3 Short Paragraphs: Army of the Dead

 2021, Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead) -- Netflix

After that massive recap of a last post, I am not up to writing that much again anytime soon. And there normally isn't that much to write, all things considered. In this case, it's a zombie action heist movie set in Las Vegas, and really, that is all you need to know. Oh, there is one more thing you DO need to know, in that I have my own head canon side story that involved three Canadian tourists that are holed up, behind the wall, in a LV microbrewery (in the Arts District) who are doing their best to survive, while staying slightly inebriated. This may, or may not, be connected to my own trip to LV in 2019.

Army of the Dead kicks off with the zombie apocalypse backstory (military science accidentally released) and then walls off the apocalypse before it really goes anywhere. (Un)fortunately LV's strip is caged up behind a train car wall, just after we get a lovely opening Snyder-style slowmo montage of some main characters escaping the chaos, while protecting people, including Dave Bautista, who chose this movie over The Suicide Squad. Years Months? Weeks(?) later, a Rich Asian Guy hires Dave to build a crew to go back inside, to claim 250 million from the Rich Asian Guy's vault. Dave will get a hefty cut that he can divvy up however he feels. Dave needs the money, as despite being the hero of LV Z Day, he's slinging burgers.

Snyder style is somewhat dialed down for this flick, which is a decent ensemble cast of military types, vbloggers, vault techs and a bad-ass Tig Notaro who was added in post after Chris D'Elia got kicked out for being a sleazebag. Considering I forgot that happened, and didn't notice she was digitally added, they did a decent enough job. The movie's not bad, but it's nothing special. I was hesitant about another fast-zombie example, and really didn't like the zombies-evolved sub-plot. To me, zombie hordes have always been scary enough without making them make babies. But you got to do something new to keep up with this genre. Of course, there are some twists that are not twists, some red herrings, and an ending that leads us to a possible sequel.

And yes, I spent much of the movie looking at the setting, thinking, "I have been there!" and "Would that building really be there, before that building?" Considering the movie was NOT shot in LV, its not a bad fictionalization of the city, even if there was no microbrewery side plot.

10 for 10: Potporridge

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

In this edition: a hodgepodge

Bad Trip (Netflix) - 2021, d. Kitao Sakurai

Muppet Treasure Island (Disney+) - 1996, d. Brian Henson

The Mitchells vs the Machines (Netflix) - 2021, d.     Michael Rianda, Jeff Rowe

Murder on the Orient Express (Disney+) - 2017, d. Kenneth Branagh

Reign of Fire (Disney+) - 2002, d. Rob Bowman

Sing Street (Tubi) - 2016, d. John Carney

Waterworld (AmazonPrime) - 1995, d. Kevin Reynolds

Possessor (Crave) - 2020, d. Brandon Cronenberg

Saturn 3 (AmazonPrime) - 1980, d. Stanley Donen (Singing In The Rain, Damn Yankees)

Nomadland (Disney+) - 2020, d.  Chloé Zhao

and...progress!

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I've watched the Borat movies and maybe one or two other of these fictional-characters-engaging-with-the-real-world movies, and, as funny as they can get, truth told, I don't like them.  It's a little mean spirited to deceive people and record their reactions to your absurdity or tomfoolery, and in terms of comedy, I mean...does anyone genuinely enjoy Just for Laughs Gags or other hidden-camera-based comedy?  These aren't that far off from that.

On his "talk show", Eric Andre does some of these comedy bits, sometimes in studio with an unsuspecting celebrity guest, and sometimes in his man-on-the-street filmed.  He likes to push things to extremes and absurds on that show, a mish-mash of Space Ghost: Coast-to-Coast and The Tom Green Show. Thankfully, paired with his show director Kitao Sakurai, they've crafted a much gentler, less imposing comedy road trip in Bad Trip (the latest in the not-a-series series of unconnected "Bad..." titled films).

In the setup, Andre plays a member of the lost generation, a man with so little going on in his life that when a high school crush reenters his life in (briefly) 20-years-later, he takes an invitation from her to visit her gallery as a hint that he needs to just uproot everything (which for him is nothing) and drag his best friend (Lil' Rel Howrey) on a road trip from Florida to New York City.  The trip requires them to borrow Howrey's sister's car - she won't mind, she's in prison.  Of course she escapes confinement and comes after them with the ferocity of a demon on fire.

The "pranks" if you want to call them that, aren't punishing to watch, and generally lean on the better nature of the people involved, although Andre and Tiffany Haddish do tend to push hard to get people to push back, and surprisingly few respond in kind.  The film kind of peaks with Andre performing a musical number in the real world to the confusion and confoundment of many bystanders, but again, it's a gentle pranking.

The gentleness makes it go down easier, and there were plenty of additional laughs, and even some impressive responses from the real players in the scenarios, but even still, it's hard to recommend something that made me so uncomfortable.  But that's the point, isn't it?

[14:28]

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Hey, I love the Muppets.  I mean, I loved The Muppet Show growing up, I watched Muppet Babies religiously for years in my childhood, I tend to watch The Muppet Family Christmas every year to get me in the holiday spirit, Muppets From Space I've seen more times than most movies, and the more recent The Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted are pretty damn good.  But for all my Muppet love, there are a lot of things Muppets I haven't seen, and some I've never cared to see.  The twist of making classic stories but with Muppets - The Muppet Christmas Carol, The Muppets' Wizard of Oz, and yes, Muppet Treasure Island I just passed on altogether.  I'm not sure why, but they didn't interest me in the same way an original Muppet venture might.

After watching Treasure Planet, I thought I would take a stab at the Muppet version of the story, and, well, I did that. Honestly, it's not that it's bad, in fact it's very well done, but, again, it really doesn't interest me.  Like I noted in my Treasure Planet review, I don't care much for pirate stories, and that extends to pirates in space and Muppet pirates.  And the Treasure Island story holds neither any mystery, nor any thrills for me.  I find it pretty dull.

Really, I can't even tell you if I finished watching this.  

[25:03]

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Like Love and Monsters (aka Monster Problems), my cable
service didn't get notification of the name change.

The Mitchells vs. The Machines seemed at first like another dumped-on-Netflix animated feature that nobody should care about.  There have been so many of these generic-looking animated features on Netflix that I've pretty much gone blind in noticing them.  They never register as anything I'm interested in watching.  But MvM... well, it started gaining traction.  I started seeing prominent articles in my nerd-news feed about it and it was sitting pretty as one of the trending movies on Letterboxd.  What the heck was this movie?

Coming from two writers of the popular-with-Millennials animated series Gravity Falls, and produced by Kent-favourites Lord and Miller, and coming from Sony Pictures Animation (home of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Into The Spider-verse, two of the best animated features ever) there was definitely something behind all this worth paying attention to.

The story is about the Mitchell Family, centering on daughter Katie (Abbi Jacobson), who is moving away from home to go to film school, and her increasingly disconnected relationship with her very analog father (Danny McBride).  On the day she's supposed to catch her flight to California, her dad surprises her with one last big family hurrah, putting everyone (including the pudgiest pug Monchi) into the station wagon and hitting the road, just as a Silicon Valley mogul launches his new AI robots who very, very suddenly take over the world and kidnap practically everyone, putting them into cubes and onto structures that will launch them into space.  The stakes accelerate very quickly.

It's an absurd plot grounded in actual fears about technology, but it's not technophobic.  It's a film that understands that technology has become a real part of the fabric of our world, and has allowed people many things, including creative expression and connection to a larger world and a sense of belonging where maybe they don't find it at home.  Those things can't be denied.  But there also has to be wariness and accountability in what we give up and who we give it up to.

But the real grounding force is the familial relationships... brothers and sisters, parents and children, and -- as a father of a daughter who is growing up way too fast -- the father/daughter dynamic.  At its heart it's a story rooted in a parent accepting their differences with their child, and vice versa, and worrying less about who they will become, and understanding more about who they are.  It's pretty nice.

Plus, hey, Olivia Coleman as the evil robot's overlord is awesome.  Even that story is kind of rooted in a "daughter" discarded by her "father', kind of the other side of Katie's relationship with her dad. 

The animation is great, the character animation is kind of bog standard caricatures of humans with big broad features, heightened for animated comedic effect, but the settings are beautiful, almost like rotoscoped real world environments.  You would think the two would clash but they mesh well, and all the unexpected interjections of Katie's creativity into the proceedings continually make things delightfully interesting.  A winner.

[42:31]

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Murder on the Orient Express is my 19-year-old's favourite film for many years running now.  His rebellion against his parents was to find police and detectives to be the best superheroes and that costumed adventurers working outside the confines of the law to be kind of boring.  Sci-fi and fantasy? Not enough uniforms and badges.

When this film came out a couple years ago, I had little interest in it.  Murder mysteries, while not something I'm abject to watching, aren't something I proactively go to see, especially when it seems like such an egregious vanity piece for its director/star.  And my stepson's praise fell on deaf ears, mainly because his movie viewing experience is very limited and his critical faculties about films don't seem well developed.

So after years of this boasting about what a wonderful film, and a veritable lull in desirable content to watch, I reluctantly put on this modern interpretation of the Agatha Christie classic.  And dammit if I wasn't tremendously entertained.

Branagh's clear enthusiasm for  *finally* getting to portray Hercule Poirot doesn't just shine through but explodes all over the screen.  There's an absolute giddiness Branagh has inhabiting the character, embuing Poirot with a zest-for-life that I can't find a parallel to in other films or film series.  There's confidence, charisma, charm, intelligence, and just the smallest of hints of vulnerability in Branagh's portrayal.  I mean, this is a cast, stacked with Michelle Pfeiffer, Penelope Cruz, Dame Judi Dench, Willem Dafoe, Leslie Odom Jr., Daisy Ridley and more, and it's like it doesn't even matter the wattage of star power around him, Branagh owns the screen, and his lens as director seems utterly in love with himself.  Only Ridley comes close to threatening to steal a scene and there's no way Branagh is letting that happen.

It's a big, bold, ludicrous performance and it makes every second of the film worth watching.  I mean, it's a classic for a reason, but even if you know the story inside and out, you don't know this performance...unless you've seen it before... and if you have, it's still kind of worth watching again.

It's not the best movie ever, but yeah, I get why my kid's so enthused with it.

[55:07]

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Oh man, Reign of Fire... when this came out I thought it was a joke.  Christian Bale before he was a mega-star Batman, and Matthew McConaughey in the midst of his "sexiest man alive" period and just entering his romcom ghetto period in a film where dragons are about to cause the extinction of humanity.  I mean, I'm not a fantasy guy, so my brain generally shuts off when dragons are mentioned, and I guess I assumed that meant this was a film where you needed to shut your brain off to watch it.  I also just assumed it was a medival-set movie.  Did the trailers intentionally hide that it was set in 2020?

It was only in the past year, listening to it being discussed on a podcast, that I learned it was a post-apocalyptic story where dragons, awakened in 1998, were the cause of the apocalypse.  That was a twist nobody had explained to me, and if they had, my brain shut off at the mention of "dragons".

But damn if this wasn't a solid action-adventure film that takes its conceit completely seriously.  I shouldn't be surprised.  Even early in his carreer, Bale didn't really do frivolous, and here, with master of disaster Gerard Butler by his side, he brings us into a very different 2020 than we know today.  McConaughey enters the picture as an overbearing American military major who is ready to sacrifice everything in order to take out the bull dragon, theorizing that there's only one alpha male that's seeding all these dragons.  That bloodline must be thin.

It's a pretty cracking movie, and even nearly 20 years later, its effects (mostly) hold up. Director Rob Bowman, best known for his work on the X-Files, doesn't do anything too fancy, yet manages to elicit the better tendencies of James Cameron in his work here.  

Surprising. Fun!

[1:06:13]

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A friend from work told me about Sing Street years ago, noting how much his teenage boys loved it, but that he greatly appreciated it to.  Praise from teenage boys is unfortunately likely what kept me away from the film, but secondary sources recently vouched for the film, and, with the aforementioned lull in viewing schedules I put it on...completely unaware of what I was getting into.

Set in Ireland in the mid-1980's in the midst of a crippling recession, family budget constraints force Conor ( Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) out of his posher education and into (I assume, without knowing Irish education system) Catholic public school on Synge Street.  It's a rough and tumble place, where instantly Conor feels like an outsider with his brown shoes and kempt wardrobe.  He becomes an easy target for a bully, but he takes everything coming at him with pursed lips and a clenched jaw.  He's got his own things going on.

His parents (Game of Thrones' Aidan Gillan and Orphan Black's Maria Doyle Kennedy) won't stop fighting and it looks like a separation is likely about to happen.  Conor's older sister has her nose stuck in her books, science is her way out.  His older brother, music obsessed, teaches him about contemporary music - Duran Duran, The Clash, Hall and Oates - as if that's all he has left, he missed his own window.  But Conor's key fixation is the beautiful older orphaned girl who doesn't go to school, says she's a model and going to move to London any day now.  But he's not a boy of simple crushes and inaction... he asks Raphina (an instant star-making turn from Lucy Boynton, not just playing the muse)  if she will model in his music video for his new song, and she agrees.  Now he just needs a song...and a band...

The story of Sing Street revolves entirely around Conor (for better or worse), both what's going on in his life that leads to the music he makes, and his ambitions both as a musician and as a possible boyfriend.  It's a film about dreaming and making your dreams come true through hard work, studying, the right combination of influences and motivators, and more than a hit of talent.

I would have liked more time with Conor connecting with the other members of his band and the relationship there, the best we get is the few great moments of Conor collaborating with Eamon (Wayne's Mark McKenna).  The music is really good, great at times, but other times seems a little anachronistic, less of the era and more of a modern interpretation of the era.  But still, I thought this was a musical, and it's not, it's really an immensely enjoyable feature about music

[1:21:03]

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I've never seen Waterworld before.  I have these stubborn spots in my life where I decide I don't like an actor or filmmaker and I just outright reject things they make simply because of their involvement.  Just the other day I saw the trailer for Infinite and said to myself "Mark Wahlberg as an immortal? Nope".

I was the same with Avatar.  My distaste for James Cameron means I'm likely never going to watch Avatar (or it's 96 forthcoming sequels) in full. 

With Waterworld it was straight up rejection of Kevin Costner, who at the time was the most boring performer in Hollywood (he's been surpassed by many, but he's still top 10). My sister, as well, was a big fan, and he was one of those "screen idols" that girls seemed to be all over at the time, and you know, being a teen boy, you just kind of reject those guys straight out.  Couple that with the disaster-in-the-making that was this film's exorbitant budget, and it seemed like there was nothing for me with Waterworld.

What I didn't know was that the film just needed time.  Time for me to dismiss it so heavily, to put it in that "do not touch list" for so long that, at a time like now, where I just want a dose of the nostalgic, of filmmaking that was almost entirely practical, but still big budgeted for the era, and big on ideas, and most of all new to me.  There aren't many of those discoveries left for me.  At this stage in my sci-fi back-fill the few features from before the year 2000 that I've left to discover tend to be direct-to-video, no-budget B-movies, stuff I can ignore.

Waterworld opens with the famous "In a world..." voiceover guy providing a brief introduction to the world of water, followed by Costner's "The Mariner" pissing into a plastic jug, pouring it into a tube and out the other end clearer liquid which he drinks.  Effectively this movie opens with Kevin Costner drinking his own piss.

From there it was all a discovery, finding out that Costner isn't playing the heroic rogue, but really a guarded asshole who keeps everyone at arms' length.  He's a mutant, with webbed toes and gills, and when people find out they not just reject him, but want to murder him something fierce.  There's a reason he hates humans.  But when the floating refuge he's visiting for trade is attacked by the Smokers - the merciless band of jetski riding pirates led by a somewhat cheerfully evil Dennis Hopper - he escapes thanks to the help of a woman and a little girl.  In return he reluctantly grants them refuge aboard his boat, but he seems to regret it at every turn.

The little girl, though, has a map tattooed on her back, the fable is that the map leads to dry land, something that nobody really believes exist, yet hold out hope for.  As such, the Smokers pull out all the stops to take on the Mariner, and in turn he finds just a little bit of connection with humanity.

I wasn't expecting, basically, Mad Max on water, and it's pretty much just that.  Certainly not up to part with Fury Road but easily in line with Beyond Thunderdome.  Easily.  It's like it's on the other side of the world from Mad Max.  Written by Kent-favourite David Twohy (the Riddick series), this film takes full inspiration not only from Miller's classic film series, but also Marvel Comics, seeding in the X-Men's struggle for acceptance, and Namor: The Sub-Mariner's notorious antisocial attitude.

The film runs a little long.  There's maybe too many loving shots of the boat sailing, but for the most part it's a very enjoyable picture throughout.  Even Costner's lack of charm works for the emotionally-stunted Mariner here.  And all those swashbuckling swinging about the boat maneuvers Costner pulls are genuinely cool looking.

Yeah, a lot of the picture looks like it was inspired by a stunt show (and not a movie that became a stunt-show) but it's still pretty impressive the whole accomplishment building a world and multiple different societies and appealing characters and even a child character that is far more charming than cute or annoying.  I'm for certain going to be watching this again...perhaps many more times.

[1:42:10]

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I started reading a comic called American Ronan the other day, about a corporate assassin who can take the DNA of another person and inject it into himself gaining extreme empathy with that person such that he basically has their feelings and memories.  He uses this in his revenge against the megacorporation that made him and destroyed his family.  It's action-oriented with a few drops of psychodrama.

Possessor, the first film from Brandon Cronenberg (yes, he is the son of...), is kind of a similar premise executed very differently.   In Possessor, Tasya Vos (sounds like a Star Wars name) is a corporate assassin who has her consciousness injected into others so that she can get close to her victims.  The process is far more rigorous than in American Ronan and it is much more scarring on the psyche of Tasya.  In her daily life she has a husband and a child, but she's somewhat estranged from them, and it's clear from the POV Cronenberg gives us that Tasya is, well, a psychopath.  She doesn't have any real emotions for her family, she's only pretending to.  It's not fully clear if she was always a psychopath or if the job - and the damage the process inflicts- progressively made her one.

Her latest job is a multi-day infiltration, but she's put into the mind of a drug abuser and depressive, which makes retaining control of his psyche very difficult.  The film, following the very grotesque accomplishment of her goals, then falls into a war of psyches as the host seemingly regains control and our POV switches to him.

It's a story that, on paper, seems intriguing, unfortunately Cronenberg leans to heavily on the sensationalism of it all, marrying cold sexuality and disturbing, gory violence in an uneasy blender (gee, wonder where he learned that form) that only distracts from the psychodrama at play, to the point that I missed the film's transition from Tasya to her host.  

The root of it all is Tasya is an immoral and reprehensible character, and her job is disgusting.  If we're supposed to get any sense that she's maybe in turmoil over whether to be a "regular person" or the vile assassin, the film never reaches it.  It always seems clear she is just gone.  As such, I was never rooting for her to accomplish her mission, and when her host regains control I was on his side.  

There's an American Ronan way to tell this story, but Cronenberg had no interest in an action movie, this is just an exercise in grotesqueness, both visually and psychologically. 

[Mini horror-not-horror: But is it horror: yes, it is]

[1:56:33]

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This should be quick.

Saturn 3 is an also-ran to Alien, an attempt to make a science-fiction/suspense-horror movie, but why, oh why bring on the director of Singing In The Rain for such an endeavor.  There's conflict here.  It's not that Stanley Donen had objection to the special effects gags of a horror movie, but he doesn't seem to have the capability to frame or light or guide the actors through the proceedings as if it were a horror movie.  

The story is so outdated.  On an isolated research station on the third moon of Saturn, a couple (Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett) are working on new ways to grow food for a struggling humanity back on Earth.  A flunked major has killed and replaced the pilot who was to arrive with new resources to help in their research. He's played by Harvey Keitel, but his vocal performance is dubbed over so that he sounds very robotic and monotone (I'm sure Keitel's natural vocal performance would have been more interesting at least).  Of course the new guy sees a hot woman with an older guy and gets ideas.  He also builds a robot who takes on his own brain pattern so suddenly we get Kirk Douglas, Harvey Keitel and a robot all being toxic males treating poor Farrah like she's a prize to be won or possession to have.  

It's a stupid, outdated premise that doesn't even need to exist anymore.  We should just burn every copy of this movie, delete it from every hard drive.  It doesn't need to be.  Poor Farrah and poor Kirk both bared all in this movie... THIS MOVIE! I guess if you're going to do a nude scene or two, do it in a movie nobody will want to watch.

[Mini horror-not-horror: but is it horror? Ew, not even]

[2:05:57]

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Neither glorifying nor demonizing the nomadic lifestyle, Chloe Zhao's Academy Award winning Nomadland is a measured view into an American subculture. It understands that, for some, the lifestyle is borne out of lack of options, but for others it is decidedly a choice, an inescapable way of being. Through Francis McDormand's Fern, we meet much of the former, but Fern herself is decidedly the latter.

Fern takes seasonal or temp jobs at an Amazon facility, at various RV parks and state parks, at roadside stands, an industrial turnip farm and more.  Zhao's film is sort of a fictitious travelogue but one that you can tangibly feel is grounded in reality.

In a weird way, watching Nomadland felt kind of similar to watching Waterworld, about two very isolated people who aren't incapable of being congenial or social but choose not to.  They could have deeper relationships, but it's not their way.  The open road, or open sea, is their home.  There's a connection there that they seem to have is greater than human connection.  Likewise, Nomadland has this quasi-post-apocalyptic feel.  The desolate rural towns full of abandoned buildings and forgotten histories, the strange industrial complexes that seem so unreal in juxtaposition.  The varying alien terrains that Fern travels.  It's not that far off from sci-fi, except that it reflects all too much a painful reality.

It's a film that (gently) hints for you to confront your existence, the societal constructs you dwell in, and what the meaning of freedom really is. Neither sweet nor bitter, it's a film that balances on the cusp of beautiful, but it's always awash in greys and hazy blues that just hold it back from anything too evocative. There is a weight on the soul of these travelers, something that keeps their feet on the ground, and yet they move and keep moving as if the weight were nothing at all.  

It's a film devoid of tension, and yet it's a film that actively engages you as a viewer.  It's like an open wound being cleaned, kind a good, healing ache of a watch.

[2:17:10]

-fin-

n Paragraphs: Godzilla vs Kong

2021, Adam Wingard (Blair Witch) -- download

OK, let's do this. 

I had to rewatch because, while I viewed it when it came out (the wonders of piracy, while it still exists) I didn't write about it. I blame COVID brain. It will continue to be the Great Excuser even when the media consumed was not during the weeks I actually suffered from COVID. The Pause pauses much.

Also, I made notes as I rewatched, as I was not as much concerned by regularly pausing and continuing. I have noticed that this leads to a less-than-overall-view-of-the-movie writing style, and lends itself more to a chronological run-through or recap. Not that interesting, but interesting to me.

Anywayz, I liked it again. But not as much as the first time round, where I turned my brain off and just enjoyed the pretty colours and monster knife fights. This time was more tainted by the "OMG the dumbs!" interfering with the fun. This is not a smart movie. But wherein I disliked the second movie so much for being Dumb Dumb Dumb, and I got very little Fun out of it, with this one I got loads of Fun. Fun trumps smart, I guess.

We begin with Kong, Kong on Kong Island (OK, Skull Island) waking up, scratching his butt like the old man he has grown into since the get-this-monkeyfucking-monkey-off-my-monkeyfucking-plane movie that introduced him. But it's NOT Skull Island, it's a compound built on what remains of the island after the storms took it over, probably killing everyone and everything. He's Under the Dome, a dome with holographic skies and a dome that he knows is there. And he don't like it. But nice scientist lady (Rebecca Hall, Iron Man 3) and little deaf girl take care of him, so he's OK.

By this time we are supposed to assume Kong has grown up from 100 odd feet to 300 odd feet, so he matches the height of Godzilla, who will be known affectionately as GZ from now on. But really, I am not convinced. He doesn't look that much bigger based on his surroundings. We are expected to ignore that.

Next up we get the Attack on Apex Cybernetics. They call it a robotics plant, but it looks more like an oil refinery meets a nuclear plant. You would think a robotics plant would just be lots and lots of boxes housing science labs and manufacturing floors. But that's not interesting enough for GZ to stomp or lazer blast. Yes, lazer, not laser. GZ's atomic blasts are frickin' lazer beams. When the dust settles the news claims only 8 died. Yeah, not buying it. Considering the lazer beams and explosions and fighter jet crashes, dozens if not hundreds should have died. Speaking of fighter jets, quit flying so close guys -- you just know he is going to swat ya like an annoying bug.

During this point in the movie, I realized I am kind of watching a Michael Bay movie. There are big exciting set pieces, lots of explosions and an annoying, comical character whom I don't like. I get, from a screenplay point of view, why these characters exist -- lighten up the situation, bring it more to the ground so we can get plot exposition. But as a tie to bring Maddie (Millie Bobby Brown, Stranger Things) back to the story, its incredibly weak.

So, GZ is attacking, they don't know why, but Evil Tech Guy (Demián Bichir, The Bridge) is likely causing it. His plan is to convince people that they have to go to the Centre of the (Hollow) Earth where they will find a power source that can protect them from GZ, and other titans. Nobody knows the way there, but Kong is probably drawn by genetic memory. Skull Island is supposed to be Hollow Earth come to the surface. So, Evil Tech Guy (and his sexy Asian Evil CTO) need to convince Hollow Earth Dude (Alexander Skarsgård, True Blood) to convince Nice Scientist Lady to convince Kong to join them in finding the way to Hollow Earth.

I have seen this movie twice now, but I am not sure I catch what Evil Tech Guy is using as leverage. I said power source, but I not convinced that is the reason. Why do they think a power source is at the centre of the planet? And how will it help them?

And speaking of the Hollow Earth, we get Hollow Earth Dude. He's an AUTHOR, an author on a pseudo-science topic that has to be more speculation than anything. But they are using HIS theories as a source, along with some magnetic imaging of the centre of the planet that show a big hollow sphere. Hint, when they get there, THERE IS NO HOLLOW SPHERE. I would think they used that "magnetic imaging" as a ruse to get Hollow Earth Dude to join them, but I don't know why they need him. Its not like all his crazy books add any air of authenticity to his theories. But still, they do convince Nice Scientist Lady and pack everyone and Kong up on a bunch of ships to sail to Antarctica where the best entrance to the Hollow Earth likely is, according to his theoretical books. And he also gets to school them on how the journey will go, gravitic inversions and such, and The Veil, which allows them to travel quickly to the centre, some thousand miles below. Again, he cannot KNOW this, he just theorized it.

So, sailing on big military boats on routes they don't expect GZ to go, with a drugged up Kong while they play Elvis music. Why Elvis, I thought. Oh, The King. Heh. And GZ finds them, of course. I still don't get why a 300' monsters can sneak up on both the military AND Evil Tech Guy's entourage, which includes his Daughter (Eiza González, Baby Driver) [rawr].

The battle atop the ships is pretty exciting, if not exactly realistic. Yes yes, I get it, in a movie about Giant Monsters with Lazer Breath fighting, realism is already out the door. But something has always bugged me about movies set on a larger than life scale. As Kong hops from ship to ship, reaching the aircraft carrier in order to have some more room to fight, I wonder about the structural capability of American sea going vessels. Sure the BOAT is bigger, but that doesn't mean the materials that make it up are equivalently bigger. Shouldn't Kong just punch through the deck until his inertia is absorbed? 

Eventually GZ gives up, and leaves the survivors to escape, using the age old trope of "turn the power off, everything that makes a noise!" GZ is not tracking a submarine, he is tracking a giant ape who is still alive and gasping for life. But I assume GZ has made his point as to who is really King, so he carries on carrying on. 

Once he is gone, they need to continue to the Rabbit Hole, so they pickup Kong in a big ol net carried by a bunch of helicopters and vertibirds. But where did they come from? The aircraft carrier, and half the other ships are sunk, so ... OK, stop Toast and just keep on watching.

Back to the sideplot where Maddie and her sidekicks, including wonderful Julian Dennison (Where the Wilder People Are) are off to Hong Kong, via the magic maglev trains that travel 260 mph, so they can transport SkullCrawler eggs to ANOTHER secret Apex base. Shouldn't our side story side kicks be tossed against the back wall of the train car? Its not like that have starship inertial dampeners. Once they have arrived they find the real reason Evil Tech Guy needs the Centre of the Earth power source (still don't know how he knows about that stuff), so that he can power up Mecha GZ ! Yup, he has built his own Titan to fight the other titans and become King of the World. Also, Evil CTO is its pilot. You would think he would hire people to do that stuff.

And now back to going down the rabbit hole in their own versions of Apex maglev trains, the H.E.A.V. ships, modeled like one of their engineers saw The Core. They convince Kong to swing his way down the tunnels from Antarctica to the Centre of the Earth by having the little deaf girl lie to Kong. Oh, did I mention Kong speaks American Sign Language? Heh. 

But with Kong swinging, they all follow until they reach The Veil. What? Why? How? Apparently there is a magical barrier between the surface and the Centre that will allow them to "travel thousands of miles in seconds." I guess something had to be done, as the movie couldn't waste hours if not days as the group travels to The Core. So, magic space warp veil thingie hand wavey science that somehow crazy book author was aware of.

Once they are in the Hollow Earth (which is not a sphere, but a PLANE -- the only thing I can think of is that the core of the Earth is still further in, but the "Hollow Earth" is an open shell around it all, which has magical "gravitic inversion") it looks incredible. Who knows where the "sunlight" comes from but all those mountains "above" and "below" look incredible. I felt I was back watching one of those Journey to the Centre of the Earth movies from the 70s that I loved so much. If only we had got to see lizard people! Perhaps they were the carvers of the realm that the Kongs ruled over? 

This underground jungle is full of trees and water and breathable air and blue rocks and other monster fauna. I do so like the Quetzalcoatl ! Kong is running and swinging towards... something. Evil Tech Guy's Daughter assumes it is the Secret Power Source that ... Kong just runs towards, just because? But no, he is actually heading towards the Kingdom of the Kongs, a hollow mountain fortress where Kong discovers his legacy and his ... THRONE !! Yep, Kong, King of Cimmeria! Its all so wonderfully grand and silly and incredible. By now I stop complaining internally and just enjoyed the batshit insane choices they were making. Kong has a BATTLEAXE that charges up !! Back in sidekick story, the Skull of Ghidora used as an uplink to MechaGZ!! And MechaGZ roars, because THAT is something you need programmed into a Giant Robot!! 

Now, GZ is drawn to Hong Kong by the Apex blinkey blink that... powers MechaGZ ? But he is also aware (???) that Kong has reached the throne room. Evil Tech Guy's Daughter didn't need the actual bue rock power source, and just scanned a bit of it, to send back to daddy so he can power up MechaGZ. That upsets the rest of the team, who see it as a corruption of why they were travelling to the Centre of the Earth. But really, why did they think they were going? And how is a simple scan going to really affect anything? Anywayz, as I was saying, GZ is aware Kong is "down under" and blows a hole all the way to the Centre of the Earth. Yup, you read that right. A HOLE FROM CHINA TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. I am pretty sure by now that this script was written by having a producer sit with a room of 8 year olds describing what they want in the next GZ movie. Or Reddit; same difference.

So, now Kong has to climb all the way back to Hong Kong (they mention but don't depict The Veil) so he can battle it out with GZ, now that he has his new POWERED UP BATTLE AXE ! Is Hong Kong really that colourful ? I do enjoy they had to recreate the Pacific Rim battle scene in a bright city because that movie still stands as my fav kaiju flick. Anyone notice the archology on the mountain at the centre of Hong Kong. Is there a mountain at the centre of Hong Kong (city, not island) ? 

GZ and Kong have to battle it out, so GZ can prove (again) that he is truly King. So squash squash, smashy smashy, thousands die (there was no time to get to the shelters) and once Kong seems down, MechaGZ emerges from the mountain to kick GZ's ass. MechaGZ has rockets, rocket propelled punches and his own red Lazer Beam to counter GZ's blue beam. And just when we think all is lost (no we didn't), Hollow Earth Dude flicks a bunch of switches, and taps a bunch of buttons and turns the HEAV into a defibrillator. Kong gets up, powers up his axe again and the two (now) best buds rip MechaGZ limb from limb. OK, maybe we can both be Kings, thinks GZ.

I love that lone helicopter that flies past after Kong takes care of MechaGZ. 

I did rather enjoy watching this movie again, but recapping it was almost as much fun as you get to say the looney things that happened out loud and make them sound awesome as well as looney. I still wish they had kept the tone of the first movie, making things more dire and scary instead of looney, but the "fans" did complain so that room of 8 year olds had to be convened.

Rewatch: Key and Peele Seasons 1-5

 2012-2015 - Comedy Central

I remember Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele from MadTV in the early 2000's and, well, I wasn't much of a fan... not of Key and/or Peele, just of MadTV.   That was a sketch comedy show that knew how to drive a joke into the ground and run over it repeatedly with a lawnmower until anything recognizably funny was gone.  I would pause, for a few minutes, on Fox on occasional Saturday nights over the years and just marvel at how hard everyone was trying on MadTV, and how spectacularly they were failing at comedy.  Saturday Night Live always has the thrill and awkwarness of being live, MadTV had little to fall back on but broad, brutal comedy.  A lot of talented people churned through MadTV, many of whom went on to do much better things with their careers.  

When Key and Peele debuted, I was like "Those guys? Those MadTV guys?"  But while it seems whatever they did on MadTV has not stood the test of time (little on MadTV has), Key and Peele is a sketch comedy legacy to be proud of.  The broad, ground-up comedy of MadTV was gone, and the sensibilities of the two performers really started to shine through very, very quickly.

Not just sharing comedic sensibilities, both Key and Peele share backgrounds, being bi-racial with white mothers and Black fathers, the subject of which comes up a few times in the interstitial segments of the show, and in the content of a couple of early sketches.  But for the most part Key and Peele stepped up to fill the 6-year void since the phenomenon of Chappelle's Show abruptly left the air: Black culture-focussed sketch comedy. That's not to say that the comedy of Chappelle's Show or Key and Peele were exclusive entertainment, just that a lot of the sketches were rooted in Black history, popular culture, social statements, trends and behaviors, both shows still managed to entertain across any preconceived racial lines by following the adage that there is humour in specificity.

Key and Peele often exposed as well as exploited the Black experience for humour, but also sometimes for the uncomfortable laugh, about police brutality and murder, slavery, even curiosity that is Black Republicans.  One of the carryovers from MadTV was Peele's Obama impersonation, which almost exclusively Key and Peele did with "Luther, Obama's anger translator".  This would find Barack Obama calmly and cooly relating his thoughts on a topic, with each sentence Key bouncing, hopping mad in the background saying what Obama's really thinking...the things a dipomatic President can never say himself out loud (or shouldn't). 

Their interests in nerd culture leads to sketches lampooning horror tropes, superheroes, zombie movies, as well as the people interested in these things.  There's a Harry Potter-adjacent sketch set in a wizarding public school, without the finer resources of a Hogwarts. A second season sketch spoofs the Power Rangers calling the Green Falcon "Black Falcon" repeatedly.  There's a sketch with Peele performing as Stan Lee, trying to solicit new superheroes which have foundation in his geriatric situation, or a gonzo final season sketch about the origins of Gremlins 2: The New Batch. There was definitely an dark streak equal to their nerdier and goofier sensibilities.

It's not a flawless five-season run by any stretch.  There are sketches that are questionable, particularly the ones where Key and/or Peele choose to play Middle-Eastern, Latino (mainly cholo gangsters), or Indian (doctors primarily).  There are some funny sketches in concept, but there's also an stereotypical undercurrent that in modern culture just doesn't fly.  There is a point where Key notes that some tough Latinos did come up to him and ask him why he didn't do any sketches about them, which just leads me to think there's a long, long way to go still for representation in sketch comedy on TV.

Over 54 episodes, Key and Peele developed a solid stable of recurring characters, though none of them overstayed their welcome.  Of them, Obama definitely appeared the most, though by season 4 appearances were very sporadic.  Meegan and Andre, the high maintenance couple, appeared about once per season.   Wendell, the overweight nerd with a complex, is maybe not the most favourable caricature but he also only appears three times.  Gay couple LaShawn and Samuel appear to promote legalized gay marriage and adoption. And of course the two movie fan Valets who were prone to pluralizing and colloquializing the names of their favourite actors ... Vally Kilmers, Melly Gibsons, Anne Hathaways, Liam Neesons....  (This tag team was so popular that Key and Peele reprised this skit in character as "Bunny" and "Ducky" promoting Toy Story 4).  There were also world-building aspects that repeat throughout as well, like the Rhinos, who are every sports team in any sports related sketches, with the big rubbery orange rhino as a mascot and their bright orange jerseys, whether football or hockey. 

There's also a lot of musical number (with some quality songsmithing happening) crossing many genres, from broadway to jazz, hip-hop to dubstep, soul to pop to R&B.  Likewise there's a lot of high concept production pieces which, in the wake of Peele's subsequent directorial career with Get Out and Us, you can see the gestation of the auteur here.  There's a lot of horror-as-comedy, or comedy-as-horror happening throughout and it's clear Peele loves the genre and enjoys toying with it.

The hits to misses ratio of the sketches in Key and Peele is extraordinarily high, but of course I have favourites.  It could be a very long list, but I'm going to narrow it down to two favourites per season:

Favourite Key and Peele sketchs from each season:
"Community Theatre Martin and Malcolm" (S1 Ep2) - Two actors are performing on stage as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.  When one actor's reciting of a famous phrase gets a rousing bout of approval from the audience, the other tries to outdo them, until it descends into just spouting any old catch phrase for approval.  Unexpected silliness.

"Bar/Bat Mitzvah Motivational Dancers" (S1 EP8) - a Christopher Guest-style mocumentary about two Black bar/bat mitvah performers.  This kind of sketch is always appealing to me.

"Dueling Hats" (S2 Ep10) - remember when people started leaving the brand sticker on the brim of their baseball cap? And then people started leaving the sales tags on their baseball caps? Well, this absurd style and one upmanship just keeps getting one upped in this sketch.

"Dub Step" (S2 Ep2) Keegan learns about Dub Step, with upsetting results

The Continental (S3 EP7) - A man discovers all the joys of the free continental breakfast buffet at his hotel. My favourite skit of the entire show.  "I'll have what I'm having!"

Key & Peele: Continental Breakfast from Peter Atencio on Vimeo.

"Othello" (S3 Ep8) - sort of a 17th century riff on Key and Peele's recurring Valets skit about two guys who love movies, but in this case it's two Black theatre goers who see Othello for the first time.

"Aerobics Meltdown" (S4 EP9) - a very close second-favourite all-time sketch.  Again showcasing a bit of the darker humour as well as the absurd specificity of K&P's comedy.  This sketch caused me to track down the audio ("National Aerobic Championship Theme" by Ty Parr) and watch more than a couple National Aerobic Championships on YouTube

If We Treated Teachers Like Pro Athletes (S5 Ep4) - K&P are no strangers to presenting alternate realities in their sketch comedy, but this was my favourite. It's basically ESPN Sportscenter highlights but about the teaching community (complete with commercial break with a teacher promoting the hot new car).


Feminist Pirate Shanty (S5 EP1) - another great musical number, this time about pirates who respect women and inform others how to as well.  See also the sketch in which two dapper men run a Ted Talk-like session about menstruation.

Honorable Mentions
"East/West Collegiate Bowl" and "Substitute Teacher" - Various seasons. 
In both cases Key and Peele had fun with toying with non-traditional names often come across in the Black community.  With the "East/West Collegiate Bowl"  It's not that they're making fun of anyone's name, specifically, just riffing on some of the patterns in names and then pushing them to absurd extremes.  These guys appreciate an unusual name...but it's also the accent or affectation and the wigs and postures and everything these guys do in these to just create gut-wrenchingly funny comedy.

The "Substitute Teacher" sketch finds a teacher used to working with inner city kids out in the suburbs faced with "normal" names like Aaron (Ay-Ay-Ron?) and Denise (Dee-Nice?). It's even more about playing with the English language than it is about making fun of names.  But still, sorry to all the Ay-Ay-Rons out there.

T&K Go Loopty Loo: Edge Of Tomorrow

 [Toast and Kent love time loop stories.  With this "Loopty Loo" series, T&K explore just what's happening in a film or TV show loop, and maybe over time, they will deconstruct what it is that makes for a good time loop]

 2014, d. Doug Liman - recorded from tv, with commercials (gasp!)

[Kent] Maybe my series recap of Mission:Impossible is a total "TL:DR", so if you didn't read it, the two key points are:

1. Christopher McQuarrie, at this stage a multi-time collaborator with Tom Cruise, is working really hard to save Cruise's career, by ensuring he's not pushed out of the Mission:Impossible franchise and by giving him a second action franchise in Jack Reacher
   
2. By injecting into Cruise's career an active display of humility. Edge of Tomorrow, the last draft of which was written by McQuarrie, starts Cruise off as a coward (something he's never played on film, at least not like this) and then, when caught in the "time-loop" (I put it in quotes, we'll get to why), we see Cruise killed over and over again.  It's a catharsis for anyone in the audience who disliked him, or soured on him or was just uncertain about him.  But each new rebirth requires Cruise to change in order to survive, to become a better, more likeable, more relatable person.  He comes out of the film like the phoenix rising from the ashes, a much different star than he went in.

[Toast] Part of me also wonders whether this movie was meant to lift people out of the assumption that they won't see Cruise movies because they don't like Cruise. But, in many ways this is as much a typical Cruise carrier, almost as much as its not.

How did the Loop Begin?

[Kent] Cruise portrays Major William Cage, but his rank is more ceremonial thanks to his adept publicity and marketing skills.  Otherwise, he's a coward. 

There's a massive global battle that is going on with an invading alien enemy.  They seem to know when to strike and where, and human casualties are massive.  Humanity has only had one victory in an otherwise lopsided battle.

Cage is conscripted into serving in battle by a spiteful General.  He tries to run, but he's tased into unconsciousness.  When he wakes up he has barely a days worth of basic training before he's sent out to the big battle, the last stand for humanity.  If they lose it's pretty much over for our species.  Utterly out of his element Cage is just there as a body, to distract the enemy, nobody is expecting anything useful from him.  His cowardice leaves him prone on the field and he's killed, but not before getting sprayed in the face with the toxic blood of one of the enemy.

And then he wakes up, at a point he's already lived, the same point when he woke up after being tased into unconsciousness... on a pile of duffle bags at the military barracks outside London, the Sergeant yelling "On your feet soldier!" 

[Toast] Bill Paxton is just brilliant in this minor role, just utterly captivating in playing the Science Hill, Kentucky staff sergeant who is working under the assumption that Cage is a deserter, a coward and deserves whatever quick death he gets. I love the subtle reactions he gives from later iterations, when Cage knows what he is about to do or say, and eerily interrupts.

[Kent] Something about Paxton as a screen presence has always rubbed me the wrong way, but it kind of rubs me the wrong way the right way here.

[Toast] That first death of Cage, the blue blood pouring all over him, is horrific. I wonder if he carries that horrible memory with him for the rest of the loops.

What was the main character's first reaction to the Loop?

[Kent] The usual: confusion. But he clearly is aware that this has all happened before.  These events he's experiencing are so outside his usual reality that it's very clear he's not dreaming, that quickly he knows he's living the same day over again.  But a little cog in a big machine, he doesn't know enough to change much of what's about to happen (to him or anyone else)... just enough to do a little better .

[Toast] I wonder how he so quickly changed his direction. I get that the first couple of loops, he is disoriented, as well he should, but instead of knowing what's ahead and immediately trying to perfect his escape, he actually tries to survive the battle AND help his fellow soldiers with their own doomed fates. So, was Cage not such a bad guy to begin with, just never expected to be in battle?

[Kent] I don't think he was ever a bad guy...just a coward.

WHY did the main character get put into the Loop? Can someone else be brought into the Loop?

[Kent] Alien blood, my good man.  It's explained in the film that the Mimics have developed the technology to reset time.  Out in the field a very small percentage of the Mimics are blue, these are the ones that are recording the events of the day and able to upload their knowledge to the master control hive mind, so that when they die and the day is reset the whole Mimic army knows how things played out before and can easily counter their enemy.

It's the alien blood of the blue Mimic that wound up killing Cage, and somehow is now in his system time-after-time (don't think too much about it...it's comic book science).  

In theory, anyone can gain this ability if they basically get soaked in this acidic, toxic, alien blood and die.  But, what isn't clear is that they say Cage now controls the Loop, and I'm not sure I really understand that, why he is now in control of the Loop.  I would think the hive mind would do that (and when I say "hive mind" I mean just that, a giant glowing blue brain that controls the hive.

[Toasty] I am not sure there is any control given until the end of the movie, where Cage knocks it all the way back to waking up on the helicopter. Sure, they talk about the "control" being Cage's hands, but I am not sure he does anything more than run on automatic.

How long is this time Loop? What resets it? Can you force the reset?

[Kent] So, here's the thing we need to discuss, Toasty... is this a time loop? It's more of a time reset, rather than a loop.  As long as Cage stays alive, time moves forward, it's just they're up against a pretty overwhelming army, and avoiding death is so, so hard.  It's only his death that causes time to loop back.  And they force that reset a LOT. 

We haven't talked about Emily Blunt... the amazing Emily Blunt as Sgt. Rita Vrataski, the Angel of Verdun.  She is the face of the military effort, because her squad is the only one to be victorious in a battle against the Mimics (at Verdun).  It's because she, too, had the ability to reset the loop... but lost it.  In the process though, she's become the most badass soldier in existence.

[Toast] This is a fun one to postulate. Is each loop (or reset) in the same timeline, or does each manipulater create their own new timeline? So, if Cage was to shoot a Big Blue and it would once again soak Rita, would she be shunted into her own timeline entirely separate from Cage? So, in effect, the Hive Mind doesn't care about its own timeline, but uses the knowledge it got from the failure/death of a Big Blue and sends it into the next timeline, albeit a bit further back, to allow THAT timeline a better chance at a positive outcome, for their race?

That said, but with more thought, I believe there is only ONE Looper (cough) / Resetter allowed at any one time. Its why the Hive Mind needs Cage blue blood depleted, so it can take back the "power".

To answer your question, I still think it's a time loop, just one that can be stretched out.

But that aside, the forced reset we are presented with is fun here. Loopty Loo's do love their montage scenes and this movie is full of them. Once the training montage is in full swing, you can see the boredom on Rita's face and her desire to force a reset every time the training session hits a merely inconvenient stage. Poor Cage.

How long does the main character stay in the Loop? Does it have any affect on them, their personality, their outlook?

[Kent] I don't know that the film ever calculates how many times Cage lives, dies and repeats. It must be thousands upon thousands of days.  It can't help but have an effect upon him. He starts to think outside himself rather quickly, attempting to save as many people on the battlefield as he can, before realizing it's kind of futile, that they're so outmatched, he can't possibly save them all.  He zeroes in on the badass Angel of Verdun, thinking, appropriately for a marketing guy, that if he saves anyone in this battle should survive it needs to be the face of their war effort.  

It's through saving her that she realizes he's Looping ("Resetting?") and that he needs to come to her when he wakes up, which he does, and over dozens, maybe hundreds of repeat days they train and think through and execute their battle plan, still losing every time, but becoming closer in the process.  Suddenly, more than anything, Cage doesn't want to save himself, he wants to save Rita, and then starts thinking of the bigger picture, saving humanity.

[Toasty] Obviously Cage's viewpoint changes. Its not only a requirement of Loopty Loo's (Palm Springs is probably the closest example where someone refuses to change) but it necessary to the plot here. Even Cage's one brief loop (even if you call it a reset, from Cage's brain, he is still looping through the timeline[s]) outside of the heroic acts, he is presented with the horror of Not Doing Anything and the consequences. I don't think he really has a choice but to try and Solve the Mimic Problem because the horror he will see without trying surpasses anything he will see in battle. And he will die again along with all those innocents.

The number of loops does weigh on him eventually, especially that little bit where he keeps on trying to save Rita, and fails. I like that they present "stable points" in the loop, points in time that cannot be changed (a very Whovian concept) and only after he lets it happen can he move forward. Very... self-helpish.

What about the other people in the Loop? Are they aware? Can they become aware?  Does anything happen if they become aware?

"Live. Die. Repeat." was the later marketing/
home video marketing tag which supplanted
the "Edge of Tomorrow" title. I long thought
L.D.R. was a better title, but now I think
"Edge of Tomorrow" is appropriate, as he's
always living on the edge...of tomorrow.

[Kent] Other people are certainly made aware.  Some refuse to accept it, others are maybe less skeptical but need to be convinced.  Cage learns who he can convince (or manipulate) and who he can't over repeated Resettings.  Of course Rita is on board immediately because she's lived it herself, and knows what that experience is like.  And then there's the squirrelly Dr. Noah Carter who had theorized about the time looping and got busted down from military scientific counsel to working on the factory floor.  He's the one who has the solution to defeating the enemy, by tracking the hive mind.  

[Toast] Rita is easy. She's been through it. The short-hand that Cage must develop to begin interacting with her must take time, but work. It also must be REALLY weird for her, given she knows what its like on the other side. But imagine being Dr Noah, and seeing those two go at it (banter, not that it) in the 3D map room, as Cage fills them in more fully each time. 

What does the main character think about the other people in the Loop? Are they real? Do they matter?

[Kent] Yes and no.  I mean, Cage is fully aware that the people are real, they matter, but I think instead he gets comfortable with the concept that time is immaterial, and death is certainly nothing to be feared.  At a certain point he becomes endgame oriented, that he needs to focus on the end result or all of humanity will be lost, and so he can't fixate too much on the individuals or he may never win.  Even, at a certain point, that means letting go of Rita, whom he's fallen in love with.  It's basically the same choice she had to make at Verdun, letting go of the man she loved who she couldn't save.

[Toast] And himself. Imagine that last loop. Sure, he saves humanity but at the cost of all of J Squad and Rita, and himself. If anything the looping gave him perspective above all. There was no way he knew he would get another loop shot, with even MORE control. 

Most memorable event in a Loop? Most surprising event during a Loop?

[Kent] I like the training montage where Rita keeps shooting an injured Cage over and over again, his progression from pretending to be fine to resigned acceptance that the only path forward is Resetting.

[Toast] For me, it will always be that yelp he gives when he mistimes the roll under the truck. And the look on Sergeant Farrell's face. It is that brief moment that tells me multiple timelines are being created. OK ok, not serious on that at all, as I imagine Cage is squashed and dying, but not dead/reset yet. 

Dead Reset Yet -- my new band name.

How does this stack up in the subgenre?

[Kent] I'm not going to be nitpicky about whether this really does count as a time loop, it's still "in the mold".  As such, this is one of my absolute favourites.  Maybe my very favourite? Possibly?

[Toast] It is definitely one of my favourites, and a wonderful example of reworking the trope. We cannot always just follow the mould can we?

That said, let me tell you about a WONDERFUL example of reworking the trope I just saw on the TV show Debris. The show is about a team (one American, one British) tasked with collecting the debris from a crashed alien ship that came down all across the US. Each piece has magical powers that affect anyone who comes into contact with the piece.

In the multi-part episode, a 20sumthin and his twin sister discovered a piece that sends someone back in time 2 days. The problem is that they emerge into another timeline, not their own original. And he appears without his twin sister, as in this timeline he doesn't have a twin. So he keeps on resetting time / looping in order to return to the timeline in which she exists. But the more loops, the more tears in the "fabric of reality". So the team has to stop him, but not before one of them gets caught in the loops, and needs to return to THEIR own timeline, so they can "return" to their own partner.

Haven't finished the story, and its also not a "true" time loop story, but it borrows tropes and was kind of a fun spin on it. 

[Kent] I need to watch this [update: cancelled] show.

Rutherford Falls Season 1 [updated]

 2021, Showcase (Canada)/Peacock (US)

There was a dead zone of new TV shows for about a month (well, it's kind of still ongoing), the impact of the COVID-19 shutdown coming to bear, and it seemed like the only new program being promoted was Rutherford Falls.  Whenever I'd turn on the TV, my cable provider's on demand service was promoting it.  I would walk the dog and see billboards and sides of buses showing the same image of Ed Helms and an actress I'm not familiar with sitting on a book in front of a statue.  This one:

It's an image that tells you nothing, unless you're really, really paying attention.  But it's such a plain image, who's paying that much attention?  I mean, Ed Helms is a very subtle comedic persona, he doesn't really stand out in any way.  I used to really like him on The Daily Show, and he's always a pleasant supporting player...even sometimes a pleasant lead, but he's never a draw.  So upon seeing these promotional images (but no commercials, since I watch everything recorded or on demand, I skip past commercials) my mind just said, without any maliciousness, "pass".

They bury the lede on this one, which is that one of the show's creators is Michael Shur, the guy who created things like Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn 99, and The Good Place...in other words, some of the best American situation comedies of not just the past decade, but of all time.  That, to me was the draw, and how did I learn that?  Well, I found myself waiting at a street corner for a light to change, time on my hands, and I actually paid attention to the bus stop poster which kind of subtly announced this.  Upon making the connection, Parks and Recreation specifically was invoked, in that Schur created one of the great goofy small-towns, so perhaps Rutherford Falls would be another such wonderfully goofy, well-populated small towns.  But at the same time, I also realized that Schur, with The Good Place, had bigger thoughts in mind, so who knows where Rutherford Falls might be going... the thought was enticing.

Within the first episode it became clear what the distinguishing factor to this show was, no, not the gentle amount of naturalistic swearing (thanks to being on NBC's streaming service), but the fact that a large amount of the show is centered around the fictional Rutherford Fall's also fictional regional Native American population, the Minishonka Nation.  The show is co-created by Sierra Teller Ornelas (as well as Ed Helms), a Navajo writer known for Brooklyn 99, Happy Endings and Superstore, and for Schur it almost seems a mea culpa to the more off-handed style jokes about (fictional) Pawnee's terrible history with the (fictional) Wamapoke Tribe in Parks and Rec.  It's not that Parks and Rec used Native Americans as the butt of the joke, but its inclusiveness was tenuous.  In Rutherford Falls, the Minishonka are a major part of the cast and the main instigators of the story.

So what is that story?  Well... Ed Helms is Nathan Rutherford, a descendant of the town's founder, and proprietor of the Rutherford Museum, a place dedicated to all things Rutherford.  He's obsessed with his family, their history, and their place in history, as well as the town.  He's undeniably proud of everything Rutherford.  He even sits as an honorary, non-voting board member of the Rutherford Inc., a powerful mutli-billion dollar conglomerate founded by his ancestors and uses the Rutherford name and town's wholesome visage as part of its own image.

There's a statute of Rutherford Falls' founder in the middle of the road downtown, which has been repeatedly crashed into over the years, and city council has proposed moving it as a safety hazard.  The statue was erected on the spot where "Big Larry" Rutherford made a "fair and honest deal" with the Minishonka for the land that would become town -- the "fair and honest" part being of particular pride to Nathan. 

But the issue of moving the statue has stirred up history, a deeper look at the deal that was struck, with Terry Thomas (Michael Greyeyes), owner of the Minishonka Casino, noting that certain terms of that original deal were not upheld, and at the same time Nathan facing the true Rutherford legacy, most of which has been whitewashed out.

Nathan's best friend from childhood, Reagan (Jana Schmeiding), runs the rather vacant, sparsely adorned cultural center in the Casino, and it's evident she is rather estranged from her Minishonka people, in large part due to a "runaway bride" situation.  Reagan winds up having a bit of a conflict of interest when Terry brings a lawsuit against Nathan for violating a hundreds of years old treaty that he values at around three hundred million dollars, and manipulates him into connecting Rutherford Inc.

If I've learned anything from The Good Place, it's that appearances aren't always what they seem, so this isn't just a pleasant small-town-America comedy - although it kind of is that, too.  No, there's a tremendous amount of meat on its sturdy structural bones.  

Nathan is posed in the first episode as our point-of-view character, which usually implies he'd be our protagonist, but that's not the case.  Nathan truly feels like a progressive - his best friend is Native American, his assistant at the museum, Bobby Yang (Jesse Liegh), is a non-binary person of colour, and he winds up (spoiler) in a torrid affair with Diedre Chisenhall (Dana L. Wilson), proudly the first black mayor of Rutherford Falls (also the Chisenhalls are historically the nemeses of the Rutherfords.  Yet, in spite of the people he surrounds himself with, Nathan refuses to acknowledge both his priviledge and his hurtful propegation of ugly, whitewashed history.  He believes the history he's been told, he believes the achievements glories, the traditions proud, his ancestors noble and righteous... be believes in not necessarily lies, but half truths.  So when the other sides of these stories he's been told (and has been repeating for years via the museum) start entering the conversation, he reacts defensively, with stern rebukes.  

The hope from the first episode is that Nathan, seemingly progressive that he is, will see his friend Reagan struggling with her Cultural Center and help her out, not just by listening to her speeches, but offering up space in his own family history museum to present the full story.  But that's never on the table for Nathan, because he's not interested.  He's too invested in the lie, the "great American fable", his family name and everything he thinks it stands for to let go of it.  Throughout his legal turmoil he is confronted with his own hypocrisy and rather than acknowledging it, he doubles-down on his ignorance and his white entitlement. 

By way of comedy, Schur, Ornelas and Helms seem to be painting the portrait the MAGA movement in a microcosm.  They are ostensibly stating that how a LOT of Trumpers have manifested is in rejecting awareness to their own failings, whether personally, or historically as a people.  Far too many people want to reject anything other than the fables of "American Exceptionalism", ignoring all the slavery, forced internment, mass murders, abuses, suppression of individual freedoms and rights that were perpetrated on so many cultures and genders in order to achieve such "greatness".  There are people refusing to acknowledge that horrible events even took place, nevermind any ancestral complicity in it. 

Without explicitly saying it, what Terry Thomas is looking for is reparations for what was taken from his people, and what he wants with it is to give back to his people.  Terry has done well for himself via the casino, but even when his actions are sometimes perhaps misguided, he's looking out for others, and a greater good.

Reagan, meanwhile, just wants her 'best friend" to look beyond himself for a change, something that, at least at this particular time when things have come to a head, Nathan is completely incapable of doing.

Everyone around Nathan - his brother, his friends, his mentor, the entire town, the corporation he's loosely affiliated - are all trying to tell him that there's something amiss buried in their past  (or in the case of the corporation, their present...they use the town to project a squeaky clean image when behind the scenes it's ...no good), and Nathan wants it to stay there.  He can't handle it otherwise, his whole sense of self has been invested into a lie.  The Rutherfords are his blind patriotism, and he's willing to burn every bridge to defend the lies.

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This all paints a pretty heavy and bleak portrait of the show, it's season finale airing in Canada next week.  While it would be nice if Nathan sees the light, it'd be too easy, and not very interesting.  Plus I don't think that's Schur's style anymore.  There's no resetting back to zero every episode here like the Simpsons, no, there are going to be consequences.  If Nathan ever chooses to see the light, it's going to take work to get out of where he is.  

This wasn't the direction I thought the show was going, trying to understand at least some facet of the MAGA crowd (while in no way acquitting them of their position).  I was thinking the Minishonka Nation would win back the land of Rutherford Falls in court, and subsequent seasons would be the reverberation across America of such a landmark decision.

This isn't the case though, but it's no less intriguing an exploration.

As I said, it seems heavy, but in reality it's all handled with a rather light touch.  It remains a comedy, and never saddles itself with its weight.  It acknowledges it is there and keeps moving forward.

I should also clarify that Nathan is not the only POV character, just the first.  Rutherford Falls cycles between Nathan, Reagan and Terry.  In fact, the fourth episode is all Terry and it's a really fantastic character profile that cements him as one of the great characters in these late stages of the Golden Age of television. 

Reagan is such a deep character that even 8 episodes in we've barely peeled back any of her layers.  All the tidbits we get that flesh out her past, informing her present show a character evolving before our eyes, connecting with herself and the world around her in ways she'd never thought she could.  She's got that delightfully awkward streak in her that will likely never leave, but it also hides the confidence that is firming up inside.  

I found it quite wonderful how the show developed Reagan's romance with Josh Carter - an NPR reporter who comes to Schitt's Creek on a hunch about the lawsuit - played by Schitt's Creek's Dustin Milligan.  Millgan is like a step or two above Hallmark Movie handsome romantic lead, and how the show handles him falling for Reagan is so natural, it just makes sense.  There *could* have been a narrative about disarmingly handsome man gets together with plus-sized woman, but they don't play it that way, and the fact that they don't play it that way (in conjuction with a few other shows where plus-sized women pair up with lean handsome men) literally is remapping my brain.  I'll get into that more in my Shrill Season 3 write up, but the point is when the entertainment culture can normalize women's bodies of all shapes and sizes and not make it the center of their identity, the rest of culture may follow suit.  Attractive is attractive, attraction is attraction.

Rutherford Falls is just kind of doing it.  They're doing the work.  It's a very entertaining show that explores some complex issues through its storytelling but with finesse, not a hammer.  It also constructs a social reality that seems ideal, but then dares to say "it could be better".  And it can, it can always be better.

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[updated June 7]

So my read on the show -- having watched 8 out of 10 episodes -- was, as Toasty ponted out in the comments (with him having the advantage of finishing the season), pretty wrong.

Where I had thought Nathan would be doubling down on is bull-headed commitment to his sense of self, his identity build around his family, instead the realizations that come to him fracture him instead.  They kind of break him and the veil sort of lifts.  

It's a sweeter resolution but far less daring than I was expecting of the show.  Especially after The Good Place took some incredible swings in its storytelling, I was expecting more of that here.  But they're more of a bunt than a big swing, a little surprising but not as spectacular had they truly turned Nathan into an unintentional right-wing blowhard because of his adherence to his fallacious legacy.

As well, the show comes to resolutions on many of its big swings rather swiftly, which I found surprising, and, again, less daring.  The lawsuit especially seems like it took a 180 in terms of giving Terry what he wanted.  I thought the show was going for a STATEMENT, but it settles back into its character story and story of the town.

It's a good watch regardless, with a great cast and wonderful characters, but it's not as bold as I had anticipated.

n Paragraphs: Tom Clancy's Without Remorse

 2021, Stefano Sollima (Sicario: Day of the Soldado) -- Amazon

I used to be That Guy, that guy during the VHS & DVD days that wondered why people would rent such standard Action Flick crap instead of seeking out good, "proper" movies. Why digest pabulum when you can get so much more from a meal with substance and flavour? Of course, I was a hypocrite as I also enjoyed own fair share of crap, because it fit my desired genre. But these days, even more so during The Pause, and yes, I know I have already said this, I find easy-to-digest is usually crap. Oh, there are exceptions, but in general, when I click (press a button?) on an action flick or adventure movie or thriller, I am usually getting something I know I will easily understand, and I am not all that offended if its bad.

But then you get something like the latest in Amazon's Tom Clancy love affair (they also rebooted Jack Ryan into an international terrorist hunter) with Without Remorse. It has a pretty decent production budget, has some recognizable faces, including one of the most currently bankable actors Michael B Jordon (The Wire). And they waste him on a not just "jingoistic" (to quote Kent; its such a great word) but also an extremely murky (morals and lighting) flick that, also as Kent said, is really just meant to pander to the Republican gun-loving crowds out there, but not TOO obviously, so people like myself, who enjoy heroic action flicks, can enjoy.

But at the heart of the movie is the cliché and rather empty "plot" that another war has to be started, that the US needs another easily identified enemy. Only then will the economy be rebooted, will America divided become one nation again. So, despite Jordon's John Kelly actually figuring out that, and coming down hard on the (American) Bad Guy who orchestrated all of this, you get the idea that at least part of the audience is expected to agree with his tactics. Kelly remains the boyscout who does what is "right" but many Americans will agree that manipulated murder of Russian citizens is fine, as long as it benefits the US in the long run. And in many ways, we kind of know that is how some Americans feel. From drone bombs on civilian targets to anti-mask movements, we know some Americans are OK with innocents dying, as long as they get what they wanted. Well, as long as they don't have to do it themselves; and not always then.

From a production view, the movie was fun to watch, when you could actually see what was going on. Like the Call of Duty FPS video games I play, the load-out of gear and weaponry is tightly depicted, and mostly realistic. The attack by the waiting snipers with high caliber weapons, was particularly tense and exciting to watch. But part of me kept on wondering where the movie would go, as it couldn't be going in the incredibly obvious direction it seemed to be. But it was, and that was entirely a letdown.

So, while it wasn't just another Straight To (again, not sure that term applies anymore) flick starring Bruce Willis or Frank Grillo or Nic Cage, it definitely was not solid in the least.