KWIF: Tootsie, plus Do Revenge (+3)

 Kent's week (or two) in film #5:
Tootsie - 1982, d. Sydney Pollack - Criterion Channel
Do Revenge - 2022, d. Jennifer Kaytin Robinson - Netflix
Caro Diario - 1993, d. Nanni Moretti - Tubi
Tampopo - 1985, d. Juzo Itami - Criterion Channel
Sharper - 2023, d. Benjamin Caron - AppleTV+

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From moment one, something didn't sit right with me about Tootsie. I mean, it's Dustin Hoffman, an actor I've never particularly cared for, playing a character that is recognizably Dustin Hoffman the actor, ergo a very difficult person nobody wants to work with (I'd forgotten about the multiple accusations of sexual predation which makes the irony of the film's intent even more distasteful). That unease I started into the film with never left me throughout the viewing.

It's the early 80's, and there's still a battle of the sexes going on, and Sydney Pollack wants to tackle it head-on by putting a womanizing, arrogant, self-involved actor in the shoes of a woman, in order for him to play a female character role on a soap opera, because the actor thinks he can do it better than any woman could. Throughout the film, Hoffman's character uses his disguise as armour while he performs his perception of a tough (but not in a manly way), independent (but not in a manly way), no-nonsense (but not in a manly way) woman. In the most unbelievable reach of the film, Pollack asks us to buy into Hoffman going off-script on a soap opera on.the.regular. They wouldn't have lasted a day in reality. One warning at best before they were turfed.

In its day I'm sure its very binary perception of gender roles and gender politics seemed progressive, but at the same time we had "nerds" who were "revenging" on the cool kids by having non-consentual sex with women for comedy. This is an equally unamusing and toxic film. 

The binary perception of gender roles here cannot sustain with a modern lens, and I cannot turn off my modern lens in watching it. There are trans, drag and other queer lenses this film is unintentionally filtering through, and since I don't think for a moment Pollack had them in mind, he's not addressing these demographics in any satisfactory way. Nor is he even having the characters reasonably question their own roles and identities, at least not beyond a knee-jerk-reactionary homophobic/transphobic-for-comedy way. It's ugly. But also, it's the 80's, so ugly is expected. So of course we wind up with a story about a cisgender, heterosexual white male who lies and uses pretty much everyone around him and succeeds as a result. It's probably the most truthful thing about the film.

Taken even at just a base, binary comedy with a love story sub-plot, it fails. I don't want Jessica Lange to be with him. I want her to despise him and let him know that he abused her trust, her dad's trust and the trust of everyone they work with for his own selfish gain, and that his love means nothing to her. There's nothing he can do to repair that trust except to respect her wishes and leave her alone. But who am I, a cis-het white man to tell another cis-het white man what the woman he's writing should or shouldn't do with her love life.

Really, kinda fuck this film, y'know. The soundtrack and score are godawful, it's not funny, it's certainly not romantic, and I just don't buy into it. But also fuck this film mostly because it's pretty insidiously watchable despite everything I said...but maybe I kept watching just hoping for a comeuppance that never really happens because 1980s.

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With Do Revenge, I found myself with mixed feelings watching upper-crust high schoolers "do revenge" on one another, in what could be an expanding whirlwind of destroying people's possible futures and trajectories in life. It can happen so simply. But at the same time these are the asshole kids of rich asshole parents (parents we never meet or see) who generally cannot see past their own wants, amusements and ambitions. They are, as reiterated numerous times, sociopaths, and it's hard to feel sorry for them for having to experience any sort of complications in life.

So the film relies upon us seeing these charismatic leads (twenty-something-year-old stars from Riverdale and Stranger Things) as complex people, not just snobs or psychos (though they are respectively each that), despite their Strangers on a Train-like bargain.

Camila Mendes' Drea, despite being the "poor kid" at school, has entrenched herself as a queen bee academically and socially, but her boyfriend Max (Dash and Lily's Austin Abrams)-- the most elite of the elite offsprings attending the school-- coaxes her into sending him a cam vid which he then shares with everyone. But, being the elite of the elite, he successfully spins himself as victim leaving Drea an outcast. During summer tennis camp she meets Eleanor (Maya Hawke), an outcast lesbian who will be transferring to Drea's school in the fall which means she will encounter the girl who maliciously branded her a sexual predator a few years earlier. The plan is to do revenge on each other's offenders.

Though we recognize Drea's elitist, selfish tendencies, we see what she has done to survive, thrive and elevate herself above her contemporaries, with none of the resources they have. She's an inspiring figure, though one clearly having lost perspective and empathy as a result of their status, but earning our support as victim of what is an actual crime. Yet her casual ability to just destroy mean girl Sophie Turner at tennis camp is a really frightening side to her personality. Eleanor has developed anxiety and keeps herself at a distance from most people so it seems like a real coup for her to befriend Drea, but the unease sets in when she becomes too comfortable blending in with Drea's old crowd. Are they a bad influence on her? Is Drea? 

The film doesn't sit with these questions for too long as it has a few tricks up its sleeve, as the revenge they do don't go so according to plan, and they have unintended consequences... but not enough for my liking. This film is entertainment, not a morality play, but I wish there was more fallout to the events at hand. Even nth degree shitheel Max, upon receiving his comeuppance, will probably just wind up backpacking around Europe with his camera (likely coaxing many European women into nude photography that he'll share without their permission) and dad's money and (unfortunately) be just fine.

Both Drea and Eleanor provide voiceover during the film, but its used inconsistently and not always effectively, and I wonder, if I actually paid attention on a rewatch, if these POV shifts would actually break the film.

Do Revenge is fun, surprising and quite engrossing, but I question if it is smartly using its elite-class setting or if it just thinks it is.

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I thought for the longest time that Caro Diario was a film I first watched on the Canadian cable channel "Showcase" back in the late-90's.  It's a small Italian film with no real narrative, just kind of a travelogue/slice of life, and I really connected with it back then.  Rewatching it on Tubi (of all places), I had a potent sense memory of sitting in the theatre watching certain scenes and realized that Caro Diario was one of the movies I watched at Thunder Bay's first film festival held by the North of Superior Film Association (which I'm happy to see is still a thing) back in 1994.

'94 was a big year for me in film. It's when both Clerks and Pulp Fiction hit and my brain exploded, realizing there was more to movies than I ever thought or new, and the NOSFA film festival was another big part of that awakening. Caro Diario holds a special place in my heart and brain as a result.  

It's a sweet, often funny picture that finds director/writer Nanni Moretti playing a version of himself as he, through narration of his diary entries, first, rides his Vespa around Rome, contemplating architecture, dance and cinema, and having a chance run-in with Jennifer Beals.  His second diary entry finds him trying to find escape to focus on work, jumping from one island to another, never to find peace (but with comedic results).  The third entry is more serious and personal as he finds himself sleepless and itchy only for it to take a year of medical examinations before a cancer diagnoses is given. This isn't documentary, it's not a drama or comedy, but somewhere in the center of the venn diagram of these.

It's not the monumental, life changing picture I remember it being, but I'm not in that same place or time I once was. It's a charming, often amusing, and serene picture that doesn't ask much of the audience except to try and enjoy the world as Moretti sees it.

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Directors du jour The Daniels (Kwan and Scheinert of Everything Everywhere All At Once) have cited Tampopo as having a direct influence on their filmmaking style, which I guess we could call an "anything goes" style.  But "anything goes" undersells the craft of actually selling the "anything goes" style, of telling a story where "anything goes" but within the frame or context of the story so that it all hangs together.

Tampopo is, as far as I know, the sole entrant in the subgenre of "ramen western", and I think that label does the absolute best job, simply so, of describing what this movie is. It's set in an unnamed city in Japan in its current-day 80's, following a truck driver who inadvertently becomes "sensei" to a ramen shop widow who wants to figure out what she's doing wrong and become the best ramen shop she can.

This is a food porn movie before food porn was a subgenre, but it maybe invented it? There are interstitial scenes, disconnected from the main plot, that feature bizarre eroticism involving food (among other, non-erotic adventures in enjoying one's meal), including one particular moment where an egg yolk is sensuously(?) passed from mouth to mouth between two lovers until the female climaxes from the sensation, breaking the yolk's membrane and dripping yellow goo everywhere.  But it's mostly about finding the ramen recipe, the Japanese noodle soup I can not partake in due to onion and wheat sensitivites (one makes me barf, the other I break out in hives). In total, it's about the pleasures of food, but with a spaghetti western pastiche. (Disclaimer, there are scenes of a turtle and prawn being killed on screen but for the purpose of food preparation...still, rough stuff).

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If the opening sequence, "Tom", were a stand alone short film starring Justice Smith and Briana Middleton, it would be a pretty compelling piece. The attractive leads have great chemistry but also there's a sense of "why are we watching this" that just underlines the whole thing. Knowing the basic plot of the film from trailers, it unfortunately cuts this seemingly stand-alone bit right off at the knees. And there's a reveal, a reveal you know is coming from almost moment one as this type of film has you questioning everything you're seeing all the time. 

Sharper stars Smith, Middleton, Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan and John Lithgow, which is a curiously intriguing cast. If you know nothing about the film and have not seen a trailer, and this cast does curiously intrigue you, maybe stop reading, and go watch it.. as I think it might play fairly well if one watches with no prior knowledge.

Buuuut...[now spoilers] even then, once you catch onto what the film is, which is a movie about grifters who are just scamming, scamming, scamming one another, it becomes somewhat obvious to see where it's going. It's the inevitable flaw in a film about grifters, it becomes a very binary picture where you either trust everything you see on the screen or you trust nothing. After its first three acts (of five), the film has taught you not to trust anything about it and so whenever it tries to surprise you, you're never surprised because you're already anticipating it.

It's a really good, often great looking film (director Caron, comes into his feature debut after working on expensive and ambitious TV projects like Sherlock, The Crown, and Andor), often cloaked in hard black shadows contrasting against the fairly spare and flat aesthetic of the nouveau riche.  The contrast between Tom's cozy bookstore and his father's sprawling, contemporary, sterile apartment are so telling of the differences between the characters. It's got an interesting structure, but the nature of the story makes it hard to invest in almost any of the characters (save Tom who disappears for a long stretch), and thus makes it difficult to really enjoy the film.  Caron surely will have much better features in the future.

3 Short Paragraphs: Jung_E

2023, Sang-ho Yeon (Train to Busan) -- Netflix

Almost got back to it, but fell off the wagon again. Actually watching movies, I mean. Instead of not being That Guy, I wonder if I can embrace the New Crap and redirect my energies into writing earnestly about what I end up doing instead?

Anywayz, I did end up watching yet another middling treatise on AI and fancy robotics AI, this time from South Korea. I had originally assumed it would take the typically American path, in that a movie about a combat AI based on a legendary soldier would be all about the combat. Interestingly enough, and boring AF to a lot of the public reviewers, it was more about the utilization of AI, and incipient rights. In this world's future, the environment has gone awry (as expected) and the waters risen, flooding most of the cities. Instead of fixing things locally, most people escape to orbiting rings, some of which almost immediately try to secede from their Earth bound leaders. The goals of the two factions are a bit washed over, pun intended, but there is a war, using hyper capable soldiers and robots... so many robots. 

The movie picks up as an Earth based AI company attempts to perfect the combat soldier via a AI driven simulation of the last battle fought by super soldier Yun Jung-yi. This simulation, is trying to push past whatever caused her to fail to win the battle, and will apply that success to The Best Combat AI Ever. The program is led by her adult daughter, under the auspices of an exuberant and annoying Director. Its been a long time since that battle took her mom from her, and this affords her opportunity to feel like there is still a connection.

Interestingly enough, the movie never actually has any true battles between the factions. Its entirely set in the facility where they experiment on Jung_E. You see, in this world, AI is not so much as fabricated from scratch, but cloned from dead people. When someone dies, they have a number of choices - be digitally cloned and housed in a robot shell with full human rights, or down the spectrum to digital copy with no rights, and they can do with your mind as they see fit, BUT their loved ones get a stipend -- basically sell your relatives to the corporation. Jung_E's family did that, because being a super mercenary paid well but all the money went to fighting her daughter's illness. Said daughter obviously recovered, and is now stuck in a terrible dilemma, forced to watch her mother's likeness tortured day in and day out.

So, while the movie was not as much about the war as an American copy would have been, there is not much weight behind the emotional impact or philosophical impacts it wants to make. Like many Korean movies, families torn apart by terrible circumstances are depicted through long crying jags and terrible choices. There are some interesting ideas presented but they are more supplanted by emotional reactions that get a bit tiresome. And the whole exploitation of digitally cloned humans is barely touched upon, and really only culminates in a sex bot joke.

That said, the action scenes are spectacular. The robot designs, the factory layout (all those impractical angles and jagged metal bits jutting out everywhere) and the water logged PA world is wonderfully depicted. But the competing choices of Robot Philosophy vs Pew Pew Pew was a loss.

3-2-1: The Phantom Lady

 1944, d. Robert Slodmak - Criterion Channel

The Plot 100:
Scott Henderson meets a woman at a bar. She seems in distress, he doesn't seem to notice. They don't really get to know each other but they attend a revue together, and say their good-nights afterwards. Scott returns home to find policemen waiting and his wife dead. The bartender, the cabbie, the people at the show all don't remember him with any lady. He's convicted and sentenced to death. His secretary, Carol, certain of his innocence, hits the pavement to save him, with Inspector Burgess smelling something fishy, and Scott's best friend Jack returning from South America to assist...except....

3-2-1 (there be spoilers)
3 Bad - (1) Structure.  This film doesn't know who its protagonist is. The basic plot would have us think Carol is its lead, but we don't even meet her until 15 minutes into this 86-minute movie, and she doesn't really start her investigation until over a half-hour into it.  Until then it's mostly about Scott, who only pops up briefly in acts 2 and 3.  In the second and third acts, the film seems to want to spend more time with Jack Marlowe, or Inspector Burgess than it does with Carol, taking a lot of ownership of the story away from Carol, and it's certainly not very interested in any form of investigative procedural.  

(2) "Paranoiacs" and other mental health disorders. Jack, we learn about mid-way through, is the murderer. He's paid off all the various people, as well as stumbled into a lot of happy coincidences, that let him get away with his vengeful murder of Scott's wife.  He thought they ware in love. But at the same time, Jack is a psychopath who just can't help himself. He has a need to kill, and the way this movie handles it is with corny hand-wringing and facial twitches. It's the '40's so the film's understanding of mental health disorders is quite poor. Likewise there's the "Phantom Lady" and her depression, that the film uses but doesn't seem particularly sympathetic with or careful in portraying.

(3) Motivations. Carol is putting herself in danger, running around town, pushing buttons, because she's in love with her boss. Sigh.  

2 Good: (1) Alan Curtis' moustache. It's pretty dashing. As much as I was like "get on with it" during the first act of the film, I just marveled at Curti's thin lip pelt and wondered how it was tended to.

(2) The danger women constantly face.  I'm not saying the danger women must face in navigating a toxic, patriarichal society is good, but this film presents that danger very, very well.  There's the leering, obvious, creepy men, the disgusting predators, and the insidious ones who can disguise themselves as seemingly kind, normal guys.  Even in the scene with no lady present, where the cops are interrogating Scott about his wife's death, they all kind of understand that a sour marriage, a woman who laughs at him, a woman who won't give him what he wants are all too common an excuse to abuse or murder her. 

1 Great: Ella Raines, at times. Sure at times Raines acts like so many other emotive screen darlings of the era, where she talks in that cadence, you know the one, the type that no real person ever use.  Or with that softness that it seems all women of the era just had to talk with, lest they seem too tough and masculine, heaven forebid it.  But here Carol has some wonderful scenes, including the stalking of the bartender which thoroughly unravels him. She doesn't say a word and cracks the man open like an egg...unfortunately he almost kills her as he stops just shy of pushing her in front of the subway (again, the threat against women comes at all angles here).  But it's her scenes with sleazy drummer Elisha Cook Jr. (The Killing) where she's coming onto him, luring him into her trap, but absolutely detests him, and cannot hide her repulsion. These scenes are so incredibly well performed by both Raines and Cook, and just bristle with an uneasy energy (again, you're fully aware of how much danger Carol is in at all times with a guy like this).

META

I'm still new with olde Noir, but, like any genre at the height of its popularity, you can easily see there's the greats and then the slew of lesser-thans. Criterion sold this as a proto-feminist picture, and there are hints of it at best. I was really, truly hoping for a surprise, something of a Promising Young Woman of the '40's, of a woman willing to go to any lengths to get the truth out. Alas, Carol is still all too reliant on men in this, and it's mere minutes into her "investigation" when Inspector Burgess (Thomas Gomez) offers his assistance, basically the film assuring the olde-tyme audience "don't worry, there's still a man involved here".  It kind of sucks. Slodmak and team handle the camera well here, and between some nifty angles and lighting it's at times a really striking picture, but like Raines' acting it's not persistently good, just sparks of greatness.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

 2023, d. Peyton Reed - in theatre

As a longtime comic book reader, I recognize what Feige is doing. Where many people are judging the latest batch of Marvel as "cinema" and, fairly, finding it lacking, I see that the MCU has settled into its ongoing shared universe storytelling mode... Feige is doing what comics have been doing for decades. If you're looking for "cinema", this isn't it (was it really ever?). It's comic books on the big screen in (somewhat) live action, it's spectacle and entertainment, with a smidge of serialized character drama.

I get the frustration and the fatigue. These are big, expensive movies that became so successful and popular that they've became the beating heart of cinema for a hot decade, much to the chagrin of anyone who finds this kind of entertainment beneath them. Marvel was undeniable for a time. That time has passed. Though Sony and WB are still trying, studios are learning that Marvel is an anomaly that is not easily replicatable, but there's no recognizable "next big thing" taking its place (though I think horror will prove itself the genre of the 2020s). Marvel is now the scapegoat, or rather the dead horse to flog for anyone who is sad about the state of cinema, and the level of attention the highly distracted masses pay to the movie going experience. Is superheroes all they want? (No, but it's among the few things they're willing to leave the house for.)

Feige has settled into the storytelling cycle of the media that birthed it. The first 20 years of comic book movies, Starting with Superman, were like the golden age of comics: everything was stand-alone and basically one-and-done. The silver age started with X-Men and Spider-man, being more serialized in nature. The Avengers kicked off the bronze age, with everything being connected, and rapidly accelerated into the modern age of event comics and cross-overs. It can be exhausting if you're expecting the rhythms of cinematic storytelling, if you just want the three acts, beginning, middle, and end. But when you're reading comics (well, Marvel or DC comics, I should specify) there's no end. There's always another issue to come, and another event next summer. From experience it can get exhausting. Some are there already. I'm not there yet.

It's true, Quantumania is not a great movie. It lacks any real meaningful character arc, and it's burdened by both its own franchise and the larger franchise empire that surrounds it. This movie would have been tighter were it just Scott and Cassie who made the trip, or just Hope and Janet (imagine centering on some mother-daughter stuff in a Marvel movie, oh how the trolls would revolt). Or funnier if it were the squad of Paul Rudd, Michael Pena, David Dastmalchian and T.I. But it needed its biggest stars, which split the adventure into two in very comic book fashion.

Quantumania fulfills the promise of exploring the Quantum Realm that the first Ant-Man hinted at but shied away from for seemingly budgetary reasons in is sequel. The rescue of Janet in Ant-Man and the Wasp left a lot of questions about what Janet was up to in her 30 years in the Quantum Realm, and in comic book tradition, here's now a whole storyline about that. This new environment gives us a lot of weird creatures and beings (including a really toyetic looking guy with a cannon for a head) and Moebius-esque living buildings that are also rocket ships (like, hell yeah!). These quantum residents (including a telepathic William Jackson Harper) aren't given "the bump" here...were Marvel able to use The Micronauts (a popular long-running series in the 80's, but licensed from a Hasbro toy line) surely this would have been a backdoor pilot for their own franchise. Alas, these characters are mostly relegated to the background beyond their initial introduction.

It feels very comic-booky, a mid-run story arc that deviates from the norm and does something unexpected (except that we've been bombarded with ads for this thing for 2 months). I can't count the number of times I've read comics that take a trip into new terrain and yet leaves before it feels you really got to know it in a satisfactory manner. The Ant-Men and Wasps are tourists in the Quantum Realm and so we only really get that limited perspective of it.

My worry from the trailer was that this was going to be the same distractingly confined Volume mess of Thor: Love and Thunder or Obi-Wan Kenobi, and while I did sense the limitations early on in the arrival to the Quantum Realm, the film did grow out of it. I'm sure if you're looking for it, you'll see it, but it didn't call attention to itself as it has when used elsewhere.

Writer Jeff Loveness' time with Rick and Morty is felt in this, particularly in the introduction to the denizens of the Quantum Realm and in...well...all of MODOK...one of comics most ridiculous character designs that I'm sure was a deal breaker for many an unfamiliar viewer. I never saw MODOK as a possibility for the MCU, and that Loveness managed to not just get him in here and also tie him into the series at hand was pretty wild.

I can watch Jonathan Majors all day, any day, and his Kang is the seriously heavy heavy of piece. In this lighter franchise-within-a-franchise, he outclasses the heroes of the story. It serves dual purpose, to provide Scott and co with a formidable adversary to overcome (proving themelves as capable heroes) and setting the threat level for Kangs to come. 

Rudd is effortless as always, he seems comfortable in any surrounding, bless him. It's unreal how keyed into this franchise Michael Douglas seems to be...is he actually... enjoying himself? Kathryn Newton is a natural fit as Cassie Lang, and I look forward to her and Hailee Steinfeld's Kate Bishop becoming best friends. Evangeline Lily, despite being a title character, is given little to say or do, and it feels like Hope unfairly sidelined (which makes me wonder if the studio was punishing her for her anti-vaxxer status during COVID times, or if it was just Loveness unable to work her into the script meaningfully). Michelle Pfeiffer, then, becomes the titular Wasp of this film, as she gets a bulkier part as the center of the story. But Pfeiffer seems to be the one having the most difficulty acting in her digital surroundings. She's at best fine, but at times not great.

I enjoyed this for what it was -- a big, messy comic book adventure-- even though I see seemingly infinite variations of what it could have been. 

It's burdened with labels - "the Ant-Man Trilogy", "the start of Phase 5", "the 31st Marvel movie"- and all the expectations and baggage that comes with it. It can't ever just exist on its own. But no Marvel comic truly exists on it's own, either, even the best of the best is saddled with history and baggage and expectations of what it should be. Navigating shared universe storytelling isn't something everyone is well versed in. It takes experience to learn you don't *have* to read every title, you don't *have* to like or follow every character, that you really can step in and out as you please. All the complaints that all these post-Endgame films are just stepping stones to the next big thing, and that they don't really mean anything well, the meaning is what you ascribe to the experience of investing in this universe. If you think it's a waste of time, then most of these will be a waste of your time. I read a couple Marvel titles monthly, and every now and then they tie into or seed some big crossover I'm not reading. Cross-referencing and teasing the future is just part of the language of superhero comics that Feige is bringing into this medium (the Arrowverse brought into TV first). If one quick reference to something you don't get from another story you haven't seen, or a hint at setting up something forthcoming ruins the entire story at hand for you, it's pretty clear shared universe storytelling is not for you.

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I haven't done a proper MCU Ranking in a while...

Ranking the MCU:

(including D+)

    the top tier - my favourites, all just good stuff

1. Avengers: Infinity War
2. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
3. Captain America: Civil War
4. Guardians of the Galaxy
5. Thor: Ragnarok
6. Spider-Man: Homecoming
7. Captain America: First Avenger
8. Hawkeye
9. Captain America: Winter Soldier
10. Avengers: Endgame
11. Black Panther
12. Spider-Man: No Way Home
13. Loki
14. Ant-Man
15. Avengers
16. Wandavision
17. She-Hulk
18. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
19. Werewolf By Night
    
     the second line - stories I like but perhaps don't fully resonate
20. Iron Man 3
21. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
22. Black Widow
23. Doctor Strange
24. Ant-Man and the Wasp
25. Captain Marvel
26. Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
    
    third wave -- flawed but still fun, stuff I'll still go back to
27. What If...?
28. Ms. Marvel
29. Spider-Man: Far From Home
30. Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special
31. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
32. Eternals
33. Falcon and the Winter Soldier
34. Moon Knight
35. Avengers: Age of Ultron
36. Iron Man 2
    
    the bottom - the ones I don't know that I ever want to watch again
37. Thor: The Dark World
38. Iron Man
39. Thor
40. The Incredible Hulk
41. Thor: Love and Thunder

Horror, Not Horror: A Knock at the Cabin

 2023, d. M. Night Shyamalan - in theatre

Toasty and I saw a movie together! His review. We agree, methinks.

The most recent Shyamalan I watched was the latter half of The Village airing on one TV channel or another, at least a decade and a half after it stunned and/or frustrated audiences. The Village was a breaking point for some, I had basically tapped out after Signs, and little has enticed me back in. Not The Visit, not Split, nor Glass or Old. I really just thought I was out completely on Night.

But he got me. The trailer for A Knock at the Cabin got me. The premise seemed predictable in terms of the drama it would create, the tension of "truth or delusion" seems quite obvious, and yet there's a hint of spectacle in the trailer, and a surprising cast (do I want to see Jonathan Groff and Dave Bautista scene spar? Yes, yes I do...and I did! I did see it!)

The film is, pretty much, what the trailer sold it as, for good and bad. There aren't many surprises, but everyone involved is committed to the bit. I had questions, though, which the film didn't answer (why the sacrifices?), and I thought it had the opportunity to develop the story into a real head spinner but it chickened out in favour of being as straightforward a narrative as it could. The "news" reports were both the lifeblood of the movie, and also its weakest part. At the very least I was never bored. 

I've heard about the book (The Cabin at the End of the World) and how Night's film deviates from it. Toasty pointed out as we left the theatre how bleak it was, and I mentioned that Night certainly wanted it to feel optimistic in its finale. Toasty pointed out rightly that its a film that leaves so much trauma in its wake, it really can't be optimistic. I don't have a religious background so I'm not really well trained into seeing  undertones (hell, sometimes the overtones escape me) of that sort, but the book leans heavily into the "What kind of God would do any of this?" question, and the end result of the book seems much more truthful and differently bleaker than what happens here.  I honestly can't say what Night's approach to whatever religious angle he's playing with here. Given the events of the story, no matter the outcome, God doesn't come out looking very good.

Bautista, though, comes out looking fantastic, the real highlight of the picture. He's obviously physically imposing, but he can play soft-spoken, kind and tortured very well, and the juxtaposition of the two is phenomenal.  All Night's close-up shots of Bautista's massive head, the way his glasses just kind of pinch his face rather than rest on his ears and nose...there's an undeniable power to it, a great marriage of performance and production. It's said Bautista wants to be known for his versatility as an actor, and he is definitely showing it. It would have been very easy for him to just become the next direct-to-video muscle-bound action star, but he's got so much more ambition than that. I think he's achieving it.

I'm not fully back on board with Shyamalan, but I'm willing to dabble a little more again.

BUT IS IT HORROR?
For some, I'm sure it is, but it strangely shies away from the character deaths (mass deaths aplenty are shown on the news programmes).

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Knock at the Cabin

2023, M Night Shyamalan (Old) -- cinema

Wen (Kristen Cui, premiere) is vacationing in the woods with her two Dads, Eric (Jonathan Groff, The Matrix Resurrections) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge, Lucky Man). While Wen is out catching, and naming, grasshoppers, she is approached by the friendly, calm but incredibly physically imposing Leonard (Dave Bautista, Blade Runner 2049). Initially calming her down, once his friends show up, Wen rightfully gets scared of the stranger and runs back to the cabin, convincing her dads to lock the doors, close the windows and barricade themselves inside. But its a cabin with glass doors, and the four strangers, each armed with weird, arcane weapons force their way inside to restrain Eric and Andrew. Leonard then explains that the world is about to end, and unless one of the three is chosen by their other family members to perish, all the world will end, in biblical style plagues & disasters.  

The premise is rather straight forward. Either these four strangers are sharing a delusion, as Andrew suggests, angrily and desperately, or the world is about to end, and a terrible choice has to be made. Amusingly enough, its the same choice that has to be in A Cabin in the Woods, but they decide to go with, "Fuck the world, let it burn." Not amusing at all is how utterly dedicated this family is to each other. With flash backs and recollections, we see the family's past, through challenging situations and perfect moments in time. All we know about the four strangers is what they are compelled to share about themselves, which is also desperate and sad. They claim to have each had visions that brought them together, and they are continually plagued by what they know will come, if the acts laid out before them, happen as described.

You are not meant to know which what it is going, one way or the other. Are they insane? Possibly. Are they telling the truth? Possibly. Is there compelling evidence that the world is going to end? Yes. Is it faked? Possibly. We are not meant to know, and Shyamalan does a great job of keeping us guessing, despite missing an opportunity to have the strangers themselves beginning questioning reality, we are not sure which way this will go, until the very end.

I really "enjoyed" how this movie played out. Love him or hate him, Shyamalan likes to take challenging, inexplicable situations and have them played out via haranguing performances. I hesitate to truthfully say I enjoyed myself, as it took my already 99.8% anxiety level (work shit) and ratcheted it up to 125%. Or maybe it just replaced one anxiety with another. Either way, it worked as it was supposed to. 

And this is where I spoil.

But at the end, I still was just left with a big, "So, what the fuck was the point of all that?" If it had turned out to be a big play on delusions, then it was just torture porn, which I dislike. But it was real, the world was ending, and therefore, what was the message?!?! Yes, a family's love for each other & sacrifice can save the world, but only if a fucking sadistic, psychotic higher being puts them into that situation. Why? What are they hoping to accomplish? Thousands, if not millions of being died, so a point could be made? Nobody will know what they did, unless they tell, which is unlikely. And if they did tell, the damage would be catastrophic. On one side, the truth behind a higher being would be provided, but with the understanding they are a wrathful god. That might create new, more powerful religions, but it also would have heretical outcomes that wouldn't work in their favour. So, again, what as the fucking point?

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Archive

2020, Gavin Rothery (visuals on a few things including Moon) -- download

There is a breed of movie I am rather fond of, one that starts with Shorts by visionary directors, that establishes, with us the viewer, their visual and emotional kit box. The best example is Neill Blomkamp, who blew us all away with his premiere District 9. He has a visual style that probably type-cast him (note: I am yet to see his horror movie Demonic but I should see it soon) but has kept me a fan, even as he returned to explore more ideas via animated & live action shorts (see Oats Studios). Everything in Archive smacks of someone with a bunch of visuals in his head, ideas and emotional constructs that need to be depicted. Unfortunately, a lot of these ideas are other people's already; homage - maybe - rip-off - more likely. Its a shame though, as there is something tangible there, but if the first real attempt is muddled in these choices, as well as a eye-rolling twist plot, I am not sure where it will go. 

George Almore (Theo James, The Time Traveller's Wife) is an AI/Robotics scientist assigned to a remote facility in Japan, a beautiful, bleak location in the mountains, perched on a gorge. The facility has seen better days, with most of the security offline, and things constantly breaking down. George has been working on the hallmark of all AI/Robotics movies -- the human like machine. His first two attempts are mild successes, one a clunking, walking box much like GNK-series (or gonk) droid from Star Wars, with the emotional & developmental level of a five year old. The other is a classic "person in a box-y robot suit" 16 year old, petulant, jealous and constantly challenging George like all teens do. The last, the one the company doesn't know about, is a perfect looking human torso. He's not finished yet and the company is pressuring him for results, but we get the idea he is not telling them what is going on, nor what his own personal end goal is.

Wrapped up in that is the death of his wife Jules (Stacy Martin, The Serpent), and a technology called Archive that keeps her mind alive, and able to communicate with him, for a short period of time. George's ulterior motive is that he is using the Archive technology to feed his AI technology, stealing their IP to further the intelligence, and yes, using his late wife's archived mind as the template. His end goal is to resurrect her. And he succeeds, or so we think. The twist ending is so fucking annoying, I am going to hand-wave it all away, even though it was somewhat broadcast, almost as if they re-edited Rothery's movie because he couldn't come up with a decent ending. When in doubt, twist ending!

I liked the look of this movie, but primarily because it looked like other movies I liked. The mild bits, like the monolithic Archive unit smacking of 2001 and hinting at how this technology will change mankind, is cute and somewhat eye-rolling. But the blatant ripping off of The Ghost in the Shell both anime and live action, during his "the human-like robot is complete" sequence was annoying enough that I wanted to just throw something at the screen. Amusingly enough, with the twist ending in place, its more acceptable. OK ok, the twist is that nothing of this is real, its all in George's head. He died in the car crash, and he is in the Archive, not his wife. The whole movie is just his brain filling in the gaps between chatting with his wife and finally dying. So, the idea his "sleeping" brain rips off a Japanese AI story is ... amusing? But no, dude, find your own metaphorical visuals.

In the end, there is a little play on the themes I was hoping more for. George does not create machines as just machines, he sees them as emotional beings, and while he treats them as badly as any human might treat another human, he does care for them. But he also uses them to his own ends. The final act has him sacrificing his opus creation to resurrect his wife, which is a very human, callous act, tossed aside for a farcical twist. But I wished they had doubled-down on his choices, and explored the impact of them to his own life, and that of his (simulated) wife.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Plane

2023, Jean-François Richet (Assault on Precinct 13) -- download

Big Dumb Action movies succeed when they have heart, when they give the viewers something or someone to latch onto beyond the bang bang, quip quip. Totally unexpectedly, in a movie that didn't even bother trying to come up with a proper title, Plane has a whole lot of heart. But yeah, its still a pretty dumb movie.

Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler, Greenland) is a pilot doing the redeye out of Singapore on New Year's Eve, playing the time zones, to meet his daughter in Hawaii for the last night of the year. There aren't a lot of passengers, but he gets saddled with a prisoner delivery. They are told not to avoid the bad weather, as it will use up valuable fuel, and of course, end up in a very very bad electrical storm. One zap later, all the instrumentation is fried; they are flying blind. Just when all hope seems lost, an island appears on the horizon and Brodie is able to make a perfect landing on a dirt road surrounded by jungle. Already the hero, but unable to report where they landed, Brodie heads into the jungle to find a building he saw from the air. His co-pilot has cautioned him these islands were home to Indonesian separatists and criminals. And he is right. From exciting plane landings to gun fights with Bad Guys, the movie never wastes time on keeping people in danger. Meanwhile, back in the US a Fixer (Tony Goldwyn, Lovecraft Country) has been brought in to help find the plane and manage the event, surprisingly playing a competent, sympathetic character actually invested in finding Brodie and his passengers.

The heart bit? Brodie is the tenacious, growling hero that Butler loves to play, but they do it an  unannounced way -- he just has to protect his passengers. He is assisted by the prisoner (Mike Colter, Luke Cage), a man who was on the run from a murder rap, who spent time with the French Foreign Legion. Together they go against the ruthless separatists, who want to ransom the passengers, but who are not above murdering a few to make their points. Eventually they are assisted by a merc crew sent in by the fixer, and just when things cannot get rah rah, bang bang heroic enough, Brodie has to fly them back out on a one engine and a half-tank, to a nearby airstrip on a protected island. As he takes a moment to breathe in what he, and his passengers have just been through, he collapses inward, emotion spilling forth. He was not a stalwart warrior who revels in just killing a bunch of people, just a man who did what he had to do.

Back when I was That Guy, I hated these kind of movies. They were just so unfettered from anything but the moment. The 80s and 90s were full of these on VHS, and despite First Blood being the role model for them, it being a little more heartfelt than its brethren, almost all were dumb, dumb, dumb. I wanted something a little smarter, something I could sink my teeth into. But these days, I more so need distraction. My mind is always racing, always being drawn back to  the stressors of my day, week or year. Concentration is hard, so the challenging movies I loved in my heyday are not accessible. And yet, I still need something to latch onto. Sometimes, just a little heart in all the bang, bang is enough.

Side Note: I might end up calling these movies "one poster flicks" as I usually get my poster choices from IMP Awards, where you are offered a plentitude of choices. But these movies usually only have the one. 

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

2022, Ryan Coogler (Creed) -- Disney+ 

Just watched it, and in that disarray of thoughts stage. Phase Four of the MCU is a weird one, but not to be unexpected, as its all coming "out" of The Pause (we truly aren't out, but we are all in that big pretending mindset, like we are Back to Normal, which we aren't), which meant that most of this material was / is being produced during the height of it all. Much of the material for cinematic release seems like pushes to remind the public that the MCU is still around. Nothing is ground breaking, most is sequel-ish, and very little feels... fully invested. Its like they have intellectual property that they have to do something with, or they would lose it. The TV stuff has been more successful, from a creative standpoint, than the cinematic releases, which all feels like... filler... to me.

Now to this movie specifically, they were already crippled by the tragedy that was Chadwick Boseman's unexpected death. Unexpected by us, the public, but I am sure he and the Marvel team knew for a very very long time. Cancer is not a villain that even the Avengers can always defeat. How could they go on? How could they do a "sequel" if their main character actor is gone? Replace him? No, too disrespectful, but in Marvel comic tradition, you can just have someone assume the mantle. This entire movie could have been about that, been a small movie about tragedy and legacy and grief, but instead... they went typically bombastic, BIG ! Unnecessarily big ?

The movie does some nice MCU filler work. A year after Shuri (Letitia Wright, Black Mirror) fails to save her brother T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman, Gods of Egypt) from illness (cancer? purple flower withdrawal?) Wakanda is a now known world power, and still the only country with a source of vibranium, and that pisses off other governments. They aren't handling it well, and make mistakes, assuming T'Challa's death would destabilize Wakanda. They are wrong.

But one of the other countries actions awakens a previously unknown world power -- Atlantis. OK OK, I know the MCU wants to have the underwater kingdom establish its own identity, wrapped up in meso-American mythos, calling it Talokan and calling him K'uk'kulkan (each syllable strongly pronounced) and making it all a rather recently built nation, but I call a merman a merman, and an underwater kingdom, Atlantis. At least his personal name is Namor and he has little feet wings! Tee hee! Anywayz, they have their own source of vibranium, and when the US encroaches on their territory, they strike back harshly. Oh well, at least Lake Bell (Surface) got a bit part.

But Talokan also mixes Wakanda into their actions, basically extorting allyship through threats of attack. Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett, Strange Days) does not respond well to extortion. Shuri, still suffering her grief stricken guilt at not saving her brother, needs distraction and takes actions against Talokan, which essentially leads to her being kidnapped by their Asgardian power level blue skinned warriors, where she (and we) learns their somewhat sympathetic 400 year old history.  And infuriates Ramonda into response.

Meanwhile, the US represented by Agent Ross (Martin Freeman, Cargo), has no fucking clue what is going on and wants to blame Wakanda for all these nasty superpowered hijinx, likely just an excuse to take action to secure vibranium. Cross-over character Director de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep), seen before in a few Marvel TV shows, a secretive, deceptive CIA Director and Ross's ex-wife, continues to manipulate things, hinting through a megaphone how critical she will be in Phase Five. But the US, and the rest of the world, are incidental to this movie.

Ramonda's actions to get back her daughter enrage Namor (Tenoch Huerta, Tigers Are Not Afraid) and he attacks Wakanda with his whales and his water bombs. Beyond being physically more powerful than Wakandan humans, I don't understand why they are considered so undefeatable. If Wakanda was supposed to be such a world power as to make the US quake in its Avenger ** boots, surely they can defend themselves against a few hundred fish folk. I mean, Wakanda fought against the alien armies of Thanos. But it takes Shuri's genius and a bit of subterfuge to bring Namor down, forcing him to yield. And with this humbling, comes understanding.

** The last few movies have had me wondering, "But why haven't the Avengers taken part in any of these world changing actions?" And then I remember: Captain America OG is gone and his new one is learning the ropes, Iron Man and Black Widow are dead, Thor is off dealing with the destruction of his world and people, Spider-Man is dealing with his own messes, Wanda is a villain, Hawkeye is dealing with PTSD and basically retired, and Hulk is ... well, back to being a scientist? Not a lot of Avenger-ish superheroes to help deal with the world. And SHIELD remains disbanded, I guess?

Like Kent mentioned, this movie took its time for Shuri to be the new Black Panther, with a small subplot of her recreating the Purple Flower which Killmonger had destroyed, so as to properly juice up and don the suit. But it never feels truly invested in that mantle, never fully focused on the idea. The Wakandan idea is that the Black Panther leads the people, so King and Protector? But I truly believed the country would have been served better with Ramonda as Queen, Shuri as Chief Thinker, and Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o, Little Monsters) wearing the Black Panther armour, instead of her weird, blue, almost The Shape of Water fish-suit, armour.

In the end, we get an exciting, adventurous movie with great CGI spectacles (albeit, more than a bit of rubber balling) and massive set pieces. But the story itself is lacking and the execution is piece meal at the best. Too much is trying to happen, with not really much of anything really happening.