What I Have Been Watching: this pile

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is usually the domain of Toast admittedly spending too much time in front of the TV. Kent's stepping on toes (Toastoes? Toestys?) here mainly because he has a piles of TV shows in progress and maybe doesn't have too much to say about any of it. Maybe(?)

Best In Miniature Season 2 - CBC (8/8 episodes)

The Mrs. Kent has really gotten into miniatures over the past few years, and the first season of Best in Mini was a real kick in the pants for her start tackling doing her own minifying. I'm kind of envious of her dedication to the art form and the increasingly impressive results she's achieving.  As a competition show, Best In Mini stands out because it doesn't drown itself in contestant's personalities like far too many other shows of this ilk. It's about skills, and in the community of miniature artists, the skills are appreciated. These contestants, though all trying to win, aren't in competition with the others, they're in competition with themselves, pushing their skill sets to the limit, to try and meet or exceed the expectation of the judges. We only get the slimmest of glimpses into the personal lives of these artisans, and usually only in as much as it's relevant to the pieces that they're working on. It's a quiet, low-stakes, relaxing, and fascinating discipline, and it's amazing to see each artisan's strengths employed, but even greater to see them try something new and succeed or fail at it. 

Like the first season, it starts with building the house. Each subsequent episode is furnishing a specific room, with specific requirements, and it ends with the external setting. The level and depth of knowledge on design and multidisciplined craftsmanship required to succeed in the show is astounding, making the frontrunners evident from the get go, but also impressive to see artists find their groove, and improve and grow as the show goes on.  I felt the winner of the season came down to the one judge not understanding one of the contestant's stories and subjectively wanting something out of the story that the artist didn't feel fit, and was penalized for being true to their own sense of the story. 

Lego Masters Australia Season 3 - Discovery Canada (10/14 Episodes)

I freaking love Lego Masters Australia. After the Mrs. and I ploughed through season 1 & 2 on demand I craved more. Each episode is a freaking dopamine hit of giddy plastic joy. Each episode ends with a teaser for the next episode and I.just.want.it.now! 

Unlike the North American Lego Masters, the Australian version feels so much more connected to its builders, the community of Lego aficionados, and to the participants in the show. You get the sense that host Hamish Blake is having an absolute blast on set, as are the contestants, and they start to form kind of in jokes between them. It's very personable in a way that the spit-and-polish of the (North) American Lego Masters, as hosted by Will Arnett, is not. Likewise, the solitary judge, "Brickman" Ryan McNaught, seems to be personally invested in the brick building journey of the contestants. The level of emotion that comes out of him as he has to eliminate a duo, especially later on in the season, is so heartfelt and genuine. These aren't just contestants to him, they are proteges or pupils. He will lean into someone mid-build and offer a gentle suggestion, whether it's to help them get unstuck from a particular problem, or to try and push them past their comfort zone. The US Lego Masters judges, while definitely interested observers, do not seem to have nearly the same investment level.  There is a reason for that, and it's how the shows are structured.

The Aussie Lego Masters, unlike any other competition show, really wants to spotlight the builders skills, and gives them many, many opportunities to shine. It's a show that starts with 8 groups of contestants and this season didn't eliminate an group until episode 3, giving each team at least three or four builds before elimination. That's a lot of opportunity for them to prove themselves and something which I wish other such shows based around skill sets would take to heart and employ (Best in Miniature could do well with a structure like this at least early on, although, there's only so many rooms in a house).  Past contestants come back as special guests to great fanfare which speaks to the sense of community the show builds...it creates legends even in the losers of previous seasons (that young season 1 contestant Jordy is now a regular player on the show as a production assistant, but onscreen seen typically in a janitorial role, is a perennial delight).

It's the highlight of my week, tempered only by the fact that Discovery has started editing the shows down to an hour, which means there are dramatic jumps in the episode timelines and we miss some delightful content (in the Marvel themed episode, we missed an entire judging segment, much to our disappointment and frustration). 

Doom Patrol Season 4 - HBOMax (6/12 episodes)

[Season 1, Season 2, Season 3]

I think my problem with Doom Patrol at this point rests entirely in how disconnected the characters are from each other in this series. This season seems to be trying to reconcile past lives, as Vic (having had all his cyborg parts removed and is now just a boring normal guy) gets reacquainted with old friends in Detroit, Rouge tries to atone for her past misdeeds (which Rita cannot let go of, for obvious reasons), Larry is still wrestling with his closeted past as well as his alien offspring/parasite, and the saga of Jane and the war of her personalities continues. We meet a new character, Casey, as we return for a one-off with Dorothy, both of whom are dealing with daddy issues. Despite all the continued weirdness (which I love) and the great scoring from Clint Mansell and Kevin Kiner, it feels like we're treading so much water with these characters, particularly waters we've tread before.

I am, however, torn by my fatigue with the show because, at its heart, it's a show about trauma, surviving it, coping with it, and moving past it as much as one can. It's very potent, and kind of important in this regard. It's a show that uses its weirdness expertly as metaphor, without ever bashing you over the head with what they're doing. If you want to approach it just as a show about weirdos facing weird things, it works on that level, but digging even one layer deeper reveals so much more complexity, and there's a lot to identify and/or empathize with. But it just feels like it doesn't quite know how to get to where it wants to go, or how it wants to say things. It's like when I write my long-winded reviews that circle the point I'm making but take forever to get there.  Except I know I don't need to pad for time.  Hoping the "part 2" of this season brings the series to a satisfactory conclusion.

Ted Lasso Season 3 -Apple TV+ (6/12 episodes)

[Seasons 1 & 2]

The good news is Ted Lasso is funny again. Where the second season seemed really, really weighed down, and troubled, this season has inflated the flat tires and replaced the busted rubber. Its nowhere near as tight as the pretty-much-perfect season 1 -- its massive success means the show can run episodes at whatever length it wants, and it does.  I can only imagine how tight a comedy it might be if held to a 25 minute standard...or it's quite possible it might not even work.

This season seems to have clear directions, chief of which is to conclude with Ted ultimately no longer being Coach of AFC Richmond, but also it seems like the show is setting itself up for life without Jason Sudekis. It's trying for a redemptive arc for Nate (after his flat-out villainy last season, it's a tall order), it's setting Rebecca up for a pretty big journey, and the triangle of Keely-Roy-Jamie finds a fourth participant pushing the edges out. The members of the team, so far, are treated almost exclusively as a collective unit, with individual personalities and stories dismissed in favour of the hive, but a few wrinkles such as eccentric superstar Zava joining the team or reporter Trent Crimm being ever present as documentarian shakes things up in a very enjoyable way (James Lance's Crimm is such a welcome addition as regular cast member).

The show seems less interested in driving towards a happy ending than it does settling in, and I think that could ultimately be a good thing. I mean, if people want 3 seasons in-and-out with Ted as the gravitational center, it might be less satisfying as a result, but if the show is pivoting to a Ted-less spin off, it's certainly setting a good foundation for it.  Either way, I'm much happier with this season than the last one, and feel more entertained, and maybe even more invested, as it slips a bit more into sit-com mode than "prestige TV". Excited to see where it goes.

Stargirl Season 3 - AmazonPrime (5/13 episodes)

[Seasons 1 & 2]

Superhero fatigue is definitely real. I'm a lifelong comics reader and I used to devote myself to seeing every tangentially superhero-related mass media product out there. These days my comics pile is so much smaller than ever before, my investment in big superhero universes has dwindled to almost nothing, I'm not rewatching the big tentpole movies as frequently as I used to, and even good superhero TV, like Stargirl, feels exhausting to me. 

13 episodes? Why?

I like Stargirl, it uses themes of legacy (my favourite subject matter for comic book superheroics) to build its own in-world history, so it has a setting where battles between superheroes and supervillains existed before its first episode began. Over the past two seasons its teenage characters have been thrust into the midst of all that history and it all seems to come spiralling back improbably to this quaint town of Blue Valley.  It stretched that credibility for all it could, this season, everything comes springing back, and it feels like we're treading familiar ground. Getting caught eating your own tail is something all TV shows have to face inevitably, but it seems like superhero shows do it more frequently and more often than regular programming. I'm not sure what it is. Probably budget and contractual limitations, forcing the re-use of characters and sets and effects and whatnot... it means that the superhero worlds on TV don't ever really grow, they just get more crowded.

What Stargirl really needed, at this stage, was to break out of Blue Valley, to go out into the world beyond, but the show couldn't afford it, so instead we're stuck with new angles on returning villains to a not-unwatchable but ho-hum result.  Season 3 is the series' final run, and we'll probably get around to finishing it, but it seems like it's going to be a chore, rather than a delight, despite the presence of Joel McHale as series regular.  Hoping to be proven wrong.

Grand Crew Season 2 - NBC/City (8/10 episodes) 

[Season 1]

I was so excited for Grand Crew to return, that I kept looking and looking and looking for it since the start of the year, with no trace. Then, suddenly, I was three weeks behind. They just snuck out the gate as seems to happen with big three network TV shows that aren't returning reality TV competition shows. It's seriously to the point with network TV where it feels like legit dramas or sitcoms don't even belong there anymore.  Eyes are always upon cable or streaming, it's like nobody's paying attention to what ABC/CBS/NBC is doing unless you're over 60.

Grand Crew exists in the tradition of hangout comedies of yore. It's basically contemporary Friends, but, you know...LA instead of New York. And a wine bar instead of a coffee shop. The gender balance is also off, with Nicole Beyer's Nicky and Grasie Mercedes' Fay as the two lone female leads, and Fay is kind of positioned more as a romantic foil for Aaron Jennings' Anthony and Nicky's immediate new BFF rather than as a lead all her own.

It's a really funny show, with Carl Tart (playing Sherm) the clear breakout of the cast. I knew Tart from before the show from his devastatingly hilarious character improv on Comedy Bang Bang, and he delivers just as large here. My biggest worry is that nobody's really noticing. 20 years ago he would already have a movie.

This second season doesn't quite hit as high or as funny as last season, primarily because the writers are trying to involve us too deeply and seriously in the characters lives and their romantic entanglements. Where 25 years ago two seasons of a show could spread out this kind of storytelling over 50 episodes, here they're trying to do the same amount of investment in less than half the time, and I'm just not that into it. I would rather the funny over the character beats any day.  This is a proper sitcom, it's not "prestige TV" so its attempts at serializing even light melodrama comes off as too heavy for its weight class.  Still, it's a good crew, and I would like to spend more time with them. Hoping the season 3 pickup announcement comes soon.

KWIF: Rye Lane (+5)

 Kent's Week in Film is this: each week (or so) I have a spotlight movie which I write a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else I watched that week I do a quick little summary of my thoughts... just to speed things along.

Rye Lane (2023, d. Raine Allen-Miller - Disney+/Hulu)
Serendipity (2001, d. Peter Chelsom - AmazonPrime)
Grosse Pointe Blank (1997, d. George Armitage - Disney+)
Men In Black (1997, d. Barry Sonnenfeld - Netflix)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984, d. Wes Craven - Bluray)
Phantom of the Paradise (1974, d. Brian De Palma - Bluray)

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Maybe it's just the circles I'm running in -- and by that I mean the podcasts I'm listening to (I'm a middle-aged parent with pets and a mortgage...there are no "circles") -- but romcoms don't have the stink on them they once used to.  Once upon a time these were a major part of the derisively labelled "chick flicks" subgenre (the derision of which is directed towards both the film and its intended audience), movies tailored for women with an formulaic and manipulative emotional core. 

During my formative years they were the domain of your Meg Ryans, Julia Robertses, Drew Barrymores and Andie MacDowells, then later your Sandra Bullocks, Reese Witherspoons, Kate Hudsons and Katherine Heigls... all names that were warning signs for stereotypical boyfriends to just stay away.  The beats of meet-cute -> emotional investment -> complication -> romantic reunion are so eye-rollingly by-the-numbers that it was, from teenage/20-something swm eyes, easy to see one romcom as completely interchangeable with any other.  

Like any genre or subgenre, there is going to be the tired, regurgitated pablum that the studios know they can crank out and make money on without even really thinking too hard about it, but there is also going to be the fresh and inventive filmmakers who either want to play within the genre, explore a very specific theme or idea, or bring people or cultures into the genre that are different than the pale-faced American (or sometimes British or Australian or Canadian) blondes and brunettes presented as the standard leads.

Rye Lane is a film that wants to do all three, and does so without making. a. point. of. it. Here we have a comedy about two Black, Gen Z Londoners who meet cute, have an ever-more-involving day together, face a complication, and get over it, because they can't get over each other. It's a film that doesn't break the mold, but it does re-shape it and re-form it into the image and style and story it wants to present.

From the opening moments of the film, an overhead panning shot of public toilet stalls, each, in the scant seconds they're on screen, telling their own micro-story, both in the radically different toilet-stall-environment it presents and in the actions of the people inhabiting them.  It comes to stop on Des (David Jonsson), who is uncontrollably sobbing in a way that captures both the pathos of his pain, but also the comedic beats of his broadly melodramatic display. In the next stall sits Yas (Vivian Oparah) who is at once worried, curious and bemused by her neighbour. They have a brief exchange (Des is covering up, Yas is being quite Pithy) before Yas leaves Des to himself, but not before catching a peek of his pink Converse sneakers.

External to this is the art show of Des and Yas' mutual friend, an art show that is exclusively intense close-ups of mouths (teeth and tongues).  It's an utterly pretentious, and simultaneously powerful display. I was about to get all arty farty, talking about how judgements and pre-judgements can be made based off the shape of teeth, or the pose of the lips, or the emotions that are conveyed or misconstrued.  The film, and its characters, understand that the art is absurd and yet it also understands that there's definitely ambition and merit to it.  Des and Yas meet proper over gently ribbing their friend's work, a light, whimsical, mutually satisfying conversation for them both that carries on outside the gallery. 

Des, the accountant, is reserved, but not uptight. Yas, the aspiring costume designer, is very forward and immediately familiar in a disarmingly pleasant way. After a few charmingly awkward instances of saying goodbye, only to realize they're both going the same way, Yas breaks down Des' guard in a matter of seconds and learns about the relationship that ended months earlier that still has Des distraught and heartbroken.  Yas has an easy way about her that start helping Des reframe the relationship he's still pining over, which involved his girlfriend of six years cheating on him with his best friend.  They make it a few blocks of very sharing, very charming conversation, before Des admits he's on his way to meet with them, "to clear the air".  Yas offers to come with, Des declines, but Yas turns up anyway, and the two continue on their way together, sharing back-and-forth, getting into mild adventures that are hilarious both in their low-stakes scenarios and the people that they meet. 

If we have such a thing as "elevated horror" then perhaps we need "elevated romcom" because this certainly is that. Director Raine Allen-Miller could have just done the Linklater walk-and-talk of Before Sunrise, capturing to attractive people clearly vibing, something definitely happening between them, and putting them in a surrounding worth exploring visually behind and around them.  But rather than just keep it so simple, Allen-Miller employs an immensely fun and fresh flashback technique that brings the people in conversation into the flashback as observers.  You can bet this is going to be a new romcom trope.  But the settings of Rye Lane, Brixton and these other kind of post-hipster boroughs of London the film explores we don't usually see on film with this sort of love and attention paid to them.  They're not the pretty tourist parts.  They're under-the-bridge shops and the odd alley flats and the like all captured with such wonder and reverie.  The colour sense of the film is very, very lush and warm, like the characters are being hugged by their surroundings, like it loves them as much as they love it (and just like the growing love between Yas and Des, it's all unsaid).

The use of fish eye lens (the only real complaint I hear about the film is the employment of the fish-eye), serves a dual purpose: to present more of the cityscape in a broader perspective to the viewer, as well as give the sense that the city is watching these characters, as if its taken a particular interest in them and what's happening...like this is a meet-cute worth watching.  And it is.

The fun subtext is about art and both its pretension and its power and how it can bring people together.  It's an art show that starts the film, and an art show that closes the film. Yas' ex-boyfriend as well is an artist and, in a respect, as a costume designer, so is she. It's not coincidence... it's clearly a "world" that Allen-Miller is familiar with and finds both alluring and amusing. The ending's art show is particularly preposterous parade of posteriors in portrait, yet palpably potent as a portfolio. I thought it was amazing.

I laughed a lot with this movie and it took mere moments for me to start shipping these two. Jonsson has such an easy demeanor about him that he can shift ever so slightly into anxiousness or charm.  Oparah has the gift of gab (and oh, I melted when she rapped) but she's also got the allure of something deeper just bubbling under the forthright, jokey surface. Their chemistry was a warm smoulder that just felt good and comfortable and was an absolute joy to be around.  It's got to be a top 10, maybe even top 5 all-timer romcom for me.

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If you had asked me two weeks ago for a list of my favourite romcoms, Serendipity would have been, at worst, an honourable mention, if not a top tenner.  I had a very potent reaction to it back in 2001 when I saw it in the theatre. Solo, I might add, which speaks to my frame of mind at the time.

High Fidelity was a landmark movie for me as a lovelorn nerd who loves to rearrange his collections, and Cusack went good actor to my avatar on screen. I went back and did or redid tours with Say Anything, and Better Off Dead, and The Grifters, and Grosse Pointe Blank, and Being John Malkovich which just solidified that for me (at the time). So  Serendipity, as Cusack's next big romantic follow-up, was an absolute must, to the point of going to see it, a flat-out, no-foolin' romance...on the big screen...all by myself. And I loved it, deeply. The story of a couple Cusack and Kate Beckinsale, each in a relationship, who meet cute trying to buy the same last pair of gloves for their partners at Christmas and then hit it off.  Except she believes in serendipity so if they are meant to be together then they will find each other again. She puts her name in her copy of Love in the Time of Cholera, which she promises to sell immediately, and he writes his name on a fiver that she then goes off and purchases some breath mints with. It's foolish, and left in the hands of fate, as other signs of disconnect start coming between this seemingly once-in-a-lifetime connection.  

It's, like 7 years later (no shit), and Cusack is an New York-based ESPN producer engaged to Sex in the City's Bridget Moynahan.  Beckinsale is a therapist in San Francisco who is engaged to the culturally appropriative, shanai-playing John Corbett from Sex in the City. While both seem fairly comfortably engaged, they both, very much, are still looking...looking for that Cholera book, or that five dollar bill. If they're in such happy relationships, then why are they looking, especially after so much time has passed (too much time, in fact, it's pretty unhealthy).

The serendipity of Serendipity has their paths crossing but moments too late, but it builds itself two spirals that are bound to meet at the end, so their spiralling paths just gets closer and closer. I kind of love it as a plot contrivance, but as a romcom, it fails in the romance department by keeping the two leads apart for pretty much all of the film.  

I think Cusack just startes to enter the sleepwalking-through-the-role/cut-me-a-paycheck mode with this film. He has a natural smarminess to him that he has been very good at hiding in his best roles, but is constantly seeping through the cracks here. The effort to turn on the charm is put in, but not nearly with the same amount of energy or force needed to sell this plot 100%.  He's at like 85% at best. Beckinsale here is a bit flighty which seems contrary to her usual nature, and the amount of emphasis she puts onto her supernatural belief systems tampers her attractiveness (but that's my male perspective, it might be something more relatable to many women?). 

I realize upon rewatching it that it's not a great romcom, and would no longer make the top ten, or even the honourable mentions for this very fact. But, I also recognize what it was about it that resonated so strongly with me, which is that it's a "you've got to break up with your fiancee" movie, and a pretty good one at that.  When the film came out, I was a little over a year past having broken off an engagement, so this film which continually asks the question "should I go through with it?" really, powerfully resonated with me. In film, ultimately the characters understand that their pining for someone they only knew for a few hours is just part of an escape plan, and it validates those feelings that they're actively denying, that something isn't right. It's still a better film than it has any right to be, even though it's not a great film. I still connect with it, except, now that I've been happily married for over 15 years(!), my connection to the material is not even close to as strong as it was over 20 years ago.

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What still holds up, mostly, is one of, if not the ultimate guys' romantic comedy. It's a romcom about a hitman returning to his high school reunion so he can face his ex-sweetie from a decade earlier and maybe see if something's still there.  The only problem is, the job, and his competition, keep getting in the way.

I've seen this film many, many times, and, while it's been a while since the last, it still holds up as a tremendously entertaining movie.  Cusack plays Martin Blank as a man with "flexable morals" and the film seems to wrestle with Martin's profession much more than he does, while still retaining a comedic tone. But the chemistry between Martin and Minnie Driver's local Michigan radio DJ Debi is electric from the first time they lay eyes upon each other. Martin, given his profession, is bold and straightforward in approaching her, and Debi is direly curious, attracted and aggressively forward.

Cusack's doing great work here, as he's confronting the past he abruptly left behind 10 years ago (joined the army, did some stuff, went independent, kills people for money...it's a growth industry), meeting old friends, old loves, old nemeses, and his mentally unwell mother. It's not easy for him and Cusack manages each of these scenes with incredible delicacy and precise responses (he co-wrote the script, so he is fully invested in Martin Blank).  But in that romance, it's Debi we're behind. We know Martin's bad news for her, even though he's not really hiding anything. They are deliciously cute together and they have to keep wiping the lens down from all the steam they're giving off, but in spite of all of it, I don't really want Debi to wind up with him, and she seems smart enough not to wind up with him, especially once she learns he wasn't joking about his job (and Driver's reaction is so painful to watch...devastation on screen).

The story does have a maybe too clever (but it has to be right) ace up its sleeve in getting this crazy couple back together, and it's a fully understated, but incredible and frequently funny action sequence oddly enough.  It dials it in to the perfect degree, not going too huge, and making so much of it feel relevant, not just mindless action. It still doesn't redeem Martin in my eyes as good enough for Debi, but I can see how it thinks so.  

I think Grosse Pointe Blank is a great precursor to HBO's Barry, but where Barry is an emotionally troubled sociopath, Martin is the lead of a very odd romcom, so he gets to overcome his demons, where Barry cannot.

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One of my podcasts was covering the Men In Black series and I realized that I've probably only seen the first two films and that I don't have much fondness for them.  A key indicator of this is that I never bought MIB on DVD and between '98 and 2002 I was buying pretty much any film I liked or thought I would like or thought I would want to rewatch.   

So, with a free evening and no agenda, I just put this on.  You know what, it's fine. It's better than fine, it's actually good. Will Smith doing his Will Smith thing at the height of his Will-Smith-thing powers. Tommy Lee Jones, remarkably having just crested 50-years-old at the time of shooting, is doing his full-on cantankerous Tommy Lee Jones thing to its comedic apex.  The practical effects by master FX artist Rick Baker are all on point, at a time just before CGI would start taking over seemingly every and any effects need. The creatures are wild, tangible and masterfully done, without the CGI spit-polish. Danny Elfman drops a score that maybe isn't as iconic as some of his other works, but it stands the test of time, and also distinguished (Elfman can get a little same-y, but he can also pull out scores that sound a part of his ouvre without seeming like riffs off earlier work). Sonnenfeld's sensibilities, his affection for simultaneous darkness and whimsey, are perfect for the film, he leaves on a layer of New York grime that the later films scrub and polish away. 

The MVP of the film is Vincent D'Onofrio as "Edgar", who starts the film as an abusive white trash husband but is immediately killed by an invading alien species who uses his skin as a suit as a disguise for his mission on earth. It's an absolutely gonzo performance which D'Onofrio commits to fully, with hilarious physicality and a verbal slur that is only accentuated by his perfect "skin suit" makeup job (but D'Onofrio is so good he probably could have pulled off the role without the make-up).

In rewatching the film, I'm still somehow not sucked into the universe of MIB. I wasn't eager to continue with the franchise. I know what else is out there isn't what I wanted. The setup for MIB 2 was Smith's Agent J partnered with Linda Fiorentino's newly recruited Agent L. But Fiorentino, a notorious personality on set, wasn't wanted for the sequel and so the sequel began to rehash the Agent J & K dynamic. Which the third one did as well. I just don't care. And my lack of interest in the sequels also kind of hampers my investment in the original. I attempted to rewatch the miserable Men in Black 2 but I cut it off in less than 10 minutes because it was godawful.

Men In Black as a franchise is similar to Ghostbusters, in that the first film was lightning in a bottle with a sense of magic its sequels couldn't replicate (but that their cartoon spin-offs, by not trying to be in continuity with the film, managed to be the better supplement).

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Even more so than Men in Black, I have very limited experience with the Elm Street franchise, but I would hazard a guess that Elm Street, and Freddy Krueger specifically, penetrated pop culture much more deeply and even though I've never seen a Nightmare film, I feel somehow very familiar with Freddy.

Part of that is thanks to Will Smith, who, back in his pre-TV rapping Fresh Prince days he did a song "A nightmare on my street".  Around the same time, the Fat Boys also had an Elm Street song tie-in, and my pre-teen brain couldn't handle it.  These goofy songs still freaked me out.  I also remember a school mate on the bus showing me a copy of Fangoria magazine (or some similar horror-themed rag) which was highlighting one of the Elm Street film's gross effects, and that image...well, it still hasn't fully left me.  Something like Freddy in a tux serving someone their own entrails maybe...its a bit blurry this picture now.

So even though I watched all manner of horror pictures these days (not devotedly, but with little of the trepidation like I once had) I still hadn't watched any Nightmare pictures (except maybe Wes Craven's A New Nightmare, but I may be confusing it with Scream 3)

My thoughts on my first watching of the original, classic, 1984 A Nightmare on Elm Street. It's fine. Bordering on good. The acting its weakest element, ranging from passable to godawful (but in the end I kind of liked Ronee Blakely's terrible acting as the soused mom with the sincerest of ironic appreciation).  Heather Lagencamp's heroic Nancy is a total mess of a character, and I really wish Craven had thought more about how to play stylistically with her delusional lack of sleep.  This could have been a real head trip of a movie if it wanted to be.  As is it's a competently made production that no doubt troubled many a teen in the 1980s, but I know Freddy become much more playful in later films, and the series goes for bigger, more inventive kills. I'm kind of looking forward to watching those, because Craven seemed to be holding back on both here.  

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In the Serendipity write-up above, I mention having broken off my engagement, my first serious relationship. To be blunt, it was a juvenile relationship, one that saw two partners who couldn't communicate honestly with each other. There was so much wrong with that relationship that it's hard to see what was ever right about it. My takeaway, though, was a better sense of what I wanted (and didn't want) in a relationship, and what I wanted out of myself. I also gained an appreciation for musicals, ska, and Brian De Palma's 1974 masterpiece Phantom of the Paradise (...masterpiece? Really? You know what, yeah, masterpiece. Full stop.)

I don't recall how I watched the film originally, whether it was on VHS or DVD, but it was a film my partner of the time really loved. Now, it's kind of a terrible admission, but I felt my partner at that time had really bad taste in most everything, and I generally bristled against what they liked and loved, much preferring the things I liked and discovered (as I said, it was a very immature relationship). But I would humour her, and watch her shows and movies, and listen to her musics, but at the same time rather than being open-minded, I was kind of resentful, and actively resisted trying to like these things. I would, however, feign appreciation with a slight nod, or an high-voiced "yeah, it's not bad" to maintain the peace.

Phantom, though was something else entirely, something that didn't fit her image and the kind of baseline tastes. I didn't get it at first, because I was so resistant, but it was something I went back to after we broke up. A couple of times. It was something I really couldn't get out of my head. 

I've recently been on a kick of acquiring physical media again (heavy suspicion that once the streaming wars end, it's going to make a lot of things scarce) and seeing the recent Scream Factory blu-ray of Phantom of the Paradise was a no-hesitation must-purchase.  The opening sequence, crisp blacks, popping colours, as the doo-wop lip sync rehearsal of "Goodbye, Eddie, Goodbye" (the first of many original, and diverse tracks written by Paul Williams, who also co-stars) plays...my pupils dilated and I sunk deeply into my seat, just ready to receive this film (sharing it with a friend who had never seen it before).

It's not an easy movie to describe. It's a horror-musical-satire about the music industry that blends the stories of Faust, Phantom of the Opera and even a little of Dorian Gray with the sensibilities of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, taking its lead character through a gruelling journey of identity.

The film has an astounding number of exceptionally well-composed scenes, just some flat-out striking imagery, chief among them an amazing split screen, De Palma-specialty, that is just ...radical.  The imagery extends beyond just compositions, set pieces, and sets to costumes like Phantom's sleek black leathers and iconic, absurdly bird-like steel mask (and teeth) and Death Records' amazing dead raven logo. Paul Williams as a world-famous music producer, Swan, who strikes bargains in blood with his subjects is, despite his stature, appropriately intimidating and unsettling (it's all in how little he seems affected by happening around him). Jessica Harper plays the chanteuse that the Phantom has affection for (but not for anything sexual, it's her voice that can service his music that he wants) and Swan basically steals to mess with him. 

It's a film unlike any other, an extremely dark rock opera, but with a levity that reveals itself more and more upon repeat viewings. It's a very playful film that warps itself in disarmingly unexpected ways. It won't be to everyone's tastes, but it's a film that rewards repeated attention.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

2023, Peyton Reed (Ant-Man) -- download 

WTF did I just watch?

Kent's still immersed in actually, regularly reading comics (I am assuming so? Its not like we actually talk about it, or write about) so I get that he might enjoy the correlation, and I might even agree; if. If we were talking about those regularly bland comic stories where they just did WTF for the sake of WTF, occasionally had cool visuals but ended up just being filler until the next writer/artist came along with something actually meaty & tangibly good, then I would definitely agree. And yes, that was the thing about comics, in that enjoying the medium meant you accepted the less than stellar stories because you just appreciated the medium onto which it was written. But does that translate onto The Big Screen?

Not sure it does...

That said, I have to argue with myself. I have a spate of movies in this blog alone that I watch, and enjoy, purely for the sub-sub-genre they are part of. Scifi movies with robots and heavy on the CGI depiction of interfaces? I am so there...

I will watch this again once it legit hits Disney+ but I have a feeling I might end up legitimately, and actively, as I did with Thor: Love & Thunder, not liking it. Oh, there are elements to enjoy and tons of cool visuals, and its boat loads of fun. But did I enjoy? I.... don't think so.

Or, as I did with the first one, I could end up liking it much more with repeated viewings. Remember, self, I am the one who did not like The Guardians of the Galaxy when it first came out, but then once I had stopped dissecting it, I began actually, truly enjoying it.

OK, we start with coming back to The MCU via Scott Lang's (Paul Rudd, Clueless) place in it. He played his part in Saving The World and is (finally) reaping the benefits with a moderately popular novelization and book tour. Kids have his face on backpacks and (most) people recognize him but he's no longer an Avenger because there are no more Avengers. The entire world has their own version of MCU Fatigue it seems, and I would like one movie to explore this post-Blip/Undo, post-Avengers world more fully. What is Lang doing now? Not much. And people are judging him for it.

Maybe I need a post where I dissect all the Marvel TV shows that are set post-Blip for just the parts that reference What Happened.

And that's where the character story ends.

Suddenly they are whisked away into the Quantum Realm via Cassie's (now played by recognizable face Kathryn Newton, Supernatural) attempt at super science. Oh, did we mention, she's now also a science genius. Not sure how, as she's not related to the Pyms (despite calling Hank "gramps") but let's hand wave it all away for fun. Fun, right?

P.S. Where are her parents?!?!

Anywayz, Quantum Realm. Funny looking aliens. Cities and sentient spaceships. Human looking aliens. Bill Murray. Slurp the goo made from the body of a red blob guy and speak the local common language. Laugh at the funny telepath guy who knows the thoughts you should keep to yourself. Meet the leader of the revolution who looks like Mongal. 

And meet Kang. Remember Kang? He's the ultra cool & suave baddie from Loki who has a shadowy agenda, and even shadowy-er powers, and is tied to the multi-verse (multiverse; not sure why I hyphenated that) because they are using that plot element to tie us to the Next Big Thing. I thought the Next Big Thing would be cosmic, with Skrulls and aliens, but maybe they will all tie together? Who knows, Kang is scary and has a scary conqueror agenda. In the comics, he's called Kang the Conqueror, so he has to say the word at least 5 times here. 

Conqueror !

Anywayz, they split the party. Scott and Cassie are captured by Kang, while the rest of the family goes to an underground nightclub to meet Bill Murray (Bill Murray, Ghostbusters) and hint at Janet's (Michelle Pfeiffer, Batman Returns) less than stellar performance last time she lived here. And hangout with all the cool alien revolutionaries, including aforementioned blob guy (who waves his arms like Kermit the Frog and loooooves holes), laser cannon for a head guy, Mongal, telepath guy, and a bunch of weird (but interesting!) looking background characters. They are revolting against conqueror Kang and his army of blue glow-y heads.

MacGuffin is a glow-y ball of multi-versal (dude, multiversal) energy. If Kang gets it, he can get out (go up?). If the heroes can get it, they can get out. Kang uses Scott to get it, leveraging Cassie against him, because Janet did something size related to it, and they need Pym Particles to undo. Buuuuuut its surrounded by sooooo much multi-versal (Marge Simpson sound) energy that it causes the biggest mindfuck but in reality. Lots of Scotts. LOTS. And then Hope (Evangeline Lilly, Real Steel) shows up and saves Scott but loses the MacGuffin.

And so on.

Suffice it to say they take the battle back to Kang, defeat him, reunite with Cassie, smash lots of things, and causes TONS of collateral damage to the residents of The Quantum Realm, but defeat Kang.

But dooooo they.

The post-credits scene.

TBH, that was the only thing that had me invested. It showed so much, showed so little but hinted at everything.

I didn't intend on commenting on my own commentary as much as I did, but I realize that was one of the initial ideas we had for this blog, in that we write the post together. So we did. Well me and me. And that is my brain these days. Let's call it Multi-Versal Toast. Multiversal! DUDE !

Also, how did you NOT even reference M.O.D.O.K. ?!?!  Well, other than being mildly disappointed he was not voiced by Patton Oswald, I was, honestly just weirded out by him, which I gather was the point. That whole, "Am I a dick?" conversation? Even Scott was having trouble being subtle... Cassie should have been given the opportunity to throw a train at him.

KWIF: Bullet Train (+6)

Kent's Week in Film is this: each week (or so) I have a spotlight movie which I write a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else I watched that week I do a quick little summary of my thoughts... just to speed things along. I usually write this on a Sunday.  Today is Wednesday. This entry covers the past two and a half weeks minus some rewatches.

Bullet Train (2022, d. David Leitch - AmazonPrime)
The Visitor (1979, d. Giulio Paradisi - tubi)
Galaxy of Terror (1980, d. Bruce D. Clark - tubi)
Two Little Boys (aka Deano and Nige's Best Last Day Ever) (2012, d. Robert Sarkies - tubi)
Hercules (1983, d. Luigi Cozzi - tubi)
The Dungeonmaster (1984, d. [x6] - tubi)
The Young Master (1980, d. Jackie Chan - Crave) 

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Sitting pretty evenly between the stylish cool of John Wick (and his world largely populated by assassins) and the overwhelmingly frenetic comedic tone of Deadpool 2 (both in which director Leitch had a hand), Bullet Train is both highly entertaining and allcaps A LOT.

A necessary bio-break meant pausing the movie, and with half the players seemingly dead or out of the picture, I thought "surely we're about to hit the endgame". But the time elapsed showing on screen read 1 hour 10 minutes with another 50+ left to go. That seemed like too much movie. And it was!

Though I was never bored in this latter half of the film, it did lose a lot of its mojo when the boss level shows up, mainly because, at this point, it started to incorrectly think we cared about the larger story it'd been attempting to weave. The problem is Brad Pitt's Ladybug is our central POV character and he's utterly circumstantial to the whole affair of this underlying story, so while the film is trying to invest us in its story from an insider's perspective, we're actually tracking it as an outsider. And given Ladybug's sort of laissez-faire attitude, the film shouldn't care as much about the story as it does. I certainly didn't.

The film does a better job at getting us to care about many of its characters, largely a lot of ruthless killers (Ladybug being the "no guns", trying-to-find-zen exception). Lemon and Tangerine are "The Twins", played by Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Henry and Taylor-Johnson are both immensely charismatic in this, which sort of neuters their intimidation factor. They're supposed to be a couple of psychos, the dialogue keeps reminding us of this, but the performances and characterization don't really show it.

As said, a very entertaining movie, but also one that constantly thinks were too dumb to keep up with it (given the shape of the world, there may be a point there). It's continually doing visual cutaways or brief flashbacks to moments or objects or people from earlier in the film, because it thinks we've forgotten or aren't paying attention? It also takes a lot of side trips into the various characters histories, but in a very inconsistent manner (some players get extensive history sequences, others don't get any). This imbalance would be more bothersome if the film had any room to breathe, but it's pretty go-go-go from the get go.

There is a lot to drive an astute film goer nuts within Bullet Train, and I can see how the vast amount of real-world improbabilities and impossibilities, on top of the overbearing cinematic devices used in telling its story would be frustrating, annoying or maddening, if you let it be. There's a better, cleaner film within what's presented, sure, but that's not really what its striving for. Taking it just as surface level entertainment, it delivers pretty highly.

[Toasty's take (we agree)]

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Something I enjoy doing all too much is browsing the ghastly Fox-owned streaming service Tubi. It is absolutely overloaded with content with zero discretion as to quality or subject matter. It is currently the best source for 70's/80's also-ran/B-grade genre schlock, the kind that used to lure you in at the video store with a lurid tape-box/sleeve cover image (often a painting of some kind) that falsely presented intoned a film with scale and quality far beyond its means. 

The Visitor jumped out at me primarily because of cast: a young, already leathery-looking Lance Henriksen, Glenn Ford, John Huston, Shelley Winters....  Names like these in schlock is never a demarcation of quality, but it is a lure, as was its description that promised demonitc, telepathic children and an "intergalactic tug-of-war". My mind, as it so often did with the text on the back of the VHS box (paired with the front-of-box painting), reeled with with potential.

The film opens with that potential revealing itself via a stark, desert-like wasteland with an ever-so-alien sky, shot with all manner of low-budge effects tricks. It's very striking. An impressive soundtrack of tones and whistles and scratching strings accompanies a sudden snowfall as a haggard, cloaked old man faces off against an unknown cloaked silhouette.  It's 4 minutes of ominous, menacing, wordless visuals which falls apart the moment a talking head starts to try and fill in the eye-roling mythos for this tale, as a christ-like figure explains its good-vs-evil concept to a group of bald, white robed children in an indoor arboretum.  The film crashes and burns the moment the overwhelmingly 70's funk horns start blaring as we're transitioned to a 5 minute sequence of a basketball game (culminating in a ball exploding, no questions asked) during which any sense of the fantasy of what came before is completely lost.

The film doesn't know what direction its going it, its not at all confident in its plot. I heard tell (via a later listening to the Video Archives podcast) that this was originally scripted as a proposed sequel to a sort of demon-seed pregnancy movie then re-formed into a sci-fi horror.  The kind of confused conception is evident, and the storytelling never settles into its more fantastical plot.  It could have been the original The Orphan had it not reached too high.  It's too boring to be bonkers, ironic viewing, and it's too bonkers to even approach being good. 

BUT IS IT HORROR?
It's more genre thriller or suspense than horror, at least it's trying to be.

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Galaxy of Terror, from Roger Corman's New World Pictures, does a good job at feeling like a film ahead of its time, and by that I mean you could easily mistake it for a cheesy rip-off of sci-fi horror films from 1987 as opposed to 1980.  What works in the film's favour is its incredible set designs, it's moderately competent special effects, and some costuming that isn't outright embarrassing.  The acting is fine but the script is garbage nonsense that doesn't matter.  It's almost like it was written to employ sets, creatures, models and costumes that Corman already had sitting around, and less like they were constructed solely for the purpose of this picture.  I'm sure it's a mix of the two.

A rag-tag team on a rescue mission arrive on a strange planet and encounter the same dangers the prior crew clearly died from.  It's a film built entirely around set-pieces, gross-out gags and tentacle rape.  Sid Haig, Robert Englund, Erin Moran, Ray Walston and others sleepwalk through the meaningless dialogue and tolerate the humiliating horror gags they're forced to suffer through to collect their paycheck.

It's said that James Cameron was working effects on this, when he requested to do second unit filming of the sets to give them more coverage, which got him noticed for his first directorial gig, Piranha 2.  The trivia on this film is kind of more interesting than the film itself.

BUT IS IT HORROR?
sure, barely. It's surely horrible.

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So many of the Kiwi comedy films I've seen seem to center around naive simpletons or awkward oddballs (or both), and I've generally been quite receptive to that sort of thing. There's a subtle, sly tone and balance these films have to sustain, seeing the humour in the oddities of the characters, but also retaining some sense of empathy and affection for them. We want them to succeed, or at least find some growth in their journey (although it seems a particular NZ trait for these characters to kind of learn nothing or refuse to change). 

Two Little Boys (or it's original name, Nige and Deano's Best Last Day Ever) centers its story around two nitwits who are trying to cover up the accidental killing of a Norwegian backpacker in the opening moments of the film, which makes it particularly tough to invest in these characters. I don't know that we want them to get away with it, or if we're even supposed to (Nige's guilt being what it is).

Nige and Deano are estranged best friends reunited by the accident, but very quickly the toxic nature of their relationship returns, and it's clear why Nige wanted to end the friendship in the first place. 

So, if the film doesn't really want us to want the boys to get away with manslaughter, and if it doesn't want us to hope for reconciliation than what outcome exactly are we supposed to want here?

It's not a poorly done movie. There's some interesting editing choices, some fine needledrops, and even some fun vfx and camera trickery. McKenzie, Blake and Pohatu are all really quite good, inhabiting their roles well, making me quickly forget their more prominent personas in Flight of the Conchords, Lego Masters and Wellington Paranormal where I know them each well, but it's just fundamentally flawed story with a thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion (and an even more unsatisfying coda).

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I've watched a couple of Hercules movies in the past year, and they are, when in the hands of Italian filmmakers, passable escapist entertainment.  This one, though, is a spectacularly ill-conceived peplum that tries to smush together all of Hercules' 12 labors into one 90 minute story in an awkward mish-mash of fantasy, sci-fi and mythology that dares to rip-off Superman, Star Wars and Clash of the Titans at once but with a quarter of their budget.

The effects are pretty daring but done on a frugal budget, so they can be either read as really charming or really bad (or perhaps both?).  The costuming, though, is superb, and super sexy.  This is the best Hercules look, methinks, and the ladies are totally va-va-voom without being lurid about it. I was surprised to find the lip sync was totally on point, like, amazingly so. There are also some fairly amazing sets, which the Italians have been great at for some time, but there's also some that really feel the budget limitations.

This was under the Canon film group logo, so there's a sense that this was trying to capitalize upon the success of Masters of the Universe, by mixing sci-fi with fantasy and superheroes, but they would have to take another crack at it a few years later.

So, that final sequence...Hercules is warned that if he removes the sword from the stone, it will result in the awakening of the pheonix.  He needs the sword to fight the big bad guys, and so he does unsheath it.  The phoenix is awakened and the whole bloody island begins to collapse, killing thousands in the process? This is the big heroic ending??

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The Dungeonmaster basically auto-played on Tubi after Hercules. I didn't select it, and I didn't intend to watch it. It opens with a sequence that plays out like an 80's glam metal music video, of a toe-headed man in glasses following in slow motion a woman in a flowing red dress through some weird local architecture that could is weird enough to be vaguely construed as "fantastical" without any set redressing.  She strips, lays on a bed, and beacons him near, only for demonic creatures to break through the wall and capture her, leaving the man, confused. Title sequence and credits. Man wakes up from dream.  The film starts with a cold open. It's rather inane.

We later see the "real life" scenario of this couple, their existence. He's a too-handsome nerd who has made a primitive 80's computer AI assistant that makes his aerobic instructor girlfriend jealous because of how much time he spends with it. Then they seem to get sucked into another dimension, she's chained up, he's in a weird costume, and a tall, deep-voiced, sallow-looking figure tells him they're going to play a game. 

What follows is a series of vignettes, each from a different director, each in a different genre, including a Mad Max-style chase and fighting a Harryhousen-esque stop-motion animate statue. None of it is particularly well-executed, and our "hero" is armed with his AI in a wrist gauntlet that serves as a total deus ex machina in every scenario.

It is supremely goofy 80's genre trash, and yet it's not unwatchable, thanks mostly to a charming Jeffrey Byron. Like most anthologies, it's not very unified, nor is this all that satisfying in whole or in part. But it also doesn't take itself too seriously, which doesn't exactly save it, but does help elevate it somewhat above some of the other more unwatchable low-low-budg fantasy trash of the era.

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I'm not as well versed in Jackie Chan's filmography as I would like to be.  Having recently watched the Police Story trilogy (I know there are more than three, but I've only seen the first three at this point), I have to say I much prefer the fight-coordination-focused Jackie Chan pictures to the stunt-set-piece-focused Jackie Chan. I mean, yes the stunts are cool but...are they maybe only cool because of the end-credits revelations showing the behind-the-scenes attempts?  As opposed to films like Drunken Master or, here, Young Master, where the film is instead built with a simple story meant to weave through a series of fighting set pieces that showcase the performers' physical prowess, Chan's inventiveness, and humour? It's not like the Police Story films take themselves overly-serious, but they're not really comedies, and the fights definitely take second fiddle to the stunts in those films.

I like Chan's sensibilities, and the sheer cleverness and comedic timing that is built into the very balletic martial arts fights needs not just the movement skills, but comedic acting chops as well to sell it all.  In Young Master, Chan and his various scene partners can run up to 10 minutes through a mesmerizing coordinated routine that is as much dance and pantomime as it is kung-fu. It is ridiculously entertaining, and not a single fight seems redundant or repetitive, somehow Chan and crew constantly keep it fresh.  The opening Dragon dance sequence is a stunner, the coordination difficulty level cranked up to 10, as two two-man teams must react to each other team, themselves within the team, and their surroundings, as they traverse the edges of water barrels and climbing to a 10-foot-high narrow platform.  It's at once joyous and intense. 

Chan's direction with Young Master is so much clearer than his Police Story 1 & 2 work, likely because they are somewhat more involved in their shooting (being shot on city streets and active locations).  He knows exactly what needs to be focused on in any given sequence, and even at this early stage in his career, seems to have a crew of people he trusts to carry out the plan, and follow the action.  Again, I don't have a deep knowledge of his repertoire, but this is a completely clean, crisp effort that doesn't attempt anything flashy behind the camera because it has absolutely no need to. The performances are all the flash needed.  An absolute gem of a movie, that I watched twice in the same week.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Harder They Fall

2021, Jeymes Samuel (They Die by Dawn) -- Netflix

Can the world be nostalgic for Idris Elba? He's not quite hit the age of being that Fondly Remembered Aging Actor, but he is hitting a certain point in the roles he choses, or are being chosen for him. This movie needed a Villain, capital V, as a destination for the main character to finally reach, a character not too flashy, but impactful enough that we wanted to watch the movie. And Elba is That Guy.

But I get ahead of myself. 

The Harder They Fall is a classic western with a rather extremely updated fashion sense about it. Not that it is dressed better than your average western, but its dressed up better. Its all about style, looking and sounding good. Coming from the music industry, and working along side Jay Z and Baz Luhrman, Samuel gives us his second western with style. The first, They Die by Dawn is a weird not-short-not-full-length indie flick with its own ensemble and high hitting cast. I guess this would be a spiritual sequel?

Plot wise, we start with a setup, where a preacher man and his wife are killed in front of their young son by Elba's Rufus Buck. He leaves the boy alive with a cross cut into his forehead. Years later, the boy, Nat Love (Jonathan Majors, Loki) is a leader of gang, and he learns that the imprisoned Buck has been "released". That release was predicated by the government, who pardoned Buck in return for killing his Union Army jailors, who had become their own corrupt entity. Buck returns to the town he created, and we know  the movie will be about the confrontation between the two.

There are probably tons of pithy reviews of this very Netflix movie out there, maybe commenting on Samuel doing Tarantino, if Tarantino was black. Or doing a typical black gangster movie, but set in the Old West. I don't want to distill it, especially considering my purview. It is definitely a creation from an ideal, a definitively "black movie" soaked in cultural aspects, especially the dialogue and music choices. But it is also so precisely a stylistic Western, like much of the 60s and 70s heyday of Westerns, when they were coming from Italy or Spain as much as from the US. Samuel knows his source and makes it fucking gorgeous. And the use of reggae for transition music? chef's kiss gesture

If I was have anything detracting about it, its that it was such a concept that it ended up lacking in full characterization. The characters are just this side caricatures, not fully developed, but still very rich in detail. The performances lend to that. And that is the landscape in which it is set. I am very eager tos ee what he will do next.

Kent's post. We agree.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Avatar: The Way of Water

2022, James Cameron (True Lies) -- download

How is James Cameron still a house hold name? Titanic was in 1997. And this movie's predecessor, in 2009, is the only fictional work he has done since. Sure, he's done a lot of producing and documentary material, but shouldn't we have forgotten all this by now? How is he getting a sequel almost 15 years later? Sure, it was talked and talked and talked about since the first one generated such buzz, negatively and positively but even that fizzled out. So, why? And that's with me being unabashedly a fan of the first. I just don't understand and of it. I guess he's made enough money to whatever the fuck he wants, passion projects and all that?

Anywayz, given it comes in at just over 3 hours, it took a few sittings to get through. And, as I totally expected, it was quite enjoyable. What wasn't expected was that it isn't really all that epic. Much of the three hours are expositional, re-introducing you to the world of Pandora (ahem; the moon...), and catching you up on what happened since Jake Sully and his blue Na'vi allies kicked most of the humans off the lush moon. Spoilers: it didn't take. But what comes afterwards is not so much an epic recreation of the Na'vi tribes fighting back against another human incursion but a smaller story of Sully and his grown up family fighting back against an old nemesis, a fight that doesn't really account for the bigger picture. Remember, there will be more movies after this.

The movie picks up 16 years after the first, (re)introducing us to a world where the remaining humans work along side the Na'vi, where Jake has raised a family with Neytiri, including two teenage boys, a younger daughter and their adopted daughter Kiri, who was Grace Augustine's avatar body's daughter. No, they don't really explain how that came about, but suffice it to say, it was a way for Sigourney Weaver to be in the film again. Jake is raising this family in bio-luminescent bliss when.... yeah, did you really expect the company RDA to just roll over and show their belly? They come back, in force, with lander ships that literally burn off the forest homes of the Na'vi, probably killing off most of the population we knew, sending Jake and the survivors hiding in those floating rocks from the first movie.

A year later, a time frame that didn't sit well with me, as the teenage boys have aged considerably, but fits well for the response, in which there is now a full city in the crater left by the lander, and Jake & family fight a guerilla war against the new interlopers. And guess who's back? Quaritch didn't let a little thing like dying keep him from coming back to take revenge on Jake Sully. Apparently, the military likes to clone special people, syncing up memories and whatnot. In a video recorded for his not-dead, and currently embedded in an avatar, self, Quaritch explains everything AND dials up the vendetta.

Jake learns of Quaritch's return and decides that makes the remaining Omitikaya (of the trees) a target. Not sure why this would make them any more a target than their current attacks on everything human, but whatever, it gives Jake pause and drags his family off into the unknown, the watery abode of Metkayina, greener skinned, fishy tailed, deep sea diving folk who lives on protected shoals and have a tight relationship with Pandora whales. 

Also, of note, Jake was raising a human child, now teen, left behind when the rest abandoned the moon, because babies cannot go into hypersleep/space/whatever. And its Quaritch's kid. And he is captured by Quaritch. And they make some toxic bond.

So, yeah this is all super extended setup so we can focus the bulk of the movie on Quaritch hunting down Jake & Family. And also lots of expositional, but totally enjoyable World Building all around the contentious relationships around tree folk trying to integrate with water folk, despite the challenges present. Its all rather beautiful and touching and the whales are people too.

The final third of the movie has Quaritch hitching a ride on a whaling boat, because Unobtanium is no longer the resource that RDA is focused on exploiting. The newest, hottest, weird stuff is basically Pandora Whale pituitary gland goo, that allows humans to live forever. Not sure if they knew that before Jake kicked RDA off the moon 16 years ago, or they have just learned that in the year of their return, but this wholly reprehensible activity makes us hate RDA all the more. They capture and kill the whales, just to extract a minor amount of glowing goo, and dump the rest back into the ocean. And considering that whales are obviously people here... 

So, we don't get a massive battle between RDA's new army and The Jake Sully Army; that is likely left for however many movies are left in this new endeavour. Instead we have Quaritch and his Avatar Buddies vs Jake Sully Family, with allies the Pandora Whales and some Metkayina. I do have to admit, I liked the less than epic confrontations, the more personal agendas, and the amount of new World Building that was allowed to happen. Immersive CGI is now a fully expected beast, so we expected that 98% of the movie was computer generated and didn't begrudge it. The few humans on screen were usually Bad Guys, along with a smidge of allies and a smidge of those suffering moral quandaries. 

But all that recap done, what did I think of it? It was OK, which is my usual direction for movies these days. The Oh Wow factor of the first is obviously not attainable and we already know I am not going to do a pan of James Cameron - I will leave that to K'ent.

In the alternate reality I just side-stepped from, Kent had written a post for rewatching all the Terminator movies and included in it a commentary on how just doesn't care much for James Cameron; maybe I am misremembering the Aliens rewatch post. 

But this move is fully enjoyable for what it is, I just don't think its good enough to be a resurrection of the franchise nor as a sequel to a long standing, divisive movie. It had to be more than just OK, it had to be more epic, it had to re-set the stage for incredible visuals. But it didn't. And that is incredibly disappointing.

3-2-1: John Wick: Chapter 4

 2023, d. Chad Stahelski - in theatre

The What 100:
John Wick continues his reign of vengeance against The Table, his friends fewer and fewer while the price on his head goes higher and higher. The Marquis de Gramont has his mission from The Table: kill John Wick and punish anyone who helps him.  John Wick brings with him ruin wherever he goes, and, he is told, his only way out is death...until another option is presented to him....
Or.
170 minutes of relentless, impossible violence.

3-2-1

3 BAD: (1) JW, superhero. John "Baba Yaga" Wick is a total cartoon character at this point. He can survive pretty much anything and keep going, seemingly finding another gear, and another, and another until he's on, like, gear 18 by the end of this journey.  In one sequence, JW is hit by cars at least four times, and not slow moving vehicles either. Where other men are out of the game with one strike, Wick gets up and keeps on fighting, and fighting, and fighting. Without some sort of superpower or supernatural explanation, it stretches credulity. In a later scene (still only a few minutes after being hit by multiple cars in story time) JW jumps out a fourth story window and bounces off the edge of a van parked below, hitting the pavement hard. He not only survives, but gets up and walks away, pained, but not many-broken-ribs pained, or coughing-up-blood-from-a-punctured-lung pained. I wasn't giving up on the action and adventure after these (or many other points) but I had an audible "yeah, right!" reaction so often in this movie. And that's not to mention all the bullets JW's taking.

(2) Bulletproof.  The bulletproof suit was introduced in the Chapter 2, so it's one of the conceits of the series, so that doesn't really bother me. But there is still a logic factor to it...even if a bullet doesn't pass through into the flesh, all that energy that it has heading into the suit has to go somewhere and it will be felt by the wearer. Bruises and cracked or broken bones. It's going to severely injure someone, and you'll be feeling it for days if not more. Not John Wick though. Where others JW goes up against kind of get pinned down by the repeated shots, JW just keeps moving.  It's a consistency thing.

In relaying the film's features and follies to the wife, I noted that the film runs 170 minutes because seemingly everyone is wearing bulletproof suits, so my real problem with them is it takes forever for John Wick to kill anyone. The fight scenes are long, and the longer they go on the more monotonous they start to get, the more I want the film to move on to something else.

(3) A video game world. The world of John Wick is comprised of 95% assassins and murderers and people who work for The Table. There are so few people in this world outside of them, and none of them, except for John Wick's dead wife or Caine's (Donnie Yen) daughter.  At one point, JW is having an all out brawl with goons and a boss-level baddie in a sprawling bunker of a rave club. It's jam packed with people, and John is burying axes in people's heads or shooting people, and the by-dancers (as opposed to bystanders) don't seem to notice. The fight goes on for many minutes before people start to flee the scene. They're digital noise, in a way, like the backdrop of a Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter game. They're not real people, they don't really even exist, they're just part of the setting.

It's the same when JW is fighting seemingly every mercenary in Paris in the roundabout of the Arc de Triomphe. There are cars and vehicles driven by non-enemy players, but do we see them? Do they matter? When someone slams into a vehicle does it seem like anyone is even driving it? Not so much. There's almost a point to Stahelski not including any collateral damage in the film. He doesn't want the audience, at any point to be taken out of the underworld that the fighters exist in, and one simple death of a bystander would blow the whole thing up.  And the dead bodies that should pile up, seem to disappear when the camera pans away.

John Wick is a video game world. JW is the player character, he has levels to go through, and bosses to beat, and between levels, there are the story cut scenes. It does all this pretty well, but I'm not a gamer, this isn't my language, so it all feels somewhat hollow.

2 GREAT: (1) Scott Adkins' Killa Harkan. I used to really detest Keanu as an actor. "The little wooden boy" I would call him. I would watch films he starred in despite his presence, not because of. In the John Wick series, I have to give him full credit...he has real presence, and a commendable physical acumen. But 4 out of every 5 line deliveries I'm asking "that's the take you're going with?" It's like he doesn't quite understand what the words coming out of his mouth mean, an alien of some kind, detached from common communication. It doesn't matter what language he's speaking (and he speaks a few in this one) the line readings are all very, very awkward.

So that's why they have some phenomenal character actors in this beast. We'll get to Donnie Yen and Bill Skarsgård in a moment, but the absolute standout player in this is B-movie action star Scott Adkins. I don't really know Adkins' work, I just know of him. I've heard talk of many of the lower-budget, direct-to-video/on demand he stars in being elevated by his presence, and his fighting / stunt coordination skills. But here, in John Wick: Chapter 4, Adkins delivers a performance. It's scenery masticating with capital "A" Acting! Adkins is a big guy to begin with but here he's got prosthetic on both his face and body to pad him out into not just a burly man, but the burliest. I think of the comic book character Kingpin who is always well tailored but is just drawn like a stone wall covered in fabric. Inside Killa, Adkins has a chin that disappears into his neck, three gold fronts in his mouth, and a playful German accent that doesn't quite hold water. Adkins sits across a table from Reeves, Yen, and Shamier Anderson, all three who can hold the screen, and he dominates them with his devious congeniality. I think of big, cartoonish, in-makeup roles like Al Pachino's Flat Top in Dick Tracy or Colin Farrell as the Penguin in The Batman. This is the best performance in the movie.  And when the big man finally gets into the fight, he's not a pushover, he's every bit that wall of fabric that the Kingpin is, but far more agile, unexpectedly delivering patented Adkins high kicks. 

(2) Donnie Yen. What a great presence Donnie Yen is. Is it any wonder that the film seems to take its leave

of John Wick for, like, a ten minute stretch and just let Donnie Yen's blind master, Caine, take the scene. The first act is almost more Yen's than Reeve's and all the warmth and charm that John Wick doesn't have can be found in Yen's performance.  Caine is, ostensibly, the second lead of the film.  He is also a man with a reason to kill.  He's been set upon John Wick by the Marquis, his daughter's life effectively in the balance. Should he fail to kill JW, both his life and his daughter's are forfeit. But he and John are friends, from way back, so he doesn't take this task lightly, though he's also keenly aware that John is not going to be an easy kill, so there is double reticence to his approach. Yen has a wonderful scene with Hiroyuki Sanada, again, old friends, but whom he's forced to combat, and there's no pleasure in the dance. Yen manages to deliver compassion, respect and admiration while in a fight for his own life. Yen has played a blind master before, in Rogue One, and he's very effective at it. There's a moment in the poker game with Killa where Yen holds the cards up to his face real close and quickly puts them down. Having a good friend who is legally blind, I'm very familiar with that type of reading, which leads me to believe Yen is playing visually impaired, but not full blind.  There's the whole Zatoichi aspect to the character that, once you introduce guns into the equation, becomes much more fantastical, and somehow I'm much more okay with Caine's ability to escape harm then I am with John Wick's ability to absorb it. 

1 GOOD: Bill Skarsgård's Marquis de Gramont.  For my many reservations about this film, it is a success, if only because it manages to earn its 170 minutes when it really should have no right to such an inflated run-time.  It's a testament to Stahlenski's visual acumen, making every scene gorgeous to look at, and his stunt team who go above and beyond with every fight...but it just wouldn't play, like, at all, without a big bad behind it. It's not that the Marquis is particularly well written...these types of vainglorious, ruthless characters with a simmering evil are everywhere, but it's what Skarsgård does with it that makes it utterly compelling. There's a composure to his Marquis, one that so very rarely cracks, such that when he does, it's quite delicious to watch. Skarsgård's performance here has that Scandanavian reserve (even though he's playing French) that reminds me of Mads Mikkelsen's Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, except if Le Chiffre's station in life was so much closer to the top. They garb the Marquis in such elegant finery that screams customized, each wardrobe tailored only for him. The design is very 1800s chic but with a contemporary line in a way that can only be described as "dandy".  Does the uniform fit the performance or vice versa.  The Marquis likes to think himself unpredictable, which makes him easily manipulated. He's just got power and money and authority, which makes him hard to get to...so the challenge for John Wick is getting to him, and more than anything, the Marquis wants to make sure that never happens.  

META:
In the end, after 170 minutes of people getting shot in the head, I had to ask, what's the point? Not of movies, which is entertainment, but of the story, both in this film and the series, what is the point? What is the objective John Wick is trying to achieve, and does it feel in any way appropriately satisfying how this film ends? Do we feel like the character had a meaningful journey, and made some sort of difference in his bleak, bullet riddled world?

I am not a John Wick devotee. I've seen each of the films and liked them to varying degrees, but I've only watched them once. I may have lost the plot on what exactly ol' JW was trying to accomplish through four of these features and hundreds of dead bodies. It certainly didn't seem like the end goal was killing the Marquis, who is just a face up front, a representative of The Table.  I was seriously expecting this to be a "John hunts down every member of the table and kills them, dismantling the table in the process." Alas, that seems to be an impossibility so John's looking for an out, from this life he's living.  But is this end agreeable? I came out of 170 minutes asking "is that it?" And I'm not really asking for more.

At a certain point in this film, quite early on, I grew...not tired...numb, I grew numb to the violence of it. The repeated sound of guns firing became a sensation that barely registered by the end. I found any form of combat without the guns to be far more enjoyable.  At one point JW gets a set of nunchucks and watching him beat people with that was far more enjoyable than the gunfighting.  That sort of very American excess of bullets and carnage, when it gives way to the more poetic dance of swordfights, is such a blessing.  This is a gun-centric series though, and the glowing reverence for Wick's preferred handgun, when the Bowery King presents it to him, made me feel kind of ill to my stomach knowing that the scene is there for the gun lovers in the crowd.  This isn't an inspirational series, it's an escapist nightmarescape, one that aptly ends where any gun-obsessed, revenge-fuelled movie should. There's no happy endings in that world.

I think of other action-first movies, like Dredd or The Raid: Redemption, and these are films I enjoyed quite a bit but that I never really go back to because they don't really have a story to tell.  The first John Wick created a world, on that seemed so intriguing and full of promise, but that promise never really bore fruit for me. The world was maybe developed (if not to my satisfaction, it's still developed) but the character we're following through that world never changes, grows or learns anything.  So I say again what's the point?  There's a reason I haven't rewatched this series, and I don't really have any desire to... there's not really anything there beyond the stylish thrills of mass murder.

RIP Lance Reddick.