally reads that report and needs to confess to Mega. But, of course, she catches him not being at fault at anything and is heart broken and forces him to do a big gesture to get into her pants good books again. Nate will design a multi-focus business district that will incorporate the old store fronts into the glass & steel, and he will sell that to the Board of his dad's Big City Company and make all right with Meg and the World. He also reminds dad and mom that they used to love it down there.

Alas his plan fails, so instead they all go to the Xmas Concert even though Xmas Street will be demolished soon after. Meg wears her best red blue dress and sings a song she wrote that is not at all Xmas-y and more just generic pop country, but still, everyone loves it and dad's heart grows three sizes larger and he cancels the plan. Though I am pretty sure the board might disagree. And his investors. And his bank account, as there must be a ton of money sunk into this already. But no, Mega's Blue Dress and Singer Song wins the day.

Of note, the site I often pirate Hallmarkies from is not the best at ripping the audio, so all music comes out a bit warbled and distorted, making Mega's already terribly boring song, a rather off key boring song.

P.S. Why does the piano get poster main billing?

The Draw: Alica Witt and a place called Xmas Street Christmas Tree Lane.

The Formulae: A thin use of the formula, that dispenses with both the PST and the Big City and smooshes them together into a picturesque mid-sized family city. Big City Guy has already come back to home town, so there is that. The street is already one giant Xmas Event, but they are ending on a Concert with an original song, which I imagine has been used on at least a half dozen occasions. And there is the reveal, which leads to pseudo-breakup, despite them not being a couple yet, but is quickly resolved. And a dead mom.

Unformulae: Sorry, but the lack of a red dress is just plain offensive, despite Alicia Witt looking wolf-howlingly hot in that blue number. PSDs are not PSTs, despite sharing all the same features. Also Xmas themed espresso drinks are lame attempts at Hot Chocolate. There is no promotion being sought, as Nate already has the job (his dad gave it to him) and Meg is working where she always has. 

True Calling? The whole point of the movie is to save Christmas Tree Lane, so yeah.

The Rewind: Nuttin, but a brief pause on that blue dress might be in order. Va Va Voom.

The Regulars: Alicia Witt has been doing these for a while, as has Andrew Walker (Nate). 

How does it Hallmark? Despite trying a new stab at the formula, it's rather charming, and very Xmas-y which hit all the right notes for me.

How does it movie? Nopers.