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. This entry covers the past two weeks, less my watching of the Scream series which will get its own entry.
This week:
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves - 2023, d. John Francis Daly & Jonathan Goldstein - In Theatre
Marcel, the Shell With Shoes On - 2022, d. Dean Fleischer - Crave
28 Weeks Later - 2008, d. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo- Disney+/Star
Dressed to Kill - 1980, d. Brian Di Palma - Criterion Channel
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Of all the things I'm nerdy about, D&D is not one of them. I've RPGed a time or three, but I'm by no means invested in the property. Hell, fantasy, in general, is not a genre I particularly even like....something about magic having basically no rules and being able to do anything is ever a barrier. Here, Justice Smith's awkward and sometimes ineffectual mage, Simon, literally has a retort about the fact that there are rules and magic can't just do anything. I appreciated the sentiment, but magic kinda just does what ever it wants in this film, ultimately. Yet, the magic here, like in the game, is just one facet of the world. It's not all about magic. There be monsters, beasts, creatures, dragons, critters...different races and classes, all of which just coexist in this realm without excessive exposition (if any at all).
D&D:Honor Among Thieves starts by introducing us to a pair of partners in crime -- Chris Pine's bard, Edgin, and Michelle Rodriguez's latest badass character, the barbarian Holga -- on the date of their fantasy-realm-equivalent of a parole hearing. Edgin has the gift of gab, regaling the parole board with his backstory and how he and Holga came to be in their prison. Holga is far more stoic (having already proven herself an ace fighter) and chimes in bluntly when she needs to. This does follow, quite precisely, the show-don't-tell rule as it cuts back and forth between enactment and retelling in an amusing manner (almost too amusing, threatening to overpower even the mildest sense of drama, but the writer-directors know quite what they're doing). It's a deft move, repeated multiple times in the movie, characters breaking into story, cutting to the flashback, all evoking the effect of a player character providing other players around the table top background info on either the character or the campaign.
Edgin has a daughter, Kira (Chloe Coleman), to return to but she's ostensibly been raised and brainwashed by his ex-band-of-thieves-mate Forge, who has reached lofty status after helping send Edgin and Holga to prison. He's also collaborating with a red wizard, Sofina (Daisy Head with a bald head) the worst of the worst denizens of the land, and has the fugitives taken away. They escape, enlist the help of their mate Simon, and a tiefling (sp) Doric (Sophia Lillis) before formulating a plan to rob Forge and get Kira back.
It all leads to one adventurous sequence and/or fantastical sequence after the next which then leads them to a remarkably subdued but ridiculously entertaining paladin in the very charming and handsome form of Rege-Jean Page. If there was a doubt as to Page's on-screen charisma, consider it quashed. He literally steals the show for the second act (and he's a lawful good, not a thief!).
Every new adventure and every twist in the journey is a delight. I found myself enjoying the film increasingly more and more as it progressed, and where I may have questioned the tonal balance early on, it's just crackling with energy and parading forward to the end to the point that I could only enjoy the ride, no questions. By the time the credits rolled, I felt good...like...invigorated and satisfied. As much as I can enjoy a Marvel, leaving the viewer at the end with a tease for the future sometimes just leaves the viewer puzzled or tantilized in an unsatisfying way. Here, the film, the journey, the story is a complete one and it feels damn good to have that sense of completeness. Nothing is left dangling. In this age of franchises, to have a done-in-one massive picture is such a rarity (and for it to be so entertaining is a blessing).
I liked the cast, but I loved the characters. Each gets their shining moment and their own arc, and most are pretty satisfying. There's a seeming kismet to this assembly, everyone working so perfectly in their role. Lillis manages to be both slight and imposing, Pine is charismatic and self aware, while Rodriguez negotiates being the tough badass and having a deep sense of love for people that isn't buried and doesn't need to be drawn out, she wears both quite ably at the same time. Smith, as he did so adeptly in Sharper, manages to be appealingly vulnerable, and then grow into his strength in a captivating way. Grant, for his part, is just playing his Paddington 2 role again, just in a different setting, and hey, if it works, why not?
John Francis Daly, once the D&D nerd on Freaks and Geeks, has fulfilled his destiny in creating an unbelievably enjoyable motion picture out of a property where others have tried and failed so miserably. With long time collaborator Jonathan Goldstein, they've topped any of their prior directorial efforts (the strongest next contender being Game Night a distant second) and this screenplay rivals their Spider-Man: Homecoming (one of the MCU's best). Just...awesome. Love a geeks-make-good story.
If say another one of these does get greenlit, as much as I love this group of characters, I hope Daly and Goldstein create a whole new roster of players to send out on a new adventure.
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I first heard about "Marcel, the shell with shoes on". When I started really getting to know Jenny Slate as a comedic performer (I recalled her from her short stint at SNL [where she said "Fuck" live on TV back when people still gave a shit if you said "fuck" live on TV], but she started to pop in her small roles on shows like Parks and Recreation, before really popping in Kroll Show and starring in the indie angel factory romcom Obvious Child). I looked into it briefly, but it didn't strike in any particular way. But it was a viral hit in the fledgling days of YouTube, and people really dug it. Slate made only three videos, each under 4 minutes, with Dean Fleischer-Camp directing and animating, the last one appearing in 2014, but there was obviously enough cache behind the series to get both a kids book and a feature film made.
The feature was critically praised but not a breakout success by any means. Having finally caught up with it, I can see why. It's a quiet, bizarre little movie about a little creature and the guy who films him. The people who own the home in which Marcel lives have split up and vacated the property, turning it into a short-term rental (AirBnB-style), and in the process of leaving accidentally took most of Marcel's family with them, save for his Nana (Isabella Rossellini). Dean (largely an off-screen/behind-the-camera/question-asking persona, having just gone through a break up himself), is renting the place and has discovered Marcel, and begins filming him and posting about him online, leading to a bit of a Marcel craze, that makes both Marcel and Dean quite uncomfortable.
If there's a journey, it's much more about Dean, primarily an off-screen persona, than Marcel. Marcel is an open book, talks about anything, where as Dean is closed off and wants the detachment of the lens to keep a barrier between him and the world. Marcel's sensibility is a trifecta of naivety, deep empathy, and zen-like acceptance for what is, and Marcel's point of view begins to affect Dean's world view but in really, really small ways. Nothing excessively large happens in this film. Marcel learns about the Internet and gets invited to be on 60 Minutes (the Shells' favourite show) and also takes a ride in Dean's car for a first trip into a much larger, mind-blowing world.
It's a sweet, delicate film that feels like it could just fall over and shatter at any moment, but it's also so blazingly different from pretty much any other all-ages entertainment out there, that it's hard not to get charmed by its uniqueness, even if I'm still not stricken with it.
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I'm not a zombie or horror guy, but I was a Danny Boyle for a long time so 28 Days Later was sort of a thing for me. It was an awakening of my mid-20s self to understanding that I could tolerate horror in a way I hadn't before. I liked the film, a lot. I saw 28 Weeks Later in the theatre, and found it to be more action-oriented, but also kind of nerdier in its examination of a kind of post-zombie contagion England.
Where 28 Days Later started in media res, this one manages to both be a sequel and a new beginning, kickstarting a brand new wave of the pandemic, ultimately resulting in a fairly good follow-up. In a COVID-is-our-reality existence, but effectively demonstrates how a highly transmissible virus can spiral out of control, and even the most extreme efforts to contain it appear futile. It's fucking bleak.
The rage virus is still the most intense and scary of the "zombie" plagues, and I'm absolutely shocked that after, like, 10+ years of The Walking Dead, there still hasn't been another "28 X Later" sequel, or prequel. You'd think Fox would just crank these things out. But no. There's still talk from Boyle and Alex Garland about making another one. They really should.
I'm not keen on the handheld style of filmmaking here from Fresnadillo, but it wares on me less the more the film goes on. It's got a phenomenal ahead-of-its time cast with Imogen Poots, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Idris Elba, Harold Parrineau, and Robert Carlyle. It's just straight up solid. I recall Renner really standing out when watching this in the theatre in 2008, like I remember distinctly thinking "should I know him?" The Hurt Locker was only a year later and then he would be Hawkeye... coulda used him in the zombie apocalypse.... Oh wait, they did.
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I probably shouldn't hold an 80's film up to modern standards of representation of mental health and gender identity, but it's hard not to. As it stands, Dressed to Kill could have been a lot worse, but it also doesn't escape Trans panic. The film's murderous character is never formally described as having a split personality, (which they clearly do), and the identities are then conflated with being transsexual rather than a mental health crisis, which sends a pretty awful message.
It was a recommendation from the Tarantin/Avery podcast "Video Archives", as part of their "American Giallo" profile. As a production, it's a gauzy yet stylish movie, that goes big and hard on the melodrama, sometimes to ludicrous excess, and manages more than a few effectively tense sequences. It does fit a giallo mold.
I'm not certain any of the performances in this film are particularly good...Angie Dickinson seems uncertain of her provocative, outwardly sexual role (looking far more fetching in that white dress than masturbating nude in the shower), while Nancy Allen never quite sells her toughness as the savvy sex worker. Michael Caine seems a little bored (sometimes works, sometimes doesn't), while Keith Gordon's gadget-wiz teen isn't really given time to develop a personality. Dennis Franz was born to play a douchebag cop, but it borders on parody here.
It all comes together to form a compellingly bizarre film that is at once in confident filmmaking hands, in a genre DiPalma seems really tapped into, but also working with subject matter(s) way out of their frame of reference.
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