3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Family Pack

2024,  François Uzan (On sourit pour la photo) -- Netflix

Also called, Loups-Garous, and why couldn't they have just translated the title directly and called it Werewolves ?? I mean, the whole premise of the movie is mashing up Jumanji (the game) with Werewolf (the game). Anywayz...

"I want something fluffy to watch," she says.

"How about a French werewolf - time travel comedy family film?" I suggest. Just saying that out loud makes me want to retroactively turn it off, but... we went with it.

Without any setup at all, we are in the living room of Gilbert Vassier (Jean Reno, My Penguin Friend), with his son Jérôme (Franck Dubosc, Cat and Dog) and his family, his new family, made up of his kid from his first marriage, her kid from her first marriage and the daughter they have had together. Gilbert is suffering some memory issues and the family is trying to spend some time with him in his home, before things have to change. 

I say "no setup" because we are just <poof> there not explaining that his cottage is outside Paris nor a really old family cottage, from as far back as medieval times. Also, the game of Werewolf they are trying to play is apparently something really old that Gilbert found hidden in the attic -- its ornate, of carved wood, with intricate playing pieces and Gilbert is just making up the rules as he goes along. Likely he played Mafia and is applying the same sort of rules, but in this game there are key characters such as The Witch, the Thief, the Hunter, etc. No sooner do they lay down some pieces, then there is some shaking and a flash.

They wake up in the same cottage but... its older, like medieval older. Middle Ages? I am not playing that game (I am -- Renaissance). And thus begins an American style screwball comedy full of utterly inane lines like, "What did you do with your house? Why is it all old?" but enough charm to keep us watching it. Again, likening it to an American comedy, the movie seems edited/butchered within an inch of its life. For example, there is a scene where they see a knight on horseback, and he charges at them, only to bounce off a shimmering bubble. "Oh, we have not time travelled, " says the teenage son, "We are in the game!" which is a neat idea, allowing one to play with the expectations of what can happen, what is nonsensical vs historical. But they almost immediately throw that out and they are indeed "in the past", but still having to follow the rules of the game and reveal who the werewolves are in order to escape the game / the past. The bubble never comes back into play again.

Eventually through the Power of Family they figure out what to do, who the werewolves are, dispatch a couple offscreen (family friendly!), bump into a random gay Italian inventor/artist, try to kick-start feminism, squabble and fight with each other, but finally pull together to defeat the final werewolf and his collaborators. When they return to the 21st century we see it was indeed time travel, for no good reason ever explained (why is there a magic game? what was the point of it all?) and see some ramifications of catching the eye of random Italian painter who, in the final scenes, admits his name was not Piero but Leonardo, and that he has a thing for Jérôme, and a certain famous painting is no longer about Lisa.

Of course, we have seen hundreds of American screwball family comedies, but part of me is tempted to see what the rest of the world does as examples. Sure, that hasn't worked out so well with horror, as my interest in what "is different" was supplanted by the often opaque cultural references that distract from my enjoyment of the horror, but it could be ... interesting/torturous? Gawds, imagine ending up watching each country's version of Rob Schneider.

There is a challenging train of thought emerging because of the last paragraph, where I strain about my lack of enjoyment from certain "foreign" horror movies. Am I attracted to "the different" in only small doses, or do I need enough of the "Western" connection to ascribe to the movie? Often the tropes I dislike in a non-Western movie, for example the heavy-handed family drama of Indonesian films, are also very apparent in familiar American films, but I understand the cultural structure and accept. Or maybe its just the examples I have watched are... not very good? Good in relation to horror movies is very subjective and what one audience LOVES in a horror movie is often not at all what I want, even in the West. But how well do certain standards to horror (and comedy) carry over from culture to culture?

Probably should have left that train of thought to October, maybe make a theme of exploring my ponderings for 2025.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Nosferatu

2024, Robert Eggers (The Northman) -- download

We've seen all Eggers features but for The Northman. Yes, I know, it's not that many but I can safely say we like all the work we've seen, and its nice to see someone doing distinctive work, stylish work that appeals to me. If you have seen our Halloween posting, you will know we are fans of vampires, and therefore have seen both predecessors (the original we saw with live musicians, including throat singers -- it was quite the experience) but to be honest, nothing sticks out to me, but for it being a homage rip-off of Dracula (there is history as to that) and the more horrible, more vourdalak-like, more monstrous depiction of a vampire. Of course, this image became a template to many depictions after.

The plot, the Dracula plot structure, wherein Thomas Hutter (Keanu Reeves Nicholas Hoult, Warm Bodies), a real estate agent / lawyer is sent to an ancient castle in Transylvania to secure signatures from Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård, The Crow), a reclusive nobleman seeking a house in the city, is intact --- the names and places have changed from the Stoker novel but the story hasn't. And his wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp, Wolf), the goth-ish waif who suffers a connection to an unseen evil and becomes distraught at her husband's failure to quickly return. While he is away she stays with friends Friederick (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Nocturnal Animals) and Anna Harding (Emma Corrin, A Murder at the End of the World), who become increasingly disturbed by her emotional outbursts and "fits". 

The arrival of Hutter at the ruined castle in Transylvania is almost a series of vignettes, beautiful gothic imagery, scene cuts and almost always black & white, a nod to the shadows that made the original silent film so stark. In fact so much of the movie fades from colour, except when bright sunlight or fire come into play -- only they let in the colour. And then there is Orlok himself, strangely enough, no a lithe sexual being as one would expect from 21st century vampires, despite my opening about the monstrous nature of "nosferatu", but with Bill Skarsgård playing the role, I expected his emaciated figure to play some sort of sexual role. But no, this is even more monstrous than the pointy ears and bald pate -- he is almost a giant, shrouded in mouldering garb, his Vlad Tepes moustache still somehow intact, his skin taught and corpse-like, sores and grave rot. He taunts and draws blood from Hutter until the man escapes, barely, awakening in a monastery whose monks explain the plot to him. A meagerly alive Hutter hurriedly returns to Wisburg to save his wife, and maybe the city.

Meanwhile Orlok has secured his passage, killed all the crew (as per The Last Voyage of the Demeter) and brought a plague to the German city. Ellen gets worse, which is made terribly so much more tragic by Orlok visiting the children and wife of the Hardings. A barely alive Hutter returns armed with knowledge that he must save his wife and the city, and seeks out a disgraced Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz (Willem Dafoe, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice), a man known for his knowledge of the darkness.

I never understood the true need for land ownership and real estate deals in these movies. At least in the original text, Dracula comes as a nobleman, sets up and lives a bit of nightlife in London. But here, it is but a walking corpse, hiding his depredations amidst the plague he brings with him. All he ends up doing is providing his address to his hunters.

The visuals are stunning -- the set dressing, the costuming, the winding narrow streets of the German city, and, of course, the shadows. But what dominates the movie in my memory is the tale between Ellen and Orlok. They are drawn together, seemingly since her childhood, and despite the horrific nature she is well aware of, it is sexual. Despite Orlok's very deathly appearance, it is sexual. A very disturbing aspect of sexuality, of desire and ownership at any cost. In the end, neither can deny what has drawn them together, and only in death can it be truly.... consummated. I was not titillated by Ellen's waifish sexuality, quite clearly the obvious, made uncomfortable by the unnatural act. This movie has succeeded in replacing the 21st century's desire to make all vampire stories about (sparkly?) desire by not only embracing the monstrous nature of the strigoi, but also tainting the act of seduction. The final image of a naked, now very dead, rotting Orlok laying upon Ellen was terribly unsettling.

I do wish I had seen this in the cinema, like Kent.

KWIF: Juror #2 (+3)

 KWIF = Kent's Week in Film. 

This Week:
Juror #2 (2024, d. Clint Eastwood - Crave)
The Wild Robot (2024, d. Chris Sanders - AmazonPrime)
Conclave (2024, d. Edward Berger - AmazonPrime)
The Gorge (2025, d. Scott Derrickson - AppleTV+)

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Juror #2 is Clint Eastwood's 40th film as director in just over 50 years, which is a remarkable achievement given what it takes to get a film made. Averaging it out, he has completed a new film every 16 months since he started directing, which is an astonishing pace compared to most other Hollywood directors. The actor/director turns 95 this year, and shows seemingly no signs of calling it quits, and will probably keel over on set. 

I have only seen a half-dozen of Eastwood's many directorial efforts, all being unfussy tales told in a pretty direct manner, with something to say through characters and story. This matter-of-factness about Eastwood's movies has never much appealed to me. I find his works mildly compelling in the viewing but with little stickiness afterwards, and very little to linger on.

Juror #2 continues that streak. It's Eastwood and first-time writer Jonathan A. Abrams' examination of the American justice system, which can be summed up as "it's a flawed system, but it's all we've got."  

Eastwood's focus here seems to be dead set on not generating any suspense or thrills. He wants to be clearn, this is not a John Grisham story, nor is it a courtroom drama, it is an exploration of subjectivity in the legal system and it never deigns to offer any answers.  It will neither condemn nor praise the justice system, as I think Eastwood's more conservative tendencies makes it hard for him to fully criticize any American institutions.   

The plot finds Justin (Nicholas Hoult, Dark Phoenix) -- a journalist, recovering alcoholic and expectant father -- reticently being selected for jury duty. The trial is of a second-degree murder case about an ex-gang banger who is charged with the death of his girlfriend. After an argument in a bar, she was found dead on the rocks down the side of a bridge.  Thing is, as the details are examined in court Justin realizes that he was there that night, at the bar, he saw the fight though he was lost in his own misery, and on his ride home in the rain, he hit what he thought was a deer, seeing nothing when he went out to check.

Justin wants to do the right thing, he wants to come forward, but his AA sponsor and lawyer (Kiefer Sutherland) tells him that coming forward, even though it was an accident, given his drunk driving history, it will result in a very hefty prison sentence and that he has a family to think about.

The thrust of the movie is not in the courtroom, but in the sequestered jury room, where, at first, Justin is the only hold-out on finding the defendant guilty. Without tipping his hat to his own complicitness, he tries to convince the others that there's reasonable doubt.  But the point of the movie is that despite being told to be unbiased and objective in their decision making, within a room of 12 individuals some are still going to have bias and base decisions on feelings.

Hoult does carry the film, with Toni Collette being the prosecuting attorney who is up for election as the District Attorney, and this case will make or break her. Her counterpart in the courtroom, the public defender played by Chris Messina is an altruistic true believer in justice and an old friend of Collette's who rides her hard about justice vs. politics, appealing to her sense of morals. It's a film lacking a villain and Collette could have easily been it, but she instead takes on the idea that she could be wrong and starts reexamining her own case.

There were avenues for this film to go down, ways of generating some incredible tension and emotional weight, but Eastwood really sidesteps these avenues for an almost clinical examination of this, I want to say, ridiculous scenario that's been concocted solely to examine these threads of the American justice system. It's not a full movie, but it's not an exciting one either. It's the type of film where you say "yeah, I get it" halfway through and then have to stick it out for the rest of the movie as it plays out hammering the same chord.

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There are levels to digital animation, and it's pretty obvious and immediate with a film when you're watching a top-tier-level animated movie and when you're watching something other. The Wild Robot is a second-level production in this hierarchy. At second-tier, it means you've got the studio backing and the celebrity voice talent, but the budget isn't nearly as high, thus the animation isn't as refined, and the story isn't as worked-over as it could be.

Within the opening few minutes of The Wild Robot I was immediately taken aback by some of the creature designs (and by creatures I mean actual woodland animals), and not in a good way... there's a blockiness to them that I think was intended to juxtapose against the roundedness of the robot protagonist. The fur and feathers and other textures of the creatures stood out to me, glaringly, a distraction that I never did fully get used to.

The titular Wild Robot awakens in the waters off the shore of an forested island. It is a task-oriented helper robot looking to every woodland creature to give it something to do. The creatures fear this automaton (except the raccoons who start pillaging it, the dirty thieves they are) and the robot prepares to send a distress beacon to be recalled home (except the raccoons steal the beacon). So the robot goes into learning mode, observing the creatures and watching the food chain play out, and along the way picks up the language so that it can speak with the animals. An accident causes the robot to knock over a tree, killing some geese and the robot finding an egg. After a chase sequence with a fox (Pedro Pascal, bringing a real Ben Schwartz energy), the robot is given the task of being a mother to a newly hatched, stunted-wing gosling. She must feed it, teach it swim and fly so that it can migrate for the winter.

In a bold choice, the film spends only about 10 minutes with the robot, her new fox friend, and the baby gosling as she develops her maternal instincts. It then smash cuts to months later, the gosling is grown and it needs to become part of the flock, failing miserably on first attempt. Migration is coming soon and to fulfill her task, the robot must get her baby in the air, ready for its long journey.

The film's first act leads to robot (named Roz, played by Lupita Nyong'o) picking up her assignment, and then jumping to putting a lot of the focus on Brightbill and his need to migrate. It's clear that in the process Roz has developed past her task-oriented programming and enabled maternal instincts and developed an approximation of emotions, and the film makes it frustratingly obvious to everyone but Roz and Brightbill (who suddenly becomes a rebellious teenager).

It feels like cheating, the time jump, and it frustrated me that this story that's partly about technology's increasing invasion upon nature doesn't do more with that thread. The third act finds Roz's, having succeeded at her task, recalling her corporate overlords, and nearly destroying the island in the process, which is the expected answer. It feels like the obvious stakes for the film, and as such wasn't fully satisfying.

Throughout the film the story toys with cohabitation within nature. It very clearly starts the film showing how the creatures of the island forest survive upon eating each other, but it starts trying to present this peaceful existence, of the creatures rallying as a community for their own self-preservation (or even to save Roz). While it makes for cozy kiddie-fare (which more and more the movie reveals itself to be) I found it hard to buy into.

It's an intentionally heartwarming film with a gentle disposition that 's hard to not be soothed by, but at the same time, it's not an honest production, and I had to keep shutting down my b.s. detector and relax into its vibe. Even still, the vibe isn't steady. The Wild Robot doesn't tell its story cleanly. I wanted to like it more.

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I'm not religious, like, at all. I'm proudly agnostic, and believe that faith can be a wonderful thing, but blind faith can be easily manipulated, and religious institutions are expert manipulators, and both the blindly faithful and those they follow are some of the key sources of evil in our global society.  

Conclave is a pseudo-political thriller that takes place inside the sterile marble walls of Vatican City in the wake of the reigning(?) Pope's death and the assemblage of cardinals from around the globe to vie for and select the new Pope, under the guise of enacting the will of God. 

But God rarely enters into it, and the election of Pope in Conclave is a fraught contest, severed down the line between regressionist conservatives and liberal progressives. Of course, among it all is a hefty level of in-fighting, bargaining, and secrets to be kept or exposed. At the center of it is Ralph Feinnes playing the dean of the College of Cardinals. He not only has no interest himself in assuming the papacy, but was preparing to resign from position as dean prior to the Pope's death. He is a good man, and thorough, and when he finds out dirt on any of the Cardinals in the running, he never directly outs them or exposes their dirt, but instead leaves it to them to do what is just and right as a member of The Church. Of course, the pettiness of others means the dirt gets tossed into the open anyway.

Most of my knowledge of the Catholic church comes from watching Father Ted, which at once lampoons and reveres the religion. Conclave is much, much more stern than Father Ted but I couldn't help but get the same sensibility out of it, that it was simultaneously reverential and also taking the piss. As a political thriller, it's sublimely pulpy with it's "shocks" and "twists", none of which are very surprising (at least until the finale) but still are quite delightful in their execution. 

It's all accentuated by incredible cinematography from Stéphane Fontaine, along with the direction and art department, practically every shot is an incredible composition in its own right. I found myself smiling at the framing of figures, or how the cardinal reds and whites contrasted against their surroundings. The laughably eccentric styling of robes and hats, especially when assembled en masse, look ludicrous, but in these compositions look like art. Seeing cardinals huddling in the courtyard in groups of three-to-five, smoking, gossiping, it's just incredible the overhead shot.  I liked the story of the film, but I loved looking at it. There may not really be any true action in the movie, but visually it's so engaging and a tense, plinking, screeching score from Volker Bertelmann makes one's pulse spike up.

It's a film that's not really saying anything pointedly (except that perhaps the Catholic church is as prone to political in-fighting as any other nation), it's just deliciously consumable entertainment.

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When I saw the trailer for The Gorge, I thought "That's such a Toasty movie". It was not a great trailer. It looked like so many other mid-budget, European-financed sci-fi-adjacent action thrillers... you know, the ones with small casts to keep the costs down, and kill a lot of runtime with just the two leads in static sets so as to leave the sci-fi element for the big climactic sequence. What was most baffling about the trailer was that it was for a film starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller, two fairly big names of the younger actors set... and not, the desperately-seeking-paycheque of, say, Nic Cage and Milla Jojovich.  It seemed too early in both their on-the-rise careers to be dumped into mid-budget Eurotrash sci-fi.  I thought for sure "This may not be a film Toasty likes, but it's most definitely the kind of film he likes to watch and write about."

For days I thought about that stupid-looking trailer because I couldn't get over that Teller and Taylor-Joy were in it. Then I learned that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were handling soundtrack duties, and that legit horror/Doctor Strange filmmaker Scott Derrickson was director. There had to be something more than what I was seeing.

Toasty recaps the film nicely in his review so I won't get into it the details much except to say that I found Teller's portrayal of being a shell-shocked veteran sniper to be fairly effective early on, but Taylor-Joy's Lithuanian sniper to be another in the relatively recent trope of quippy eastern bloc women killers (see also: Helena in Orphan Black, Yelena in the MCU and Max/Nichka in The Recruit) who seems completely unaffected by the work she does.

As Toasty points out, the premise of what's in the titular gorge is not inherently bad, but there are so many questions raised about the whys and hows of containing what's in the gorge that it threatens to undermine the logic of the whole movie (okay, maybe not threaten so much as cut the film off at its knees). And yet, if The Gorge succeeds at all, it's because it doesn't start as a movie about the gorge at all, but instead about these two characters falling in love (yes, really) and a critique of private military contractors who will stop at nothing to profit even more from war.

I really and truly bought into the accross-the-gorge romance between Teller and Taylor-Joy, and frankly, I would have loved a movie starring these two that was solely a wartime drama about them being on opposing sides of a conflict staring at each other through sniper lenses across some barrier between them, and connecting anyway.  There's some meat to that idea. 

The second act of this film gets lost in the mysteries of the Gorge and, at first I was surprised by how...bigger budgeted the world inside the gorge was. There's lots of bio-organic creepy-crawlies and vine-and-moss-ensconced skeletons to fend off and frankly, it all looks so much better than anything I was expecting. There are terrains and building within the gorge to discover, again, not at all what I was expecting, only to unveil the true nature of what our protagonists were up on those towers trying to stop from getting out.

As much as the unveiled world within the gorge impressed me, it was still far less interesting to me than the romance between our leads and I couldn't help but feel that the story loses sight of the characters once it starts playing into "unraveling the conspiracy".  Having just dashed through all 6 seasons of Lost in the two months, I'm all for secret buildings and old videos and mysteries, but it's not really what you were selling me on throughout your first act.

As Toasty notes, the more the film reveals about the gorge, the more ridiculous the setup becomes. I wasn't really thinking there was a mystery to explore going into the film. I was anticipating instead that within the gorge was some ruptured gateway to the afterlife and the undead soldier of past gorge-watchers were spilling out. I don't know if the film would have been better had the gorge been left more of a mystery, but the third act winds up feeling pretty perfunctory. It's a film that really needed a John Carpenter-esque approach, explaining less, and more of an unresolved ending.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Moana 2

2024,  David G. Derrick Jr, Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller (feature debut by people from other depts) -- download

Seriously? They stuck the sequel to a bunch of supporting people from other movies? Back in My Day, they would sometimes release a sequel straight to VHS. That was a sign they knew they could sell another movie with the characters but didn't have enough faith in it to actually invest in the movie. In today's world of barely releasing a movie in the theatre anyway, before dumping it onto a streaming service, I am not sure that old fashioned model applies anymore. Oh, I get there is still the determination about whether its worth advertising and distributing said movie in cinemas, but with a movie like this they knew they had enough draw for a cinema run to succeed as well as any can do in today's world. But then why not invest in the actual making of the movie?

The movie picks up not long after the first, long enough for the island to have regrown from the blight but not long enough for her new sister to have grown up, let's say three years. Moana, who now gleefully goes beyond the reef, wants to find other people, but is having no luck. Island after island is empty, with nary a sign of every having people. Until she finds a pottery shard.

Because of a vision, Moana (Auli'i Cravalho, Mean Girls) realizes she has to find a legendary sunken island, for it was this island that allowed all other peoples to connect to each other. More wrath of gods sunk the island, and she learns that her people, as well as all the others, will fade if they do not reconnect. Quest Time! But this time, armed with the skill & knowledge of bigger boats and a crew, they head out to recover the island. They figger they will find Maui (The Rock, Black Adam) along the way. Its not like they can raise an island on their own.

Like all sequels, it has to hit all the same beats as the first movie. The quest is similar, the segments are similar, the antagonists are similar (or they revisit them) and the music... well, the music is not similar. The music is entirely unmemorable. Like, entirely. Not a single new-tune is even remotely catchy. And as the movie closes with a rework of a piece from the first movie, I am reminded how disappointing that is.

I am noticing in my last dozen or so posts, a strong state of dissatisfaction with ... everything. Is it me? Is it the movies? To restate me having a low mood is redundant, as that is my normal state of being, but is it indicative of movies or of me? The only one I can I unabashedly liked without reserve was 10+ year old movie "The Samaritan". Others, I enjoyed but was just "OK" with. So, either I have to focus on watching actually good movies, or something is up with me (likely) or something is up with recent movies (entirely possible).

I absolutely love the first movie, the only Disney-flick I can say that about for more than a decade. There are elements of this movie I enjoyed, such as the addition of Moana bud Loto (Rose Matafeo, Starstruck), but for the most part I was not captivated at all. This movie had such the stink of Straight To to it, and entirely wasted all the good energy the first movie generated.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Fix

2024, Kelsey Egan (Glasshouse) -- download

South Africa, the near future, a dystopian world future where the air is toxic and millions are dying every year. Most people wear masks with filters but some have access to a wonder-drug AIRemedy which gives them a tolerance to the toxins. The corpo that makes it, Aethera, stockpiles it for the rich but is also scrambling to find synthetic ways to make more, because a key resource in its production is running out. Meanwhile another mysterious insurgency is working towards something else, hopefully for the betterment of all mankind.

Enter Ella (Grace Van Dien, Stranger Things), a model and actress, spoiled and bitter about how her world is not real. She doesn't trust anyone, doesn't really love anyone, and when she catches her boyfriend with her best friend, she quickly drinks down the new drug he stole from a street lab, to spite them. That was a mistake.

The drug begins to change her, alter her. Meanwhile Aethera is hunting her down, the authorities are hunting her down and the original drug creator is hunting her down. She's afraid of what's happening to her and angry at everyone. Eventually she has to trust someone, so why not the insurgency and their drug creating scientist who only wants to do right by the world. But not before she is altered in ways she can never return from, a bug-like human hybrid that was meant to become the new source for AIRemedy's key resource -- dragonfly blood? It didn't strike me that this goal was any less exploitative than Aethera's stockpiling, and one can easily imagine a world where the human-bug hybrids are farmed. But the movie doesn't go there, just saddles us with the boring reveal and let's Ella escape.

Egan's been in the movie making business for quite a while, dancing around in all areas, including stunt work and various production roles. You can see she knows how a movie is put together, but I am not sure its given her any true vision. But there is time for that. This movie looks and feels very indie but lacks any definitive edges to make the dystopian scifi stand out in anyway.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Gorge

2025, Scott Derrickson (Doctor Strange) -- download

Weird movie, a genre movie whose trailers presented a novel idea -- something not often done in today's scifi flicks, especially one from big studios with current it-people leading the movie. There is a gorge in the wilderness upon which stand two towers, one on each side, and single soldiers are positioned in each tower, one on each side, to watch over what is down in the gorge. Their duty is one year and they are not to make contact with each other; they are not told what is in the gorge. Of course, they make contact. Its a movie that came out on Feb 14, so we know what is expected to happen.

Sort of a "Twilight Zone" or "The Outer Limits" style premise.

The further oddity is that each side represents The East and The West, which is weird considering any Cold War aspect is long gone, and is there even an "The East" anymore? Sure, there is the looming evil of Russia with her few allies, but its not like the cinematic (and geo-political) divide of the 60s era exists anymore. When I saw the trailers, I was thinking the movie was set in some sort of alternate timeline, or maybe a near future where the gorge was a centre stake in the tension between the two sides. Alas no, the movie opens with mundane setup of the characters: one is an ex-sniper for the American military, and the other is a hitman for Russia who gets spotted completing a job. He, the American, has nowhere else to be, and she, the assassin, is being punished by being placed here.

The further dichotomy of this movie flies in the face of current American politics where they (via their current insane leadership) are quickly becoming an ally of Russia, making the movie have little sense in "this" reality.

This movie has a budget, has hot-ticket names leading in Miles Teller (Whiplash) and Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen's Gambit). Its a slick movie, well executed, well directed, tense and pleasing, both in the action-thriller parts and the "romance" parts. I was not sure where it was going to go, I posited many theories in my head as to what was going on down there in the mists of the gorge, especially after the reveal of the first antagonist. But in the end I was disappointed by the pedestrian nature of the reveal, something I would more expect from a video game or C-level Netflix series. But still, I enjoyed the experience.

I am still struggling by the dissolution of my head-canon as to who Ms Taylor-Joy is. Because my first [memorable] experience with her was Egger's "The VVitch", I had created a viewpoint that she was Scandinavian of descent, which is further complicated by the idea that movie is set in New England, not anywhere European. Sure, I didn't think she was another Alicia Vikander, but I built a background in my head, that she had some Nordic blood in her, went to school there, was raised there, or something to that effect. Nope, nada. No connection at all. Born in Miami, raised in England to parents of Argentinian and UK and Spanish heritage.

So, yeah, a Feb 14 movie, so romance. They two isolated figures break protocol and make contact, at first via long distance, mechano-magical binoculars, but eventually physically via a zipline. In some ways the romance is only an excuse for them to go down into the gorge; when the zipline fails and deposits Levi (Teller) into the gorge deep below, and Drasa (Taylor-Joy) makes her immediately down, to save him. That is where we get the reveal and set in motion a climax.

Here lie spoilers.

The gorge bottom itself is wonderfully alien and terrible, full of bugs and slithery things and teeth filled trees, something alien or eldritch. There was a brief moment where Levi witnesses a strange looking drone fly away, and I was thinking the bottom might be a portal to another world, another planet or dimension. But then they come across ruins from the 40s and it all turns out to be the product of an experiment gone wrong. They (both sides, The East and the West) had been working together, just post-WWII, on bio-weapons. Something went wrong and the weapon was released, changing the environment and the people. Initially soldiers were sent in to contain it, but they were also changed, creating immortal zombie-like human-plant-ickiness hybrid monster-men, but then the protocol of the two towers were constructed. The gun and mines installed, the protection to keep whatever was down in the gorge from getting out was established.

After the reveal, the whole setup felt entirely ridiculous. Why solitary watchmen? If they wanted to continue to exploit what was there, then why not a big, giant base, even if it had to wait for more technology to emerge, or the political environment to stabilize, then the 21st century protocol was just ... odd. Or if it was all considered too dangerous, which they did prepare for with an auto-mated nuke system, should whatever was down there succeed in escaping, then why not just destroy it all. The premise on its own is fun, but when it is explained, it just fell apart. So, the movie had to have it all apart by falling back on actioner tropes, with our characters shooting their way out, fighting monsters, and making sure it was all blowed up good. Still enjoyed the movie, but as always, wanted more.

KWIF: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (+2)

KWIF = Kent's Week(end) in Film.

This Week:
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982, d. Steven Spielberg - Crave)
Blink Twice (2024, d. Zoe Kravitz - AmazonPrime)
Miracle Mile (1988, d. Steve De Jarnatt - HollywoodSuite)

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E.T. was a big deal when I was a kid - both the character and the film. The movie was a crowd-pleasing sensation but for the kids and preteens it burrowed deep into us. At the end of the film, when the stunted, wrinkly, rubber-skinned alien has to say goodbye to the human family who took him when he was unfortunately abandoned, his finger glows and touches Elliott, whom he was most connected with, and says "I'll be right here."  And yeah, for those of us who watched and were affected by the film, he has in some form remained pretty ingrained in our brains. I'm guessing anyone who was a child of the '80's on this continent can cast a pretty clear picture in their mind of what E.T. looks like. 

Yes, E.T. is iconic, but unlike so many other pop culture icons he's not remained ubiquitous like he was in the 80's, he's not remained a pitch-thing for Reese's Pieces or been seen regularly schlepping for Honda or KFC or used in Space Jam or Wreck-It Ralph-style movies where "remember that thing" properties go for nostalgia tugs. No, E.T. remains (*taps forehead*) right here.

Did I love E.T. The Extra-Terrstrial as a kid? It's hard to say. I know I watched it enough times to be intimately familiar with its story, its repeated mantras, and have specific scenes live loudly in my mind. But, I was a Star Wars kid. To me the most exciting part of E.T. was when Elliott was introducing the spaceman to his Star Wars action figure collection. As an adult I now see how brilliantly director Spielberg and writer Melissa Mathison allowed the kids to exist as kids in this space, and a scene like that would absolutely resonate with the kids in the audience at that time, most of whom would probably have at least a couple Star Wars action figures in their room, and perhaps were important enough to them to be one of the first things they introduce to a friendly space goblin they've brought home.

Like most of us from the time, we grew up into angsty teenagers who tried to dismiss or erase their childhood. I would get pretty destructive with some of my childhood toys, and the films and television I enjoyed as a kid would be "baby stuff" and I would get pretty dismissive towards it [and yet, I never really stopped loving Star Wars, or the Muppets, or He-Man or most of my childhood things, so maybe it was just E.T.?]. I'm sure many of us in our teenage years looked at E.T. as emotionally manipulative claptrap for children, and for some of us that perception never went away. 

There's nothing cool about E.T. It's not a wild adventure movie, nor is it an action-packed space opera. It's a rousing drama about those brief, but intense moments from childhood that stick with us forever. Henry Thomas' Elliott is our guide through this spirited time of adolescence, the middle child who is too old and boyish to connect with his younger sister, Gertie (Drew Barrymore), and too young and annoying for his older brother, Michael (Robert MacNaughton), to want to spend time with him.  His dad has just run off with his mistress to Mexico, leaving his mom (Dee Wallace) to stoically do her best for her children, but it's clear she's barely holding it together.

When E.T. enters Elliott's life, after initially freaking each other out, there is a bond that is forged. Elliott is a lonely child, and he's unconsciously reeling from the absence of his father, and E.T. is a gentle stranded creature being hunted by men with flashlights in need of refuge. They fill an immediate need in each other's life, but quickly they come to care for each other, and they are literally psychically connected. They sense what each other is feeling. (I don't think I ever truly understood this aspect of their relationship as a kid.)

E.T. becomes a bonding point for Elliott and his siblings. The sister that he was distanced from is pulled into his circle of confidence, and his older brother suddenly is not only hanging out with him, but deferring to Elliott regarding what is in E.T.'s best interests. I would not have picked up on these sibling and family dynamics, nor how a third-party was a necessary thing in their life to bring them together in the wake of their father's abandonment of them.

Late in the second act of the film, E.T. has fallen ill, and so has Elliott as a sympathetic response. The visual of the pasty white E.T. and ailing Elliott in his waffle knit longjohns laying together on the bathroom floor was viscerally upsetting to me as a child. I never wanted to wear white waffle-knitted longjohns again, in case I would fall sick too. Michael is doing his best to try and care for the two of them, but he has no clue what to do. Their mom walks in only to panic, grab her children and try to flee they dying space goblin just as space-suited men start busting into every entrance of the home. It's a zombie attack-like sequence, and it was terrifying as a child. (As an adult, I think the NASA space suits, complete with sun-visor, is way overkill). 

The quarantining of the home, Elliott's gasping dialogue, E.T. conceding to his illness so that Elliott may live. The whole sequence was traumatic, which probably explains why I haven't watched this film in almost 40 years, even more than holding onto my teenage "manipulative bullshit for babies" opinion. It traumatized me (over and over again) and I didn't want to relive it.

E.T.'s sudden resurrection is a result of his psychic connection with his people being restored. Elliott knows his friend's revival is because his people are on their way back to retrieve him. It was E.T.'s disconnect from his people, not Earthly conditions or downing a six-pack of beer that caused him to fall ill. It's not something the film spells out for the audience (which could have been done easily through Elliott), but it is the answer to something I never understood as a child watching it.

The film is now over 40 years old, and it still packs a pretty good emotional whollop. The weight of the film falls heavily on Henry Thomas' young shoulders, with a pretty even distribution landing squarely on the extra-terrestrial of the title. Thomas is absolutely stellar, making clear choices and reacting with an exaggerated honesty that is incredible for a performer his age. The E.T. creature design is so alien as to be immediately off-putting but there's a gentleness in both the form and its expressiveness that softens the innate reaction. There's a couple of "bits" with E.T. getting drunk or getting dressed up in drag that require comedic timing and the puppeteers deliver.  The micromovements in E.T.s face and the expressiveness of the extending neck, along with the glowing bits and the adorable waddle, they all contribute to making a beloved character out of an aggressively unappealing exterior.

Returning to this as an adult, it's hard not to be swept up in such a deceptively simple story, especially when it features a sweeping John Williams score that punctuates every emotional beat.  It's Williams' score even more than the beats of the story that lead me to the "emotionally manipulative" critique. But that is the conductor's job is to accentuate the story and does it ever!  I couldn't help but let some tears loose (but oddly not at the moments you would think). The film connected to deep-seated emotions no matter how much I wanted to fold my arms and harumph my way through it.

Even the "bad guys" of the film aren't really the bad guys. Peter Coyote's man-with-the-keys-on-his-belt, unseen in full until the third act, is a most menacing figure that even at a young age we know from storytelling tropes that he's bad news. Except he's not. He's not effectively there to help E.T. get home, but he is there semi-altruistically to meet an alien, something he's dreamed of since childhood. He recognizes Elliot's connection to E.T., and being an adult, is aware of the nature of man, and is grateful to Elliott that he got to him first. All the scientists and whatnot try to help save both the alien and the child, unaware of their psychic connection nor the creature's need to return to his people. Their sin as the film's villains is that of adults throughout the film, of being emotionally oblivious to the needs of the world and its people and creatures. 

Do I love E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial? Nah. Not so much. I still kind of find it to be emotionally manipulative bullshit. But I can see things in it as an adult that I couldn't see as a child that tip me off to the immeasurable craft and care that went into the production, and the exceptionalism is evident all throughout the film. 

E.T. is incredibly well-constructed, and plays like magic, but there are still things that keep me at arms length from truly embracing the film (outside of the traumatic childhood response). While I'm quite fond of E.T.'s empathic connection to Elliott, I hate his telekinetic ability. I hate that he floats things around and especially hate the flying bikes. Even as a kid I didn't care for these sequences that tried to recall Superman (with another Williams score). It never made sense to me invoking superpowers into this otherwise grounded tale, and it winds a pretty convenient deus ex machina.  I also don't like that E.T., despite coming to a certain comprehension of our language, never presents his (its) name to his Earthly friends...assuming his people have names. I'm fine with "E.T." as a film title, but kind of hate it as a character name. Can't he be called, like, Grogu or something?

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Blink Twice, at least as it plays on AmazonPrime, opens with a trigger warning from the studio and Amazon, noting that the film deals with sexual assault. It's also a spoiler warning that dramatically changes the tenor of the opening act.

Roommates Frida (Naomi Ackie) and Jess (Alia Shawkat) are also best friends and coworkers. Their current gig is as caterers at the Met Gala, where Frida spies billionaire tech mogul Slater (Channing Tatum). She had just seen him earlier on social media making apology statements about some misconduct or other, but it's clear Frida was fixating on him, not what he did or what he was saying. At the gala, she fixates on him, and can't seem to pull her attention away. 

Frida and Jess ditch their waiting garb for eye-catching red and blue dresses (respectively) and Frida once again spies Slater and starts to stride towards him, but breaking her heel and careening hard to the ground. It's Slater who picks her up and seems utterly fascinated by her. He takes Frida and Jess into his inner circle, introducing them to all the names and faces within (including Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Adria Arjona, Haley Joel Osment and Kyle MacLachlan). The conversation is freewheeling among them all, but Slater and Frida seem most locked in on each other. Slater says the party is going to his private island retreat, and asks if Jess and Frida would like to join.

At the island homestead all phones are requested, so as not to interrupt the festivities. Frida and Jess are each given private quarters and bleached-white bikinis with vibrant white linen skirts and shawls.  All the women are. They settle in by the olympic-sized pool for cocktails and big fat blunts and other drugs, with exquisite catered dinners and relaxed conversation, though with strangely pointed personal questions, a few directed right at Frida, feeling both an outsider and yet, somehow, comfortable in this space with Slater fawning attention on her. The frivolity extends into the evening women running in the massive grass courtyard, their white linens flowing behind them as they giggle and squeal. 

And the days seem to repeat themselves. Drugs, drinks, food, pool, dancing, frolicking. The days blur into a sameness of dejavu, but one that seems too blissful to want to escape from.

All is not perfect however as the staff, who don't seem to speak fluent English, tend to avoid Frida. One woman on staff, an elderly maid, spies Frida and points at her repeating "red rabbit" over and over again. And there's also a snake problem that the staff spend a lot of time tending to. But Jess gets bitten by a snake, and hours later starts freaking out, the bliss of this retreat completely gone. Frida tries to soothe her, but wakes up the next morning to find Jess not only gone but her existence completely unacknowledged by anyone else.

It's from there that Frida starts to unravel herself, and the island seems more like a prison than a vacation. 

Even without the trigger warning at the head of the film, I'm pretty certain Kravitz's fairly exceptional direction leads us to understand that Slater is "stranger danger" and his uncontrollable allure to Frida is a bit of a puzzle. Frida and Jess agreeing to go with feels like an "oh no" moment, doubled when cel phones are requested be handed over, and once more when all the wome are graced with the same exact wardrobe. It's a definite "Get Out" vibe. 

I don't know if the film hadn't had the trigger warning if I would have felt the opening time on the island was more casual...a more "where is this going" sensibility? I would have maybe wondered if they were all in danger. Given the stacked cast, there was a Glass Onion sensibility mixed in with the Get Out vibe. It could have went anywhere, but the trigger warning spelled out where it was going from the start. Not completely, but we know.  And I was on edge, nerves frayed, the entire time.

There is a process of discovery, and my stomach started to churn as things unravelled. It's what we thought it was, but also somehow so much worse. But it's not just trauma porn, it's also a revenge flick.  We so desperately want the tables to turn, and when they do it's only somewhat satisfying. Almost too beholden to the power dynamics, Kravitz concedes that this can't just be an easy win, and it gets pretty ugly.

The power dynamics are the baseline to the entire plot, and the conclusion subverts those dynamics in the most...capitalistic way possible, such that I wasn't satisfied by it, but I got it. It's a control thing.

In the moment, I was too frazzled (and quite invested) in Frida's increasingly horrifying predicament and not necessarily examining the scenario she was in. There are questions and holes to be poked into the way memories are masqued and restored, but it's best not to look too deeply as it could all unravel, and as much as I was upset by it, I liked the film enough not to want to pull it apart.

Kravitz's debut feature looks amazing. It's a sun-baked film with vibrant colours and Adam Newport-Berr's cinematography captures picture-perfect frames in a movie where photos are constantly being taken but never seen.  It all reminds me a tid of Don't Worry Darling, another exceptional-looking feature from an actress-turned-director that tells a fundamentally flawed story of abuse and assault set in a heightened reality very very well. I would say Blink Twice hangs together much better than Don't Worry Darling (which is more of a puzzle box) but it's not a competition and we don't need to pit the two films against one another.  Ultimately it is important that stories about assault and abuse and/or the fear and anxiety and/or trauma thereof come from women storytellers and are presented on the main stage rather than as niche or arthouse features.

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The Miracle Mile is a Los Angeles neighbourhood that includes extensive residential and commercial buildings, and is higlighted by its shopping and museums, as well as the La Brea tar pits.  It is, like many "downtown" commercial cores, very active during the day and quite sparse at night.  It could be a really charming setting for a romantic comedy, or a haunting environment for a post-apocalyptic wasteland. 

The film Miracle Mile opens with Harry (Anthony Edwards) providing a monologue over a montage of images, talking about love and connections and missed opportunities, as he spies Julie (Mare Winningham), and can't help but be captivated by her, following her around the La Brea Tarpit museum. They eventually connect, their dialogue is cute and flirty, and they have a couple of dates that dip in and out of montage. Visually it's all gauzy, hammering home the dreamy falling-in-love moments. Julie promises a more intimate encounter for their third date, and she advises Harry to head back to his hotel to rest up while she heads to her waitressing gig, ending at midnight.

A power surge interrupts Harry's alarm clock and he wakes up three hours late. At the all-hours diner where she works Harry tries to draw out Julie's contact info from the waitress. After making a futile call in the phone booth outside the diner, the phone rings back. Harry picks it up. On the other end is someone frantic, mistaking Harry for their father, and telling them about how the missiles have been launched. It's an hour and counting to doomsday. 

Edwards is fantastic in wrestling with the info he's received from this phone call. He doesn't know how to parse it out, and the patrons of the diner, most he's never met, are his only lifeline to his sanity. It just so happens there's someone in the diner with enough connections that they can at least corroborate that Harry heard something he wasn't supposed to, and it sparks off panic among the diners. It's time to get the eff outta dodge. But Harry, having just met the love of his life, isn't going to leave Julie behind.

Just getting to her is an epic feat on its own, nevermind getting to the rooftop helipad that will take them to the airport and to safety. Events continue to escalate into increasingly upsetting acts of violence as zero hour looms. It's all happening real-time as well, which adds to the tension. We rarely leave Harry's side, though the camera may glance away at some aspect of chaos or another or linger behind in a situation before jump cutting back to Harry.

By the time dawn breaks, the streets have erupted, and it's straight-up madness. Some familiar faces come back around, but in more dire straights. Harry starts to question, given the timing, whether he "Chicken Littled" the whole scenario and has all this rioting, death and chaos on his shoulders.

Miracle Mile works exceptionally well because of its real-time gimmick. It lets us feel the intensity as those minutes counting down without relying on any countdown clock motif (but occasional check-ins with the time via community clocks do give us bearings). It also works so incredibly well because it does cast that doubt that Harry just might have misconstrued something, or that it was an elaborate prank call. It's easy to forget amongst all this that Harry is just a tourist, that this isn't his home and that he doesn't know his way around very well. He relies upon others, but learns quickly that most others aren't easy to rely upon.  His desperation isn't self-survival but to hold onto the love he's only briefly found, and it's his greatest desire to service that love, protect it, even over self-preservation. It drives him to extremes, but even some things are still an extreme too far for him.

It's a pulse-pounding, exciting and somewhat upsetting film, as pre-apocalyptic stories tend to be. It's only through Winningham's winning affability that there's some oasis from all the weight of the night's events.

I had seen Miracle Mile a couple decades ago and I have a vague recollection of liking it, I didn't remember much outside of images of the diner, the mall, 80's clothing, and the very memorable ending. It was great to revisit it with almost fresh eyes and I can't see forgetting it any time soon.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Killer's Game

2024, JJ Perry (Day Shift) -- Amazon/download

If I can say anything positive about Back in Action it is that it was exactly what it meant itself to be --- it just did not mean anything good. But it is true to itself, in tone and execution. I wish this movie had been so, because all in all, I really enjoyed this movie, it just ... was a bit uneven.

The elevator pitch -- a hitman finds out he is dying of an incurable disease, and goes to his competition to take a hit out on himself. Then he finds out they got the diagnosis mixed up with someone else and has to fight off everyone trying to kill him.

Dave Bautista is that hitman, desperate to shed his Drax suit, taking (thankfully) leading roles that place him as the well-rounded Cool Tough Guy Who Gets the Girl. The opening of this movie is about getting that girl, as Joe Flood (Dave Bautista, Riddick), a Europe-based hitman (another Hollywood movie banking on the incentives shooting in Europe provides) has a meet-cute during one of his jobs. The girl is Maize (Sofia Boutella, Rebel Moon: - Pt One: The Child of Fire), a dancer, and Joe kills an oligarch in her audience, but also helps rescue her from the ensuing chaos. They hit it off, and the movie does its best to avoid the Beauty & Beast scenario despite Bautista's looming over her. The most beastly thing about him is his haircut.

The opening sequence, the setup, is sobre, serious, even gentle. Uncharacteristic of these movies (assassin movies) Flood's handler Zvi (Ben Kingsley, Iron Man 3) is a friend and even helps Joe set himself up to get out of the business. That is, until Joe's headaches turn out to be Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and his world comes collapsing down around him. Joe goes to Antoinette, a handler for a rival organization that hates him cuz Joe killed her father ("My name is Marianna Antoinette, you killed my father, prepare to die," in a French accent). She joyfully accepts the job, as well as Joe's conditions. Until Joe finds out the doctor switched the results, and Joe is not the guy who ate contaminated brains. He finds this out just as the first international assassin attacks him at his home.

It was at this point that the movie's tone shifted drastically, becoming almost comical in its depictions of Joe's rival assassins, the colourful killers who took on Antoinette's job, almost cartoon exaggerated characters, including a Korean gang, a pair of Scottish brothers, a pair of Ritchie-an London hit women, a dancing Mexican, etc. Antoinette refuses to cancel the contract and even goes further, increasing the bounty. Silly acting killers come out of the woodwork. It all comes down to a splodey fight in a castle, cuz "Europe-based".

Don't get me wrong; it's fun, but the shift in tone was disappointing. And it leads the movie down an irreverent path towards quips and snarkiness, which I generally enjoy, but I so much more liked the sombre introduction to the character. But assassin movies these days have to be flashy and full of dark comedy. Bautista was alright, though I am not sure he is able to act his way out of his bulk. Despite a vast amount of slimming down since his more bulkier roles, the man is still a giant, especially when standing next to Boutella. Sure, that is the point, but it wasn't the point of his character, who is supposed to be sly and maneuverable, a sniper rifle, not a sledge hammer.

What? You don't mention Terry Crews as sexi-fied assassin Creighton Lovedahl (best name EVER!) who flips on Pom, and helps a Bautista out? Or Alex Kingston as Zvi's ex-prostitute wife and how they're absolutely adorable together?!?

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Self Reliance

2023, Jake Johnson (feature debut) -- Netflix

Watch a movie on our list? Or watch something that just appeared on Netflix, because it caught our attention....

Sigh.

Not that heavy of a sigh, as this was alright. And the premise is ... interesting? This is where my lack of commitment to an opinion comes into play. Was the movie worth the effort put into watching it? I guess I will have say "yes" for I did mildly enjoy it. But just mildly shouldn't be enough these days; I should want for at least Good if not Great. That is the reason for the sigh.

Dude, you're spinning out.

Premise. Andy Samburg (actor but also character) pulls up in a limo to proposition Tommy (Jake Johnson, The Mummy), a loser -- the people he represents will give Tommy $1,000,000.00 (Doctor Evil cackle) if he survives 30 days. During those 30 days if he is alone, other players (staff?) of "the game" are permitted to murder him. They cannot attack him if he is in the presence of others. This is all some sort of European (usually these things are Japanese but the really nice Danish guys was a fun twist) dark-web reality show and he is also informed that there will be cameras and observers everywhere so it can all be televised. Its sort of like Jackpot! but more dark comedy than directly comedic. 

This is Jake Johnson's directorial debut, movie wise. He also stars.

Its fun, its quirky and on-brand for Johnson, in that the character is entirely spinning out from almost the beginning. Its not as easy for him as he thought it would be, to find someone to always be around. His family doesn't believe him and labels this just another episode in his usual behaviour when he doesn't want to face something -- in this instance, he hasn't gotten over his breakup two (two!!) years ago. Literally the best thing about the movie is his older sister Mary sniggering in the background and goading Tommy every chance she gets.

Most of the movie is vignettes of Tommy being stalked by the other players (again, maybe staff?) and the few people who indulge him, until they cannot handle him any longer. Even the homeless guy (Biff Wiff, Trade Show Show) he pays to follow him around seems somewhat annoyed. Even the girl (Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air) who answers his Craigslist ad, claiming she is also playing the game, eventually tires of him spinning out. And yeah, so did I.

What more would I have wanted? More lunacy, more violence, more zaniness. I mean, if I was watching the game I would have been bored almost immediately. There are hints that the killers sent after Tommy are quirky individuals -- cowboy (Jeff Kober, Sons of Anarchy), giant in a Michael Jackson jacket (Boban Marjanovic, John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum) -- but there aren't enough of them. I means, its LA; there should have been more just regular LA weirdoes. 

In the end, it was alright but as hinted above, I am not sure I am satisfied with alright right now, and yet, that is what I keep on shoveling into my mouth.

Captain America: Brave New World

 2025, d. Julius Onah - in theatre

I have been fairly defensive about the post-Endgame Marvel Cinematic Universe movies even when most critics, and, it seems, much of the populace, has become pretty exhausted by them.

I have invested a lot of viewing time and contemplative energy into the MCU, so I want to see it succeed, but a lot of the recent Marvel entries I feel like I have to be quite forgiving and charitable towards despite seeing a lot of the same flaws that their harsher critics identify.  

It's hard, though, with films like Thor: Love and Thunder, The Marvels and Captain America: Brave New World to really invest in them when they seem so aggressively (and noticeably) chopped up and restructured, riddled with scenes that seem truncated on odd beats, weird additional dialogue recordings that don't sound like they are part of the scene, pace-halting exposition-heavy cut-in sequences, or truly, brain-meltingly ugly reshoot scenes (in an otherwise nice-looking film) that feel so out of place within the film's sequence like they were inserted from another reality.

Brave New World is riddled with these distractions, but, at its core it results in a decently engaging superhero, but largely forgettable, political thriller in a superheroic world.  

The film opens with Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross (Harrison Ford, replacing William Hurt in the MCU after his passing) having just won the Presidency. In his victory speech he hammers home the point of bringing the country, and the world, "Together." His key initiative is a global accord around mining right of the giant Celestial being turned to stone in The Eternals, which, it turns out, contains an unrefined metal that can be refined into Adamantium, a metal on par or superior to Wakanda's vibranium. 

Sam Wilson, now Captain America (Anthony Mackie), has decided to support the "Together." initiative and work with Ross, whom he was on opposite sides of during the superhero Civil War. Sam, now with an upgraded flight suit of Wakandan technology, is also reluctantly coaching his man-in-the-chair pal Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) in becoming the new Falcon, with the forgotten Captain America, Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) acting as trainer.

But at a White House event, something triggers Bradley and a number of other Secret Service agents into attacking President Ross and his diplomatic guests, setting off a conspiratorial puzzle Sam, Joaquin and special attache (and ex-Black Widow) Ruth Bat-Seraph must unravel.

The film is trying so hard to follow in Captain America: The Winter Soldier's footsteps, but it misses the key element of that film, which is having the story be of personal consequence to Sam Wilson. Sure, Sam's investment is about freeing Bradley who is clearly a pawn in all of this, but it's still a tale that's actually centered around Ford's President Ross, with the mastermind behind it all having been reported two years ago in casting leaks, so there's no surprise to scale up to.  Even the big reveal that the villain of the piece has been playing Ross for years and has set the foundation for Ross to turn into the Red Hulk, something which should have been a cheer-worthy surprise (as it's teased throughout the first two acts before erupting in the third) but was heavily part of the marketing campaign for the movie.

Throughout it all is rising political stakes as America and Japan seem to be heading towards war as they view for control of the Celestial.  It all seems a bit much for a man in a high-tech bird suit to take on, but that's what is supposed to elevate Sam Wilson, that he is the man capable of solving nations going to war and a Hulk rampaging on Washington.

There is a scene or two with Sam having to face his own limitations, having to face the pressure of being a Black man taking over the moniker of a legend and knowing there are people depending on him to succeed, just as there is a contingent of people eagerly looking for him to fail. He speaks to his imposter syndrome, the pressure that's on him, and how one slip-up is all it will take for it to be all over.  I wish this was more at the heart of the film.  Sam did spend a lot of energy in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier denying the burden of carrying the shield before stepping into it. This touches upon what he now faces, but not enough, and it seems somewhat watered down.

Captain America, whether it's Steve or Sam, is meant to lead and inspire. Steve had a super-soldier serum coursing through is veins that gave him strength, speed and agility to physically stand up in a fight. Sam may have technology, but has to rely upon his wits, his compassion, and his trauma counsellor training as much as any physical skills. There are a few examples of that here, some better than others (as those in the reshoots seem...a bit rushed and unrefined as far as speeches go).

Most of the aerial sequences are really good, but none are great. The film doesn't give us the sense of wonder of flying like Sam so much as it show Sam flying. It looks pretty cool, but it's not a visceral experience. It's a problem Marvel's been having increasingly is their sense of superpowers has devolved into a very matter-of-fact, into a given as opposed to something unique and worthy of continued awe.  Sam's new suit, containing Vibranium technology much like Black Panther's suit, allows him to absorb kinetic energy and erupt it back, as well the wings contain razor-sharp blades that can slice a car in half if necessary. In an effort to have bigger fight sequences, we find the suit doing things that test even its super-science credulity. It would be far more interesting if Sam had to puzzle his way through these encounters rather than just be CGI figures fighting CGI planes and missiles and other CGI characters.

Of course it all leads up to what the trailers promise, Captain America versus Red Hulk, and it's here where I was finally really impressed. The likeness of Ford they captured in Red Hulk is so good that I would believe that Ford actually gave a performance as the beast (can you imagine Harrison Ford in a mo-cap suit?). And the rampage through Washington, the wanton damage to the White House, all looked pretty spectacular. There was a density to it all, a sense of the heft and strength of the Red Hulk and the lack of resistance that the buildings around him could provide. 

Brave New World spent a lot of time with President Ross trying to prove to the world, but mostly his daughter, Betty (a returning Liv Tyler) that he was a changed man, no longer the might-makes-right General, but a more forward thinking, diplomatic individual. Were this solely a film about Ross, it seems right that in the end it would be his daughter who would talk him off the rage-ledge that turned him into a Hulk.  It's so clear that this is what the film was leaning towards, but in the end they understood that this resolution takes away Sam's agency as the hero of the piece and it ends with a reshoot sequence of Sam appealing to Ross in a pretty unconvincing manner.  

The shadowy adversary is the grand manipulator of the events of the film, and it's only through Sam's intervention that his plans go completely awry. So it winds up thoroughly unsatisfying in conclusion that the villain of the piece just surrenders himself in a parking lot in the ugliest reshoot of the film. I can't even speculate what the original sequence was going to be but this was a horrendous resolution to that thread and made absolutely no sense for the character. Plus, this character's story was specifically tied to Ross and not Sam, which, again, undercuts the title figure.

Mackie is really, really good here. He's the leading man of the picture, and he seems to get what it means to "level up" a character. It's a film that does level Sam up in many ways, but it doesn't do him complete justice. It robs him of focus time and again in making the events all about Ross, and having Sam doggedly stick his nose into them.  Ross should have been much more on the backburner, and the film should have had the courage of its convictions to make Ross more outright the enemy. But it seemed determined to disprove that idea "a man can never change", and it had lofty goals of striving for a healing bridge in a divided nation.

But Sam Wilson will not be the healing bridge. He's a character in a movie. Points for ambition, but double points deducted for middling execution.

These Marvel films, being confined by their predetermined release dates, are suffering as a result. If the films need to be so heavily restructured in their editing then it's clear they need more time in the scripting and planning stages. They need to be less beholden to pre-visualized fight sequences and work harder at character-centric stories and letting their storyteller take the lead over "universe expanding", or in this case, circling back on ideas and characters from the past.  

The shared universe was once a feature of the MCU, but it's now becoming a bug, a storytelling crutch that's not helping something that seems to have two broken legs.

It's a movie. It's not offensive, but it's also not great.

KWIF: Purple Rain (+2)

KWIF = Kent's Week in Film... or rather it's "Kent's Week in Film but from two weeks ago because one of the films he stopped halfway through watching and put off finishing the column until he finished watching that film rather than just posting about the two films he had seen"... but KWIFBFTWABOOTFHSHTWAPOFTCUHFWTFRTJPATTFHHS is kind of an unruly acronym.

This Week:
Purple Rain (1984, d. Albert Magnoli - dvd)
Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (2024, d. Jeff Fowler - in theatre)
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992, d. Francis Ford Coppola - crave)

---

I can't say how many times I
have seen this poster but in
adding it to this post, it's the first
time I've ever noticed the woman
(Appolonia) in the background. That's
just how much Prince draws all the 
attention.

Prince was, without a doubt, a most distinct musician, a singular performer, and a one-of-a-kind persona on and off stage. He was an incredibly prolific songwriter, such that in the years since his passing there's still apparently thousands of recorded songs in his "vault" yet to be released (a lot of the delay in releasing said recordings is due to the legal turmoil over his estate). With such an astounding volume of output, even when just judging what was released when he was alive, it's no surprise that I love some of his songs, like some others, and the vast remainder I classify as "not for me". 

Prince was never my guy. He didn't have to be. Ever since I've been aware of pop music, Prince was there, to the point that I've never had to think much about him... he's just been a part of my audio diet my entire life. I never had to put a Prince album on, I would just get Prince in my life by being out in the world. But when I did put a Prince album on, to be honest, they didn't connect.  I guess I just didn't understand.

In finally watching Purple Rain, over 40 years after its release, I think I understand now. Music is Prince's art (duh), and like many artists, it seems like so much of it is specific to who he is.  His art is not created with others in mind, he is not motivated by being crowd pleasing, his art is just what came crawling (or spewing) out of him.

Purple Rain is a rarity in music biopics in that the artist was still in his ascendancy when the biopic was released, the artist plays himself in the film, and the artist managed to make the biopic about the success of new music created for the film, rather than any established hits. 

Prince and his band The Revolution came up in the Minneapolis music scene in the 1970's along with Morris Day and the Time, but the movie transposes the story to the early 1980's.  It's so '80's it hurts.  Having recently watched Streets of Fire, which came out the same year, both movies start out the same way, with vibrant neons screaming out of the shadows and pulsating pop hits blissfully inundating the audience's ears (on screen and off), but where Streets of Fire gets lost in its pseudo-reality that mashes up the 80's with the 50's, Purple Rain seems to be archiving the look and feel of the era. It's 80's and it hurts, but hurts so good.

Prince plays "The Kid" while Morris Day plays himself. They are rivals, competing for time and attention on the local music circuit. The Time's combination of boisterous rhythm-heavy soul mixed with Motown-style stagework is an obvious crowd-pleaser. The Revolution, playing The Kid's songs, are about challenging the audience, experimenting with sound, toying with expectations, and the audience runs hot and cold on them (I can relate).

Enter Appolonia, a beautiful wannabe pop singer from New Orleans who heard about the Minneapolis scene, and presumably a stand-in for Sheila E in Prince's true life story. She becomes the object of desire for both The Kid and Day, but we all know who's going to get her in the end. Day promises her the attention she craves from an audience, but she can't resist the wounded artistic soul of The Kid.

It should be noted that Prince, in playing The Kid, is...well...Prince circa 1984 all the way. The dramatically high hair, the one-of-a-kind exquisitely tailored outfits that bridge the gap between runway and superhero, and that bad-ass purple motorcycle that looks like it belongs on the streets of Gotham. The film's most absurd moment is seeing the kid run off stage while his band is still playing, stroll through the backstage corridors, burst out the back door, hop on his bitchin' ride, ride through the streets of Minneapolis (or L.A. posing as) to wind up parking in the driveway of in the most generic post-war bungalow. When you look like The Kid, you should have a freaking Batcave, or at the very least an all-brick-interior loft, not a room in your parent's basement.  

But this is the shattering of the pastiche of Prince that makes this fictionalized biopic so essential to understanding the man. The Kid enters his home to find his father, once again, beating on his mother. His father is a hulk of a man, at least compared to The Kid who barely scratches 5 feet tall and whose body weight doubles with all the gel in his hair. There's not much he can do to stop his dad, and that powerlessness is foundational.

Not only that but we learn that The Kid's father used to be a musician as well, bordering on big-time. His mother too, a singer on the scene...but it was their union that - instead of creating a force to be reckoned with - sunk them both into a toxic relationship of abuse and substance abuse, bearing a child who would grow up looking to escape them. But The Kid, with Appolonia, finds himself echoing his parent's dynamic, and catches himself, but not before it's too late.

Prince's best performances in the movie are when he's on stage (and seemingly half the movie is comprised of full-song stage performances, fully to the film's benefit) but he's still undeniably watchable and charismatic off that stage. Prince exposes his ugly side unabashedly, and he tells you exactly where that ugly side came from. It's not a point of pride, but also not something he wants to hide. The Kid, like Prince, is quiet and unassuming, but struts with confidence...except when he doesn't. The Kid never breaks outside of who we've ever seen Prince as, which is astonishing for a story that goes the places that it does. It's as if the image of Prince isn't an image at all, or else the Prince persona is so ingrained in him he can perform it with complete ease. Either way, it doesn't seem like acting.

Morris Day doesn't come off in the greatest light, here. He's like a high school bully, picking on the sensitive artist kid, and he's a nasty womanizer with a distasteful sense of humour. But, in playing himself, Day softens this with playing his whole schtick as camp. Like, he's not a punchline, but he and his entourage dial up their presence to the max, and then go over the top with a wink. At one point early in the film Day encounters a clingy ...ex-girlfriend? one-night-stand?... on the street and has her literally disposed of into a dumpster. It's disgustingly misogynist in context and riotously absurd in execution.

A sub-plot in the film finds The Kid's Revoloution bandmates Wendy and Lisa looking to have the band play a song they've written, and The Kid, certain only his genius matters, keeps denying them. But, in the film's climax, their song is the film's title track that not only bowls over the crowd but cements The Kid's status as the supreme performer in town (and wins back Appolonia)... except that Prince clearly wrote "Purple Rain" and the only track written by Wendy and Lisa on the soundtrack is "Computer Blue". I have to wonder if there was some other truth behind that fiction from Prince's backstory (especially considering Wendy and Lisa were rather new to The Revolution prior to the film's production).

I won't mince words, I loved Purple Rain. It's so shockingly unlike most musical biopics, the ones that try to span entire careers or focus on how the hits were generated. This is a slice of life movie, with a killer soundtrack, immensely energetic stage performances, and wholly understated drama. Never once is the intent of a scene spelled out, never once does the film give us the sense of pat resolutions, and never once does it stretch outside the immediate story its telling. It's not projecting in any way the future celebrity The Kid-aka-Prince is about to experience, it doesn't have record label executives in the audience of the climactic performance ready to sign him up to a million dollar record deal, it never even intones there's a world outside that Minneapolis music scene worth giving a damn about.

This is a very, very personal film to Prince and I came out of it impressed with the restraint, the honesty and the lack of ego it took to play someone who is both very egotistical but also very wounded inside, and to show the origins of that pain. And it makes so much sense that the songs within the film are sometimes there to express emotions The Kid cannot express except on stage, but it also makes sense that some of the songs are just outright crowd-pleasing hits. The soundtrack is ludicrously good.

I came out of viewing the film with a new sense of appreciation for Prince, for his artistry. His songs, even when they're not the refined pop hits, are still expressions of himself, his creativity, his sense of exploration and curiosity, his appreciation for music, both in where it's been and where he can take it. I don't necessarily like it all, but I do appreciate much better the man behind the art.

---

There are a LOT of posters
for Sonic 3, but 10 of them, like
this one, are fun parodies of
famous Xmas movie posters

I have never been a hardcore gamer, and I haven't played a video game that isn't a simple mobile time waster or digital board game adaptation in a very, very long time. I lost the drive to while away the hours on such things.  As such most video game-turned-movies hold zero interest for me, whether it's Assassin's Creed, Hitman, Prince of Persia, Super Mario Bros. or Sonic the Hedgehog.

I watched maybe half an hour of the first Sonic movie before getting distracted and never returning. It was fine but didn't captivate me in any way. A couple  of years later and I found myself at a screening of Sonic 3 because my teen asked me to go with them, and I've always said "I'll go see any movie" (although I still groaned and asked if we could go see Companion or Presence instead...alas).

In Sonic 3, Sonic has to learn how to be a team player with his new pals Knuckles and Tails, especially now that Shadow is on the loose.

Shadow was captured by a shadowy inter-governmental agency and run through experiments nearly 50 years earlier. The only thing that made it passable for Shadow was the friendship and companionship of the granddaughter of the lead scientist, Prof. Robotnik (double-senior to the usual Dr. Robotnik). When she is killed in an accident, Shadow is put on ice. Now that he is free, it's up to Sonic and team, partnering up with a depressed (and still alive) Dr. Robotnik to find Robotnik's grampa and save the day.  Except grampa  Robotnik is a nefarious guy with his own plans and things are bound to go haywire.

Sonic 3 is passably entertaining.  The effects are decent and there's some pop to some of the action sequences, though they're not pushing any boundaries here. I didn't really care about any of the characters coming into the movie nor did I develop any strong feelings for them coming out of the film. Ben Schwartz is kind of the perfect vocal tone for Sonic, playful and hyper and able to dip into pathos without getting too heavy...it's a really kid-friendly vocal performance for a kid-friendly movie. Jim Carrey does double duty as both Robotniks and, I have to say, is really going for it. Carrey always was a sort of human cartoon so being able to lean into that side of his schtick in dual roles seems so completely in his wheelhouse. The script (and I'm sure Carrey's plentiful ad-libs) don't totally abstain from pop-culture references but they're not the foundation of the humour here. Despite never being a big Carrey guy, I did find his performances here were *the* thing to glom onto. Keanu Reeves plays Shadow and...I never would have known if I weren't told. It's an effective performance for a brooding, sad character, but it doesn't stand out in any way.

This is straight-up middle-of-the-road family-friendly entertainment. It's not setting out to do much other than entertain some kids, their parents, and fans of the franchise for two hours, and it seems to do just that.

---

A few weeks back I crammed viewings of the three iterations of Nosferatu into two days. Nosferatu, in its original F.W. Murnow iteration, was a thinly concealed spin on Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. For copyright reasons, it was intended for a German audience only, intent on skirting the attention of Stoker's estate. But it was too good, circulated too widely in Europe and the film did receive a lawsuit and most copies of the film were destroyed.

I've seen various iterations of Dracula in the past... I watched the Tod Browning version and its superior Mexican counterpart filmed in the same sitting in 2023, I watched many of the Hammer Horror versions in my early 20s and I saw Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (got a real "Ruth's Chris' Steakhouse" vibe to that name) when it came out. I'd be lying if I said any of them left a lasting impression.

Coppola's version, if it stoood out to me at all, was in part because of the Topps Comics adaptation, featuring four issues of glorious Mike Mignola (creator of Hellboy) illustrations. I was curious to watch a proper "Dracula" adaptation to see how it stood against Nosferatu. 

My mistake was thinking Coppola would do anything "proper" (see also the Toastypost on Megalopolis). His film opens with a prologue in the late 1400s with Vlad Dracula (Gary Oldman) going off to war, during which his beloved Elisabeta (Winona Ryder) hears of his demise and she drowns herself. Vlad returns home to find her dead and, in his rage, renounces God and all things holy, in the process becoming something demonically other.

A woefully miscast Keanu Reeves, sporting one of the all-time worst British accents committed to celluloid, plays Jonathan Harker, the young newlywed solicitor tasked with helping the noble count Dracula close his land deal as he plans his move from Transylvania to London.  Harker's arrival at the castle finds the young man is kept captive, unable to resist the demands of dramatically garbed and coiffeed Count. Dracula has spied a photograph of Harker's bride Mina (also Winona Ryder, somewhat miscast), who bears a striking resemblance to his Elizabeta, and he is stricken.  In his captivity, Harker seems to enter a semi-fugue state and, roaming the grounds, he encounters the Count's brides and things get...real horny, but blood horny, you know?

Dracula makes his preparations and the move to London, where he stalks and seduces Mina in the guise of an emo band frontman. Mina herself senses a connection to Dracula and despite her love for Jonathan can't seem to resist the Count. Her horny friend Lucy (Sadie Frost) has three suitors in Billy Campbell, Richard E. Grant and Carey Elwes, but runs into the night to fuck Dracula in his wolf form. She is bitten and falls ill, which spurs one of her suitors to bring in Professor Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins) who diagnoses her as victim of a vampire attack.

The first 45 minutes of Coppola's film is pretty enthralling. The use of super-imposition, at the time, was a trite, olde-timey cinematic technique, and hasn't much been used since, but when characters are telling stories and the images sort of fade in and hover beside them providing the visuals, it is striking, particularly because he uses it often, but purposefully. Likewise, in an era where CGI is in its nacent form, Coppola turned instead to in-camera techniques for effects, often involving lighting and shadows. Especially early on, when Dracula is on screen, his shadow moves independent of him, and it's a wonderful effect.  

Coppola with this film was definitely using red as centrepiece, whether it's blood or clothing, everything else is kept in cool tones so that the reds pop. And boy do they pop, whether it's the guyser of blood that erupts from the cross when Dracula stabs it with his sword in the prologue, or the freaky blood-play the brides have with Jonathan, or Lucy's red nightgown as she goes fleeing lustfully into the night.

I want to say the wardrobes are anachronistic, but the costuming is really not of any discernible time. It's all bespoke to the film, from Dracula's ribbed armor (assuming it's meant to reflect musculature) in the prologue, to the draping robes that are both loose and clingy on the women of the film, to Dracula's London appearance with a finely tailored crushvelvet suit and stovepipe hat and armless glasses with blue lenses that is pretty sexy in its own right. Everything looks great.

Dracula works best when its central figure is a threatening commodity. The opening scenes, despite Reeves' godawful accent, are scintellating, as is the voyage of the Demeter transporting the Count to London. The film lulls briefly when it first falls into its romance sub-plot, as Dracula woos Mina, but it picks up as Van Helsing, Harker and Lucy's three suitors go vampire hunting while Mina tries to resist her past-life connection to the Count. Dracula here is a man long devoid of humanity finding desire and connection again with a woman who reminds him of what he lost. Unlike Count Orlok of Nosferatu, who cannot hide his ugliness, Dracula is a monster borne of romantic tragedy. Is there redemption for him? Of course not, but the film strangely captures him not as the ultimate villain but a somewhat sympathetic demon of desire.

It's pretty wild.